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He would have liked to put out the candles for him.
The lowlands of Arast were usually very warm and dry in early summer, but Kadou awoke the next morning to a grey, rainy day and a breakfast invitation from his sister, a simple note, signed with her own name. In it, she plaintively wondered what she had to do to bribe him back to her table, and offered a few pieces of knowledge as a temptation: Eozena had recently re-approved the Mistress of the Table for service, and said Mistress had just hired a new chef from Vinte.
Kadou sat in his parlor and sipped at a cup of chamomile tea, a vain attempt to soothe his nerves from the previous night’s ordeals. He felt Evemer’s absence more keenly now, he noticed. There was an empty space at his shoulder where a silent glowering presence should have stood. It seemed rather cold, like the chill of the room came more strongly on that side.
He stared at Zeliha’s note for an embarrassing length of time. Remembering the conversation with Eozena the night before, Kadou sent for Tadek, who arrived pleasant and composed. He was too skilled with his masks for Kadou to see through him.
“As my personal secretary, I thought you should know—I’m going over to Her Majesty’s chambers for breakfast.”
“Of course, Highness,” Tadek said. “Will you be lingering?”
“I don’t know.”
“There are a few small matters which require your attention, but I shall send word that you will not be available until the afternoon, if you wish.”
Kadou hated this. Tadek sounded so distant and formal—surely there was some middle ground between this and the shameless flirting? And then, of course, there was the conversation he’d had with Eozena . . . “Actually, I was wondering if you’d help me dress for it.”
Tadek blinked, but recovered smoothly. “Of course, Highness, anything you require.”
He followed a few steps behind as Kadou headed back into his bedroom with his tea and settled himself in the chair by the window. “I leave it in your hands. I trust you.”
Tadek shot him a thoughtful, almost suspicious look and went to the wardrobes. Kadou had finished his tea by the time Tadek had laid out his choice of clothes—a butter-yellow underlayer, thickly embroidered mahogany trousers, and an ankle-length kaftan of deep burgundy silk brocade woven with gold threads in a pattern of oak leaves and saffron flowers.
He shaved Kadou and dressed his hair simply—he had a much lighter touch than Evemer did, and Kadou hardly felt him working at all—then helped Kadou into his layers. They buttoned up the front together, both starting from the middle and working outward: Tadek up to the high collar, Kadou to the end of the row of jet buttons, halfway down his thighs, after which the long panels of the kaftan hung loose to his ankles, splitting open to show his trousers and slippers beneath. Tadek stepped back and finally looked at Kadou properly, putting his head on one side and his hands on his hips. Kadou rather got the impression that Tadek really was sizing up his clothes for once, rather than leering at him directly. “Are you going to wear jewels?” Tadek asked.
“I can, if you think I ought to.”
Tadek opened the jewel box and picked through it while Kadou sat quiet and docile and let him work. “What happened to your padparadscha earrings?”
“They should be in there.”
“Ah, here.” He held them up to Kadou’s ear, studied the effect. “I’ve always liked how bright they are against your hair.”
“I don’t like orange.” Tadek set them aside, though not back in the jewel box, and tried a pair of honey topaz earrings. “There are garnets in there somewhere.”
“I don’t want too much matching,” Tadek replied absently, digging deeper in the box, and Kadou couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re good at this. I didn’t know.”
Tadek smiled sadly and came to Kadou’s side again, his hands full of glittering things. “I haven’t . . . I haven’t been spending my stipend as wisely as I could have. I’ve erred too far on the side of cultural enrichment, as they call it, and rather neglected the educational side of it.” He clasped a gold bracelet around Kadou’s wrist. “Live vibrantly and think nothing of the future, as the poets have warned against.”
“And yet have also usually espoused,” Kadou said, looking at him curiously.
After a moment, Tadek said quietly, “I was thinking about this last night. I was at one of the shrines. There wasn’t anyone around, and I felt silly sitting there all by myself. But I cleaned up the altars, scraped all the old wax out of the candelabras, polished Usmim’s scales and Sannesi’s bowl. I swept the floors. I shook out the rugs. Hell, I mopped the flagstones. You couldeatoff them now.”
“And then?”
“And then I lit candles for the two of us, and I sat there and thought about myself.” Tadek shook his head. “I’ve seen every play and opera and acrobatic troupe that’s come through Kasaba City since I became part of the fringe-guard. My ambitions ended with the kahyalar corps—being a minister of something in some dusty little office didn’t sound like any fun, certainly not as much as being in the thick of things and getting to watch how everything happened. So I spent my enrichment stipend on silly things that didn’t do much except get me out into the city to meet people. By comparison, Melek has a hundred different practical skills, Commander Eozena couldteachmilitary history, and Evemer’s scrounged up books about numismatics and law from somewhere and keeps them in a stack next to his bed. Istani knows how to play every instrument I’ve ever heard of, Sanem speaks seven languages and can do complex sums in her head, and Firuze can argue legal philosophy until she’s blue in the face. And . . . Well, you were right, weren’t you? I haven’t made myself useful, just entertaining. Melek and Evemer and Sanem andcertainlyFiruze will end up ministers of some sort, and where will I be? Seeing plays and cooling my heels in the garrison, because I never bothered to make anything more of myself. There’s not much I can do with skills in dressing people and making snide comments.”
“But therearepeople who make a profession of that. Stewards and the masters of protocol and so forth. I’ve seen discussions of military strategy that were less complicated than some of the banquet seating arrangements that the chief of diplomacy has to manage.”
Tadek snorted and held up a teardrop amethyst to Kadou’s ear. “They wouldn’t give me that sort of responsibility when I’ve got a record of dishonor. I’ll probably die an armsman.” He sighed. “No offense.”
Kadou’s heart ached. “Tadek, I told you I’d still pay your stipend if you want to use it. You still have time—what do you want to do?”
Tadek set the amethyst aside and tried a sparkling thread of diamonds, then set that aside as well. “Too ostentatious,” he muttered to himself. “Only breakfast.” He shook his head and snorted. “You know, I’m not pious. I don’t go to the temple more than once a year, I only participate in the fun holidays, and I don’t expect some man who supposedly lives in a cave in the ground to send me fairer trials just because I ask nicely. I don’t even care much for philosophy, unless I’m drunk and I get to argue with somebody in person, and then it’s more about needling them . . . But when I was trying to unburden myself last night, I got to thinking about sin, and I thought about what I believe.”
“Which is?” He had rarely seen Tadek so serious. His expression was rather smooth and serene, other than the slightest tension around his mouth and between his eyebrows. Oh, he really had been trying, hadn’t he? He’d been trying as hard as Kadou himself had been.
