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“I’m starting to get it.” He tugged again with the finger hooked on Evemer’s buttons. “Come here?” There was a knock on the door. Kadou snatched his hand away at the same moment Evemer jerked back and they both turned to the table as if the food were the most fascinating thing in the room. “Come in!”
Tadek stuck his head in. “It’s been three minutes. More than three minutes. The parade route isn’t going to fix itself, you know.”
“Of course, apologies,” Kadou said, waving him in. “You should eat before the food gets cold, too.”
Tadek swung himself in on his crutches, the rolled-up map stuck through the side of his sash and the new kaftan slung over his shoulder. “I sent Melek out with the mail,” he said, tossing the map onto the table. “Help you change?”
Kadou wiped a smear of jam off the corner of his mouth and sucked it off his thumb, which made Evemer want to die, and rolled up to his feet, already undoing his buttons. Tadek leaned his crutches on the back of a nearby armchair and, standing on one leg, helped Kadou wriggle his top layer off his shoulders and down his arms, replacing it with the new one, a very summery bluegreen, the color of the water just outside the city harbor, made of linen nearly as light and sheer as the underlayer. He did up his own buttons and sat back down on his cushion at the table as Tadek shook out the old kaftan and began loosely folding it. “Oh,” he said, pausing. “You’ve left something in your pockets.”
Evemer had never seen Kadou’s face go so white. He whirled around and dove for Tadek, who wobbled, nearly fell, and hopped back a step. “Drop it.”
Tadek froze, dropping both the kaftan, which fell to the floor with a soft noise, and whatever had been in the pockets, which fell with a metallic clink and two soft thumps on the carpet.
“What the hell did I just bumble into?” Tadek said.
Evemer looked back, but he had a feeling already—ah. Yes. The hinge pins. He forced himself to look back at the food like it was nothing and hoped his face wasn’t going as red as Kadou’s had gone pale.
Kadou snatched them off the floor and stuffed them into the pocket of his new kaftan. “Sorry,” he said, his voice forced to lightness. “Didn’t mean to snap. Just startled.”
“I’m sure. Hey, why isn’t Evemer trying to kill me right now?”
Evemer shrugged. “Why would I be trying to kill you?”
“Because Kadou nearly bit my hands off to get those back, and you’re sitting there pretending to be unaffected instead of jumping to draw steel on me at the first sudden movement, or glare me into submission, or haul me off for a little bit of recreational drowning.” Tadek came around the table and sat across from them, grinning. “Have I discovered another clue?”
“It’s not a clue to anything,” Kadou said firmly. “Eat your breakfast.”
“Do we need to have another conversation about lying?” Tadek asked mildly. He took a piece of simit from the platter and tore a morsel off it, dipping it in salted olive oil.
“I’m not lying, and they’re not a clue. They’re—a souvenir. That’s all.”
“Of what? If you say it’s none of my business, then I’llknowthey’re important, and I’m going to file them underEvemer: Secretly a Prince?”
“Strange to assume that it’s at all connected,” Evemer said.
“Is it? Because recently that seems to be the only issue that you two get so defensive and cagey about when I accidentally meander face-first into it. So if it’s not that, then what’s to stop you from telling me what those things are a souvenir of?” Tadek smiled like a fox.
“They’re from the place we were held captive, if you must know,” Kadou said, annoyed. “That time Evemer nearlydied.”
“Excellent use of passive-aggression, I definitely feel guilty for even asking,” Tadek said encouragingly. “What are they?”
“Hinge pins,” Evemer said. “From a door.”
“Right. And that’s the sort of thing you want to be reminded of?” he asked Kadou curiously. “You want a souvenir of what must have been a terrifying and traumatic moment?”
Evemer’s patience, frayed to its breaking point, finally snapped. “Just tell him,” he said. “He’ll have it out of us sooner or later.”
Tadek beamed at him. “Let’s be best friends for always, Evemer.”
“I’m not telling him anything!” Kadou hissed back.
Evemer turned fully to face him. “Do you think it might help him coordinate your schedule if he knew slightly more about why you are making certain requests?” Kadou hesitated. “He’s already eighty percent of the way to figuring it out. He already guessed my . . . my part of it.”
“Which part?” Kadou asked suspiciously.
“The part where I look at you too much.”
Tadek lit up. “Oh, yes, that part. I’ve had that part for ages now. Wait—” He looked back and forth between them, his expression slipping into something a little less giddy. “DoesKadouknow about that part?”
