Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
I gave Taisiya an hour’s head start before I headed to my father’s study.
It was his guard who answered today, excusing himself when he saw me on the other side. I closed the door behind me and tried not to inhale his familiar scent of pipe smoke and steel. Most of the time, it was easy to block out memories of my childhood, of the man I thought I had known before I understood the reality of everything he was.
Deceiving him always managed to make me feel younger, though. As if I were still a child, unwilling to admit to him that the woman he had chosen to be my new mother after losing the one he loved was more monster than maternal.
But she wasn’t here now, thanks to Taisiya’s herbs.
“My son.” His greeting was a heartbeat too late, his half smile just a touch uncertain.
Taras had gauged his mood well. I leaned over his desk, making a show of noting who was listening in.
“There is a prisoner you should see,” I told him.
Walk with me so no one overhears.
He followed my gaze to the door, his paranoia kicking in right on cue. Then he nodded, still quicker to react than men with twice his sanity. It was why I was never foolish enough to underestimate him.
“What’s this about?” he asked once we were outside of the palace.
An icy wind whistled through the narrow gaps between buildings as we moved from the main part of the palace to the tower reserved for prisoners.
“A traitor,” I responded shortly, unleashing a bit of the anger that had lived just beneath the surface of my skin since the night she left. “One who took something that belonged to us.” Belongs to me .
I watched the gears turn in my father’s eyes as he tried to remember what I would care enough to be angry about.
“And just when I was starting to have fun with her,” I added, giving him the hint he needed.
His expression clouded with fury, stopping in his tracks.
“They took the bastard’s daughter?” he spat the question, each word coated in a violent promise.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“And you allowed this to happen?”
As a matter of fact, I did.
“They took her from the balcony,” I explained through gritted teeth.
Not a lie. I was banking on the fact that he didn’t remember she had escaped that way once before, couldn’t fathom a woman climbing onto a rooftop, and therefore would not have seen the need to guard for people coming out of that door.
“Impossible.”
“She is easy to coerce when her family is threatened.” It was another truth, one that soured in my mouth to give him.
But it didn’t matter. He would never get his hands on her again.
We passed through the doors of the tower, shaking the snow from our hair and boots. I greeted the chief guard stationed at the entrance to the dungeons, who was, conveniently, Kirill, freshly back from his leave. He offered a grim nod, unlocking the iron door before allowing us through.
I led my father to one of the farthest cells from the door. The space was mostly unused, since Socairan justice tended to be swift and decisive. We were more likely to divest someone of their limbs or life than have them languishing away in a dungeon where we had to tap into our food stores for them.
Still, there were a handful of people awaiting judgment, and, of course, the occupant of the cell we were headed to now. Pulling a brass key from my pocket, I unlocked the door to reveal my spy.
The man hung limply from the manacles, sporting evidence of torture I couldn’t bring myself to regret. His life had already been forfeit. The wounds… Well, I had to make it look like I had been questioning him.
“Your work?” my father asked.
The scent of blood and other bodily fluids wafted over to us, mitigated only by the frigid temperatures. I nodded.
He stared at each of the prisoner’s injuries as if they were some sort of puzzle to be solved. As if deciphering exactly what methods I had used to inflict such pain.
“It isn’t like you to lose control,” he said dispassionately.
Or was there a hint of suspicion in his tone?
My heartbeat slowed down to a loud, rhythmic thump, the world around me coming into the sharp kind of clarity that usually accompanied battle. Of course, that’s what conversations with my father had felt like for years now.
“This was an insult to our entire clan, and to me,” I growled.
He tilted his head, looking from the man to me, and I let him see every ounce of the rage that had consumed me just as surely as the fires I set to the villages that had done nothing to deserve it. The rage my father instilled in me with every unreasonable order, flames that were fueled by the constant futility of dealing with men like the one in that cell.
I might not hate him for the reasons I led my father to believe, but I hated him all the same.
“Did you at least obtain useful information first?” my father asked.
I tried not to be offended by the supposition.
“Relevant, yes, though I wouldn’t call it precisely useful,” I replied evenly. “They took her to the tunnels. There will be no catching up with her now.”
“And you plan to let this stand?”
This was the precarious part, balancing barefoot on a razor’s edge.
I met his gaze solidly. “Of course not, but timing will be everything.”
I held my breath, hoping we had played this right. We needed him lucid, but not lucid enough to ask for details he wouldn’t remember. If his mind accepted this explanation now, it would be simple enough to tell him I was working on things on the chance he questioned it later.
He didn’t like to look weak or call attention to his lacking memory, so it was in his best interest to trust me. Even when I was lying. Even if part of him suspected that, like he did right now…
A muscle clenched in his jaw and his eyes narrowed. The torch crackled and someone called out in a faraway cell, both sounds drowned out by the too-loud beat of my heart.
He could still say no.
He could still start a war.
Will you lead your men to the mountain pass?
I wouldn’t have a choice, Lemmikki.
Then my father shook his head like he was forcing out any lingering doubts about the son he had raised to take up his mantle of ruthlessness.
“Very well. String the traitor along the curtain wall, and spread the word that she has gone.”
I forced my exhale to be slow, knowing the relieved puff of air would give me away.
“You wish me to tell the dukes that she escaped?” It was a leading question. He would die before admitting that.
“Tell them that we’ve allowed her to return home—for now—and at our discretion. That we have plans in the works that they are not privy to.”
It would almost have been laughable under other circumstances.
My father’s carefully crafted lie was closer to the truth than he would ever know.