The Ragpicker King (Chronicles of Castellane #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY

A fter she returned from rounds with Aron, Lin prepared to leave for the Black Mansion to collect the King’s medicine from Merren. When she stepped out the door, she found that a folded piece of parchment had been laid upon her front steps. Sure that it was something to do with her upcoming test, she opened it to read three words scrawled in an elegant hand:

We must talk.

And beneath, initials.

C.A.

Conor Aurelian.

Her heart was beating as if she had been running, and the taste of metal was in her mouth. She crumpled the parchment in her hand and cast it into the fireplace before slamming the door behind her on her way out.

Kel and Conor were seated on the floor of their room playing Triumph for copper pennies. Kel’s luck that afternoon had been abysmally bad. He squinted at the cards in his hand, willing them to improve. He had the Witch, the Vine, and the Ship, but the more powerful cards—the Sorcerer, the Chalice, the Sunderglass Tower—had so far eluded him. Conor was almost certainly going to win.

At another time, this would have pleased Kel. Conor hated to lose but was sensitive to being allowed to win. Currently, however, he was playing with very little attention, having discarded both Lotan’s Sword and the Tower without seeming to have noticed.

He had been distracted since yesterday’s Solstice Ball, which continued to puzzle Kel. Whatever had happened when Conor left the Armory had troubled him greatly, and though he and Anjelica had made a great show of enjoying the rest of the evening together, Kel knew it was only acting—on Conor’s part at least.

He had tried to gently inquire as to what had happened, but Conor had only put him off, always changing the subject; Kel supposed Conor would tell him when he was ready. Or he would forget all about it; either eventuality seemed entirely possible.

He set down the card of Gentleman Death, which always made Kel think of the Ragpicker King. Of course, Gentleman Death was smiling, and the last time Kel had seen Andreyen, he’d been exasperated.

Kel, Merren, and Ji-An had been forced to return to the Black Mansion after questioning Ciprian Cabrol and admit that they had offered Ciprian the protection of the Ragpicker King. Andreyen had not been pleased. “ Protection is vague. Did you specify what I was offering him? Am I now to share my home with Ciprian Cabrol and his entire family?”

“There are plenty of extra rooms here, if that’s what it comes to,” said Merren.

Andreyen looked upon Merren with resignation. “Merren, I do not expect you to understand why this would annoy me,” he said. “But Ji-An—you are not usually so liberal with the use of my name.”

“I was caught up in the moment,” Ji-An admitted. “We’ve been spending too much time with Kel. He only has reckless ideas.”

Kel made a noise of protest.

“Well, don’t offer things in my name without consulting me first.” Andreyen slumped back in his chair. “Still, it was an interesting gambit on your part. I will be curious to see what comes of it.”

Conor threw his cards onto the floor. He was sitting with his back propped against the frame of a divan, his eyes circled in shadows. Kel had heard him tossing and turning through the night. “I give up,” Conor said. “I cede victory. Have every penny.”

Kel was not interested in the pennies. “But you’re winning, Con.” He fanned out his pathetic cards. “See?”

Conor’s mouth twitched up at the corner. “Those are bad.”

“I was telling you—”

The door to the apartments burst open. Kel could hear the alarmed voice of a Castelguard in the corridor, but Anjelica sailed past him and into the room.

She looked magnificent in saffron silk, thin gold chains at her wrists and ankles. There was something about her that seemed different from any time Kel had ever seen her before. He had seen her nervous, even worried, but never without a layer of cool control. Even when preparing to deal with Laurent Aden, she had been calm, but now—

Conor waved pleasantly at her, as if out the window of a carriage. “Care for a hand of Sixes?” he offered. “I am a wretched player myself, which should afford you a satisfying and easy victory—”

“You told me,” Anjelica snapped, her voice icy, “that you would not humiliate me.”

Conor did not move or react. Only the muscles around his mouth tightened—and someone who was not Kel would not have seen it. “You will have to elaborate on what you mean,” he said slowly, and Kel could tell he was taking whatever time he could to gather his thoughts. “Is it my outfit? My tailor did warn me against pairing burgundy with teal—”

“You were seen,” Anjelica said evenly. “The night of the Solstice Ball.”

“It was a public event,” said Conor. “I imagine I was seen often, yes.”

“When you left the Armory,” Anjelica said. “I assumed you had been called away on some matter of state, something that was urgent. Instead, I find out today from Kurame that you were fornicating with some commoner. In public. Where anyone could see you.” She bit off each word as if she were snapping at it.

“ What? ” Kel said. He looked at Conor, half prepared for angry denial. It did not come. Conor’s expression hovered somewhere between resignation and relief. This has been weighing on him, Kel thought, through his own growing anger. This is what has been troubling him, of all things. Perhaps he is even glad to be caught.

He wondered, too, who it had been—but he could not ask Conor that now.

“It was an error in judgment,” said Conor, “and not planned. Though I understand that may make no difference to you, Ayakemi .”

“Do not use that word when speaking to me.” Color burned high on Anjelica’s cheeks. “You play with honorifics that mean nothing to you, yet you will not treat me with honor.”

Conor’s eyes flared with anger. “Do you have your brother spying on me?”

“Conor,” Kel interrupted. “ Apologize. ”

For the first time, Anjelica looked at Kel, this time with some surprise. She must be wondering if he had known, Kel thought. If he had been protecting Conor at the ball, even when he’d been dancing with her.

Kel rose to his feet. “I should go,” he said. “This is personal business—”

Gold bracelets clinked as Anjelica threw up her hand. “No. Stay. For you are part of this.”

“Kel is not part of this,” said Conor. He stood up, facing Anjelica directly. “I only told him I was leaving the ball—nothing more, and certainly not why. I am sure we can all agree it is better my absence was not noted.”

Anjelica said, “We agreed that you would be discreet, and I assumed you knew what discreet meant. It does not mean leaving your Sword Catcher to take your place at a ball so you could meet some courtesan in one of your mother’s ridiculous follies, where anyone could see you. It happened to be Kurame this time, and he will tell no one. But it could have been any member of the Charter Families. Then how long do you think it would have been before everyone knew? And the shame would not be yours. It would be mine.”

Conor passed a hand across his face. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Anjelica,” he said with a sort of weary self-loathing that surprised Kel. “And my Sword Catcher is right. You see he is not just my guardian, but my conscience. I do owe you an apology.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Then make it,” she said. “And I will tell you if it satisfies me.”

“I know you were told even before you came here that I was weak. Someone who cared nothing for his city, who counted pleasure above responsibility. And those were not just scurrilous rumors. Those were the truth. But it is also the truth that I have changed. And change, I have learned, is not one decision, but many decisions made every day. What I did was a mistake, and I can say that in absolute truth. When I did what I did, it was because it was what I wanted at that moment, and I gave no thought to those I was hurting.”

There was a silence. Kel looked out of the corner of his eye at Anjelica. Would she understand, as he did, how unusual it was for Conor to speak this way? To reveal his true thoughts and doubts to anyone?

“Well,” Anjelica said. “That was not, quite precisely, an apology.”

Conor met her eyes. “I am sorry,” he said. “More than I can say.”

Indeed, Kel thought. There is much you are not saying.

Anjelica nodded slowly. “I will forgive you,” she said. “Not this moment—there is something I must do first—but I will forgive you. This time.” She turned to leave; at the door, her hand on the latch, she hesitated. “At the ball, I told someone you had only ever treated me with honor and respect,” she said, and a deep anger that Kel did not precisely comprehend underlined her words. “Do not make a liar out of me.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

Conor looked after her. “I wonder,” he said. “What does she feel she must do?”

“ Conor, ” Kel said. “Look at me. Who was it? The girl in the folly?”

Conor’s gray eyes darkened. “Leave it, Kel. It doesn’t matter.”

“You would not have done it if it didn’t matter. You left a politically important party—and you asked me to change places with you. This is someone you care about, Con.”

And I think I may know who it is.

Conor cursed under his breath, turned, and began to climb the spiral stairs that led to the tower. Ordinarily, Kel would have let him go, but nothing about the situation was ordinary. He started up the steps after him.

“Conor—”

Conor glowered down at him from the step above. “If you are correct,” he said, “and I am not saying you are, that should tell you why I cannot answer your question.”

They had reached the top of the tower. It was another hot, bright day. Not a single cloud marred the porcelain-blue sky. The gardens of Marivent spread out, green and low, around them; the clear edge of the sea cliffs was visible, the ocean a sheet of blue iron.

“I know what you want to say,” Conor said, and Kel was surprised by the savagery in his voice. It was a savagery directed not at Kel, but at Conor himself. “ Tell Anjelica you can’t marry her. Figure out some other way Castellane can pay its debt to Sarthe and protect itself at the same time. Do not torture yourself. But you know there is no other way.”

“I would not have used the word torture ,” Kel said in a low voice. “But it means something to me that you did.”

Conor whirled to face Kel. “I see them,” he said. “At night, when I close my eyes.”

“Who do you see?”

“The people of Castellane,” said Conor. He sounded reluctant, as if he did not want to be saying what he was saying. Which, Kel knew, made it likelier to be true. “Guildmasters, publicans, merchants’ wives, shopkeepers, children. I see them put to the sword when the Sarthians break through the Narrow Pass. I see the Palace burn, the ashes of Poet’s Hill, our city brought to ruin all because I failed. Because I could not manage this alliance with Kutani.” His gray eyes fixed on Kel. “You have always been an idealist, Kellian. But this is not an ideal world. If you knew—”

He was interrupted by a loud blast. The trumpeting of an elephant.

Sedai. Kel raced to the edge of the tower, Conor beside him, and looked over the parapet. The clarity of the day made it easy to see them—Sedai, with Anjelica perched on her back, marching along the cliff path. Despite her size, Sedai picked her way delicately, Anjelica riding her without benefit of the usual wicker seat. Even from this distance, Kel could see her perched by Sedai’s head, her legs dangling as she leaned forward to stroke her mount’s broad ear.

“Well,” Conor said in his normal voice. “At least she’s having a good time...?”

Kel rather thought it was more than that. He said nothing, watching as—alerted by the elephant’s trumpeting—quite a number of Marivent’s servants and Castelguards spilled out into the courtyards. A faint cheer went up from a few; everyone was fond of Sedai. Kel wondered where Kurame was, if he was watching as Anjelica and Sedai bore down on a white folly perched by the cliff edge.

“Is she—?” Conor began just as Sedai reared back and came down, her two great circular feet landing directly on top of the folly. Kel could hear the noise as it burst apart. Plaster dust rose like smoke as Sedai drew back and kicked out with her powerful legs. More wood and plaster collapsed as the folly’s roof fell in, landing like a wobbly plate atop a pile of kindling.

“Well,” Kel said, “you always did say you thought the follies ruined the view.”

Conor laughed. It was a real laugh—half disbelief, half genuine amusement. “So is this what she had to do before she forgave me?”

Sedai had already turned around, and she and Anjelica were moving past the ruins of the folly, heading farther down the cliff path. It would take them to the wooded path that ran along the spine of the hills separating Castellane from Detmarch. As they went, Anjelica turned around and waved in the direction of the Castel Mitat.

“I suppose it is,” said Kel. “Be glad she only crushed the folly, and not you personally.”

Conor was gazing out toward Detmarch and the mountains. “You have always been the one thing in my life that was real,” he said. “But when I become King, I will lose you.”

“I will still be here,” Kel said, though he knew what Conor meant. He would never be Conor again, never need to stand in for him, never need to recall at all moments how he talked and walked and thought, and as the head of the Arrow Squadron he would not be Conor’s shield alone, but a shield for all Castellane. “But you may require more than just me.” Anjelica? Perhaps, if you are honest with her, and discreet as she has required. But he did not say it.

“ Require, ” Conor echoed. “There is something I require now. Before I can speak with Anjelica again.” He looked at his hands, at the rings glittering there, as if he had never seen them before. “I have to be sure.”

And with that he was gone, in a whirl of burgundy silk and teal velvet.

Conor’s tailor had been right about the colors, Kel thought, leaning against the ridged parapet. They did clash with each other.

Lin could not concentrate. Having returned from the Black Mansion with the medicine, she had determined to do what she could to prepare for her test, but her mind would not focus. She sat fretfully at her kitchen table, where she usually did her best research, her books spread out around her. Her eyes had blurred from staring at diagrams of Source-Stones and reading various accounts of how they held power.

If only she could concentrate. But every time her mind wandered, it wandered back to the night before, to the folly and what had happened there. To Conor: his mouth, his hands, the sound of the rain, the sensation of him against her. Her heart would skip and stutter; she would feel sick and hot all at once, as if her skin were burning.

Trying to pull her mind free of the memories was like trying to wrench her hand back through narrow slats that seemed to want to peel off her skin. But she did it, telling herself to forget Conor, to concentrate on how power was forced into a Source-Stone. Still, the image of the letter he had scrawled to her kept rising in her mind, as did the knowledge that in fact, she did need to talk to him about the medicine for his father, regardless of how very much she didn’t want to talk to him about anything else.

Focus, she whispered to herself. Lin, you are facing a trial whose substance you cannot guess at. You must prepare. It was true that since she had last seen King Markus, she had noted a flicker of power in her stone, but it was only a flicker.

She thought again of those blurred moments in the tower. The King shouting in Malgasi. The stone flaring up with brilliant light when his blood touched it, so hot that the metal pained her. She still had a pale-pink scar from the burn.

Old legends claimed that a king or queen was inherently magical. That they could perform miracles, could heal with a laying on of hands. But Lin had a practical physician’s mind. She did not believe in miracles—or at least did not believe they had existed since the Sundering. Nor did she believe there was something physically different about royal blood that made it in any way different from the stuff that ran in ordinary men’s veins.

She could hear Aron in the back of her head: It looks to me like an easy choice, Lin. Withdraw your claim, take the small punishment, and that will be the end of it.

A knock on the door roused her from her misery. Mariam, perhaps, or Chana, who had been brewing up horrible teas that were supposed to help Lin study.

A second knock. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” Lin muttered, hurrying to the door. She threw it open and all thoughts of medicine flew from her mind. It was not Chana standing on her stoop, tea in hand.

It was Conor.

Her heart contracted painfully inside her chest. He looked awful. He was dressed plainly, in a black linen cloak with a hood, no doubt to hide his face. But she could see enough to note that his light-brown skin was ashy, his eyes circled in blue-black. He wore no crown, and his black hair was tangled. The muscles in his jaw were tight, his mouth set.

“If you are wondering how I got through the gates,” he said, his voice flat, “the guards are surprisingly sentimental. I told them I was a Gold Roads trader with a lady-love I wished to importune. That, and I tipped them each three crowns. Where sentiment fails, good old-fashioned bribery cannot but win the day.”

There was a faint humming sound in Lin’s ears. Mechanically, she said, “The Watchers are not meant to take bribes.”

“Then you will have to speak with them about it.” He regarded her tensely. “Is there someone else at home with you? Or do you simply not want me to come in?”

I don’t want you to come in. She was terrified of what it would mean to allow him inside, to be alone with him. She did not trust her self-control. After last night, she knew it crumbled like wet sand in his presence.

But. It would be much safer not to be seen speaking with him. Even if he was disguised, tongues wagged in the Sault, and anyone could see them on the doorstep together.

She stood aside. “Come in.”

He shouldered past her, smelling of the city: warm stone, river, and seawater. She closed the door behind him, smoothing her fingers quickly through her hair. She was suddenly aware of how she must look. Her white dress was crumpled, an ink stain on one of her sleeves. She was barefoot, her hair out of its braids and tumbling in uncombed curls down her back.

“I know I sent you a message earlier.” He was drawing off his gloves, black kidskin. He seemed to loom strangely large inside her small house, as if his head might brush the rafters. “But I decided that this could not wait.”

She almost closed her eyes. The memory of the rain, the folly, his hands on her hips, was too strong. It threatened to draw her back down and under into currents of feeling so bottomless, she feared the depth and force of them. “In the folly— It was a mistake,” she whispered. “You knew it immediately. So did I. What else is there to say?”

He had pulled the gloves off and was twisting them between his hands. His head was lowered; she could not see his face. “And that’s all?” he said. “A mistake?”

“Are you worried that I will tell someone what happened?” She stared at him. “Mayesh, or—” She swallowed. “I will not tell anyone. I have no more reason than you to want this known.”

Twist, went the gloves. “I had not thought you would.”

“Then, if there’s nothing else...”

“Of course that isn’t all,” he snapped. “Lin. I am not a fool. What we did— That was your first time, wasn’t it? If I had guessed, I would never—”

“ Stop, ” she hissed, and he looked up at that, surprised at the force in her voice. “It was my choice. I wanted to. I said as much.”

“But”—he sounded bewildered—“you said it was a mistake.”

“Of course it was!” she cried out, and how could he not understand? “Story-Spinner tales of princes and peasants are just that, Conor. Tales. And I am Ashkar. If anyone were to discover what we had done—”

“I know that, Lin. It is a crime for us to touch each other. I know the Laws, my family made the Laws—”

“Then why are you here?” she demanded. “To apologize to me, to tell me it was a mistake? You could have sent a letter. Something on royal stationery, with a seal.” Her voice shook, and the backs of her eyes ached as if something were pressing hard against them. “Why compound the risk by coming to the Sault?”

“Because.” His gray eyes were slits of silver. “I had to see you. I had to.”

“Why?” And to her horror, her voice caught on a sob. The heat pressing against the back of her eyes became tears, spilling hot down her face. She could not stop them. Shocked, she covered her mouth with her hand, hiding the trembling of her lips.

Everything about him changed. His eyes widened. He dropped the gloves he’d been holding as his hard, stiff, defensive posture seemed to melt away; suddenly he was frantic to get across the room to her. He pulled her against him, his hand in her hair, his voice soft. “Lin, Lin. Don’t, sweetheart. Please.”

She had never heard him sound like that. Never imagined he could. He kissed her cheeks, her salt-damp eyes; he curled his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. His heart beat under her cheek, fast as hummingbird wings.

“I cannot marry you,” he whispered.

Her voice caught on her reply. “I know.”

“But I can offer you— Lin, look at me. Look at me.”

Half unwilling, she craned her head back. His gray eyes burned with a clear light. He looked almost fanatical, as if he were praying for salvation—or damnation, perhaps. “I am a Prince,” he said. “I can give you gold. Jewels. A fleet of ships. But you want none of those things. What I cannot do is marry you—not without smashing the alliances that are keeping Castellane whole. Not without losing the throne, and who then would take it? If there was someone I trusted, I would give it up willingly, but there is no one—”

“Conor.” She was half appalled. “You should never give up those things. I would never ask it.”

“I want to give them up.” His voice was ragged. “But I cannot. I cannot offer you what the lowest peasant in the street could offer you. Myself. Because myself does not belong to me. It belongs to Castellane.”

“I know. I expected nothing else.” She started to turn her face away, felt him go rigid against her.

“I cannot offer you what I would wish to, Lin. But I can offer you— I can settle some money on you. A house, a grand one, in the Silver Streets. A carriage, servants. Whatever you needed.”

“And I would be your mistress?”

“It would be discreet,” he said. “But we could see each other. I would spend nights with you. Not every night, not at the beginning, but some. I would see you as much as I could.”

Lin could not speak. She thought of Silla— The dream of every courtesan is to become a mistress. One gets a house in the Silver Streets, a carriage, and a bit of money to save. Independence. It’s a decent living if the man’s kind.

Lin took a step back. “Conor. No.”

She saw the hurt bloom across his face and wondered if she would ever be this close to him again. Close enough to see his flickering expressions, pain followed by stubbornness, the quick flash of anger that mirrored hurt. Close enough to see the way the dark curls of his hair lay against his temples, begging for a hand to brush them back. Close enough to examine the exact curve of his mouth. “Why not?” he said.

“You know what I am,” she said. “I am Ashkar. My people are here. What you offer me—a life outside these walls, but one penned up in a house, waiting on your visits—means exile for me.”

The tops of his cheeks flushed; it was clear he had not thought of that aspect of his offer. “And it is not worth it to you.”

“ Conor. ” Her heart ached as she looked at him. Part of her saw only that he hurt, saw the pain in his eyes, the way his hands gripped themselves into fists so that his nails could dig into his palms. How well, how oddly, she knew him. “If I became your mistress,” she said, “how long would it take you to tire of me? Once you had enough of my body, once I was no longer something you wanted but could not have, what would you do then? And what would happen to me?”

He whitened. “I had you already,” he said harshly. “I doubt you have forgotten. And I want you still. That has never happened to me before.” He plunged his hands into his hair, as if he would tear it out in handfuls. “You are a healer,” he said with a bitter laugh. “If you could cut this fascination out of me, like a cancer, oh, I would let you. For it has tortured me, Lin. I have neglected every duty, every requirement, just to steal another moment with you. I feared that if anyone ever saw me with you, they would see it on my face, that I was an addict, that I would barter my birthright just to touch you—”

“ Stop. ” The word came out more harshly than she had intended. “Please. I can’t. ”

He sucked in a breath. “You are sure of your answer,” he said. “You are determined to say no.”

He was so close. So close she had to force back the memory: the taste of his mouth on hers, wine and rain. His hands a key that unlocked a Lin inside her she had never imagined: a girl who burned like fire burned, whose heart was thunder, wind, and storm, whose body was capable of feelings as sharp and fine as a blade’s edge. She knew she was losing that Lin forever as she spoke, even as she knew she had no choice about it.

“Would you give up your marriage?” she whispered. “Cancel the alliance with Kutani? Make me Queen instead?”

He had been bending over her; now he jerked upright. “You know I can’t. Lin. You know. ”

“It is your life you will not give up, just as I cannot give up my own. I will not be your mistress,” she said. “I do not want some part of you, of your time and self.” She raised her face to his, wondering if the hot spark of desire and memory she saw in his eyes was only a reflection of her own. “I do not want a lover. I want something more than that, and you cannot give it to me.”

She saw a shudder go through him, like a spasm of pain. “There is one more thing,” he said, almost as if he hated himself for saying it. “There could be a child.”

“No.” Lin thought of the early hours of this morning, alone in the kitchens of the Women’s House, stirring the mug of oily tea. She had made it so often for other women; never once had she expected to require it herself. The flavor of it had been strong, tasting of mint and bitter pennyroyal. “I made sure no pregnancy could take hold.”

It was as if something vital went out of him then, like blood running from a cut. “As easily as that?”

She recalled holding the cup of tea in both hands, hesitating; recalled how for a brief moment, the thought of a child with the most beautiful eyes in the world, silver as storm clouds, had flashed across her vision.

But that was not her child to have. One day it would be Anjelica’s. That was the way things worked.

“As easily as that,” she said.

There was an awful sort of silence.

“Well,” he said finally. Something about his face looked different, as if the shape of the bones had changed—become harsher, sharper, beneath the skin. “Thank you for your honesty.”

He moved toward the door, a little unsteadily, as if he were finding his way in a dark room. At the door, he paused without turning back to look at her. “My father,” he said. “We have unfinished business there, you and I.”

“Oh—yes. Wait a moment.” Lin darted into her kitchen and returned with the stoppered flask Merren had given her. She crossed the room to Conor at the half-open door. She could not bear to look at him, but she held the flask out for him to take. “The remedy,” she said. “It is ready for you to administer. And of course I will continue to treat the King,” she added. “He is my patient.”

His fingers brushed hers as he took the flask from her. He drew his hand back quickly.

“Thank you,” he said. “You are indeed an excellent physician, Lin.”

And he was gone.

Lin sank into a chair, staring at the still-open front door and the bit of the street she could see beyond it. Dust and cobblestones. She felt oddly too light, as if a gust of wind might blow through her, finding no resistance.

She did not know how long she had been sitting there when a shadow crossed her threshold. Loomed up in the arch of her doorway, eyes bright and narrow behind a tangle of hair.

Oren Kandel. Staring blankly as if it were not at all odd to find her sitting barefoot in her kitchen, staring at an open door.

“Shekinah,” he said. “Your test has been set for tomorrow at sundown. Present yourself at the Shulamat at that hour. Such is the instruction of the Exilarch.”

She drew in a breath. It was too much, all of this, happening at once. She could not hold it in her mind, could not feel anything beyond a great emptiness.

“Oren,” she said wearily. “You do not need to call me Shekinah.”

“For now I must,” he said, and she saw the hate flash in his small, bright eyes. “But after tomorrow, I will never need to do it again.”

Thunk. The sword stabbed into the hay bale with a satisfying noise. Kel pulled it free with a twist of his wrist, spilling loose hay onto the floorboards.

He was in the Hayloft, and the golden light of late afternoon was spilling in through the windows like the slow drip of honey. There had seemed no better place to go, really, once Conor had left on his mysterious errand. Especially as Kel wanted to avoid Lilibet, who would surely be in a rage over the destruction of her folly.

By the time he’d left the Castel Mitat, dressed in his practice linens, crews of servants were already starting to cart the broken pieces of the folly away. It would be gone entirely by evening, no trace left, as if none of it had ever happened. As Lilibet had closed away the slaughter in the Shining Gallery by bolting the doors. Why not scrub out the blood, clean the place, restore it? Conor had asked.

Because what is not seen is forgotten, Lilibet had replied.

Thunk. Kel slammed the blade into another hay bale, withdrew it. His arms would hurt tomorrow, but today he didn’t care. Anger powered his movements. Anger at Conor, for the nonsensical and dangerous thing he’d done that had nearly wrecked the alliance with Kutani. Anger that the only way to buy Castellane out of its trouble with Sarthe was with Conor’s life. He was so clearly wretched, and Kel hated it. He was angry at himself, too. It was his duty to observe Conor, to pay close attention to his moods and movements, and yet Conor’s actions at the ball had surprised him—more, he suspected, than they had surprised Anjelica. How had he become so distant from Conor that he could not even guess at the depths of his longing, his despair?

But perhaps it was unfair to blame Conor for hiding his feelings. Hadn’t Kel hidden his own? He’d barely slept himself the past two nights. Over and over he heard Antonetta’s voice, You have to be careful about what you share with Kel.

He had thought she believed him to be the only one she could trust. Now he knew she had never trusted him at all. Not with the truth of herself. He had congratulated himself for being the only one on the Hill who saw through her pretenses, who glimpsed the whip-smart intelligence behind the silk ribbons and giggling. That self-congratulation rang hollow now that he realized she’d taken him in with a different kind of acting.

And he hadn’t seen it. Not until she’d spoken to him at the ball, when he’d been pretending to be Conor. He still didn’t know why she’d said what she had, what her motivation could be. But he knew she’d been laughing at him for some time now. He wondered about that night, when she had rescued him from Tyndaris. Would it have been any different, he wondered, had he given her a real answer when she’d asked what he was doing there?

Would it? He swung again with the sword—an old one, dented from many practice sessions—and again and again, his arm aching, his hair wet with sweat. Burn out the rage, he told himself. Throw yourself against the wall of it like water crashing against rocks. Break yourself apart like a ship running aground on coral. Spill out what is inside—the cargo of useless feelings, pointless hopes.

“Your hands are bleeding.”

Anjelica.

Kel whirled around. He had created a small tornado of loose straw, drifting in the air along with a cloud of dust motes. She was right, he realized, with some surprise—his knuckles were bloody. He didn’t know how they’d gotten that way.

“I thought you might be here,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

She had twisted her hair into braids and looked younger than she usually did. She had changed from her saffron silk into more casual linen.

“Why?” he asked, still breathless.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Kel plunged the sword into a hay bale, where it stuck, the hilt vibrating slightly. He turned to her, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Apologize for what?”

She raised her chin. “Princesses do not often apologize.”

“Nor Princes,” said Kel, “in my experience.”

“And yet. I have no regrets about shouting at Conor, but I should not have done it in front of you. I should have insisted that Conor let you excuse yourself. You are a Sword Catcher. Your duty is to protect Conor from weapons, not angry words.”

“I’ve done both.”

She smiled a little at that. “Still, I should not have put you in that position. You’re not just anyone. You have been a good friend to me in a place that I did not expect to find friends.”

“It is early days yet, Princess. You will find friends here, ones closer to your station.”

“I am not overly concerned about my station.” She looked him over thoughtfully. “I will not ask you again to lie to the Prince on my behalf.”

“Are you going to tell him about Laurent?”

“I will. I think I might write it down in a letter. It will go better that way.” She looked at him solemnly. “I will not forget that you have been good to me.”

“I did what I thought was best,” said Kel. “Anjelica—I do think you can be happy here. I think Conor will do all he can do to make sure you are.”

“You care for the Prince very much,” she said. “He is lucky, for you would do your duty whether you loved him or hated him.”

“I think perhaps,” Kel said slowly, “it is your own duty you are thinking of.”

“Perhaps,” she said, smiling, and departed.

He wondered if she would ever speak to him again, now that she had no further need of him. She had used him in her plan to rid herself of Laurent; that was over. He wondered if that was how it would be with his friends in the Black Mansion, once they had solved their mystery. Jerrod was already gone; Andreyen, Ji-An, Merren—would they disappear from his life in an eyeblink? It would leave a hole, he knew, one that would be hard to fill, and made harder so by the fact that he would never be able to speak to anyone about it.