Sariah sneered.“Lies won’t help your situation.”
“Lady, I haven’t even begun to address the issue of you implanting anetavin me.I suggest you don’t make me any angrier than I already am,” Kira warned.
Graydon looked over with sudden interest.“What’s this?”
“Didn’t your buddy tell you?”Kira smirked as caution finally entered Sariah’s expression.“While I was in their custody, they left me a little gift.Thankfully, Quillon discovered it before it could do any damage.He and Harlow plan to lodge a formal complaint.”
From the way Graydon eyed the inquisitor, Kira could tell he was imagining what it would be like to feel her neck under his hands.
And not in a romantic way.
“I didn’t know anything about this,” Jarek was quick to say.
“Sure, you didn’t, Jare,” Kira drawled.
That’s why she’d woken up to find him in her cell, watching over her.Because he had nothing to do with it.
Kira hoped when Graydon or the emperor finally got around to holding the inquisitors accountable that they went for the throat.What they’d done was a violation.Of her bodily autonomy.Her House’s privacy.All of it.
She’d have already wiped their order off the map if Roake’s position wasn’t so precarious.As the pirate clans could attest, she made for an awful enemy.
But she’d play nice.
For now.
“Torvald was remiss in offering Roake a temporary pardon.”Sariah lifted her chin in challenge.“I was simply acting in the empire’s best interest.Something you have shown again and again to be incapable of.As such, I am exercising my authority and removing you from control of this mission.”Sariah glanced at Baran.“Arrest her.”
Jin looked up at Dylan.“Can she do that?”
Kira glanced at the oshota, a little interested in that answer herself.
“There is precedent,” Dylan admitted.“The Face’s oshota would have to find some legitimacy to her accusations.They’d also have to be willing to bear the stigma that comes from having betrayed their sword.”
The second would be the more difficult obstacle.Dylan didn’t have to say that a betrayal of that magnitude guaranteed no one else would take them into service.Their life as an oshota would end.To say nothing of the social death that would follow.
Only a stupidly honorable person would even consider it.
“It’s only happened once in the entirety of our history,” Dylan added.
Jin frowned at Sariah.“Is this woman stupid?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
“What’s it to be?”Kira asked Baran.“Is it finally time for that rematch?”
She didn’t really think Baran would go against Graydon—she’d seen how loyal he was—but if by some chance he lost the entirety of his mind and decided to betray his sword, there was no way she was letting Sariah take her into custody.Not after the shit the inquisitor pulled with theetav.
“A rematch does sound tempting,” Baran admitted, for a moment sounding like he was actually considering it.“But no, I don’t answer to idiots.”Baran sent a cryptic look at Sariah.“No matter how important or self-righteous they pretend to be.”
Kira hid her wince.That sounded personal.
She noted Graydon’s lack of surprise at Sariah’s attempted insubordination and Baran’s response.Things like this were what made her find him so terrifying sometimes.Graydon had orchestrated this entire chain of events.Maybe not this exact situation, but Sariah overstepping so badly that Graydon now had an excuse to oppose her presence?Definitely.
Sariah was done.Not just here, but likely in the inquisitor’s order as well.She hadn’t just attempted to seize power and question Graydon.She’d called out the emperor by name.
There would be consequences.Big, life altering consequences.
“Just what did you do to make that woman trust you so much she was willing to attempt a coup?”Jin asked.
