Look at my fingers, Jase! Take a good long look.
An image of Kazi’s long beautiful fingers with missing tips kept seeping through my mind. Why didn’t she tell me before? All the times in the wilderness when I had asked—
I didn’t grow up like you.
I had never seen a single tear in Kazi’s eye. Not when she ran across burning sands that blistered her feet. Not when a labor hunter hit her across her face. Not when a raider nearly choked the life from her. But this, a memory eleven years old, made her unravel. I watched her struggle to hold it back, like she was trying to dissect her feelings from the facts.
But when Lydia and Nash came to the door, she steeled herself and became someone else. How do you do that? I had asked as we walked to dinner, How do you go from anguish to pulling coins out from behind ears?
It’s an acquired skill, Jase. Something all thieves learn.
I heard the sarcasm in her reply. I knew what she thought I had meant, that even her tears had been a shallow act. It was just the opposite. I watched her sacrifice part of herself for their sakes, like hiding a bleeding limb behind her back and pretending she wasn’t in pain.
“Jase, you’re picking at your food,” Priya said, waving her fork at me. “You’re not hungry?”
I looked at my plate, untouched.
I had no servant to bring me food.
No parties in the garden.
I wore rags upon rags to stay warm in winter.
I remembered in the wilderness when she was ready to eat minnows before we had cooked them. I had to scavenge for every rotten mouthful I ever ate. And now I knew—there were worse things than raw minnows, and she had eaten them.
My mother eyed my full plate. “I can ask Natiya to fix you something else if you like?”
“No,” I replied. “This is fine.” I stabbed a piece of meat and chewed.
I made more of an effort to concentrate on the multiple conversations running around the table. They seemed fuller and louder tonight. Maybe it was an effort to avoid any uncomfortable silences. An effort to cover Jalaine’s absence. To avoid the obvious—Kazi’s outburst at the arena—though the evidence on my jaw was a little harder to ignore. Lydia had asked me what happened. “A fall,” I answered, and that wasn’t far from the truth. I had told Garvin to keep his revelation just between us, so at least no one knew she had once been a thief.
And maybe, on occasion, she still was.
She nicked the king.
What did she take from him? And why?
There were still so many questions I hadn’t asked. Things I wanted to know. How does an orphaned street thief become a premier guard of the queen? Where had she been in those hours I couldn’t find her? But after Lydia and Nash left, she went into the bath chamber and closed the door. I heard her running water and splashing her face. When she came out, the redness in her eyes was gone, but it felt like she still teetered on an edge and I was afraid to push her over it. My questions retreated. At least for a little while.
“More ale, Patrei?” Natiya stood next to me, a pitcher poised in her hand over my drained tankard.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
Apparently I was more thirsty than I was hungry.
Synové was always chatty, but tonight more so, hardly finishing one sentence before she began another. Even Wren, the quiet one with searing eyes who always filled me with some level of trepidation, was more talkative than usual. Aram and Samuel hung on every word as she explained the history of the ziethe, a weapon of the Meurasi clan that she hailed from.
Kazi spoke enthusiastically with my mother about foods the queen preferred, as if we hadn’t just had a screaming conversation in her room. As if she hadn’t just broken down and sobbed in front of me. As if none of it had happened at all.
“Maybe we can meet with the cook in the morning,” Kazi said, “and discuss which dishes she would recommend. I know the queen has a fondness for vagabond food.”
Something about it all was off.
It didn’t feel right.
The cook and her husband had come in several times to replenish dishes or take them away. I stared at the husband each time. He was reserved, aloof, the opposite of his wife. Since they had been here, she had expressed her gratitude to me several times for giving them work. The first day, she had patted her abdomen and said their family would soon be expanding, so she was especially grateful. He had shown no emotion. He just kept going about his work in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with quick smooth movements. She was right about one thing; he was good with a knife.
And Kazi was right about another thing—his appearance. Now every time he walked through the kitchen door his appearance turned my stomach.