A footstep in the doorway drew her head up. The grey light wasn’t kind to Nikos-his sandalwood skin looked sickly and shadows smudged his eyes. Even his usual flamboyant clothing was subdued to shades of black and emerald. He hadn’t been in his rooms when she’d first knocked, far earlier than he normally rose, and Kistos had only shaken his head with the pained look that meant he’d been told not to speak of something. Nikos tried to school his face now, but she caught the tightness at the corners of his mouth. His lips quirked as he watched Ashlin.
He stopped behind Savedra’s bench and brushed a quick caress across her shoulder. “Have breakfast with me. I need to talk to you.”
Had Denaris told him about the assassin already? Usually she waited till lunch, if the would-be killer was already dead.
Once Savedra might have thought it a point scored, that he came to her and not his wife for counsel, but she had long since given up scorekeeping. Now loyalty and friendship pricked and tugged her with every conflict.
“Alone?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.
Before he answered, the sky opened with a sigh and rain rattled against the windows. The clash of steel died. Out of the corner of her eye, Savedra saw Ashlin frozen in place and scowling, her opponent’s sword brushing her belt buckle.
The guard, one of Ashlin’s personal retinue, said something joking in Celanoran and stepped back with a bow. She repeated the word, still frowning, and turned away to sheathe her blade. The soldier, well-used to her temper, caught Savedra’s eye and quirked an eloquent brow. One corner of her mouth curled wryly in response.
Ashlin crossed the room in long strides, rain-shadows rippling across her flushed skin. From her expression, Savedra guessed she wanted to chide Nikos for costing her the match. But that would mean admitting that he could distract her.
“My Lady,” he said with a shallow bow. “As I was just asking Vedra, would you join us for breakfast?”
Her scowl transformed into an entirely different frown as she sniffed herself. “I need a bath more than food.”
Savedra thought he would drop the matter now that courtesy was satisfied, but he surprised her. “You can have both in my rooms. I think you’ll like to hear this story.”
Nikos’ suite was in its usual disarray: clothing draped over bed and chairs, tables littered with books and notes and the glitter of whatever cunning or lovely things had caught his eye this decad. The city called him the Peacock Prince-for his sartorial extravagance as well as the company he kept-but Savedra thought him more a magpie. He’d spent so many years studiously not being his father that it had become ingrained. The door that led to Ashlin’s adjoining suite was shut-Savedra didn’t want to know if she was locking it this decad.
Savedra helped herself to a cup of steaming coffee while servants laid out breakfast. She’d begun tasting his food as a warning to her mother; that habit too had become ingrained. It had its benefits, though-the new Assari empress was freer with trade than her predecessor, but coffee beans were still costly. Water gurgled in the pipes as Ashlin drew herself a bath, drowning the gentler susurrus of the rain.
Then Nikos began to recount his expedition to the royal crypts, and food and bath water and coffee alike cooled untouched.
“Vampires?” Ashlin perched on the edge of a velvet-cushioned chair, one boot still on, the other hanging forgotten in her hand.
Nikos nodded and ran a weary hand through his hair. “They live below the city, in catacombs underneath the sewers.”
The boot slipped from the princess’s fingers and thumped to the floor. “I thought those were only stories.”
“It was an arrangement made with an ancient Severos king,” Savedra said. That agreement was part of the family histories her mother had taught her. Those not often found in public records. She sipped her coffee and winced at the lukewarm bitterness; if only it tasted as wonderful as it smelled. Nikos refreshed her cup from the carafe before he poured his own. “The vrykoloi agreed to stay in the catacombs and be… discreet.”
“Like murdering women in alleys?” Ashlin asked, eyebrows climbing. She brushed sweat-stiffened hair off her forehead absently.
“Of course. It would be indiscreet to kill them on the street, after all.”
The princess snorted and tugged off her other boot, letting it fall beside its mate. “What are you going to do?”
Nikos shook his head and stared at his cup. “I don’t know. I-” His voice lowered. “I can’t let Father find out.”
A chill snaked down Savedra’s back. Another fine line between discretion and treason. But he was right; Mathiros’s wrath was an ugly thing. He vented his grief and bitterness by campaigning in Ashke Ros, fighting the Ordozh raiders who pillaged there. That was madness and folly enough-no one wanted to bring the folly home.
“You’ll have to work quickly,” Ashlin said, with a soldier’s practicality. “The campaigning season is already over.”
“Not that quickly.” The flavor of Nikos’s frown changed. “There’s been a delay.” He flicked a fingernail against a folded parchment half-buried on the table.
“What now?” said Savedra. The king had promised his council a short campaign when he led troops to aid the Rosians in the spring, but one thing or another had delayed their return since late summer.
“An armistice.”
That sent Ashlin’s eyebrows winging toward her hair. “With the Ordozh?” The raiding horsemen were feared like demons by any country that shared their border, and no one had managed to treat with their warlords in decades.
“They have a new
Ashlin turned, unlacing her vest and peeling off her sweat-stained blouse on the way to the bathroom. She left the door ajar, and Savedra glimpsed the peach-pale curve of her back as Ashlin dropped her shirt. “I want to fight the Ordozh emperor,” she called over her shoulder. “Lacking that, I want to see a vampire. Your demons sound much more interesting than ours back home.”
Nikos rolled his eyes. “Your desire is my duty, Your Radiance.” Splashing drowned Ashlin’s retort. She swore in Celanoran, anyway.
One of their rare moments of easygoing humor. Savedra’s throat closed. Neither of them tried to shut her out, but they didn’t need to. Fate had done that well enough.
She stood, shaking her skirts with a practiced fillip, and poured the rest of her cooling coffee back into the pot.
“Where are you going?” Nikos asked.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek, sliding deftly away when he tried to pull her close. “To visit my mother.”
Savedra and Nikos’ relationship might not be the most impolitic the Azure Palace had ever seen, but she was hard pressed to think of many others. Their houses had been bitter rivals for decades, ever since Thanos Alexios led the rebellion that overthrew the last of the Severoi kings. Not that Ioris Severos had been what anyone would call a good ruler, but that hardly mattered to the family. The last thing the Alexioi and their allies wanted was a Severos worming her way near the throne, especially the daughter of Nadesda, an archa known for her ruthlessness and wide-flung web of influence. Since Savedra moved into the palace she had narrowly avoided three poisoning attempts. Had she been able to bear Nikos any bastards she would be dead by now, no matter how careful she was or how powerful her mother.
Instead she was hijra; the third sex, in old Sindhain-men born in women’s bodies, women born as men, and the androgynes who were neither or both. The hijra veiled themselves with ritual and mysticism, keeping mostly to their temple in the Garden. The curious paid to see the faces of their priestesses, and paid more for their prophecies and their bodies. So Savedra’s rivals called her freak and whore-never mind that she had never taken the mark of the order-and made cruel jokes where Nikos couldn’t hear, but she would never be queen or mother to a
