That wasn’t true. Tahki had been hungry just before dinner. He hadn’t eaten breakfast and skipped the clam lunch.
“Hunger and pride don’t make good company,” Hona said. “Rye was always too proud to beg. As kids, we were dragged around by our mother. During the day, Rye and I would find safe places to sleep, and during the nights, we’d follow our mother around from bar to bar, carrying her sad sack of bones across town after she’d pissed herself drunk. That woman could drink ten men on shore leave under the table. It was actually quite impressive.”
Tahki had wanted to know about Rye, but this felt wrong, intrusive.
Hona went on. “Don’t think I’m looking for sympathy or pity, and don’t think Rye is, either. We were poor, but so was everyone in that part of town. Our mother was a worthless drunk, but at least she didn’t beat us or anything.”
“Maybe you would have better manners if she had,” Dyraien said.
Hona laughed, despite the seriousness of his voice. “Maybe. And maybe Rye would have had the sense to leave her behind.” Hona slouched in her chair. Her voice sounded a little hoarse, like she’d been screaming. She traced the edge of her glass so it hummed. “Rye was ten and I was fifteen when I left.”
“When you left?”
Hona scrunched her nose. “Ran away, I guess you could say.” She looked over to Dyraien. Tahki noticed the prince’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “I told myself I’d find a job and bring them money, but I was lying. I abandoned Rye, left him with our alcoholic mother.”
Tahki’s heart beat fast. The wine made him feel warm, but Hona’s words chilled him. He pictured a young Rye, shivering in the cold outside some bar.
He thought about when he’d been ten. The fine meals he ate with his father, the beautiful imported silk clothing, the expensive toys he played with once or twice. Hona had been right. He didn’t know what it was like to be hungry. To rely on the pity of strangers for a meal.
“Anyway,” Hona said in a sad voice. “I came back years later, but I was too late.”
“Rye’s mother left him shortly after Hona,” Dyraien said. “Left him to fend for himself. He was all alone. When I found him and took him in, he had no one. No one who’d ever offered him so much as a kind word. But I fixed all that, and we have each other now. What more could he want?”
Tahki watched the lightning roots flicker pale light across the table. His eyelids drooped. Rye’s story made him tired and depressed, and he wanted to be alone, away from the glances he didn’t understand, away from the people who kept him an arm’s length away, who only told him part of the truth.
“Maybe we should retire to our rooms,” Dyraien said. “We’ll clean up tomorrow.”
They all stood, but as Tahki walked from the room, Hona grabbed his arm.
“I tried to make it right,” she said. “I tried to fix things between us.”
Tahki pulled his arm out of her grip. He wanted to be away from her. Away from anyone who had caused Rye grief.
“Let him go, Hona,” Dyraien said, his voice sharp.
Tahki walked from the room, a slight sway in his step. He knew Rye’s past now, but Rye knew nothing about him, and that wasn’t right.
Tonight, he’d tell Rye who he was and where he was from.
WHEN HE arrived in his room, Tahki sat on his bed, still a little fuzzy-headed from the wine. Hona’s words stuck in his mind. He had learned so much about Rye. It was only fair Rye learned about him now.
He took a deep breath. Tonight, he’d tell Rye everything. If Rye kept his secret, their bond would grow. But if Rye couldn’t, what would he do? Rye wouldn’t turn him over to Dyraien, that much he knew. Worst scenario, Rye would tell Tahki to leave.
It seemed worth the risk for a chance to finally tell Rye the truth.
With this resolve in mind, Tahki left to find Rye, hoping he’d be back from Edgewater. He tiptoed down the stairs. Everything looked distorted in the dark. Walls crawled upward forever. The banisters curled beside him like long, outstretched fingers. The white marble appeared to move as clouds swept in front of the moon. As he reached the bottom step, the sound of plates clattering echoed through the hall. For a moment, he pictured the black cat crouched and ready to pounce, but then he heard voices. Dyraien, Hona, and someone else. He followed the chatter to the dining room. The door was cracked only half an inch, but he could see inside.
Dyraien and Hona sat at the table, speaking lowly to a man across from them. A man with short hair and a pointed chin.
“Must be nice,” Zinc said. “Living here all cozy and comfortable. Do I ever get invited to dine with you? Don’t think so. And why would that be? Not good enough for you? Not a large enough vo-cabulary?”
“Not clean enough,” Dyraien said.
Zinc ate from the tray of leftover pork, tearing off meat with his hands and chewing loudly. “Right, right. Or maybe you don’t love the people of Vatolokít as much as you say you do.”
Dyraien leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. “Tell me, Zinc. How much money would I need to pay your people to have them tie you to a rock and throw you in the ocean? Twenty notes? Thirty? I suspect the number is pretty low.”
Tahki pressed closer. He could see Dyraien now. His eyes appeared dark and threatening, like at any moment he might swipe a knife from the table and lodge it in Zinc’s throat.
Zinc must have sensed this, too, because he swallowed and said in a tense voice, “You can’t blame me for what happened.”
“I think I can,” Dyraien said. “A perk of being a prince.
