With an emphatic gesture, Doma Larissa indicates the screened awning and the royal clothing neatly folded atop a table inside.
“Yes, yes, just like when I was five and you dressed me,” says Kal with a rueful glance that makes me stifle a laugh.
He steps under the awning. The wet towel is plastered to his form in a way that interests me more than the beautiful garden scenery, that reminds me of the sweetness we have shared, the trust that binds our hearts. But a squad of attendants swarms out of the garden like a disturbance of cockroaches to dress and settle him in a waiting sedan chair and carry him off through the garden into the king’s chambers, where I am not invited to follow.
My giddiness vanishes, burned away by the thought of so many invisible knives.
Doma Larissa picks up the tray and escorts me back the way we came.
“So I was always meant to bathe in the other courtyard?” I ask, desperate to figure out how to negotiate this endless succession of traps.
She nods. Two guardsmen have arrived to stand duty at the gate between the compounds; they let us through without a word. Now that I get a better look at the original private courtyard, I see there is a separate area for washing before you get in the pool, with a stone bench, a drain, and a cloth screen if you wish for privacy.
Doma Larissa hums a pretty melody as she pours jasmine-scented water over my grimy skin, soaking me repeatedly as I sigh with pleasure. Her fingers gently tease apart my matted hair. The cut barely hurts as she uses a small brush to gently clean away dried blood, then washes my entire body with a brisk energy I haven’t felt since I was a little child and Mother would scrub us down.
She dresses me in silk undergarments, a finely woven sheath dress, and a calf-length jacket of pale yellow. However costly the fabric, this is the garb of a servant, not of a highborn doma or noble-born lady. I want to refuse the clothing but I don’t have anything else clean to wear.
This whole place reeks of rottenness. I don’t want to leave Kal and Father, and I don’t want to stay here to face off with the likes of Volua and Galaia every day. I’ve walked myself into a blind trap where I can’t go forward while the path behind me has closed off.
When I offer to help her carry the basin holding my dirty garments, she refuses with a gesture and hauls it herself to the portico. I wait in the sun. A soft click brings my head around. One of the tile-encrusted cornucopias shifts, develops a seam, and starts to open.
It’s a secret gate.
I dash for Larissa. Her back is to me, so I yank on her sleeve. When she turns, I point, then pull us behind a pillar.
An armed man dressed in the tabard of the queen’s guard steps through and surveys the pool and courtyard as would a scout. He speaks to someone behind him, and six men carry a curtained litter in through the narrow gate and set it down. A harried-looking attendant holds aside the heavy curtain and assists the woman sitting hidden within to climb out. She has come in such furtive haste that she appears more like a clandestine lover than a proud highborn woman. She isn’t wearing the queen’s diadem, but what gives her away is her striking resemblance to statues of her mother, Serenissima the Fourth, with her round face and slightly bulging eyes.
Her expression seems gentle, even timid, but I know Queen Serenissima the Fifth for what she really is: a conspirator and murderer who colluded in the death of her brother Kliatemnos and her only child, Temnos, so she could hold on to power.
Now she has come for Kal.
11
I desperately want to be the one to warn Kal but Larissa won’t be able to make Father understand the urgency.
“Go warn the king,” I whisper.
Her path to the gate into the king’s garden is shielded by a hedge so she can scurry away while I’m still trapped. If I try to go to the doors that lead into Father’s suite, they’ll see me. But cowering behind a pillar is not the only way to hide. I’m dressed in servants’ garb, and even though Efeans never work in the palace, I only need the queen and her attendants to hesitate for an instant.
I grab the basin and, bracing it against my hip, stride along the portico to Father’s suite just as if I were an ordinary servant about her ordinary tasks. I make it to the doors before I hear a concerned exclamation followed by a demand to hush.
Steward Haredas has just set a tray of food and drink down on the desk in front of Father. “Personally sampled by the head cook so it is safe,” he remarks with a dry smile, a legacy of years of trust built up between the two men.
“Father! The queen just entered the courtyard through a secret door—”
He’s on his feet and moving so fast that I barely have time to set down the basin and hurry after him onto the portico. Serenissima is already speaking in a rush as a new group of figures enter the sunlit courtyard from the king’s garden.
“Nikonos! I was so frightened for you! Thank goodness you have returned in triumph.”
The light of triumph dies in her face as she takes in Kal with his coterie of officers and crowd of exalted officials. He wears an ankle-length keldi of soft purple and a sleeveless vest. Of course he looks the very image of a handsome prince in a play. Maybe it would be more truthful to say that actors playing handsome princes strive to look like him.
The new king speaks no word. He waits. Not one of the senior palace officials who surround him moves toward the queen or makes any effort to acknowledge her. The silence settles, grows heavy, and becomes oppressive.
At last, slowly, as if she can barely find the energy to act, she presses a hand to her chest. “Kalliarkos. You have surprised me.”
“Yes, I must suppose I have.”
Her gaze darts around the courtyard now filled with men. It pauses on Junior Palace Steward Sarnon, who gives the slightest shake of his head. Father whispers in an adjutant’s ear and I’m absolutely sure Sarnon will be expelled from service in the king’s palace before the day is over.
Oblivious to this byplay, Serenissima takes several tottering steps forward. Officers shift inward, ready to fling themselves in front of Kal, but she drops to her knees in supplication.
“Oh, thank the gods, my dearest cousin Kalliarkos. I prayed and prayed to be rescued from my brother’s brutal attentions—”
“Which brother?” he interposes. A twitch has started up at the corner of his right eye.
“Why, Nikonos, of course! Everyone knew he was a brute. He murdered my darling son… my gentle Temnos.…” She sobs gustily.
My hands close into fists.
The queen heaves a tremulous sigh. “That innocent boy, fresh as the morning dew, ripped from my loving arms and killed before my wounded, weeping heart.”