"Blackwater."
"Old ground."
"You wrote the witnesses."
The fire down the corridor sighs through a board and the light behind him flickers. He watches my face just like he used to watch faces across folders—measuring how much truth would still buy him something.
"I edited," he says.
"You wrote them."
"I took what was true at other sites and put it where it would move you. Yes. The suffering was real. I gave it a useful address."
I'd thought I'd prepared for hearing it. I hadn't. The breath I take in is shorter than I want.
"Why?"
"Because outrage that has nowhere to land doesn't raise an army." He shrugs. "The rebellion needed a fire. You needed a reason. I had reasons in abundance. I had no shortage of fires. I paired you. It wasn't cynical, Cori. You were the cleanest match in the cell."
"Cleanest."
"Compassion is easy to aim. You were furious and decent. I knew exactly which lever in you to pull. So did Varek." His head tilts. "He had a parallel arithmetic, going the other direction. We met in the middle."
The drain is between us. I feel my pulse against the haft of the blade.
"He wanted Leoric dead."
Gideon's mouth softens. He's enjoying this. "Varek wanted Leoric removed. Dead by preference. Martyred if not. Your captain had a problem—the soldiers loved him. The wrong ones. He'd begun asking questions about the lower cells, and the cells were a senate ledger. Varek needed the fortress purged and the commander gone. I needed a recruiting fire. We agreed on a night."
"He wasn't collateral."
"He was the point." Gideon spreads his hands, the glove flat. "You were the way."
I move before I've decided to. The blade goes for his throat, and he's faster than I remember—the missing fingers no impediment to a man who's spent seven years compensating. He catches my wrist and turns it and uses my own momentum to put me against the wall. The drain is between our boots. His other hand finds my hair at the nape and pulls hard enough to bend my head back, and his mouth is at my ear, calm.
"You don't get to kill me, Cori. That's not the story we wrote."
I drive my knee up into the soft place under his ribs. He grunts. The grip in my hair loosens by a fraction. I get the blade hand free. He goes for my throat with his good hand and I twist under it, and the blade goes into him low at the belt line, where there's no armor because he wasn't expecting to fight. He was expecting to oversee. He makes a sound that isn't a word. I step back. He stays standing. His hand goes to the wound and comes away dark and surprised.
"Where is it?" My voice isn't mine. "The original authorizations. Varek isn't trusting the floor anymore. He's carrying."
"Sealed case," he says, after a moment. "Black leather. Senate-stamped. He took it from the upper archive two nights ago. He's wearing it under the gray coat. He won't put it down. He'll burn it before he lets it leave the valley."
"Where on the field?"
"East ridge. Behind the second standard. He won't come down for less than your captain's head."
I lower the blade an inch. I should drive it home. I should do for him what he did to all those people. The math is right there in my hand, but I don't. I step back. He sees me not take it, and something passes through his face that almost looks like disappointment.
"Cori—"
The doorway fills with three of Gideon's own—the heron mark at their collars, eyes that've come down with the broadcast still ringing in them. The one in front is the youngest. He looks at Gideon's hand at the wound, at my blade, at Gideon's face, and his own face does something I've seen done in mirrors.
"You wrote them," he says. Not to me. To Gideon.
Gideon opens his mouth. He gets one syllable out. They take him to the floor. It isn't clean. It isn't quick. It's the work of men who've been told a story their whole adult lives and have just been handed a different one in another woman's voice. I press myself against the wall and watch, because looking away would be a courtesy none of us has earned.
When they are done, the youngest is breathing hard with blood on his sleeve. Gideon is not standing. He is barely a shape at my feet, one hand pressed uselessly to the wound at his belt, the other hidden under the angle of his coat. I see the movement before the blade clears his boot. Not a surge. Not strength. One last piece of ugliness crawling out of him because even dying, Gideon needs the final word.
