“Unlike your brother. I stabbed him through his throat then threw him out of the window.” The sharp knobble in Foscar’s neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I had Mauthis poisoned. Ganmark run through with a ton of bronze. Faithful’s stabbed, slashed, drowned and hung from a waterwheel. Still turning on it, for all I know. Gobba was lucky. I only smashed his hands, and his knees, and his skull to bonemeal with a hammer.” The list gave her grim nausea rather than grim satisfaction, but she forced her way through it. “Of the seven men who were in that room when they murdered Benna, there’s just your father left.” She slid the Calvez from its sheath, the gentle scraping of the blade as ugly as a child’s scream. “Your father… and you.”

The room was close, stale. Friendly’s face was empty as a corpse’s. Shivers leaned back against the wall beside her, arms folded, grinning.

“I understand.” Foscar came closer. Small, unwilling steps, but towards her still. He stopped no more than a stride away, and sank to his knees. Awkwardly, since his hands were tied behind him. The whole time his eyes were on hers. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re fucking sorry?” she squeezed through gritted teeth.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen! I loved Benna!” His lip trembled, a tear ran down the side of his face. Fear, or guilt, or both. “Your brother was like… a brother to me. I would never have wanted… that, for either of you. I’m sorry… for my part in it.” He’d had no part in it. She knew that. “I just… I want to live!”

“So did Benna.”

“Please.” More tears trickled, leaving glistening trails down his cheeks. “I just want to live.”

Her stomach churned, acid burning her throat and washing up into her watering mouth. Do it. She’d come all this way to do it, suffered all this and made all those others suffer just so she could do it. Her brother would have had no doubts, not then. She could almost hear his voice.

Do what you have to. Conscience is an excuse. Mercy and cowardice are the same.

It was time to do it. He had to die.

Do it now.

But her stiff arm seemed to weigh a thousand tons. She stared at Foscar’s ashen face. His big, wide, helpless eyes. Something about him reminded her of Benna. When he was young. Before Caprile, before Sweet Pines, before they betrayed Cosca, before they joined up with the Thousand Swords, even. When she’d wanted just to make things grow. Long ago, that boy laughing in the wheat.

The point of the Calvez wobbled, dropped, tapped against the floor.

Foscar took a long, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again, wet glistening in the corners. “Thank you. I always knew you had a heart… whatever they said. Thank—”

Shivers’ big fist crunched into his face and knocked him on his back, blood bubbling from his broken nose. He got out a shocked splutter before the Northman was on top of him, hands closing tight around his throat.