His Queen of Chaos
"That's why I'm paying you and not doing it myself."
"Counselor." Delia's voice had gone flat and careful. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to get somebody killed."
I watched the black water. I thought about the pages I was not sending, the ones with a small pressed insignia in the corner of the paper stock, a crown, the St. James mark my father had used out of habit or fear or some horrible loyalty, the pages that would have hung a different king. I'd photographed every page in the tower and sat up three nights sorting them the way a surgeon sorts tissue: this stays, this goes, this touches Malik and therefore burns. I had built a knife that cut in exactly one direction.