“I want. You to go away,” replied the prince.
There was a scrape of rock and then a sharp pain across the prince’s forehead. He leaped to his feet, wiping blood from a cut above his eye, just in time to dodge another rock. He surged forward, caught the boy’s scrawny wrist, and twisted until the boy cried out and dropped the rock.
“Little devil!” the prince snapped, shaking the boy. “This is why I don’t grant wishes to children! You’re fiendish, impulsive things. You can’t be trusted!”
There was a brief, high-pitched scream from across the square. “Hans! Oh, Hans! Take your hands off him, you brute!”
A blond woman came flying over to rip the boy from the prince’s grasp. She glared at the prince as she checked littleHans’s wrist and head and the whole rest of his body, as if the toad had been in a brawl.
“How dare you?” she exclaimed, pressing Hans close to her chest. “How dare you handle him like that—he’s just a baby!”
Hans’s flat blue eyes stared at the prince from the depths of his mother’s cleavage. A crowd was beginning to gather on the edges of the square.
“He was throwing rocks at me because I wouldn’t grant him a wish,” said the prince, jabbing a finger at the cut on his forehead. “Is this what you teach your spawn to do when they don’t get their way? Throw rocks?”
“Why couldn’t you just give him a wish?” Hans’s mother was wailing louder now, as ifshehad been the one hit with a rock. There were actualtearsin her eyes. “He’s a little boy, he only wants a wish, how could you be so cruel to withhold a wish from achild?”
Evren appeared by the prince’s side then, ready to smooth the situation over, but the prince held up his hand.
“Fine,” he said, teeth bared. “Your devil child wants a wish, he has to answer a riddle first. That’s how it works, andeveryonehas to do it.”
The mother blinked at him as Hans wriggled out of her tight embrace, almost shoving her away. “I can do it,” he said. “I can answer riddles.”
The prince loomed over him. “Here it is, hellion.What slew none, and yet slew twelve?”
The boy was so young he seemed not even to completely understand the form of the question. Even if he had, he couldn’t have gotten it right, because this riddle had no answer. The prince had created it intentionally as a riddle with no answer, so no matter what answer was given, it would be wrong. It was the counterpoint to his easiest riddle.
Hans stood silent, his lips pressed tight, his face turning red, his eyes roving around the square.
“That’s too hard,” complained Hans’s mother. “Can’t you ask him something easier, so he can answer it? Or so I can answer it for him?”
“You can’t answer for him,” the prince spat, his ire well and truly up. “Hemust answer, and he gets the riddle that he gets. The world does not hand out wishes on a platter just because one is achild, andyourchild is no more special than any other. Oh, did you not realize? Better you find out now than later, I suppose—”
“Altan!”Evren hissed in his ear, jerking his arm to pull him away. “That’senough!”
The prince turned to the boy once more. “And what will you be, little Hans, when you no longer have your mother to holdyou and tell you everything will be okay? Will you still be a devil? Or will your neighbors quash you before—”
“Enough!”Evren said again, grabbing the prince by the lapels of his coat and bodily shoving him toward the inn. After the first few steps, the prince allowed himself to be pushed, and once they were inside the inn, he stomped his way up to their shared room on his own. Evren shut the door behind them.
“You just told a small boy you hoped his neighbors would kill him,” Evren said, red-faced and out of breath.
“If you haven’t noticed,” the prince replied, dabbing daintily at his bloodied forehead with his kerchief, “I hate children.”
“Yes, but normally you’re not so vicious about it! We only have one day left. Can you please not get us attacked by the villagers? I’m worried about the caravan, too—I doubt they’ll want to associate with us now. We’ll have to find our way out of this forest ourselves.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard; there’s only one road.”
“Altan, please... maybe we should leave now.”
“No! I’ve got plans.”
“What, the conquest of a tailor? Surely you can find someone else in the next town or city we come across.”
“I’m not leaving yet.”
“You’re causing more trouble, is what you’re doing.”
“Tomorrow is the day she’ll let me grant her wish,” the prince said. “Tomorrow night, during the troupe’s final performance. I’ll stay here until then, what about that? I won’t leave this room.”
