Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(80)

But I didn’t try to explain it. The guilty always talked first. Rahim and I were both smart enough not to interrupt the Sultan’s silence.

‘Father—’ Which made us both smarter than Kadir.

‘I didn’t give you permission to speak.’ The Sultan sounded calm. Unnervingly calm. Deceptively calm. ‘You are a thief, Kadir.’ Kadir bristled, but the Sultan was already talking again. ‘Don’t disagree with me. You tried to take something of mine.’ He gestured to me. I hated being referred to as belonging to the Sultan. But I couldn’t help the surge of satisfaction over being worth more to him than Kadir right now. ‘And trade it for the support of the Gallan.’

‘She’s not human, Father!’ Kadir’s voice rose. He sounded close to stomping his foot in rage like a child.

‘Everyone knew that, brother,’ Rahim interjected. His calm just made Kadir angrier. ‘If you only just figured that out, I have some concerns about the intelligence of our future ruler.’

The Sultan held up his hand. ‘If you think now is the time for bickering, with a foreign diplomat dead in my palace, then I have questions about your intelligence, Rahim.’ He nodded at Kadir to continue.

‘The negotiations were lasting forever. And the Gallan were never going to make a new alliance with us so long as you were so blatantly flaunting a half-human thing in violation of their beliefs. They came to me’ – his chest swelled with pride – ‘and demanded her death before they would negotiate any further.’

The Sultan didn’t raise his voice, but even I shrank under the look he gave Kadir. And it wasn’t even directed at me. ‘They demanded her death because she is making lying to me about their resources and their intentions more difficult, and revealing that the Gallan empire is stretched thinner than they would like us to think.’ He spoke slowly, carefully, like he was explaining something to a child. ‘And they came to you because you have clearly been itching to get your hands on her in some way for weeks now.’

Kadir sneered, flopping into the other chair petulantly as his father spoke.

The silence that followed was worse than the glare. ‘I didn’t give you permission to sit.’

Kadir started a laugh, like he thought his father might be joking.

‘Stand up,’ the Sultan ordered calmly. ‘Take an example from your brother for once. Perhaps I should have sent you to Iliaz instead of him.’

I remembered what Rahim had told me – that the Sultan had sent him to Iliaz to die. I understood the threat implied in his words. But it was lost on Kadir.

‘All that military training didn’t help him beat me in the Sultim trials.’ Kadir stood, shoving the chair so it clattered angrily against his father’s desk, shifting some of the papers from the edge onto the floor. ‘So, what, are you going to put him on the throne instead of me now?’

‘The Sultim trials are sacred.’ The Sultan kept all his attention on his son, ignoring the disrupted papers on the ground. ‘Overturning them would turn the people more against us than they already are. You’d have to die before we held another Sultim trial, Kadir.’

‘So unless you’re going to do everyone a favour …’ Rahim muttered.

I snorted under my breath, drawing the Sultan’s gaze. I stifled it too late. The Sultan had already noticed the connection between me and Rahim. But his gaze shifted away again without comment.

‘The Gallan king is due to arrive tomorrow, in advance of Auranzeb.’ The Sultan’s fingers returned to drumming out the same pattern. ‘You will come with me to meet him, Kadir. And you will tell him the same story I will. That the ambassador went into the city without a guard and was killed by rebels on the street. Do you understand?’

Kadir’s jaw worked angrily for a moment. But if he thought his father was going to give in first, he was badly mistaken. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. You are dismissed.’

Kadir slammed the door behind him on his way out, like an angry child.

‘That lie may not be wise, Father,’ Rahim said. ‘If it looks to the Gallan like you can’t control your own people—’

‘Then we may look weak. I had considered that and I don’t in fact need a lesson in political strategy from my son.’ The Sultan cut him off impatiently. ‘If we are lucky, it may give the Gallan soldiers who come with him some incentive to help keep the peace in Izman leading up to Auranzeb. The only alternative is to turn you over to Gallan justice. Perhaps you’d prefer that.’

Rahim’s jaw screwed itself shut.

‘Rahim saved my life.’ I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. The Sultan’s attention swung to me and immediately I regretted talking. But I was already going now. ‘He ought to be rewarded, not threatened.’ The Sultan didn’t speak and I didn’t back down. I couldn’t afford to now. ‘I figured I was here to tell the truth.’

Finally he seemed to check his temper. ‘She’s right. Your soldiers did well today, Rahim.’ Somehow it still didn’t sound like praise. ‘At your orders, no less.’ More like veiled suspicion.

‘Yes, they did.’ Rahim was as smart as his father. He didn’t offer excuses for his men obeying his orders over Kadir’s. He kept his answers short. Like a good soldier would. Or a traitor. Waiting to be dismissed.