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Something deep in Kel’s belly tightened. He was not sure if it was anxiety or relief, lightness or heaviness. He was not sure of anything anymore. He had not been since that first meeting with the Ragpicker King. Slowly, he said, “What makes you ask?”
“Something Mayesh’s granddaughter said.” Conor flopped back down on the bed and regarded Kel through the tangle of his dark hair. “When I was escorting her out of the Palace.”
“You didn’t need to ban Lin Caster from the Palace, Con,” Kel said. “She wasn’t plotting some sort of coup. She’s a physician. She feels a sense of duty toward her patients.”
“She’s maddening,” Conor said, moving restlessly on the bed. “I’ve met sharp-tongued women before, but most know to temper their blades. She speaks as if—”
“As if you weren’t her Prince?” said Kel. “The Ashkar have their own banished ruler, you know. The Exilarch.”
“I don’t think I recalled that,” Conor murmured. “Either way—”
“She is Mayesh’s granddaughter,” said Kel, not sure why he was pushing against this so hard. He often felt it was his purpose not only to protect Conor physically, but to recognize the ways in which he had been given principles to follow only irregularly—a word from Jolivet here, a bit of advice from Mayesh there—and left in neglect to attend them as best he could in an atmosphere that rewarded neither virtue nor empathy nor restraint. Perhaps it was merely that he feltthere was no one else to define goodness for Conor, though he was no expert himself. “Do you want her to be afraid of you?”
Conor pushed the hair out of his eyes and fixed Kel with a sharp look. “Afraid of me? She is the furthest thing from afraid of me, Kellian.”
“And it bothers you?”
“When I see her, I feel as if I have stood too close to a fire, and hot cinders have flecked my skin with little burns.” Conor scowled. “I tried to pay her, the night she healed you. She refused to take the reward I offered—” He held up his hand, showing Kel the blue signet on his right ring finger—“and I cannot help but feel that if she had, my irritation would cease. I dislike owing her.”
“Think of it as owing Mayesh,” Kel suggested. “We are all used to that.”
Conor only scowled more, and Kel decided it was past time to change the subject.
“So,” he asked, “what wouldyousay, if I told you I no longer wished to beKirálar? That I wanted to leave Marivent?”
“I would let you go,” said Conor. “You are not a prisoner.”
“Then there is your answer,” Kel said. “If I wanted to leave, I would leave. If you no longer want a Sword Catcher, that is your decision, but not one you ought to make for my benefit.” Conor was silent. “I have trained for this, nearly all my life,” Kel added. “I am proud of what I do, Conor.”
“Even though hardly anyone knows about it?” Conor said, with a crooked smile. “Even though you must be heroic in secret?”
I wouldn’t say hardly anyone,Kel thought darkly. Too many people knew his secret for his liking, but that was not something he could share with Conor. “It isn’tthatmuch heroism,” he said. “Mostly it’s listening to you complain.Andsnore.”
“That is a treasonous statement. I do not snore,” Conor said, with great dignity.
“People who snore never think they snore,” said Kel.
“Treason,” Conor repeated. “Sedition.” He stood up and stretched, yawning. “As it turns out, I barely remember a word of Malgasi. Fortunately, I’ve a new cloak of black swan feathers that ought to distract the ambassadress.”
“That sounds expensive,” said Kel, and immediately regretted having said it. Conor stopped his stretching and looked at Kel, hard. After a moment, he said, “If you are still worried about the Prosper Beck business, don’t be. I’ll take care of it.”
“I wasn’t worried at all,” Kel said, but it was not the truth, and he suspected Conor knew it.
—
This time, when a knock came on the door late in the evening, Lin knew immediately that it was not Mariam. She would have used her code: two quick raps, a pause, then a third. This was the thud of a fist against her door, and she bolted to her feet, suddenly panicked.
She had spent much of the evening, after her rounds in the city, studying the few pages she had of Qasmuna’s book and cursing herself for never having studied Callatian. She had a translator’s dictionary from her time as a student and had been doing her best with it, skipping from the dictionary to the original. The pages were also not in order, having been torn from their bindings, making it difficult to construct a narrative or even a series of instructions from the pages.
So far Lin had learned only a few rather disappointing things. The Source-Stones had indeed existed, and been invented by Suleman the Great, lord of what was now Marakand. There seemed three ways to fill them with power: One could drain off one’s own magical energy into them, like filling a flask with water. One could take power from a magical creature—a dragon or phoenix or hippogryph, something formed from the power of the Word itself. Or one could kill another magic-user and take their energy in the form of blood.
Magical creatures, alas, no longer existed. Lin did not know how one could manage the method of saving one’s own magicalpotential, and her physician’s Oath forbade her from killing anyone else, had she even known a magic-user in the first place.
Frustrated, she took out her own stone—she was beginning to think of it as hers, and not Petrov’s—and looked into it.How can I use you?she thought.How can you help me heal Mariam?
For a moment, she thought she saw the odd shapes in the stone rearrange themselves, flowing like the letters and numbers ofgematry.She thought she could read the old Ashkar word for “heal,” buried down deep, a cinder glowing through smoke—
And then the knock came on the door. She scrambled up, sliding the pages of Qasmuna’s book—and her notes—carefully under the pillows on the window seat. Then she went to the door.
