Page 4 of Prima
He gathers himself and murmurs the requisite greetings; she returns the expected platitudes. He offers her a seat and steps aside for her to squeeze past him in the confined space. She smells of still-damp hair and expensive silk. As she pivots to sit down on the bench, the hem of her dress flares out in a near-perfect circle.
He stares at her a moment too long before pulling up a chair for himself. She lifts the cup of tea he pours for her. With the rise and fall of the boat, the light overhead picks out flecks of glitter and gleam on her dress at just the sort of random frequency to further distract him.
“I recognize this tea,” she says after two sips. “Jasperdew. In my younger days, I carried it with me on a long journey. Very costly, is it not?”
He seizes the opening. "Five, my esteemed brother, tried to tell me that it’s mostly the uninitiated who drink Jasperdew, to impress other uninitiated. I trust his judgment in just about everything, but on matters having to do with tea I’m afraid I’ve deferred to my own taste.”
Five, the rare individual to emerge from an upbringing in the Potentate’s Palace with his soul intact, is the man who should accede to the throne of Dawan.
But Lady Sun does not turn the conversation toward Five. “Istill drink Jasperdew. Then again, I’ve never heard such a pronouncement against it. What madeyoupersist, Your Highness?”
“Please, call me Nineteen.”
“Very well then. What made you persist, Prince Nineteen?”
This isn’t a question about his choice of tea, is it, but about his suitability as Five’s advocate? His mental fitness as an amnesiac.
He tastes the pale brew in his cup. Perhaps the tea does lack depth, but he finds its verdant brightness comforting—and haunting at the same time.
“Six years ago, I was rescued at sea. When I regained consciousness a fortnight later, I couldn’t remember anything that led up to my mishap. One of the few possessions found with me was a packet of Jasperdew, already spoiled by humidity. I don’t know why I had it with me, but”—he shrugs—“I took it to mean that I always liked this particular tea.”
Her expression is a combination of a smile and a raised brow, as if she likes his answer yet disagrees wholeheartedly. He is tempted to smile back at her.
“Six years ago,” she muses, sliding a fingertip over the cream-and-blue cushion that covers the bench. “Word on the street is that you can’t remember anything from before your rescue. Is it true, prince?”
All desire to smile at her flees. She is as dangerous as any of the sharks that attempted to capsizeThe Blue Sampanthe night before—and he can’t use a tranquilizer dart on her.
“If it’s true, then that means you’ve known Prince Five for only six years,” she points out. “Which makes you less persuasive of a champion for his aspirations to the throne.”
He exhales. Shouldn’t she be more concerned about Five’s own merits than the true length of the two brothers’ acquaintance? “That I can’t remember anything from before the incident is what I’ve always maintained. But that isn’t entirely true. What is true is that I can’t recall the events leading up to the near foundering of my vessel.”
“Or the people involved in it?”
A frisson jolts up the inside of his arm. “I was told later that my mother and my sister had received special dispensation to travel outside the palace, to see the sperm whales at their nursing ground, a tradition my mother’s people observe on major birthdays—she was to turn forty that year.”
“You accompanied the two of them?”
“My mother’s maid came along too.”
Something gleams in Lady Sun’s eyes, something wavering between sympathy and clinical curiosity. His inability to get a proper read on her—he thought it was due to his own inner disequilibrium. But now he wonders if it isn’t also becauseshehas yet to make up her mind whether he pleases her—or the opposite.
“You were the only one who was found, I understand,” she says. “The other three disappeared without a trace.”
An old fear grips him. On a good day he can convince himself that they escaped and now live free and happy. But the truth is he doesn’t know. He might never know.
She waits until he is forced to give an answer.
“That is correct. There was a search, but nothing was ever recovered except the tracking devices my mother and sister once wore, chewed into pieces, on the ocean floor. We held a memorial for them and built cenotaphs.”
And he visits those empty tombs several times a year, as befitting a bereaved son and brother.
His interlocutor picks up a small pastry from the offerings on the table. “Mooncake?”
The oscillation of topics—the swerving from the momentous to the utterly insignificant—gives him whiplash. And sets him even more on edge. “Yes.”
She glances at him, a heavy-lidded look, and takes a bite. At the sight of her teeth sinking into the mooncake, a fresh upswell of desire wars with his wariness.
Pain flickers across her features—no, pain and pleasure both. “Jackfruit, my favorite. Are you sure these were not prepared especially for me?”
