“Don’t think about it,” she assured me, still all smiles. “Here’s one for you too, Lady Shadi, for all the help you have given Lady Tea here. Now hurry up. Your guests are waiting for you.”
I didn’t know what to do, but Lady Shadi tucked the envelope inside her waist wrap and bowed, and so I did the same.“Good luck,” Fox said to us before resuming his post outside the tearoom.
Mistress Peg led me to the exact same room where Zoya had made me entertain Prince Kance and his friends all those months ago, and I was sure she could hear how hard my heart was pounding.
When she slid the door back, I was almost disappointed. Prince Kance was not inside the room. But Kalen was. With him were other boys his age, also clad in the black he was so fond of wearing. To my chagrin, Zoya was also present, and two of her friends—Yonca and Brijette, I remembered.
“If it isn’t the Valerian girls!” one of the boys hooted, rising to his feet and extending both hands to us with a large grin. He was tall and muscular, built for a fight. “And it’s the Dark asha too! Come join us, pretty ladies. We don’t bite!”
That set off a chain of laughter among the rest, and for an instant, I thought about fleeing. I knew the necessary etiquette when it came to dealing with people, but as Mistress Parmina had pointed out already, the theory paled when it came to practice. To my relief, Lady Shadi took charge.
“Don’t tease her, Ostry,” she scolded him. “This is her first party, and we should be making her feel at home. Come sit between me and Kalen, Tea, and I’ll introduce you to the boys. You’ve already met the duke, haven’t you?”
“The duke?”
Kalen shrugged, still glaring at me; he had not displayed such hostility before. He addressed Lady Shadi instead and did not look back in my direction. “I never told her. We’re not in the immediate line for the crown, so we tend to be glossed over in your history lessons.”
“Kalen is the son of a duke,” Ostry said. “The Duke of Holsrath to be more specific—King Telemaine’s own brother.” He scratched at his unruly red hair. “Unfortunately, the rest of us come from humbler origins. I am Ostry of Mireth. My father runs a pig farm there, so perhaps you can refer to me as the Duke of Hog.”
“Ignore their idiocy,” Lady Shadi said, but she was smiling. “They leave Kion tomorrow, so they’re trying their best to get drunk before then.”
“Idiocy? Lady Shadi, you slay me.” One of the boys grabbed at his heartsglass in mock pain.
“You’re all leaving tomorrow?”
“Except Kalen, that lucky bastard. He’s manning the fort here while we go chase after daeva,” Ostry said, gulping down his drink. “And who better to hunt it down than a roomful of Deathseekers? But I’d much rather be here, drinking on Empress Alyx’s tab and being entertained by pretty ladies.”
“Not the best attitude to have before leaving to fight daeva,” Kalen said with stiff disapproval.
“Oh, lighten up, Your Lordship. We’ve got one last night. Where’s the attendant? We need some of those alut they like so much in Yadosha. This wine is not doing much to get me drunk quickly enough.”
“Aren’t you one of Tea’s friends?” another man asked Zoya. “You were together when that accident here happened, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“‘I suppose so’? That’s an odd answer. Are you or aren’t you?”
“Little Tea here has friends who think shielding her from all sorts of harm is the best way to teach her how to be an asha. I don’t believe in such nonsense. If she wants to tread the waters of the Willows, then the best way to teach is to throw her into the river. There is no better way to learn to swim than when you are struggling to keep your head above water.”
“That’s a harsh way of putting things, Lady Zoya.”
“Isn’t being a Deathseeker the same way? And yet you do not mind.”
“I suppose it pains me to see beautiful women placed in such difficult situations.”
“We are not paper flowers that easily rend and tear in the wind, Alsron.”
“You must try to be nicer to Tea, Zoya,” Lady Shadi chided.
“That’s none of your concern, Shadi.” Zoya flashed me an artificial smile. “Some wine, Lord Alsron?”
Lord Alsron did want some wine, as did most of the others. Yonca pulled back the door to summon a passing attendant.
“Would you like me to refill your bowl, Your Highness?” I asked Kalen.
“No, thank you.” Kalen only looked irritated.
“Now that we have the celebrated asha apprentice in our midst,” Ostry continued, and I felt embarrassed when all eyes turned to me again. “We must know—what did happen at the Falling Leaf that night? We deserve a firsthand account, don’t you think?”
“Zoya was there,” Kalen said. “She could probably tell it better.”
“But she has! Now we want the story from the girl herself!” A chorus of agreement met Ostry’s words. “Well, Lady Tea?”
I decided not to delay what was inevitable. I cleared my throat. “I don’t understand it myself. Everything happened so quickly that it’s hard to know where to begin.”
“How did you come to be at the Falling Leaf in the first place?” someone interrupted. “Lady Zoya says that you’d snuck into their party without anyone knowing.”
Instructor Kaa taught me several breathing techniques to control my temper. I employed one of them because the alternative was to rise to my feet and attempt to strangle Zoya. “I was an idiot. I was barely a novice, and I didn’t know the rules. I worked at the Valerian as a servant far longer than most apprentices had, and I found the rules constricting. I’m sure you know Mistress Parmina. She is a hard taskmaster.”
“We’ve had the misfortune,” Ostry said, and the room roared.
“She’s not as bad as you think,” I said once the laughter died down. “She likes a clean house though and was always sending me out on errands. One night, I was determined to see how asha worked in the evenings—I wanted to see if all my hard work would be worth being an asha. So I did sneak out. I still feel guilty, thinking about it now.”
“Don’t be,” a boy they called Mavren said. “We’ve all done that—playing truant and sneaking out into the city when the master of arms isn’t looking.”
“Lady Zoya, Lady Yonca, and Lady Brijette here were at that party—it was in this very room, in fact! Sir Kalen should remember; he was here with Prince Kance and the Princess of Arhen-Kosho.” I smiled at Zoya. “Lady Zoya was kind enough to let me join them. There were too many guests about, and she knew I would be caught if I snuck back out on my own. They lent me a hua and made me up to look like an asha.”
I saw the asha trade looks with her friends, but no one else noticed.
“But then something happened—”