“Neither will letting him live.” My tone was flat.
My father let go of my hair, but the boot stayed put, his weight and power holding me motionless against the floor. “Get back here, you cowards!” he bellowed, and if I could have sucked in enough breath, I would’ve sighed with relief. I needed an audience.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched those who had run slink back in, aristocracy at the forefront. Despite their fear, they moved smoothly, flowing in an oddly coordinated mass, all eyes fixed on the two of us. With them came the clunk of Tips’s leg, his pace reluctant as he played his part.
“Tell me of the conversation that passed between you and His Highness,” my father ordered, once everyone had settled in.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Tips’s voice was hoarse with all-too real nerves. “He came down into the mines not two nights after you released him from prison. Tracked down me and my crew and set to telling us that we’d been duped. That the plans you’d given us for the stone tree weren’t what he designed, and that even if we completed them, that the structure would never hold. Said you’d knowingly given us false plans.”
Whispers broke out through the throne room, too many and too quiet to clearly make out.
The weight between my shoulders shifted. This is what he’d thought I’d do – reveal that the plans he’d given the half-bloods were false and not of my making. He was ready for that move, but not, I thought, for the half-bloods turning against me for it.
“The lady you know as Ana?s d’Angoulême gave me those documents herself,” my father said. “She swore they were the plans for a stone structure drafted by Tristan, entrusted to her for safekeeping. You all” – he gestured at the surrounding aristocracy – “were witness to that conversation.”
There were murmurs of agreement, but I barely heard them. In one fell swoop, I had the confirmation I needed that he was in league with Lessa and that he was using her ability to lie to his advantage.
“And we’ve no cause to doubt her, Your Majesty,” Tips replied. “But well we know His Highness’ ability to twist words. We trusted him before, and all that gained us were the deaths of friends and family. I told him it wasn’t happening again, and that we’d learned our lesson about turning traitor.”
The truth, if not all of it.
“I’m pleased to hear it.” The irony in my father’s voice was unmistakable. “Tristan, do you deny this conversation took place?”
“No.” I forced the word out loud enough for everyone to hear.
“But Your Majesty, there’s more,” Tips said, raising his voice so that he could be heard over the growing noise from outside. “He wouldn’t let it be. He sought me out again yesterday, and tried to convince me to turn against you and accept his leadership. Made all sorts of promises of what he’d give us if we helped tear you off the throne and make him king. I told him that we wanted nothing more to do with him, and that we’d all go to the grave before seeing him on the throne.”
The lie.
“Tristan, do you deny this second conversation took place as well?”
I hesitated, breathing in shallowly, once, twice, three times before I spoke. “That is what the half-blood said.” Which he had. That he’d been lying through his teeth when he’d said it did not change the fact the words had come from his lips. No one in the room would doubt that I’d confirmed Tips’s tale except my father, who had used the same ruse a time or two himself.
My father froze, his weight so steady on my back that I wondered if he was even breathing. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the wheels were turning. He knew Tips was lying for me, and that I’d put him up to it. And if Tips was lying for me, how many others were?
Something exploded outside and my father flinched, losing his balance enough that he stepped off my back. I desperately wanted to turn my head to see the look on his face as the belief I’d brought every half-blood in the city back to my cause settled into his mind. That all of them were actually oblivious to my machinations and really did want me dead didn’t matter in that moment. All that mattered was that he thought they followed me. That he, in discovering that I knew the half-bloods’ ability to lie, had become so wrapped up in his own web of duplicity that the probable became improbable, the truth a lie.
He was silent, and I could all but feel his mind working as he considered how to proceed. Calling Tips out for lying was out of the question. Not only would it bring to light that he’d known of the half-bloods’ ability and kept it from his people, it would strip away a tool he’d long used to his advantage. His only choice was to play along, acting as though he believed Tips’s words as much as anyone else in the room.