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“I did.”
“It’s not nothing. You know it’s not nothing. Why did you say it was?”
“I do know,” Kadou said, even softer. “I only thought that I shouldn’t let you feel beholden to me. Or like you were obliged to behave as if you were grateful.”
“Yes,obligationis surely why people feel grateful to someone who’s saved their life.” Damn, there went his treacherous tongue again. “Apologies, Highness.”
“No, don’t. I am sorry again for saying it was nothing. It’s . . .” He sighed once more, and his hands slipped out of Evemer’s hair. “Perhaps this is a foolish way to think of it, but . . . It’s a bond. Like the oaths of fealty, but you didn’t get a choice. I just did it because I had to, and now there’s an extra thread connecting us, and maybe you didn’t want that.”
A rope,Evemer could have told him.An iron chain. “I am honored to have it,” he said. “And even if I weren’t, I’d prefer that to death.” Kadou guided his head back with a soapy hand on his forehead and rinsed his hair, pouring more delicately now. Evemer still squeezed his eyes shut.
“I,” said Kadou, “really was pleased, a minute ago. In case that wasn’t clear. You made a joke, and it pleased me, and I want you to know that. And I like it when you’re sarcastic, too. It . . . helps me worry less.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Just in caseyouwere worried.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Another sigh. “I’m making you uncomfortable.”
“My lord?” Where was Kadou getting an idea like that? Just as Evemer was bringing himself around to it, remembering more of the stories of the lords of ancient times who would wash their servants’ feet to show their respect and humility, and how they were remembered in songs asgood men,just like the commander had said of Kadou . . .
“You’re gripping the edge of the bench.”
Evemer looked down at his hands, surprised. He hadn’t even noticed. He flexed his hands to relax them, placing them flat on his knees. “I wasn’t uncomfortable.”
Kadou’s voice was suddenly very close to his ear. “If you lie to me, Iwon’tbe pleased,” he said. All the hairs on the left side of Evemer’s body stood on end. “You said you wouldn’t lie to your liege.”
“I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“Evemer.”
“I swear it.” It was nice, in fact—the steady motion of Kadou’s hands through his hair and the gentle scrape of his nails over Evemer’s scalp. It was going to put him to sleep if it went on any longer, and it was making his shoulders feelveryodd, sort of loose as if he’d just woken up. “I wouldn’t lie to you, my lord.”
“Hmm,” said Kadou.
Evemer noticed his lungs were burning and took a breath. He unclenched his hands again and laid them very carefully, very flat, on his knees once more. He kept that door in his mind shut tight—he didn’t even want to glance at the light shining through the cracks, let alone the immensesomethingthat burned behind it. He counted tiles on the fountain and, when he had collected himself again, cleared his throat. “Except if I were trying to get you to kidnap yourself,” he said, because he had to say something and—and Kadou said he’d been pleased with the joke, hadn’t he. “I’d probably lie to you then.”
Kadou’s hands paused for only a fraction of a second. “Oh? And what lie would you tell me?”
“That I—” A torrent of images tumbled through Evemer’s thoughts too quickly to even identify. “That I knew of a beautiful house in the mountains and that I’d take you to it, because there are no rude people named Siranos there.” Kadou laughed aloud, and Evemer filled with warmth all the way to his throat.
“Already an improvement over the palace, then. Is there a bathhouse even finer than this one?”
“Fed by a natural hot spring.”
“Lovely,” said Kadou, and Evemer felt like his very soul was pulling toward the amusement and life in Kadou’s voice like a stubborn horse pulling against the reins. He wanted to tell Kadou all about the beautiful house, build it room by room in words like he and his friends had built their imaginary liege’s great house as children, the way the wizards in the stories had raised the plateau and built this very palace with their poetry, as exact as any architect. Evemer wanted to tell him about the tall silent pines, and the morning mist veiling the surface of the lake in springtime, the grand main hall and its enormous fireplace, big enough to roast an entire ox, a stable of a thousand white horses whose hooves were shod with silver . . . Rooms and rooms and rooms of every kind for every purpose. There would be a hundred bedrooms alone with huge feather beds and wide fireplaces. It would be a house of endless winding hallways where no one else could ever find Kadou if he wished not to be found.
But it felt so foolish that Evemer could not command his tongue to move, even under the auspices of a jest.
“You grew up in the mountains, didn’t you?” Kadou said.
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound of it, besides your name.”
“My body-father died when I was small. My mother moved us to the city after that.”
