“Yes,” he said. “That was it. That was what I was supposed to do.” He smiled at me gratefully, and did what I commanded.

* * *

I waited for hours in the cellar, until the rumble in my belly said dinnertime was nearing, which would mean that servants could come down into the cellar soon to fetch wine. Cautiously, I cracked open the cellar doors. The alley wasn’t totally empty. Two women in frothy candy-colored lace were giggling and eating pleasure dust from their palms. Their lips glittered with it. But they paid me no attention. I glanced above. The twilit sky was empty of the Elysium bird—which, I hoped, had lost track of me long ago.

The thoroughfare was strewn with trash. The blue ivy had sagged into a heap, its blossoms blown wide-open and gone as brown as butcher paper. A few people stumbled through the street, drunk or foxed, but most people were probably sleeping until the parties began.

I turned to head back to Sid’s house in the hope of finding her there, but before I took more than a few steps, I heard someone call my name.

It was the Middling boy, Sid’s little spy.

He ran up to me. “You have to help,” he said breathlessly. “I have been looking everywhere for you. Sid’s in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw a man come up to her after you disappeared. He pulled her away from the crowd.”

“A councilman?”

The boy shook his head. “No.” His eyes were wide. “I’ve never seen a man like this before.”

“Describe him. What did he look like?”

“A monster.”

49

THE BOY SAID THE MAN had taken Sid in the direction of her house, so I rushed there, blaming myself for having brought the Lord Protector’s attention to her. I assumed she had been seen beside me, that even if I wasn’t easily identifiable in the crowd and the haste of the chase, someone had noticed Sid standing close to me and easily recognized the foreigner by her short blond hair, her large dark eyes, the way she dressed, and the reputation she relished. Home didn’t seem like a good place for her to hide.

Unless it was a trap set for me, and she had been forced to set it.

The smart thing would have been to stay away, but my heart raged with fear at the thought of her in any danger. I couldn’t leave her alone, captured by someone who sought me.

I remember clearly how I felt: my pulse quivering like a dragonfly over water, a glassy insect with a vivid green body. Easy prey, easily seen, its wings as transparent as how frightened I was for Sid—and for myself, should harm come to her.

When I flung open the door, I heard an argument in another language: Sid’s voice anxious in a way that pierced through me, and the man’s voice alternately insinuating and forceful. It wasn’t a language I recognized. It didn’t sound like Herrani, with its rounded vowels and similarity to my own tongue. It had clusters of hard and harsh sounds. Sid said something that ended with a hiss.

I strode into the sitting room, where I expected to see Sid bound, or with her dagger drawn, threatened by the man who had stolen her. Instead, I found her impeccably dressed, drinking a green liqueur, and gazing up in worried affection at a tall man with no face.

At least, that was my instant impression of him. I immediately recoiled, sucking in my breath. His face had been mutilated. He had no nose and no ears. He looked like he had been made to pay a horrific tithe. He turned and took my measure, black eyes raking me caustically from head to toe with the gaze of someone who makes short work of assessing people. I felt summarized and quickly dismissed. He was old enough to be Sid’s father, with gray in his closely cut black hair. His skin was far darker than mine, a rich brown. If Sid looked foreign, he looked more so: his cheekbones broad, his mouth very full, his liquid black eyes rimmed with green paint.

But most startling were his mutilations. The scar tissue was old, a lighter shade than the rest of his skin. I couldn’t help staring. His mouth curled into a hard smile.

“Nirrim.” Sid’s grip on her glass slackened, her expression relieved yet still apprehensive.

The man spoke to her in a cool, amused, slightly mocking tone.

“Yes.” Sid frowned at him. “She is.”

“What is going on?” I said. “What did he say? Who is he?”

“A family friend.”

“Why is he here?”

“His ship docked in your city’s harbor today.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Hesitantly, she said, “I know.”

I cut a glance at him. “Is he … safe?”

“Me?” he said in my tongue, his accent heavy. He laughed. “No.”

I flinched in surprise. I had assumed he didn’t know my language. I was growing angry at Sid for her silence. I said, “You are making me feel as though I know nothing.”

In a slow, droll tone with the edge of command, the man spoke to Sid in the language they shared. She snapped at him. He shrugged.

Sid glanced at me but wouldn’t hold my gaze. “Earlier, he asked if you were my lover. Now he says I owe you my honesty. Nirrim, there is something I need to explain.”

“Swiftly, Princess,” the man said to her in Herrath.

“Princess?” I echoed, sounding exactly like the stupid ithya bird Raven had claimed I was. “Princess?”

Sid closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in frustration and anger, and said something to the man that sounded like a terrible plea, a grieved accusation. Finally she told him, “Just go. Leave me, please.”

I was flooded with relief, which made me realize how afraid I had been that sending him away was something she wasn’t able to do, and that he was here to take her away.

“You have had your fun.” He said the words to Sid, but they were meant for me to understand. “Now it’s time to come home.” With a scant glance at me, he left.

“What did he mean, princess?” I asked. “Was he teasing you? Was that a joke?”

Miserably, she shook her head.

“Who are you?”

“His name is Roshar,” she said. “He is a prince of Dacra, the eastern land, and I have known him all my life.”

“I didn’t ask about him!”

She set the glass of green liqueur down on a small table with slow precision, like it was an act of utmost importance, her last act. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. This is difficult to explain. Roshar—my parents—no one knew where I was for a long time, but he found out I was on this island after I made the prison officials contact his ambassador here to secure our release. He has always understood me in ways my parents don’t, and I hoped he would keep what he knew to himself. Even if he chose not to, I accepted the risk because it didn’t matter so much that he could track me down here. I planned to be gone long before he received word from his ambassador and his ship was able to arrive. But”—she twisted her fingers together—“I stayed.”