The conversation slowed down after that.
Trafalgar looked across at the man in the chair and thought about what he had here. Darian was useful. He had always been useful, and Trafalgar had never once pretended otherwise, not to himself. A patriarch of a Great Family who answered his letters and told him the truth was worth more than an army.
But the old arrangement had gone soft at the edges, and both of them knew it. Years ago the leash had been fear, plain and simple. Darian had watched what Trafalgar did to the men standing between him and that chair, and he had behaved accordingly. That worked when Darian was a frightened heir sitting on a ruin. It didn't work now. Darian had soldiers, walls, money, and a family that mostly did what he told it to.
'And if he ever decided he was finished with me, what would I actually do about it?'
