nazlanmak (v.) pretending reluctance or indifference when you are actually willing or eager; saying no and meaning yes

"Darling," Kasimira Schreave said, disapprovingly. "You shouldn't be out without a jacket."

Smoke was still drifting lazily over the inner districts, staining the sky with that same sickly-sweet scent that had so permeated the ballroom the evening prior. The guards were still sifting through the rubble remains for survivors, calling back and forth to one another as corpses, or some parts thereof, were uncovered beneath the shattered pieces of the obliterated mosaic ceiling. The gardens were not so remote, so removed from the eastern side of the palace, that they could not still see the grey-garbed servants slowly proceeding down the cliffside, carrying the bodies wrapped in grey cloth which they had managed to recover in the six hours since the xrafstar's attack.

Silas said, dryly, "I expect I'll survive."

Even as he said the words, he held back a cough; even as he said the words, his chest felt tight.

Kasimira sat back on her heels, tugging at the wrists of her black gardening gloves. She was not dressed for this task – a long wine-purple skirt and a neat grey bodice, with a guard's jacket thrown over her shoulders to keep the cold at bay – but she had the air of a woman for whom the idea of doing nothing was pure anathema. Preferable, then, to butcher Priscus' precious gardens, if the uprooted stalks beside her boots were any indication. The little star-shaped blossoms were perfectly familiar; Lady Alliette had carried clippings of these zandik plants with her in the Kur empire's mad dash across the sea, and planted them here – the first set of roots the Schreave kingdom had set down in their new home.

Silas said, "how is he?"

Kasimira shook her head. "Alive."

Silas slowly raised an eyebrow. "Better than the alternative."

"You have an irrepressible knack for understatement, Si." Kasimira gently lifted her accumulated shoots and flowers, and ladled them into the mortar she had wedged into the soil beside her. The stone golem had torn up great swathes of the garden on its escape from the palace, but – thank god – the plantations of zandik seemed to have escaped, for the most part, unscathed. Sunrise was creeping across the roses and datura which clustered the central oasis of the gardens; it was dawning as a crisp morning, tinged with the slightest suggestion of frost, such that Silas' breath misted before him as he crouched beside his mother and picked fallen zandik petals out of the churned soil to make sure that none were left behind. Kasimira murmured a quiet word of thanks that he did not acknowledge; he so rarely had the opportuntiy to contribute to the family business. "He will live. He is too strong to do otherwise."

Silas said, "and Sena?"

"Calming the populace," Kasimira said. "Holding up the kingdom."

Silas pinched the petal between his fingertips, staining his skin with the strange mandarin-yellow pigment. It stung, just a little; it bit into the skin, toxically acrid in its scent. His mother's voice carried no hint of bitterness; Silas could not imagine sounding so neutral as she did, discussing the matter. The people of Illéa viewed her an omen, an harbinger of doom. It was a happy coincidence that she had eschewed the ball the night before; Silas was certain that his mother would have been blamed for the druj attack if she had been so much as glimpsed by their gathered guests. However, that simple fact, and Silas' many maladies, meant that it fell to his sister to hold up the monarchy entire. "She is working too hard."

"I leave it to you," Kasimira said, "to convince her of that fact. I fear she feigns deafness when I broach the topic."

Silas chuckled. "Priscus is a bad influence."

"If only you knew." Kasimira laughed softly with her son. It felt warmly conspiratorial; it felt pleasantly clandestine. "We must be grateful that he's family."

He would be with Aviram, no doubt. It was enough of a surprise that Kasimira was not slavishly attending to her husband's sickbed; Silas knew that she would not have left him in the care of any but Priscus Schreave. For all their differences, Priscus and Kasimira were bound together by that strange, esoteric bond to which none of the other family members could even aspire; they were equals, truly and irrevocably so, in a family inherently constructed on hierarchy and power and secrets.

Even that thought was enough to tighten his chest further.

She peeled off her gardening gloves. "Are you sure you're well enough to be up?"

Silas shook his head. "I tire of convalescing."

"Yes," Kasimira said, "if only genetic disorders could be persuaded to abate because you are bored of your sickbed."

He did not mention to Kasimira that his bed was occupied. It was strange for him to have such ordinary secrets to keep from his mother; this was the stuff of novels. "Fresh air will be good for me."

"As stubborn as your father." Kasimira sighed. "Did you inherit nothing from me, darling?"

"Any number of less respectable traits, I'm sure."

"You're getting to be as bad as your sister, you know."

Silas wasn't sure if he was meant to take that as a compliment, but he certainly did. "How many Selected dead?"

"We've found two bodies," Kasimira said. She may as well have been discussing the effects upon the gardens; it was the same soft note of regret, without any true sympathy or sorrow staining her customarily cold voice. "Reiko is conducting an audit of the numbers who wish to remain."

The palace was no longer a safe haven. That was the silent undercurrent to this strange, stilted conversation, in which mother and son could discuss all except the most pressing issue, which overhung all else. Two hundred years on this forsaken island, and the royal family had thrived on the simple fact that the walls would hold fast – and if they did not, then their tagma would hold back the hordes beyond for long enough that a solution might be found. It was a key reason for Selected girls to even agree to the whole blasted competition, a path to the inner circles where life was easy and few, if any, of your lived ones were liable to be torn apart and consumed by a stray druj attack.

If that was no longer the case…

"Eleven, then," Kasimira said. "At the most. Let us hope your soulmate was not among the dead."

She smiled. Silas said, drily, "I expect that was not the case."

"Tch. None have caught your eye?" Kasimira raised an eyebrow. "You danced with a few."

Silas said nothing. His mother's cold eyes swept across his face. She relented.

"It was the same for your father," she said, softly. "Worry not."

"Of all things," Silas said, "this is not a pressing matter at this time, Mama."

"Your happiness is always a pressing matter."

She lifted her woven basket, into which she had heaped an assortment of poisonous plants, and settled her mortar atop then, slinging it over one arm. Here, for a split second, it was as though there were no xrafstars within the kingdom at all; it was as though it was another day, simple in its predictability.

Silas said, "Asenath will select a girl for me, and Priscus will approve her, and she'll recoil from my touch for all the years that we are married." He smiled. "Truly, a love story for the ages."

Kasimira sighed. "We have committed that cardinal sin, you and I, despite your sister's best efforts. They are afraid of you, darling. You, my beautiful boy, are all their fears personified." She looked at the smoking ruins of the ballroom. "It could make you strong, you know. If you embraced it."

Silas said, "I can embrace it no more than I have."

She touched his cheek, gently and briefly. "You think that now."

A loud cry went up from the other side of the palace – a survivor had been found. They were excavating him slowly; from the sound of it, many parts of his body had been put beyond salvage. He was to be considered lucky, then: Björn, one of Silas' personal guards, had been killed in the first few moments of the attack. They had discerned his body with some difficulty, so far had he been put beyond recognition; Agnar had been pulled from the debris bloodied, but alive.

One of the Selected had gone to help with the grisly task – in a sea of grey suits, her mint-green jacket stood out like a strange leafy beacon.

Silas said, "there was more than one of them, wasn't there?"

"More," Kasimira said, "certainly. I could not number them for certain. Perhaps three – four."

Silas thought of the golden-eyed girl on the dancefloor. "Asenath will be pleased."

"So I had hoped," Kasimira said. "Unfortunately, our guest has escaped Captain Hijikata's grasp once more. I understand that the losses to the excubutors were considerable."

Silas raised an eyebrow. "They lost him?"

"The enemy is calculated," Kasimira said. "They hoped to provoke a response – they almost succeeded."

When Silas spoke, it was with a wintry coldness. "You make it sound like we're at war."

"Not yet." When Kasimira smiled, it was with a particular martial viciousness that twenty five years in the genteel existence of royalty had done little to dull. She was, after all, still a soldier at her core. She was, after all, less Schreave than the rest – less, and yet more so. "Not yet."