Shadow Magic

CHAPTER THIRTEEN





CAIUS

It had been nearly a week since Josette, Alcibiades, and I had shared our tête-à-tête in the general’s room, and we had yet to find an opportunity in which to get Lord Temur by himself.

The man was simply impossible!

“Of course, we would have to pick one of the more popular lords.” I sighed, murmuring my complaint to Alcibiades behind the fall of my sleeve. “He’s much too sociable for a Ke-Han warlord.”

“I thought that was what you liked about him,” Alcibiades countered in a maddening fashion.

He reached over me to spear one of the fried dumplings that had somehow begun cropping up at our table. Alcibiades did well enough with his sticks, even if he did use them as if they were weapons instead of eating utensils. I couldn’t help but think that his improved mood had a great deal to do with the fare, though that in turn was doubtless more to do with my helpful little suggestions to Lord Temur—all of them exquisitely tactful—than any hint the cooks might have taken from Alcibiades’ plates of fish going back untouched.

Josette, on my left, took a sip of her tea, watching our quarry with an expression that I might have termed intimate concern were I feeling more romantic about the whole thing. Really, she almost made it too easy for me. She was much like Alcibiades in that fashion, poor thing. Some people just couldn’t keep anything to themselves.

“Are we sure this is the proper way to go about things?” Josette asked.

“Oh, surely not proper,” I said, unable to keep the smile from my lips, “but it will be simplest. And it’s dreadfully efficient. I’m a bit out of practice since the war ended, and unlike Alcibiades, I haven’t had any opportunity for fun.”

“Fun,” Alcibiades snorted. “I wouldn’t call it that, exactly.”

I was starting to take the impression that my companions were experiencing what amounted to a softening of the heart. It was not quite a change of heart, since Alcibiades at the very least could be counted on to stick to a decision once he’d made it, but I could still tell that the poor dears were having doubts. Even to men such as Alcibiades, hardened on the battlefield, my Talent was a questionable force. When asked directly, the most explanation that people could manage was that it didn’t seem “quite fair,” all things considered.

That was all right. It was an attitude I’d grown rather used to in my eighteen years of living at the palace, and subsequently in exile. I was an ally, but not trusted—a necessary weapon, whose means were considered underhanded and whose actions left a considerably sour taste in most people’s mouths. The fact that I enjoyed my work seemed to be what distressed them the most, but I was good at it, and I made it a point always to enjoy the things I was good at.

So I was quite prepared to go through with our plan, even if it meant losing the friendships I’d cultivated there. I held no real illusions about the strength of such relationships, anyway, knowing full well that Josette only put up with me because my good general did, and that Alcibiades only put up with me because he was, bless him, an endearingly simple creature to baffle, and I thrust myself into his company more often than not.

That, and I considered us friends. He would simply have to forgive me my transgressions. And he would, given enough time.

Besides, it was terribly cumbersome living beholden to the whims and expectations of other people. I’d gone dreadfully overboard in my enthusiasm on first arriving within the Ke-Han capital, and it was time to prune back what had bloomed.

Everyone made their jokes about the instability on my mother’s side of the family, but the truth was it made things very difficult when one came out of a spell of madness to find one’s life all askew. It had happened once, just before my period of exile, but I was grateful for that one—it meant I had to recall very little of my first few weeks therein. I sometimes felt as though I spent at least half my time putting things to right again. It could be exhausting, but there were moments that made it quite worthwhile.

Getting the chance to exercise my powers was certainly one of those moments, and in the week that followed our decision, I confess that I trailed Lord Temur like a lynx, lithe and hungry.

It had been so long since my last prey.

As luck would have it, my opportunity came just as I was nearly ready to give up altogether and ask Alcibiades’ aid in knocking Lord Temur over the head.

I was sitting at my vanity table, unhooking the clever wooden fastenings of the hair ornaments I’d borrowed from Josette without permission, when the door connecting mine to Alcibiades’ slid open, and the general himself appeared.

If I hadn’t already been sitting, I’d have fallen over with shock.

“My dear!” I said, rising at once and casting the little lacquered butterflies onto the desk. “If I’d known you were coming, I might have waited to undo myself. Come in, come in.”

I rushed over to take him by the arm, lest he change his mind before entering and duck out again straightaway. To my continuing shock, he allowed himself not only to be pulled into the room proper, but pressed into a nearby chair as well.

“You’ve got a bug in your hair,” he said, staring up at me.

“Oh!” I said foolishly, running a hand through my hair for the stray clasp. There it was, caught at the back. I fished it out, careful not to let it snag. “Well, fancy that. I completely missed it. Have you come to be helpful? Because there’s a knot in this sash that I can never seem to quite—”

“Josette says we’re doing it tomorrow,” he blurted out, interrupting me in the middle of turning around.

“Are we?” I asked, whirling around again at once to face him. I hadn’t meant to look so eager, but the fact remained that I had begun to think we’d never have an opportunity at all.

“You don’t have to look like it’s your birthday come early,” Alcibiades grunted, but there was a small, hard smile on his face that I hadn’t seen before.

“But you couldn’t have planned it better if it had been my birthday,” I told him earnestly, clasping my hands together.

“You’re an odd bird,” Alcibiades said, in a way that made me think that perhaps it was a compliment, coming from him.

“The very finest of peacocks, my dear,” I said. “Now I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, I’ve a great deal of preparation to do for tomorrow.”

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the look on Alcibiades’ face was almost disappointed.

“All right,” he said, rising to his feet. “Just so long as we can get this over with.”

“I do hope it doesn’t bother you, my dear,” I said, softening considerably. “As I know how traditional you like to be about things.”

“If it were up to me,” Alcibiades began, then cut off, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Since it’s not.”

“That’s the most sensible you’ve ever been,” I replied, patting him on the shoulder.

It was only when I returned to the task at hand—the clips for my hair—that I noticed that my hands were shaking.

I was often asked what it meant to be a velikaia by the men and women who came to visit me during my “sojourns” in the countryside—all of them lonely, silly people desperate for gossip to get them through the country life. If it wasn’t chasing down poor, helpless little foxes during hunts—I liked to rescue them and keep them in my own private menagerie—then it was sitting about wondering what was happening in the capital, that distant, glowing, glorious zenith of social importance.

Some asked only for news of the Esar and the Esarina; this margrave or that; the latest news from Thremedon, and who was wearing what, and who had married whom—the usual trifling bits and bats we all longed for. Myself, I must necessarily admit, included.

But some, the poor creatures, had no idea about real manners at all. After a time, everyone found some way, tactful or not, to ask the questions they were so desperate to have answered.

What did it mean to be a velikaia? Were all the rumors they’d heard—bastion-only-knew from whom—true?

I always answered the question about the rumors first, because that really was the more interesting. Yes, I had been involved with the incident of Margrave Aulame; but no, his pretty young wife did not kill herself because of it. Yes, I had begun to assist the Esar when I was only seven years old; but no, I had assuredly not played a part in the untimely death of the Arlemagne duchess who married the Esar’s eldest son. Yes, I had played a significant role in information garnered during the war—but really, it wasn’t all that grisly; just asking questions and receiving answers, more quickly than if I did not have my Talent.

And as for my Talent…

That was another matter entirely. They really ought to have asked Mme. Antoinette about that. But seeing as most country lords and ladies, desperate for some taste of the urban life, did not have the opportunity to ask Antoinette for themselves, it was up to me to provide the information.

What did it mean to be a velikaia? For me, the fascinating question always was, what did it mean not to be a velikaia? It was merely a chance happening, the well water that ran like pedigree through my blood. It was only that my family had sought, through various means, to keep that blood as pure and our Talents as keen as possible. It was good business sense more than it was madness—the madness that had developed over time, and of which I, perhaps, was a product.

All it required was a little blood spilled. I couldn’t go about reading minds hither and yon; that would have been so very messy. Once blood was exchanged, however—and this was where rumors of torture, knives, scars, et cetera, came in—it was a different matter, and the mind was, to use a favorite phrase, as open as a book.

Or—I could add this to my repertoire—as linear as a hand scroll.

No doubt, Alcibiades had some terrible ritual all planned out in his mind since, for a man who displayed very little imagination, he was nevertheless prone to flights of fancy. I knew well enough what he might be envisioning. When it came time to speak with Lord Temur, he’d be at the ready, sword drawn, waiting for me to tell him to go out and kill a goat and bring its blood, along with the legs of thirteen frogs and the eyes of thirteen snakes, back to the ceremony room. But all we needed was something as simple as a needle, a pinprick at Lord Temur’s finger, and I would know what I needed to know.

Country folk were always so superstitious. At least, in Thremedon, everyone worth talking to knew exactly what I was capable of. They also knew that the most frightening Talent was that which required no fanfare at all, that which slipped unnoticed to lie beside you at night and whispered hello from the other side of the pillow.

It wasn’t mind reading. It was the art of pure compulsion—a charisma no man could refuse. Those under my influence always told me what I needed to know, and that was why I had always been so useful to the crown.

I barely even noticed the second knock on my door though I did turn at the sound of the door sliding open.

There was Alcibiades again, looking nervous and somewhat like a recalcitrant child. He might well have been about to admit to me that it was he who’d stolen the cookies, and he couldn’t live with the guilt of it any longer. I softened as I looked at him.

“Yes, my dear?”

“It really doesn’t bother you?” he said.

I blinked. “What doesn’t bother me?”

Alcibiades gestured with one enormous hand as though he were trying to grasp the words from midair. “All this,” he settled on finally. “All these tricks. It doesn’t bother you to just take what you want from him?”

I smiled thinly. “Not at all,” I replied.

That appeared to be both the wrong and the right answer, for Alcibiades was quiet and grim and gray as a bleak sunrise. Like a day in the country when all was set to rain for the next week, and not even the thrill of the hunt—a hunt I’d orchestrated to futility by rescuing all the foxes beforehand—could offer illumination in the darkness.

“We’ve all done terrible things for our country,” I said, trying to keep the blow as gentle as possible and remaining cheerful as ever, so that he wouldn’t worry. “You and I for Volstov; Lord Temur for the Ke-Han. Does it really make so much of a difference that you and he have done those things while looking your enemy in the eye, and I’ve conducted my business in the shadows?”

“I thought it did,” Alcibiades said. “Let’s just get this entire mess over and done with. How are you planning to… you know…”

“Corner him?” I asked, and Alcibiades nodded, not quite looking at me. I did hope this wouldn’t affect our relationship. I did hope he could pull through his misgivings. Things would be so awful—so awfully boring—without him. “I plan on using this,” I continued, and held up a particularly sharp hairpin.

“Sometimes…” Alcibiades muttered, but he didn’t finish his sentence.

We met Josette and Temur in the gardens the next morning, at what was still left of the menagerie that had once been the greatest in the land.

“… so you see,” Temur was explaining to Josette, “that when the one raid came that close to the palace, the glass was shattered, and there was chaos in the streets as the rarest white tigers, lions long caged, elephants tossed into a frenzy of fear for their young, and even peacocks desperate to escape the flames, ran out into the streets.”

“I hear that the younger prince was caught in that terrible tragedy,” Josette said, ever the perfect diplomat.

“Ah,” Lord Temur replied, with a reticence I understood. Then, noticing me and my companion, he turned and bowed stiffly in greeting. “I see that we are blessed with company.”

“You know him,” Alcibiades grunted out. “Always has to be where the party is.”

“I just love peacocks,” I added, playing along. At least, that was what I thought I was doing. One could never tell when Alcibiades was being ingenious or merely surly.

“There are many here who, given the opportunity, would gladly donate a peacock to your cause,” Lord Temur said. He was always so flattering—a real gentleman. It was a pity that I did have to use subterfuge on a man so honorable, but I was not as tangled in my morals as some. Much like those peacocks, I did not enjoy being kept in a cage when the fire was near. Much like those peacocks, I would have done anything within my ostentatious nature to escape with my life.

“Oh dear,” I said, the hairpin spilling from my sleeve and clattering upon the blue-tiled walkway beneath me. “I seem to have dropped my—Oh, that is most kind of you, Lord Temur, you really shouldn’t!”

It was the sharpest hairpin I could find, sharpened yet further. Personally, I was quite proud of my handiwork, and I was certain that even Lord Temur could have appreciated the time and effort I’d put into the piece. He leaned down deftly, with all the honor bound up tight as coils within him, to retrieve my bauble, and when he pricked his thumb, I didn’t even see him flinch.

Ke-Han warriors were a fascinating study. I wished that I could spend the rest of my life among them—but then, Alcibiades would never have approved of that. All he wanted to do was go home to dear, sweet Yana. To each his own, no matter how banal.

“Oh my,” I said, as the pin was returned to me. “You seem to have pricked yourself. I do feel awful about that.” My fingers, small and white, slipped against his, which were long and dark and callused from a lifetime of the sword. The Ke-Han army was also comprised of skilled archers, madmen with the longbow, and Lord Temur was no peacock himself—not an ornamental piece, like so many at Thremedon or the surrounding countryside, but the real blade, meant for combat. “Come here, Josette,” I continued, as Alcibiades loomed like a disapproving shadow just beside me, curious despite himself. “You must come help me with Lord Temur’s wound!”

I did hope I wouldn’t let anyone down.

“It is nothing, Lord Greylace,” Lord Temur said, and I could tell that he was amused at the fuss I was making. Yes, I wished to agree, the diplomats from Volstov are so very particular when it comes to the little things, like an accidental scratch, or being kept prisoner. “You make a mountain out of a—what is your phrase?”

“Molehill,” Alcibiades supplied softly.

Temur’s blood, a mere drop, stained my fingertips. It was all the closeness I needed to begin, and when I caught his eyes, they stilled immediately. They were a very deep brown, and not black at all, as I first assumed.

Somewhere deep in the menagerie a bird cawed. Animals always knew more than men when something was not right.

“Lord Temur,” I said softly. “I have a few simple questions to ask of you.”

Temur blinked once, twice, three times, sensing danger himself, but every movement was as slow as if it had been first passed through a jar of honey. “Greylace,” he said, slowly.

“Is that it?” I heard Alcibiades hiss to Josette, and then, “Ow,” which meant she must have elbowed him to be quiet.

I admired Josette. If we’d been rooming next to one another, we might have been the best of friends already—but fate had put General Alcibiades and me together more than once, and it was fate I’d chosen to guide me in this endeavor.

“Our letters, Lord Temur,” I said. “Who has been reading our letters?”

Temur was silent for a long time, fighting with himself and, of course, fighting with me. I didn’t know what it felt like on the other side—I could only feel the tension in a conquered mind as the body struggled to keep tight reins on its wayward thoughts, as the lips tried to refuse the commands from the brain. But I knew that a man born and bred on straight-backed duty would be more difficult to crack.

But I had cracked many a Ke-Han lord before. The only difference was that I’d spoken to Lord Temur before the session began.

“Perhaps you would like to sit down,” I suggested, and, on my signal, Josette and Alcibiades moved quickly forward to assist me, ushering Lord Temur to one of the spindly-wired benches that lined the tiled walkways. “There,” I said, as I eased him down. “Isn’t that much better?”

“Yes,” said Lord Temur.

The answers always came more quickly when the question was innocuous. With some men, it was a simple matter of asking the easy questions until they became so used to the answering that they didn’t realize your last question concerning the weather had really been concerning the defenses of the city wall. I wasn’t depending on that technique for Lord Temur, since he’d already proven that he was more than proficient in our language, and a little more familiar with me personally than I’d have liked.

One matter on which Alcibiades and I might have agreed upon immediately was that all this business of diplomacy certainly had made our jobs more difficult.

“Now,” I said, brightening. “This is much friendlier, isn’t it? I do hate to be a bore and go on repeating myself, but since you refrained from answering me the first time, I’m afraid I must ask again. Who has been reading our letters?”

Lord Temur swallowed, and wet his lips with his tongue.

With a touch of regret—I had hoped, however foolishly, to get through this without applying too much force—I leaned forward, filling his field of vision so that there was only my face to focus on.

Behind me, I could hear Alcibiades give a sigh, though whether it was out of impatience or disgust, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t afford the distraction of trying to parse his unexpectedly layered mannerisms at the moment, though. I had a duty there. Not to the Esar, but to myself-—and to Alcibiades as well, whether he knew it or not—and surely that was the most important sort of duty a man could ask for.

“Lord Temur,” I whispered.

He murmured something in the Ke-Han tongue.

“What did he say?” Alcibiades asked. “Ow!”

“Be quiet,” Josette muttered. “Let Greylace work.”

I pursed my lips, regretting that I hadn’t been given the opportunity to learn more of the colloquial Ke-Han language. I’d picked out the word the lords used whenever the demon of their Emperor was floating about, and I knew the most academic form, the old dialect used for plays, but no more common tongue.

“The Emperor?” I asked gently, like leading foxes from the hunt. “Is it his command?”

Lord Temur’s jaw clenched, and I sighed a little, myself. If he was going to make things difficult, then I supposed there was no way around it. I twitched the fabric of my sleeve back above the elbow, and pressed cool fingers to his temple.

His pupils dilated sharply like an unexpected eclipse, and for a moment I thought I might have gone too far too quickly. There was no point in worrying about what had been done, though, and certainly no point in mentioning it to the others. Best to concentrate on the matter at hand until we’d got what we needed out of him.

The rest I would deal with later. If there was anything left to deal with, of course.

“The Emperor is having our mail read,” I said, taking a new tack with this unforeseen change in winds. “Does he suspect us of something?”

“This… is treason,” Lord Temur managed, his lips stiff around the foreign words. “For all of you, and… myself, as well.”

“That does not answer my question,” I said shortly, feeling the beginnings of impatience growing within me. I did so want this to go as smoothly as possible, but it had been so long since I’d been given a chance to exercise my Talent, and Lord Temur’s stubbornness was simply begging for a taste of true pressure.

I could have broken him so easily.

Instead, I took a deep breath, running my tongue along my teeth to gather my thoughts.

Lord Temur shifted on the bench, as though he wished to escape, but found he could not quite wriggle out from under my gaze.

“Yes,” he said softly, eyes fixed on mine. There was a seed of fear in his expression, though somehow I didn’t presume that I was the cause of it. “The Emperor…”

He stopped himself, nostrils flared with the effort it took to keep his mouth closed.

“Please,” I said, pressing my fingers against his temple to keep them from twitching. “Don’t make this difficult for yourself.”

He moved with a swiftness I hadn’t been expecting—since so many of my guests in the Esar’s dungeons had been chained, and therefore rendered harmless—grabbing me by the front of my robes and hauling me close.

Behind me, I heard Alcibiades cry out, and the unmistakable sound of a dagger being unsheathed; since the rules still prohibited swords, Alcibiades had taken to hiding one of my smaller weapons in his belt. If I’d had the time to think on it, I’d have been flattered. But Lord Temur made no further move to harm me, and I could hear his breathing, shallow and fixed in my ear.

“It’s all right, my dear,” I said, waving my noble protector off. I’d meant to say more, but that was when Lord Temur began to speak.

“The Emperor sees enemies around every corner,” he rasped, “and ghosts in his teacup. He has not yet managed to catch sight or word of his brother the prince, and that exacerbates his condition.”

“He has become excessively paranoid,” I agreed quietly. People always felt so much better when they were offered agreement, even and especially if they happened to be betraying their lords and countries.

“He has taken certain measures to ensure his victory over Prince Mamoru, though the council of warlords was set against using it unless matters changed so drastically that it became a necessary course of action. There are those among our number who believe that the Emperor, caught up in his imagined world of treachery, will go ahead with this plan without our agreement. It would not be the first time he has done such a thing since assuming his honored father’s responsibility. After the Emperor died…”

Josette gasped softly and put a hand against my shoulder, to steady either myself or her. I wasn’t sure, and couldn’t afford to pay enough attention to the distraction in order to tell.

I’d asked about our mail being read, and instead I had uncovered something dark and rotten at the center of the Ke-Han court. I felt like an adventurer who’d stumbled upon an ancient treasure. My fingers twitched again with the urge to break Lord Temur and draw out all the information I desired as quickly as I wanted.

Something held me back, as stubbornly as Alcibiades himself might have, had he known what I was thinking.

I had to phrase my next question very carefully.

“What is the plan?”

Close as I was I could feel Lord Temur shudder—in horror, or the effort it had taken to resist me this long.

“It is a forbidden magic,” he whispered. “The Old Way. Blood magic, outlawed as too cruel since before the war with your Volstov.”

I felt a shiver of delight pass over me. I’d read accounts of Ke-Han blood magic, but they were all ancient, and terribly outdated, with hysterical illustrations of what fate befell the men foolish enough to allow their spilled blood to pass into the hands of their enemies.

“One only needs a drop,” Lord Temur went on. “The smallest amount is enough to bring a grown man down.”

“The Emperor’s necklace,” Alcibiades said suddenly, and I felt at once admiring and annoyed that I hadn’t been the one to get it—like the cogwheels of a dragon sliding into place upon completion, when she was ready at last to take flight.

All of a sudden I was being jostled aside, and Alcibiades crouched in front of the bench where Lord Temur sat.

“That’s it, isn’t it? He’s got the prince’s blood in that freaky-looking necklace of his, and he’s going to use it to do something. Something bad.”

Lord Temur’s eyes seemed to lose some of their glassiness as he looked at Alcibiades.

“Yes. If he hasn’t already.”

Alcibiades’ next question was better than my own. “Does he have our blood?”

Temur fell silent; darkness flickered across his eyes, and I knew how they must be burning now, desperate just to blink. “The warlords are the most dutiful,” he whispered. These weren’t his own words, but a speech he’d memorized long ago. “Seven of them there are, and honored most beside the Emperor. Each gives his blood at the first; each gives his life at the last.”

“What does that mean?” Alcibiades hissed. He was going to break my concentration, and Lord Temur’s, and there would be no slipping through the cracks again. “I don’t want poetry, I want answers!”

“Duty,” Lord Temur said, then he collapsed.





KOUJE

It was sometime past the heat of midday, while the sun cast jagged shadows all throughout the pass, that I heard the crunch of gravel from behind us.

The passes had long since been cleared, one through twenty-seven. I assumed it was an animal of some sort, a mountain lynx, or perhaps one of the big rams the people living in the borderlands hunted for food. But what I heard next was speaking, though—real words from real voices in my own native tongue. It was a man, a low, muttered complaint that made my blood freeze in my veins and my heart stop short with the shock of it. I had enough presence of mind to wrench our horse sideways by its reins, pulling at Mamoru by the sleeve, and dragging them both off the pathway into the sanctuary of the rocks.

“Kouje,” Mamoru whispered, his voice hoarse from the ravages of his illness. He straightened up, taking his weight from my shoulder to lean against one of the smooth blue boulders while I led the horse off farther still so that he wouldn’t be spotted from the road. “I heard—Was that you speaking? It seemed so far away…”

“I don’t know,” I said under my breath, answering his unspoken question. “There shouldn’t be anyone around here.”

The gravel crunched again, and that time I saw the boot responsible, crouched as I was beneath an overhang of rock. Mamoru ducked lower behind the rock as I tried desperately to see and not be seen. The man was clad in a soldier’s uniform, cloth dyed cobalt blue. Dressed that way, he was nearly invisible against the backdrop of the mountains.

He rubbed his palms together and crossed his arms, staring out at nothing.

I couldn’t see his face, which might have been for the best. He might well have been one of my fellow soldiers—a comrade in arms.

“Might as well have sent us to the ass-end of the world,” he grumbled, and I heard a short laugh from somewhere behind him.

My heart skittered sideways with sudden panic. How many of them were there?

“Better than them up at the eighth pass,” said his companion. “Not even a hint of a hope of action there. Least we’re going to be useful.”

“If there’s ever any use for us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A man can see the entire capital from here. Thremedon. Like being an eagle, watching a mouse. We’ll be useful, and that’s enough insolence from the likes of you.”

The soldier’s companion passed into view. He was an unshaven, sharp-looking man, with a long scar that traveled raw and ugly from the corner of his eye back past his hairline. His hair was braided like a general’s and parted like a hero’s.

Next to me, I felt Mamoru go still as the stone he leaned on.

“That’s General Yisun,” he gasped in a voice like a ghost’s. “He served under Iseul for the duration of the war. But he’s… He went back to live with his family.”

I held my finger up to my lips, and Mamoru quieted, though he still tormented the ragged hem of his sleeve.

I cast about for anything I might use as a weapon, should it come to that. A large rock. More large rocks. I didn’t think that any kind of rock would be much help against the man who had allegedly trained the eldest prince in place of his father. I’d heard of him, of course, but my own service had kept me with Mamoru and not among Iseul’s retinue of servants and soldiers. I’d only seen him in passing, but I knew enough of his reputation to feel the bile rise in my throat.

I put my hand on Mamoru’s shoulder, signaling that we had best move farther off the path and attempt to keep going. I couldn’t imagine what one of our most formidable generals was doing holed up in the mountains with an unknown number of soldiers at his disposal.

They weren’t the only group stationed, either, if what he’d said about the eighth pass was to be believed.

I paused in the middle of rising to my feet, rooted in place with half curiosity, half dread. I didn’t want to know what was going on. As far as I was concerned, Iseul had stopped being predictable the night he’d declared Mamoru a traitor. To try and understand the motives of such a man was pointless, and time was a resource I couldn’t afford to waste. Not now, when Iseul’s devilry boiled in my lord’s veins. And yet I found that I couldn’t move. I had to know.

What madness had Mamoru’s brother wrought in the time since we’d fled the palace?

Had the war begun again, in our absence?

“There’ll be a use for us, all right,” General Yisun repeated, lighting a long-stemmed pipe and puffing easily, as though he really were home with his family. “Can’t answer for the poor bastards elsewhere, but we’re set to move straight into Thremedon, soon as the Emperor’s given us the signal. Shame his attention’s been diverted by that whelp for so long, but that’ll soon be over.”

“I don’t care what else is going on, so long as we get moving soon,” said the soldier. “It’s too hot during the day and too cold during the night in these damned mountains.”

“Mind your manners before a superior officer,” said General Yisun, and he flicked his ashes into the wind. “I won’t tell you that again.”

The soldier coughed.

I straightened up slowly, ever so slowly, and gently pulled at Mamoru’s shoulder. He nodded, seemingly unable to tear his gaze away from the soldiers down in the pass, so that I had to tug at him again before he would move, stepping as softly as any servant might have.

He had picked up such an eclectic mixture of skills during our time on the run. I felt an odd flush of pride in my chest at his accomplishments, too myriad to denote with simple braids.

“I don’t understand,” he said to me, once we’d rejoined the horse, ducking and weaving through the complex of rocky outcroppings and hideaways. His voice was still shadowed with caution and the effects of the fever.

“There are soldiers in the mountains again,” I said, not that it was an answer. I didn’t understand what it meant. I didn’t see how we could understand, without seeing firsthand in the capital what Iseul was planning. My own concerns were more immediate: traveling as far as we could before the fever set in again and curing the fever once and for all.

I did my best to ignore the nagging voice in my head that wondered what General Yisun had meant by that’ll be over soon. Did he have some information regarding Iseul’s pursuit of us that I did not? All I could know was that he must have been in close contact with the Emperor. As much as I hesitated to speculate, I was beginning to fear my lord’s fever in the same way I feared his brother the Emperor. I hated the power he wielded over my lord and how we’d been blinded to it for so long.

I had to know for certain.

“Stay where you are,” I whispered, holding my hand up to Mamoru as I would have to a skittish horse. “I’m going back.”

“Why,” Mamoru said. “Wait—Kouje—”

I couldn’t listen to him. I had to learn more—for there might come a time when knowledge of Iseul’s next move would be our only salvation. And if there was more that Iseul had up his bright sleeve, I would have to be the shield between that knowledge and Mamoru.

The soldier and the general were still talking when I returned, hidden behind the rock and the lichen, my palms pressed against the rough surface, hoping against all hope that I remained hidden.

“… so that’s his trick,” the soldier was saying, before he whistled softly. “To his own brother?”

“Traitor to the country,” General Yisun replied. His voice was dry, in a way that indicated he didn’t believe that story for a moment but had no trouble agreeing to it. “There’s no punishment too harsh for those.”

“Blood magic,” the soldier said. I could feel the terror in his voice, even when he tried to swallow it down. “Have you really seen it?”

“Our Emperor wears the vial around his neck,” General Yisun said. “It’s just blood, Ichikawa. Now get back to work.”

The sounds of their footsteps faded in the opposite direction. I leaned against the rock to glean strength from the mountain itself before I returned to my lord’s side.

My worst fears had been confirmed. There was nothing to do but move forward.

“Kouje,” said Mamoru, brightening the moment he saw me. He tucked a stray length of hair behind his ear with fretful fingers. “What is it?”

“I do not know what your brother intends,” I told him. I had no reason to burden him in his state with information, but I had only the horse to speak to—and my lord was far cleverer than I. For the time that he was still cogent, still himself, I needed to consult with him. I needed his permission for what I sought to do next. “And I admit that I am… afraid of what he will do.”

Mamoru was quiet, though his fingers continued to twitch; he bit at his nails, a habit he’d never had, as though he barely noticed what he was doing. “Do you think the fighting’s started again?” he asked at last. “Do you think the talks have failed because Iseul’s been so distracted with trying to find me?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, though it was just like my lord to blame himself for starting a war when he was as far removed from the capital as a field mouse himself. “I admit that I cannot think of any other reason—any good reason—for some of our best soldiers to be stationed in the Cobalts unless they are planning some sort of… attack.” I drew a deep breath. “Mamoru—you and Volstov share a common enemy.”

Mamoru watched me with fevered eyes. His voice was dry. “What did you hear?”

“Your brother will kill you unless I find some magic to stop him,” I said. “There are magicians just beyond this mountain range. But I do not know what I can barter for your safety.”

There they were: all my worries, spread before him. I could no more shield him from the truth than I could think of a solution myself, and so we must counsel with one another for inspiration.

“I am a prince,” Mamoru said. “Which means I must think of my people before myself. Our focus should not be on what we might barter for my safety, but rather, how we might still preserve the peace negotiated first by my father before his death. Iseul has dishonored his memory by betraying that—betraying the wishes of our father—and stationing these men in the mountains as if to start another war on the heels of the first! If Iseul will not think of our people, then it must fall to me.” His cheeks flushed again, though this time, I feared, it was due to a different kind of fever altogether.

I was shocked. Since our flight from the palace I had only ever thought of what my lord had lost in terms of station and a proper home. It had never occurred to me what the people had come so close to losing—a leader who cared enough to think of them before himself.

He was like a rare gem, my lord Mamoru, and I knew then—as I had most assuredly known before—that I would follow him to my very death if that was what he wished.

I did not speak of any of that.

“We will barter our knowledge of the enemies in the pass for my…” Mamoru swallowed thickly, as though it pained him. “… life, I suppose.”

“And you think they will believe us? Or even understand us?”

Mamoru blinked. “Every man, no matter his mother tongue, understands the truth,” he said, as though this should have been evident. Then he added, “Besides, I’ll make them believe us.”

I stared at my lord, his arm healing from where I’d struck him and his hair wild with the previous night’s ride to the mountains. His lips were chapped, and his face was dirty. I’d never seen a more perfect heir, his clothing torn and stained with mud.

He looked every inch the prince.

I was going to carry him into the belly of the dragon in order to save him.

“There is another way,” I told him. “Come.”

There was another branch to the fourteenth pass. One that had been tunneled deep into the earth long ago, to keep it safe from dragonfire, and most who had worked on it had been killed in the dragon’s final assault on the city. Not even many among the Ke-Han army had known about its construction since it had happened so late in the war that our forces had been mostly scattered all over. It had been omitted from the treaty for that very reason—I’d only remembered it just then, and I’d spent the better part of my adult life fighting beside my prince in the war around those very mountains. It was unlikely the diplomats at court had even heard of its existence; certainly, Iseul would not have been the one to alert them to it.

But General Yisun, who had spent so much time in these mountains many jested he’d become its guardian deity, had every reason to know of its existence. I had no real way of knowing the way was safe. What was worse, I had no better options left to me.

I hated to take my lord into uncertain territory, a place where I might not be able to protect him, but it seemed that we had little choice in the matter.

In the stories that my father told me of the old magic, a bond forged by fever would allow Iseul to know what Mamoru knew and see what he saw.

We would simply have to outride him.