This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(11)

“If I am indeed overwrought,” said the prince, losing a modicum of composure, “it is no doubt a symptom of my enthusiasm to remind you that my father would’ve had you hung for your insolence.”

“Just so,” Hazan said softly. “Though it occurs to me now that you are not your father.”

Kamran’s head snapped up. He drew his sword from its scabbard without thinking, and not until he saw the barely contained mirth in his minister’s eyes did he stall, his hand frozen on the hilt.

Kamran was rattled.

He’d been gone from home for over a year; he’d forgotten how to have normal conversations. Long months he’d spent in the service of the empire, securing borders, leading skirmishes, dreaming of death.

Ardunia’s rivalry with the south was as old as time.

Ardunia was a formidable empire—the largest in the known world—and their greatest weakness was both a well-kept secret and a source of immense shame: they were running out of water.

Kamran was proud of Ardunia’s existing qanat systems, intuitive networks that transported water from aquifers to aboveground reservoirs, and upon which people relied for their drinking water and irrigation. The problem was that qanats relied entirely upon the availability of groundwater, which meant large swaths of the Ardunian empire were for centuries rendered uninhabitable—a problem mitigated only by barging freshwater via marine vessel from the Mashti River.

The fastest path to this titanic waterway was located at the nadir of Tulan, a small, neighboring empire affixed to Ardunia’s southernmost border. Tulan was much like a flea they could not shake free, a parasite that could neither be eliminated nor exhumed. Ardunia’s greatest wish was to build an aqueduct straight through the heart of the southern nation, but decade after decade its kings would not bow. Tulan’s only peaceful offering in exchange for such access was a punishing, ruinous tax, one too great even for Ardunia. Several times they’d tried simply to decimate Tulan, but the Ardunian military had suffered astonishing losses as a result—Kamran’s own father had died in the effort—and none in the north could understand why.

Hatred had grown between the two nations not unlike an impassable mountain range.

For nearly a century the Ardunian navy had been forced instead to take a far more dangerous route to water, traveling many months for access to the tempestuous river. It was lucky, then, that Ardunia had been blessed not only with a reliable rainy season, but with engineers who’d built impressive catchment areas to capture and store rainwater for years at a time. Even so, the clouds never seemed quite as full these days, and the empire’s cisterns were running low.

Every day, Kamran prayed for rain.

The empire of Ardunia was not officially at war—not yet—but peace, too, Kamran had learned, was maintained at a bloody price.

“Your Highness.” Hazan’s tentative voice startled the prince, returning him to the present moment. “Forgive me. I spoke thoughtlessly.”

Kamran looked up.

The details of the hall in which he stood came suddenly into sharp focus: glossy marble floors, towering jade columns, soaring opalescent ceilings. He felt the worn, leather hilt of his sword against his palm, growing all the while incrementally aware of the musculature of his body, the dense weight he carried always and seldom considered: the heaviness in his arms, the heft of his legs. He forced himself to return the sword to its scabbard, briefly closing his eyes. He smelled rosewater and fresh rice; a servant bustled past carrying a copper tray laden with tea things.

How long had he been lost in his own thoughts?

Kamran had grown anxious and distracted of late. The recent swell of Tulanian spies discovered on Ardunian land had done little for his sleep; alone it would’ve been a disturbing enough discovery, but this intelligence was compounded by his own myriad worries, for not only did the prince fear for their reservoirs, but he’d seen things on his recent tour of duty that continued to unnerve him.

The future seemed dim, and his role in it, bleak.

As was expected, the prince sent his grandfather frequent updates while away. His most recent letter had been rife with news of Tulan, whose small empire became only bolder as the days went on. Rumors of discord and political maneuvering grew louder each day, and despite the tenuous peace between the two empires, Kamran suspected war might soon be inevitable.

His return to the capital the week prior was for two reasons only: first, after completing a perilous water journey, he’d had to replenish the central cisterns that fed the others throughout the empire, and then deliver his troops safely home. Second, and more simply: his grandfather had asked it of him.

In response to Kamran’s many concerns, the prince had been instructed to return to Setar. For a respite, his grandfather had said. An innocuous enough request, one Kamran knew to be quite irregular.

The prince had been restored to the palace for a week now, and every day he grew only more unsettled. Even after seven days home the king had yet to respond directly to his note, and Kamran had grown restless without a mission, without his soldiers. He was just then listening to Hazan articulate these same thoughts, allowing that this very restlessness was—

“—perhaps the only plausible explanation for your actions this morning.”

Yes. Kamran could at least agree that he was eager to return to work. He would need to leave again, he realized.

Soon.