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“What shall we talk about today?” Sigil said as she walked the bars of her cell. Unlike Dom, she wore only a single shackle around her ankle, its long chain connected to a ring on the far wall.
He tipped his head back, careful to avoid the drip.
“Three weeks,” he growled. “They could be back in Vodin by now. Or Sirandel, in the Castlewood, if they can find it. Or they took to the sea, with the raiders. Or—”
“Or Corayne and the others could be in another cell, locked up in this maze with the two of us,” Sigil snapped. She scowled in his direction, eyes fighting against the dark. “Or—”
Dom curled a fist, one of the only things he could do.
“Do not say it.”
Sigil braced her head between the bars, fitting her face into the gap.
“I won’t if we talk aboutsomethingelse,” she shot back at him. “We’vegone over every inch of what-if’s and maybe’s. You Elders may have centuries to dwell but we mortals have tomove on.”
He glared at her across the corridor, his face hot with anger. Not that Sigil could see it.
“Even I know you’re lying,” he muttered.
Her bowl clonked off the bars of her cell, splitting in two. Unsatisfied, Sigil kicked blindly at the pieces.
“Well, it’s one of the only things I can do down here!” she shouted, throwing up her hands.
After another furious pace across the cell, she fell into her usual routine. Hands braced against the packed dirt and cut stone floor, she started her exercises. With every sit-up, she hissed a long breath.
“They aren’t questioning us,” she muttered as her body bobbed up and down. “They aren’t torturing us. They aren’t even going to just let us die. What does that Corblood bastard want?”
Dom watched her exercises with envy. What he would give for a single free limb, let alone run of the entire cell.
“Taristan wants us to suffer,” he spat, glaring up. He imagined the New Palace above him, with all its stained glass and gilding, its great halls crawling with silk rats and steel vipers.
On the ground, Sigil scoffed. Then she turned her head, yelling up at the stone ceiling.
“We’re suffering!”
Dom barely heard her over the thrum in his ears, his own blood pounding. It roared like a crashing river, like the lion on Erida’s cursed flag.
“Taristan will keep us alive until his victory is complete.” Dom bared his teeth to no one. In the shadows, he saw Allward fall, consumed by What Waits and His realm of Asunder. Borne into flame, fallen into theabyss. “When he sits a throne of ashes, king of a broken realm, he will make us kneel. And watch.”
Sigil slowed and blew a lock of black hair out of her eyes.
“He’s going to have a hard time tearing apart any more Spindles without a sword,” she said thoughtfully. “He doesn’t have it. Not if we’re still rotting down here. He doesn’t have the sword —and he doesn’t haveher.”
Dom remembered it all too sharply. Sorasa’s whip on Taristan’s wrist, the Spindleblade falling from his hands to land at Corayne’s feet. And then their fading silhouettes, reduced to shadows in the smoke.
“I certainly hope so,” he murmured.
Sigil looked in his direction, her eyes narrowed to slits as she tried to see. “Save some of that hope for yourself, Dom.”
“You’ve got enough for us both, Sigil.” He chuckled darkly. “The iron bones of the Countless?”
The bounty hunter leapt to her feet in a flash. She curled both arms over her head and slammed her hands to her chest with a resounding slap.
“Will never be broken,” she answered, a true smile on her face. It was the only thing that seemed to cheer her in the darkness.
Even in the dungeons of a conqueror queen, the battle cry of the Temur shuddered them both.
Until the scrape of a key in a lock splintered through the air. Dom turned his head so quickly his skin caught on the collar, scratching painfully. He barely noticed, his Vederan eyes narrowed on the end of the corridor.
