Alasne smiled, a bloody strike. “Sendoa’s whore still breathes?”
“Yes.”
“Though you were under the same roof for days? Weeks?” Alasne’s tea-stained teeth flashed. She’d spent so many nights in Geneva’s chambers at the Itspi, cradling the pregnant queen as she cried over what she’d inferred between the king and his general. It was only when Geneva had no tears left to cry—and a firm belief in her ability to survive on her own—that she’d released Alasne to her dream of joining the people-led resistance of the Warlord in the newly fallen Torrent. “How can this be? Have you grown so soft? I thought hers was the soul you wanted most in this world?”
“I needed her.”
The pirate’s sun-dark nose wrinkled. “We both know you don’t need anyone. That’s why you’ve survived this long.”
“True.” Geneva again reached for her sagardoa. “But surviving a lie and surviving beneath a mask are two totally different conceits.”
“And now?”
“Now I must survive as a fugitive.” Geneva took a long drink, the liquid burning all the way down. She coughed into her tattooed wrist, swallowed, and leveled a look upon Alasne. “All the continent knows where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I am not safe until it is mine again.”
“I gathered as much from your letter.” Alasne stood and crossed to her hardwood desk, plucking Geneva’s parchment from the top pile. She wielded it like a dagger. “But what you have not stated is what’s in it forme.”
And there it was.
The line, and the difference in where they’d stood since Alasne came into her own power. Since the very day Geneva and her babe entered the Warlord’s tent, the conversation was never one-sided, weighted to her high birth. No, it was equal and there was give-and-take. Alasne had gone far because she always took what was afforded to her. When one grew from seedling to sapling on nothing, it was imperative to take every bit of something the world provided.
This was a lesson Alasne provided Geneva, too.
The pirate returned to her chaise and tossed the parchment onto the table between them. Geneva set the dregs of her drink upon the paper, sat back until her spine rested upon the cushions of the divan, and crossed her legs. “You need the Port of Torrent.”
“I’m told it’s the Port ofTorrencenow, Gen.”
Oh, how she missed Alasne’s biting sardonic responses. “It is what I say it is, pirate. You need the port. Without me, you will not be able to dock on the continent.”
“You say that as if the port is the only place I can dock. As if I didn’t just pick your ass up from our appointed cove.”
Shedid notmiss the woman’s stubbornness. It was too much like her own. Like Amarande’s, if Geneva was being honest.
“Let me rephrase,” Geneva started. “You cannot dock anywhereconvenientto sell your stolen wares. There is no infrastructure for you in that cove or any other. You’ll have to rebuild your underground systems, and the longer that takes the easier it is for your competitors to cut a slice of the cake for themselves.”
“Oh, how I miss cake.” The woman nearly swooned. Always so food motivated, Alasne. “Tell me, when we pummel the young wolf cub into the sand, can we make it a point to get cake? Lemon cake. Pineapple. I will even accept maple cake from Eritri if that’s the most convenient.”
“It will be done—”
“Exceptional, though I am still asking you:What else is in it for me?” Alasne’s question was presented as a brick wall—no way around it, no way through, save for the single key to a doorway her ego kept hidden. “You are only giving me what I already had, plus cake, Gen. If my men and connections are going landside for this, what else am I going to get?”
Geneva straightened. Perhaps she’d misjudged how low her positionappeared to her friend. Or rather, how much negotiation it had taken for Alasne to survive on the sea. She’d upped her game considerably.
“You will get a firm partner in me as I will be in a position where I can directly supply you with Basilican steel—raw or formed weapons—and Ardenian diamonds.”
Alasne cocked a dark brow, her lips in a twist that showed every hard-earned wrinkle on one side of her face. “Oh, can you now? How will regaining theTorrentmake this possible?”
“It is not merely regaining my status that makes it possible,” Geneva pointed out, “it iswhowill rule those kingdoms that will make it possible.”
“Is that right?” Something like interest slid across the pirate’s face.
Geneva gave a measured nod, down to business, eye contact stern. “We will have a new, direct partnership with Basilica, and Ardenia will either come by force or by subversion, but it will be available to us in a new way.”
Alasne’s eyes hooded. “And you can guarantee this? Along with our legacy?”
“Yes.” Geneva’s entire body hummed with her belief in that single, small word. “We will protect it and kill any chance at rebellion. With their king’s blood spilled in the sand, the resistance will crumble. They will die fighting, or run, or simply fall into the shadows and do as they are told to survive. The old ways will be irresistible, and no one will fight back.”
Her friend leaned forward, her resistance crumbling just enough that Geneva knew she was in. Alasne nodded, as if seeing it all play out before her.
