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Had they administered other drugs to Seth while he had been unconscious? Likely so. He felt loose and floaty in his body. Open. He didn’t like it.
Resisting a powerful impulse to answer Malik’s question about Emperor Hassan’s death, Seth demanded, “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Answer the question!” Rahim snapped, wheeling to face Seth. When Malik raised a placating hand, the prince took a deep breath and straightened his silky white tunic.
“Answer the question,” Malik echoed more calmly.
Seth’s answer spilled out. “He was assassinated by his brother, Kahzir.” It was common knowledge. Why were they asking him this?
“Not directly,” Prince Rahim said with disturbing relish, his eyes glinting like the diamond pins in his cloth-of-gold turban. “Someone else did the deed. A fact revealed by this book.”
Rahim strode back toward Malik, who picked up a leather-bound book from the worktable. As the arcanist handed the book to the prince, Seth glimpsed the cover.
“Is that—”
“The book you’ve been after, yes,” Malik replied.
Seth’s anger spilled out as easily as his words. “You’ve had it this whole fucking time? So why the goddamn charade? You spent two fucking days pretending to help me hunt for—” Seth cut himself off. “Wait. If you have the book, do you have Julian as well? Is he here? What the hell—”
“It’s not for you to ask questions,” Rahim snarled.
Seth yanked at the ropes binding his arms to the chair. “You have no right—”
“I have every right, you insolent dog!”
“My love,” Malik soothed. “Please. Allow me to serve you in this.”
Rahim made a sound of disgust but relented, stalking away to the window.
“Julian is not here,” Malik told Seth. “He arrived in Aqarat four days ahead of you. He was almost as conspicuous as you, entering through the western gate, ragged from desert travel. It’s my duty to investigate all suspicious visitors, so I approached him. He tried to flee. I caught him, but he had in his service an ifrit. It helped him get away—but I had hold of his pack, which contained this book.
“I did not know the man’s name until you came along, looking for a missing arcanist with a stolen book. By then, I had studied the volume and knew its significance, and I, too, wanted to find your fugitive. I made you visible in the city in the hopes of spurring him to foolish, visible action. I had already, of course, talked to all the people you wanted to talk to.”
Seth reeled at the information. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me all this?”
“Because I didn’t know your connection to him, nor your role in larger events.”
“Why not just drug me and ask me from the start?” Seth snarled.
A slight smile tugged at Malik’s lips. “Because the answer was worth less than your unknowing participation in my own hunt, though it had not yet yielded anything before certain … revelations shifted our focus.”
Seth ignored the parts of that that he couldn’t understand. “Julian is a fugitive of the Arcanum. His crime was committed in Masir. So what the hell do you care about it?”
Malik’s eyes flicked across the room. Seth followed his gaze to Rahim, who had put his back to the window and was eyeing Seth once again.
“Are you convinced yet?” Malik asked the prince.
Convinced of what?
Rahim replied, “Even if he’s truly ignorant of the book’s import and of Julian’s purpose, whatever that may be, there’s still the other, larger matter.”
“Indeed.”
The prince fixed Seth with a glare. “What is your relationship with the man who calls himself Raider?”
Seth blinked. Why had Rahim phrased it like that? More importantly: “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Other than fucking,” Rahim clarified harshly without answering Seth’s question.
