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“I recognized youranokhamtalisman.” She seemed remarkably calm, considering. “It’s very old Ashkari work, not the kind of thing that is made anymore. I won’t tell anyone,” she added. “Consider me bound to secrecy, as my grandfather is. If I were to tell anyone, it would endanger him.”
Kel released her wrist. He ought to be furious, he thought, or panicked. And yet. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the Ragpicker King was aware of his true identity, as were Merren and Ji-An. In truth, Lin’s awareness of who he was did not place him on a sharper knife’s edge than he already walked. Perhaps it was that some part of him trusted her. She had saved his life; it was instinctual, a sort of recognition.
“Tell me one thing,” Lin said, screwing the cap back on the jar of salve. “Do you even remember how you got all those scars?”
Kel, who had been about to reach for his shirt, paused. He touched a scar on his left shoulder, a triangular welt like a dent in his skin. “This came from an assassin at the Court of Valderan, armed with a bow and arrow. And this one, here”—he indicated a spot below his rib cage—“a mercenary with a whip; he’d broken into Antonetta’s eighteenth birthday party, looking for Conor. Here”—he stretched to reach his back—“an anti-monarchist with an axe who managed to infiltrate the annual inspection of the cavalry.”
“And this?” She touched a patch of raised skin just over his right hip. She smelled faintly of lemons.
“Hot soup,” Kel said, gravely. “Not every story is a heroic one.”
“You never know,” Lin replied, with equal seriousness. She finished rebandaging his injury and patted him lightly on the shoulder. “The soup could have been poisoned.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Kel, and retrieved his tunic with a laugh; it was the first time he had laughed in several days, and it felt like a weight lifted off him.
“Now,” she said, looking up at him as he rebuttoned his tunic, and he expected her to give him a piece of medical advice, instruct him to use the salve each day perhaps. “I did not only come here to see if you were healing.” She tucked a braid behind her ear. “The other night, when you were hurt, you said something about arrows, and then a name.Jeanne.”
He looked at her silently.
“But you were not sayingJeanne,were you? It wasJi-An.She’s the one who saved your life that night. She carried you up here—”
“She shot arrows at the Crawlers,” he said, shrugging on his jacket. “Killed several. I imagine they’re none too pleased about it. Lin,how do you know all this?”
“We both know him,” she said, quietly. “The Ragpicker King. We both know him, and we both shouldn’t. So I thought we could keep each other’s secret.” She held out a folded square of paper. “I didn’t come here because he asked me to,” she said, firmly. “I don’t even know how he found out I was planning to come to the Palace. But when I was leaving the Sault, a little boy ran up and shoved this into my hands. ‘Compliments of the Ragpicker King.’ ”
Kel took the paper gingerly, as if it were coated with black powder. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s addressed to you—”
A babble of voices exploded in the hallway. Kel could hear Antonetta’s voice, high and distressed, “Oh,don’tgo in there, Conor, please don’t—”
And Conor’s voice. Familiar, and annoyed. “It’smy room,Ana,” and then Lin was on her feet, and the door was open, spilling Conor and Antonetta into the room.
Conor had clearly ridden Asti from the Alleyne estate; he had on his riding clothes, including a tooled-leather coat in hunter green. The placket and cuffs gleamed with brass studs. He wore no crown, and the wind had whipped his hair into a smoky tangle.
Quickly, Kel palmed the paper, tucking it into the sleeve of his jacket. It was not particularly skillfully done, but then, Conor was not looking at him. He was looking at Lin, and for a moment there was an expression on his face—an unaffected surprise and anger—that startled Kel. Conor rarely showed the truth of what he felt, unless that feeling was amusement.
The look was gone as soon as it had appeared. Calmly, Conor drew off one of his riding gloves and said, “I thought I had made it clear what my wishes were the last time you were here, Domna Caster.”
Antonetta stamped a slippered foot. “Conor, don’t be angry.I’mthe one who brought her. I thought it was important for Kel—”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s important.” Conor tossed his riding glove onto the bed next to Kel, who raised an eyebrow at him. Conor ignored this. He also ignored Lin, who was standing with her back straight, her hands folded in front of her. Her cheeks were flaming bright red—anger or embarrassment, Kel did not know—but otherwise she had not reacted to Conor at all.
“Conor.” Antonetta tugged at the sleeve of the Prince’s jacket. “I heard you’d told her not to come back, but I thought you were joking. You’re always so funny.” She pouted up at him. “It’s not as if you’d be bothered by some little Ashkari girl. Notreally.”
Conor drew off his second glove even more slowly than the first, seeming utterly absorbed in the task. And Kel realized, with a flicker of surprise, what Antonetta’s calculated show of naïveté was capable of. She had deftly disarmed Conor in a way that arguing with him could never have done. Even if he guessed her behavior tobe part pretense, there was little he could do now to show his anger without looking a fool, or seeming as if he were truly concerned over the matter of Lin’s presence.
Conor tossed the second glove into the corner of the room. “How true, Antonetta,” he said, without a flicker of emotion. “You have such a generous heart. Such tolerance for others, regardless of their behavior.” He turned to Lin. “Have you finished examining Kel? And determined that competent care has been taken of him? Or is he dying as a result of the Palace’s negligence?”
Lin had picked up her satchel. “He’s healing very well,” she said. “But you knew that.”
“Yes,” said Conor, smiling coldly. “I did.”
Never had Kel felt more like a piece of flotsam, pulled between shifting tides. Conor would not blame him for any of this, he was aware—he had not known Lin was banned from Marivent—yet he could think of nothing he could say to ameliorate the situation. A strange energy seemed to pass between Lin and Conor, like the charge given off by amber when it was polished with cloth. Was it just that Lin seemed not to understand the way she was meant to speak to Conor? That one showed deference to a prince? Or had something happened the night Lin had healed him, something more than her request for Conor to leave the room?
Conor turned to Antonetta, who was regarding Lin and Conor with a look of consideration on her face. Kel, not for the first or last time, wondered what she was really thinking. “I am sure you have more fashionable and interesting things to be doing, Ana,” Conor said. “Go home.”
Antonetta wavered but stood her ground. “I’m meant to bring Lin back to the city—”
