“It was an honor,” he said. There was something in his voice she could not identify. It was not anger, which she would have expected, but something else again. “I was honoring you. As your prince—”
“All these years you have known my grandfather,” she said, “and still you do not see or understand his people. You are not my prince. You are the Prince of Castellane. A city I do not live in—a city I am forbidden to live in, save I keep myself walled off from it. You came into the one part of Castellane in which I am at home, and you brought the worst kind of attention upon me. You could simply have had a messenger deliver that book, but no, you had to show off, prove that you were being gracious to someone so far below you.” Her voice shook. “And the moment you left, the Maharam came and took the book from me and confiscated it, because it came from you. And now—”
She stopped before she could say And now I will lose Mariam. Unless . . . The tears that had not come the night before were threatening now, her eyes burning painfully, but she would not cry in front of him. She would not.
She reached for the handle of the carriage door and tugged on it. To her horror, it stuck. She felt herself freeze as he reached around her, his gloved hand sliding over hers as he grasped the handle. She could feel the strength in him, the lean arch of his body.
He had not moved to open the door. She was in the circle of his arm: She could feel the rough softness of his linen jacket against her. Feel him breathing in short, caught breaths. He wanted to touch her, she knew. She could not help but remember kissing him at the Roverge mansion; even now, in the depths of her rage and despair, she knew that whoever had interrupted them had been all that had prevented her from doing anything he wanted that night. She had wanted it, too.
“I thought,” she whispered, “that you were going to forget me. Forget all about me.”
“I can’t.” His voice sounded as if it were being pulled taut. “A malady. Which is ironic, since you are a physician. If you had medicine that could make me forget you—”
“No such thing exists,” she said.
“Then I am cursed,” he said, “to think only of you. You, who think I am a loathsome person. A vain monster who could not resist showing off, and in doing so, has made you wretched.”
Lin stared at the carriage door handle. It appeared to be growing and shrinking in size, as her vision blurred. “I think you are a broken person,” she whispered. “Since you have been given whatever you wanted, all of your life, and never been told no, I don’t see how you could have been anything else. I suppose it is not your fault.”
There was a short silence. He withdrew his arm from around her, moving stiffly, as if he were recovering from an injury.
“Get out,” he said.
She fumbled for the door handle, nearly falling when the carriage door swung open. She tumbled out into the street, and heard him call out, hoarsely—but he was only shouting to the carriage driver. The carriage lurched off, the unlocked door swinging. A hand emerged, caught the door, slammed it shut; the carriage vanished into the traffic on the Great Southwestern Road.
Heart hammering, Lin made her way back to the gates, where Mez was waiting. He looked at her in concern. “You’re awfully pale,” he said. “Someone really ill?”
“Yes,” Lin said, her voice seeming to echo, some distance from where she was. “But they’ve been ill a long time, I think.”
“Well, don’t let it ruin the Festival for you,” he said, kindly, and tapped at his forehead. “I nearly forgot. You’re popular today, Caster. Someone left this note for you, earlier.”
He handed over a folded sheet of vellum, sealed with wax. She thanked him and walked away, running a thumb under the seal to break it. When she opened the note, she saw familiar, cramped handwriting. The Ragpicker King’s.
Remember, stay away from the harbor this midnight. You never know where a stray spark might land.—A. M.
She crumpled the note in her hand. She had not forgotten about Ciprian Cabrol’s black powder. It was time to send a note back to the Ragpicker King, telling him that she had acquired Qasmuna’s book, and though it had been taken from her, she now had a plan to get it back.
When Kel woke up, Conor was not in his bed. This was unusual, as Kel was almost always the earlier riser. Still, he had had a restless night, tossing back and forth as he woke over and over from dreams of Fausten’s screams, and red blood spreading across the surface of the ocean.
It was already nearly afternoon, and a quick look out the window told Kel that preparations for the evening’s festivities were well under way. He frowned—tailors, boot-makers, jewelers, and the like would all be arriving shortly to make sure Conor would be impeccably turned out. As much as Conor might not be looking forward to the banquet, he would be unlikely to miss having every stitch of his attire fussed over. Frowning, Kel threw on clothes and went in search of the Prince.
He looked first in Conor’s favored hiding places—Asti’s stable, the Palace library, the Night Garden—but found no trace of him. As he wandered, preparations for the banquet went on around him. The trees were draped in yards of blue and scarlet fabric, and lanterns in the shapes of apples, cherries, and figs dangled from their branches, waiting to be lit at nightfall. Waggons rolled by, piled with ceramic plates, silver vases, and what looked to Kel alarmingly like whole trees. The doors to the Shining Gallery had been flung open, and servants raced back and forth from the kitchens and the storerooms, carrying everything from piles of green silk to what appeared to be a life-sized jaguar carved from sugar pastry.
So he returned to his bedchamber. Later, he would wish he had kept wandering around the grounds, possibly until the next day, but by the time he stepped through the door it was already too late. Conor’s closets had been torn open, and his clothes scattered on the floor. Queen Lilibet was pacing back and forth, stepping occasionally on an embroidered waistcoat or fur-trimmed hat, keeping up a stream of curses in Marakandi. Mayesh had stationed himself at the window, his lined face more haggard than usual.
Both started at the sight of Kel, their faces momentarily eager before relaxing in disappointment.
“It’s you,” Lilibet said, marching across the room toward him. “I don’t suppose you have an explanation for this?”
She thrust out a folded note. This, Kel knew, could not be good. He took the paper with a feeling of deep foreboding and unfolded it to see Conor’s familiar spiky hand slashing across the page. He read:
Dear Mother,
I have decided not to attend the welcoming banquet this evening. I wish to reassure you that I have thought deeply about the issue, and the many very good reasons I ought to attend. Please do not imagine it an ill-considered decision when I say that I will not be attending because, frankly, I do not want to. I leave it in your capable hands to manage my absence. If it will trouble you, I suggest you cancel the banquet. If not, it is my opinion the banquet could be held perfectly well without me. If you really consider it, this entire engagement and wedding could proceed perfectly well without me there, to say nothing of the marriage. My part could as easily be played by an empty chair.