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He thinks he should regret losing his name, becoming interchangeable, and remarkable only for his limp. But he isn’t ashamed of how easily he grew used to being called slave. Shame was the first part of him to be stripped away – back on the ship, back in the closet of the library, really.
Anyway, he grew up thinking in euphemisms – for dragons, for sins, for the sacrifices of flesh and gold that were expected of them. Now, he feels a small and secret delight in being able to think clearly about what he is and what he will always be.
“Your father betrayed you, and left you to die”, Adrian says, and his voice flows evenly in the night.
“My father arranged for me to die, so he could win his upcoming election.”
“Your father wanted you killed.”
“My father decided that among his daughters, I was the one he didn’t need.”
Adrian doesn’t top that, so Lucasta adds, “I was the useless and graceless one, with too much power and not enough control.”
“Will you ever forgive him?” he asks, and Lucasta never thought about it. She feels surprised, fleetingly, when she says:
“Never. I want him to burn.”
This is what Rhys knows about the poetess Razia: she was a blacksmith, her life was difficult, her death grotesque. She wrote one long song, about death in flames, and suffering and decay. Rhys used to think that hers was the kind of art people respected but would never love.
Adrian falls in love with her book on a winter afternoon, he learns all her words and speaks them to himself when he’s working, or to them when they’re all curled up by the fire. It’s unlovely, jarring verse, unrhyming and full of contempt, but on Adrian’s lips it turns to love songs.
Rhys thinks – in secret – that it might be because Adrian cannot talk to the river, and so his soul flows differently, and can appreciate the jagged edges that repel Rhys.
Rhys learns the words by candle-light. You are a worthless, crooked blade, he whispers into Adrian’s skin, feels him still. You’ve been discarded by your betters and now you are mine: I will beat you until you can be used or add you to the ring of carcasses that keeps me safe. Adrian laughs, and Rhys cannot understand his delight, but he is grateful for it nonetheless.