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“Nothing. Orders. Oaths.”
“Hmm.” Tadek put the back of his hand to Evemer’s forehead. Evemer batted him away. “I think you’re very sick,” he said solemnly, “with an illness called ‘a Mahisti looked at me,’ and as this is sometimes fatal—”
“We’re not friends, Tadek.”
“Yes, yes,” he said patiently, “I know, we’re working on it. Anyway, are you dying? You looked like you might have been dying in there.”
“I’m not dying.”
Tadek waggled an eyebrow at him. “As good as crushing a melon with her thighs? As good as a chair through a window?”
Evemer was heartbeats away from dragging Tadek by his hair out the front door and kicking his ass down the street and halfway across the city to the harbor, where he would dump Tadek bodily into the water if there was anything left of him. The only thing that stopped him was an idea that Kadou wouldn’t like it and Eozena’s dire warnings from the night before that if Kadou cried it would be their fault. Evemer gathered his patience up in both hands. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“Well, no, but . . . I mean, come on. Even I felt a bit warm under the collar, and that’s not my sort of thing at all. What did she say to you when she leaned down?”
Evemer could have told him it was none of his business, that it would never be his business. He shuffled across the room and sat heavily on the bench in front of his mother’s loom and looked down at his hands in his lap.
With half a sentence, she’d made Tadek a kahya again—if he’d understood it right. With another, she’d given Evemer the greatest treasure—and the most serious.
“She gave me a gift,” he said quietly.
“What gift?”
“It’s none—”
“None of my business, yes, got it.”
The door opened again and Kadou looked in, immediately going tense and wary when he saw them. “Tadek. I didn’t know you were in here. What are you two talking about?”
“Oh, this and that,” Tadek said airily. “Nothing of any great importance, you know me. What can I do for you, Highness?”
“I need to talk to Evemer.”
“Certainly. Privately, I expect?”
“It’ll just take a moment,” Kadou said quickly. “It’s nothing of—of any importance, as you said. And then we’ll—all four of us, I think—plan something.”
Tadek nodded and, favoring his injured leg, half limped and half hopped back through the door. Kadou shut it behind him and leaned on it with his hands behind his back, looking at Evemer. “She’s not taking you from me, is she?”
“No, my lord.”
Kadou nodded vaguely. “All right. All right.”
Evemer drew himself up and spoke before he could stop himself. “My lord, I’d like to request a clarification of my orders.”
Last week, Kadou might have flinched. Now . . .
It was like the way Evemer could fight in the dark with Eozena at his back, simply by knowing precisely where she’d be. It must have been a little bit the same for Kadou, because his only reaction was the briefest flicker of his eyes before he said, “Of course, Lieutenant. Please speak freely.”
Evemer got off the loom bench and gestured to it. Kadou sat, folding his hands in his lap, and Evemer settled himself cross-legged on the floor in front of him. “Her Majesty granted me something just now. You should know about it before it becomes an issue in an urgent moment.”
“Go on.”
“The privilege of disobedience, my lord.”
Kadou was quiet. “Oh,” he said at last. “Oh. Congratulations, that’s . . .”
Evemer looked straight in his eyes, beautiful and dark and surprised. “I don’t like it.”
