Chapter 17: Nothing For Free

Sierra

"You look terrible," Liriel said, closing my chamber door behind her without waiting to be asked in. "I take it you didn't sleep."

"I didn't."

"And yet here I am, and there's no answer waiting for me. That's not a good sign, Sierra."

"I have questions first."

"You had an hour to think, not to interrogate me."

"You said you could find the tower. Confirm she's alive." I made myself hold her gaze instead of looking away, the way I would have with Fenris across the training ring steady, unwilling to be the first to flinch. "Prove it."

"Prove it."

"Before I agree to anything. Before I give up everything I have here on the strength of one conversation with a woman who's admitted she wants my husband for herself."

"That's a bold way to phrase a request from someone with nothing to bargain with."

"I have the one thing you actually want. Which means I get to ask for something before I hand it over."

Liriel was quiet for a moment, studying me the way she might study an opponent who'd unexpectedly landed a hit. 

"What exactly would satisfy you? A drawing of the tower? A guard's schedule delivered with a bow?"

"A name. Someone real, inside Glendale, who can confirm my daughter is alive and where she's being kept. Not secondhand gossip you've collected over the years. Something I can verify."

"And if I give you that name, what's to stop you from using it yourself and cutting me out entirely?"

"Nothing. Except you already know I have no way to reach anyone inside Glendale without you. My last attempt is currently folded up in your sleeve."

Something flickered across her face not quite a smile, but close. "Careful, that almost sounded like respect."

"It's not. It's arithmetic."

"Fine, Arithmetic, then." She crossed to the window, looking out at nothing in particular, her arms folded loosely. 

"There's a man near the eastern boundary of Glendale's territory a former guard, dismissed under Darius for reasons that don't matter here. He owes my family a debt he'd rather not have called in publicly. He still has contacts inside the household. If anyone can confirm what you're asking, it's him."

"Then send word to him. Before I agree to anything."

"That's not how this works."

"Why not?"

"Because the moment I hand you proof, you have no reason left to keep talking to me. You take the information, you find some other way to act on it without me, and I'm left with nothing but the satisfaction of having been generous for once in my life. I don't do generous, Sierra. Ask anyone who's known me longer than you have."

"Then we're at an impasse."

"We're not. You're just refusing to admit you don't actually have room to negotiate." She turned back from the window, and her voice sharpened just slightly, enough that I felt it. "You want proof before you commit. I understand that, but I'm not sending a man into Darius's territory to ask dangerous questions on the strength of a maybe. Give me your word first, areal one then I move."

"My word isn't worth anything to you if I can still change my mind afterward."

"No. But it's worth something to me if you're the kind of person who keeps it anyway. And I've watched you long enough to have an opinion on that."

"You don't know me."

"I know you gave up your daughter to a room full of strangers rather than let Darius keep raising her to be like him. I know you've spent months training yourself half to death for a fight you haven't told anyone the real reason for. I know exactly what kind of person does those things, Sierra, because I've spent my whole life around people who don't." 

She let that sit for a second longer than was comfortable. "So, your word or nothing."

"I need time."

"You had a night."

"I need more than a night to decide whether to walk away from my entire life on the strength of one conversation with someone who's told me outright she's threatened by me."

"Fair." Liriel said it easily, like the word cost her nothing. "Take your time, I'm not in a rush."

"That's not what you said yesterday. You told me the offer expired the moment Kairo came home."

"Things change." She smiled then, small and private, the kind of smile that told me more than anything she'd said out loud. "I've had a night to think as well."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning I don't actually need you to say yes today, or tomorrow, or next week. I have other ways of getting what I want, Sierra. I'd simply prefer this one, because it costs the least and hurts the fewest people I still care about." 

She moved toward the door, unhurried, exactly the way she had the day before. "But don't mistake my patience for desperation. I can wait as long as I need to."

"What does that mean, other ways?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like." She paused with her hand on the door, glancing back at me with an expression I couldn't fully read, not triumph, not yet, but something adjacent to it, like a woman who'd already accounted for every version of how this conversation might go. 

"You're not the only piece on this board, and you're not the only one with something to lose if things stay exactly as they are. Take your time deciding, just don't assume the rest of the palace is standing still while you do."

"Liriel—"

"I'll check on you again soon," she said, cutting me off gently, already halfway through the door. "In the meantime, do try to sleep. You really do look terrible."

The door clicked shut behind her, and I stood in the middle of my own chambers with my pulse hammering and no closer to an answer than I'd been the night before except now, underneath the fear I already understood, but there was a new one I didn't. 

A backup plan she hadn't needed to mention at all, unless she wanted me to know it existed. Unless she wanted me to spend every hour, I'd just bought myself wondering exactly what it was, and who it was going to cost.