Page 57 of The Second Marriage
Taral’s heart jumped with a mixture of relief and worry. “You found him? Where was he? Is he hurt?”
The superintendent’s eyebrows shot up. “Found? Hurt? No. We take him. Bring him here. Because of—” The man broke off, then shrugged.
Well, that explained nothing, but at least Sejun wasn’t injured. “I’ll take him home, then, and relieve you of the burden of supervising him.”
“No. He stay here. We keep him for king.” The man made a loose gesture. “He will not leave until king say he will leave.”
“Until the king—but why,” Taral said, and then stopped as a cold wave of sickening realization rolled over him. Sejun had been detained, and he was in custody now.
But why? What could he have possibly done? He had gone shopping with that Chedai courtier, and as far as Taral knew had planned to return to the palace immediately thereafter. Unless—oh, he could guess at any number of possibilities, but he wouldn’t know the truth until someone told him. And this man didn’t seem to be able to.
His cold horror ebbed. Here was a problem, and Taral would have to solve it so that he might have his Sejun again. He would need to be methodical and not waste time panicking. No one else in Banuri would devote as much time and effort to this matter as Taral would, and that was as it should be. Sejun was his to care for and protect.
“May I see him?” he asked.
The superintendent’s mouth pursed. “No.” He shrugged. “You talk to king. Maybe he will say yes.”
“Thank you,” Taral said. The man inclined his head. Taral opened the door and went out.
The guard who had brought him in was gone. So was the servant who had escorted him. He stood in the dark courtyard for a minute, considering his options. Then he turned and walked into the palace.
* * *
He knockedat Feba’s door, praying she wasn’t out somewhere as he knew she often was in the evenings. She answered, to his relief, and was adorned in jewelry so that he knew he had come close to missing her altogether.
“Taral,” she said, smiling, and then took in his expression and grew serious. “What’s wrong?”
“Sejun has been taken into custody,” Taral said.
“I see.” Feba looked past his shoulder down the corridor beyond. “You had better come inside, then.”
They sat down together. Feba removed her bangles as Taral spoke and stacked them on the surface of the table. They were carved of jade and cast of silver, so much like the bracelets Sejun wore that Taral momentarily lost the thread of what he was saying. He wished more than anything that the bond wasn’t so closed to him, so that he might get some sense of how Sejun was. Although it might be worse to know that Sejun was afraid.
He finished telling Feba what he had learned. She sat in silence for a minute, staring into the flame of the lamp on the table. Then she said, “Do you have any idea what might have happened?”
“I can speculate. One of his new friends got him into trouble. Of what nature, I can’t say. But he wouldn’t knowingly do anything that would merit his arrest. He was deceived or misled in some way, and I have to wonder if it was by someone who doesn’t want our work here to succeed.”
“Yes. That’s my thought as well.” Feba drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ll send a message to the king. I have to warn you that I doubt this matter will be resolved tonight.”
That was what Taral had expected, but his stomach sank anyway. He hated to think of Sejun sleeping in a cell in the cantonment, cold and alone, and surely convinced that Taral had abandoned him. Taral never would, but he had given Sejun no reason to have faith in him.
His sleep that night was sweaty and restless, disturbed by repeated dreams of walking through the cantonment knocking on every door as he searched for Sejun. He woke before dawn and forced himself to wait until a more reasonable hour before going to Feba’s room. But she had received no reply from the king and could do nothing but counsel patience.
Taral had no patience. If he were a warrior, he would go storming into the cantonment armed and furious and let no one stand in his way until he had secured Sejun’s release. He wished now that Tadasho were slightly more prone to fighting so that he had some training with a sword. Instead, he was helpless: a letter writer, a hand wringer, dependent on Feba’s aid.
A servant brought him breakfast, which he picked at without appetite. At a knock on the door, he leaped to his feet and went to answer. It was Feba, holding a folded paper in her hand, and the grim set of her mouth told him the news was not good.
She came in and accepted the cup of tea he poured with unsteady hands. “It’s sedition they’ve got him for. Which seems excessive to me. He delivered a letter, that’s all, but it seems the contents regarded a conspiracy against the king.”
Taral rubbed at his eyes. A letter—of course. Sejun would think nothing of doing a favor for a friend. “We weren’t misinformed, then, about the separatist movement.”
“It seems not.” Feba held her cup without drinking. “Taral, you’re under suspicion as well. It seems you’re acquainted with the woman the letter was delivered to.”
Taral looked at her in shock. “Simra?”
“A curiosities seller in the city. I take it there’s only one candidate.” At Taral’s nod, she added, “You’re safe for now thanks to your formal role in the negotiations. But the king has opened an inquest, and depending on what that reveals, I don’t know if I can protect you.”
“I knew nothing,” Taral said, flat and numb. “Simra—she’s the one who told me about the separatists in the first place. She was manipulating me all along, I suppose.”