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“It is an honor, Your Majesty,” Mama said immediately. “Think nothing of it.” She gave Evemer a sharp look. “Why are you still here? Didn’t you hear Her Majesty?”
“Yes, Mama,” he said. “Majesty, do you require anything? A chair?” She did, as it turned out. He hauled Tadek out of the best chair in the kitchen, ignored his protests, and brought it to her.
Kadou had gone back upstairs earlier in the morning when Siranos had woken and come up from the basement. He suspected Kadou wasn’t as steady as he claimed—if Evemer had been a betting man, he would have wagered that Kadou was even now working himself into a fit of nerves again.
He found Kadou curled up in bed, reading Evemer’s book. Kadou looked up, startled, when the door opened. “Sorry,” he said, shutting the book carefully. “Sorry. I was bored, I didn’t—do you mind that I’m reading it?”
“Letter from Commander Eozena,” Evemer said to buy himself time. “Her Majesty has read it.” He held out the letter; Kadou took it.
DidEvemer mind? Kadou had the handwritten one, the one Evemer had copied out painstakingly a few years before the printing presses came to Kasaba City and made books likeThe Ten Pillars of Waraffordable enough to buy. It represented more than a year of dedicated labor, though his work had gotten faster and cleaner toward the end.
He decided he didn’t mind. It would have been different if it was Tadek or Melek. They had no call to be poking their noses into Evemer’s precious things. Kadou could do as he pleased, of course.
Kadou looked up from the letter. “We’re supposed to stay here.”
“I know.”
“I need to send a letter back to her.” Evemer went to his desk, got out paper, ink, pen. “The other night, when you said you thought Sylvia was up to something . . .”
Evemer frowned. He’d been far too busy to think of anything in the world besides the people under his roof. “She did tell Siranos to stay out of her way. She said she’d handle things.” He handed the paper and ink to Kadou.
“Do you think . . . didn’t Siranos say that everyone in Thorikou knows everyone else? Do you think Sylvia knows Azuta Melachrinos?”
“I am skeptical of coincidences,” Evemer said flatly. “I think that involvement in this plot would have significant benefits for Madam Sylvia and her family. They have motive.”
“Careful,” Kadou whispered. “Careful. Just . . . I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Tadek.”
“I know.”
“We can’t make decisions based on paranoia.”
“Investigating an option is different from making a decision.” He paused. “My lord, if I may be bold?”
“Of course.”
“You are overcorrecting for a past error.”
Kadou sighed and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I know.” He took a breath. “You’re right, of course. We should look at Sylvia. Calmly, quietly, not making any assumptions.”
“Should Her Majesty know?”
Kadou opened his mouth to speak, paused, and sighed again. “I don’t trust my own judgment on that one. That kind of question keeps getting me in trouble.” He added, a moment later, “Probably because I keepnottelling her things. I could . . . I could try telling her, and see if it makes any difference?”
“You could, Highness.”
“And in the meantime . . .” Kadou’s brow furrowed in thought. He got out of bed; Evemer stepped back from the desk so he could sit. He straightened the bedclothes while Kadou wrote, blew on the ink to dry it, and looked around the desk. “Do you have sealing wax?”
“In the kitchen.” There were too many bits and bobs to keep all to himself in his room, and you needed a flame of some sort to melt the wax anyway.
“I hope Zeliha brought her seal,” Kadou mused, and that made Evemer freeze again. Whatever he’d just written wasn’t a letter to Eozena, then. It was something official.
“She’s with my mother in the workshop,” he said.
Kadou took another moment to collect himself—he really was skirting the edge of his terrors today, wasn’t he? Evemer wondered if Kadou had even noticed it himself yet, or if he was too accustomed to a low-burn of anxiety to pay it any heed, in the same way that muscles became conditioned to exercise and only noticed a strain when they were being overtaxed.
Kadou went downstairs and into the workshop; Evemer followed.
Zeliha was sitting at the loom, and Mama had gotten over enough of her nerves to scold: “Nowyankthe rope. Sharp, girl, sharper! Look, now your shuttle’s died in the middle of the warp, look.” Mama stuck her fingers between the threads of the warp to flick the shuttle the rest of the way to the other side. “Then lift your foot from the treadle—yes, then the beater—”
