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Almost as if it had been used to batter down a red-painted door.
They gazed at it in silence for a long time. “It wasn’t that hard to find,” Kadou said slowly. “Did Armagan even look?”
“Not as far as I know. And not according to the notes.”
“Çe would have recorded it, otherwise. Surely.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kadou didn’t want to say it out loud. Armagan, noted for being a thorough and meticulous investigator, either hadn’t found it or had omitted it. Either option was . . . not promising. “Can we carry this back to the palace?”
Evemer gave him a look. “I would prefer to have my hands free, sir.”
“Oh, I can probably carry it, then,” Kadou said just for the sake of seeing Evemer’s barest eye-twitch, which of course meant unspeakable anguish at the very thought of Kadou doing physical labor. It was nice to see him being so expressive. He really oughtn’t tease Evemer, though,especiallywhen it was easy. “We’ll leave it with the guards,” he said, nodding up to the guildhall. “I’ll send someone to collect it tomorrow.”
Evemer seemed to find this acceptable and hauled it out from under Kadou’s hands and up onto his shoulder with only the barest grunt of effort. Ah, Kadou reflected sagely to himself. That log must have weighed as much as he did. Good to know that one day when Evemer inevitably snapped and hauled him back to the palace over those incredible shoulders, he wouldn’t hurt his back or strain a muscle doing so.
Evemer took the lantern too, pointedly.
Kadou let him do the talking when they went up to the guildhall, once more hanging back as Evemer ordered the guards to keep the discarded battering ram in a secure place.
It must have been past midnight by then—the kahyalar waiting with the carriage at the foot of the Palace Road would be quietly having conniptions. Kadou was only half-drunk now, but exhaustion was creeping in, there was a soreness just above his eyes and a gummy feeling when he blinked, and the consensus through all his muscles and sinews was that the thing to do would be to find a cushion somewhere and rest his eyes for a minute. As soon as Evemer turned away from the guards, Kadou said, “Home now, I think.”
“Very good, sir,” said Evemer, which Kadou translated asI shall dance and sing in the streets from joy.
In this part of the city and this late at night, the streets were quiet but for the occasional sweeper picking up trash and debris or sloshing buckets of well water onto the cobblestones to rinse off dust and grime. Kadou watched one of them as he passed, musing absently to himself about the welfare of government employees, the ongoing public works, health and sanitation—perhaps if he came up with some ideas for Zeliha, she might let him back into court—
He was so deep in thought that the hands clamping around his arms and shoulders took him entirely by surprise.
Before he could so much as gasp in shock, he was dragged into an alley and flung against the wall, the breath knocked out of him, then knocked out again with a punch to his stomach. He wheezed, coughing for air, momentarily too dazed to struggle as two assailants fumbled through his clothes, their faces and even their clothes well concealed in the dark. “Quick, quick,” one grunted, yanking out Kadou’s coin purse as the other cut the fine silver buttons from his kaftan and pulled the knot of his sash loose. “He have rings? Jewels?”
Evemer, where was Evemer? Where in thegods’ nameswas—
His vision, hazy from the pain and the drink and not entirely adjusted to the darkness, focused just enough: Evemer, at the mouth of the alley, grappling with two other thieves.
Evemer fought like a wolf. He flung them aside, sending them stumbling to the ground, and then he slammed into the two who held Kadou—they all went down, him and the thieves and nearly Kadou too.
Evemer shot to his feet. “Run. I’ll hold them off.” Three of the thieves scrambled back up, and Evemer flung himself at them.
But Kadou had heard the slick ring of steel behind him, and then a footstep, and he’d quarter-turned enough to glimpse a lick of starlight glinting off a blade—
He wrenched himself to the side, just as Master Kazar had drilled into his bones for years. The knife missed him by six inches.
Ah.
The knife flashed again and Kadou found himself another six inches away, knees slightly bent, feet apart and weight equally distributed between them as if he were floating between those two points on the ground, his body turned sideways to the person with the knife.
Octem’s stance, first position. A flash of the knife—from first position, swivel toin quartata(noton his toes, knees still bent, still maintaining floating balance), retreat one step, and recover into first position.
He knew this. Like dancing and embroidery and coins and horses and ships and the tides and stars, this was as natural as breathing. It was a gift; a deliberate, intentional gift, a gift from his parents and theirs and generations of House Mahisti before them, who knew with a cold and level certainty what it was to rule and who had seen wisdom in teaching their children to survive unarmed against armed assailants for more than ten frantic heartbeats.
He and his attacker had rotated, and his eyes had adjusted as much as they could to the thick darkness of the alley—the thief had short hair and a rough masculine timbre to his rasping breath. He grunted as he lunged forward again, swinging his knife at Kadou’s face—Kadou ducked, stepped to the side, came up in third position. Swivel. Retreat. Recover to first.
He found himself on the outside of the fight’s circle. Evemer, deeper in the alley, was an indistinguishable knot of furious movement with the other three assailants—he’d drawn his long dagger, but one of the thieves had pinned his arm, and as Kadou watched, they twisted the blade away from him, sending it clattering to the stones.
Kadou was outside the fight. He could run. Should run.
Evemer caught a bad blow to the side that sent him reeling off balance, and that seemed to be all the thieves needed. They wrenched his arms behind his back, and one of them bent to pick up the dagger.
