AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I thought it would be a burden,” he whispered. “You’re very busy, and with Eyne, and I didn’t want to cause trouble . . . And I was worried he was right, that I was too far out of line, that I might have done something that would hurt you. But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, not ever. You’re mysister.”
She sighed and stood again, walking to the balcony, her hands clasped behind her back. “I have told Siranos in the past that I do not share his opinion of you. He has spoken to me several times about his concerns regarding you and your position. I thought it enough to brush him off. Now I see that it wasnot. It was never going to be enough.” She paced along the length of the balcony and back. Kadou wasn’t sure if he should follow her or stay. He stayed. “He found your behavior objectionable and suspicious. He thought you were skulking—that was the word he used—and I said you were simply doing as duty commanded.
“The two of you have put me into an uncomfortable and unfortunate position. If I do not address these problems, they will grow—you and I both know they will. Our tutors madesurewe knew. You have power by your birth; he has some by Eyne’s, for better or worse, regardless of whether I grant him claim on her.” She sighed, her mouth thinning. “If I could go back nine months, I would tell myself not to get so . . . fixated on one person. I would tell myself to visit another lover, or two, to confuse the issue. It would have been better. Cleaner. But I blithely owned to the fact that Siranos was the body-father, and now he has a few threads of natural claim on Eyne, even if none of them are recognized in the eyes of the law.” She turned on her heel, the skirts of her short kaftan swinging wide around her knees, the leather soles of her embroidered slippers hushing against the floor. “So. Something must be done while the problem is small and manageable, before it gets even more gruesome than it already is.” She shot him a glance. “Before it gets any more like what happened to Siranos’s own family in his grandfather’s youth.”
Kadou dropped his eyes to the floor. A jealous younger brother had happened. It was no wonder Siranos hated him.
“I won’t stand to have childish squabbles in my court turning into a matter of blood and live steel. I won’t stand to see factions this potentially severe breaking out in front of my eyes. But how do I solve it without breaking my relationships with my brother or with the body-father of my heir?” She didn’t seem to be looking for an answer; she didn’t even seem to be speaking directly to him anymore. “The answer lies, I think, in showing restraint where neither you nor Siranos have done so. Perhaps it is understandable that such unpleasantness, to use poetic under-statement, might break out. Tensions have been running high. Things are new and different for all of us—I’ve only been sultan for, what, not even two years? And now Eyne. So perhaps the thing to do, before I take any drastic measures, is to deal with the root of the problem: The tension. The chaos.” She turned again and looked right at Kadou. “You need some time. You’ve never been comfortable in court, and I can’t imagine that all this reshuffling of positions and responsibilities has been easy on you. So! I would strongly, strongly suggest that you take a vacation. Maybe spend the summer at the hunting lodge in the mountains. Get away from it all, get some peace and quiet and fresh air. I’ll see that there are people to attend to any of your business in the city.”
“You’re sending me away,” Kadou said. He felt . . . blank. Blank, but for an ache where his heart was supposed to be. “You’re . . . exiling me?”
“Exile is a very strong word,” Zeliha said, raising one finger. “And that’s definitely not what I’m doing. But you’re responsible for three deaths, Kadou,” she said. “This decision is born of my own selfishness. If I were a better monarch, I would punish you more harshly.” She scowled at him.
“I didn’t mean for anyone to be hurt. I was only afraid.”
“If you’re so afraid of Siranos that you are jumping at shadows and not trusting me to keep you safe, then you need something else to occupy your attention.”
“I’m still responsible for the investigation—the Shipbuilder’s Guild—”
“Lieutenant Armagan has it well under control. And I’m sure we could manage it without your oversight. So why, pray tell, do you need to be in the palace?”
There was one benefit to chronic cowardice, and that was that he had an intimate relationship with fear. For as many times as his nerves had screamed in panic at him that there was some imminent disaster happening around him, it meant that now, in arealmoment of catastrophe, when he looked for an inward place of calm, he found it. The very fact that the terrible thingwasn’tjust in his own imagination was a comfort and a relief.
“It won’t look good,” he said. “If anyone finds out I’ve gone—they won’t know what you said in here.” His voice shook just a little, but not nearly as much as he expected it to. Thank goodness this was real. It was something he could put his hands on and fight, not just a pressing sense of aimless dread he was helpless against. “If it looks like you’ve sent your little brother into exile, and it sounds like it, and the effect is the same . . .”
Her glare sharpened. “That’snotwhat I’m doing.”
“How many kahyalar know about what happened today? All of them will, if they don’t already—youknowhow they gossip. One thousand three hundred and seven in the palace, and that’s not counting the cadets. Their families will know about this by dinnertime, their neighbors by lunch tomorrow, the city by breakfast the day after. It’s a very bad situation. I’m responsible. But if you send me away, it will be so much worse. It will look like—”
“Like we’re weak? Like my brother and the body-father of the heir were conspiring against each other right under my nose?”
“Zeliha,” he whispered. He wanted so badly for her to be hissisternow, instead of his sultan. “The first lesson.”
Three words to stop her in her tracks.
She let out a long slow breath.
“Do you remember how old we were?” he asked. “I don’t remember much of it.”
“I was nine. You were five,” she said through gritted teeth. “You were too young for that lesson, but you begged and begged to come and I couldn’t shake you off my sleeve. And you regretted it after, didn’t you? You cried for days.”
“The first lesson: Don’t use power impulsively or in anger,” Kadou said. “Like sticking your hand into a fire, but the people smaller and weaker than you are the ones who get burned.”
“You’re not so much smaller or weaker than I am,” she said flatly.
“The kahyalar are. Their families are.” Her eye twitched. “Send me away and you’ll have punished me and satisfied your anger, and I’ll be miserable. But you know as well as I do that if there are consequences,wewon’t be the ones suffering for them. What if—what if N’gaka thinks we’re weak and distracted, and decides to break our alliance and invade? In a war, thousands die before we do.”
She scoffed. “An unlikely scenario.”
“Yes, but not impossible. We have no idea how this will affect anything. We have no way of predicting it, and there are far too many pieces on the chessboard for us to estimate the cost. We are the descendants of merchants—are you willing to buy something without knowing the price of it?” Had he convinced her? Was this line of argument working at all? Would it have been better to cling to her sleeve and weep and beg, like he was five again? That had worked all through their childhood. It might well work again. “Please,” he said, because he couldn’t resist trying. “Please. You may give me whatever punishment you want. But keep it a family matter, as much as we can.”
“A family matter,” she said, incredulous. “Involving two dead kahyalar, a dead Oissika and several more injured ones—you know the Oissic ambassador is already furious with me over Azuta Melachrinos and her counterfeits.”
“All the more reason to not make this a national incident,” he said quickly. “Between the counterfeits and the Shipbuilder’s Guild, there are already too many fires to put out. Tell the ambassador it was a hunting accident, and that we mourn their dead countryman and—and we’ll send money to his family and honor him equally alongside our fallen kahyalar.”
“And Siranos?” she said. “What’s your great plan for him?”
Oh, by all means sendhimaway,his mind suggested with a manic kind of brightness. “Restrict him to the Gold Court.” The innermost area of the palace, residence of only the royal family and the highest-ranking courtiers when they visited from the country. “It’s—it’s house arrest, but it’ll look like an honor.”
