This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(24)

Kamran straightened, then frowned. “What can you mean? How can it be worse than death? Our prisons are not so foul as that. You would be offered a daily meal, at the very least—”

The boy was now shaking his head hard, looking so agitated Kamran feared he might bolt from the room.

“All right—enough,” the prince said reluctantly, and sighed. “You may instead tell me what you know of the girl.”

The boy froze at that, the inquiry unexpected enough to have disarmed him. “Know of her? I do not know her, sire.”

“How, then, were you able to communicate with her? Do you speak much Ardanz?”

“Very little, sire.”

“And yet, you spoke with her.”

“Yes, sire.” The boy blinked. “She spoke Feshtoon.”

Kamran was so surprised by this revelation he failed to mask his expression fast enough. “But there are no servants in the royal city who speak Feshtoon.”

“Begging your pardon, sire, but I didn’t know you were acquainted with all the servants in the royal city.”

At that, Kamran experienced a swell of anger so large he thought it might break open his chest. It took all he had to bite out the words: “Your insolence is astonishing.”

The boy grinned; Kamran resisted the urge to smother him.

This redheaded Fesht boy had the uncommon ability to move Kamran to a swift, discomposing anger—an anger of the most dangerous variety. Kamran knew this, for he knew well his own weaknesses, and implored himself to defuse what he knew to be an irrational reaction. There was no reason to scare away the child, after all, not now that the boy might provide him with information he needed to hunt down the duplicitous servant girl.

“I beg you will help me understand,” Kamran had said flatly. “You claim that a servant girl with little education—a servant girl who is likely illiterate—somehow spoke to you in Feshtoon. You claim she gave you bread, which you di—”

“No, sire. I said that she offered me bread.”

Kamran’s jaw tensed. This was the second time the child had interrupted him. “I see little difference,” he’d said. “Gave and offered are interchangeable words.”

“No, sire. She told me to come to the kitchens at Baz House if I was in need of bread.”

Here, Kamran experienced a moment of triumph.

“Then she lied to you,” said the prince. “I know Baz House, and that girl is no servant there. In fact, if it has not yet been made obvious to you, you should know: that girl was no servant at all.”

The child shook his head. “You’re wrong, sire.”

Impertinent, disrespectful, shameless boy. Kamran found he no longer cared that the child had nearly died; he seemed well enough now, with the audacity of an impudent street rat, speaking to a member of the royal household with so little deference. And yet—Kamran was now shackled to him in this strange way, compelled to be kind to the precocious imp.

Omid. His name was Omid.

He was the son of saffron farmers in the south. His parents had been imprisoned for failing to pay taxes on a meager harvest, and their official complaint—Kamran had since pulled the report—was that the taxes were a fixed amount, instead of a percentage. Paying the fixed amount, they had insisted, would’ve meant starvation for their family, as the season’s crop had been so small. They had appealed to the courts for leniency, but had contracted lung fever in prison and died days later, leaving the boy to fend for himself.

Twelve, he’d said he was. Twelve years old.

“You are either very brave or very stupid,” Kamran had said to him. “To disagree with me so readily.”

“But, sire, you didn’t see her hands,” Omid insisted. “And I did.”

Kamran had only scowled.

In his haste to take his leave of the insufferable child, Kamran had forgotten, yet again, to pay his respects to the honorable priests and priestesses. He was instead intercepted by a halo of Diviners on his way out—who’d said little, as they were wont to do—and accepted as payment but a moment of his time before they pressed a small parcel into his hands. The prince offered his many thanks, but his mind, full and disordered as it was, bade him tuck away the untitled gift, to be opened at a later date.

The parcel would remain forgotten, for some days, in the interior pocket of Kamran’s cloak.

Unnerved by his conversation with Omid, the prince had gone straight from the Diviners Quarters to Baz House, the home of his distant aunt. He knew exactly where the kitchens were; he’d spent a great deal of his youth at Baz House, sneaking belowstairs for snacks after midnight. He considered going through the front doors and simply asking his aunt whether she’d employed such a servant, but he thought of his grandfather’s warning that his actions were now under intense scrutiny.

Kamran had many reasons for seeking out the girl—not the least of which was King Zaal’s confirmation that Ardunia was destined for war—but he did not think it wise to over-hastily spread word of this to the happy public.

In any case, Kamran was good at waiting.

He could stand in one position for hours without tiring, had been trained to practically disappear at will. It was no trouble at all to him to waste an hour standing in an alley to capture a criminal, not when his aim was to protect his empire, to spare his people the machinations of this faceless girl—