This man, she decided, would be mourned by a great many sycophants, his pockets deeper, no doubt, than Dariush himself. The stranger was tall, forbidding. He’d drawn the hood over his head, casting most of his face in shadow, but he was far from the anonymous creature he hoped to be. In the wind, Alizeh glimpsed the lining of his cloak: the purest ink silk, aged in wine, cured with frost. Years, it took, to create such a textile. Thousands of hours of labor. The young man likely had no idea what he wore, just as he seemed to have no idea that she could tell, even from here, that the clasp at his throat was pure gold, that the cost of his simple, unadorned boots would feed hundreds of families in the city. He was a fool to think he might disappear here, that he might have the advantage of her, that he might—
Alizeh went deathly still.
Understanding awoke slowly in her mind, and with it a thick, disorienting unease.
How long had he been standing there?
There once was a man
who bore a snake on each shoulder
In truth, Alizeh might not have noticed him at all were he not looking directly at her, pinning her in the air with his eyes. It hit her then—she gasped—hit her with the force of a thunderclap: she saw him now only because he allowed it.
Who was the fool, then?
She.
Panic set fire to her chest. Alizeh tore herself from the ground and fairly disappeared, tearing off through the streets with the preternatural swiftness she usually saved for her worst altercations.
Alizeh did not know what darkness this strange, Clay face would bring. She only knew she’d never be able to outrun it.
Still, she had to try.
Four
THE MOON SAT SO LARGE in the sky Kamran thought he might lift a finger to its skin, draw circles around its wounds. He stared at its veins and starbursts, white pockmarks like spider sacs. He studied it all as his mind worked, his eyes narrowing in the aftermath of an impossible illusion.
She’d fairly disappeared.
He’d not meant to stare, but how, also, was he meant to look away? He’d seen danger in the assailant’s movements even before the man drew his knife; worse, no one paid the altercation any attention. The girl could’ve been maimed or abducted or murdered in the worst ways—and even though Kamran had been sworn to anonymity in daylight, his every instinct compelled him to issue a warning, to step in before it was too late—
He needn’t have worried.
Still, there was much that troubled him, not the least of which was that there’d seemed something amiss about the girl. She’d worn a snoda—a sheath of semi-transparent silk—around her eyes and nose, which did not obscure, exactly, but blur her features. The snoda itself was innocuous enough; it was required of all who worked in service. She was ostensibly a maid.
But servants were not required to wear the snoda outside of work, and it was unusual that the girl had worn hers at this early hour, when the royals were still abed.
It seemed far more likely that she was not a maid at all.
Spies had been infiltrating the empire of Ardunia for years, but these numbers had been bloating dangerously in more recent months, feeding an unnerving concern that lately crowned Kamran’s thoughts, and which he could not now shake.
He exhaled his frustration, shaping a cloud in the cold.
More in every moment, Kamran grew convinced the girl had stolen the servants’ uniform, for her covert attempt had not only been poorly executed, but easily betrayed by an ignorance of the many rules and mannerisms that defined the lives of the lower classes. Her gait alone would’ve been warning enough; she’d walked too well for a servant, carrying herself with a kind of regal bearing established only in infancy.
No, Kamran felt certain now that the girl had been hiding something. It would not be the first time someone had used the snoda to mask themselves in public.
Kamran glanced at the clock in the square; he’d come into town this morning to speak with the Diviners, who’d sent a mysterious note requesting an audience with the young man despite his never having announced his return home. Today’s meeting, it seemed, would have to wait; for much to his dismay, Kamran’s always-reliable instincts would not quiet.
How, with only one free hand, had a maid so coolly disarmed a man holding a knife to her throat? When would a maid have had the time or coin to spare learning self-defense? And what on earth had she said to the man to leave him weeping in the snow?
The suspect in question was only now stumbling to his feet. His shock of red curls screamed he was from Fesht, a region at least one month south of Setar, the capital city; not only was the assailant far from home, but he appeared to be in severe pain, one arm hanging lower than the other. Kamran watched as the redhead held his bad limb—dislocated, it seemed—with the good, carefully steadying himself. Tears had tracked clean paths down his otherwise dirty cheeks, and for the first time, Kamran got a good look at the criminal. Had he more practice with outward displays of emotion, Kamran’s features might’ve registered surprise.