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People who loved him . . . “Gülpasa and Balaban?”
“I took them for drinks,” Tadek said, finally dropping his eyes. “I asked—too many things. They were on edge by the end of it. Paranoid, worried. I thought it didn’t matter because it was just proof of their love that I could show to His Highness. But kahyalar are terrible gossips.” He gestured broadly among the three of them in the room. “Nothing like a midnight gossip, is there? Suddenly quite a lot of people were on edge, asking me what had happened or if His Highness needed anything, and I was—I was proud of them. Of us. I wasproudthat we were all so loyal, that we could all be together in loving him. I encouraged them, and when things went wrong, no one was thinking straight. So it was my fault. You may consider yourselves at liberty to lay the blame on me if His Highness starts claiming otherwise. I was careless.”
The really frustrating part was how rational it all sounded—Siranos had gotten physical; Kadou had been afraid. Naturally, he’d confided in someone.
What would Evemer have done in that situation? Would he have done anything different from what Tadek had done? If His Highness had told Evemer that someone had physically threatened him, had dared tohurthim, then . . . Well, whathadTadek done? Gathered a little group of people he trusted without question? Told them just enough to keep them watchful? That was their job, after all, just as Tadek said. They were supposed to be companions and servants, but before all else, their duty was to protect the lives of the Mahisti scions.
Evemer was not yet sure that his first assessment—either of Kadou or Tadek—had beenwrong,per se, but evidently he hadn’t been entirely right either. “Thank you. I’d better return to His Highness,” he said quietly, and left without waiting for another word.
Commander Eozena nodded to him again as he passed by and let himself back into Kadou’s bedroom. He gazed for a long time at the too-small lump under the blankets, where Kadou was still curled up tight with the sheets drawn up nearly to his forehead, and the spill of his black hair across the white pillow—he hadn’t tied it up, and it was going to be tangled again in the morning.
The prince was, frankly, a disaster. It was like there were two Kadous, or possibly three Kadous, and Evemer hadn’t yet found a way to reconcile them—one was cowardly, if that’s what you could call it. Like a spooked horse, as Tadek had said, so maybe “persistent nervousness” was a better descriptor, not that one term or another made much of a difference.
And the other . . .
The other had quite literally saved Evemer’s life less than an hour before. He could have run away, and he hadn’t. He could have left Evemer to do his duty and die in the service of protecting his charge. And he hadn’t.ThatKadou had cut down their enemies—theirenemies, theirsharedenemies—like they were so many stalks of wheat.
Evemer felt the lightning prickling through his veins again at the very memory. He put a hand off-center of his stomach, where he’d been punched, and the flare of a deep bruise there made it all real.
There’d been an instant, right as Kadou had killed the last one, when Evemer had felt . . .
He’d felt . . .
What had he felt?
It had been as if he’d been standing on a street corner, watching the crowds pass by, and sensed a presence at his shoulder, and turned—and there he was. There he was, familiar and comfortable. That’s what it felt like. Like his heart, or whatever part of him it was that yearned for someone worthy to serve, had recognized the person he was meant to follow. The person he was meant to die for. There he was.
Evemer stared harder at Kadou, still shivering a little in sleep.
There he was.
Well. All right, then.
Kadou felt like paint scraped thin over a canvas, and it wasn’t just the hangover. He’d barely eaten anything, despite coaxing from all the kahyalar as they went on and off of their attendance shifts.
They were all fussing over him, which was only to be expected from the others, but even Evemer was behaving strangely. He’d slept on the divan the night before, waking again as soon as Kadou stirred, sending Melek to bring Kadou tea, fussing quietly with the curtains on the bed so that Kadou was shielded from the light.
All morning, Evemer had been making himself available in a way that he hadn’t before, a livingpresencerather than a statue standing at the door and waiting for Kadou’s commands.
He’d all but loomed over Kadou during breakfast, watching him nibble halfheartedly at a sesame bun and listening intently when Eozena tactfully asked Kadou to explain his breakdown from the night before and whether it was likely to happen again. Kadou had deflected her questions as best he could, drawing her attention away from his health by telling her in hollow tones about what they’d found at the Shipbuilder’s Guild.
Eozena made notes, agreed to send someone to fetch the evidence they’d uncovered, and then deftly brought the conversation around once more to the original topic. It was nothing, Kadou explained to her, just a minor episode, aftereffects of the shock from the attack. Kadou had sent Eozena away after they’d eaten (though “eat” was a generous overstatement for what Kadou had mostly failed to do with the food in front of him), but Evemer would not be dissuaded.
Kadou wished he could say anything to calm what was, for Evemer, a wild rampage of restless fidgeting. It was only making him fretful too.
He tried to read through Armagan’s notes one more time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, but his head was aching and his nerves felt like they’d been scraped raw with the edge of a shard of broken glass. “Evemer,” he said in a small voice, and Evemer’s attention, already wholly focused on him, became as intense as a sunbeam through a lens.
“Highness,” said Evemer. He had bruises—the imprint of fingers on his neck, a faint black eye, a cut high on his cheekbone and another on the opposite side of his jaw. Probably more under his clothes—the thieves had gotten at least a couple good punches to his stomach. “Is there something troubling you?”
He wouldn’t have asked that yesterday. “Only what you’d expect.”
“If there is anything you require.” Others would have trailed off; Evemer said it as a statement with a definite end.
What had he meant to request, a moment ago? For Evemer to stop fixing so much of his attention on him? “Nothing,” Kadou answered. “Never mind.” He looked away, out the window, staring out over the garden. He couldn’t go out again—not yet. Possibly not ever. Even if he took Eozena and Evemer both—you never knew what might happen. It wasn’t safe.
“Highness.” Evemer cleared his throat then, and said, “Your Highness seemed shaken last night.”
Kadou choked out part of a laugh, more surprised than anything. Shaken—what tactful phrasing. “Yes, I suppose I was.”
