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I glance at Valdus, but he has moved to the bar, uttering a few words to the barman and picking up the ledger the older man has put in front of him.
“Lara. The girl who saved your skin,” she says, rolling her eyes. “The one whose rations you left in the middle of a busy street.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, heat rising to my cheeks.
The barman interrupts our conversation. He slides a glass across the bar, and I have to catch it before it topples over the edge. The dark liquid swirls inside, threatening to spill over the rim.
“A Dusty Rumble for the princess,” the man says, a smile peeking through his sharp-cut beard dusted with gray. “Nice catch, by the way.”
“How about you call me Nel?”
The man picks up one of the faceted glasses and rubs it with a sparkling-white towel. “For a girl on the run, when the whole desert is on her heels, you seem to be too eager to share your name.”
“Is calling me princess better?”
“Point taken,” the man says with a chuckle and stretches his hand over the bar. “I’m Kyle.”
I clasp his arm below his elbow and give it a good shake.
“If you ever need a drink and someone to hear your story”—he throws the towel over his shoulder with a smile peeking through the beard—“this is a place to come. The doors will always be open for you, Nel.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The man smiles, tucks long strands of his gray hair that have escaped the bun at the back of his head, and limps back where Valdus is drumming his fingers on the bar, his eyes still running over lines scribbled down on thin paper.
Lara picks up her glass and loops her arm through mine as if we’ve known each other for much longer than only a few minutes. “Now that you’ve met the most important man in this place, let me show you around the most illegal bar in Usmad.”
“Lara,” Valdus says sharply from behind our backs.
“What? I don’t say it out there,” she says, motioning to the world outside.
Before Valdus can answer, she pulls me throughout the room, showing me relics of famous battles kept in locked cabinets, and introducing me to so many people I have trouble remembering anyone’s name. A spot of light casts a halo on a scene with worn-velvet curtains, but only an empty chair stands in the middle with a guitar resting on its tattered back.
“Tell me,” Lara says when we settle at the bar, and she’s sipping on her drink again. “Is the life at the palace as glamorous and lavish as they say?”
“Those aren’t the words I would use…” I start, but stop when disappointment makes her eyes drop. Drawing senseless patterns on the chilled glass, I add, “It’s alluring, but not everything that sparkles is silver.”
Lara crinkles her nose, but when she looks up from her glass, her eyes glimmer with excitement again. “Have you had an admirer as in ‘The Adventures of Princess Katine’?”
A hearty blush warms my cheeks as my eyes dart to Valdus as if of their own accord. That ballad is a salacious tale. No one ever would sing such a song inside the palace walls, yet every princess knew the words.
“The wives of Magnar and his unmarried daughters live in the part of the palace where no man is allowed.”
“Since when did it ever stop anyone?”
I snort. “I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have any tantalizing story to share.”
“There wasn’t even someone since you left?” she asks, lifting her brows in a scheming look.
I sip on my cocktail of rum and ginger syrup, following her gaze, until I see Valdus looking straight back at us. I choke on my drink, coughing on the burning liquor.
“No, no,” I rush to say between coughs. “It’s nothing like that.”
The sound of chords struck on the guitar makes us look up to the stage. Lara’s braid flies over her shoulder, revealing a tattoo of a rising sun peeking out from under her hair. I didn’t need to see the symbol to figure out that she was a rebel. Like all the men and women in this very private bar. The only thing left is to meet the king whose refuge it is.
The emperor has led powerful people of the empire to believe his rants that the rebellion was a disorganized group completely under his thumb. He told them there were only a few men left to catch who were scheming to overthrow Magnar. Yet as I’ve been learning for the past weeks, my father has been lying about a great many things. The rebellion being the biggest of the deceptive tales everyone has swallowed without a doubt voiced.
A young man pulls on a few strings again and turns the pegs to tune the guitar. As he plays another chord, girls and women shush men discussing matters with overworked enthusiasm. Aware of the effect he has on his audience, the man offers the room a crooked smile from behind long strands of hair that hide the rest of his face. When he brushes them behind his ear, his hand glistens under the bright light.
