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op the duel."
"Yes." In spite of everything, he was surprised. For someone who leapt to conclusions as often as she did, her leaps were fairly accurate.
She stared at him. "You bastard, if you want to kill Denzil, have the guts to do it yourself; don't use me for it."
It was foolish to be angry with her, but Thomas found himself saying tightly, "If you don't want to be used, then don't open yourself to it by behaving stupidly and leaving other people to pick up the pieces. You can't play the spoiled witless child all your life."
"Well it's better than what you're playing at, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't know, having never been so lacking in initiative that I had to act like a raving idiot to get what I wanted."
As Kade was drawing breath to answer, there was a crash beneath their feet as a glass-paned door was flung violently open on the balcony of the floor below. Both of them flinched.
"My lord--" Denzil's voice said.
"Don't call me that, not while we're alone." It was Roland.
Thomas remembered that this terrace was directly above the balcony of one of Roland's private solars. He and Kade regarded each other in silence. They could hardly object to each other's eavesdropping, Thomas supposed, having just come to the mutual conclusion that they were both too despicable to live in polite company anyway.
Denzil asked, "Are you all right?"
"You ask me that?"
The voices below had grown softer. Thomas took a silent step forward to the railing to hear more clearly. After a moment Kade joined him.
"What? Were you worried?" Denzil's voice had a laugh in it. "That was barely worth the effort."
"You take too many chances. But you should have left that boy alone. He's nothing." Roland was oblivious to the fact that Aristofan was perhaps a year or two older than himself.
"He insulted me. And you should thank me for ridding you of him. He's your wife's lover."
"He's nothing. All the married women in the city have lovers.