“Ohh,” she breathed. She began to flip through the pages, frantically—even as she felt how soft they were, and fragile, under her touch. Words, so many words, and drawings—of stones that looked like her own, in various stages of brightness—and numbered columns that could be instructions—
“I suppose I should have expected this,” said the Prince drily. “Your grandfather has never thanked me for anything, either.”
Lin forced herself to look up from the book, remembering suddenly what Andreyen had said. There are murmurs that someone else is searching for our book. With great dedication, I hear.
“You’re the one who’s been searching the city for this?”
She was still clutching it to her chest, like a little girl with a new favorite toy. She saw a smile tug the corners of his mouth.
“I’ve turned Castellane upside down looking for it,” he said. “I finally hunted it down in the collection of a trader who’d found it in the Maze. He was about to take it to Marakand, where collectors will offer great sums for this sort of thing. I persuaded him he’d make more money selling it to me.”
“But—why did you do this? How did you even know I wanted it—？”
“You mentioned it. That night at Marivent.”
And she had, she realized, the night of his whipping. She had told him all about the book, the Maharam, the Shulamat . . .
Only she had not thought he was really listening. But he had been, it seemed. Something hot flared inside her chest. Gratitude—but she had never been comfortable with gratitude, and it came now edged with panic.
“But what does it matter to you,” she said, “that I was looking for it? I do not need to be paid, I have told you that before—”
He was no longer smiling. “Yes,” he said. “You refused the ring I offered you in recompense for healing Kel. You would take nothing for healing me. But that does not mean I do not owe you. And I despise being indebted.”
She drew herself up, knowing she must look ridiculous, barefoot and tangle-haired and stubborn. “What difference does it make? You are a Prince—one might say you cannot owe anything to someone like me.”
“But you know that is not true. You saved me. You saved my Sword Catcher.” He took a step forward, closing the space between them. Lin could not move away; the table was directly behind her. “And as long as I owe you, I cannot forget it. I think of you—of the debt I owe you—and I cannot rid my mind of the thoughts. It is like a fever.”
“And now you wish me to heal you again,” Lin said slowly. He was so close—not as close to her as he had been the night before, but she could see lighter flecks of silvery white in his eyes. “Of the fever that is myself. Your debt to me.”
“It is a sickness,” he whispered. She felt his breath stir her hair, and a tide of goosebumps flooded across her skin. “I need my thoughts back. My freedom. You ought to understand that, physician.” He flicked his glance to the book in her hands. “Everyone wants something,” he said. “It is the nature of people. You cannot be that different.”
Her hand tightened on the book. A part of her, that did not want to give him what he wanted—that did not, if she had to admit it, want to be ordinary in his eyes—wished to thrust it back at him. But she thought of Mariam, of Mariam’s bright eyes glowing at the thought of making a cloak for the Prince, and she could not do it. It would be madness.
She set Qasmuna’s book down on the table. Turned back to look at him. “There,” she said. “I’ve taken it. Does that mean you can forget all about me now?”
He was breathing quickly. If he had been her patient, she would have laid her fingers against the smooth skin of his throat, would have pressed in lightly, feeling his blood pulse beneath her fingertips. Would have said, Breathe, breathe.
But he was not her patient. He was the Prince of Castellane, and he leaned in close to her then, putting his lips against her ear. She clutched the edge of the table behind her, feeling a hot tide flood through her belly, her legs. His voice was rough in her ear. “I,” he said, “have already forgotten you.”
She stiffened. Heard him inhale sharply, and then he was gone, whirling away from her. She stayed braced against the table as the door slammed shut behind him.
Lin closed her eyes. She could hear the commotion outside as he exited her house; presumably everyone who’d just heard that the Prince of Castellane had come to visit Lin Caster was now lining the street, satisfying their curiosity. She wondered what would happen if she told them that he had simply come to settle a debt. She rather doubted they would believe her.
Kel turned through the crumbling stone arch and made his way down Arsenal Road. He had never been in the Maze during the day before. Like the flowers in the Night Garden, it came awake only after sunset.
Most sights were improved by bright sunlight and a blue sky overhead, but the Maze was not among them. The harsh illumination showed all its ragged edges and filthy corners, without the shadows of night to blue them to softness. Drunken nobles stumbled home after a night of carousing, stopping to vomit against the walls of abandoned shophouses. The doors of poppy-houses stood open, revealing bare wooden floors on which addicts twitched, the morning light stirring them out of dreams and into painful consciousness. While the brothels that lined the road were still open, there were few customers trickling in and out of the doors. The doxies who worked through the nights sprawled comfortably on the balconies in tunics and knickers, drinking karak and smoking hand-rolled cheroots from Hind. Food stalls set up in between the buildings served bowls of Shenzan rice porridge topped with fish or fruit to sailors who lined up, carrying the dented metal serving bowls they kept in their packs; they were often to be seen cleaning them conscientiously at various public cisterns.
He nearly passed it without recognizing his goal: the warehouse with the blacked-out windows where Jerrod had brought him the other night.
It was hard to believe that the cracked fa?ade hid a lively cabaret within, at least during nighttime hours. The place seemed utterly silent and deserted. Kel was aware of curious eyes on him as he knocked on the front door. There was no answer, so he tried the handle and found it unlocked, but stuck in its frame; wood warped often here, so close to the sea and the humid air. Kel shouldered it open and stepped inside.
The long corridor he remembered was nearly lightless, illuminated only by window spots where the black paint had chipped away. Kel made his way silently to the enormous main room. It was empty, the glass lanterns, nearly all unlit, swaying over a floor scattered with overturned tables and broken bits of furniture. Abandoned mother-of-pearl gaming chips gleamed like sequins against the dusty floor surrounding the upturned crow’s nest.
Kel ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He found, as he had expected, nothing at all. The warehouse seemed as if it had been deserted for years; the room in which he had met Prosper Beck was entirely emptied, even the boxes of Singing Monkey Wine gone.
He made his way back downstairs, trailing a hand along the wall to keep himself oriented in the gloom. Prosper Beck moved his headquarters from place to place often, he knew, but this was more than that. This place had been looted of its decorations, abandoned utterly. Something had happened.