I was talking to Nerilla, asking her what she thought could have been so pressing that everyone was called away, until I got distracted when I realized that Marcellus was yelling at Dae-Jung to stop. The problem was, Marcellus was too far away to simply increase his speed a bit and reach Dae-Jung, so if he wanted to get him to stop, he’d have to run. He had no guards with him, as far as I could see, and as Nerilla pointed out, it was beneath Marcellus to either run himself, or have someone else do so on his behalf. Ordering Dae-Jung to stop should have sufficed. The issue was, my servant was ignoring him.
“Can he force Dae-Jung to stop?” I asked Nerilla.
“If he puts a hand on him, by law, that hand is yours for attempting to touch your property,” she informed me.
I turned to look at Zev, who was squinting at his phone screen. “Would you take Marcellus’ hand?”
“What?” he asked, clearly not listening.
I groaned and returned my attention to Nerilla.
“He would,” Nerilla assured me. “One of my courtiers was groped by a visitor when she brought me a sweater in the great library a month ago, and Jarah relieved him of his hand.”
I glanced over at Jarah, who, unlike Zev, was looking around, checking for threats. “Did you think the punishment fit the crime, Jarah?”
“No one should touch another without permission, my consort,” he told me. “But beyond that, the courtier in question is solely in the princess’ retinue for the next five years, as agreed upon, so no one but the princess may put a hand on her.”
That made sense.
I turned back to Zev. “Would you cut off someone’s hand if they touched Dae-Jung?”
“Who?” he asked, squinting at me.
Nerilla chuckled.
“It’s not funny,” I told her. “You’re the one that said you couldn’t believe how my people treat me.”
“Yes, and you have taken on perhaps the worst offender of all, because Zev has treated many with the same flippancy he gives you, Cassius among them, the queen as well, Gideon certainly,” she told me. “In fact, I believe the only one, ever, who has not met the end of his barbed tongue, is the king. Even Varic was once to have him flogged.”
I looked back over at Zev. “Varic was going to flog you?”
“What?” he snapped, like I was really bugging him.
I turned back to Nerilla. “Maybe Varic made a mistake asking Zev to be––”
She waved her hand dismissively. “You have to understand, having Zev with you is like taking a bazooka to a knife fight. Unless you are in imminent danger, he’s not going to waste his energy on paying attention. Why would he?”
“Because it’s rude not to,” I grumbled, giving the man a sharp look.
“Yes, but he is your champion, he punishes for you, he stands between you and all others save Varic. He’s your enforcer, the one who kills in your name.”
She was making it sound scary, and it was wrong of me, as well as naïve, not to have thought about Zev’s actual duties, who he really was in my household.
“So you’re saying he’s not like Tiago, we’re not friends, and I don’t have conversations about minutia with him or expect him to interfere in small situations.”
“Not unless you want them to become life-and-death situations,” she explained to me. “A hendr is like a drawn sword that once unsheathed must draw blood.”
His disinterest suddenly made sense. If he was engaged, Marcellus might already be dead.
“And I can promise you that he is paying attention to what’s happening around you, but it’s not really your voice or mine, it’s more the air around us, the space. If something were to change, a vibration or even the timbre of another’s voice—you’d see a very different Zev.”
“Excuse me if I doubt you.”
She tipped her head, and I saw the mischievous arc of her eyebrow before she suddenly stepped sideways into me. I staggered, but before I could even correct, I was steadied by Zev’s hand on my bicep. The movement was unexpected, and more than that, instantaneous. I had to reassess my judgement.
“Okay,” I sighed, and then I heard Marcellus yell for the dreki, who didn’t stop either, until they reached the edge of the white marble where it crossed to black.
Marcellus went to follow, and there were suddenly four members of Varic’s elite guard there making sure he did not pass.
“I need to speak to him,” Marcellus yelled, pointing after Dae-Jung.
One of the guards shook her head and explained that on the king’s order, his quarters, the queen’s, the prince’s, as well as all members of the nobility, were off-limits until further notice. People could visit, of course, but only with permission.
Marcellus roared and spun around, at which point he saw Nerilla and me. “My consort!” he yelled. “I would speak to you and your servant.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching the edge of the tile.
All four members of the dreki bowed to me, and even though I didn’t know their names—they hadn’t traveled to New Orleans with Varic—I still considered them part of my new family. I needed to learn all their names as well.
“My consort,” the woman in front greeted me, “shall I bring your servant to you?”
“Yes, please,” I replied, “but first, what’s your name?”
“I am Sibel,” she told me, bowing quickly and then calling over to Bavor.
He turned, and Sibel pointed at Dae-Jung. We all saw Bavor put a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, and Dae-Jung took an AirPod out of his ear and looked up at him.
“That’s why he didn’t hear you,” I told Marcellus. “I’m sure he’s got the new noise-cancelling ones, so he was totally in his own little world.”
The news seemed to placate Marcellus as Dae-Jung hurriedly passed Oz all his packages and rushed to where I was. He hesitated for just a moment when he saw Marcellus, a look of trepidation crossing his perfect features, but he moved anyway, and was bowing in front of me seconds later.
“Rise,” I told him.
He straightened, and then I looked at Marcellus. “Okay, what do you need to ask him?”
Varic’s cousin glanced at me, then at Dae-Jung, and back to me.
Nothing.
I cleared my throat. “Is something lost in your apartments, and you’re thinking maybe he knows where it is?”
Marcellus glanced at Nerilla, who only smiled. He then turned sideways, indicating the man on his right. “My consort, I had forgotten when I offered Dae-Jung as a gift to you that I had made a previous commitment to my dear friend Count Judoc Teyrn. I promised that when next we were at court he could watch as Dae-Jung was first taken repeatedly in the concubine quarters, and then afterwards have him for the night.”
All said like it was nothing. Like I wasn’t going to throw up right there on his boots.
“So, if you’ll loan me your servant for the evening, I will not bother you anymore with such––”
“Who allowed him to cut his hair?” Teyrn snapped at Marcellus. “I wanted him as you had him displayed the last time we were here. I told you he was perfect, with all the beautiful welts on his skin. I wanted to watch those made to rise again on his flesh.”