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No, Evemer didn’t actually want to do that.Shakinghim, though, yes, very much. He’d grab this stupid little prince by his shoulders and shake him until his bones rattled and then maybe, just maybe, he’d come to his senses and stop being so much . . .like this.
His Highness charged forward to the shrine so suddenly that Evemer mentally cursed and had to scramble to keep up, and then stopped so abruptly on the threshold that Evemer nearly crashed into his back.
It took Evemer’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom, and then he saw the person sitting there on the floor in front of Usmim’s altar. Whoever it was hadn’t lit any candles as they would have if they were properly praying, and something about it scraped across Evemer’s instincts and set him on edge. He had the sudden impulse to step in front of Kadou, put his body between the prince and . . . whoever that was.
“Sorry,” His Highness said. “I didn’t know there was anyone in here.”
The person turned, and in a wintry voice said, “Your Highness.”
Evemer didn’t notice how much restless, fidgeting energy Kadou had actually been carrying until it vanished. “Oh,” His Highness said. “Siranos.”
It took Evemer a moment to place the name—the princess’s body-father? What washedoing in the Gold Court? He didn’t belong here. The urge to put himself between them grew keener, but the doorway was too narrow to sidle around Kadou.
Siranos turned back to the altar. “Come in or don’t. I don’t care.”
His Highness did five more verses of that stop-start hesitation before he slunk forward, keeping close to the wall as if . . . as if he were afraid of Siranos. Something reallywaswrong, then.
Kadou took a candle from the filigree box by the wall. When he’d lit it and stuck it into a sconce—the one furthest away from Siranos—he retreated to sit an awkward distance away from the altar. It took him a moment, evidently, to center himself: He flexed his hands open and closed for a minute before he moved into the first position of prayer.
Evemer kept an eye on Siranos and a hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip. He had only ever seen the man at a distance before, and would not have been able to put the name and face together before this. He was of a height with Her Majesty, lean and well-formed, with sharp narrow features, excellent cheekbones, and an immaculately trimmed beard. Oddly, he wore his hair very short, like a commoner, though it was styled with an expensive fragrant oil that Evemer could smell faintly even from ten feet away. The short hair showed that he didn’t have his ears pierced—also like a commoner, though he wore a large gold ring with a yellow stone on his right hand. To Evemer’s eye, the whole effect was of incompletion and inelegance: a man rich enough to afford fine clothing and jewels, but either too miserly to employ a competent body-servant who might advise him on how to better present himself, or else too obstinate to listen to that advice.
Evemer didn’t like this. Why didn’t he like this? Less than ten words from Siranos and he was wound tighter than the warp on his mother’s loom.
His Highness had progressed to the third position of prayer when Siranos spoke again: “I’m told that it is thanks to you that I have been granted residence here,” he said. His voice echoed oddly against the bare stone floors and walls, the high ceiling. Evemer was too appalled to do anything but stare at him. Who did he think he was tointerruptsomeone at prayer? That was only permissible for temple dedicates—even Tadek wouldn’t be so rude.
“It was nothing,” His Highness said. He kept his eyes squeezed closed, his hands raised in orans.
“So you don’t expect me to show gratitude. Excellent.”
A long silence. Evemer shifted closer to Kadou until he was nearly touching him—Kadou, sitting tailor-style, could have leaned back against Evemer’s knees.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Siranos asked suddenly. “That night you were in Her Majesty’s offices, rummaging through her things?” Evemer calmly filed this into his inventory of everything objectionable about His Highness, then paused, took it out again, and mentally turned it over once or twice.With a grain of salt,said his mother’s voice in his head.Possibly a handful.Evemer had accompanied His Highness and Commander Eozena to those very offices before he’d been sent off to run messages.
“I wasn’t harming anything,” His Highness said. “I was supposed to be there.” True, as far as Evemer knew. The commander, whose years of service and heroism had proven her beyond reproach, had asked him to accompany her.
“It was about the matter at the Shipbuilder’s Guild, wasn’t it?”
His Highness lowered his hands. “How did you . . . ?”
“You told me yourself,” Siranos said.
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
Exasperatingly, His Highness didn’t seem to care about the interruptions to his prayer. Evemer wished with some annoyance that Siranos would at least address His Highness properly—whether or not the prince was careless-flighty-negligent, he was still theprince,and Siranos just some rich, good-looking nobody from Oissos. But then, the Oissika didn’t understand about princes in the first place—they didn’t have them. So Siranos could not be expected to behave with proper comportment.
“I don’t remember what I said,” His Highness murmured.
“You said,” Siranos replied, a little too smoothly, “that there was something the matter at the Shipbuilder’s Guild and that you had to write orders to someone about it. An investigation, I suppose.”
His Highness shifted and said nothing, just . . . looked at Siranos. His head was turned just enough that Evemer, standing behind and above him, could see how knotted his brow was.
“How is the investigation going?” Siranos asked. “Well, I hope?”
“I’m sorry, but it—it wouldn’t be right for me to—discuss state matters like that.”
“What harm is there? I live in the Gold Court now, don’t I? Now and for the foreseeable future, evidently. And I am the law-father of your niece.”
