I laughed. “Just when I think I couldn’t hate you more, you prove me wrong.”
“Come now, Jezelia, after I’ve shown you every kindness? Most prisoners would be dead by now.”
While I wouldn’t call it kindness, his remarks to me had grown less biting, and I couldn’t help but note he did something my father had never done in his own kingdom. He walked among those he ruled, both near and far. He didn’t rule from a distance, but intimately and thoroughly. He knew his people.
To an extent.
Yesterday he had asked me what the claw and vine design on my shoulder was. I didn’t mention the Song of Venda, and I hoped no one else would either, but I was sure that at least a few of those who had stared at it were digging it up from dusty memories of long-forgotten tales. “A mistake,” I had told him simply. “A wedding kavah not properly applied.”
“It seems to have captured the fancy of many.”
I’d shrugged it off. “I’m sure it’s as much a curiosity to them as I am, something exotic from a faraway kingdom.”
“That you are. Wear one of your dresses tomorrow that shows it off properly,” he had ordered. “That dreary shirt is tedious.”
And also warm. Only that was of little concern to him—not to mention, the dresses weren’t particularly suited for riding, again, inconsequential in light of his greater plans. I had nodded, acknowledging his demand, but I wore my shirt and trousers again today. He hadn’t seemed to notice.
When he wasn’t scrutinizing my every movement and word, I enjoyed my interactions with the people. They provided me with a different kind of warmth that I probably needed more. That part wasn’t a sham. The welcome of the Meurasi had spread to many clans. The moments of sharing thannis, or stories, or a few sincere words gave me balance, if not a few hours of relief from the Sanctum. My gift rarely came into play. A few times I was gripped with a sense of something large and dark descending. I sucked in a breath and looked upward, truly expecting to see a black clawed thing swooping down upon me, but there was nothing there. Only a feeling that I’d quickly shake off when I saw the Komizar smiling. He never missed an opportunity to turn it into something corrupt and shameful. He made me want to smother the gift instead of listen to it. It seemed impossible to nurture anything in his presence.
We reached a narrow lane and dismounted, handing off the reins to guards who followed us.
“Is it this?” he asked, tugging on Walther’s baldrick with his thumb. “Is this what continues to make you so testy?”
I looked at the strap of leather across his chest that I had managed to block from my vision by some magic of will. Testy? By the gods, they had stolen it off my brother’s dead body after they had massacred his entire company. Testy? I looked from the baldrick into his cool black eyes. A smile swept through them as if he saw every burning thought in my mind.
He shook his head, satisfied with my silent response. “You need to learn to let go of things, Lia. All things. Nevertheless…” He slipped his dagger from it, then lifted the baldrick over his head and placed it over mine. His hands lingered on my back as he adjusted it. “Yours. As a reward. You’ve been proving yourself useful these past days.”
I breathed with relief when he finally finished adjusting the baldrick and removed his hands from my back. “Your people already bend at your command,” I said. “What do you need me for?”
He reached up, and his hand gently glided over my cheek. “Fervor, Lia. Food supplies are shorter than ever. They’ll need fervor to help them forget their hunger, their cold, their fear through this last long winter. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
I looked at him uncertainly. Fervor was an odd word choice. It implied something more feverish than hope or determination. “I don’t have words to stir fervor, Komizar.”
“For now just do what you’ve been doing all along. Smile, flutter your lashes as if spirits whisper to you. Later I’ll tell you the words to speak.” His hand slid to my shoulder, caressing it, then I felt the fabric of my shirt pinching me as he gathered it up in his fist. He yanked suddenly, and I winced as the cloth tore free from my shoulder. “There now,” he said. “Your tedious shirt is taken care of.” His fingers brushed over my shoulder where the kavah now lay exposed, and he leaned close so that his lips were hot against my ear. “The next time I tell you what to do, see that you do it.”
* * *
We headed toward the washing grounds without another word. I garnered stares for both my kavah and my flapping torn shirt. Fervor. That’s not too much to ask, is it? He was making me a spectacle one way or another. I was certain that in his own mind, the kavah was only something peculiar and exotic, or even backward. He didn’t care about the meaning, only that it might help fan this so-called fervor. An added distraction, that’s all he wanted, and nothing about it seemed right.
When we reached the washing grounds, I saw three long basins, the pressure of the river skillfully routed through them. Women lined the edges, kneeling to scrub their laundry on the stones, their knuckles split and red from the icy waters. Sickly sweet smoke drifted from one of the many nearby shops that circled the grounds, and the Komizar said he was stepping inside for a moment.
“Talk to the workers, but go no farther than the basins,” he said sternly, reminding me I was to do exactly as he said. “I’ll be right out.”
I watched the women hunched and working, throwing their washed laundry into baskets, but then I spotted Aster, Zekiah, and Yvet across the way, huddled in the shadows of a stone wall and looking at something that Yvet held.
They seemed unusually subdued and quiet, which was certainly not typical of Aster. I walked across the plaza, calling their names, and when they turned toward me, I saw the bloody cloth wrapped around Yvet’s hand.
I gasped and rushed over to her. “Yvet, what happened?” I reached for her hand, but she fiercely clutched it to her belly to hide it from me.
“Tell me, Yvet,” I said more gently, thinking I had startled her. “How did you hurt yourself?”
“She won’t tell you,” Aster said. “She’s ’shamed. The quarterlord took it.”
I turned to Aster, my face prickling with heat. “What do you mean? Took it?”
“A fingertip for stealing. A whole hand if it happens again.”
“It was my fault,” Zekiah added, looking down at his feet. “She knew I’d been aching fierce for a taste of that marbly cheese.”
I remembered the angry swelling stump of Zekiah’s forefinger the first time I met him.
For stealing cheese?
Rage descended, so utter and complete that every part of me shook—my hands, my lips, my legs. My body was no longer my own. “Where?” I demanded. “Where is this quarterlord?” Aster told me he was the metalsmith at the entrance to the jehendra, then clapped her hand over her mouth. She pulled on my belt, trying to stop me as I stormed away, begging me not to go. I shook her loose. “Stay here!” I yelled. “All of you! Stay here!”
I knew exactly where the shop was. Seeing me fly into a rage, several of the women from the washing grounds followed after me, echoing Aster’s words, don’t go.