Page 61 of The Ragpicker King
Lin frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve never been drunk.”
The Prince smiled. It was not his earlier, practiced smile. It was a real smile, with no edge of falsity to it.
“I’m a very busy physician,” she said. “I don’t have time to be drunk.”
“Gasquet is a doctor, and he’s drunk all the time,” Prince Conor pointed out.
“Yes,” said Lin. “But he is a very, very bad doctor. That’s why you keep coming to me in emergencies. You’ve done it”—she counted aloud on her fingers—“three times now.Three.”
His eyes sparkled. There was something heart-catching about his unstudied amusement. Though it had nothing to do with him personally, Lin reminded herself. It was as she had said before, about the Arena.Everyone is interested in beautiful things.Though it was unfair that he was a Prince and also beautiful. Like being very rich and very lucky; a person should really be only one of those things.
“I have an idea,” he said. “There are plenty offloriculturetexts in the Palace library, due to my mother’s obsession with gardens.”
“You’ve been to the Palace library?” Lin couldn’t hide her surprise.
“The assumptions you make about me are truly bizarre,” he said. “Apparently you think I am illiterate and are not afraid to say so to my face. It’s... unusual.”
“I just didn’t think—”
“That I know how to read? Believe me, I’m required to—andin several languages. Ienjoyreading. I could show you my favorite books, but you would probably tell me they were silly.”
Lin made an indignant sound.
“There’s a banquet I can miss, if I must, tomorrow night. Come to Marivent. I’ll let you into the library. You can help me look for information on this root of yours.”
There was a loud grinding noise. Two gates had opened in the pit. Through each slithered a massive crocodile—certainly among the largest that had marched around the Arena earlier. Now that there were only two, it was possible to see them in more detail: Elaborately worked collars encircled their necks, each collar attached to a chain. Their scales flashed; jewels were embedded into individual scutes, each jewel a symbol of a battle won. White scars showed along their hides, around their eyes and jaws.
At the other ends of the animals’ chains were their handlers.Massive men with oarsman’s shoulders, they controlled their beasts with a mixture of strength and training. These were not crocodiles from the harbor of Castellane; they had been bred as fighting animals, and as such, responded to their handlers. Still, it was a dangerous job: Lin had once cared for a handler whose leg had been bitten off below the knee by his beast.
The handlers released the animals, who lunged for each other, jaws snapping. The acoustics of the Arena brought the sound up to the crowd, who yelled out the names of their preferred fighters—Split-Tail! Green Death!—though Lin doubted the crocodiles cared.
Amid the noise and motion of the fight, Lin caught sight of another movement. It was Kel, heading up the steps of the Arena, clearly having finished his conversation with Magali. Lin must have made a noise of surprise—she had nearly forgotten that her purpose in the box was to distract the Prince’s attention—for Conor glanced at her and said, “Does it bother you? The sight of the crocodiles?”
“I am not afraid of them, no.” The warmth of the alcohol was receding; she felt a bit sick. “It is more that I have no desire to see two living creatures, no matter how brutal they are, kill each other.”
“It is unusual for one to kill the other.” Prince Conor gestured toward the Arena floor. “You see that white circle chalked at their feet? Each crocodile tries to drive the other out of the circle’s boundary. The one pushed out of the circle loses. They fight for territory just as people do. Murder is not the first step; the game of dominance comes before it. It is about what you can hold,” he added, “even as another might try to take it from you.”
“But they wound each other,” Lin said. “They bite and slash and bleed.”
“Of course.” There was an odd light in his eyes as he studied her face. “I had forgotten you can be gentlehearted.”
In the pit, the crocodiles circled each other, heads down, growling. Lin wanted to say,I am always gentle, I heal, I am a physician.She wanted to say,I can see the shadows in your eyes, hear the bitterness inyour voice when you speak of your father. I know you have nightmares. Kel told me. I feel for your wounds. How could I not?
But she thought, instead,He gave me a royal order,and the taste of therabarbarowas bitter in the back of her throat.
“Well,” she said, rising to her feet, “not to Princes. Just crocodiles,” and she slipped out of the box without looking back.
She passed the Castelguards on the long stairs and heard the crowd roar as she went; the beasts in the pit below had begun to fight.
Well done, Lin,Kel thought as he made his way down the Arena steps. Away from the shade of the royal box, the Arena was even hotter than it had been earlier, and more crowded. The air was thick and salty, as if the sea and air had melded at the horizon.
Lin had been nimble in getting him away from Conor. Clever to use her relationship with Mayesh that way. Though she’d certainly have to think up something that would keep Conor distracted for the next quarter hour at least.
He was aware that somewhere in the Arena, Ji-An and the others were watching him as he approached the lower tier where Magali Berthe was seated, alone.
Kel was used to seeing Magali on the Hill, clothed in the rose and silver of the Alleyne livery. Now she was dressed as an ordinary woman of Castellane, a shopkeeper or a publican’s wife, wearing a plain brown cotton dress over a linen cotehardie. In her lap was a ceramic dish of sweet treats: fried milk, sesamepasteli,spiced biscuits from Hanse. She was staring fixedly at the crocodiles parading around the Arena floor.
Kel pushed past a knot of people—some of whom stared; perhaps they recognized him as one of the Prince’s companions—and planted himself in front of Magali. She was gnawing amacun—a sweet-spicy toffee wrapped around a stick and popular on the Gold Roads.
