“Aren’t you afraid of being poisoned?” I sputtered. “That’s Pale Arts. Ibaje never comes without a price.”

“Of course I’ve paid a price.” He chuckled, replacing the arm band, and his eyes looked bright and manic. “But at least, unlike the rest of my family, I got to pick my poison.”

My vision spun. The empty-headed king of Djbanti—the gambling drunkard who couldn’t tell one end of a scepter from the other—was the Crocodile. The name whispered in the streets and written at the top of my security reports. Leader of the most organized vigilante group in Aritsar, responsible for disrupting industries across the empire.

“Should be a bath ready,” Zuri said, nodding at a corner of the chamber. Behind woven screens stood a carved wooden tub, perfumed steam curling into the air. “It’s for me . . . but I think we can agree you need it more than I do.”

Am’s Story—even his voice sounded different, low and resonant, rather than the nasal drawl he had used at court.

“How?” I squeaked. “How can you be the Crocodile?”

He poured himself a drink from a tall, fluted carafe. “You mean, ‘How can a man you can’t stand turn out to have a brain after all?’ ” He smiled, a white flash against midnight skin. “Sorry. That’s unfair.” He swirled the drink in his hand—herb water, not wine as I expected. I wondered again if I had ever seen Zuri drink at all. At court functions, he slurred and stumbled around, but his cup was always full. “I’m good at playing an idiot,” he said. “I have to be.”

“Who knows?” I demanded. “Your servants, obviously. But the other rulers? Your government? All of Djbanti? Did everyone know about this but me?”

“With a few exceptions, my servants believe I sneak out to brothels. As for the other monarchs and my warlords”—he took a long swill from his chalice—“they think I’m an even bigger halfwit than you do. Even the revolutionaries who follow the Crocodile are uncertain of his identity, though I’m sure some of them have guessed.”

I crossed my arms. “Then the only people in the world who know you’re the Crocodile—who know the real you—are a couple servants . . . and me?”

He smirked, slipping back into his court drawl. “Bold of you to assume I’m not really an idiot.”

But something grim lurked in his expression. The longer I watched him, the more I realized I had stumbled upon the only person in Oluwan as lonely as I was.

I turned away, snuffing out the sudden kinship between us. “Why tell me?” I said. “I could expose you to the world. People might doubt the word of a servant, but they would listen to an empress.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it. “You’re staining my rug,” he observed, and turned to pour himself another drink.

I glanced down. Red muck dripped from my legs, and my sandals had left gruesome smears on the carpet. My face and neck had grown stiff with filth.