Page 46 of The Concubine King
“I don’t know,” Poyut admitted.“I’ve never had it done, but it doesn’t seem to hurt terribly.Even young children have their ears pierced sometimes.”
“Look.”The merchant pulled them from the cloth and offered them.“Hold them up to your ears.”
Ethyr furrowed his brow, but when the man pushed them encouragingly towards him, he obliged, taking them and doing as told.The merchant pulled a little framed square from below his counter and held it up.
It was a mirror—not big enough to show his whole face, but large enough to see the area around his ear, and the earring dangling below it.He couldn’t help but turn his head one way, then the other, admiring how they looked contrasted so nicely against his hair and neck.
“Do you want them?”
Ethyr looked up at Poyut’s encouraging smile and lowered his hands.“Oh, no, better not.”
Despite his words, she turned to the seller.“How much?”
“Four sulra.”
“Two sulra,” Poyut countered.
“Three sulra, fifty quios.”
“Two sulra, twenty-five.”
“Three sulra,” the merchant replied with a firm air of finality.
Poyut considered this.
“Two sulra,” Ethyr spoke up before she could agree.“Or I don’t want them.”
The man looked between them, almost as though he expected Poyut to deny this, but she only looked back at him with raised eyebrows.His shoulders dropped a little in defeat.“Two sulra, then,” he agreed.Poyut handed silver coins over and a little wrapped package was given in return.
Two sulra.Still hundreds more than any amount of currency he had ever held, but it was better than six kith.
“Anything else that catches your eye, Your Divinity?”the merchant asked.“This necklace, perhaps?It would go perfectly with the earrings.”Ethyr shook his head and the man did a poor job of hiding his disappointment.
“It’s getting late,” Poyut said, pulling him from the stall.“We should head back.”
Ethyr followed obediently to the horses, ignoring the man’s calls to tell everyone where he got the earrings from.
As they rode up the mountain, before they reached the long road to the palace, Poyut halted them in front of an enormous building, its stairs framed by wide columns.The top of the stairs, to one side of the entrance, hosted a regal statue of Catocus.
Poyut beckoned Ethyr down from his horse so he dismounted.
“This is the administration forum,” she told him.“As king, I think you should be familiar with it.”
“Oh.”He had assumed with the additional guards that they weren’t going to go here.“It’s all the government officials, right?”he asked, looking and sounding as innocent as possible.“Surely they wouldn’t hurt me.I can’t imagine I need guards in there.”
The guards looked at each other.
“I’ll go in with him,” Poyut reassured them.“We’ll be back in a few minutes.”She herded him towards the stairs before any of them could protest.“They’re going to tell the High Priest you were here,” she murmured as they trod up the steps.“It might get you in trouble again.So if you don’t want to, you don’t have to go in.”
“I want to,” Ethyr said confidently.Yorith could stub a toe.
“Why do you want to talk to Lyrian anyway?”
“I… have questions I think he can answer.”
She halted by the doorway and gripped his arm to stop him from entering.“Lyrian isn’t that different from Yorith,” she told him quietly.“He’s ambitious and scheming, and uses people for his own gain.You have to be careful with him.”
Ethyr met her gaze boldly, the warning not chipping his determination in the slightest.Fight fire with fire, after all.
