Page 122 of The Ragpicker King
“Well,” he said finally. Something about his face looked different, as if the shape of the bones had changed—become harsher, sharper, beneath the skin. “Thank you for your honesty.”
He moved toward the door, a little unsteadily, as if he were finding his way in a dark room. At the door, he paused without turning back to look at her. “My father,” he said. “We have unfinished business there, you and I.”
“Oh—yes. Wait a moment.” Lin darted into her kitchen andreturned with the stoppered flask Merren had given her. She crossed the room to Conor at the half-open door. She could not bear to look at him, but she held the flask out for him to take. “The remedy,” she said. “It is ready for you to administer. And of course I will continue to treat the King,” she added. “He is my patient.”
His fingers brushed hers as he took the flask from her. He drew his hand back quickly.
“Thank you,” he said. “You are indeed an excellent physician, Lin.”
And he was gone.
Lin sank into a chair, staring at the still-open front door and the bit of the street she could see beyond it. Dust and cobblestones. She felt oddly too light, as if a gust of wind might blow through her, finding no resistance.
She did not know how long she had been sitting there when a shadow crossed her threshold. Loomed up in the arch of her doorway, eyes bright and narrow behind a tangle of hair.
Oren Kandel. Staring blankly as if it were not at all odd to find her sitting barefoot in her kitchen, staring at an open door.
“Shekinah,” he said. “Your test has been set for tomorrow at sundown. Present yourself at the Shulamat at that hour. Such is the instruction of the Exilarch.”
She drew in a breath. It was too much, all of this, happening at once. She could not hold it in her mind, could not feel anything beyond a great emptiness.
“Oren,” she said wearily. “You do not need to call me Shekinah.”
“For now I must,” he said, and she saw the hate flash in his small, bright eyes. “But after tomorrow, I will never need to do it again.”
Thunk.The sword stabbed into the hay bale with a satisfying noise. Kel pulled it free with a twist of his wrist, spilling loose hay onto the floorboards.
He was in the Hayloft, and the golden light of late afternoonwas spilling in through the windows like the slow drip of honey. There had seemed no better place to go, really, once Conor had left on his mysterious errand. Especially as Kel wanted to avoid Lilibet, who would surely be in a rage over the destruction of her folly.
By the time he’d left the Castel Mitat, dressed in his practice linens, crews of servants were already starting to cart the broken pieces of the folly away. It would be gone entirely by evening, no trace left, as if none of it had ever happened. As Lilibet had closed away the slaughter in the Shining Gallery by bolting the doors.Why not scrub out the blood, clean the place, restore it?Conor had asked.
Because what is not seen is forgotten,Lilibet had replied.
Thunk.Kel slammed the blade into another hay bale, withdrew it. His arms would hurt tomorrow, but today he didn’t care. Anger powered his movements. Anger at Conor, for the nonsensical and dangerous thing he’d done that had nearly wrecked the alliance with Kutani. Anger that the only way to buy Castellane out of its trouble with Sarthe was with Conor’s life. He was so clearly wretched, and Kel hated it. He was angry at himself, too. It was his duty to observe Conor, to pay close attention to his moods and movements, and yet Conor’s actions at the ball had surprised him—more, he suspected, than they had surprised Anjelica. How had he become so distant from Conor that he could not even guess at the depths of his longing, his despair?
But perhaps it was unfair to blame Conor for hiding his feelings. Hadn’t Kel hidden his own? He’d barely slept himself the past two nights. Over and over he heard Antonetta’s voice,You have to be careful about what you share with Kel.
He had thought she believed him to be the only one she could trust. Now he knew she had never trusted him at all. Not with the truth of herself. He had congratulated himself for being the only one on the Hill who saw through her pretenses, who glimpsed the whip-smart intelligence behind the silk ribbons and giggling. That self-congratulation rang hollow now that he realized she’d taken him in with a different kind of acting.
And he hadn’t seen it. Not until she’d spoken to him at the ball, when he’d been pretending to be Conor. He still didn’t know why she’d said what she had, what her motivation could be. But he knew she’d been laughing at him for some time now. He wondered about that night, when she had rescued him from Tyndaris. Would it have been any different, he wondered, had he given her a real answer when she’d asked what he was doing there?
Would it?He swung again with the sword—an old one, dented from many practice sessions—and again and again, his arm aching, his hair wet with sweat.Burn out the rage,he told himself.Throw yourself against the wall of it like water crashing against rocks. Break yourself apart like a ship running aground on coral. Spill out what is inside—the cargo of useless feelings, pointless hopes.
“Your hands are bleeding.”
Anjelica.
Kel whirled around. He had created a small tornado of loose straw, drifting in the air along with a cloud of dust motes. She was right, he realized, with some surprise—his knuckleswerebloody. He didn’t know how they’d gotten that way.
“I thought you might be here,” she said. “I was looking for you.”
She had twisted her hair into braids and looked younger than she usually did. She had changed from her saffron silk into more casual linen.
“Why?” he asked, still breathless.
“I wanted to apologize.”
Kel plunged the sword into a hay bale, where it stuck, the hilt vibrating slightly. He turned to her, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Apologize for what?”
