The Blood Mirror

So he did.

Breathing, he decided pretty much immediately, felt amazing.

Chapter 38

“I thought you’d humiliate me,” Gavin said. He didn’t move. He still thought it. He scanned the room. His father was leaning back in his chair, and the table was covered with food. Meat, dried fruits, sweetmeats, cheeses, bread, nuts, two flagons, two fine golden goblets. Gavin could hardly bear to look at it, and could hardly bear not to.

“Humiliate you? By springing a trap on you? Like all your others? What would that prove? That I could outthink a prisoner with no weapons, no tools, and only the light I’ve allowed him? That’s not exactly a challenge, is it?” He hesitated. “Or are you really still trying to prove how smart you are? Is that what all this is?”

There was no answer.

“Come. Sit,” Andross said. “This wine shan’t stay chilled forever.” Indeed, there was condensation on one of the glasses.

He’d not been here long, he was saying. Just long enough to have plenty of time to wait for Gavin. He’d predicted him that perfectly.

Andross tilted the goblet and inhaled the scent with relish.

“Marvelous. Oh, wait. Was this the one I poisoned, or the other?” He picked up the other glass and drank. “Ah, that’s right, I poisoned neither. What trivial games you play, boy. How unworthy you are of my name.”

Gavin didn’t move. It didn’t make sense. His father had taken such precautions last time. Why simply let Gavin step within striking range?

“You fucker,” Gavin said.

That was the humiliation. Gavin was so weak, the old man didn’t fear physical violence from him. And Gavin couldn’t draft. He had no power Andross need fear, neither martial nor magical nor mental.

Andross grinned, as if pleased that Gavin had figured it out. “You know, I made a mistake with you.”

“More than one,” Gavin said.

Andross continued as if he’d not heard him. “I thought you’d found this prison. I had no idea you were so insane that you’d made it. I didn’t realize the truth until you broke out of the blue cell. Then it became obvious. And of course you’d not have made a prison without designing ways for you yourself to escape.”

“I am my mother’s son,” Gavin said. Orholam have mercy, that food. His whole body ached for it. Not the hunger of the belly, but the deeper hunger felt in the throat like thirst.

Andross’s face darkened, but he controlled himself. He said, “I propose a trade.”

“A trade?”

“There is a dignity in making bargains, and you need all the dignity you can get. You know I’ll abide by my word.”

Gavin said nothing. He was too hungry, too weak. His mind couldn’t race as fast as Andross Guile’s in this moment.

“You give me the tooth and that bit of hellstone, and you can eat your fill.”

Gavin’s heart had been an eagle, mounting on strong wings, as he’d seen the chamber before him. His father’s appearance had torn out his flight feathers. And now Andross plucked out his last hopes. Andross knew about the hellstone. He knew about it all. Wearing nothing but rags, Gavin had hidden both secrets in his cheeks, like a khat-chewer. Gavin’s hopes plunged to earth, flapping wildly, helplessly, uselessly.

“Then what?” Gavin asked.

“Then you go back to a cell, of course.”

Gavin didn’t so much as glance back at the lux torch he’d stuck in the works to keep the portcullis from falling. He was weak, but it could be used as a club.

His father did look at it, pointedly. “Too far away, don’t you think?”

It was.

“Even were it closer, do you think it would be enough, against me, in your present state?”

And Gavin’s hopes plunged into the earth, ribs breaking, body smashed. There was nothing left for him.

Andross said, “Come now, sit sit sit. We have so much to talk about.”

Gavin hesitated for one moment more.

“So disappointing,” Andross said. He sighed. “It used to be your particular strength that you could see how a situation had changed and adapt to it instantly… Dazen.”

It was a horse stomping on a body already dead. Gavin had known his father had to know by now, but to hear it, to have that sick, shameful truth spoken, was more than he could bear.

“Three… two… one… and the offer’s expired,” Andross said. And now he was stripping the dead for loot, breaking open Gavin’s jaw to get at a gold tooth.

“But wait, I haven’t—”

“I gave you a fair chance. This wasn’t a trap. This food was here for you, and you had it. Almost.”

And now Andross was desecrating the dead, mutilating the corpse.

The word had a resonance, here, in this chamber: ‘almost.’

But Gavin was already speaking, reacting, walking toward Andross. For may not the desecrated dead rise as vengeful ghosts? “I want you to know, father. I didn’t know if I could really go through with it and kill Gavin. But then I realized I wasn’t murdering him, I was freeing him from the nightmare you’d pulled him into when he was just a child. You took him away from us and destroyed the boy he was. I was freeing him from your corruption. It was a mercy killing.”

Rage washing over his face, Andross snapped his fingers and light flared from a wall back and to Gavin’s left.

Fiery letters appeared, spelling out ‘Almost’ in Gavin’s own hand. The very sign he’d used to taunt his brother into his trap.

But how had Andross triggered it?

Gavin didn’t wait. He lunged toward the old man.

An egg of red luxin larger than his head hit him in the face and blew him off his feet.

Gavin fell flat on his back and pawed at the sticky pyrejelly covering his face, spitting, trying to breathe. He barely opened his eyes in time to see Andross standing over him, one hand aflame.

With the combustible goop on his face, if Andross brought that fire close, Gavin would burn to death.

But his father checked himself, extinguished the flame, and merely hit him with a right cross.

Gavin’s head bounced off the floor and his limbs went limp. He fought to recover.

He heard a clang as Andross used luxin to hurl aside Gavin’s lux torch from where it was blocking the portcullis. But there was no clatter of the portcullis dropping to the floor.