“Body-father,” His Highness said. “The word isbody-father. I know it must be confusing if you’re not familiar with the language. Easy to mix those words up—they must sound very similar to your ear.” From another person’s lips, this might have been a dig, but Evemer couldn’t read a drop of sarcasm in His Highness’s voice.
Siranos made an annoyed noise. “Body-father, law-father, love-father.” He said these mockingly, mispronouncing each of the three words. “I can’t see what the distinction is, but you fussy Arasti keep insisting there is one!” Evemer filed this away too—he had heard some rumors that Siranos didn’t understand this either. As a cadet in the academy, Evemer’s teachers had told them that in Oissos, children automatically belonged as much to their sire as they did to their mother, even if the two weren’t married, which seemed a strange and backward way of doing things. Perhaps that was why the Oissika took such a funny angle on marriage. In Arast, it all came down toclaim: Someone who became pregnant retained full claim on their child unless they specifically shared that claim with the child’s sire. That was the reason Her Majesty had very wisely not gotten married, and indeedwouldn’tbe getting married, because then another house (or, gods forbid, anothercountry,if Her Majesty married some foreign noble) would have claim on any of the future heirs to the throne. Far more prudent for Her Majesty to get her children from lovers, as she had with Siranos—it was the main benefit of having a sovereign capable of bearing: House Mahisti would maintain full and exclusive claim on their heirs. His Majesty the former sultan, on the other hand—Kadou and Zeliha’s grandfather—hadhadto get married, since he wouldn’t have been guaranteed claim on his body-children otherwise.
And then there were His Highness’s parents. That, Evemer had heard, was a simple love story. An outlier. His Highness couldn’t reasonably expect a love-match, though they were unre-markable and commonplace in the lower classes.
“In any case,” Siranos was saying bitterly. “What’s the harm of me knowing anything? Who am I going to tell?”
“Whether or not you have anyone to tell,” His Highness said softly to Siranos, “it doesn’t make it right for me to speak of it. I shouldn’t have even told you about the Shipbuilder’s Guild. It’s a state matter.”
Siranos snorted. “Fine. As you wish. I suppose I’ll ask Zeliha instead.”
Evemer would not stand to letthatsort of ill manners slide. A prince was one thing, the sultan quite another. “Her Majesty,” Evemer said. His Highness and Siranos both started. “You will address Sultan Zeliha with the proper honorifics, whether or not you are in her presence.”
In the light from the single candle and what light spilled through the doorway behind them, Siranos sneered. “Do you always let your guards speak out of turn?”
His Highness’s spine stiffened until his posture was nearly one that Evemer could approve of. “He’s not a guard, he’s akahya.”
“Even after a year, I fail to discern the difference there too.”
“A guard is just someone you hire off the street,” His Highness said, and now he evensoundeda bit like a prince. There was a banked fire in his voice. “The kahyalar are the future ministers of the government and military. They’re educated in law, history, literature, the skills of war, and a hundred practical matters. I imagine Evemer could shoe a horse if there were no farrier available, or measure and sew clothing, or play music, or navigate by the stars, or run through all twenty verses of Beydamur’s progression for the sword upon command.” All of this was true, and more besides, but Evemer didn’t give His Highness any credit for it—might as well applaud him for knowing that the sky was blue. “And they take oaths,” His Highness added. “So yes, we let our kahyalar speak. They’re people, not automatons. If we are entrusting these people with our lives, if we trust them to know when to draw their swords, why not trust them to know when to hold their tongues?”
“And his hypocrisy? He rebukes me for rudeness but I don’t even get asir?” He looked at Evemer again as if daring him to reply. Evemer stared back at him. “If it were me, I’d have him whipped. I’d do it myself.”
His Highness dropped his hands from orans and folded them on his knees. “If my kahya’s words have offended you, then I shall take it upon myself to apologize.” His voice was soft again. “I beg your forgiveness.”
Evemer snapped his eyes to the altar and glared hard at it. Siranos wantedhimwhipped? He ought to be whipped himself for speaking like that in the presence of his betters.
And the apology! His Highness was a prince; he owed no apology to anyone, particularly not to Siranos, of all people. Evemer had done absolutely nothing that could be considered even mildly improper—how dare the prince apologize for him?
At least Siranos could find nothing to say in reply. He turned back to the altar, and after a moment His Highness raised his hands again and returned to prayer.
“Is it true your mother was an adulteress?” asked Siranos quite suddenly. Evemer very nearly drew steel on him.
“No,” Kadou said. His voice had gone rather . . . vague. Distant, perhaps, or dazed.
“Are you sure—”
“Yes,” Evemer snapped. “And Her Majesty will thank you not to slander her mother like that.”
“I thought it a reasonable question,” Siranos said, with the silky satisfaction of one whose fencing riposte had landed just right.
“It isn’t.”
“One hears such rumors.”
“Hold your tongue.” Except yes, one did hear such rumors—the kahyalar were all terrible gossips, and Evemer had often received a whispered piece of gossip framed asNow, you must be aware of the things people say sometimes so that you won’t be surprised . . .
Kadou’s mother, the princess Mihrisah, had married Lord Arslan, a very minor landholder from the backcountry, barely more than a gentleman farmer. His holdings had been only a day’s ride from the mountain village where Evemer had been born. The fact that the crown princess had married at all should have been the first big scandal, but . . . Well, even now, thirty years later, the kahyalar in the garrison were still sighing over the sweeping, splendid romance of it all.
The second scandal had been when Kadou’s grandfather had sent Princess Mihrisah on a diplomatic mission to Vinte without her husband, yet she had returned, fourteen months later, with a five-month-old infant son. Perhaps it might have blown over with no more than a few grumbles from the worst busybodies, since most people could add nine months to five months and come up with fourteen, and therefore there was no reason to suspect that she had violated her oaths by having a child with someone besides her husband . . . Except for the fact that she’d named the child something funny and foreign.Kadou.Vintish, apparently.
It had been just enough to cast a shadow of a doubt as to whether the claim she and Arslan shared on the child was tainted, though everyone who had told Evemer this story was quick to assure him that Prince Kadou was the spitting image of the late prince-consort Arslan, only with better hair and the Mahisti eyes.
Siranos was looking over his shoulder now with a strange smile. “I beg your pardon? Hold my tongue?”
His Highness heaved himself to his feet. He hadn’t finished the prayer—there were three more positions to move through. “Good day,” he mumbled to Siranos, already scuttling toward the door. Evemer clenched his jaw and followed. Evidently the prince hadn’t been lying about cowardice. Well, at least he knew that about himself.
Siranos laughed behind them as they left.