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Tadek looked at him. “There was a whole argument about it, did you miss that?”
“I must have. It was hard to focus.”
“He was with Zeliha when we got to her chambers, and then he just sort of . . . followed along with everyone, didn’t make a fuss. No one really paid attention him anyway—you gave everyone a scare,” Tadek said easily, though he didn’t meet Kadou’s eyes. “Falling about half-dead like that. Evemer nearly bit Melek’s head off when çe first tried to help move you, and a second time when they put you to bed here and Melek tried to suggest that he go off duty.” Kadou didn’t remember those either. “How are you feeling?”
“Headache,” Kadou said. “Dry mouth. No worse than a bad hangover, really.”
“Durdona,” Tadek said, getting up from the table. “Do you have willowbark? Ah, thank you, my pearl.”
“No respect at all,” she muttered at him as he pulled down a jar from a shelf in the pantry. “Keep your flirting to yourself, young fox.”
“In the face of such radiance? How could I possibly?” Tadek moved around the kitchen like he owned it, pulling down a cup from the shelf above the worktable and pouring water from a kettle keeping warm on the hearth. “Can I make you a cup of anything, radiant one?”
“I could be your mother,” she growled at him, and pointed at the pantry again. “Tea.”
Kadou was just finishing his first cup of willowbark tea when Evemer returned with a large woven-wood basket of things on a strap over his shoulder. “What took so long?” Madam Hoskadem cried, dragging the basket off of his back.
“It’s market day, Mama,” Evemer said, unruffled. “There were crowds.”
“And I suppose you strolled all the way back! His Highness has been waiting here ages for his breakfast!”
Evemer shot Kadou a guilty look. “It’s uphill on the way back, Mama,” he muttered, helping her to pull things out of the basket and arranging most of them on the table within Kadou’s reach. Two big loaves of bread, a dozen simit, olives, several blocks of cheese, butter, a jug of milk, smoked summer sausages, a great variety of fruits, a cake of sugar, and a pound-bag of coffee, which Evemer took immediately to the hearth. Seeing this last item, Tadek made a very strange face as if he were both very angry and holding back hysterical laughter, then stared firmly at the wall. Kadou felt oddly like he’d missed some important bit of context.
Evemer presently brought Kadou a cup of coffee, asked whether he thought Her Majesty would be wanting any, offered some to his mother who was furiously busy at the hearth and the work-table, and finally made the same offer to Tadek.
Priorities, Kadou supposed, and gulped the coffee even though it was nearly scalding. It was perfect—thick and rich and sweet. “Are we safe here?” he asked Evemer.
“Yes,” Evemer replied firmly.
One of Zeliha’s kahyalar came downstairs—Pinar, Kadou thought her name was. She had skin nearly as dark as Commander Eozena’s, and a head of tight curls she kept cropped close to her scalp. Her previous day’s makeup remained as smudges around her eyes, and she looked just as tired as the rest of them did. “Her Majesty is awake, and wonders whether there might be breakfast.”
“By all means,” Madam Hoskadem said. She shoved a tray into Evemer’s arms and assembled pieces of everything she’d been working on, plus more from the pantry, until it was laden.
“And do you have any cloth?” Pinar asked. “The princess needs a change.”
“Oh—just linen,” Madam Hoskadem said. “Will that do? Surely even princesses don’t have diapers out of silk, do they?”
That got a bark of laughter out of Tadek, who covered his mouth to muffle the rest of his giggles, and a tired but warm smile from Pinar. “Linen will be just fine, thank you.”
Madam Hoskadem finished assembling the breakfast tray, muttering all the while to Evemer that he must mind his manners when he spoke to the sultan, and don’t think she hadn’t noticed that Evemer hadn’t said a word to His Highness when he’d come in the door, not a word, let alone a bow! Had she raised a son to be so disrespectful? All of this was under her breath, and Evemer replied, “Yes, Mama,” to everything she said until finally she tsked sharply at him and told him off for sass. “Mama,” he replied solemnly, and Kadou had to bite back a smile.
She chivvied Evemer to follow Pinar up the stairs with the food and ducked into her workshop to look for cloths. Tadek turned to Kadou, his expression sober but his eyes dancing with mirth. “I seem to be having a morning of epiphanies.”
“You mean,aha, that’s why Evemer is like that?”
“That’s the ongoing theme, yes,” Tadek said, and got up to refill Kadou’s coffee.
Amessage from the commander arrived before lunch—she’d addressed it to Evemer and his mother, presumably so that whoever was delivering it wouldn’t wonder why Kadou and Zeliha Mahisti were hiding in a house in the artisans’ quarter.
No one could identify the assailants’ bodies. They’d been wearing kahyalar uniforms, and nobody could say where they’d gotten those from either. There had been another attack elsewhere in the palace—eight people dead, and one prisoner missing: Azuta Melachrinos. Eozena begged Zeliha to stay put.
Evemer took the note into his mother’s workshop, where she was at her loom with Zeliha standing behind her and holding Eyne. Mama had been terribly nervous of her and Kadou at first, but Her Majesty was so personable and kind, had inquired so sincerely about her work, and had seemed genuinely delighted when Mama had confessed that she belonged to the partnership of weavers who had been commissioned to make the fabric for Zeliha’s own coronation outfit. She herself had woven enough for two panels of one of its layers: Mahisti-blue silk for the warp, a weft of thin ribbons of silver-backed paper, worked in an intricate brocade that had taken her months. Evemer had come home once a week from his duties with the fringe-guard and watched the loom’s cloth beam wind steadily thicker with the glimmering, delicate fabric.
Evemer had heard from others that Her Majesty was a diplomatic force to be both admired and feared, and he was not at all surprised when his mother caved to it and shyly offered to show her the workshop.
“Majesty,” he said, offering her the letter. “It was addressed to me, so I’ve already read it. Apologies.”
Zeliha shifted Eyne to her shoulder, took the letter, and skimmed it quickly. “Damn,” she breathed. “Damn. All right.” She handed the letter back to him. “Go tell Kadou. Madam Hoskadem, it seems like we’ll be inflicting ourselves upon you for a little while longer yet.”
