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“Nothing important. A bedtime story, at most.”
“We went to the incense lounge,” Evemer said. “We changed our plans. We were captured.” And then, because he was tired or because it was the quiet hour of the night when tongues sometimes moved unbidden, he added: “His Highness saved my life.”
Tadek’s expression softened, cleared, became very fond. “Oh. Yes. He does that.”
“Again,” Evemer said. “Twice now.”
“What happened?”
Evemer mentally shook himself. No details, or else Tadek would start pulling it all out of him one thread at a time. “I don’t want to talk about tonight.”
“All right,” Tadek said easily.
They sat in silence while Evemer drank his coffee. They heard the night watch go past, distantly calling the second hour past midnight.
“You can admit it,” Tadek said in a much different voice. Quieter, more serious. “Who am I going to tell?”
“Admit what?”
“You keep looking at him. You’re always looking at him. Even when Her Majesty had you at her feet.” Tadek was studying the grain of the table’s wood, tracing the whorl of a knot with one fingertip as if it occupied his whole attention. “I see things.”
Twelve hours ago, Evemer absolutely would have denied it. But he’d already admitted it to Kadou, kissed it into his mouth, pressed it into his hands, whispered it into the dark.I can’t help it,he might say.Of all people, you should know that feeling. Look at him. How could anyone help it?But he wasn’t going to be friends with the likes of Tadek.
“Do you have a point to make?”
“No. Just . . . questions and theories. Except I’m not allowed those,” Tadek added with a half smile. “And the occasional unexpected, uncomfortable, unwelcome emotion here and there, but no need for either of us to heed those. Do you believe in the gods?”
An odd sort of non sequitur, but perhaps Tadek was going somewhere with it. “Yes,” Evemer said slowly.
“You believe there’s a woman in the sky who has a galaxy for a navel and who birthed the world and put a thousand blessings into it, and that she has a brother below the ground, who sends us trials, opportunities to test our strength of character? Literal beings?”
Evemer did not particularly care for this flavor of philosophizing. What did it matter? The world was for living in, and the gods were elsewhere, and that was that. “Do you believe that?”
“Oh, goodness, no. I hardly even believe in the abstract forms of them, honeybee. Never been one for temples or prayers to someone whose merciful intercession, if it were ever granted, would still be totally unverifiable and almost totally undetectable.” He paused, half smiled again. “But every now and then a trial comes to me, and it’s so perfectly crafted to make me stretch to the very limits of myself, and . . . You know, it’s just enough make me pause and wonder, from time to time. Maybe there is at least Usmim, and maybe he’s genuinely testing me. Or maybe he’s just fucking with me. Hard to say. The two can be so close, you know.”
“Have you come across one of those trials recently?”
“Oh, yes,” Tadek whispered, still tracing the knot in the wood of the table, still half smiling as if there were some amusing secret joke that he had with himself that he certainly wasn’t going to share with Evemer. “Very much yes. Like many trials, this one’s about who I am, and who I want to be, and acceptance, and kindness, and several other nonsense things about myself that I’ve been ignoring for far too long.”
Totally incomprehensible, of course, because Tadek could only speak in riddles or else be far, far too forthright for comfort. Evemer nodded anyway.
“I think,” Tadek continued thoughtfully, “that when we’ve sorted out everything and I’ve got a day off, I’ll go out and get myself reallyspectacularlylaid. I’m thinking at least three other people. Atleast.”
Evemer silently put down his coffee cup, put his elbows on the table, and put his face in his hands.
“Cures what ails you, you know,” Tadek went on. “You might try it, if—if a trial springs itself upon you. If you suddenly find yourself with . . . unwelcome, uncomfortable feelings and you want to get rid of them.”
“I’m in the middle of a trial as we speak, and I am very much uncomfortable,” Evemer growled, and Tadek laughed loud enough that Kadou jerked awake.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked blearily.
“Only enough time for Evemer to have a cup of coffee,” Tadek said airily. “Would you like one?”
Kadou shook his head and wobbled to his feet. “Got to go to the palace. Bring the satyota to Zeliha. Important.” He blinked at them owlishly. “I sent the messages?”
“Yes,” Evemer said, getting up too. “One to the harbor, one to the palace.”
“Oh. Good.” He steadied himself against the table. “Where’s the satyota?” The last word was broken on a yawn.
