This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(29)

She’d run straight into a winter storm, rain lashing the streets, her face, her uncovered head. It was but a moment before Alizeh was soaked through. She was trying, while balancing an armful of parcels, to pull the sopping wet snoda away from her eyes, when she suddenly collided with a stranger. She cried out, her heart racing wildly in her chest, and through miracle alone caught her packages before they hit the ground. Alizeh gave up on her snoda then, darting deeper into the night, moving almost as fast as her feet could carry her.

She was thinking of the devil.

There once was a man

who bore a snake on each shoulder.

If the snakes were well fed

their master ceased growing older.

What they ate no one knew,

even as the children were found

with brains shucked from their skulls,

bodies splayed on the ground.

The vision she’d seen, the nightmare delivered by Iblees in the night—

The signs seemed clear enough now: the hooded man in the square; the boy who’d never turned up at her kitchen door; the devil whispering riddles in her heart.

That face had belonged to the prince.

Who else could it be? It had to be the prince, the elusive prince—and he was murdering children. Or perhaps he was trying to murder children. Had he tried to murder the child and failed? When Alizeh had left the Fesht boy earlier today he’d not seemed in danger of killing himself.

What had the prince done to him?

Alizeh’s feet pounded the slick cobblestone as she ran, desperately, back to Baz House. Alizeh had hardly enough time to breathe lately; she’d even less time to solve a riddle sent down from the devil. Her head was spinning, her boots slipping. The rain was falling so hard she hardly saw where she was going, much less the hand that darted out of the darkness, clamping down on her wrist.

She screamed.





Twelve





KAMRAN DID NOT LOOK AT Hazan as the latter approached through what was fast becoming a violent storm, choosing to stare instead at a stripe of wet cobblestone shimmering under orange gaslight. The rain had grown only more brutal, thrashing all and sundry while a vengeful wind rattled around their bodies, unseating ribbons of frost from a stand of trees.

It was unlike Hazan to overlook Kamran’s cold reception, for though the minister knew his place—and knew that he was owed little of Kamran’s attentions—he relished any opportunity to provoke his old friend, as the prince was easily provoked.

Theirs was an unusual friendship, to be sure.

The solidarity between the two was real—if varnished over with a thin layer of acerbity—but the foundations of their comradeship were so steeped in the separation of their classes that it seldom occurred to Kamran to ask Hazan a single question about his life. The prince assumed, because they’d been acquainted since childhood, that he knew all there was to know about his minister, and it had never once occurred to him that he might be wrong, that a subordinate might possess in his mind as many dimensions as his superior.

Still, the general effect of proximity over time meant that Kamran was at least well versed in the language of his minister’s silence.

That Hazan said nothing as he stepped under the battered awning was Kamran’s first indication that something was wrong. When Hazan shifted his weight, a moment later, Kamran had his second.

“Out with it,” he said, straining a bit to be heard over the rain. “What have you discovered?”

“Only that you were right,” said Hazan, his expression dour.

Kamran turned his gaze up at the gaslight, watched the flame batter the glass cage with its tongues. He felt suddenly uneasy. “I am often right, Minister. Why should this fact distress you tonight?”

Hazan did not respond, reaching instead into his coat pocket for the handkerchief, which he held out to the prince. This, Kamran accepted wordlessly.

Kamran studied the handkerchief with his fingers, running the pad of his thumb over its delicate lace edges. The textile was of a higher quality than he’d originally considered, with an embroidered detail in one corner that the prince only now noticed. He struggled to distinguish the details in the dim light, but it appeared to be a small, winged insect—just above which hovered an ornamental crown.

The prince frowned.

The heavy fabric was neither damp nor dirty. Kamran turned it over in his hands, finding it hard to believe that such a thing was in fact stained with the girl’s blood. More curious, perhaps, was that as the day wore on, Kamran grew only more interested in its mysterious owner.

“Your Highness.”

Kamran was again studying the embroidered fly, trying to name the uncommon insect, when he said: “Go on, then. I take it you’ve discovered something dreadful?”

“Indeed.”

Kamran finally looked up at Hazan, his heart constricting in his chest. The prince had only just reconciled himself to the idea of the girl’s innocence; all this uncertainty was reeking havoc on his mind.

“What, then?” Kamran forced a laugh. “She is a Tulanian spy? A mercenary?”

Hazan grimaced. “The news is bleak indeed, sire.”

Kamran took a deep, bracing breath, felt the chill fill his lungs. He experienced, for an extraordinary moment, a pang of what could only be described as disappointment—a feeling that left him both stunned and confused.