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Looking at it with his eyes rather than just the senses in his fingertips, he could see that the counterfeit was extremely well made. If he had only glanced at it lying on the table, perhaps amongst genuine altinlar, he wouldn’t have taken any notice of it.
He drew his hand back, feeling a little sick. Zeliha snorted and tucked the coins away again, murmuring, “Yes, that’s the face that all the other touch-tasters have made, too.” Kadou wasn’t surprised. The consistency of the value of their coinage was the foundation their nation was built on. The Arasti mercantile empire was vast and robust enough that their currency could be used nearly anywhere around the Sea of Serpents and in many places further beyond, because everyone, everywhere, knew that an Arasti coin was a coin you could trust. If a merchant in Imakami, Map Sut, Oissos, Aswijan, Mangar-Khagra, Kaskinen, or N’gaka was offered an altin, they would knowexactlywhat its relative value was.
The country’s power did not come from the edge of a sword, nor from enormous tracts of conquered territory, nor from even the navy, though Arast had the fastest ships in the world. Their power came instead from the clink of coin, an open palm, a smile. Theirs was an empire built on the bedrock of reputation before all else.
“The ambassador of Oissos is behaving with no sense of decorum whatsoever,” Zeliha went on. “She keeps following me around anddeclaimingas if she’s in the middle of her Senate. I don’t know who thought a Senate was a good idea. All it seems to do is turn out a load of annoying power-hungry bureaucrats.”
Kadou snuggled Eyne a little closer, flexing his hand again to rid himself of the sense-memory of the befouled coin. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It must have made sense to someone, once.” It might be nicer tochoosepower than to be stuck with it, he sometimes thought. Being prince often felt like he was seated on the back of a ferocious wild horse that could bite or trample anyone around him who didn’t have a horse of their own. He had to be careful of it and aware of it all the time, lest it yank the reins out of his hands and buck him out of a solid seat. And who was to say that he was the best rider to tame it, simply because he had been born to it?
But then, Zeliha was right too—the Oissic Senate did seem to draw power-hungry bureaucrats, primarily.
“Anyway,” she said. “It’s a nice day, and investigating Azuta Melachrinos won’t go any faster whether I’m there to hover over it or not. I needed a break and some fresh air and entertainment, and there’s really nothing more entertaining than watching a bunch of fussy people traipse around on their ponies and try to kill things without getting their hands or their hems dirty.” She picked over the tray of fruit without looking at him. “And I missed you,” she added. “You usually call meMajestythese days, and it makes me feel far away from you.” She shrugged, looked away.
“I miss you too,” he said softly. He bit his lip and occupied himself with fussing over the wrinkles and folds of Eyne’s swaddling cloths. She stared up at him solemnly as he did it—her eyes were huge and already quite dark grey, promising to darken to the classic blue-black of the Mahisti family, the same as his and Zeliha’s.
“And,” Zeliha said, her tone shifting, “I haven’t gotten to talk to you about what happened at the kahyalar’s party when you went for the Visit. You wereverynaughty, I heard.”
He nearly choked, and it was only because he was terrified of dropping Eyne that he forced the wave of panic back.
Someone must have seen him talking to Tadek at the Visit.
(Gods, he realized immediately, of course they had seen it. He and Tadek had been right out in the open, they hadn’t been subtle in theleast—)
There were times when Kadou acted and only later realized, in a flash of crushing humiliation just like this one, how his actions might look from the outside. It had rather been at the top of his mind lately due to the troubles with Eyne’s body-father, the way he stalked around Kadou, scrutinizing him so closely, glaring at him, making it clear with every glance that he believed that Kadou was up to something.
But who could blame him? Siranos’s family had been devastated two generations ago by the machinations of a jealous second son, and he had no reason to believe that Kadou would behave any differently. Most people in his position, Kadou supposed,wouldn’thave been joyfully happy to find themselves a step further away from the throne. But it made him nervous to be the target of such suspicion. He’d been second-guessing himself constantly, worrying and half-confused over his own motivations, lying awake at night wondering whether it was an inevitable matter ofwhenhe brought harm to his sister and niece, rather than an impossible, unthinkableif.
Someone had seen him talking to Tadek at the Visit. How could he explain? Was there any explanation that would be sufficient?
The night of Eyne’s birth, Commander Eozena had come to the temple where Kadou was praying to give him news about the Shipbuilder’s Guild break-in, had asked him to take charge of the matter since Her Majesty was indisposed in childbed, and had escorted him to the royal administrative offices so they could hurriedly scrawl out orders to secure the guild and limit passage out of the city, buying them time until they could ensure that the crucial secret held within the guild was secure and had not been . . . taken. It had been past midnight when she had left to see those orders executed. Kadou and Melek, one of the kahyalar assigned to his personal service, had remained behind to search through the files and find out whether any other incidents or concerns had been recently reported by the guild.
They’d been up to their elbows in documents when Siranos had come in, demanded to know what Kadou thought he was doing, and had not-quite-accused him of making his move against Her Majesty and his new daughter. Kadou had denied it—of course he had, the thought was horrifying to him—but Siranos had escalated, had seized Kadou’s arm hard enough to bruise . . . It was only Melek, so firm and calm that çe hadn’t even needed to raise çir voice, who had finally convinced Siranos to back down and leave.
No matter that Zeliha had brushed all these incidents off the very next morning when Kadou reported to her—all except the finer details of what Siranos had said and done, of course, becausethatfelt like retaliation, like making a fuss about nothing, like escalating the conflict again after Melek had gone to all the trouble of deflecting it. It was no crime for Siranos to be a little out of sorts on the night of his body-child’s birth, after all. But resolving to keep the peace made no difference in the privacy of his own mind, and neither did the fact that Zeliha had cheerfully agreed with Eozena’s executive decision to delegate responsibility. Kadou did what he always did with incidents like these—he held tight to it, interrogated it from every angle, worried over it, ate himself up with anxiety until he was a shaking, nervous wreck. He hadn’t been able to stop circling his mind around it all week—why was Siranos so suspicious of him? Was he seeing something in Kadou that Kadou hadn’t yet noticed in himself?
All that would have been fine, but then . . .
He’d confided his fears to Tadek—another of the kahyalar, who he had known for some time, and who he had once been . . . close to. Tadek, who was so easy to talk to, even about matters Kadou barely dared to whisper aloud to anyone else.
Tadek had comforted and reassured him, had kissed his hands and smiled at him, had offered to ask around as to whether anyone else had heard mention of what Kadou had done (or was doing) to make Siranos so angry and suspicious. That was the point where things had started to go . . . awkward. Awkward, even before this moment, when his perspective wrenched and he was able to look at it from an outsider’s perspective: Sending a kahya after Siranos was tantamount to having himtailed. Anyone else would conclude that easily.
Zeliha had awhole ministryof professional spies whose job it was to know everything that went on in every corner of the palace, in every alley of the capital, and in every village in the country. Of course she knew. Someone would have reported to her that Tadek, who had been assigned to Kadou’s personal service last year, had suddenly been asking around about Siranos, about his motives, about any gossip surrounding him. That too would have been forgivable. But Tadek was a kahya of the core-guard, and that meant loyalty, and devotion, and a certain inclination to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Tadek—clever Tadek, too cunning for his own good, that expression of sly hazel mischief always sparkling in his eyes—had done just that. He’d asked other questions of his fellow kahyalar as well—questions that Kadou certainly hadnotasked him to investigate andwould not haveasked. When Kadou had paid his formal visit to the kahyalar’s enormous celebration of the birth of the princess, Tadek had come to Kadou in the crowd, bearing news and secrets and whispers like guest-gifts. They had briefly left the courtyard of the garrison for a discreet walk.I know a dozen kahyalar who would happily die for you,Tadek had murmured to him, as if that were at all what Kadou wanted. Fireworks had been cracking and hissing overhead, reflecting bright off the surface of the garrison’s laundry pond as they strolled around it and Tadek whispered all he’d found.I myself, Highness, would of course lay down my life to protect you without hesitation, particularly from a—well, we can’t yet call him a villain, can we?
Gods, what had he been doing? He’d been gathering spies of his own.
“I’m—I don’t—I can’t—” He was trembling a little, and Eyne made a soft warning noise. “It’s complicated, I swear it’s not what it looked like, and I didn’t mean anything by it, and—”
“Goodness, take a breath, Kadou!” Zeliha stared at him. “What in the world is the matter?”
“I’m really sorry,” he said. His eyes prickled with tears.
Zeliha sat up. “Kadou, goodness, calm yourself. I was only going to—ohhh.” She smiled and shook a finger at him. “Clever boy.You’reteasingme,aren’t you?” She sat back again, satisfied. “You’re wasted as Duke of Harbors, you know. Maybe General Mirize’s lessons on war tactics didn’t fall on entirely uninterested ears after all.”
He breathed, as his sovereign commanded. “I’m not teasing. I’m serious. I—you’re right, I made some errors of judgment and I didn’t mean anything by it, I should have thought more about how it would seem to other people . . .” He found himself clutching Eyne close. She was oddly comforting to hold.
“Kadou, gods! You’re not teasing, are you? Gods, calm down. It was just flirting, right?”
