Drugh fixed me with a heavy stare. “You are not Gort.”
“I am his employer.”
“I’m not here for you.”
Too bad. He wasn’t getting his hands on the Magnars. Drugh wasn’t a bad man, but he was dangerous, and no matter how much bad blood there was between him and Filderon, the broker had been his mentor. I needed this to go well, because if it didn’t someone would end up dead.
“Filderon was a greedy man in the truest sense of the word. Some people are greedy until they get comfortable and then they decide they have enough. For Filderon, enough didn’t exist. He was always looking for a way to grab more.”
No reaction.
“That’s why he lied to you that day in the cemetery, when you were holding your mother as she wept. Your father never asked him to take care of you. Your father knew what kind of man Filderon was, and he didn’t expect to die in that campaign. Filderon recognized talent when he saw it. He understood your worth and reasoned you would make him a lot of coin. That’s why he convinced you to abandon knighthood. What was it he said? ‘Knighthood is for people born into money. It keeps them from being bored. You have a mother to take care of.’”
Still no reaction.
“That’s why he took your wife under his wing. He’d ignored his cousin for most of his life. The only reason he showed up at his funeral was because he realized there was an inheritance. He didn’t even know your wife’s name, he just knew there was a sixteen-year-old orphaned daughter, and she would be an easy target. That’s why he didn’t want the two of you to marry. Once you did, he’d lose the money. She came to the wedding with only a quarter of her dowry.”
The commander of the Dargans was a tough nut to crack.
“When Indora Yolenta sent a sack of gold to him to lead eighty people to the slaughter, Filderon wavered. Not because it was wrong, or because he felt guilty about it. It was because he knew that there was no coming back from that. It would finish him as a broker so there would be no more money to be had. But the offer was just too tempting. So much money. He already had the estate picked out where he would retire. That’s why he tried to get all of the Magnars in. He didn’t want Gort’s sons looking for him after their father died at Falcon Point and disrupting his sweet new life. You’ve read the instructions pinned to his chest. Things like trust and loyalty didn’t matter to him at all.”
That was the Dargans’ credo: trust and loyalty.
I had run out of things to say. The silence lay heavy.
Drugh opened his mouth. “Do you think you’ve told me something I didn’t know? There is a reason I stopped speaking to him.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because right or wrong, Filderon was there. He robbed me blind, but he gave me a way to support my mother. He taught me. He was shrewd and patient and he didn’t hold back. I am where I am because he showed me the ropes. Hedena knew her uncle was after her dowry, but he gave her a safe place to stay. When she was scared and grieving, he put a roof over her head and food on her table. She was not alone. She belonged somewhere, and when she was ready, he pulled in all his favors to apprentice her to the weaver of her choice. He treated us as his own. He sat at our wedding for both of our fathers, and he left everything he owned to us. He was family. That’s what the Magnars took away.”
And I had just crashed and burned. Damn it.
“My wife is sad. She wants someone to be held accountable.” Drugh stared at me. “I’ll make it simple. Tell me where the Magnars are, and I will let you walk out of here.”
It was time for plan B. “No.”
Drugh stared at me.
“Filderon was your family. The Magnars are mine.”
Drugh sighed. “Not smart. You think being a noblewoman will protect you.”
No, I was sure it wouldn’t. “I accept responsibility for their actions. The person you’re looking for is right here.”
The mercenary commander raised his eyebrows.
“You have a choice, Drugh. Either you kill me here and now, or we come to some kind of arrangement. But I will not let you hunt down Gort and Shana and their sons. Filderon was going to send them to their deaths. He got what was coming to him. If you persist, I will expose every dirty secret he had. By the time I’m done, his name will be mud and everything you and your wife have built will be splattered with it. Decide what you’re going to do.”
Drugh looked at Reynald. “And what about you? Are you fine with dying here, too?”
“Hadn’t planned on it,” Reynald said.
“Too bad, because that’s what—”
Reynald pulled down his lancer’s coif.
Drugh went white. The man behind him froze, too. The guy by the door wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he caught the change in body posture and snapped to alert readiness.
