Chapter Nine
Makari rummaged through the wardrobe at the foot of her large, four-poster bed, tossing aside gown after gown. The pink saffron? Gone. Lavender silk? Out. Lime satin with lemon trim? She hurled it over her head, knowing Kendshi would catch it, the hand slave scurrying about as her mistress threw her best gowns away.
“Oh, Majesty! Not the gold wool!”
But that one went, too, hitting the marble floor in a pile.
It wasn’t that Makari hated the gowns—they’d all been her mother’s, and each had been the height of fashion when it hit her mother’s wardrobe. A decade or more earlier.
Makari had never really cared much for fashion. In fact, her lack of modern fashion had served her well lately, helping chase off pandering lord-lings.
Until now.
She grabbed a sky-blue dress with a scooping neckline—one her mother had called scandalous at the time, but that now looked conservative—and started to toss it at her servant. She stopped.
Light blue. A subtle but important variation of her family’s primary color. The neckline, cuffs, and hem had all been decorated with a silvery, almost gray lace, making the dress more appropriate for winter than early fall, but trim could change.
She dashed to her mirror as Kendshi joined her. The slave held the dress up in front of Makari’s figure. The effect stunned the princess. Her eyes popped, suddenly bright and riveting, and her skin went from washed out to shimmering. Instead of flat and dirty, her hair now looked like silken strands of midnight.
“He’ll be hungry for you,” Kendshi whispered in her ear.
Makari gasped and covered her mouth.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about! The only man I expect to see tonight is that insufferably boring guard assigned to protect me. And perhaps Captain Bauti, should he check on me.”
Kendshi wrinkled her nose, her gold-flecked eyes narrowed. “The captain will hunger, too.”
Makari sighed. “He’s a good man, Kendshi. He …”
“He loves you. And not in the way a soldier should love his future queen.”
The girl’s Nishi’iti accent always made Makari smile. It sounded pure. Innocent. Though she knew first-hand the girl could be quite naughty, where thoughts of men were concerned.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Makari lied.
Kendshi removed the dress and hung it on the mirror, moving to help her mistress out of the tangerine one she wore underneath.
“Sometimes, when he thinks no one is watching—I am always watching, but he does not know—he looks at you for too long. His eyes look deep into you, past your dress and your skin and into your heart. He looks to see if you love him too. I have seen this look before.”
She lowered her gaze, and her lip trembled. The girl fit so well in the palace that Makari often forgot she’d had a different life once, and her own betrothed.
She squeezed the maid’s shoulder.
“I’m sure Captain Bauti is just daydreaming,” she said, pulling her arms from the old dress and stepping out. The cold of the marble floor soaked up into her ankles. “He’s getting no younger, and older people tend to daydream a lot. He might even be napping.”
Kendshi giggled at that, a wicked, sly little laugh. “I know what he’s dreaming about when he naps, then!”
Makari pinched her on the arm and the maid danced away, snatching the blue dress up again and helping Makari into it before cleaning up. The slave had just re-hung the last of the dresses back in the wardrobe when a commotion sounded outside the chamber door.
Makari wasn’t expecting a visitor, so when Kendshi looked at her, she shrugged. Nodding, Kendshi moved to the door, opening it just a wedge. She muttered something, then looked back over her shoulder at Makari, grinning.
“Princess,” she said, straightening, but holding the door closed with her hip, “Lord Ashai Larish, Minister of Finance, requests an audience. Should Captain Bauti’s guard send him away ‘bloodied and broken,’ as the captain instructed?”
Makari’s love for the girl grew every day. She held wisdom far beyond her seventeen years.
The princess straightened her dress, smoothed her hair—both of which made Kendshi giggle—and leveled her coolest stare at the door.
“Show him in.”
When Ashai first stepped into her room, Makari nearly gasped. His eyes held a flinty edge as he glared at the guards—his own guard stood outside next to hers—with contempt. As soon as he saw her, though, his expression softened and a grin broke out across his face. He stood a moment too long, as if drinking in the sight of her in the blue dress, and only when Kendshi cleared her throat did the merchant-turned-minister perform a sweeping bow.
“Your Highness, you look magnificent. That dress is just—”
“This dress belonged to my mother, Minister Ashai,” she said. “It is at least five years out of date and will be updated shortly. As a former cloth merchant, you must know this.”
Ashai looked the dress over, then let his gaze wander to the open door of her wardrobe, where his eye crawled over the few hemlines sticking out through the opening. He made a pained expression, as if seeing her mother’s old clothing drove a needle into his heart.
“I’m only a cloth merchant, Highness, not a tailor. My knowledge of fashion is limited to what materials are popular—”
“Nonsense!” she snapped. “Cloth merchants are always present with tailors when I order dresses, and they’re often more informed than the tailors. So spare me the nonsense and explain why you’re here.”
Caught off guard, Ashai stammered an instant before flashing a disarming smile.
“Perhaps we should discuss things in private?” He nodded toward Kendshi, who made no move to depart.
Makari crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
“Kendshi is trustworthy. You can talk in front of her.” The slave made a show of pouring goblets of wine for them, but did not hide the smile on her lips. “Someone must preserve my reputation, since my father insists on parading me before a long line of potential suitors. It would not do for us to be alone together. Unless you’ve come to court me, Master Ashai?”
Ashai’s face turned the deep maroon of their wine, and he choked a bit on his first swallow. Makari grinned. So, he was interested.
“Very well, Your Highness,” he said, recovering in a hurry. “The meeting did not produce any significant movement on the matter of the slave rebellions in the north foothills. The Pushtani policy will remain the same, and your father did not accept suggestion of a more peaceful method to deal with the insurgency. He will continue to allow the Army to deal with the situation.”
Kendshi knocked over an empty goblet, the pewter cup clanging on the floor as the slave-girl gasped. She stared openly at Ashai for a moment before picking up the cup and pretending to focus on her work again.
Of course—her betrothed. What was his name?
“Surely there was more than that,” Makari said, giving Ashai an arch of her eyebrow. “You were there for quite some time.”
He moved close to her then, not quite touching her, but close enough to whisper.
“The walls have ears.” Then he backed up a half step and raised his voice. “No, Princess, the discussions were quite brief. It simply took me some time to get away from the other council members. They all seem to want private audiences with the Finance Minister for some reason.”
Makari looked up into Ashai’s warm, blue eyes and saw something new, then. Something she hadn’t noticed before. Behind the blue hid something dark and mysterious, as if the simple cloth merchant hid some deep secret he sought to share only with her.
The thought overwhelmed her with emotion, making her feel closer to Ashai than she ever had to a man. She admired the strong line of his jaw as he spoke, the jagged line of his nose, and the softer curve of his lips. His was a face she could wake up to every day.
On impulse, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the lips. For an instant—for a single fleeting heartbeat—he kissed her back and Kendshi emitted a low purr behind them. Then Ashai shuddered, eased Makari back, and bowed his head.
“I apologize for my forwardness, Majesty,” he said. Her attraction for him waned. He was apologizing for her kissing him! “I will show myself out.”
He sketched a bow and left the room in a rush, his personal guard struggling to keep up.
Makari’s heart felt like it might rip in two.
“Looks like I scared another one,” she said, downing the rest of her wine in one gulp.
Kendshi shrugged. “But you didn’t try to stab him. So this one will come back.”