Thick as Thieves (The Queen's Thief #5)
Author: Megan Whalen Turner
CHAPTER ONE
It was midday and the passageway quiet and cool. The stone walls kept out the heat while the openings near the high ceilings admitted some of the sun's fierce light. Midday, and the houseboy was gone on an errand, probably stealing a nap somewhere, so I was alone at the door to my master's apartments, holding my head in my hand and cursing myself for an idiot. I was not prone to stupidity, but I'd made a foolish mistake and was paying the price. My knees shook and I would have leaned against the wall for support, but it had recently been whitewashed and the blood would stain-I did not want to be reminded of this moment every time I passed until the stones were whitened again.
Sighing, I tried to think through the fire in my head and my shoulder. I wanted a place where I could withdraw until the pain had eased, but my usual retreat was an alcove off the main room of my master's apartments-on the other side of the door in front of me. I was absolutely not going through that door until summoned. I'd invited disaster already that day by offering my master an evidently entirely inappropriate glass of remchik. The bottle of remchik was smashed, the glasses were smashed, and, judging by the pain in my shoulder and my side, the small statuette of Kamia Shesmegah formerly resting on his writing desk was smashed as well-from which I gathered that the emperor had not, in fact, offered my master the governorship of Hemsha.
I rubbed my head and checked my hand to see if it was still bleeding. It was, but not much.
In my defense, it had not been unreasonable on my part to assume that my master would become governor. He was still the nephew of the emperor and the brother of the emperor's chosen heir, the prince Naheelid. The governorship of Hemsha, a minor coastal province with a single small harbor, was not outside his expectations. I am the first to admit that he has a habit of overreaching, and I had been very quietly relieved that he had set his sights so low.
After the debacle in Attolia, he'd taken us to rusticate on his family estate. We'd hidden there for more than a year while the laughter died down, my master fighting with his wife the entire time-she had been, unsurprisingly, unenthusiastic about his attempts to marry the Attolian queen. Finally, we had returned to the capital, where my master found that even his oldest friends had turned their backs on him. When he'd applied for the post of governor, I'd thought he was conceding defeat. I'd thought that if Hemsha was far away from the capital, at least it was equally far away from his wife. I would have sworn on my aching shoulder that there was no reason for him to be denied such a reasonable request. Which is why, when he returned with one of his cousins, I had been waiting for him with a tray of glasses and a newly opened bottle of remchik, ready for congratulations.
"I so hate presumption in a slave," I'd heard his cousin say, as I crept out of the room.
I sighed again. I hated being beaten. Nothing could make me feel so stupid and so angry at myself, and on top of everything else, I'd have to deal with the smirks and pitying remarks of other slaves. It did my authority no good to be seen with my face covered in blood, but I really couldn't go back into my master's apartments.
"Kamet?"
I had already bowed and begged pardon before I realized that it was Laela beside me. She reached to touch my shoulder and I flinched.
"Dear Kamet," she said. "Is it more than the face?"
I nodded. My shoulder wasn't going to heal for some time, I could tell.
Laela had been one of my master's dancing girls. When she fell out of favor, she'd asked if I could do anything for her-afraid of where she might be sold to next. I had persuaded my master that she should stay with the household as a matron over the other girls, and she was one of the few slaves I could trust to do me a favor. "Come to my room," she suggested.
Shaking my head slowly, I said, "He will call me back." He always did, sooner or later. I needed to be closer than her rooms, which were deep in the slaves' dormitories.
"I'll make sure the houseboys know where you are," she said, and took me gently by the arm to lead me down the hall.
As matron, Laela had a narrow room much the same size as the alcove where I slept. With the curtain pulled across the doorway, it was almost dark inside. She watched me lie down, then went to fetch a bowl with cool water and a cup to dip in it. After I'd had a drink, she soaked a cloth in the bowl and laid it on my face, wiping away the blood. It made her bedding wet, and I mumbled an apology.