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Kadou felt rather faint. He was very glad to already be sitting. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that one of his kahyalar—oh, Melek—had set a cup of tea on the table next to him. He took it and sipped, scalding the tip of his tongue, which didn’t help his nerves. Zeliha shook the proffered pages at him insistently, and he finally reached out to take them.
They were written in an unfamiliar, hesitant hand—there were several common misspellings and the letters were rather wobbly, as if shaped by someone who wasn’t comfortably literate. Not a kahya, then? They were all given schooling from the moment they joined the cadet corps, beginning with the trivium—arithmetic, grammar, and rhetoric. Some of them, over the course of their careers, received more intense and specialized schooling than even Kadou and Zeliha had.
The papers described scenes that the writer had witnessed, or gossip that they had overheard.Prince Kadou met with ministers of the government and paid them bribes in the amount of 3500 altinlar . . . Prince Kadou made contact with several prominent merchants and secured funding . . . Prince Kadou wrote letters to the monarchs of Aswijan, Inacha, Kafia, and Persep, and to the governing bodies of Pezia and N’gaka . . . Prince Kadou keeps records of Her Majesty’s personal retinue and their schedules, and has plans to replace them with his own people . . .
He shoved the papers away from him and sipped his tea again. “Right,” he said, taking several shaky breaths. “And you don’t believe any of this.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Siranos said. “It’s a deplorable affront to the honor of the royal family.” Kadou spared him a single glance—why washe,of all people, trying to defend him? The last month, he hadn’t spoken again of their exchange in the royal shrine, and hadn’t acted as if he resented Kadou for it. He’d only been . . . cool but polite. Never quite warm, but impeccably courteous. Kadou hadn’t yet figured out what to make of it.
“You’re my brother,” said Zeliha easily. “I know you. You wouldn’t do this.”
“You weren’t so generous after the hunt,” he said, and hated himself for how his voice cracked.
“Well, as far as I can see, nobody has died yet because of these,” she said, tapping the papers. “And . . . I was angry, before. And tired. I was perhaps harsher than I meant to be. Having a baby takes a lot out of you,” she added, a little defensive.
“It does,” Siranos murmured. “It is a demanding situation for everyone.”
“I’ll say sorry if you want me to,” Zeliha added, leaning on the edge of the table and giving Kadou a frank look. “Should I?”
Kadou felt sick all over, and didn’t know what to say. “No.”
“Let’s set this matter aside for now,” Eozena said firmly, sweeping the papers up and quite literally pushing them to the other end of the table. “You said you’d found something?”
Kadou paused briefly and glanced at Siranos.
“Ah,” Siranos said. “I’ll just go check on Eyne.”
Very strange. Kadou shoved it all aside as Siranos left the room and shut the heavy oak door that led to Zeliha’s more private quarters. “There’s an incense lounge,” Kadou said tonelessly. He’d had one shock too many today, and he was feeling the edges of that drifting, unmoored sensation that sometimes came on the heels of his panic attacks. He welcomed it, yearned toward it. “The Jasmine Tree. There are people there involved with the counterfeits. They talked about their friend, apparently the person in charge of the scheme. They mentioned a contact in the palace I can only assume was Lieutenant Armagan.” He pushed himself up from the chair. “That’s all. I’m going to bed.”
He didn’t wait to be dismissed from Her Majesty’s presence. He swept out into the corridor, and then out the front door of the royal house. He crossed the wide span of gardens to the other residence, where his own and several other royal apartments were located—empty ever since the royal family had been reduced so cataclysmically in the same shipwreck that had taken his parents.
At his rooms, Melek posted çemself on watch outside the door, and Evemer followed him in. Kadou flung himself onto the divan by the window, and Evemer went around the room to light the lamps. He’d only done half when there was a knock at the door, and Melek poked çir head in. “It’s Eozena,” çe said.
“Fine,” Kadou said.
Melek let her in. “Evening, Highness,” she said, then paused and studied him. “You all right?”
“Long day.”
She hummed in response and dragged a chair over to his divan. She sat, crossed her legs, laced her fingers over her knee, and watched him. “Good work tonight,” she said. “I’m very proud of you.”
“Thanks,” he said dully.
“I wanted to have another talk with you now that you’ve made progress and found a lead. You seemed quite understandably upset earlier—Zeliha sprang that news on you rather clumsily—so I thought you might prefer it if we talked in private. It’s up to you whether you’d like Evemer to stick around for moral support.”
Yescame the sudden fierce thought, from . . . somewhere. Kadou fidgeted. “I don’t have secrets from him.” That was the entirely wrong thing to say, good gods. His face went hot.
Eozena tilted her head and looked for a moment like she was about to say something—and maybe she would have, if they’d been alone. Maybe she would have said,That seems like a sudden change,orI see all that skulking around in the bad parts of town together has really brought you two closer as friends,and then he might have to explain to her what had happened, and . . . Oh, dear. But all she said was, “Of course, Your Highness, as you wish.”
Kadou looked at Evemer and gestured at the other seat; he took it silently.
“Right,” said Eozena. “I’m about to speak plainly. Fair warning to both of you, but particularly to Evemer, so that he can brace himself for it. I’m sure we have smelling salts around here if it gets to be too much for you,” she added dryly.
“Commander,” Evemer said.
“You’ve accomplished somethingverygood today. I hope you have the perspective to know just how much of an accomplishment this is. It’s a huge piece of progress, and just what we needed. So, with that in mind, I was wondering if you might now be willing to step aside and let our people handle the rest.”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t make decisions like this.
