The Bandit King by Lilith Saintcrow

before the Cabinet.” My mother pressed her soft cheek to my unshaven one, and kept herself between Perseval d’Arcenne and me.
    I suddenly felt smaller than I was accustomed to, as if I were much younger.
But does she weep? Is she well?
    “Sílvie.” My father made a restless movement. “I would speak with my son.”
    She let loose of me and half-turned, spreading her arms slightly to bar his passage. “
Your
son, now? Ah, yes. I carried him inside me, Perseval, and had the birthing of him as well. Until your suffering can match that, he is
our
son, and I shall thank you not to forget it. And I shall not let you speak until your tone takes on some kindness.”
    “The papers are
damning
,” my father hissed, leaning forward with his hand to his rapier-hilt. “I read them myself. That woman wears the Aryx, it abides by her touch, she is the Queen, and her orders are
given
. I counted us lucky our family had remained untainted by treachery. What else did they teach him at Court, Sílvie? Beyond how to lie to his family, his Consort, his liege?”
    I opened my mouth to reply, but my mother did before I could. I could never remember a time she took him to task without a laughing look or a simple grace that let him keep his pride, but now she turned on him with a ferocity I had scarce suspected in my gentle, ever-decorous dam.
    “
You
said someone had to account for the provinces at Court, best it be us, and that he was seventeen and old enough to whore, hence old enough to catch the King’s eye. Do you not recall it, sending my boy into that den of wolves they call Court?” Between us, the slim shape of my mother was a line too easily breached. She is a small woman, like Vianne, and barely reached my father’s chin.
    And yet my father retreated before her. I moved as if to put my mother aside, for it was not meet for a nobleman to hide behind a woman’s skirts, but she merely slapped my hand gently away as if I had reached for one too many scones at the chai-table. Chains rattled, and her voice rose. “Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin used our son as he saw fit. And
you
colluded, Perseval d’Arcenne. You sent the boy I raised, the boy I labored fifteen hours to birth, the heir you were so set on that almost killed me—
you
sent him there, and now you would just as easily cast him from the battlements without listening to a single word in his favor?”
    “Sílvie—” My father actually retreated again, and I could have sworn he looked ashamed.
    “I held my peace for
thirteen years
, Perseval. Now I shall not. And as I live and breathe, if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing
our son
, I shall leave you with your pride to warm your bed at night and retreat myself to Kimyan’s service, after I return your marriage-ring with a curse. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Mère—”
I had never heard her speak so, and a child’s fear—that my father would strike her, though he never had in my memory—made me move restlessly, the chains rattling.
    “As for
you
.” She rounded on me, dark eyes flashing. “What have you to say for yourself, Tristan? Amazed you are not, and I see you have not been worrying at the cuffs to get them loose.”
    She was, as usual, correct. Had I been entirely innocent, I might have been working my wrists bloody under the cuffs, seeking to escape and return to Vianne’s side. In one stroke, my mother disarmed me.
    Silence ran through the cell like a dangerous river. What could I tell them? Whatever story I chose would have to be effective—and salted with the right leavening of truth. It would have to account for everything they had seen, and whatever Vianne suspected as well.
    “Henri was about to marry her off.” I heard the queer flatness of my tone, as if I spoke of another man’s downfall. “To a Damarsene, if the proper assassin could be found for Corax Fang of Hese-Arburg; to marry
him
to a bastard royal would be too much. But to a younger Damarsene, a