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“Oh,reading,” Tadek said airily. “Bad for the eyes, that.” He stopped, frowned, and prodded at the scales on Usmim’s altar. “Huh. These are out of balance.”
“No, they’re—” Kadou sighed with frustration, dropping out of the position of prayer. “They’re not, they’re just old. There’s a trick to them.” Not that anyoneusedthe scales on this altar or needed them to be accurate. They were just symbolic.
“No,” Tadek said slowly, standing back and eyeing them from a couple different angles. “They’re definitely off.”
“They’re not.”
“Not to contradict my liege lord, but I’m pretty sure they are, gorgeous.”
Kadou was at the altar and elbowing Tadek aside before he could stop himself. He flicked back the skirts of his kaftan and knelt, resting his elbows on the altar and fiddling with the scales. “Look, watch.”
Tadek crouched next to him. “I swear it, they’re off.”
“I swear they’renot. Do either of you have any coins?” With any set of scales, you would want to check the balance first, but with the fiddliness of this particular set, it was essential.
They each had a handful of copper kürler and silver yiralar—Kadou took two yiralar from each of them and placed them in the pans. The scales had been slightly damaged decades before Kadou was born: There was a particular tension screw at the scales’ balance point that needed to be fiddled from time to time, especially after damp weather or big changes in the ambient temperature. Easy enough to do, when you had a few coins that all weighed precisely the same. “There, see.” He returned their yiralar and produced the two small coin purses that Zeliha and Eozena had given him. Left, Melachrinos’s coins. Right, Armagan’s coins. Important to keep them straight.
He kept his mind blank of conclusions. It would be easy enough to say, “Aha, two instances of counterfeits so close together must mean that they come from the same place and were made by the same people.” But that sort of thing could lead an investigation astray. No, testing was important. And this test, particularly, might not mean anything.
He counted out five altinlar from each pouch and placed them on the pans: Left, Melachrinos. Right, Armagan.
The scales balanced. Kadou let out a long breath. It wasn’t quite definitive confirmation—they’d need a very skilled team of goldsmiths for that, or better yet an incredibly sensitive touch-taster . . .
“Tadek, can you touch-taste?”
“Not a whit. Why?”
“Who is the most sensitive touch-taster you know? And are they trustworthy?”
“Melek,” Tadek said immediately. “And I’d wager every last kür in my possession on çir loyalty, yes.”
Kadou sat back on his heels and studied the level scales. “Right. We’ll go ask Eozena to—”
“What are you doing, Your Highness?” Kadou’s muscles locked up—Siranos. He scrambled to his feet.
“I was—we were—”
“Praying,” Evemer said smoothly. “Repairing the scales as service to Usmim.”
Siranos, standing in the doorway, frowned. “They weren’t broken the last time I was here.”
“Sir,” Evemer said flatly, and Kadou felt terribly grateful to him. His hands were beginning to shake again—damn this affliction! Could it not leave him be for a day? Could it not let him look Siranos in the eye? “We’d just finished,” Evemer said.
Siranos laughed—it sounded a little forced. “Is this how many princes and guards it takes to repair a simple set of scales?”
“We’re all equal in the eyes of the Lord of Judgment,” said Tadek loftily. “Perhaps you ought to spend some time in here contemplating. Oh, or perhaps another shrine would be better, so that you don’t get in Her Majesty’s way.”
Kadou felt another rush of relief and gratitude—Evemer could have stonewalled Siranos all day, but Tadek used words like a rapier.
Siranos blinked. “I didn’t mean it as an insult,” he said. His eyes flickered to the scales, and he came forward. Evemer angled himself between him and Kadou. From the corner of Kadou’s eye, he saw Tadek also drift forward with an air of idleness.
Siranos picked up one of the coins from the pan, looking at the rest in their two piles on either side of the altar. The corner of his mouth quirked in a strange smile. “My,” he said. “Arasti princes certainly carry around a small fortune, don’t they. You could live for weeks in Thorikou on all this. Months, if you didn’t have expensive tastes.”
“Sir, His Highness requires solitude,” Evemer said.
Siranos picked up the two coin purses and looked in, raising his eyebrows. “Solitude and enough money to buy the best Vintish warhorse?”
“Please put those down,” Kadou said.
