The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(27)

Omair made a sound of acknowledgment. “It’s hard to believe that Daagmun—that the emperor hasn’t caught wind of this.”

“You’ve been away too long,” the stranger said. “You forget how the court works—secrets are both currency and weaponry. The clever ones hoard them until the right opportunity. And if you’re not clever, you don’t survive.”

“Then how are you still around?” Omair retorted, but his voice was fond. Nok had never heard the old man speak this way—it felt not unlike how Adé teased Nok.

“That’s good,” snapped the stranger. “That’s very funny. Well, here’s another joke for you: Set believes he’s found Yunis.”

Nok frowned. Yunis. The Gray City in the North. Where rites and devotions and diplomatic meetings between the half a hundred Gifted Kith took place for a thousand years. Until the imperials razed it a year before Nok’s birth.

It had been beyond a dark time for all the Gifted—Nok’s mother often said he and Nasan had been born after the end of the world. But of course, she hadn’t known what was yet to come.

“Yunis was destroyed,” Omair said, as though echoing Nok’s thoughts. There was a creak as he leaned back in his chair.

“The old city was,” countered the stranger firmly. “There were always rumors of survivors—”

“Just rumors.”

There was a long pause. “I still have friends in the North. Men I fought beside in battle. Men I trust my life to.”

“And?”

“I have it on good faith that Prince Jin—the youngest of the Triarch—was recently seen patrolling their borders with a force ten thousand strong.”

“That’s one royal. If there’s any truth to the story at all.”

The stranger chose to ignore Omair’s second comment. “That one royal is the one that matters—he controls their army.”

“It seems unlikely there would be anywhere left for them to hide,” Omair mused. “The colonies have grown so. I hear they’re using sparkstone to crumble the mountains.”

“Just the foothills, here and there. If anywhere could hide a city, it would be the Gray Mountains,” the stranger said. Then he snorted. “And the situation up there is far more precarious than the emperor would like—than his advisers let on. I suppose you heard about the prison break earlier this moon? Fifty slipskins and convicts freed—”

Nok’s breath caught in his throat. Slipskins. For half a heartbeat, his sister’s face hovered in front of his own and something in him soared. No, he said, yanking it back down. It was a familiar feeling; how many times had he woken thinking the past year, then two years, five years, had been a terrible dream, only to remember it was all too real?

Fifty slipskins. He slammed down the spike of hope and exhilaration and fear that surged in him at those words. They had nothing to do with him. Everyone I ever loved is dead. He’d seen them die.

“What does Set want with the Gray City, anyway?” Omair asked, drawing Nok back into their conversation.

“I don’t know.” The stranger sounded frustrated. “None of us seem to, except for his monk, and he’s not telling. But whatever it is, Set seems willing to commit half the imperial army toward getting it, even if it means beggaring the empire along the way. If the girl doesn’t prevail, war may be at hand again.”

“The girl,” Omair said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” His voice took on a new edge. Bitterness, Nok realized. “You want me to make a new king.”

“You did it before.”

“And did you forget what happened then?” The pain and loathing that clung to his words was unlike anything Nok had heard from the old man before, but he recognized their shape nevertheless. Shame. Guilt. Loss. All things Nok himself wore like a second skin.

“This time won’t be like the last. I’ve trained Princess Lu since she was a child,” the stranger said, his voice vehement. Not angry, though; proud. “She’s green, but strong. Smarter than her father ever was. And she has a good heart. She will need guidance, but I believe in her.”

When Omair spoke again, his voice was soft: “Does she look like her mother?”

The stranger scoffed. “It isn’t like that.”

Omair lapsed into a weighted silence. Nok could imagine with perfect clarity the look on his face: the glint in his shrewd, appraising eyes, the way his mouth would turn down slightly at the corners in restrained disapproval, as though waiting for your shame to occur to you.

“Don’t look at me that way,” the stranger snapped. But there was something almost affectionate in his tone. “It’s not going to work. I’m not eighteen anymore. I’m an old man.”

Omair said nothing.

“There’s something about the princess that recalls her, certainly—how not? But no, she looks nothing like her. And so what if she did? Like I said: I’m an old man.”

The princess’s mother . . . ? Did the stranger have romantic feelings for the empress? Nok recalled the radiant, stately woman with cold gray eyes. Eyes that to his mind inspired fear over affection, but then, he knew some men could be quite stupid about pretty women.

“I’m not accusing you of anything untoward,” Omair said. “It’s only, old men get sentimental.”