This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(15)

“I am tragically bored,” she said. “And as my child pays so little attention to me, I am forced to be creative.”

Kamran was freshly bathed, his clothes pressed and scented, but he wanted desperately to be back in his military uniform. He’d always disliked his formal clothes for their impracticality, their frivolousness. He resisted the urge now to scratch his neck, where the stiff collar of his tunic scraped against his throat. “No doubt there are innumerable other ways,” he said to his mother, “to inspire my attention.”

“Tedious other ways,” she said tersely. “Besides, I should not have to inspire your interest. I did enough work growing you inside my own body. I am owed, at the very least, a modicum of devotion.”

Kamran bowed. “Indeed.”

“You patronize me.”

“I do not.”

Firuzeh slapped Kamran’s hand away from his neck. “Do cease scratching yourself like a dog, my love.”

Kamran stiffened.

It did not matter how many men he’d killed, his mother would forever treat him like a child. “You would blame me for my discomfort when the collar of this ridiculous costume clearly seeks the decapitation of its wearer? Pray can we not, in all the empire, find someone to stitch together two pieces of reasonable clothing?”

Firuzeh ignored this.

She said, “It is a dangerous thing to keep an intelligent woman from performing a single practical task,” and slipped her arm through her son’s, forcing them to walk together toward the king’s main chamber. “I am not to blame for my fits of creativity.”

Kamran stopped, surprised, and turned to his mother. “Do you mean to say you have a desire to work?”

Firuzeh made a face. “Don’t be intentionally stupid. You know what I mean.”

Kamran had once thought there could never in all the world exist his mother’s equal, not in beauty or elegance, not in grace or intelligence. He’d not known then how critical it was to also possess a heart. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Firuzeh sighed theatrically, waving him away as they entered the king’s reception chamber. Kamran had not known his mother would be joining them for this meeting. He suspected that, more than anything else, she’d come along merely for another look at the king’s rooms, as his were her favorite in the palace, and seldom was anyone invited inside.

His grandfather’s rooms were designed entirely with mirrors; with what seemed an incalculable number of these small, reflective tiles. Every inch of the interior space, high and low, glittered with arrangements of star-like patterns, all interwoven into a series of larger geometric shapes. The soaring domed ceilings glimmered from high above, a mirage of infinity that seemed to reach the heavens. Two large windows were thrown open to grant entrée to the sun: sharp shafts of light penetrated the room, further illuminating constellation after constellation of shattered glow. Even the floors were covered in mirrored tiles, though the delicate work was protected by a series of rich, intricately woven rugs.

The overall effect was ethereal; Kamran imagined it was not unlike standing in the belly of a star. The room itself was sublime, but the effect it had on its occupants was perhaps the greater accomplishment. A visitor stepped into this room and felt at once exalted, transported to the heavens. Even Kamran was not immune to its effects.

His mother, however, grew mournful.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, spinning around the room, a hand clasped to her chest. “This should’ve all been mine one day.”

Kamran watched as his mother peered into the nearest wall, admiring herself; she fluttered her fingers, making her jewels sparkle and dance. Kamran always found it a bit disorienting, entering this space. It inspired a feeling of magnificence, yes, but he found the feeling chased always by a feeling of inadequacy. He felt his small footprint in the world never more acutely than when surrounded by true strength, and he never felt this feeling with more precision than when he drew nearer his grandfather.

The prince looked around then for a sign of the man.

Kamran peered through a crack in one of the adjoining doors, the one he knew led to the king’s bedchamber, and was weighing the impertinence of searching the bedroom when Firuzeh tugged on his arm.

Kamran looked back.

“Life is so unfair, is it not?” she said, her eyes shining with feeling. “Our dreams so easily shattered?”

A muscle jumped in Kamran’s jaw. “Indeed, Mother. Father’s death was a great tragedy.”

She made a noncommittal noise.

Often, Kamran thought he could not leave this palace quickly enough. He did not resent his inheritance to the throne, but neither did he relish it. No, Kamran knew too well the gore that accompanied glory.

He’d never once hoped to be king.

As a child, people spoke to Kamran of his position as if he were blessed, fortunate to be in line for a title that first demanded the deaths of the two people he cared for most in the world. It had always seemed to him a disturbing business, and never more so than the day his father’s head had been returned home without its body.

Kamran was eleven years old.

He was expected to show strength even then; only days later he was forced to attend a ceremony declaring him the direct heir to the throne. He was but a child, commanded to stand beside the mutilated remains of his father and show no pain, no fear—only fury. It was the day his grandfather gave him his first sword, the day his life changed forever. It was the day a boy was forced to leap, unformed, into the body of a man.