Page 22 of The Golden Princess

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“Not so much as a rumble.” I groaned. “But that just makes me more nervous. Centuries have passed, and the tales from Ardasira say the first cave’s enchantments had degraded with time. If that had happened here as well, it might explain the cave not collapsing, but I would have expected at least a little shake, some dust coming down from the roof, perhaps. But there was no response at all to Ali taking the gold.”

“And that worries you?” Navid asked.

“It makes me think there was never any enchantment to collapse the cave at all. Which means the second cave may have an entirely different enchantment.”

“Or none at all.”

“That seems to be your father’s point of view.”

Navid ran a hand through his increasingly messy hair. “I see your concern. There’s no way I’m going to convince Mother and Father to give this up, though.”

I sighed and held out the scales. “No, I didn’t think so. I’ve brought the scales, as requested.”

Navid took them, looking down at them with an expression of unbelief. “So much gold it needs to be weighed instead of counted,” he said softly. “It does seem too good to be true.”

“Precisely,” I said grimly, gently pushing him toward the door of the house. “But come on, we might as well go inside. I told the other servants Ali wanted my help again today, so I don’t have to head back home yet.”

“Thank you, Zaria.” He led the way through their front door. “I’m grateful to have your good sense in this craziness—even if I was enormously alarmed when Father said he had to push you to take even a single coin. If you didn’t want any part of this, I wasn’t sure we did either.”

“You’re right, I don’t want any part of it for myself. I wish I hadn’t taken even that one coin, but at the time I was obsessed with getting out of there as fast as possible.”

Navid tossed a look of apology over his shoulder. “Sorry. Father can be like that. He’s so cheerful and always smiling, that you don’t even notice how insistent he can be.”

“Zaria!” Mariam pounced on us, all smiles. “Thank you so much for coming. Now we can get started.”

“Sorry, I meant to be here earlier.”

She brushed my words aside, smiling as she bustled toward the back of the house with the scales in hand.

“You worried me with the material on your door,” I added, and that got a chuckle out of her.

“I only came up with the idea after you left yesterday.” She stopped suddenly, turning to fix me with an intense look as Navid disappeared through the door. “I assume Navid told you the story? What do you think?”

I considered the question. Mariam was obviously wanting to know the reaction of the first person to hear her invented story. Part of me was reluctant to encourage her, but while I didn’t approve of the whole situation, I didn’t want to see her family in trouble, either.

And I didn’t want to be dragged into trouble myself. I had been at the cave as well, after all. At this point, it would be best for all of us if Ali and Mariam pulled this charade off.

“I think it’s believable enough,” I said, and Mariam’s beam returned.

“The best bit is that it means we can start spending at least some of the gold immediately. Naturally my relatives have left us money to enable us to set up this end of the business.”

An objection I should have thought of earlier hit me. “Won’t people be expecting you to start buying products to ship to the new lands?”

“Navid is taking care of that part.” Her face filled with pride. “He’s going to set up an actual merchant business. Who knows, maybe we actually will end up with connections in the Four Kingdoms?”

She hesitated, giving me a look that made me nervous. “You couldn’t help there, could you? If you’ve been holding back from Nyla, we’d all understand. But I know you’d want to help Navid…”

“If I could, I would, of course,” I said hurriedly. “Navid has been a good friend to me since I arrived with Kasim and Nyla. But I haven’t been holding back. All I did was exchange a few passing words with Princess Cassandra—and that was before she was even a princess. I don’t have any royal connections.”

Even as I said the words, I saw Rek’s face from the day before. Was Mariam’s query only based on old history, or had Ali told her the story about my strange conversation with the prince inside the city gates?

Since my realizations overnight, any thought of the royals filled me with a heady mix of anxiety and excitement, but I kept my face still. It was complete truth that I didn’t know the first thing about helpful contacts for a fledgling merchant.

“Oh well.” Mariam’s momentary disappointment didn’t last long. “Ali!” she called. “The scales are here!”

She disappeared out the back door of the small house, but I stayed in place, considering our conversation. My realizations of the night before had opened up more than one part of my thinking. I had stayed with Nyla in an effort to cling to my old life. But Rek knew of my connection to Ali now, so even that poor reasoning no longer precluded me from accepting Mariam’s offer of employment.

But if I left Nyla to work for Mariam, would other people think like Mariam—that I had been holding back from Nyla and was now helping my friend?


Tags: Melanie Cellier Fantasy