He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me then?” He had changed. Before Stoffenbeck it would never have occurred to him to ask.

“I should have. But I never thought you would find out. I never thought anyone would.”

He narrowed his eyes further. The look of a wary customer who suspects he is being palmed off with inferior goods. “But someone has?”

“It seems so. And they might make it known to others.” She swallowed. Every word felt like a weight to lift. “Secrets, in my experience, rarely stay buried.”

“So you judged it was better to tell me now than risk me finding out for myself. Excellent strategy. I’d expect nothing less.”

“Please, Leo.”

“What kind of secret worries you?”

The disgusting and potentially lethal kind. She clenched her fists. Forced out the words. “King Orso… and I…”

Leo waved her away. “Selest dan bloody Heugen told me you were lovers, remember?”

“Not that.” Well, yes, that, but so much more than that. It still shocked her to say it. Still repelled her to think it. She squeezed her eyes shut, her ears full of the sound of blood surging, and blurted it in a rush. “We have the same father!”

Silence. When she opened her eyes, Leo was frowning at her. Puzzled. As though he must have misheard. “Wait…”

“King Jezal and my mother were lovers! Long ago. Before he was king, even. And I was the result.”

“Orso’s your brother?” whispered Leo.

She grimaced. “Yes.”

“That’s why he didn’t hang me.”

“Maybe. Part of it.”

Leo sat back, frowning at the ceiling. “So… my wife…”

She closed her eyes again, face burning. “Yes.”

“Is King Jezal’s oldest child?”

“What?” That she had enthusiastically practised incest did not seem to have occurred to him. Or, if it did, there were aspects of the case that interested him far more.

“Our children… are King Jezal’s grandchildren. By the dead, Savine, our children might be next in line to the throne!”

It was not fear in his voice, or disgust. It was excitement. Somehow that worried her even more.

“But, don’t you see…” She sat on the bed, nervously clutching up a handful of the quilt. “The danger this puts us in, puts them in—”

“Of course.” He clasped her hand, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “But danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.”

Savine stared. “My father used to say that.”

“Which one? Old Sticks?” He leaned from the bed and fished up his iron leg again. “I can’t say we got on.” He jammed his stump into the padded socket and started to fasten the buckles. “But no one ever denied he was a clever bastard. Can’t be lying around, Savine. I’ve got work to do!” And he grasped his cane and stood.

She sat in silence as he limped out, teeth gritted. Click, tap, grunt. Click, tap, grunt. That mixture of cunning, ruthlessness, burning ambition and constant pain was far from unfamiliar.

She had heard it said that every woman ends up marrying her father. Until that moment, she had always imagined herself the exception.