Zeid made it as far as his tent before the pain became too strong.
Until then it had allowed him to ride back from the old press-house, allowed him to answer Suhayl’s report, allowed him to stand while Khalaf entered names into the road ledger and Rydric ordered the prisoners bound under Esberian custody. It had even permitted him to bow, very slightly, to Yahya of the Well-House when the stolen goats were returned.
The bow had been a mistake.
Rafiq had seen it. Rafiq saw everything. He had said nothing in public, which meant the reckoning had merely been postponed.
Now, inside the tent, the reckoning arrived with a cup of bitter medicine, a folded length of clean linen, and the quiet closing of the tent flap.
“Sit,” Rafiq said.
Zeid sat.
Rafiq set the cup beside the lamp, unfastened the outer clasps of Zeid’s travel coat, and began removing the dust of the day layer by layer. His hands were steady. They always were.
Outside, the camp murmured around the night. Esberian voices near one fire, Jaludian near another. Horses stamping. Harness creaking. Someone coughing. Farther off, a bound prisoner from Merys cursed, was struck, and decided silence suited him better.
Inside the tent, there was only lamplight, cloth, breath, and Rafiq’s anger.
“You will drink,” Rafiq said.
“I have drunk.”
“Water. Not medicine.”
“I prefer water.”
“You also prefer kneeling in front of archers. Your preferences are no longer evidence of wisdom.”
Zeid looked at the cup. “How much of that is meant to help me, and how much is revenge?”
“Both purposes can be served by one liquid.”
The coat came away. Dust fell from the hem. Rafiq folded it with unnecessary precision and set it aside. Beneath it, the linen had shifted. Zeid felt the moment Rafiq saw the damage. No gasp. No curse. Only a pause, so small another man would have missed it.
Zeid did not miss it.
“Do not make that face,” he said.
“I have made no face.”
“You have withheld one. That is ruder.”
Rafiq reached for the ties. “Lift your arm.”
Zeid lifted it.
Pain moved like a hook.
He kept his breath even. Rafiq’s mouth tightened.
The first layer loosened. Then the second. The bindings had been wrapped before dawn for riding, formal enough to hold the line of his body under the coat, practical enough to survive heat and dust. They had not been meant for a hard pursuit through a wadi, a kneel beside a bleeding guard, an arrow striking too near, or Alianor Aldren seizing him as if he were a sack of grain with titles.
Rafiq peeled the linen free.
A thin line of blood had dried where the cloth had bitten under the left side. Bruising spread beneath it, dark at the edges and angry near the ribs. Dust had found even the places cloth should have protected. When Rafiq touched the worst of it, Zeid’s hand closed around the edge of the stool.
“You should have let the guard bleed until someone else reached him,” Rafiq said.
Zeid looked at him. “No.”
“No,” Rafiq repeated, softly now. “Of course not. A prince must be seen to be merciful. An envoy must be seen to honour the Sultan’s peace. A son must make himself useful to his father’s treaty. A fool must kneel where arrows can find him.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“The guard would have died.”
“And if you had?”
Zeid had no answer that would not insult them both.
Rafiq turned to the medicine chest. It was small, cedar-lined, its brass corners darkened by travel. The physician in Solymer had packed it before dawn on the day they left: folded herbs in waxed cloth, salves stoppered in little pots, bitter powders, strips of boiled linen, a bronze needle case, and instructions written in a hand too sharp to be comforting. Rafiq had accepted the instructions without telling the physician he knew most of them already.
Rafiq opened a small pot of salve.
“The bindings are not to be tightened after a day’s hard riding,” he said.
“The man who wrote that is in Solymer.”
“He anticipated that argument.”
“Naturally.”
“He packed instructions.”
“Burn them.”
“He anticipated that too. I memorized them.”
Zeid closed his eyes. “There is no mercy in this world.”
“There is. You keep spending it on strangers.”
The salve touched the raw place.
Zeid’s breath caught despite him.
Rafiq’s hands paused. This time he did curse, but under his breath and in Nabatir, which made the words sound dry enough to strike sparks.
“It is not broken,” Zeid said.
“You do not know that.”
“I can breathe.”
“You can perform breathing. I have seen you perform piety, masculinity, serenity, and filial obedience. Breath may simply be next in the procession.”
That almost made Zeid laugh. The attempt hurt enough to cure him of it.
Rafiq worked in silence for a while. Washed the blood with warm water. Pressed the salve in carefully. Rewrapped, looser than court demanded, tighter than comfort deserved. He left space where swelling might come. He tied the final knot flat, away from the bruise.
Zeid looked down. “That will show under the coat.”
“Then wear a heavier coat.”
“It is hot.”
“Then sweat. Sweat is less fatal than vanity.”
“It is not vanity.”
Rafiq’s eyes lifted.
Zeid looked away first.
Outside, someone laughed near an Esberian fire.
Zeid said, “She carried me.”
“Yes.”
“You might pretend not to have noticed.”
“No.”
“It was unnecessary.”
“The arrow disagreed.”
“She called me baggage.”
“You were being difficult to transport.”
“She has no respect for diplomatic rank.”
“She has respect for useful burdens. Aspire to that.”
Zeid reached for the medicine cup. Anything was better than letting Rafiq see his face too clearly. The liquid was bitter enough to make his tongue resent the rest of his body.
Rafiq watched him drink.
Then, quieter, he said, “Your body is not the uncertainty.”
Zeid lowered the cup.
Rafiq took the stained linen and folded it inward, hiding the blood. “It is everyone else’s eyes. Unfortunately, everyone else’s eyes are coming west with us.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Zeid looked at the lamp flame. The light trembled whenever wind moved against the tent cloth. Beyond the canvas were Esberians who thought him an infidel prince, Jaludians who thought him Seylim’s son, clerks who thought him a treaty term, priests who thought him a problem, and one princess who had carried him up a slope with her arms locked around the body he spent his life persuading the world not to see.
“Then we shall give them something else to look at,” he said.
Rafiq did not answer.
That was when the shadow passed near the tent.
Both men heard it. Rafiq moved first, gathering the bloody linen in one hand and lifting the tent flap with the other. Outside, the night air came in cool and dusty.
Princess Alianor stood beyond the rope line.
She had not meant to be caught standing still. That was obvious from the way her shoulders changed when Rafiq stepped out. She had her cloak drawn close, Mercy belted at her side. One hand was bandaged beneath a glove that had been cut and restitched at the palm.
Rafiq held the linen too late.
She had seen the blood.
For several breaths, neither of them spoke.
Behind Rafiq, Zeid shifted inside the tent. Rafiq did not turn. He kept himself between the opening and Alianor with the ease of long habit.
Alianor looked at the folded cloth.
Then at Rafiq.
Then away.
“He rode like a fool today,” she said.
Rafiq’s face remained grave. “He is a prince, Highness. It is one of the first things they teach them.”
Something almost moved at the corner of her mouth.
“Was it worsened?” she asked.
The question came too quickly to be indifference and too flatly to be tenderness.
Rafiq weighed three answers and chose the least dangerous.
“It was not improved.”
Her eyes flicked once toward the tent flap. She did not try to see past him.
Rafiq’s gaze dropped to her bandaged hand.
He said nothing.
She hid it too late.
For the first time that night, Rafiq’s expression changed.
“Your hand should be washed before it stiffens,” he said.
“My hand is none of your charge.”
“No,” Rafiq said. “But wound-rot obeys no household roll.”
That did make her smile.
“Do all Jaludian servants lecture royalty?”
“Only those of us who wish them to live long enough to become other people’s burdens.”
Inside the tent, Zeid said, “I can hear you both.”
“Then hear this,” Rafiq said without looking back. “Sleep.”
Alianor turned before the exchange could become anything else.
She walked away toward the Esberian fires, cloak moving around her boots, head high, hand hidden badly against her side. Rafiq watched until the dark took her.
Then he went back inside.
Zeid was looking at him.
“What?” Rafiq said.
“You like her.”
“I trust knives when I know where they are.”
Zeid smiled.
Outside, the camp settled by degrees. Men slept. Guards changed. The bound prisoners muttered in their ropes.
Zeid lay down carefully on his side.
Rafiq watched until his breathing deepened into something that might, with charity, be called sleep.
Only then did he take the bloody linen outside, dig a shallow hole beyond the tent light, and bury it under dust and stones where no curious Esberian eye would find it.