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A young guard brought water at the turn of the watch. He wouldn't meet her eyes, which told her he knew exactly who she was and had been raised to think better of the house he served.

"You can look at me," she said, not unkindly. "I don't bite, and I'm not contagious. Whatever they told you I did, I did it with my eyes open and I'd do it again. There's nothing in that you need to be afraid of."

He looked at her then, quick and startled, a boy under the trained face. He set the water down and went. But he'd looked. She filed it away anyway. He was young, and he still had a conscience he hadn't learned to hide. She could work with that. She'd worked with a great deal less.

Then she sat back down and did the one useful act left to her. She started listing every soul in the Colony who owed her a truth, and began, in the dark, to plan.

*** Kavren ***

He rose before the gray came. He didn't go to Sillevia. He went to the king.

A guard did not request an audience with the D'Karr. It wasn't done. Kavren did it anyway, and the warriors at the door let him pass, partly because they'd served beside him for years, partly because something in his face made stopping him seem unwise.

Boradrith was awake. Kings on dying planets didn't sleep much either. He looked at the soldier who'd walked in without leave and didn't call for anyone.

"You're the guard," Boradrith said.

"I am." Kavren didn't kneel. He stood the way he stood a post. "I've come to tell you what it costs to break her, D'Karr. Not what it costs her. What it costs you."

"Sit, then." Boradrith's mouth did something that wasn't a smile. "You're the second person in two days to come into this room and defend the other one instead of themselves. It's becoming a theme."

That stopped Kavren half a breath. Then he understood, and something braced in his chest for a long time eased a fraction. She'd gone first. Of course she had.

"Then you already know the shape of it," he said. He didn't sit. "So I'll give you the numbers. Numbers are the one language nobody in this Colony can argue with. She taught me that too."

"She taught a great many people how to think. Go on."

"Earth doesn't trust Dobromia. Earth trusts her. Every ship that comes down, every day the alliance holds instead of breaking, runs through one fact. The humans have one of their own standing beside your throne who's never lied to them." Kavren kept his voice level, flat, built to carry weight without adding any. "Your son holds the far end of that rope on Earth. Toren and the scientist turn two governments toward each other so the ships keep coming. Diana holds this end. Cut her out, name her a schemer, put her boy out of the light, and you don't only ruin a woman. You cut Dobromia's half of the only rope out of the dark, on the exact turn of the cycle your sun began to die."

"You've made her argument for her," Boradrith said.

"It's a good argument. She makes it better. I'm only the one who isn't confined."

The king almost laughed at that, then caught it. The catching told Kavren more than the laugh would have.

"And what occurred in the caves," Boradrith said. "You'll tell me that costs me nothing either."

"It costs you your pride, and your pride isn't worth a single ship." Kavren didn't look away. "So, take the price out of me instead of her. I overstepped. I forgot my place. A guard of the Dowager's house who reached above himself and got put down hard for it, that's a story the court swallows easily and forgets by the next shortfall. And it leaves your consort, your alliance and your son exactly where they were this morning. Blame me. Banish me. Whatever the story needs. I'll stand up under it. I've stood up under worse, and I've never once had a better reason."

Boradrith studied him for a while. Kavren had guarded enough powerful men to know that stillness like that wasn't calm. It was a mind working hard.

"You talk like her," Boradrith said at last. It wasn't quite a compliment. "The same math. The same refusal to let a man keep his anger once it turns expensive."

"She taught me to think. I don't believe she meant to. I don't think she can help it." Kavren's voice stayed even. "You had her counsel for eighteen months, D'Karr. You know exactly what she's worth. And you know your mother wants to end it over a matter of blood, on a planet that freezes in a handful of cycles if blood is all anyone can find room to think about."

"Careful," the king said.

"I've run out of uses for careful. I spent the last of it in a cave." Kavren met his eyes. "I'm telling you the truth because it's the only coin I've got left that's worth anything to you."

The silence after that had a different weight to it.

Boradrith had spent his reign being handed men who wanted something from him. Grain, rank, land, the ear of the throne. He couldn't remember the last time a man had walked into his chamber wanting nothing for himself at all, offering to carry a punishment he hadn't earned so that someone else could keep a life he'd never get to share. It was either the finest performance he'd ever been shown or the plain truth, and thirty years on a throne had taught him to tell those apart. He looked at the soldier standing at ease with nothing left to lose, and he knew which this was.

"You'd take all of it," Boradrith said slowly. "Her disgrace onto your own back. For a woman you can't have, in a court that will never let you keep her."

"Yes."

"Why?"