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“You’re not coming?”
“Yasemin is attending you, my lord. I’m going to fix your rooms.”
A formal dinner might take three or four hours—it was just barely sunset when Kadou left. Evemer went to fix the atrocious job that someone had done in organizing Kadou’s clothes, and presently Tadek returned with a few cadets carrying armfuls of bundled cloth. Evemer eyed the bundles suspiciously. “Did you steal those?”
“Yes,” Tadek said. “Obviously. You said go find curtains. I found curtains. No one will even notice they’re gone, and we’ll replace them as soon as His Highness commissions new ones. What do you want from me?”
Evemer gave him an incredulous look and flicked his eyes to the cadets, who shuffled nervously. Gods, they looked young. Had he ever been that young? Some of them hadpimples.
Tadek waved a hand. “They won’t tell anybody, it’s fine. Do you want the curtains or not?”
They hung them across all the windows of Kadou’s bedroom while Tadek sat in a chair in the middle of the room with his crutches across his knees, making annoying comments about the draping and insisting almost everything was crooked, until Evemer was just about ready to throw him off the balcony. He kicked out the cadets as soon as they were done and attempted to kick out Tadek too, but Tadek pled his aching injured leg, and the difficulty of the stairs, and the long, long walk across the Gold Court, and Evemer gritted his teeth again and finished organizing the wardrobes and jewelry cases while Tadek . . . continued to make annoying comments about it.
It was almost exactly four hours from when Evemer had sent Kadou off to dinner that they heard the front door open, followed by weary steps up the stairs. Kadou came in, looking dead on his feet, and saw the curtains immediately. “Oh,thank you,” he said, and Evemer cleared his throat and pretended to be adjusting things at the very back of the wardrobe so Tadek wouldn’t see his blush.
“How was dinner?” Tadek asked.
“Long,” Kadou said, going to the windows to run his hands over the fabric. “Whose idea was this?”
“Evemer’s,” Tadek said, at the same moment Evemer said, “We both did it.”
Kadou went all around the room, flicking the curtains closed—they were green silk, backed with heavy linen to keep out the light and trimmed along the hems with a wide band of butter-gold satin. He stood back from them and sighed. “Oh, that’s so much better. I felt like I was on stage for the whole city to see.” He turned away and removed his earrings, but hesitated at the newly organized jewel boxes. “Where do these go now?” Evemer came forward to take them. “And have we heard any news from the city gates?” He piled the rest of his jewels into Evemer’s palms one by one—the rings, the bracelets, the labradorite pendant that looked like a piece of the aurora borealis, the jeweled combs and pearl-ended pins from his hair—and watched as Evemer laid them in their new places, all neat and tidy.
“Not yet,” Tadek said. “All I’ve heard is that the flying squad is waiting around in the Copper Court with their horses saddled and their weapons on.” He sighed and stretched his leg, wincing. “There are kahya’s quarters here, aren’t there?”
“Several,” Kadou said. “You want one?”
“If it’s not too bold a request. I shouldn’t have sat down for so long, it’s gone all stiff,” he said, tapping his fingers on his knee. “Honeybee, give us a hand out of this chair, eh?”
“Don’t call me that if you want help down the stairs.”
“Evemer,” Tadek said, all wide-eyed and guileless. “Help me down the stairs.”
If it would get rid of him, Evemer would have carried him halfway across the Gold Court. By the time he came back up, Kadou had already taken down his own hair and laid his kaftan over the back of the chair, so Evemer had two more reasons to resent Tadek.
“You should go to bed too,” Kadou said. “You look like you’re ready to fall over.”
“So do you.”
“It won’t get any better, this next week. It’ll be like this every day. Go on, get some sleep.” Evemer couldn’t have even said why he hesitated. Kadou smiled gently. “Everyone’s home. Everyone’s safe. Eozena’s doing well. I went to look in on her after dinner—Zeliha’s got the best doctors for her, and they said her fever’s broken, and they’ve given her milk of the poppy for the pain. Melek’s in the infirmary tonight, but çe isn’t in any danger either. Tadek’s here, Eyne’s here, you and I are here. You can sleep.”
Evemer nodded. The glow in his chest from earlier had turned into an ache. “As my lord commands.”
“I’m not commanding,” Kadou sighed. “But you haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep in your own bed in days.” He half smiled at Evemer and nodded toward the door to the stairs, the corridor below that led to the kahya’s chambers. “A room all to yourself. That doesn’t sound appealing?”
The ache sharpened. “No. It doesn’t.”
“No?”
“Don’t send me away from you,” Evemer whispered.
Kadou’s expression softened. “At least go wash and change. You’ll feel better, and you don’t want to sleep in your uniform. Go, and come back quickly, and we’ll . . . figure something out.”
Why was Evemer’s heart pounding? Nothing was going to happen when he came back. Nothingcouldhappen. He walked slowly downstairs and outside to collect a bucket of water from the font in the little courtyard outside the front door.
With every step further, he felt pulled to go back to Kadou’s new chambers—why wait? Why waste even an instant apart from him?
He knew he ought to be sensible. He ought to clean his teeth and at least splash off the dust and sweat and take a moment to collect and recenter himself.
