The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

indeed that Alyrra has taken to you. We’ll see if just the promise of a hold, and the already proven fact of your loyalty, will be enough.”

If it isn’t, I’d rather Kestrin destroy me than ever learn about Niya.

I dip Filadon a curtsy. My foot gives a twinge, but it’s worth it, for it brings Filadon up short. “Verayn,” I say. “I put my trust in you.”

He doesn’t speak as I let myself out. Nor does he follow me.

This time, I make it back to the guard room successfully. Matsin waits, fingers drumming impatiently on the center table where he sits. He looks up at the sound of my step, and is rising from his seat before I pass through the door.

“There’s a carriage waiting below, kelari,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Chapter

47

The sun has just cleared the palace walls when I finally clamber into the waiting carriage. Matsin swings up to sit beside the driver, the quad he has brought with him mounted and ready to escort us. We pull out of the palace gates, turning to rumble east toward the river. We cross over the soaring bridge that passes Speakers’ Hall, and continue into the merchants’ quarter, eventually leaving the main road for smaller streets.

The carriage draws to a stop before the wide steps to a carved and painted door. The home within will be well-appointed but not rich, just as the door is—it lacks the bronze inlay that characterizes wealthy homes, but is a step above most of what I’ve seen in the city.

As I alight, a figure detaches itself from the wall farther down and saunters over to meet us. Matsin swings down from his seat, glancing from me to—

“Bren?”

His eyes laugh at me. “Rae, glad to see you’ve brought a guard with you this time.”

I’ve never seen him so well dressed: his clothes are pristine, the muted green of his tunic and sand brown of his pants lending him an almost somber air. He’s forgone tying back his hair, as many of the nobility do, and I have a momentary flashback of him sitting on the edge of my bed, my hand in his hair.

Oh no. That won’t do at all. “Captain Matsin,” I say sharply. “Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, Bren. Bren, Captain Matsin of the royal guard.”

Matsin dips his head. “Matsin en Korto,” he says, naming his lineage. It’s a formal introduction that demands a response in kind.

Bren grins and bows with a flourish, that of a bow to one’s peer. “Bren,” he says, and lifts his brow in challenge.

“Do you have some information?” I ask abruptly. Bren was right: I am prickly as a burr. But Kirrana’s in danger, and there’s no time to waste on games.

“Not yet. I wanted to hear what I could from the family. That may help my men in their search.”

“You have men searching?” Matsin asks.

Bren spreads his hands, the picture of innocence. “Of course. Don’t you?”

I turn my back on them both and knock on the door.

“Kelari, you know and trust this fellow?” Matsin says as footsteps approach from the other side.

“Yes,” I say, which is mostly true. “It was his man following us to the docks, to make sure we were safe.”

“Ah, good, then the soldier was trustworthy?” Bren asks.

“The soldier was me,” Matsin says.

“That’s a yes?”

The door swings open, saving both Matsin and me from replying. We are welcomed in by Kirrana’s mother. Kelari Siyela takes my hands, pressing them firmly in hers. Her skin is dry and cool. Her face is pale beneath its natural brown, her eyes so shadowed they look bruised.

“I am so sorry,” I whisper. Until this moment, Kirrana having gone missing was real but not. Faced with her mother’s fear and grief, the reality slaps me in the face as hard as the foreign prince’s palm. Kirrana is gone, and it is almost certainly my fault.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” she says, because she does not know. “Please, come in. Have you any news of Kirrana?”

“I’m afraid not,” Matsin says as we file into the entry hall. “We’ve launched an investigation within the palace complex. Her friends and roommate are being questioned, as are her colleagues and superior at the tax office. If there’s a clue there, we’ll find it. What I need to know now is what you can tell me. Or your husband, if he can speak to us.”

“He’s resting upstairs,” Siyela says, pausing at the door to the sitting room. “Do you wish to speak with him?”

“With your permission, that would be very helpful,” Bren says without a glance at Matsin. So we follow her up the stairs, past a room where two young women sit on cushions, sewing baskets untouched on the carpet beside them. They turn to watch us pass, their expressions tight with worry. Kirrana’s elder sisters. I had forgotten about them. In their eyes, I catch a glimpse of Ani’s grief, dark and terrified.

I follow behind the two men to linger in the doorway of the bedchamber where Kirrana’s father lies, the blankets resting over his slim figure. He turns his head toward us, and my lungs stutter. His face is a mass of bruises, dark and shiny and puffed up, his lips split and his eyes barely visible. Whoever did this meant to punish him, not just knock him out. And those men now have Kirrana.

I clutch the doorframe unsteadily.

He speaks in a low, rough voice, the words clumsy behind puffy lips. “There were five of them,” he tells us at Matsin’s urging. “We weren’t far, only two or three blocks from here. We were passing an alley, and they came up on the other side of us. They were armed—told us to walk into the alley or they’d kill us where we stood. We should have—” His voice breaks on a sob. He shakes his head.

“They would have killed you if you’d shouted or tried to run,” Bren says. “You did the right thing,