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“No.”
Kadou bit the inside of his cheek. This was going downhill extremely quickly. Was there a way to excuse himself gracefully, at least?
Tadek was looking thoughtful. “You know, I know almost everything about almost everyone, and I don’t even know whether you like boys, girls, oryasilar, or none of the above.”
“None of your business,” Evemer said.
“Come on, this is part of becoming friends,” Tadek said brightly. “Here, I’ll start: I like everybody. Now Melek.”
“None of the above,” Melek said gamely.
“Now Evemer.”
Evemer glowered. “We’re not becoming friends.”
“Don’t bully him, it’s been a long night,” Kadou said. “Leave him be.”
Melek sat up straight. “Wait, I remember—wasn’t there someone when we were cadets?”
“Was there?” Tadek said, surprised. “I don’t recall. Honestly, I was busy deflowering everyone who would let me get my hands on them, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else.”
Melek scrunched çir nose. “That’d be why I noticed, then, I wasn’t preoccupied. But Evemer, wasn’t there—Nihani, wasn’t it?”
“Nihani Baltakan?” Tadek said. “The one who got an appointment as staff to one of the provincial governors a few years back? Crack shot with a bow and thighs that could crush a melon?”
“That’s the one! Weren’t you following her around for a bit, Evemer?”
“Everyone was,” he mumbled.
“No,” Tadek said past rising laughter. “No, honeybee, they weren’t. Everyone thought she wasterrifying.”
“Yeah,” Melek added. “I think it was just you. Did you like her?”
Evemer took a breath and cast a truly exhausted, beseeching look upward to the gods. “I was sixteen,” he said, evidently giving up. “She was sixteen.”
“She was angry about everything. All the time. Didn’t she throw a chair through a window?”
“Yes.”
“So is that it?” Tadek said, amused. “Not boys or girls or oryasilar for you, but angry people who throw chairs through windows and threaten to punch Scholar Arikmas for the appalling crime of daring to teach basic rhetoric?”
“I thought you said you didn’t remember,” Melek said, wondering.
“My memory’s been jogged. Answer the question, Evemer.”
“I respected her,” Evemer said stiffly. “She was compelling. Powerful.”
Tadek snapped his fingers. “There it is.Power,he says.”
“Shewasterrifying,” Melek agreed. “That follows.”
“So you and Nihani Baltakan were sixteen together,” Tadek said, “and she threw a chair through a window one day and you said,Now there’s a tiger I’d like to offer an opportunity to rip my throat out?”
“Essentially,” Evemer sighed, resigned.
Melek squinted. “Was it you and her that I caught in the broom closet that one time, or someone else?”
“Yes,” Evemer said.
