Skandra sounded half-scandalized, and half-amused. He didn't mention that he'd told her the same thing he'd told Ithacles, with the proper pronouns inserted, and Lethe had stormed out in a red-faced huff. Not until after she'd wished a violently sexual death upon him at the hands of orcs. For a princess, she had quite a bit of filth stored up behind those teeth of hers. It wasn't anything to imagine what sort of fellow would have to deal with that. Probably a deaf mute was the only one who could tolerate bedding her. Not that Skandra would have turned her down...
Not the sort of thing he'd say to Ithacles.
"Sounded like a barrel of weasels was chewing on her tongue when she did it," Skandra added with a laugh, wiping his upper lip with the back of a hand. "But she did it."
For what, was what he'd really wanted to ask. What was she thanking him for? What did she think he'd done that had anything to do with her, or Ithunvel, or this whole stinking place? Ithacles ought to walk away from being a prince. He was too good for all of this nonsense. Too good for what it did to a person. Take them and turn them inside out, make them ugly. Skandra never put much stock in honor or virtue. Those weren't as important as doing the right thing. Regardless of the laws it broke or the lives it ended. As long as those lives were on the wrong side, then fuck 'em.
Ithacles was going to lose that if he stayed. Someday, eventually, he was going to lose it. He wouldn't be able to afford it.
There was a miserable depressing thought. Skandra drained the rest of the second tankard and decided that Ithacles hadn't brought enough with him.
"So I heard there are daily hangings," the Immortal went on soberly; it didn't last. "But I bet I've missed all the good ones, curse this gimped arm of mine."