Kylar shrugged, but no answer was required.
“I’m not interested in condemning my baby girl, Kylar,” the count said. “I’ve done far worse in my life than she’ll ever dream of. But more than her happiness is at stake. Is Logan aware of her . . . indiscretions?”
“I asked her to tell him, but I don’t believe she has, sir.”
“You know that Logan has asked for my permission to marry Serah?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should I give him my blessing?”
“You couldn’t hope to gain a better son.”
“For my family, it would be wonderful. Is it right for Logan?”
Kylar hesitated. “I think he loves her,” he said finally.
“He wants to know within two days,” the count said. “When he turns twenty-one he takes possession of the Gyre household and becomes one of the richest and most powerful men in the realm, even given how the king has interfered with his house in the last decade. Sixth in the line of succession. First behind the royals. People will say he’s marrying beneath himself. They’ll say she isn’t worthy of him.” The count looked away. “I don’t usually give a damn what they think, Kylar, because they think it for all the wrong reasons. This time, I’m afraid they’ll be right.”
Kylar couldn’t say anything.
“I’ve prayed for years that my daughters would find the right men to be their husbands. And I’ve prayed that Logan would marry the right woman. Why doesn’t this feel like the answer?” He shook his head again and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, I’ve asked you a dozen questions you can’t possibly answer, and haven’t asked the one you can.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Do you love Serah?”
“No, sir.”
“And that girl? The one you’ve been sending money to for almost a decade?”
Kylar flushed. “I’ve sworn not to love, sir.”
“But do you?”
Kylar walked out the door.
As Kylar stepped into the hall, the count said, “You know, I pray for you, too, Kylar.”
33
The whorehouse had closed hours ago. Upstairs, the girls slept on fouled sheets amid the brothel smells of stale alcohol, stale sweat, old sex, wood smoke, and cheap perfume. The doors were locked. All but two of the plain copper lamps downstairs had been extinguished. Momma K didn’t allow her brothels to waste money.
There were only two people downstairs, both of them at the bar. Around the man’s seat were the remains of a dozen smashed glasses.
He finished the thirteenth beer, lifted the glass, and threw it onto the floor. It shattered.
Momma K poured Durzo another beer from the tap, not even blinking. She didn’t say a word. Durzo would speak when he was ready. Still, she wondered why he’d chosen this brothel. It was a hole. She sent her attractive girls elsewhere. Other brothels she’d bought had been worth fixing, but this one huddled deep in the Warrens, far from main roads in the maze of shacks and hovels. This was where she’d lost her maidenhead. She’d been paid ten silvers, and had counted herself lucky.
It wasn’t high on her list of places to visit.
“I should kill you,” Durzo said finally. They were the first words he’d spoken in six hours. He finished his beer and shoved it along the bar. It slid several feet, fell over, rolled off the bar, and cracked.
“Oh, so you do have the power of speech?” Momma K said. She grabbed another glass and opened the tap.
“Do I have a daughter too?”
Momma K froze. She closed the tap too late and beer spilled all over.
“Vonda made me swear not to tell you. She was too scared to tell you and then when she died. . . . You can hate Vonda for what she did, Durzo, but she did it because she loved you.”
Durzo gave her a look of such disbelief and disgust that Gwinvere wanted to hit his ugly face.
“What do you know about love, you whore?”
She had thought that no one could hurt her with words. She’d heard every whore comment in the book, and had added a few besides. But something in how Durzo said it, something about that comment—coming from him!—struck her to the core. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe.
Finally, she said, “I know if I’d had the chance for love that you had, I would have quit whoring. I would have done anything to hold onto that. I was born into this chamber pot of a life; you’re the one who chose it.”
“What’s my daughter’s name?”
“So that’s it? You bring me here to remind me how many times I got fucked in this stinking hole? I remember. I remember! I whored so my baby sister wouldn’t have to. And then you came along. You fucked me five times a week and told Vonda you loved her. Got her pregnant. Left. I could have told her that much was a given. That part of the story’s so predictable it’s not even worth repeating, is it? But you weren’t just any john. No, you got her kidnapped too. And then what? Did you go after her? No, you showed exactly how much you loved her. Called their bluff, didn’t you? You always were willing to gamble with other people’s lives, weren’t you, Durzo? You coward.”
Durzo’s glass exploded against the keg behind her. He was trembling violently. He pointed a finger in her face. “You! You don’t have any right. You would have given it all up for love? Horseshit. Where’s the man in your life now, Gwin? You don’t whore anymore, so there’s nothing for a man to be jealous of, right? But there’s still no man, is there? Do you want to know why you’re the perfect whore? For the same reason there’s no man. Because you don’t have the capacity for love. You’re all cunt. You suck everyone dry and make them pay you for the pleasure. So don’t give me that bleeding heart, I-did-it-to-save-my-sister horseshit. It’s always been power for you. Oh sure, there are women who whore for money or for fame or because they don’t have any other options. But then there are whores. You might not fuck anymore, Gwin, but you will always be a whore. Now. What. Is. Her. Name?” He bit off each word like moldy bread.
“Uly,” Gwinvere said quietly. “Ulyssandra. She lives with a nurse in the castle.”
She looked at the beer she was holding in her hand. She didn’t even remember filling it. Was this what Durzo reduced her to? A submissive little. . . . She didn’t even know. She felt like she’d been eviscerated, that if she looked down, she’d see ropes of her own intestines coiled around her feet.
It took all of her strength to spit in the beer and set it on the counter with even a shadow of nonchalance.
“Well, it’s tough to be a victim of circumstance,” Durzo said. His voice had that killing edge on it.
“You aren’t. . . . You wouldn’t kill your own child.” Not even Durzo could do that, could he?
“I won’t have to,” Durzo said. “They’ll kill her for me.”
He picked up the beer, smiled at Gwinvere over the spit, and drank. He finished half the beer at a gulp and said, “I’m leaving. It smells like old whore in here.” He poured the rest of his beer onto the floor and set the glass carefully on the bar.
Kylar woke two hours before dawn and briefly wondered if death would be too high a price to pay for a full night’s sleep. The correct answer, however, was unavoidable, so after a few minutes, he dragged himself out of bed. He dressed quietly in the dark, reaching into his third drawer where his wetboy grays were folded as always and reaching into his ash jar to smear his features black.