Page 9 of Prima
“Our current Prima is a man who has only platonic interest in other men,” she says. “I, on the other hand, do find you extremely attractive, Prince Nineteen.”
He swallows and decants a jar of soup his cook had prepared into the pot. He has preserved his chastity all these years. Was it only to cede it to her?
Why does the thought not alarm him more? Why does it not alarm him at all?
“But I never received an answer about the depth of your acquaintance with Prince Five sans a lifetime of observation,” she says casually, almost breezily. “You mentioned that it is not true that you forgot everything. So what did you forget—and what do you remember?”
That whiplash again. He hasn’t faced inquiries concerning his memory loss in years, except occasionally from Five’s mother, when she was still alive. The Noble Consort’s questions on whether anything came back to him he was able to answer more or less truthfully, as no erased recollections have ever tumbled back into his mind. But Lady Sun demands an honesty that is more than invasive: It feels ruinous.
And the device in her valise could be a lie detector, even though it doesn’t resemble any he’s read about.
He sets a layered scallion flatbread to heat and adds a pinch of salt to the soup. But is his attempt at nonchalance meant to reassure his interrogator or himself?
“Mostly I forgot about my mother and my sister—my memories of them from before I turned ten have been preserved, but nothing since,” he manages slowly. Sometimes a wound no longer hurts if you leave it alone, but the merest collision lets you know, with a stab of pain, that it’s still open, still raw.
“Of the other people in my life, I did not forget anywhere near as much. Specifically, with regard to my brother Five, I only forgot a few meetings we had in the months before my incident—and one meeting from some years before that.”
“How do you know?”
The memory still chills him. He exhales. “I regained consciousness earlier than I let on and overheard conversations between two of my father’s eunuchs who were in the hospital room with me. It became clear immediately that the Potentate was extremely displeased at the disappearance of his concubine and daughter, however little thought he gave them when they still lived in his palace. He ordered everything they’d left behind burned and ransacked my place outside the palace, too. The eunuchs wondered if I had somehow managed to free them from their tracking devices, the removal of which should have killed them.
“If I could have done anything to aid in their escape, I would have. But I didn’t know what I’d done—or even what I could have done. All I knew was that, according to the whispering eunuchs, I’d taken these two women somewhere and lost them on my watch.”
He flips the flatbread. She now stands on the other side of the transparent splatter guard that separates the galley from the rest of the lounging area. Her dress fastens down the front in a row of mother-of-pearl buttons. Small buttons, not exactly round, but scalloped like flowers—even when he’s trying not to look at her, she is all he sees.
“So you decided that a claim of general amnesia was your best bet?”
“A claim of complete ignorance and bewilderment, while suggesting, without ever doing so overtly, that I had been ambushed by the women I trusted the most. That they managed to free themselves from their trackers, then attacked me when I wouldn’t let them leave.”
Did his father ever believe him? Hard to say. But some of his brothers taunted him, telling him that if he was stupid enough to trust women then he deserved his fate.
“Anyway, while I was still in the hospital, Five came to see me. I asked him how we knew each other, and most of what he said accorded with my own memories. At the time, the exception that stood out the most was a meeting he mentioned from ten, eleven years prior. He said I’d made myself a tri-hull and invited him for a trial run, and the tri-hull sailed so fast he was terrified and refused to ever get on it again. That was apparently the same vessel that was destroyed when I lost my mother and sister—I don’t recall it at all.”
She toys with the top button on her dress. “Are you going to say nothing of those years of hard labor you had to endure as punishment for losing your womenfolk?”
He lowers the heat on the soup that has come to a boil and places another round of flatbread in the pan to toast, trying not to betray his agitation. Agitation—and a strange…no, not pleasure, but a stinging, bruising gratification at her scalpel-like interest. “Is that relevant to my eligibility to advocate for Five?”
“No, but it might affect how I would rate you as my gift from Prince Five.”
“It was unpaid work, but not backbreaking. Just physical labor. And frankly, it was good for me to be away from the capital. I didn’t like my punishment, per se, but it was hardly the most difficult period of my life.”
She tilts her head. There is a teasing light on her face. “Are you trying to rate higher in my eyes, Prince Nineteen?”
“Madam, far be it for me, who is trying not to be ravished by you on such short acquaintance, to deliberately make myself more appealing in your eyes. I simply don’t wish to be thought of as damaged goods.”
She laughs. “And why not?”
Because he does want to remain appealing in her eyes, just not so appealing as to be devoured this second.
“Useless masculine pride,” he says.
He pours the soup into a serving dish and sets another pot of water to boil. “You might wish to stand back a little, my lady. The oil could spatter when I cook the scallops.”
And the splatter guard reaches only to her chest height, leaving him completely exposed to the smooth skin of her decolletage and the hypnotic power of her smiles.
“What about you? You too are wearing something better suited for a diplomatic reception.”
So he is. He walks over to the far end of the bench where he stowed some of his things, takes off the silk shirt he put on to receive her for tea, and pulls on a t-shirt so old it’s hard to tell what its original color was. He certainly doesn’t remember, but it’s another one of those possessions that were found with him when he was rescued at sea.
