Arghun opened his mouth to speak to Hasar, but the princess strode right to Chaol and Nesryn and murmured in Nesryn’s ear, “Move.”
CHAPTER
21
Nesryn blinked at Hasar.
The princess smiled, cold as a snake, and clarified, “It is not polite to only sit with your companion. We should have separated you two before now.”
Nesryn glanced to him. Everyone watched. Chaol had no idea—absolutely none—what to say. Yrene seemed inclined to melt into the green marble floor.
Sartaq cleared his throat. “Join me here, Captain Faliq.”
Nesryn stood quickly, and Hasar beamed up at her. The princess patted the back of the seat Nesryn had vacated and crooned to Yrene, lingering a few feet away, “You sit here. In case you are needed.”
Yrene shot Chaol a look that might have been considered pleading, but he kept his face neutral and offered a close-lipped smile.
Nesryn found her seat beside Sartaq, who had asked a vizier to move down the table, and Hasar, satisfied that the adjustments had been done to her liking, deemed that her own usual seats were not to her taste and kicked out two viziers down by Arghun. The second seat was for Renia, who gave her lover a mildly disapproving glance, but smiled to herself—as if it were typical.
The meal resumed, and Chaol slid his attention to Yrene. The vizier on her other side paid her no heed. Platters were passed around by servants, food and drink piled and poured. Chaol muttered under his breath, “Do I want to know?”
Yrene cut into the simmered lamb and saffron rice heaped on her golden plate. “No.”
He was willing to bet whatever shadows had been in her eyes earlier today, the thing she’d halted herself from saying to him … It went hand in hand with whatever was unfolding here.
He peered down the table, to where Nesryn watched them, half listening to Sartaq as the prince spoke about something Chaol could not hear over the clatter of silverware and discussion.
He shot her an apologetic look.
Nesryn threw him a warning one in answer—directed toward Hasar. Be careful.
“How are your toes?” Yrene said, taking tiny bites of her food. He’d seen her devour the box of carob sweets she’d gotten for them atop their horses. The dainty eating here—for show.
“Active,” he said with a half smile. No matter that it had only been two hours since they’d last seen each other.
“Sensation?”
“A tingle.”
“Good.” Her throat bobbed, that scar shifting with it.
He knew they were being watched. Listened to. She did as well.
Yrene’s knuckles were white as she clenched her utensils, her back ramrod straight. No smile. Little light in her kohl-lined eyes.
Had the princess maneuvered them to sit together to talk, or to manipulate Kashin into some sort of action? The prince was indeed watching, even while he engaged two gold-robed viziers in conversation.
Chaol murmured to Yrene, “The role of pawn doesn’t suit you.”
Those gold-brown eyes flickered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But she did. The words weren’t meant for him.
He scrambled for topics to get them through the meal. “When do you meet with the ladies for their next lesson?”
Some of the tension drained from Yrene’s shoulders as she said, “Two weeks. It would normally be next week, but many of them have their examinations then, and will be focused on studying.”
“Some exercise and fresh air might be helpful.”
“I’d say so, but to them, these tests are life and death. They certainly were to me.”
“Do you have any more remaining?”
She shook her head, her jeweled earrings catching the light. “I completed my final one two weeks ago. I am an official healer of the Torre.” A bit of a self-effacing humor danced in her eyes.
He lifted his goblet to her. “Congratulations.”
A shrug, but she nodded in thanks. “Though Hafiza thinks to test me one last time.”
Ah. “So I am indeed an experiment.”
A piss-poor attempt at making light of their argument days ago, of that rawness that had ripped a hole through him.
“No,” Yrene said quietly, quickly. “You have very little to do with it. This last, unofficial test … It is about me.”
He wanted to ask, but there were too many eyes upon them. “Then I wish you luck,” he said formally. So at odds with how they’d spoken while riding through the city.
The meal passed slowly and yet swiftly, their conversation stilted and infrequent.
It was only when the desserts and kahve were served that Arghun clapped his hands and called for entertainment.
“With our father in his chambers,” Chaol heard Sartaq confide to Nesryn, “we tend to have more … informal celebrations.”
Indeed, a troupe of musicians in finery, bearing instruments both familiar and foreign, emerged into the space between the pillars beyond the table. Rumbling drums and flutes and horns announced the arrival of the main event: dancers.
A circle of eight dancers, both male and female—a holy number, Sartaq explained to a tentatively smiling Nesryn—emerged from the curtains to the side of the pillars.
Chaol tried not to choke.
They had been painted in gold, bedecked with jewels and gauzy, belted robes of thinnest silk, but beneath that … nothing.
Their bodies were lithe and young, the peak of youth and virility. Hips rolled, backs arched, hands twined in the air above them as they began to weave around one another in circles and lines.
“I told you,” was all Yrene muttered to him.
“I think Dorian would enjoy this,” he muttered back, and was surprised to find the corners of his mouth tugging upward at the thought.
Yrene threw him a bemused look, some light back in her eyes. People had twisted in their seats to better watch the dancers, their sculpted bodies and nimble, bare feet.
Perfect, precise movements, their bodies merely instruments of the music. Beautiful—ethereal and yet … tangible. Aelin, he realized, would have enjoyed this, too. Greatly.
As the dancers performed, servants hauled over chairs and couches, arranging pillows and tables. Bowls of smoking herbs were laid atop them, the smell sweet and cloying.
“Don’t get too close if you want your senses intact,” Yrene warned as a male servant bore one of the smoking metal dishes toward a carved wood table. “It’s a mild opiate.”
“They really let their hair down when their parents are away.”
Some of the viziers were leaving, but many left the table to take up cushioned seats, the entirety of the great hall remade in a matter of moments to accommodate lounging, and—
Servants emerged from the curtains, well groomed and dressed in gauzy, rich silk as well. Men and women, all beautiful, found their way to laps and armrests, some curling at the feet of viziers or nobility.
He’d seen fairly unleashed parties at the glass castle, but there had still been a stiffness. A formality and sense that such things were hidden behind closed doors. Dorian had certainly saved it for his own room. Or someone else’s. Or he just dragged Chaol into Rifthold, or down to Bellhaven, where the nobility held parties far more uninhibited than those of Queen Georgina.
Sartaq remained at the table beside Nesryn, who watched the skilled dancers with wide-eyed admiration, but the other royal children … Duva, a hand on her belly, bid her farewells, her husband at her side, silent as always. The smoke was not good for the babe in her womb, Duva claimed, and Yrene nodded in approval, though no one looked her way.
Arghun claimed a couch for himself around the dancing, reclining and breathing in the smoke rippling off the embers in those small metal bowls beside them. Courtiers and viziers vied for the seats nearest the eldest prince.
Hasar and her lover took a small couch for themselves, the princess’s hands soon tangling in her lover’s thick black hair. Her mouth found a spot
on the woman’s neck a moment later. Renia’s answering smile was slow and broad—her eyes fluttering closed as Hasar whispered something against her skin.
Kashin seemed to wait for minutes as Yrene and Chaol watched the unfolding decadence from the emptying banquet table.
Waiting for Yrene, no doubt, to rise.
Color had stained her cheeks as she kept her eyes firmly on her kahve, steam curling from the small cup.
“You’ve seen this before?” Chaol asked her.
“Give it an hour or two, and they’ll all slip away to their rooms—not alone, of course.”
Prince Kashin seemed to have dragged out his conversation with the vizier beside him for as long as he could stomach. He opened his mouth, looking right toward Yrene, and Chaol read the invitation in his eyes before the man could speak.
Chaol had perhaps a heartbeat to decide. To see that Sartaq had invited Nesryn to sit with him—not at the table, not on one of the couches, but at a pair of chairs to the far back of the room, where there was no smoke and the windows were open, and yet they could still watch. She gave Chaol a reassuring nod, her pace unhurried as she walked with the prince.
So as Kashin leaned forward to invite Yrene to join him at a couch, Chaol turned to the healer and said, “I would like to sit with you.”