This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(9)

Kamran stepped closer; the boy nearly whimpered.

“Jev man,” he said. “Pres.” Answer me. Now.

The boy’s tongue came loose then, almost too quickly to be comprehensible. Kamran translated in his head as the child spoke:

“Nothing, sir—please, sir, I didn’t hurt her, it was only a misunderstanding—”

Kamran clamped a gloved hand around the boy’s dislocated shoulder and the Fesht boy cried out, gasping as his knees buckled.

“You dare lie to my face—”

“Sir—please—” The child was crying now. “She only gave me back my knife, sir, I swear it, and—and then she offered me bread, she said—”

Kamran rocked backward, dropping his hand. “You continue to lie.”

“On m-my mother’s grave, I swear. On all that is holy—”

“She returned your weapon and offered to feed you,” Kamran said sharply, “after you nearly killed her. After you tried to steal from her.”

The boy shook his head, tears welling again in his eyes. “She showed me mercy, sir— Please—”

“Enough.”

The boy’s mouth snapped shut. Kamran’s frustration was mounting; he wanted desperately to throttle someone. He searched the square once more, as if the girl might appear as easily as she’d evaporated. His gaze landed again on the boy.

It was like thunder, his voice.

“You pressed a blade to a woman’s throat like the worst coward, the most detestable of men. That young woman might’ve shown you mercy but I see no reason to do the same. You expect to walk away from this without judgment? Without justice?”

The boy panicked. “Please, sir—I will go and die, sir—I will slit my own throat if you ask me to, only don’t hand me over to the magistrates, I beg you.”

Kamran blinked. The situation grew more complicated by the second. “Why do you say such a thing?”

The boy shook his head then, growing only more hysterical. His eyes were wild, his fear too palpable for theater. Soon he began to wail, the sound ringing through the streets.

Kamran did not know how to calm the urchin; his own dying soldiers had never allowed themselves such weakness in his presence. Too late, Kamran considered letting the boy go, but he’d hardly begun to formulate the thought when, without warning, the child drove the length of the crude blade into his own throat.

Kamran inhaled sharply.

The boy—whose name he did not know—choked on his own blood, on the knife still buried in his neck. Kamran caught him when he fell, could feel the outline of the boy’s ribs under his fingers. He was light as a bird, bones hollowed out, no doubt, by hunger.

Old impulses prevailed.

Kamran issued commands to passersby with the voice he used to lead a legion, and strangers appeared as if out of thin air, abandoning their own children to carry out his orders. His head was so dense with disbelief he hardly noticed when the boy was lifted from his arms and carried out of the square. The way he stared at the blood, the spotted snow, the red rivulets circling a manhole cover—it was as if Kamran had never seen death; hadn’t seen it a thousand times over. He had, he had, he thought he’d seen all manner of darkness. But Kamran had never before witnessed a child commit suicide.

It was then that he saw the handkerchief.

He’d watched the young woman press it to her throat, to the wound inflicted by a boy who was now presumably dead. He’d watched this strange girl manage her own near-death with the forbearance of a soldier, meting out justice with the compassion of a saint. He held no doubt now that she was indeed a spy, one in possession of an astuteness of mind that surprised him.

She’d known in but a moment how to handle the child, had she not? She’d done far better than he, had judged better; and now, as he processed her earlier escape, his fears only ratcheted higher. It was rare that Kamran experienced shame, but the sensation roared inside him now, refusing to be quieted. With a single finger, he lifted the embroidered square out of the snow. He’d expected the white textile to be stained with blood.

It was pristine.





Five





KAMRAN’S HEELS KNOCKED AGAINST THE marble floors with unusual force, the sounds echoing through the cavernous halls of his home. Upon his father’s death Kamran had discovered that he could be propelled through life by a single emotion; carefully cultivated, it grew hot and vital inside his chest, like an experimental organ.

Anger.

It kept him alive better than his heart ever had.

He felt anger always, but he felt it especially now, and Lord save the man who crossed him when he was at his worst.

After tucking the girl’s handkerchief into his breast pocket, he’d pivoted sharply, single-minded as he strode toward his horse, the animal patiently awaiting his return. Kamran liked horses. They did not ask questions before doing as they were told; at least not with their tongues. The jet stallion had not minded his master’s bloodied cloak nor his distracted temper.

Not the way Hazan did.

The minister trailed him now with impressive speed; his the second set of boots pounding the stone floors. Had they not grown up together, Kamran might’ve reacted to this insolence with an inelegant method of problem-solving: brute force. But then, it was his incapacity for awe that made Hazan perfect for his role as minister. Kamran could not countenance sycophants.