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Kadou moved to another bench where there was a bubbling fountain set into the wall and an elegant little stone table with a tray of cut-glass bottles and wide-mouthed jars. He poked through them, smelling each of them in turn.
Torn, Evemer glanced down at his own hands, then at the archway of the door. If he offered his own services, would he be compromising his ability to protect Kadou in the event of sudden assassination? Or, slightly more likely, Siranos? Was Siranos even allowed in the royal baths? The man had a habit of worming his way into places he wasn’t quite welcome . . .
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Kadou peeling the wet robe off his shoulders so it pooled around his hips, framing the soft curve of his slender waist, the slope of his ribs and the line of his spine as it disappeared up into the black river of his long hair, damp and sticking to his skin in curls and waves . . . the arresting curve from shoulder to elegant neck that was for some reason momentarily the most important thing in the world. Kadou took water from the fountain’s reservoir with one of the silver bowls sitting on its lip and poured it over his head to wet his hair again, pulling the slick length of it over his shoulder. He scooped soft soap out of a little glass pot, and Evemer abruptly decided he would not be able to live with himself if he failed to offer. “Please, my lord, would you allow me?”
Kadou blinked at him. “Allow you?”
“I can do that for you, if you wish.”
“Oh.” Kadou rubbed his hands together, lathering the oily soap. “That’s—that’s really not necessary.” He half laughed. He wasn’t meeting Evemer’s eyes now. “I always feel strange, asking for things like that—expecting them. Especially from someone I don’t know very well. I always worry that they’ll think I’m incapable, or that they’ll feel that those things are beneath them.”
Evemer felt like he’d been dropped into a crucible of molten iron. “In your service, nothing is beneath me,” he said softly, just loud enough to be heard over the bubbling of the fountain. “Everything is my job if it makes your life more comfortable.”
Kadou looked over at him, that troubled, regretful,resignedlook in his eyes again. “You’re unhappy, aren’t you.”
“What? No. I—”
“You are, though,” Kadou said softly. “You’re an infamously dedicated and disciplined kahya of my house. You took the final oaths of service for the core-guard and immediately got assigned to the most disfavored person in the palace. And I . . . I’ve been making it difficult for you. I drag you out to taverns when you think it’s a bad idea, and I get as drunk as I possibly can and you hate that, and I have a hard time asking for help or letting people take care of me. Of course you’re unhappy.”
Evemer clenched his jaw. “My lord, I’m not. I’m not unhappy.” Hewasn’t. He was . . . he was just . . . He was doing his best. He was following all his training and education; he was doing his duty and staying steadfast to his oaths; he was even . . . getting along with His Highness. Sort of—beginning to. The tension of resentment between them hadn’t lasted past the night before, when his lord had saved his life. And that moment in the garden, when his lord had made the impossible request and granted him impossible mercy.
“What are you, then?” The soap was dripping off Kadou’s fingers. Evemer swallowed. “Because you’re not happy either, so what are you?”
Evemer couldn’t answer right away. He didn’t know how to speak like this. No one had ever asked him to.
“I’ll tell you whatIam,” Kadou said, still very quiet. But there was a note of that recklessness underneath, like when he had been trying to pick fights with drunk sailors. “I am a person with no use, Evemer. Her Majesty is the anchor the entire kingdom rests upon. I’m just the spare. Thefail-safe mechanism.” He held Evemer’s eyes for a long moment, and then said gently, “What are you?”
It was a very strange sensation, the thing that happened in Evemer’s mind. It was like a cloud slipping from in front of the moons and spilling their light over all the things he paid no heed to, the things he ignored or pushed aside or discarded if he held them up against the image of what he wanted most to be and found that they did not fit any more than his childhood clothes would. It was horrifyingly unpleasant.
“What are you, Evemer?” Kadou said again.
“Lost,” Evemer said, because he was. Because he didn’t have words for this, because he didn’t know what was happening to him, because he didn’t know how he felt about it or what the rules were or how to hold himself upright and know that he was being correct and righteous.A ship at sea on a cloudy night,he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get his tongue to move again.A child who turned the wrong way on a crowded street. A man in a cave, fallen, his torch extinguished.
Except for that feeling he’d had the night before—that feeling of turning unexpectedly on a crowded street and finding someone familiar beside him. Thatah, there you arefeeling. The same one he’d had in the garden, kneeling at Kadou’s feet, prepared to sacrifice anything to that soft voice and its gentlest request.
But had he imagined it? Could that feeling ever be replicated, outside those two extraordinary circumstances? Or was he fated to be wandering the world with this urgent feeling in the back of his mind that could never find an answer? Wandering, and thus . . . lost.
The only sound was the trickle of water into the basins of the fountains, and then Kadou said, in a voice so exquisitely kind that it sent sharp arrows right through Evemer’s chest, “Would you please wash my hair?”
Evemer nodded, eyes downcast to the beautiful mosaics on the floor. He removed his sword belt and set it on a neighboring bench, still within reach but well clear of the water, and his lord held out his hands so Evemer could scrape the soap off of them. He moved slowly, and Kadou turned his back. The weight of the water had pulled Kadou’s hair otter-sleek over his scalp and down his back, dripping onto the marble seat of the bench. Evemer rubbed the soft oil-soap between his hands and began working it into Kadou’s hair, his nose filling with the scent of orange blossom and rare kesarwood.
“I feel like I should apologize too,” Kadou said. “I think I understand why you’re lost.” He was twisting his fingers in his lap in that way he had. “We . . . There aren’t . . .” He flexed his hands, made a frustrated noise in his throat. “Fealty works so long as there is a certain amount of trust and loyalty between both parties. It works only when both parties act altruistically to protect each other’s interests, otherwise it’s just exploitation. I’ve been so preoccupied with my own troubles that I haven’t had a care for yours. If your job is to—to do anything that makes my life more comfortable, then I need to know how I can do the same for you. Because it’s only ethical if it’s reciprocal and balanced, and I think that you’re feeling lostbecauseI haven’t been reciprocating as I ought to.”
Evemer’s hands had paused. Kadou’s hair was tangled soft and slick around his fingers like rivers of black ink. He heard an echo of Commander Eozena’s voice:A good man . . .“It’s not necessary,” he heard himself say, but he knew it wasn’t true, his gut twisted and soured with how untrue it was, how much he longed for—
“Yes, it is,” Kadou said in a voice as inflexible as the granite bones of the earth, and all the air rushed back into the room. “It is necessary. If I disregard what I owe you, then I am not being a good liege, and you would be well within your rights to withdraw your loyalty. I would not deserve it. I’d be taking from you without giving anything back.” He took a breath. “Can you tell me?” His voice was small now—he was lost too, Evemer realized. That’s what he meant by being a person with no use. He’d been tugged along by the will of the gods and his own fear for his whole life, and here they were, two ships on a dark cloudy night whose only point of reference was each other. “Can you tell me what you need?”
“I just want to be needed,” Evemer whispered. Then, because he thought Kadou would understand what he meant, would understandhim,he said, “I want to be useful.”
“But that’s not reciprocity. What do you need from me?”
Evemer forced his fingers to move again, working the soap through Kadou’s hair as if he were handling gossamer-thin crystal.
“If we can’t be honest with each other, then how are we going to stand each other’s company a month from now?” Kadou said. “We haven’t been—it’s been better, today. I haven’t felt like . . . like there was anger or resentment between us. I don’t want to go back to that. I want to make itright. I want to know how to care for you. So what do I owe you, as your lord?”
“Fairness. Loyalty. Reciprocal protection,” Evemer said, and then, before he could stop himself: “A place in your home. A place at your hearth.” Words from the oath of fealty a person took upon becoming a cadet, then again upon promotion to the kahyalar of the fringe-guard, and once more for core-guard, growing longer and more elaborate every time—but that phrase stayed the same. Home and hearth.
Evemer filled one of the fountain’s silver bowls with water and poured it slowly over Kadou’s hair, shielding his lord’s face with his hand. Kadou obligingly tilted his head back—he kept his eyes open, and he looked at Evemer with an expression that he could not quite read. Evemer stared hard at the stream of water.
