Page 52 of Kingdom of Flames & Flowers
I glared at him.
“Please,” he tried again.
I relented.
He pulled out a handkerchief and stuck it to his nose, sitting across from me. His face looked suddenly tired and worn.
“It isn’t my fault my brother refuses to accept the beast raging inside of him. It makes the dragon harder to control. But I … I will refrain from … taunting him.” He frowned. “That’s why he can be violent and angry.”
I snorted. “And you’re not?”
He matched my glare. “I didn’t eat you, did I?”
I rolled my eyes and picked a parchment at random. “This one. What does it say?”
Zariah dabbed at his nose and sniffed, making sure there was no blood on his fingers before gingerly picking up the aged parchment. “It’s a history of the kings of the past, and their great deeds. It’s how I figured out when the dome was built—”
“Not interested. What else?” I demanded since I’d had enough of men going on and on about how wonderful they were.
Zariah eyed me, but set down the paper and picked up another one. “This details the trade agreements between Cantrada and us, back when we were trade partners. It’s actually quite interesting.” He pushed the large book toward me, but I noticed something wedged in the pages toward the back.
“What is this?” I carefully pulled it out. Zariah held out his hands, and I reluctantly handed it over.
“Hmm. Just a ledger book. Quite boring. Who dug up what on what day, how much it weighed … trivial day-to-day minutiae that no one cares about.”
I snatched it from him. “Maybe a prince or a king wouldn’t care, but I’m neither.”
The fluid strokes of the letters swam in front of me like mystical symbols. I knew a few numbers, which I recognized after squinting at the fancy script for a few moments.
“There are very large numbers here. What do the numbers mean?” I pointed at a few lines, curious.
Zariah frowned, leaning over my shoulder. I ignored his smoky scent and tried to focus. “Just saying which slaves brought in which amounts of specific gems.”
Everything in my body and my mind came to a screeching halt. “Slaves? What slaves?”
Zariah jerked back suddenly, his face blanching before it resumed its calm facade. “I misspoke. I meant workers.”
I slammed the book shut. “You want to get punched in the nose again?”
He closed his mouth, winced, then answered. “They weren’t slaves. It’s just … they worked in the mines. Usually slaves do that or the punished criminals from what I gathered from the books. Political prisoners. I apologize. No one in this kingdom has ever been a slave. We are all equals.”
Yeah, right. And my mother got the same amount of food every week that the queen did.
My disbelief must have shown on my face because Zariah leaned forward, intent on arguing. “Mari, you must believe me. My father, the king, was only a fireguard from the mud district before he married my mother! He was raised up and—”
I held up a hand. “Excuse me?” Rage built as I remembered how the queen had looked down on me for my birth while her own husband was no better than me. That absolute bitch. Maybe it also explained his meekness and why the queen rode roughshod over him. Why didn’t he use his power to help his people?
It’s curious, isn’t it? Why marry a dirty mud district boy? Why not another noble? Something is wrong. Something is wrong.
And whatever it was, it was clear either Zariah didn’t know about it or wouldn’t be telling me soon. I took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Where are the mines? I know there are some underneath the stone district.”
Zariah pushed away the history books and grabbed a few more, flipping through them quickly before landing on an extremely large book. He blew the dust off and opened it up. A gorgeously illustrated map unfolded in front of my eyes.
“Here. This is us.” He pointed to the red star on the right page in the middle. “There are a few small local mines here, and here.” I followed the trail his finger made over where I knew the stone quarter was.
He frowned. I watched his eyes dart here and there, but I didn’t miss it when they lingered on a small group of mountains just to the west of the city.
“There. It is large and has a sketch of an opening. Are those mines?”
