“Rock the boat,” I offer, nodding. “When did things change between you and Tamsin?”
“Perhaps a year ago, during Kualni An-Orra. Folk were rushing to the terraces to see the rainbow, everyone murmuring the Prayer of the Colors. And I was doing the same, standing at the rail, and then it struck me that the person next to me wasn’t. And I turned and it was her.” He tilts the amber si-oque, gazing at the light flickering on its gems. “She was looking up at the sky, and she smiled and said, ‘Funny, how we break it down into twelve parts. It’s so very like people to simplify, when instead the truth is a . . .’ Forgive me, I can’t recall the word. Opohko—when all the colors run together, with no breaks between?”
“A spectrum,” I suggest.
“Yes, spectrum. And I said, ‘Uah, yes, I feel the same, how simplistic we make it,’ and we started talking. And I found she was not nearly so frightening as I’d made her out to be. Brilliant, uah, and so sure, but friendly and casual, too.”
“And things took off?” I say.
“Things . . . took . . .”
I adjust my wording. “You developed a relationship.”
“Well, yes—accidentally. Ikuah.” He stumbles for words in Eastern. “We kept it quiet, or at least, we thought we did. We were so careful, I still don’t understand how . . . how someone found out.” He rubs his eyes with vigor. “It’s not customary, you see, for an ashoki and a monarch to fall in love. Many ashoki choose not to marry, to avoid forging one-sided alliances. Certainly no king or queen has ever married their ashoki. It’s not illegal, just . . . not wise. Too much potential for bias. We knew there would be an uproar in court, so we agreed to proceed slowly, with care, letting things unfold for a few years, before we made any big decisions. We treated each other as casual acquaintances in public, we kept all our correspondences hidden . . . the only times we were alone was during weekly policy meetings, when she helped me write the letters to Princess Eloise.”
“Could someone have observed you during those?” I ask.
His ears redden, and I expect my guess was correct—that more went on during those policy meetings than simply drafting a few letters.
“I don’t see how,” he says firmly. “I meet with all kinds of people privately, and we were no more or less secretive when scheduling them. I don’t see why someone might suspect we were up to anything extraordinary.” He shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter how we . . . let the weasel out of the box, or however that saying goes. The point is, someone found out—someone who feared Tamsin’s influence on me. Which is why I don’t know who to trust—it could be anyone, it could be everyone. If I appeal to the wrong person for help, or if I confront the wrong person, they could very well turn around and tell whoever’s keeping her to murder her, and I can’t . . . I can’t do anything, can’t find . . . ekho, see . . .”
He’s losing his grip on Eastern again, but the frustration in his voice makes it clear. His fingers have strayed unconsciously to the hilt of his rapier on the end table, as if wishing he could introduce it to his secret enemy.
I spread my hands on my knees and switch back into Moquoian. “I’m sorry to hear all this, Iano, really I am—and I’m sorry that it’s created such a fiasco for you. But I don’t have anything to do with it, and neither does the ambassador or the princess. Which is why I want to set a few things right before we leave.”
He picks his head up from the back of the chair. “Leave? Why are you leaving?”
“Well, a variety of reasons, one of which is our negative progress in the negotiations for the Ferinno Road. But the other is that Princess Eloise is sick—she’s come down with rainshed fever.”
“Oh,” he says, startled. “I’m sorry to hear that.” And he sounds sincere. “Can she not recover here? My personal physician is highly qualified.”
“It’s complicated,” I say. “Rou would rather get her back east, to be closer to her mother, and I don’t blame him. He’s . . . protective of her.” I’m not sure whether to get into the case of Moira Alastaire at the moment—there are so many other moving parts to this. “Besides that, I have my suspicions that someone deliberately exposed her to the fever. One of her windowpanes was removed, and a bowl of water left on the sill to breed mosquitoes. I think your enemy in court is against us, as well.”
His eyes widen in shock, and then his gaze drifts to the fire, his fingers clenched on the arms of his chair. “I’m sorry that my court has put her at risk. I respect her a great deal—I wish these circumstances had been different. If it’s any consolation, people often recover from rainshed fever the first time around.”
“It’s not a risk Eloise or Rou is willing to take—particularly not if it was deliberate,” I say. “Both of them want to leave now, and I’m not going to try to stop them. But before we go, I just wanted you to understand that you don’t need to home in on the Ferinno to search for Tamsin. We haven’t got her. And sending soldiers over the border is only going to make things worse for you.”
“I’m not sending them into the Ferinno because of you,” he says, his eyebrows raised. “Or at least, not anymore. I admit I couldn’t think what your motive might be for all this, but like I said, every clue I can find points to the desert. It’s where the Sunshield Bandit attacked her stage, and it’s where her letters are coming from.”
“I’m not so sure the Sunshield Bandit—wait, how do you know it’s where her letters are coming from?” My brow furrows. “I thought you didn’t know who’s sending them.”
“I don’t. But I can tell where they’re coming from.” He tilts the envelope toward the firelight and taps the writing—specifically on the water spot over his name. “Water-soluble ink, and paper, not parchment, made from some kind of reed—no one in Moquoia would use materials like this. Our ink is gum based, to withstand the rain, and our parchment is all sheep or goatskin.”
He gropes for a random piece of correspondence on the side table and hands it to me to compare. I take both it and the envelope, running my thumb over the parchment. Sure enough, the blackmail letter is noticeably more lightweight, with a rough grain, and the ink is thinner.
“I’ve compared it to a few other pieces of correspondence from the stage road in the Ferinno, including your letters,” he says with determination. “The ink is the same, the paper is similar. The letters are coming from the desert. And that’s not even considering the report that the Sunshield Bandit was the one to turn over her stage. If you’re not behind it, then she must have a hand in it somehow.” He clenches his fingers on his trousers. “She must have contacts in our court. Maybe even people in her pay. The servants seem to think so.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why would she want this kind of leverage over you?”
“By the colors, I don’t know—power, money. Control.”
“But she’s not harassing you for that kind of thing. She—or whoever—is focused on appointing Kimela to ashoki.”
“So?”
“So—why would the Sunshield Bandit want Kimela to be ashoki, or care about the ashoki at all?”
He’s quiet. Then, hurriedly, “There could be some motive we don’t know about.”
I shake my head. “I really don’t think it was her.”
“Why?” he asks. “Why are you so ready to believe in the virtue of a notorious outlaw?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it virtue, but if my dates are correct, I think on the day she was allegedly turning over Tamsin’s stage, she was actually robbing a different stage outside Snaketown.”
He frowns. “Why? How do you know?”
“Fala told me Tamsin was attacked at the start of Iksi?”
“You seem very familiar with my servants,” he says shortly.
“No one else was giving me any answers,” I point out.
He sighs with some irritation. “I suppose. Yes, the attack was at the start of Iksi.”
“Do you remember the exact day?”
“We got the news on the fifth. It happened three
days before.”
I reach into my tunic and pull out the letter Colm sent me a week and a half ago. “We traveled across the desert with one of my professors, Eloise’s uncle. He had business to conduct in Pasul while we continued on to Tolukum. He broke camp for Snaketown on the first of Iksi and was attacked that day by the Sunshield Bandit.” I tap the date written in his cramped hand. “Unless she’s developed the ability to manifest out of the sun itself, I don’t see how she could be outside Snaketown on the first and ninety miles away in Vittenta on the second.”
He takes Colm’s letter and scans it himself.
“What’s this bit down here—who’s Moira? Is this about that missing princess from way back when?”
“No—well, sort of, but not at the moment.” By the Light, this is getting complicated—fake murders and desert hostages and long-lost princesses. “What’s more important is that the story about the attack on Tamsin’s stage was deliberately false.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything—I already know I’m being misled.”
“But not by the Sunshield Bandit. You’re looking for someone to trust. You’re also looking for someone being held captive, by all evidence in the Ferinno.” I circle my hands, trying to stir up his comprehension, to guide him to the same lightning strike I had at Eloise’s window a few hours earlier. “Who better to find an antislavery prisoner in the desert than someone who deliberately roots out slavers?”
He stares at me a moment, and then he throws his head back and gives the first laugh I’ve heard out of him in five weeks. “So far in your stay you have struck me as a little perplexed, a little overeager, but not a joker.”
“I’m not joking,” I say, my cheeks reddening. “I’m serious. If Tamsin comes back before your coronation, she can resume her post as ashoki. You won’t have to appoint Kimela.”
“I’ve already made the announcement,” he says, gesturing to the blackmail letter.
“But ashoki is a lifelong position, isn’t it? If Tamsin’s still alive, then she’s still the ashoki, isn’t she? You wouldn’t be able to appoint Kimela—there’s no vacancy to fill.”
He stares. “Yes, I suppose . . . you’re correct. I’ve been so worried about finding her that I haven’t considered that she negates a new ashoki.” He brightens considerably, but the expression is instantly replaced by dismay. “Which is why I need to find her before my coronation—they’ll keep her alive until then, but once Kimela is appointed, they won’t want there to be anything that might undo her position.”
I nod. “You need to find her as quickly as possible. If you can do that, and pinpoint who’s threatening you, then we avoid war, and we can begin diplomacy again, which means there’s a real chance we can stamp out the slave trade—if Tamsin’s as set against trafficking as you say she is.”
“She is,” he says firmly. “She was dokkua-ti into working for slavers after her mother died, to copy manifestos and sale papers for them.”
“Sorry—she was what? I don’t know that word.”
“She was . . . recruit . . . er, f-forced? Uah, forced. Into a bond.”
“She was captured?” I nearly squawk. “She was a slave?”
“She was a bond-servant. It’s different. Many people work for bonds, there are some in the palace . . .”
“It’s still . . .”
He tosses up his hands defensively. “Slavery, I know. I understand. Tamsin helped me realize that. I don’t pretend to justify it to you, though it is a more complex system than I think your Eastern courts comprehend. There are many who would not be able to survive without the room and board provided on bond.”
“I expect most of them would prefer a livable wage,” I say flatly.
He sighs. “Yes. I am aware. And I was working on it. We both were—like I said, Tamsin helped draft all my letters to you. She had the ideas about leasing the quarries, about partnering with Alcoran engineers to mechanize part of the process to cut down the need for human labor. She’s—she’s incredible, she has such a sense on economy and society and how the two intersect . . . how to sway people, how to communicate . . . it made her an astonishing ashoki. It will be a difficult transition—expensive, possibly recessive, and heavily opposed by many influential people in court. But I was so sure, with her at my side . . .”
“Well, that only proves my point about the Sunshield Bandit,” I say, trying to steer him back to my earlier thought. “Getting Tamsin back could be extremely enticing to her—dismantling the slave trade means no more need to pursue slave wagons.”
His eyebrows knit, and I suspect he’s suppressing an eye roll. “I think you overestimate her sense of goodwill.”
“Well, we’ll probably have to offer a reward, too,” I acknowledge. “But she’s stealing shoes and pocket change—I think we could come up with a sum she’d be willing to accept.”
He spreads his hands, half slouched in his chair with one boot up on the cushion. “And how exactly do I pitch this idea to her? Ride out into the desert and hope she attacks me?”
I fidget a moment, silent.
“Oh, colored Light,” he says in realization. “That’s exactly your plan, isn’t it? Veran, she set fire to a stage a few days ago.”
“She set fire to a slave wagon, not a stage, and the report said there were multiple patches of blood in the sand,” I point out. “There was probably some kind of struggle. I don’t think she would have attacked the wagon just to torch everyone inside. Something probably went wrong.”
He groans and rubs his eyes. “None of this is making it sound any more sensible. She’s a notorious outlaw, and an enigma. And anyway—not to sound conceited, but I am a rather important member of court. I’m the only direct heir—should I die, I leave a vacuum. That won’t help either of our causes in the least—I’m just as likely to be replaced by a pro-slavery minister.”
I ponder a moment, staring at the fire, making mental calculations, guesses, estimations, stretches of imagination.
“I’ll go, then,” I say.
He arches a sculpted eyebrow. “I thought you were leaving.”
“We are—rather conveniently for Pasul.” My heart quickens in my chest, blurry details coming together. “I could leave tonight. I’ll move fast on horseback, much faster than the coaches. And I won’t have to make scheduled stops like they will. I’ll camp along the road. It’ll take a week for a coach to reach Pasul, but I can make it in half that. I can charter a stage to take me into the desert and draw the Sunshield Bandit’s attention. I’ll get the information from her, and then, if I’m lucky, I might even be back in Pasul by the time the ambassador and Princess Eloise get there.”
Rou will be livid.
Iano is staring at me as if I’m in the process of sprouting another head.
“What would the princess think of this?” he asks.
“She’d understand,” I lie, my gut twinging. She’ll be angry with me, too, but it’s a price I’m going to have to pay, and grovel later. Iano’s inscrutable gaze remains locked on mine, and I silently pray that he won’t ask about Rou. I don’t think I can lie that big.
“Why?” he finally asks. “You’ve given me firm evidence you’re not behind the blackmail—why stay tangled up in this?”
“I want to end the slave trade.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “That’s not why. Or, at least, that’s not the main reason.”
I swallow. “I . . . listen, this trip, this alliance—this is the first real thing I’ve ever been trusted with. You know about my parents?”
“King and queen of the Silverwood Mountains?” he asks. “Didn’t your mother reinstate Queen Mona Alastaire to the throne of Lumen Lake and facilitate the Eastern Alliance?”
“More or less. My father had nearly as much a role as she did, and my siblings sort of inherited their tendency toward greatness. Of the five of us, I’m the only one who hasn’t done anything remotely noteworthy.”
“You’re eighteen,” he says sagely, as if he’s not merel
y a year older than me.
“My little sister is fifteen, and she’s already considered one of the greatest dancers the Silverwood has ever seen,” I say. “And my brother is nineteen and nearly ready to be a Woodwalker. My older sisters are no different. It’s not so much that I want a victory to call my own, it’s that I don’t want a colossal failure. This trip, being here, alongside Rou and Eloise, who have their own status—this has been my first real chance to actually do something. My parents weren’t keen on me coming. I worked my ass off at the university to make sure I had the highest marks in Moquoian that anyone in the East has ever had.” My hands fall open in my lap. “I can’t just walk away, knowing what I know, and leave things to only get worse. It could be years before another diplomatic trip can be arranged. I know we can make this work, if we can only straighten out what’s gone wrong.”
“And you’re obsessed with the Sunshield Bandit,” he says wryly. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m not obsessed. But—she does fascinate me. The fact that she’s made herself into a . . . a . . .”
“Terror of the desert,” he supplies.
“Or queen of the desert, if you will. I really do think she can help us. But—and maybe I’m deranged—but I also just want to see her myself, to see if all the tales are true. And if they’re not true, then I want to know how she’s managed to build and keep such a name for herself.” I shrug. “You said it yourself—she’s an enigma, powerful and heroic and free as a breeze. That doesn’t make you curious?”
“Not in a way that makes me want to put myself at the mercy of her sword,” he says. “But it would be very nice to start stripping away some of the pedestal she’s on, especially if she helps us in the process.”
That’s not exactly what I have in mind, but I nod to keep him going. “I think it’s worth a try.”
“I think it’s crazy, but you’re the one taking the biggest risk, not me. How are you planning to relay your information to me after you return to Pasul?”
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