Ash Princess(Ash Princess Trilogy #1)(18)

Instead, he lets out a long, pained exhale and tears his gaze away. He suddenly looks much older than seventeen. He looks like a man who has seen too much of the world. “What kind of information?” he asks finally.

My smile feels brittle. “They aren’t infallible, no matter what the Kaiser likes to believe. The riot last month, in the Air Mine?”

He looks away from me. “The one that killed a hundred Astreans and injured more than twice that?” he asks.

“Instigated by an earthquake, of all things. The Astreans saw their opportunity to revolt and they took it. The Kaiser said Ampelio caused it, but he was a Fire Guardian, not Earth. Of course, the Kaiser doesn’t rely on logic or facts. He said Ampelio caused it, and that’s good enough for the Kalovaxians,” I say. “Besides, it killed nearly as many Kalovaxians,” I add.

His thick eyebrows dart up. “I didn’t hear that.”

“The Kaiser must have kept it quiet. He wouldn’t want anyone to know how much damage a group of Astrean rebels could do. You know the Theyn?”

Blaise’s face darkens and he gives a grunt of acknowledgment.

“His daughter thinks of me as a friend, and she has loose lips,” I say, though guilt ties my stomach into knots as I say it. Cress is my friend, but she’s also the Theyn’s daughter. It’s easiest to think of them as two separate people.

“I’m surprised they allow her around you, then,” he remarks.

I shake my head. “I’m just a broken girl to them, a bleeding trophy from another land they’ve conquered,” I say. “They don’t see me as a threat.”

He frowns. “And the Kaiser? Do you have anything on him?”

“It’s difficult,” I admit. “He’s careful to appear more god than human. Even the Kalovaxians are too frightened of his wrath to risk gossiping, at least not where they can be overheard.”

“And the Prinz?” he presses.

The Prinz. S?ren, he asked me to call him. I hear him tell me the names of the Astreans he killed on his tenth birthday again, though I’m sure there have been many more killings since then. He can hardly remember all their names, can he?

I push the thought aside and shrug. “I don’t know him well; he’s been training at sea for the last five years. He’s a warrior, and a good one from what I’ve heard,” I say, thinking more about our conversation at the banquet, how he followed me after Ampelio’s execution to make sure I was all right when no one else thought twice about me. “But he has a weakness for heroism. I suppose it traces back to wanting to protect his mother. The Kaiser doesn’t seem particularly attached to him, even as an heir. I think he’s intimidated by him. As I said, the Kalovaxians don’t love the Kaiser, they fear him. I’m sure many of them are waiting for the day the Prinz replaces him.”

Blaise’s expression is guarded, but I can see his mind working. “Have you heard anything about berserkers?”

The word is strange, though it’s certainly Kalovaxian. “Berserkers?” I repeat. “I don’t think so, no.”

“It’s a kind of weapon,” he explains. “There have been…whispers about them, but no one’s been able to discover what they do firsthand. Or at least survive to report on it.”

“The Theyn’s daughter might know something,” I say, desperation leaking into my voice. I need to stay here, I need to be useful, I need to do something. “I can try to find out more.”

He gives a loud exhale, leaning his head back against the wall. He’s pretending to consider it, but I know I have him. I’m not offering much, but he has no other options.

“I’ll have to find a way to stay in contact,” he says finally.

Relief floods through me, and I can’t help but laugh. “You certainly can’t drug my Shadows again.”

He looks surprised that I figured it out, but shrugs. “They’ll think they got carried away at the banquet, and they definitely won’t want the Kaiser to find out about it.”

“The Kaiser finds out about everything,” I tell him. “This time, the Shadows might take the fall, but if there’s a pattern—even a hint of a pattern—he’ll find a way to blame me for it.”

He thinks for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“I might have an idea, but I’ll need some help first,” he says. “It might be a few days. I’ll find you—don’t risk coming looking for me. In the meantime, see what you can do about the Prinz.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He looks me over, sizing me up again, but this time in a different way, one I can’t quite put my finger on. “You said he likes the idea of being a hero,” he says, a grim smile pulling at his mouth. “Aren’t you a maiden in need of rescuing?”

I can’t help but laugh. “I’m hardly of any interest to him. The Kaiser would never allow it.”

“And spoiled prinzes always want things they can’t have,” he says. “You notice a lot, but did you notice the way he looked at you?”

I think of the way he watched me at the banquet, how he asked if I was all right, but the idea still seems ridiculous.

“The same way he looked at anyone, I’d imagine. With an expression carved from stone and frost behind his eyes.”