She didn't understand. For a priestess, she was not very empathetic. Then again, why should she be? It probably never came up in Elfland.
Skandra had imagined all the ways Gershul could die a thousand times. When the night was cold, or dark, or both. When he was full. When he was hungry. When he was sober. When he was drunk. In one of them, Gershul caught footlong spearblade in the stomach, and Skandra used it to slash through all of the old man's intestines and spill them onto the earth. In another, Gershul was buried alive, pincushioned by knives and unable even to flail enough to beg for his safety. In still another, he drowned, tied to a barrel as it drifted and floated on the open sea while Skandra watched. In still another, Skandra did put the knife in Gershul's throat, and watched with pleasure as the light faded out of his eyes.
"You're not listening, are you?" Skandra demanded irritably. "It isn't the same as you feel about your father, who I'm sure is a lovely fellow."
As Skandra began to turn the handcrank - which offered very little resistance - he thought about how to explain it to her. What was a father, really? They didn't have to be blood. There was no sense to tell you from whom you'd sprung. You knew your family was your family because you were told, because the lineage had been witness and documented, because someone had watched you come out of your mother. Skandra had none of that with Gershul. For all he knew, Gershul and Shantar could have been strangers to him, not part of his family and using him for their own ends. Skandra wouldn't have put it past either one of them. He didn't feel an instinctive love, or a protectiveness. What he really felt for Gershul was a result only of what Gershul did.
They had no bond. They had no history worth talking about. Gershul was a thief, a liar and a killer.
"He killed my wife," Skandra was watching the ground recede as the platform began to move up. "If I don't kill him, it's the same as saying that doesn't matter to me anymore. It does matter, Aeotha. I'd kill him a thousand times if it would bring her back to life. Knowing that it won't, all I can do is kill him once, so that's what I'm going to do. Don't say we are going to kill him. He's mine if it kills me, and just you fucking remember that, all right?"