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Sana’a and Killen exchanged glances at her words.
She must have caught their mystified expressions. ‘He is too close to the arokí for my liking.’
‘He is?’ Killen murmured.
‘I believe so. Keep your eye out for him. As I said, you have a quisling—in the army camp on Karth, to be exact, and at the highest level—one of your kíndunas.’
Kaxim jerked his head, sniffing in annoyance. ‘Kermis? He holds a grudge against me for not picking him as Kínduna of the Kíríga’s Klós.’
The shrouded woman shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it could be anyone. Kaibani, Kytan, Kermis or K’Laino.’
‘Not Kaibani,’ the King’s First Armourer qualified. ‘He’s true to the core and would die for this cause in a heartbeat. Which is why I left him in charge of the kambí until I return.’
‘Then it’s one of the others,’ the woman stated with confidence.
‘And you know this how?’ Killen asked.
She leaned in. ‘They don’t call me the songbird for nothing. I get close to the ears of the K?'nere. I hear and see things. Kassian and his K?str?l kíndunas have met with Kalila in the last few days, and I’ve managed to catch snippets of their conversation.’
Killen’s head cocked as he stared at her. ‘You’ve also infiltrated the royal kíota without the kσχ?ς cage forming over you. Which means you have regal blood.’
‘I’m not royal in a manner of speaking,’ she corrected the Kíríga. ‘But I have sovereign íkan in one of my koya, which was gifted to me by Kesia and Kaadiq many years ago.’
She removed her gilded bird mask to reveal her face.
Again, Sana’a and Killen exchanged glances of surprise.
Unfazed, Kione and Kaxim jerked their chins at her in acknowledgement.
‘Kamilla. The singer from the street,’ Sana’a murmured, the more shocked of the four.
‘And also the songbird at the Sab?r Arena,’ Killen added. ‘With the voice that thrills the kä’avi and induces grown men to tears.’
‘Sante, though the latter is not my aim,’ Kamilla agreed with a short smile. ‘We’re family if you can believe it, Kíríga by marriage. Your mother, K’Elisa, is Kalila’s niece. I’m Kalila’s stepdaughter, which makes me privy to my stepmother’s machinations and scheming. Kaxim and Kione have been working with me for some time now.’
‘To what end?’
‘To Kalila’s end,’ Kamilla said matter of fact.
‘You’d betray the woman who raised you just like that?’ Sana’a challenged.
The newcomer gave her a steady stare. ‘She married my father, a Kírkos merchant after he’d had me out of wedlock with his Kazin housemaid who happened to have a strand of songbird koel in her. So, in Kalila’s eyes, I was and remain the lowest of the low. I am not royal. I have no favoured bloodline, lineage or K?'nere ancestry.’
‘And yet the hawkstone reacts to you,’ Killen murmured, sensing the jewel on his temple throbbing and pulsing at the woman’s presence.
‘Interesting,’ Kamilla commented, her eyes flicking over his forehead. ‘Still, Kalila has never been a mother to me, and our relationship is nothing if not toxic. She abandoned me to nurses and carers for most of my life and treated me like she’d no need of me as a child. She only keeps me around because she hopes I will agree to a good marriage. One that’ll be a political, power-drunk union that she can manipulate and hates me because I refuse to do so.’
‘Fokk,’ Kione growled. ‘That sucks.’
She shrugged. ‘Worse, she is a powerful k?νit, a poisons expert under your grandfather Tempest Light. Did you know she conjured the poison that murdered her husband, my father? She used a toxicant rachís to stroke his skin in the pretence of cooling him down after a day of heat.’
‘Why would she do something so despicable?’ Killen murmured.
‘He’d done his duty,’ she grated, her voice bitter. ‘Provided his sperm and genes, she now needed his access to money to continue her extensive gambling. She’s also suspected of advising many courtiers on how to use potions, extracts and poisons to murder their contemporaries. However, she covers her tracks well, and no one can prove it, so we remain helpless to her machinations.’
Killen leaned forward. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘That she’s such an evil bitch and unapologetic kharpi?’ his unexpected guest muttered.
