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“Mm,” said Tadek, raising his eyebrows and nodding. “Well, if you decide that there is something.”
“There’snothingto tell.”
“Of course.” Tadek offered him a tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and left, shutting the door softly behind him.
Kadou woke sore all over, either from the unfamiliar bed, from unknowingly wrenching something in the fight the night before, or most likely, from a combination of the two.
He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes. They felt dry and gritty, and he had to blink several times to get anything to come into focus.
Evemer was still sitting exactly where he’d been the night before, in the same rigid posture. Kadou peered up at him blearily. “Did you sleep?” he croaked.
“Yes, my lord.” He pulled his sleeve out of Kadou’s grip and immediately got to his feet.
Kadou felt a flush of embarrassment run through him. It was bad form to cling so.
Evemer must have wanted to get away, because he left the room immediately. Kadou heard him stomping down the stairs, voices below . . .
He was in Evemer’s room. That’s what they’d said last night, wasn’t it? There was a shelf of carefully organized papers, a plain wardrobe, a desk and a chair. On the desk, two books in pride of place. One was brand-new, clearly printed with the new presses that had come to the city five or ten years ago and caused something of an explosion of the written word. The other book was older. Kadou rolled out of bed and picked them up.
The new one was Beydamur’sTen Pillars of War,a classic and one of the foundational texts for those members of the cadet corps who wished to pursue any of the military-adjacent career tracks. The old book was . . . also Beydamur’sTen Pillars of War,but it had been copied out by hand. The early pages were imperfect, the handwriting uneven and a little sloppy. Childish. As the book went on, the work got neater. By the end, the margins were perfectly justified, the lines of text neatly spaced, and the letters regular and clear.
It was too early in the morning for this. Kadou put the books back and went downstairs.
The first floor was one large room, the ceilings generously high to keep the house cool in the summer. The raw wood beams running across were hung with dried herbs, pots and pans, and a leg or two of smoked meat. Tadek sat in a chair at the table near the hearth, shelling beans into a basket and carrying on a lively conversation with a woman bent over a pot on the fire. He smiled when he noticed Kadou. “Highness, good morning.”
The woman jerked upright and whirled around. She could only be Evemer’s mother—she lookedjustlike him, in the color of her eyes and the shape of her jaw, the soft texture of her hair, though hers was generously streaked with grey. Just like him, too, in the stone-wall expression that gave nothing away. “Your Highness,” she said stiffly. “Good morning. There will be food shortly.”
“We’ve sent Evemer to the market,” Tadek said, with a private smile to himself about something. “He and Madam thought you and Her Majesty would be too good for eggs and porridge. Want to help me with these beans?”
Kadou sat on the bench next to him and began picking loose the papery husks, plucking the beans out one by one. Madam Hoskadem watched for a moment with a scandalized expression he’d seen a hundred times on Evemer.
“Tea, Highness?” she said, struggling back to composure.
“Is there coffee?”
“There will be when Evemer gets back from the market,” Tadek said.
Madam Hoskadem carefully said, “We didn’t tell him to get that.”
“Madam,” Tadek said. “I’m certain enough of this that I will lay a wager on it, if you fancy it. He will not return to this house without coffee. Trust me.”
She clucked her tongue at him. “Such faith in my son! I’m sure he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Faith in something, anyway,” Tadek said mildly.
“Eggs and porridge would have been fine,” Kadou said. “You needn’t have gone to all the trouble.”
She drew herself up and set her chin stubbornly—he recognized that too, and immediately concluded that there wasn’t any point arguing with her on this one. At least, not if she dug in her heels the way Evemer did. “I won’t have the neighborhood saying Durdona Hoskadem provided poor hospitality to the sultan and the prince when they turned up on her doorstep.”
“I assure you we will only spread rumors of the excellence of your housekeeping,” Tadek said with the same air of deliberate charm that he’d so often used to beguile Kadou.
Madam Hoskadem went a bit pink in the cheeks and turned quickly back to the hearth.
“Where are the rest of the kahyalar?” Kadou asked.
“On patrol around the perimeter, like we arranged last night. A couple of them asleep on pallets in the basement. Siranos is down there too.”
Kadou blinked. “Siranos is here? Why?”
