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They had to confess that she did not, and she left to get dressed.
“I don’t like her,” Evemer said.
“You don’t like anybody when you first meet them. But Zeliha wanted to find a satyota in the city, and here one is, so . . .”
“I don’t like it.”
“Satyota are like kahyalar,” Kadou said. “Just act with the assumption that her first loyalty is to Inacha and her second is to money, and we’ll be fine.”
She returned only few minutes later, dressed in a comfortable linen tunic, trousers, and quilted overcoat, as well as beautifully made turn-toe boots in the style of Map Sut, embroidered around the tops with decorative stitching and silver beads. She also held the now-open wine bottle in one hand and was sipping leisurely from it.
Tenzin took absolutely no agency in the proceedings, ambling after them as they slunk carefully out onto the main floor of the house. She did not offer comments or suggestions on how to get out, even when they found that there was a guard standing at the front door and had to backtrack. She only drank her wine from the bottle and watched them curiously, as if mere observation were her only driving motive.
A very careful, very quiet search through the rest of the house turned up an unlocked study with several windows overlooking the street—only a ten-foot drop or so. They were in the middle of a whispered argument about whether it was safer for Evemer to jump out first or second when there was a sudden distant crash, a cry, and then the sound of shouting and thundering feet. They scrambled out—Kadou later would have no recollection of which of them had actually jumped first.
Tenzin, of course, made them catch her wine bottle before she followed.
They didn’t stop running until they were dozens of streets away, solidly in the middle of a completely different district of the city. Evemer’s legs and lungs were burning, his wounded shoulder throbbing dully and his wrenched one aching—he probably shouldn’t have picked up both Kadouanda solid oak door.
Even on any other day, it wouldn’t have been a late enough hour for the streets to be completely deserted, but tonight there was an extra scattering of people out and about, mostly occupied with hanging decorations in preparation for the following week’s Midsummer festival: bright swags of yellow-and-white tassels above the doors, long chains of folded paper flowers spanning the street from window to window, and trailing ribbons of silk or tissue covered in poems and blessings in silver and gold calligraphy that had already been pinned beside a few doors. These last, as the day of the festival drew nearer, would appear nailed or pasted to any and every available surface until the slightest breeze would make the streets appear as though they were covered in gently fluttering swarms of sparkling butterflies.
“Where,” Evemer wheezed. He stopped, leaned on his knees, gasped for breath. “Where, my lord? Palace? House?”
The few times Kadou had joined Evemer and the commander for sword drills in the gardens, he’d proven his endurance. Evemer might win in contests of strength, and Tadek in cunning and speed, and Melek in dexterity, but when the game was simply to run drills until they dropped, Kadou was always the last one standing.
Yet even he was flushed and sweating and heaving for breath, his hair sticking to his face and neck.
Tenzin, too, was wheezing and red-faced—and still carrying her half-full wine bottle.
Kadou put his hands on his hips and coughed. “House? Safe there. Kahyalar. Send letters to—gods, to everyone. Tell Zeliha. Shut down the harbor.”
“Find Melek,” Evemer said.
“Find Melek, yes.”
“Who’s Melek?” Tenzin asked.
Coughing for breath again, Kadou managed to get out “Important.”
The people on the street were hesitating in their work, looking toward them, whispering to each other. Evemer silently groaned. Why had the gods not sent him kinder trials than to go about the city with an appallingly distinctive Mahisti? Even when he was splotchy and pouring with sweat, he was heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Evemer wearily stood. “People are staring.”
“Nothing to be done about it,” Kadou said, and gestured them onward.
It was gone midnight by the time they made it back to Mama’s house. They startled the kahya standing watch on the far perimeter, but as soon as çe recognized them, çe stood abruptly. “Oh, thank thegods,we thought you’d been kidnapped!”
“Wewere,” Evemer said, striding past çem.
There were still lamps on inside the house, and when they entered, they found Tadek and Mama sitting at the kitchen table together, drinking coffee in grim silence.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Tadek howled, standing. Mama, seeing them, let out a huge sigh of relief and flicked a hand in a gesture of gratitude toward the statues of the gods on the mantelpiece.
As Kadou and Evemer stumbled in and flung themselves into the first chairs they could seize, Tadek shouted, “You scoldusfor fouling up a reconnaissance mission? And then you have the gall to go andvanish? And who isthis?” he added, gesturing at Tenzin, who had already helped herself to the water bucket and was splashing her face.
Mama said, “Tadek, hush, the baby—”
It was too late. Eyne, cuddled in a cozy nest of fabric in a basket, had woken and began to cry.
