Arin was not a man prone to the melodramatic.
Vaida stirred a spoonful of sugar into her drink. “How magnificently your fortunes have changed, darling Sylvia. I could not believe the news. A chemist’s apprentice from Omal’s lower villages, chosen for the Alcalah? Handpicked by the Nizahl Heir, no less? I must confess, my kingdom spoke of little else for a time. My poor Champion was quite distraught at losing their attention.” She pushed a chalice studded with rubies closer to me. I dared a glance at Arin, who gave me a small nod. I picked up the red drink and took a sip.
Karkade. The dry tang cut through the excess syrup she’d poured into the hibiscus tea. The drink was Jasadi in origin, but I wasn’t alarmed. After Jasad’s fall, the vultures had picked at Jasadi culture, tearing out the choicest bits for their own nests. I had seen the evidence in Mahair, watching bakers flip aish baladi into their ovens as though they had done it for generations. Then again, Adel probably had.
“I am grateful,” I said when it became clear Vaida expected an answer.
“Ah, gratitude.” Vaida wrinkled her nose. “Excise it with your sharpest knife and throw it away. Gratitude lowers women’s necks for a chain far more than it raises them for a fight. You earned your place. Correct?”
“Correct.” I would say anything if it meant she would stop talking to me.
“Tell me, Sylvia, does your husband wait anxiously at home for your safe return?”
I blinked. “My what?”
I sensed Arin’s mounting unease. “Vaida—”
She talked over Arin, the first I met with the courage to do so. “A wife, then? Or a lover?” At my continued befuddlement, Vaida sat back. She looked genuinely upset. “It has been years since my last visit to Omal, but have all its citizens lost their appreciation for beauty?”
My veneer slipped a little, and I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t fret, Your Highness. My life is not lacking in fulfillment.”
Beside me, Arin was rigid and doing a fantastic job of concealing it. Vaida and I stared at each other. I thought of the people in the well, languishing in their filth. Suffering a slow, undignified death.
Disquieting, Arin had called her. I needed to break my stare, to flush and stumble with my words. To my consternation, a remnant of royal arrogance surfaced, howling to answer her challenge.
“Who fulfills it?” she asked, her voice husky. She slid her gaze meaningfully to Arin, and we both straightened as though struck.
“That’s enough,” Arin growled. Even his iron control bent against this woman. “Do not antagonize my Champion. We are guests in your home.”
Instantly, the atmosphere shifted. Vaida picked up her plate. “Sylvia knows I’m teasing! Anyway, I already love her. Curiosity is a tempting mistress. No one knows that better than you, Arin.”
Though Vaida’s attention remained on Arin for the rest of the hour, I hadn’t a doubt she was attuned to my every movement. Too nervous to reach for the sweets spread on the table, I stayed on my side of the couch until we left her receiving room. Arin led us past the palace courtyards to a thriving flower garden.
“One of Vaida’s favorite patches,” Arin said.
Guards in their various kingdoms’ colors milled around. Servants rushed past us in frenzied preparation. “Crouch by the poppies and pretend to admire them.” Arin lowered himself on a concrete bench.
I fought a prickle of embarrassment. “Which ones are the poppies?” Mahair didn’t waste fertile soil for plants that couldn’t be consumed or used for medicinal puposes. The only flowers I could recognize on sight were the ones Hanim warned could poison me.
Not a hint of scorn crossed Arin’s expression as he pointed at a patch of red flowers with thin, parchment-like petals curling up around a fuzzy black center.
With a small smile of thanks, I slid to the ground, folding my legs under me. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh?”
“I shouldn’t have glared at her.”
“You did well, Sylvia.”
I pretended to keel sideways into the poppies. His mouth twisted ruefully. “I do wish you hadn’t matched her gaze, since Vaida prides herself on provocation. She finds you interesting, but she won’t bait you if you stay near me. She cannot afford to stir bad blood between Lukub and Nizahl.”
The doll in the war room cabinet and its stained flag flashed through my mind. “The Battle of Zinish,” I recalled. “She must honor the peace accords.”