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There are small loops where the lines of the letters connect.Almost like…
I pull out a book on the Eastern Lands from one of the many bookshelves, flipping the cover open. The first page is a map labeled in an artful script I can’t decipher.
Almost like someone who learned to write an entirely different kind of alphabet before switching to the common language.
What had Zaina said? That Ulla was just the woman who stole her as a child?
Any doubts that she wrote this note are erased. As everything with Zaina, though, that knowledge is its own contradiction. I feel like I understand even less than I did before.
Like why she wrote a note for me but took it with her instead of leaving it here. Why did she keep the rose in the saddlebags and not on her person?
Zaina is brilliant, and she isn’t careless. So why were the petals in plain sight on her floor? And she only left one on the fake rose, when there had been two on the real rose. She left the key in the cabinet. Every single thing she does is calculated and cautious, so why make it obvious that she was stealing the rose?
To taunt me? But then why send it back? Which I assume she did, if she sent the note? Why take it at all if she was going to return it? Nothing makes any sense, up to and including the fact that she sauntered off to die without a single word.
I know she’s a gifted liar, but there are things even she can’t fake.
That’s why I got her Khijhana. For companionship and protection, yes, but also as a way to read her. Chalyxes grow in direct correlation to their bond with their owner. Khijhana is enormous, bigger than some full-grown chalyxes I’ve seen, and she’s only a few months old.
Yet, in spite of all that, Zaina was willing to leave the only thing in this castle I am confident she loves behind. She was willing to die rather than confide in me, and I can’t fathom why.
That kind of information is exactly what she likes to claim doesn’t fall under the terms of our deal, so I’ll have to take my time getting it out of her in pieces.
But I will get my answers. She owes me that much.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zaina
The days slip by after Einar brings me the books. In the days that follow, I can’t deny that I’m starting to get more than a little bit restless. The only thing of note that happens is an awkward exchange with Leif when he valiantly steps in for Sigrid to bring me a basket ofessentials. At the very least, I have the relief of knowing I am not carrying Einar’s heir.
Still, I dutifully study the king’s notes and the contents of the books, which are a mix of Jokithan and the common tongue, though I’ve read them each at least twice by now.
I have a suspicion the answer isn’t in here. Madame likes to be clever.
Something that relies on a complex alchemical solution isn’t really her style, because it misses the purpose of making the searcher feel like an idiot when they find it. No. I’m certain we’re missing something obvious, or at least obvious toher.
I spend countless hours staring at her cruel letter until I would sooner gouge my own eyes out than look at it again. I can only imagine how Einar has felt for the past seventeen years. Staring at her carefully crafted letter and failing at creating a cure again and again.
I straighten my stiff back and study it again, my eyes gliding along her penmanship for any clue she could have left behind.
Sadly, there isn’t much I’ve thought of that Einar hasn’t already. No sooner do I come up with a possible solution than I read the results of that very combination in his notebook.
All of them have gone badly.
Every day, Einar interrogates me in between my research. He calls it collaborating, but that’s just a fancy term for him to ask me an endless sea of questions. Some of them are definitely less pertinent to his cause than others.
At least today, he has brought in a chessboard so that I might not descend into madness with the repetition of it all.
“How old were you when she took you?” he asks, moving a pawn ahead.
“Six.” I look at him askance, because we both know there is no point to this question that could possibly involve his people, but some masochistic part of me keeps answering him anyway.
“So you could already read and write in the Desert language?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Why? Did you need me for something? I already told you I am gifted with languages.” It’s not a boast. It’s one of the many skills Madame forcibly imparted, but it did come fairly naturally to me.
“No.” His simple answer aggravates me, because he knows I want to know why he was asking, but he is deliberately not telling me.
