Rigel did not put the packet on the table.
Cynthia filled the far doorway, cloak film-stained, blade low.
The map between them was no longer a roll.
It had peeled itself open to the old capital and the north road, and the ink was creeping, wet, toward Riverbend as if the paper remembered feet.
"Father," Cynthia said.
"Your eyes. Look at me."
Count Blade looked at her.
That much was his.
The lining under his voice looked too.
"Ask," he told Rigel, still calm.
"You were going to."
Rigel kept the wrapped metal against his ribs.
The tick in it matched the Count's stopped fingers, almost.
"How many boxes of stomach potion did you tell Calden to write."
A small question.
Ugly only to the man who had been drinking the stuff since dawn.
Count Blade's mouth tightened.
The iron in him liked that.
The lining in him did not.
"Four," he said, too fast.
Then, slower, with hate in it:
