Dumped the Oathbreaker for His War God Uncle novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Confined

By noon there were Sun guards on every wall of the Iron House.

Sixty of them, in white and gold, with gold-tipped spears.

They stood along the black stone in the wind and tried to look like they weren't afraid of the dogs.

Inside the walls were four hundred men who used to be the Sky Legion.

There were also twenty priestesses, one goddess of the vintage, and a housekeeper with one eye.

"We could take them," the captain said, looking up at the walls.

"No," Theron said.

"I'm only saying we could."

"And I'm only saying no."

He let me clean his knuckles at the kitchen table.

They were split to the bone on two fingers.

I picked splinters of oak out of them with the housekeeper's tweezers while he sat perfectly still and watched me.

"You're very calm for a man charged with treason," I said.

"I've been charged with worse."

"By who?"

He looked at me a moment too long.

"Nobody you'd know," he said.

I tied off the bandage harder than I needed to.

That night the Iron House got drunk.

It started with Eudora, who said that if we were going to be besieged, we were going to be besieged properly.

She'd brought eleven casks from her own cellars the day she moved in.

By moonrise there were trestle tables down the whole great hall.

The fire in the hearth was big enough to roast a bull.

The legionaries sang marching songs.

The priestesses, who had never in their lives been allowed to drink anything but water and temple wine, discovered they liked Eudora's red very much.

One of them sang a hymn to me, very slowly, standing on a bench.

Then she fell off it.

I ended up at the dice table with the captain, three legionaries and my husband.

"Don't play him," the captain told me. "He cheats."

"I've never cheated in my life," Theron said.

"He doesn't need to. He just looks at the dice and they're scared of him."

I played him.

I won a silver cup, then a pair of riding gloves, then the bronze clasp off his shoulder.

Then he put his dagger on the table.

It was his best one, black-handled, with a blade that had been to the Eastern Pass and back.

The legionaries went quiet.

"You're sure?" I said.

"Throw."

I threw two sixes.

The table roared.

Theron sat back and laughed, a real laugh, loud and surprised, with his head back.

I'd never seen him laugh like that.

None of them had, from the looks on their faces.

I picked up the dagger and slid it through my belt.

"I'm keeping this," I said.

"I'd hoped you would."

Across the hall, Eudora sat on the edge of a table with her skirt hitched to her knees.

She was teaching the captain a drinking song from her vineyards.

He was singing it badly, and looking at her the whole time.

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