“I think your spies must not be smart enough to have seen the amount of work I do versus what that old man does.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Spies?”

“Everyone knows you have spies everywhere.”

“Well. Everyone knows. It must be so, then.”

“Oh, I see,” Roth said. “It’s one of those things everyone knows but I’m not supposed to mention because it’s rude.”

“There are people within this organization with whom it is dangerous to be rude, boy. If you’re asking for my vote, you’d do well to make a friend of me.”

He motioned to the servants, who took their plates and replaced them with cuts of spiced meats and a lightly broiled egg dish with cheese.

“I’m not asking,” he said quietly.

Momma K finished her eggs and began on the braised meat. Delightful. The man must have brought a chef from Gandu. She ate and looked at the lightening sky, the sun rising slowly over the great iron gate to Grimson’s estate. If he took that comment back, she’d let him live.

“I don’t know how you have such influence on the Nine, but I know I need your vote, and I will have it,” Roth said. “I will take your vote, or I will take your niece.”

The meat that a moment ago had seemed so delightfully spiced, that seemed to melt in Momma K’s mouth, suddenly tasted like a mouthful of sand.

“Pretty girl, isn’t she? Adorable little braids. It’s so sad about her mother dying, but wonderful that she had a rich aunt to find her a place to live, and in the castle itself, no less! Still, a rich old whore ought to have done better than have her niece raised by a serving woman.”

She was frozen. How did he find out?

The ledgers. Her ledgers were done all in code, but Phineas Seratsin was the Sa’kagé’s Master of Coin. He had access to more financial records than the next five people in the kingdom combined. Roth must have followed the records and found payments made to a serving woman in the castle. She was a frightened woman. A single threat from Roth and she’d have folded.

Roth stood, his plate already empty. “No, do sit. Finish your breakfast.”

She did, mechanically, using the time to think. Could she spirit the girl away? She couldn’t use Durzo for this, but he wasn’t the only wetboy she knew.

“I am a cruel man, Gwinvere. Taking a life is . . .” Roth shivered with remembered ecstasy. “Better. Better than any of the pleasures you sell. But I control my appetites. And that’s what makes us human rather than slaves, isn’t it?”

He was pulling on a thick leather glove. The portcullis of his gate was rising as he spoke. Outside, Momma K saw dozens of ragged peasants gathered. Obviously, this was a daily ritual.