‘Squeamish?’ said Govart. ‘We’re just getting started. You can stay and watch if you like.’
‘Does he know?’ Laurent said.
His voice was a little hoarser than it had been starting out; his response to pain had been conventional. Guion was frowning.
‘Know what?’
‘The secret. Your clever secret. What it is you have on my uncle.’
‘Shut up,’ said Govart.
‘What is he talking about?’
‘You never wondered,’ said Laurent, ‘why my uncle kept him alive? Why he kept him in wine and women all these years?’
‘I said shut your mouth.’ Closing his hand around the hilt of the knife, Govart turned it.
Blackness burst over him, so that he was only distantly aware of what followed. He heard Guion demanding, in a tinny voice far away, ‘What’s he saying? You have some private arrangement with the King?’
‘You keep out of it. This isn’t your business.’ Govart.
‘If you have some other arrangement, you will disclose it to me, now.’
He felt Govart let go of the knife. Lifting his own hand was the second hardest thing he had ever done, after raising his head. Govart was moving to face down Guion, blocking his path to Laurent.
Laurent closed his eyes, wrapped his unsteady left hand around the hilt, and pulled the knife out of his shoulder.
He couldn’t contain the low sound that escaped him. The two men turned as his fumbling hands cut his remaining bonds, and he staggered to stand behind the chair. Laurent held the knife in his left hand in as close to a correct defensive posture as he could presently manage. The room was wavering. The hilt of the knife was slippery. Govart smiled, amused and pleased, as a jaded voyeur at some unexpected minor final act of a play.
Guion said, with mild irritation but absolutely no urgency, ‘Get him back under control.’
They faced each other. Laurent had no illusions about his skill as a left-handed knife fighter. He knew how negligible a threat he presented to Govart, even on a day when he wasn’t swaying. At his best, he would land a single knife strike before Govart closed on him. It wouldn’t matter. Govart’s structural bulk of muscle was layered over with a secondary bulk of fat. Govart could weather a single knife cut from a weakened, weaker opponent, and keep fighting. The outcome of his brief excursion into freedom was inevitable. He knew it. Govart knew it.
Laurent made his single clumsy left-handed strike with the knife, and Govart countered it, brutally. And indeed, it was Laurent who cried out at the tearing pain beyond anything he had ever known.
As, with his ruined right arm, Laurent swung the chair.
The heavy oak hit Govart in the ear, with the sound of a mallet striking a wooden ball. Govart staggered and went down. Laurent half staggered, too, the weight of the swing taking him part way across the cell. Guion was moving desperately out of his way, pressing his back to the wall. Laurent focused all his remaining strength on the task of reaching the barred door and placing himself on the other side of it, dragging it closed behind him and turning the key that was still in the lock. Govart didn’t get up.
In the stillness that followed, Laurent found his way from the bars, to the open corridor, to the opposite wall, which he slid down, finding at the midway point that there was a wooden bench, which took his weight. He had expected the floor.
His eyes closed. He was dimly aware of Guion, tugging at the cell bars, which rattled and clanged and stayed irrefutably closed.
He did laugh then, a breathless sound, with the sweet, cool feel of the stone at his back. His head lolled.
‘—how dare you, you worthless traitor, you’re a stain on your family’s honour, you—’
‘Guion,’ said Laurent, without opening his eyes. ‘You had me tied up and locked in a room with Govart. Do you think name-calling will hurt my feelings?’
‘Let me out!’ The words ricocheted off the walls.
‘I tried that,’ said Laurent, calmly.
Guion said, ‘I’ll give you anything you want.’
‘I tried that too,’ said Laurent. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as predictable. But apparently I cycle through all the usual responses. Shall I tell you what you’re going to do when I stick the knife in for the first time?’
His eyes opened. Guion took a single, gratifying step back from the bars.