The Windward King, page 9
Then came a lesson on posture—mostly Korith shoving Shara’s chin up to an uncomfortable and rudely high angle.
“It’s not rude, it’s regal. You’ll get used to it.”
He said “You’ll get used to it” almost as often as he said “You’re doing fine.” If there was one thing Korith excelled at other than gossip, it was platitudes.
Korith was recounting how Princess Nashai had lost her hearing when a sharp rap at the door sent Shara leaping. Tea splattered over his hand and slopped onto Iliath’s shirt.
“Your Highness?”
Just Tishel. He slumped and blew out a sigh. “Come in.”
She ignored Korith’s bright “Morning, Si!” and planted herself in front of Shara, who wrung out his shirt and rose reluctantly and scrambled for what to do next. Something about shoulders up and chin back, or shoulders back and chin up, and eyes . . . somewhere . . .
Her gaze swept over him, less frightening than usual owing to the dark shadows pooling like smeared makeup beneath her eyes. Had she slept at all last night?
Just when he was sure he’d failed some unspoken test, Tishel bowed. “Your Highness.”
Bowing at people had been on the list, so he simply nodded and said, “Captain.” Before he could stop himself, he added, “I don’t suppose you found him?”
Tishel snorted and pulled a small flask from her hip. “No, but we’ve quelled the rumors. We told those who came for the gifting last night that you were attacked but managed to flee and hide.” She took a sip from the flask, and Shara’s nostrils flared—was she drinking chocolate? “I’m sure that rumor will spread, but it’s better than the truth. I’d suggest looking wary and a bit jumpy today, but . . .”
The vague flick of her hand at him said the rest. He scrunched his toes in the thick wool of Iliath’s boots.
“Now then. Gepar and—”
The scrape of a chair against stone and a shrill female voice sent them all whirling to face the door. Tishel’s hand leapt to her sword, but her expression twitched quickly from concern to distaste as the voice outside continued its tirade.
“—come all this way!”
“I’m sorry,” came a much softer voice that must have been Amesal, Iliath’s young secretary, “but I really must—”
“You are not going to keep me out when you just admitted that half-breed whore—”
A door banged open, and the argument grew louder. Growling, Tishel pushed her way into the outer room, and before Shara could decide whether to follow and rescue poor Amesal or hide and rescue himself, the angry woman caught sight of him.
“Your Highness!”
She swept into an exaggerated bow, flicking the skirt of her long coat to the side in a flourish he’d seen Korith and other nobles use. In Shara’s head, a little Korith voice lectured about her garments: how her coat’s artfully draping sleeves were cut in the latest fashion, how the deep green color was both popular and appropriate for the season.
“Lady Pareth,” Korith whispered with a hint of acidity.
“Lady Pareth,” Shara repeated. His voice wavered over even those simple words. Breathe, Shara. He’d been over this with Korith not ten minutes ago. He couldn’t have forgotten it already. “What can I do for you?”
Lady Pareth straightened and brushed at her garments, sending the scent of roses wisping across the room. “Your Highness, I do apologize for the fuss, but I’d only just disembarked when I heard the news of the attack, and I simply had to come straightaway to reassure myself that you were well and express my deepest concern over this horrific incident.”
Dropping her chin slightly, she twirled a finger around her loose hair and fluttered her eyelashes.
Shara stared. Was she expressing supposed concern over Iliath’s near death or hinting she wanted to mate with him?
Humans were odd.
Nobles were worse.
Korith’s subtle kick startled him from his discomfort, and he started to bow before catching himself. “Thank you for your kind words, Lady Pareth. I’m”—disturbed? bothered?—“honored by your concern for his—er, my well-being.”
“But of course. To think that our beloved prince could be attacked within the royal palace, within his very rooms!”
Her expression of exaggerated horror shifted into a scathing glance at Tishel and then back into her simpering smile so quickly that Shara’s alvithi senses reeled.
“Indeed,” Korith agreed earnestly. “It is most fortunate that the royal guard are trained so well and possess such dedication to our future king.”
Tishel went violently red, and her jaw clenched.
Lady Pareth somehow turned a scowl into another eyelash flutter. “As I’m certain you’re aware, my prince, I will be formally representing my house at the gifting, but in the meantime, please know that House Pareth is, as always, at your service.”
Shara’s mind spiralled into a dive after a proper response. He couldn’t recite the formulaic words Korith had taught him, but a mere “thank you” seemed insufficient. What would a prince say? “I’m . . . pleased to hear that your house will continue to, uh . . . be loyal.”
Well, now he knew what a prince wouldn’t say.
Whether Lady Pareth was oblivious or too sycophantic to care, she merely smiled and bowed again. “Thank you for seeing me, my prince.”
She nodded politely at Korith, scowled at Tishel, and departed. Shara almost threw the bolt behind her, and only the binding cuff prevented him from dissolving into a kitten.
“Only just disembarked.” Korith snorted. “She’s been here three days.”
“Your Highness, I’m so sorry.” Amesal wrung his hands. “I told her you were unavailable, but she—”
“It’s fine. I know how—” He bit his tongue. Iliath didn’t know what it felt like to be pushed around. “That is, don’t worry about it, Amesal.”
He gave the young man an encouraging smile and felt a feather of fondness for Iliath when Amesal smiled back, apparently unsurprised at his prince’s behavior. Dipping his head, Amesal stole back into the corridor, and Shara fled to the study and sank into the nearest chair with a low keen.
“Are they all going to do that?” he muttered, scrunching his nose to banish the lingering rose scent. “Tell me they’re sorry and loyal and then—”
“Flirt?” Korith rolled his eyes.
The disdain was clearly for Lady Pareth, but even so, Shara slouched so deeply that he nearly slid off the chair.
“Shara, you did—”
“Fine, I know.”
“Yes, fine.” Korith’s shadow hovered above him. “Look, you’ve taken on an impossible task, and you won’t do everything right. There’s no shame in that. We’ll help you as much as we can, but we won’t be able to tell you every single thing to do and say. You need to trust yourself as well—your heart and your instincts.”
His heart and his instincts. White stars danced over his vision, and his head spun.
He’d been right last night—they were all doomed.
“. . . didn’t he, Si?” Korith’s voice cut into Shara’s vision of impending disaster. “Sira?”
Tishel jerked her attention from the door. “What?”
“Didn’t Shara do fine out there?”
She scowled and shrugged. “He held a basic, polite conversation. If there was concern about his ability to do that, then I pray we find Iliath sooner rather than later. Until then, whatever you’re teaching him, do it faster. And don’t forget his meeting with Malothi and Gepar in an hour. Excuse me.”
She stalked to the door, and Korith jumped into her path. “Don’t worry about her, Si. Listen, why don’t you—”
Tishel shoved past her brother and shut the door firmly, leaving Korith staring after her and Shara wishing he could be anywhere else.
Chapter 15
Gepar’s Counsel
Even safe behind several locked doors, Shara could hear Amesal scrambling to turn away other nobles, all loudly demanding to see Iliath and reassure themselves that their beloved almost-king was well. As much as the voices rubbed his scales the wrong way, at least he had Korith, who kept up a running commentary on the voices he recognized.
“Watch out for her, she’ll be trying to marry off her daughter to you.”
“Oh hills, if he’s here it means he’s in debt again.”
“This one actually burned down a rival’s warehouse a few months back. Inquiries and hearings and all these witnesses summoned to testify; it was a mess.”
At the end of the hour, they escaped Iliath’s chambers and ambled toward the room where Shara would meet his advisors. Despite the guards trailing them and the increased likelihood of encountering demanding nobles, Shara relished the change—another hour caged by ever-shrinking walls and plagued by the lingering sting of alsum, and he would have gone mad.
As they neared their destination, the stone halls gave way to quietly creaking floorboards and wood-panelled walls.
“It was originally the royal family’s summer retreat,” Korith explained, quietly enough that the guards wouldn’t hear him lecturing the prince on basic history. “After the capital was destroyed in the civil war, they fled here and expanded it into a proper palace.”
Though darker than the stone corridors, the halls exuded warmth and comfort. Shara might have sought refuge here, too, if he hadn’t been so desperate to escape.
The desperation only increased when they reached the council room: thick, sound-swallowing carpets, stifling air, and not a single window. At Korith’s nod, he settled awkwardly into the straight-backed chair at the head of the table. Malothi, Gepar, and Korith sat as well. Tishel paced. No one spoke.
At last, Malothi smoothed the pile of papers she’d brought. Clearing her throat, she frowned at Korith. “I hope it goes without saying, Lord Aman, that everything pertaining to this ordeal is to be held under the strictest confidence, both now and after. You may be important to our ‘king,’ but any indication that you’ve abused your quite unexpected and frankly inconvenient involvement in this affair, and I will personally strap you to the mast of a sinking ship.”
Her tone never changed, and faint wrinkles of humor lined her eyes, yet the underlying threat burned as fiercely as seawater on a wound.
“Relax,” Korith drawled, waving a hand and smiling guilelessly. “I won’t say a word.” He leaned over to Shara and, in a dramatic undertone, whispered, “You’ll save me, right?”
Refusing to indulge him, Malothi gestured at Shara. “Now that we have the immediate problem in hand, we need to focus our attention on the coronation and the Tethamari.”
Korith twitched upright. “We need to focus our attention on finding Iliath.”
“No.” Tishel pivoted. “I need to find Prince Iliath.”
“You most certainly do, Captain,” Gepar said, wringing his hands, “as it was you and your guard who failed to prevent his abduction.”
Tishel stiffened. Her shoulders drooped and her head ducked, but her voice remained sure. “And it is we who will recover him.”
“And what do you plan to do?” Korith pressed, flashing a brief glower at Gepar before fixing his sister in a look of exaggerated interest. “How do you hope to find him when you can’t tell anyone he’s missing?”
It was so obvious an invitation to boast that Shara couldn’t blame Tishel for scowling. “I have some ideas, but with respect, Lord Aman, we are here on Shara’s behalf to discuss his role.”
“But—”
“Lady Malothi?”
Korith huffed in defeat and returned to his sketchbook, no doubt already watching for his next opportunity to put his sister on a pillar. How many such pillars had Tishel shoved over and used to build her wall?
Malothi slid a small pile of papers to Shara, all covered in line after line of swirling script in a deep blueish-purple ink. “This is your schedule for the week,” she told him, chuckling sympathetically when his jaw fell.
“All of this?” His vision blurred, then focused too sharply. There had to be a hundred things on this list. Audiences, meetings, dinners, garment fittings, rehearsals, a parade—on and on, each line a new opportunity to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, lose his wind and plummet from the sky. The word Tethamari stuck out here and there alongside dozens of other unfamiliar names and places and . . .
He sat back, heart pounding. “I can’t do this.”
“You will,” Malothi said.
Gepar twirled his hands with a sort of nervous elegance, and his nose wrinkled like he could scent fear and didn’t care for it. “Unless you want the kingdom to erupt into chaos.”
Shara’s stomach had already erupted into chaos. Closing his eyes, he rubbed another sky of flashing stars from his vision, but that cleared the way for an image of the list.
“I understand it’s overwhelming,” Malothi said, “but bear in mind that many—most, in fact—of the people on this list are coming to Farna from other islands and have rarely spoken with Prince Iliath. Some have never met him. We’ve also cancelled anything that isn’t a formality or coronation preparation, so you needn’t worry about audiences of actual import apart from the Tethamari, nor about meeting with the council. The prince’s relative youth will also give you considerable leeway so long as you maintain proper royal demeanor. Lord Aman can assist you in that.”
Gepar scoffed. Korith scribbled a giant mustache onto his sketch of Gepar.
They spent what felt like an hour perusing the list. Again and again, Shara’s body tried to shift out claws, and not even the cuff could stop his fingernails from piercing deeper into the padded arm of his chair with every reminder of how little he knew. These people were mad to believe he could impersonate their prince.
Drawing a slow breath, he traced a shaking finger over the edge of the page, curling it into a gentle fold as if making the paper look less official would make its contents less intimidating. Sad that the coronation itself now seemed the simplest of all.
The conversation stalled after the coronation—no one wanted to discuss what might happen if Iliath still hadn’t been found, nor acknowledge that if the Tethamari were behind the abduction, none of this planning had any point.
Shara leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, starved for sunlight and fresh air and a giant bowl of fruit. “All right,” he said, trying to sound marginally authoritative. “What else?”
Malothi twirled a loose strand of hair around her finger. “You will go nowhere without your guards, not even within the palace. The added benefit of your presence as Iliath is that it will have ruined whatever immediate plans the kidnappers had, and it’s entirely possible that they will try again. We must not give them the opportunity.”
Shara wasn’t sure he agreed—with his week now laid before him, being kidnapped didn’t sound entirely awful.
“Captain Tishel has already increased the guard around your rooms, and after this morning’s visit from Lady Pareth, I will see to replacing your secretary as wel—”
“What? No!” The words burst forth without consulting his mind.
Malothi pursed her lips, and Tishel stopped pacing. Gepar, who seemed to waver constantly between nervousness and disapproval, finally settled on disapproval. Only Korith smiled.
“I . . .” Shara ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I . . . I like him. And it wasn’t his fault. Please don’t . . .”
The idea of Amesal being sent away stung deeply, personally. All for a single mistake.
Gradually, the room came to life again. Tishel took a drink from her flask and resumed wearing a road into the carpet, and Malothi and Gepar exchanged a few hushed words.
Swivelling to face Shara, Malothi nodded. “Very well. But if we hear of further incidents—”
“Of course.” Shara nodded hastily.
“Only one thing more, then.” Gepar slid two papers along the table and set a stylus on top. “The first of these is a model of Prince Iliath’s signature. Sign the second.”
Shara’s nerves faded beneath the urge to roll his eyes. Any of them could have done this, but the task fell to him because he looked like Iliath. He skimmed the second document, all swirling handwriting he could hardly read. “What is it?”
Gepar huffed. “That, like your secretary, is none of your concern. Please recall that you are not here to have an opinion.”
Heat surged through Shara’s face. “Yes. I mean, no. I understand.”
Korith kicked him beneath the table.
“If it will ease your conscience,” Malothi told him, “it’s merely a note to the treasury authorizing payment for coronation decorations.”
“And you’re being cheated at that price,” added Korith, craning his neck for a better view.
Not even the thick carpet could obscure Tishel’s footfalls now.
Shara’s signature looked like a pile of tangled yarn, but he doubted anyone would care so long as the decorator got paid.
“Good,” Malothi said as Gepar reclaimed the papers. “As you’re now aware, Your Highness, you have an appointment with the tailor shortly. Lord Aman will accompany you, and Lieutenant Mereth will be present as well. If the rest of you would stay behind, please.”
Shara nearly bolted, and to his surprise, Korith followed him from the room without protest or other commentary. They set off down the hall, and Shara was about to heave a sigh of relief when Korith flapped a hand at the guards and subtly steered him into the next room.
“Korith, what—”
Shushing him, Korith closed the door, then made for the wall that divided the two rooms. A large painting of a fox hung there, and with silent, practiced ease, he lifted it off the wall, set it aside, and removed the panelling beneath. A narrow gap of darkness greeted them, just wide enough for a person.
“Do this often, do you?” Shara muttered, but he stepped closer anyway.
