Chapter Thirteen

When he woke from his nap, his harem was gathered around the small table where they nearly always ate breakfast, the only exception when he had guests or special meetings. "Any word?" he asked around a yawn.

"Not yet, unfortunately," Merza said. "They've dragged in many people, merchants and dock goons alike, but we still have not located Lady Kubra. Master Masood is doing well, though."

"I'm glad." Aradishir wandered off to clean up and dress for the day, then joined them at the table and ate the fruit and pastries waiting for him, along with a pot of tea that was still hot, because his concubines knew what they were about. "Thank you. My parents?"

"Your mother said that if you woke before noon, to tell you to find her, and she'd update you on everything. The last I heard she was in the minor throne room sorting through problems that were too onerous for public court. Prince Bakhtiar is holding general audience today, showing Relanya how to do it. I believe His Majesty has been in meetings regarding our problem all day, and not a single person has left that room looking happy."

Heydar snorted. "They have tried multiple times to kill his son, and now are killing anyone in their path with wanton recklessness. I wouldn't be happy either if I was so involved the king himself demanded an audience. Every merchant in the city and their most distant cousin has been summoned today, and nobility is walking around like they have glass bowls full of water balanced on their heads."

"Diamonds are loose in their settings, to be sure," Merza said.

Aradishir smiled softly, fond as ever of Merza's slang. "Let's go find my mother then."

Several minutes later, they found her in the library, surrounded by her harem and looking peeved with the librarians and clerks attending her. "Mother."

Her irritation vanished as she turned to him, breaking into a smile. "Shir, there you are, darling. Did you get some rest?"

"Probably more than you." He took her hands and kissed her cheek. "What are you doing here?"

"Seeking records for your father, but they've all mysteriously gone missing," she replied, ire returning. "Copies of certain contracts, specifically. And no one is able to explain to me how such important documents have gone missing."

"I have copies of them," Merza said, causing everyone to turn to look at him. "Golds and diamonds always snitch the papers when they get to dark dealing. The moment this became my prince's problem, I took out the contracts, made official copies of all of them myself, and put everything back. Took me quite some time. Which reminds me, you have no security in this place against smuggling out books and papers that you might want to remain on the premises." He clicked his tongue. "If I'd been paid to steal papers instead of jewels, I'd have had a much higher success rate."

"Oh, I think stealing the heart of a prince ranks pretty high on the list of successes," Fahima said dryly. "Fetch me those copies, please, Lord Merza."

"Of course, Your Majesty. I'll go now and deliver them to your chambers."

"Tasha," she said quietly, and the concubine slipped away to join Merza.

Turning back to the clerks, who all looked like they were about to face their execution, she said, "This abysmal failure will be addressed later when I can put my full attention on it. If I were you, I'd compose a very thorough report about what went wrong and how you will keep it from happening again. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," the head librarian said quietly, eyes on the floor.

"Good." She swept off without further word, and Aradishir cast the poor man a sympathetic look before hastening after her.

"Why would they steal contracts? Especially when there are also copies with the courts, and with each person who signed the contract?" Multiple copies, all certified, made it impossible for any one person to alter a contract after the fact, something that had been done long in the past and caused no small amount of confusion and harm.

Javed said, "If they were willing to steal them from here, they likely stole them from other locations. That would explain in part why they have been dragging this process out. What was in the contracts, Your Majesty?"

"On the surface, simple trade deals with various foreign parties, but Beynum noticed a few odd things in the couple that we do have copies of, though only by chance. Turns of phrase, certain objects, that he recognized from his pirating days."

Aradishir felt abysmally stupid he had not noticed such important details.

"Don't think like that." Fahima smiled when he looked up. "I didn't see it. Your father didn't see it. Why would we? The whole point is for most people to never see it. The only one of us who did in this entire family was a former pirate. The only failure is that neither I nor your father thought to ask him in the first place. What matters is that Beynum did see it, and now we have new information to work with. I'll show you."

As they reached the room where his father was, the guards posted outside bowed low, greeting them quietly before sliding the doors open.

Inside, Shah looked up, frown melting away. "Hello, my jewel. Shir, you look rested."

"You don't," Aradishir said unhappily.

Shah waved the words aside. "I'll get plenty of rest when this is over, believe me. I am king, this is what I do. Were you able to get the contracts, my love?"

"There was a bit of an issue, but also an impressive resolution," she replied, and by the time she'd finished, Merza and Tashi had returned with the copies.

"Well done, Merza," Shah said. "You have an instinct that one can only be born with."

Merza flushed, looking at the table as he replied, "Thank you, Your Majesty. You're far too kind."

His father was kind, but he also did not dole out praise that wasn't earned.

"So what are we looking for?"

Beynum, sitting to Shah's right, said, "We're matching contracts to manifests. These manifests list things like barrels of certain wines, sacks of spices, which on the surface seem normal, but these particular wines and spices are not sold in these quantities. Other strange things like that—I've made a full list. Normally a full contract would not be necessary for such things…"

"But they're not really trading those kinds of goods, so assurance of payment and such was necessary. Right beneath my nose this whole damned time," Aradishir said bitterly.

"They've been destroying many of them for some time, and without the contracts to match to the manifests, why would you know? None of us knew, until Beynum happened to look at one while waiting for me to finish speaking with someone. We all missed it for years. That was the whole point," Shah said. "Do not berate yourself for such things, my son. It accomplishes nothing. We showed our wisdom in picking pirates and thieves, hmm?" He leaned up to kiss Beynum softly. "Though I think my pirate picked me, really."

Aradishir didn't roll his eyes, but only because he knew he had no room to talk, at all, even a little. He was just as sappy with his concubines as his parents were with theirs. "So we go through the contracts and manifests, match them up? Wouldn't that be fairly simple?"

"Yes and no," Beynum said. "The contracts only state what is traded, with no specific dates, only a broad, unhelpful range to meet the barest legal requirements. Further arrangements, not written down in any useful legal way, would have been made later. So we have to look through the contracts and figure out which manifests they go with, hope they are specific enough to irrevocably prove the connection, the nefarious actions they are hiding."

"Their arrogance will certainly work against them," Shah said. "I have this well in hand, though, now you've brought the contracts to me. All the merchants have been rounded up, so you—" He stopped as a frantic knock came at the door. "Enter."

Two guards burst inside, barely toppling to their knees and bowing their heads before saying, "Your Majesty, we've found Lady Kubra! She's being escorted to the palace as we speak and should be here soon."

Aradishir bolted, hastening through the palace, barely noticing everyone around him or the admonitions to slow down. Mere moments after he'd reached the main entrance, exasperated concubines and aggravated guards right behind him, a cart belonging to the city guards pulled into the pavilion.

It came to a stop in front of him, guards saluting, other people bowing, still others gawking not-so-subtly. The doors opened, and a guard offered assistance to a pale, exhausted and still-shaken Lady Kubra. "Y-Your Highness!" she said, clearly surprised.

Aradishir dismissed the guards, lending his own assistance into the palace. "I am so sorry you've endured such torment, Lady Kubra."

"Masood?" she asked, and from the look on her face it was clear she was bracing herself for the worst possible news. "He went over the balcony trying to defend me, I—" Her bottom lip trembled, and she bit it in a vain attempt to hold back tears.

"He's fine, doing quite well in fact. I was going to go see him when I was done meeting with my father."

Kubra cried in earnest then, and Aradishir hugged her close, stifling his anger for the time being. Everyone responsible would pay eventually, and he would make them suffer a thousand-fold for all the torment they had caused hundreds, possibly thousands, of people. Right now, though, anger would help nothing.

So he led her through the halls to one of the royal guest rooms, prepared in anticipation—hope—of her arrival at some point. He left her there, with plenty of guards stationed outside and well-trained servants within, to get cleaned and fed and rested.

With nothing else to do, but unlikely to be able to focus on work, he headed out to his gardens to simply breathe, get his thoughts in order, and start plotting how he was going to destroy all these worthless merchants once and for all.

He'd been sitting there for a couple of hours, though after an hour he'd resumed work by sending out notes, letters, and more, slowly bringing all the pieces he needed together, when a servant came to inform him that Lady Kubra would enjoy speaking with him at his leisure.

"Escort her to my sunroom, please. I'll speak with her there. Have a late lunch brought, and whatever Lady Kubra would like. If Master Masood is fit to join us, invite him as well. I'll be there shortly."

"Yes, Your Highness," the woman replied, and faded off in that smooth, silent way that staff mastered so easily and nobles only wished they could do half as well.

"Are you all right, my prince?" Javed asked.

"Been better, but also I'm not the one who has been beaten and kidnapped and further terrorized. I'm only angry I did not stop all of this before it came to this point."

"You are fighting against a tide with a bucket," Merza said. "Golds don't give up their comforts without a fight, and the more spoiled they are, the nastier they fight. You're also fighting the reds that cater to the golds, and they're even worse, because unlike golds, most of them had to make their money first. If stopping them was easy, someone would have already done it."

"Reds," Aradishir echoed. Because red was an expensive color, difficult to maintain the brightness of, and one of the first colors people indulged in when they had money enough. Also, merchants were flashy by nature, and red was a flashy color. There was rarely anything subtle or understated about red. "They'll have a new, bloody reason for their nickname by the time I'm finished. " If he had his way, several would be sentenced to execution, which would be enough to scare good behavior into the rest, at least for a time.

He sent off the last of his messages with another servant standing by to take them, then finally left the garden to go freshen up properly before he joined Lady Kubra.

A short time later he stepped into the sunroom, a beautiful room of glass and light that overlooked a small butterfly garden. Keri would probably love the butterflies. How had he not thought to bring Keri to see them sooner?

"Your Highness," Lady Kubra and Masood said together, pulling apart where they'd been tightly embracing. They sank to their knees and bowed low. "Thank you so much for everything. I—" Lady Kubra stopped, took a deep breath. "I did not think I would ever leave that awful place alive. See Masood again."

"I'm glad the guards were able to find you," he said quietly. "Please, sit. Eat, drink, get your strength back. "

"Thank you," she said again, and they both took their seats a respectful distance apart, since as they were not married, they should not really be touching at all except in the most perfunctory ways. Thankfully, the guards already present in the room before Aradishir had arrived were not so stupidly fussy.

"Javed."

Javed immediately sat between the pair and served the tea and food on the tray there, smiling and soothing their flustered demeanors.

It was always interesting, seeing how people reacted to something that Aradishir and his family simply took as understood. Concubines to serve them was never a matter of if, only when. Though he had for years despaired he would ever find his, given he was the least interesting of his family.

A discussion on privilege and being a spoiled brat, to be sure.

"We're glad you're all right, my lady, " Javed said as he arranged plates of food for both of them.

Aradishir gave a slight nod. "We'll do better about keeping you safe. I did not think they would go to such extremes."

"Neither did I," Kubra said. "I thought they would ostracize me, spread unpleasant rumors, that sort of thing. Not kidnap me."

"Do you know who took you?"

"Yes, I do, and I already named them in the formal report I gave right after the guards found me," Kubra said, voice hardening like steel. "Yusef, Vahid, and Kambiz. I would know their cretinous guards anywhere. They all use the same militia, and the warehouse they took me to is one of Yusef's, though not one on his books. I knew it because I've had him tailed there before, and went to see it myself one night."

"Against my begging and pleading for you to not do so," Masood grumbled.

"Well, it proved useful in the end, didn't it?"

Masood only sighed.

Javed, Heydar, and Merza laughed. "We can commiserate with both sides," Javed said. "If my prince did not have a bad habit sneaking out of the palace and into the city in the dead of night, we would have never met, but that also means he was putting himself in needless danger, which none of us likes him doing."

"It paid off," Aradishir said, sharing a smirk with Kubra.

Masood and his concubines rolled their eyes as one.

"I'm just saying, you should listen to me more often," Kubra added, and some weighty, silent conversation seemed to pass between them.

"I'm listening now, right?" Masood said.

Kubra smiled, bright and happy, all her recent troubles clearly far away for the moment. "Yes, you are."

Wasn't hard to guess what was going on, not really. Aradishir smiled. "So you accepted an offer of marriage, I assume?"

"Yes," Kubra said. "He did! Finally!"

Masood rolled his eyes again, but it was performative at best. "Try to stay out of trouble in the interim, please."

"Don't get your hopes up," Heydar said. "We beg Aradishir the same, and all he does is find more trouble."

"You're exaggerating," Aradishir said, ignoring the looks all three of them sent him. "So Yusef, Vahid, and Kambiz. That does not surprise me. Those three seem to be the leaders in all this. Have we captured them yet?"

A guard by the door replied, "The last report we received, they were still being sought, believed to be in hiding or to have fled the city entirely. That was some hours ago, though, Your Highness. Shall I send someone to get an update?"

"No, not worth the trouble. I'll speak with my parents after this. I'm sure they'll have the latest info."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"So they took you to a warehouse."

"Yes," Kubra said. "I think their plan was to force me to sign some papers and then… well, make certain I couldn't contest them later. But from what the guards said, the hunt for them was more intense than anticipated. They couldn't come to sign the papers themselves, not until everything calmed down and they could come out of hiding. I was found beforehand, thankfully. I'm astonished they didn't make me sign the papers and then simply worry about their own signatures later."

"Probably didn't have the papers entirely ready," Aradishir said. Contracts, even sketchy ones, took time to draft. "If they'd been smart, they would have drafted the papers, made certain all was ready, arranged or waited for some big distraction, and then kidnapped you, buying them hours or even days of time before your absence was noticed."

Kubra stared at him a moment, then gave a bare shake of her head. "I can see why they're scared of you, and I'm glad you're on our side, Your Highness."

"He would indeed be dangerous as a villain," Merza said. "The worse or greater a deed, the more that doing or not doing it is a choice. A penniless mother desperate to feed her children? Stealing isn't really a choice. A wealthy man who can get still more wealth by selling children? That is a choice. Fortunately for everyone in this city, my prince has a pure spirit and a heart of fire."

"Oh, be quiet," Aradishir said. "I do what is required of my position. Now then, I am certain the two of you would like to get more rest, and put these terrible events behind you once and for all. I am certain we will have more questions, but for now please rest. You are my guests for as long as you want to remain here, and every visit in the future." He rose so they could rise as well and led the way out of the room.

In the hallway, he stopped them one last time. "I am truly happy to hear you will be getting married. Let my wedding gift to you be to pay for the celebrations in full."

Masood looked ready to pass out, as Kubra gasped, hands over her mouth before she dropped them to say, "Your Highness! That is too generous by far. We have done nothing—"

"You have done everything ," Aradishir said firmly. "Without your choices, your actions, they would not have made these foolish, reckless movements that have damned them once and for all. You broke a bitter stalemate to my favor. To pay for your wedding festivities is a trifling thing for me, and we all know it. Please, I insist."

"Thank you," Kubra said, blinking away tears—and then threw away all protocol to hug him tightly "I am always happy to help you, Your Highness. Whatever you need, no matter the day or the hour."

"I appreciate it. Now go, get some rest and be well."