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Zeliha turned to Kadou. “You’ve got about an hour and a half. Go clean up and get dressed, you look like—”
“A horsemonger?”
“Like you’ve been borrowing clothes from a weaver’s son who’s got several inches and at least sixty pounds on you,” she said, plucking at his sleeve—the top of the armscye’s seam fell baggy a hand’s width below the point of his shoulder, and he’d had to turn back the cuffs. “Go make yourself look like a prince again. You’ll have work to do.” She paused. “Oh. I had your quarters moved. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought you might want a clean slate after what happened the other night. Also there are . . . stains. We’re going to have to have that room refloored.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, shuddering. “And you’re probably right. Where am I now?”
“Cypress Cliff, but you can move again if you don’t like it.”
He suppressed a groan. The Cypress Cliff house was all the way at the other end of the Gold Court, the hard end of nowhere. It’d be a trek to get anywhere in the palace from there. “Shoving me in the back corner, are you?” he said, trying to keep his voice light.
“Only so that I can put as much space as possible between you and anyone who’s trying to hurt you,” she said, and added sarcastically, “Forgive me for being protective. Hurry along.”
The Cypress Cliff residence was built into the outer wall of the palace itself, on the edge of an irregular outcropping of the plateau overhanging a sheer vertical drop. The tower’s curved outer wall faced toward the city so that each floor’s wide windows caught a splendid panoramic view, caught every summer breeze and bit of light . . . and caught every howling winter tempest.
Kadou had the whole thing to himself—three floors, consisting of one enormous room each, with soaring ceilings spanned by huge wooden beams, thick carpets (though these were several decades out of fashion), and sturdy doors that would not have been out of place in a fortress. On the top floor, which had been arranged as his bedroom, a balcony wrapped around the outer wall of the structure.
He’d have to have heavy curtains installed if he wanted to be able to sleep past dawn—it was east-facing, with nothing blocking a view of the horizon, and he could already imagine the way the rising sun would glare into the room every morning. Besides that, it felt very . . . exposed, a sensation that was only increased when a few cadets arrived with buckets of lukewarm water and he was obliged to wash in front of all those expansive windows.
Evemer, who had pointedly left the room for that part, came back in to dress him—he’d spent the time productively, it seemed, and had found where Kadou’s clothes had been stashed, though he grumbled about how they had been organized. He himself had changed into his core-guard uniform, and the sight of him in good Mahisti cobalt made Kadou’s knees nearly give out, made his palms ache with how much he wanted to run them across the uniform’s smoothly tailored shoulders and down Evemer’s back, how he wanted to brush his fingertips over the bright buttons down his front, mother-of-pearl in a setting of pale electrum.
But there were other people only a room away, and his nerves, still sharp and raw with that feeling of being exposed to the whole world, wouldn’t allow him to risk reaching out.
Evemer had never been more relieved: There were enough proven kahyalar around that at last he could relax his vigilance. Kadou looked tense on the ride down to Sylvia’s manor, but he was splendid again in shimmering silk brocade, which Evemer had chosen exclusively because the sun was bright and he wanted to see Kadou catching the light like a jewel as they rode.
He hung back with Kadou as the kahyalar knocked on the door of the manor, then banged on it. In the end, they had to climb up and break a window to get inside—the house was completely deserted.
“There are cellars,” Kadou said. His hands were tight on the reins of his horse. “Search them.” He turned to Evemer, worry clouding over his face. “If Melek’s not here . . .”
“I’ll look. Stay here.” He dismounted from the horse, a large and solidly built blue-roan gelding the color of polished iron, and went inside.
Sylvia hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said this house had a warren of cellars—three times, Evemer spotted a door out of the corner of his eye that he had almost missed, and each time his heart caught in his chest to think that perhaps Melek was behind it and that he’d come that close to turning his back and walking away.
Even after exhaustive searching, the cellars were empty. “Check the rest,” Evemer said to the kahyalar who had come in with him. “Be certain.”
The rooms upstairs had been all but sacked—in the bedrooms, drawers and cabinets stood gaping open. Clothes were strewn across the floor, a stray bracelet and a single earring had been dropped on the stairs . . . They’d left in a hurry. Was it when they had discovered that Kadou and Evemer had escaped? It had to have been.
If most of the kahyalar hadn’t been working elsewhere in the house, Evemer might have missed it—a faint thumping on the other side of a wall in the corridor. He stopped, listened. Pressed his ear against the wall, thumped hard on the wall with a fist. The thumping stopped, then redoubled, frantic.
Evemer shouted for the other kahyalar and within a minute there were a handful of them banging and kicking the wall, tugging on sconces, wedging their fingernails into cracks in the paneling. All at once, there was a click, and a section of the wall jumped back an inch. It was easy to push it back, then, as easy as opening a door. In a tiny, bare stone room beyond, lit only by a single window, Melek lay on the floor, bound and gagged, bruised and bloodied, but still wriggling.
Evemer cut çir bonds; Melek yanked the spit-sodden gag from çir mouth and groaned. “Thank the gods. How did you get out before I did?” Çir face was bruised and swollen, a few cuts here and there, and three of çir fingers were broken.
“Long story. Let’s get you out.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Evemer said. “Don’t be a hero. You followed us here?” He helped Melek to çir feet.
“Yeah,” çe said sheepishly, letting Evemer steady the both of them. “Sent a message to Tadek and your mother, and then I tried to scale the wall of the manor and break in, but I picked the wrong window. They caught me. Beat me up for a while.”
“Any injuries that need immediate attention?”
“My fingers. Don’t think I have a concussion, but I got a clip to the head that made me fuzzy for a minute or two. My shoulder’s dislocated, and I can’t tell if my ribs are cracked, but my breast-bindings are keeping them in place for now, so that’s fine.”
Fine was a generous word for it. “When did Siranos escape?”
Melek coughed a bit and winced, pressing çir uninjured hand to çir side. “No idea. They stopped hitting me when someone came in to say you’d escaped, and they threw me in here while they figured out what to do. It was still dark, that’s all I know.” Çe nodded to the tiny window. “I managed to get myself standing long enough to watch them load up the carriage.”
