Chapter Sixty-Seven: Collateral

“Are you sleeping still?” called Sakina.

Osmund blinked awake. Had he dreamed her voice? Swirling golden patterns greeted his bleary eyes. Ah, right.

He rose from the cocoon of soft sheets—and immediately winced, kneading his lower back. From the doorway, Sakina, who was by contrast fully dressed, tittered in amusement.

It was no good getting embarrassed now. “My clothes…” he mumbled. The room was cold, and he tugged the blankets back around his middle.

“I’ll get you something clean. Cemil left you a note.”

A note. Osmund looked around, newly alert. They’d never had occasion to write to each other before.

He found the rolled-up piece of paper resting near the mattress. The letter was short, and written in Cemil’s legible but unadorned hand, which Osmund had seen in passing on documents. He had to read it several times over before he was awake enough for the words to stick.

Osmund, (the letter read,)

My father expressed a wish to travel to the hunting lodge in nearby Elmaluk. I tried to wake you. In the end, I kissed your sleeping cheek.

Sakina will remain here as well. You two have much catching up to do. Entertain yourselves with a carefree heart. If anxieties remain from yesterday, put them aside until I may reassure you in person.

Rest well, and I’ll return home to you soon.

Cemil

It wasn’t much as far as romantic missives went, but it was as vivid as hearing his voice. Osmund would treasure the note. At the same time, he sorely regretted having missed his window to see him off. Shake me awake next time, you silly man! he mentally scolded the letter in his hands.

“They’ve gone hunting?” he said aloud to Sakina.

“The emperor often brings his trusted ministers and advisors on such trips. They conduct their strange masculine rituals while they sport.” She had vanished from sight, but he could still hear her voice, and the sounds of shuffling fabric, from the adjoining room. “Cemil knows neither of us care for the hunt, and insisted we stay behind.”

“How long will they be gone?”

“A week, maybe two. Who knows.”

Two weeks! And he hadn’t given Osmund so much as a chance to say goodbye. Maybe he feared he’d try and tag along. The Tolmishman had a suspicion, knowing Cemil, that after last night he would be keeping the people he loved away from his father, consciously or otherwise.

“The emperor is vigorous for a man who’s terminally ill,” he remarked, rolling the precious paper carefully.

Sakina reentered the room and tossed some clothes in his direction. “Remember not to breathe a word of that to anyone,” she cautioned him as he slipped the undershirt over his head. “He’s taken great pains to conceal it. It’s a state secret.”

Osmund shuddered, imagining himself in Emre’s place beneath the headsman’s blade. “Trust me, I’m not in a hurry to get on his bad side.”

He rose to his feet to pull on his trousers, and again winced. It had been a while since he’d taken it so…rough, with nothing but water to ease the passage, now that the night’s vices were out of his system, he felt it. Sakina smirked knowingly.

“Seems like you enjoyed yourself.”

Now that he was fully awake, the memory of the steam room was back to haunt him in force. Even if they hadn’t stayed for the main event, Sakina and Mirhan had definitely seen, or at least heard, their fair share. (No wonder Cemil had gotten so worked up.) “I hope that wasn’t weird for you,” he said guiltily.

“I expect weird when our tricky friend is involved.”

At this mention, Osmund glanced around the room as if he’d find Mirhan lurking in some corner. “He’s gone with the hunting party.” Sakina had guessed at his thoughts. “The emperor keeps him close these days.”

There was an unspoken something beneath her words. Osmund began hesitatingly, “Mirhan and the emperor…” He didn’t presume to finish the question.

“Don’t suggest to Cemil that Mirhan is sleeping with our illustrious sovereign, please. It’d spoil his dinner.”

“Is he?”

“Almost certainly.”

The mental image made him shudder. It wasn’t an appealing one. “You might’ve told me before I slept with him! Heavens, the son and the father, the minx…”

She shot him a disapproving look. “It’s a political game, you know. No one has the right to judge how he plays it.”

“…I suppose.”

“Besides, you didn’t sleep with Mirhan really, did you? You were just involving him, and me, in a game you were playing with Cemil.”

Osmund couldn’t deny the charge. Even if it hadn’t been his idea.

He finished dressing himself, and they emerged into the main salon. A serving tray had been set out in the center of the room, plated with a dazzling array of sundry fruits—some familiar, some exotic, well more than their small party could eat. It was strange to be in this spacious apartment without any servants. Osmund wondered who had brought the food. Maybe Cemil had arranged for it discreetly. He hardly had an appetite after the banquet last night, but he picked up an unknown citrus fruit and began to casually cut it into slices with a coral-handled knife that could probably be traded for a number of fat, healthy sheep.

Sakina didn’t sit with him. “I wanted to let you know I’m going into town,” she announced, breezing around the room behind him. “I’ve been corresponding with a gentleman here in Şebyan. Time to find out if he really is a tall, handsome soldier with a fetching scar over his eye.”

Osmund looked up, his full mouth of fruit. “You’f god a date?”

She’d stopped in the mirror to imperceptibly rearrange her curls, and he saw now that she’d taken care to paint her face. “If he’s a dud, I’ve got another tomorrow.”

“Well! You’re in demand!”

“You don’t know the half of it, Osmund.” Into one lobe and then the other she affixed dangling earrings, pendants set with precious jewels. “I’ll tell you everything tonight! You may have your domestic bliss, but I’ve been living the kind of single life in Inecalar that would make Lady Marazan envious.”

“Who?”

Even for all the debauchery they’d accomplished, it was only now that she looked positively scandalized. “You didn’t read The Flowering Maiden’s Court yet?! Wicked fellow, you promised, and you knew I was coming!”

“I’m sorry, I’ll get to it as soon as I’m through with some of these books Cemil got me!”

A pause. “He bought you books?”

Osmund gave her a brief summary of the events of his birthday, tactfully concealing certain details, such as the state in which he’d woken up—and, naturally, the fact that it hadn’t been his actual birthday at all. “Oh, Osmund,” Sakina said once she’d heard the tale. “He adores you.”

There was an unmistakable yearning in her words.

Following a last glance in the mirror, she headed for the door. “At least read the first few chapters,” she entreated before he had a chance to say anything. “With any luck, I’ll be back late. Don’t wait for—”

Her words cut off as the door swung. Osmund turned to look. There stood Emre, staring as if he was equally surprised to see her there, and not the one who’d come to their front step of his own volition.

The awkward silence stretched out before them. Osmund scurried up to relieve her. “Cemil’s already left,” he said. The rest came spilling out at once. “Emre, are you alright? I was terrified! I can’t imagine how you felt. I’m so glad you’re alive. Does it hurt?”

“…I didn’t come here for my brother,” Emre said, ignoring the rest. His expression gave nothing away as he scanned the interior of the Golden House, visible behind them. “You had a party in the emperor’s apartment,” he observed neutrally.

Sakina seemed, if anything, even more uncomfortable than before. “Cemil wasn’t himself over what happened, and Mirhan suggested it,” she asserted, as if defending herself from an accusation.

“I hope you had fun, at least,” Emre remarked with his characteristic dryness.

Osmund gave Sakina a worried look. She was usually so quick with her words. “I should go, I’m sorry,” she said at last. To Osmund she added a redundant, “I’ll be back tonight.”

They waited until her fleeing form vanished from sight of the Golden House’s resplendent terrace.

“Why did she seem angry at me?” Emre mumbled.

“You weren’t angry at her?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“Well,” Osmund pointed out reluctantly, “we had a party after you were nearly executed.”

“That’s why I hoped at least one of us had fun. It was a joke.” Emre sighed exasperatedly. “Women. I don’t understand them at all.”

Osmund decided to leave it at that. He often felt like he understood women better than he did other men. “So, who did you come here to see?”

“You, of course. Let me in.”

Emre pushed through the magnificent doors of the Golden House, and looked about restlessly as he kicked off his shoes. Osmund waited for some quip about Meskato opulence. Instead, the other man paused, distracted, nostrils flaring.

“Sakina’s perfume,” Osmund explained, realizing.

“Like a garden,” said Emre distantly.

He seemed largely unchanged after the events of last night. Or was trying to be. “How is your mother doing?” Osmund ventured, leading with a more indirect question.

Emre’s gaze lingered on a random section of wall a lot longer than the rest. “She’s speaking to me again. So that’s something.”

Their footsteps echoed peculiarly off of the overhead dome. Osmund joined him in the salon, kneeling again before the spread of mostly uneaten fruit. “I can tell she truly loves you, even if I never really knew my own mother,” Osmund said as he took up an orange.

“I don’t remember how the Queen of Valcrest died.”

“The wasting sickness. Officially.”

“And unofficially?”

“She took a potion in secret. I found that out later.”

Emre’s features softened in sympathy. “I still don’t know what happened to my father,” he muttered. “He was Anshan, like my mother. I was too young to understand when the Meskato invaded our home and took us away, but he didn’t come with us. He might’ve been killed in the battle, or he was locked somewhere in a cell to rot.”

“Does she ever speak of him?”

“Never. Nothing about home. Only that our suffering was the heavens’ will, so that Cemil could be born.”

Osmund had no idea what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s in the past,” said Emre unconvincingly. He showed Osmund what he was eating. “Have you had one of these before? It’s called a quince. Sometimes I think the empire expands in pursuit of exotic fruit, and the rest is collateral.”

“I’ve never even seen most of these. Does your hand hurt?”

“No,” Emre said as he pushed a wedge in to his mouth and bit down. “Doesn’t hurt.” 

When Osmund continued to stare, Emre set down the skin of the wedge directly back on the tray. Then he rolled up a sleeve and shed a thin sheepskin glove from his right hand. “There. Get your fill.”

Osmund gulped, studying the charred collection of lines below his knuckles. Altogether, they appeared to form some kind of pictogram. The grooves of the brand shimmered with an inner light.

“Emre,” he murmured, “what exactly did they do to you?”

Emre yanked the glove back on. The leather couldn’t fully hide the glowing mark. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s temporary. Someone out there must know how to undo it,” he said adamantly, and Osmund recognized with dread that this was a belief he was maintaining at all costs.

And if they can’t? he wondered privately. What is it that’s too terrible for you to accept?

“I heard something preposterous last night,” Osmund said instead, changing the subject, though this new one he feared in equal measure. “Apparently the Crown Prince of Valcrest is alive and well in the Meskato Empire. That’s what people are saying!” He braced himself. “Please say this rumor is your doing.”

“Unfortunately, that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. It’s not my work. I’ve heard it too.”

“Is someone going around pretending to be me?”

“I don’t know. But I see our man Pravin’s hand in it. He needs to pretend he has you if he wants that claim to the throne; apparently, his daughter went and got herself pregnant. She’s going to have the child soon.” He gave Osmund a shrewd look. “To be clear, there’s absolutely no possibility…?”

The implication dredged up awful memories. “It isn’t mine!” Osmund protested, indignant. “They tried to pressure me into lying with her before the wedding, but even Father didn’t want me to. Not until Pravin fulfilled his end of the deal, that is.” 

“Well, congratulations,” said Emre. “You’re going to become a father without ever needing to touch a woman.”

“It isn’t funny,” Osmund groaned. He ran a hand through his cascading blond hair. “Should I be scared, Emre? Is this better for me, or worse?”

“If Pravin does have an impostor he’s parading around as you, and no one points out the deception,” Emre began, deep in thought, “then he’ll have bigger things to worry about in the short term. Securing alliances, ships, funding.”

“But if I were to resurface…” The dead doppelganger at the caravansary flashed again into focus in horrifying detail, and Osmund shivered with the realization. “Oh, heavens. He wants me out of the picture.”

“Afraid so,” Emre agreed. “We’ll just have to take him out first.”

He bit into another piece of fruit as Osmund sat, staring blankly into the carpet. “Wow, this one’s a winner,” Emre commented, impressed. “Nearly worth the violent imperialism, I’d say.”

It was another painfully long minute—filled mostly with the sounds of squelching citrus—before the Tolmishman finally recovered himself. “How do we do it?” His voice was small. Killer though he was, he could not make himself say the word.

“It won’t be simple. He spends most of his time surrounded by loyal minions, safe in his manor. But I’ve heard rumors.” Emre sat back. “A certain house, though I don’t know where, and an upcoming meeting with a certain man. On Guild business, no less.”

“Where? Who?”

The happenstance that would follow shook him to his core.

“Works at the docks. He’s a handler. Name of Mylo.”