Shadow Magic

CHAPTER FOURTEEN





ALCIBIADES

Lord Temur was no longer asleep in my bed.

In point of fact, he was awake in my bed, and staring at me like I’d taken leave of my senses, which, all things considered, I probably had.

We were at an impasse, like two opposite forces on either side of the same bridge, and neither side willing to give an inch of ground, and each with death firm in his jaw and hard in his eyes. We were enemies now, and we always had been, and, what was worse, both of us had done something that went against our codes of honor as men and as soldiers, and being Ke-Han or Volstovic had neither hide nor hair to do with it.

We might have hated each other, but, what was worse was that we hated what we’d done to each other, and we hated that we each knew what we’d done.

It wasn’t honorable behavior.

We were no longer honorable men.

That wasn’t the kind of thing that bothered Caius, of course, who’d told Josette and me—after we’d dragged Temur back through the hallways, limp as a sack of uncooked dumplings—that he had a headache and needed to lie down for a bit, so could I please look after the helpful lord until he awoke?

“I’ll spot your shift,” Josette said. “But right now I have to talk to Fiacre.”

“Right,” I said.

“And I think I’ll be better at explaining things to him than you will be,” she added.

“Right,” I agreed.

And that’s what left me on guard duty, sitting at Lord Temur’s bedside like some kind of lovesick admirer, instead of a man who’d just violated everything sacred and true about the peace between our two countries, and indeed peace itself. The only thing keeping me from going mad from shame was knowing that he and his Emperor were no better than we’d been—but that still didn’t justify what I’d done. Or what I’d helped Caius do. Or anything. Everything.

“Lord Greylace is indeed quite talented,” Temur said. “I have never had the opportunity to see one of your—what is it? Ah yes, velikaia—I have never had the opportunity to see one of your velikaia in action. I thought I might never have the opportunity, given the peace, but I am glad that at least I have been favored in one of my more anomalous requests.”

I didn’t even know what “anomalous” meant—it sounded filthy, if I was being honest—and it was a word in my own damned language. I grunted, just to show him I meant business and wasn’t into idle chatter with just anyone, mind.

“You are lucky to have him as a friend,” Temur continued, his eyes fluttering shut. “It is not in a Ke-Han warrior’s nature to complain, but my head feels like a broken egg.”

Or a shattered dome, I thought. Not my finest moment, I’d be the first to admit. “He’s not my friend,” I protested, out of habit.

“Is that so?” Temur replied. “Hm.”

Things were real quiet and real awkward for a long time after that, and I wished that Josette was around because she knew how to talk to these people, and to people in general, and I just didn’t. Even having Caius would have been preferable, because he would have started talking about the cuisine or the jacket Lord Temur was wearing while we broke into his thoughts like common thieves, and everything would at least have felt a little more normal.

Which nothing was.

Things were—to put it simply—bad. The situation couldn’t be fixed, and it was clear to us all by now that the Emperor had been planning on it all along. We’d just stepped right into his neat little trap and he’d been waiting all that time, laughing to himself, to spring it. There was no way to contact anyone outside of the capital, which meant we were prisoners of a war we’d thought, up until a few hours ago, had actually ended when we crushed the bastards.

Except he hadn’t seen it that way. Apparently being beaten didn’t have the same definition to him.

Lying bastard. I cursed the day Iseul was born, and it must have showed a little in the expression (more like a grimace) I was making, because suddenly Temur was talking like he was the mind reader and not “my friend.”

“Do not think that because an emperor behaves one way he influences the behavior of all his people,” Temur said. “I, too, thought that peace was possible.”

I snorted. “I’m not allowed to say anything,” I said finally. “Josette’ll kill me, for one. Whatever I talk about’ll just make things worse.”

“It is not as though things can get much worse at the moment,” Temur replied, “considering you have taken me prisoner as a counteraction for being taken prisoner, yourself.”

“Well, I don’t want to see if they can get worse,” I replied. Because, chances were and with how everything had been going, they could. And they were going to. And I didn’t want to be behind it all any more than I already was.

If that was even possible. I wasn’t sure anymore, especially considering the company I’d been keeping lately. It was one of the things I’d have written Yana about if it’d been Yana I was writing to and not some poor bastard Ke-Han scribe stuck writing responses to our letters.

“There are not many crimes in the Ke-Han Empire worse than holding a warlord captive,” Lord Temur said, turning his words over carefully. That wasn’t anything new. “You could attempt to assassinate the Emperor himself, of course, but as you no doubt remember, the punishment for that is considerably more dire.”

“Your laws don’t bind us,” I told him, trying to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about and not like I was making it all up as I went along. “What I mean is… Well, you know. We’re not the same. You can’t just stick us in the ground and call us lilies when we’re really petunias.”

Lord Temur raised his eyebrows. “Petunias? I don’t believe I’ve seen that particular specimen in our gardens.”

“Country flower,” I said, crossing my arms and staring down at the floor. My boots still had mud on them from our adventure at the theatre. If Josette came in, she was going to rip me a new one for talking when I’d as good as promised not to. But I was starting to think that maybe our fine captive lord was right, that there wasn’t much worse we could do than kidnapping one of the seven warlords.

Fighting the war had been a lot damned easier when everything had been out in the open. I wasn’t made for all that subterfuge.

“A country flower,” Lord Temur repeated. There was a funny look in his eyes when he opened them, almost like he was sharing a joke with me. “Much like I am. Wouldn’t you say so, General Alcibiades?”

“Suppose so,” I muttered, wondering just when he’d gone and cultivated a sense of humor. Probably planned it just to throw me off for that moment. I knew enough now not to assume anything about the Ke-Han as a whole, but most of them were definitely tricky enough to try a tactic like that.

The thing was, I’d never thought Lord Temur was one of the tricky ones. And even if I’d been wrong and he had been, after the number Caius’d done on him, I’d have been surprised if he could scheme his way out of bed, let alone getting past me. I didn’t entirely like the look of him, pale as the folding screen in my room and tired as if he’d spent the whole night out drinking, which was an image that nearly set me to laughing.

“Am I to be kept here, then?” Lord Temur asked caustically. His eyes flicked from one wall to the other, scanning the room. “You will doubtless have many uncomfortable nights ahead of you if that’s to be the case.”

“I’ll be just fine,” I said, because I sure as hell wasn’t about to admit that I didn’t know what we were going to do with him. “Not like your beds are all that comfortable to begin with.”

Josette would know what to do, I told myself. Fiacre too, if Josette could get him to calm down long enough to come and see the situation for himself. I was a mite worried about our leader in diplomatic proceedings, since he did a little too much bowing and scraping for my tastes, but Fiacre wasn’t half-bad when you got right down to it.

And we were definitely down to it.

“Say…” I said, not really sure where I was going to go from there, or even what I was doing besides preventing Temur from asking more questions I didn’t have the answers to.

There was a soft cough from the adjoining door and the familiar dull sound of wood sliding against wood, and without warning—which was how he liked it best—Caius Greylace arrived with impeccable timing so I didn’t have to say a thing. I was grateful for the little peacock, feathers and all.

He was wearing white, a color he hated, but with a bright red beneath it like fresh blood on snow. Probably making a statement. When wasn’t he? Trouble was, I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to be patriotic or just plain creepy. Maybe he thought they were one and the same.

“Oh, you’re awake!” Caius said, as if Lord Temur were a guest he’d invited for dinner and not a man he’d just spent the better part of the day torturing with visions and mind tricks and bastion-only-knew what else.

“Been awake for a while now,” I said, feeling uncomfortable again in the face of all this pretending that everything was normal. Everything wasn’t normal. Fiacre was going to string all of us up by our privates before we could get a word in edgeways—but, knowing Greylace, the little nut would probably enjoy it.

“That’s very good,” Caius said, slinking over to stand on the other side of my bed like a viper waiting to strike. “Perhaps then he can tell us what’s happened to our esteemed head of proceedings.”

“Fiacre?” I asked, confused again and liking it about as much as I always did. “Isn’t he with Josette?”

Caius shook his head, not looking away from Lord Temur, though I had to admit the warlord looked about as baffled as I was by the new revelation.

“She’s still looking,” Caius explained. “She wanted to come in and ask Lord Temur himself whether he had any thoughts, but the poor dear has a temper much the same as yours, Alcibiades, and I felt it best—well, I may have persuaded her just a touch, just the slightest touch—that it would be the best for everyone involved if I was the one to do the questioning.”

“Wait,” I said, “hold it there. You did what to Josette?”

“Please try and focus on the larger picture, my dear,” Caius said, clasping his hands like he was some kind of saint and I was the troublemaker.

Lord Temur closed his eyes again and moved to sit up. I stood the moment he shifted, one hand against my sword just in case he did something stupid. He didn’t seem like the type to make a move—too much prudence and all—but you never knew what a man was capable of after he’d been tortured. I saw Caius’s hand creep into the fall of one of his long sleeves, too, so I knew that he’d been thinking the same thing I had.

It turned out we were both wrong. Either Lord Temur was confident in his expectation of rescue, or he wasn’t the sort of warlord who carried around poisoned arrowheads or daggers, or anything else that clumsy.

“This is news to me, as well,” he said. “You say that your head of proceedings, Fiacre… He is nowhere to be found?”

“Not in his rooms, nor the meeting rooms,” Caius said. He hadn’t taken his hand out of his sleeve, even though I’d sat back down. “He wasn’t seen going into the city, and he wasn’t seen at breakfast. I happen to know that breakfast is his favorite meal, even without traditional Volstov fare, so I find it all quite unsettling news.”

I started to get a really bad feeling as Caius went on, listing all the places that Fiacre should have been but wasn’t.

“Have you looked in the gardens?” Lord Temur asked. “He holds great affection for our fireflies, and can often be found there in the early evening.”

“Well, you’ve just been making friends with everyone, haven’t you?” I exploded, even though I wasn’t the one conducting the investigation, and I probably should’ve waited for Caius to say it was my turn, or whatever. I was done doing things this way. I’d tried being diplomatic, and that hadn’t worked, and now what? It was all just some crazed Emperor’s ruse to get us here, spy on us, then trap us here indefinitely. I could feel the bars of the cage sliding into place and I hated it.

The whole thing was ridiculous.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, because I had to say something as Caius and Lord Temur both were staring at me. “This whole time, he’s probably been watching us and reporting back to the Emperor with bastion knows what. How we like our tea and how many fried dumplings I bought at that stand and how many steps it took to get from the theatre district to the artists’ alley. Did you tell him about all those prints we looked at, Lord Temur? The ones that called him out for the brother-hunting madman he is? Or did you tell him about the play, and how his brother what’s-his-name is some kind of folk hero now that he’s gone and declared him a traitor? How about how many people booed when his player got up onstage? Does he know it’s common opinion that he’s about as good as a raving, conniving lunatic who—”

“Alcibiades,” Caius said.

I shut up. So much for not talking. I was so angry I could feel my face turning red like a lobster in boiling water.

Lord Temur folded his hands against the blanket like it was a table, and we were having another one of those diplomatic meetings, just the three of us this time. The only thing different I could see was that there was a ring of white flesh around Lord Temur’s mouth that made him look like he’d caught fever or a plague. Somewhere in his soul, tradition meant that he should kill me for what I’d just said about his Emperor; and, somewhere in his soul, he also knew I was right.

That shut me up good and proper.

“I was…” Temur began. “Rather I am, still, quite curious about Volstovic customs and culture.” He spoke slowly but firmly with his head held up. The Ke-Han had seventeen different ways to bow, but apparently none of those applied to torturers and kidnappers. “My interest led me to speak first with Lord Greylace and Margrave Josette, both of whom seemed to harbor a corresponding curiosity about our own traditions and habits. It was through their association that I also came to meet you, General Alcibiades, and, though I can hardly expect you to believe me under the circumstances, no machinations more complicated than that.”

His face darkened for a moment, and he looked at me.

“Of course, my lord Emperor is exceedingly clever at using a situation to his advantage if you will take my meaning.”

Caius made a noise like a hiss and sat down on my bed to look Lord Temur in the eyes.

“So while we were enjoying your very fine company, you were informing him of everything we said. Something like that?”

“It was my duty,” Lord Temur said. It was simple as that for him.

Maybe to the Ke-Han it was, and that was what I didn’t like about them. I respected th’Esar, but when he mucked it up it was our duty as citizens to make sure he knew it, not serve him to the brink of madness and beyond.

I’d have spat on the ground if we hadn’t been inside. As things stood, I had to settle for snorting.

“Why tell us now?” Caius asked. “Of your own free will, even! I did a fine job on you, certainly, but there isn’t any… lingering control.”

A silence followed, during which I started thinking of all the things that might have been happening to Fiacre if Iseul the Stark Raving Mad was responsible for his being nowhere to be found. None of them were good things. All of them were shades darker than bad.

“You must understand,” Lord Temur said quietly, “that there are those of us who feel that matters have been taken quite out of hand. In understanding that, however, you must also know that our customs bid us do nothing but follow blindly, even in the face of such a leader as our Emperor.”

“That’s batty,” I said, disappointed because maybe I’d sort of almost got my head around not minding Lord Temur, only it turned out he was as crazy as the rest of them.

He shrugged.

“Those are our ways,” he said. “They may seem strange or unfathomable to you, but they remain very important to us.”

“But surely even someone as set in tradition as yourself, Lord Temur, must see that the Emperor has gone too far,” said Caius, spinning it a lot more delicately than I’d have done given the chance.

“Why do you think I’m allowing you to keep me here?” Lord Temur asked, giving us a look like maybe we were a little slow. “It is hardly an ideal place for confinement. Why, I might have escaped at least half a dozen times over now if I were not here by my own consent.”

“Now wait just a minute,” I said, and then stopped confusing the matter because it actually made sense.

Caius smiled—a thin little reptilian smile that made him look mad as the Emperor himself. Somehow I didn’t mind it as much on him.

“Well,” he said, like we’d all been having tea together, “I suppose this makes us comrades of a sort. How thrilling.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m really thrilled.”

“I am concerned for your Margrave Josette,” Lord Temur said after a moment, when everyone’d been thinking about all the people other than us they’d have preferred as comrades at that moment in time. “If she asks too many questions about your leader, and if it is the Emperor who is behind his disappearance…”

“F*ck,” I said, standing up immediately.

Caius followed me with his lone eye cold and strange, catching me for a moment and holding me in place. As little as two weeks ago, he would’ve definitely taken something like that as sure proof of some kind of love affair—and if not that, then at least something to drive Josette crazy babbling about. But it was like we’d unleashed some kind of beast in him with his Talent, like the snake that had got into our Well and poisoned everything in the night. He was different.

It was eerie.

“I’ll keep a weather eye on our guest,” Caius said, smiling thinly. “You go and play the hero. Drag her back kicking and screaming if you have to, which I suspect you might. And do try not to attract any attention if you can, though I know that’s your specialty.”

I nodded, though I still wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about leaving Lord Temur in the custody of Caius like that.

“Do not worry about my well-being,” Lord Temur said.

I snorted again. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I won’t.”

The hallways of the Ke-Han palace were as serpentine as ever, and the mirrors reminded me like always that no matter what we did, we were being watched. Those were the same halls Fiacre had been walking hours ago for all we knew, feeling safe and cocky as any blue-blooded diplomat had to in order to put on a good show of it. I was a soldier and, for once, that made me feel less like a fox in the henhouse and more like I was in my element. Though if the Emperor really had gone mad, I wasn’t skilled enough with a sword to best him one-on-one—barring divine intervention or, more likely, a sizable portion of foul play.

Things were grim, simple as that. We didn’t need signs like a Ke-Han warlord up and changing sides on us to tell me how grim, either. I didn’t take to being held captive—though who did? It was tighter than the Basquiat in the narrow halls with no windows, and Fiacre’s room was quiet from within.

The guard in front of his door watched me coolly with eyes trained beyond emotion. None of that’d ever sat well with me because I had no talent for it, but I cleared my throat and tried, anyway, to be polite.

“Did a woman come by here?” I asked. “The Margrave Josette?” I gestured vaguely as to her proportions—about this high, this wide, hair this long—and the guard pointed soundlessly down another hall.

“The menagerie,” he said, and bowed as low as if I’d been a visiting emperor.

It all felt so unclean. That was the trouble. Caius sitting on Lord Temur, mirrors winking at me from the corners, and that guard watching me all the way until I turned the corner.

Just walk slowly, Alcibiades, I told myself. Everything’s fine. Everything’s all right. You just want to look at the striped cats. Who doesn’t like a good striped cat? No harm in visiting the zoo now and then, seeing the native wildlife.

And a little bit of sunlight would do me a spot of good, too.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting when, at last, the palace opened up into its private gardens. Maybe I was preparing to burst in and rescue Josette from the hands of ten, maybe twenty, expressionless Ke-Han guards, dragging her off to wherever it was Fiacre was being kept. I didn’t realize how I’d steeled myself for combat until I turned a corner past some giant white-blossomed tree to find her watching the tigers. There wasn’t even a single assassin lying in wait for her—though that didn’t mean I was going to give Greylace his dagger back anytime soon.

“Have you come to rescue me?” Josette asked, giving me a look over her shoulder that signified, as always, she wasn’t exactly impressed.

I cleared my throat. “Fiacre’s missing,” I said, coming close enough to her to whisper.

“It would seem so,” Josette said. “But don’t worry. It’s not as though I’d kick up some kind of idiot fuss trying to find him.”

“Greylace says I should drag you back kicking and screaming, if I have to.”

Josette laughed. “I’ll save my kicking and screaming for a few other choice inhabitants of this palace,” she replied.

“Well,” I said. All my nerves were on fire—waiting for a storm that was about to come, with the clouds too far off in the distance to gauge the precise timing the deluge would erupt. “Would you do me the honor of escorting me back to my quarters?”

“Why, General,” Josette said. “I never suspected you of having any manners.” She heaved a deep sigh then, her face tightening as she watched the tigers, too sleepy in the heat to even pace back and forth. I could sense a little of what she was thinking, at least in the barest outline of a metaphor, because bastion damn me if those cats didn’t remind me just a little of myself. There was even a baby one, all white; no use saying which that one was.

Right. No use thinking about it.

We walked back through the quiet hallways together, and as we walked, I felt like we were heading deeper and deeper into the belly of a winding beast—one great big snake made out of formality and sliding doors and cypress wood and mirrors. The deeper we got, the less of a chance there was we’d have any way of slicing our way out again.

I was half-expecting Lord Temur and Caius Greylace to be gone by the time we returned to my chambers, whisked away by the guards like they were just cleaning the place up. Josette and Caius and I had been cockeyed to the point of being blind, so caught up in the problem with the letters that we hadn’t reported our findings higher up along the diplomatic chain. And now, we were separated from the rest of the group, the age-old and generally effective tactic of divide and conquer.

What I wasn’t expecting was to find Caius serving Lord Temur tea from the hearth in the center of the room, the two of them drinking from the delicate cups and savoring the taste.

“I’ve made enough for you and Josette,” Caius said brightly as we entered. “I know that Josette prefers her tea strong, so I’ve let it steep. Alcibiades, would you be a dear and put a wedge in the doorframe? You never know who will stop by, and it’s best always to be prepared.”

I hesitated for long enough to see Lord Temur’s face—he was watching Josette, and, as far as I could tell from Ke-Han expressions, he was even more glad to see her in one piece than I’d been.

And that, no doubt, was because he’d known the kind of shape she might’ve been found in better than I did.

I did as Caius told me, using two extra wedges for good measure, before I took the cup of tea, because it was something to hold on to. Josette made herself comfortable on the floor, then we all must have realized how crazy we all looked, since after that all four of us—Lord Temur included—were laughing.

“Soldiers get like this in the trench,” I said, once we’d sobered some.

“How fascinating,” Caius said. “What of our fellow soldiers?”

Josette drank deeply from her glass before she spoke. “I’ve been sent to this room and that all day,” she explained, “on someone or another’s directions. First I was told Fiacre was in a meeting with the Emperor—but they must have known that explanation wouldn’t hold water for long, since the rest of us would’ve been there for that kind of an event, now wouldn’t we? Then I was told he was out in the gardens—which he wasn’t—but a nice young woman in the gardens told me he’d gone back to his room, except he wasn’t there either. As you can see, I’ve been given something of a runaround. Your help really should be better informed, Lord Temur.”

Lord Temur said nothing, but bowed his head and sipped his tea. After all he’d been through, I didn’t blame him for feeling ashamed. I felt it, too, instead of letting myself feel other things in which fear was heavily involved.

And once you let fear in, panic settled over you, so we were lucky, at least, that all four of us had different kinds of level heads.

“So it would seem that our companions have been taken captive,” Caius said, after a long pause, like he was saying, “I do so love that flower arrangement” or “The tea is a tad too strong.”

“It would seem that we’ve been taken captive,” I added.

“Just in a different manner of speaking,” Josette agreed.

“Well, we are lucky at least in one respect,” Caius said, blithe as you please, “since we have an asset that our companions were unfortunately lacking.”

All three of us—Caius, Josette, and I—turned to look at Lord Temur, who was holding the teacup in his hand like it was alive and he was afraid of hurting it. He’d drained it, and turned it over on his palm, so that it formed a pale blue dome in his hand. Something like wry defeat passed across his face.

“What do you plan to do?” he asked at last.

“We cannot hope to bring assistance to our companions unless we have gotten word out to the Esar of our predicament,” Caius said.

“But I’m not leaving anyone here,” I countered sharply.

“Nor can I leave,” Temur said. “That far, I cannot go.”

Josette smiled. “Then, General Alcibiades, Lord Temur,” she explained, quick as you like, and her blue eyes hard and pretty as jewelry, “you will cause the distraction that gives us cover to escape.”

“I figured as much,” I said.





MAMORU

I woke in an alien world of clean white sheets and a pillow that was too soft—like resting upon something as untrustworthy as a cloud. It wasn’t the bed I’d had at the palace, and it most certainly wasn’t the ground I’d grown accustomed to sleeping on in recent weeks. My stomach clenched with a sudden rush of panic, followed by confusion. All around me, I heard voices whispering in a foreign language—one I’d taken great pains to learn, once, though it felt like another lifetime of lessons. A bright light streamed from an unknown source, making it impossible for me to see.

There was only one question to ask.

“Kouje?” I croaked, surprised to hear the quality of my voice, which was hoarse and raw, as though I’d been misusing it for some time. Had the fever done so much?

I heard someone issue a command, stern and brisk, but my head was still fuzzy and I couldn’t understand it. The word for “summon” …? Or maybe it had been “call”. The fever had taken my clarity from me, even causing me to awaken with no memory of how we had come from one point to another. I remembered the mountains, and being unbearably cold. I remembered the night sky, and nothing so bright as the light focused upon me.

There had to be something I was missing.

I cast my mind back as far as I could remember. Kouje had spoken of going to Volstov, that there was where we would find the cure to the fever that raged in my blood at night. But Kouje hadn’t answered my call, which meant he couldn’t possibly be there beside me.

I held up my hands, the only thing familiar in the too-bright room, and passed them in front of my face, back and forth, until my fingers took shape and form, and I began to recognize the sight of my own palm. Then I reached over and pinched the skin on the back of one hand. It hurt, and I didn’t wake up.

“Oh,” I heard myself saying. “It isn’t a dream.”

“Hardly,” said another voice. That one was speaking in my native tongue, though it stumbled over the softer consonants, and the familiar words were tinged with an unmistakable foreignness. “Unless you make a habit of dreaming yourself into medical supervision so that a crack team of strange magicians can eradicate your fever. Nasty business, so I’m told. Not really my specialty.”

At least he knew the language well enough, though his tone was overly formal.

“Excuse us,” said another voice. That one was female and more skilled with our language. “My companion was evidently not chosen for his manners, but rather for his familiarity with the Ke-Han language and customs. Neither of which, I’m sorry to say, he has displayed here.”

“I was being honest,” the man protested, in Volstovic.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that he had a beard, and was dressed in much the same fashion as the delegates from Volstov had been, if less ceremonial. His companion was a striking woman with dark skin and eyes; no Ke-Han woman had a gaze like that. She pinned me to the mattress with one glance, like a butterfly in a collector’s display. I licked my lips to wet them before I spoke.

“My apologies,” I said, trying to sound like a prince of the Ke-Han and not a mouse caught in the granary. “I am… in Volstov?”

“Thremedon, actually,” said the man.

“If you are looking for your companion, I believe that he is sleeping downstairs,” the woman added. “He was suffering from exhaustion, and even then we had to be quite persuasive with him in order to gain permission to take you here for observation.”

“It certainly caused a scene,” added the man. “I assume they hauled us in as translators to ward off the massacre, since the guards of the Basquiat barely speak our language, let alone yours, and that companion of yours is certainly something to be reckoned with when he’s wielding a sword and shouting like the devil. Why, if we hadn’t been able to tie him down—”

“Royston,” the woman admonished.

The man blinked, then turned to me, bowing low in the Ke-Han fashion.

“I speak a great deal, Your Highness,” he said. “Sometimes a great deal too bluntly. If an apology is in order, then you may rest assured that you have my sincerest one.”

I shivered and tried to remember how a prince acted. It was more difficult than I’d hoped.

“Please don’t,” I said, before I could help myself. “It isn’t necessary to be so formal. Not when you have already been so gracious as to take us in.”

“Margrave Royston,” said the man, gesturing toward himself, “and my lovely companion is the velikaia Antoinette.”

The lady spread her skirts wide as a fan and bowed in her own, delicate way.

“Our magicians have been working through the night to discover the source of your ailment,” she said. “We are keeping the symptoms at bay through… well, certainly unorthodox means, but… As of right now, we believe that we have it narrowed down, though we were hoping to speak with your retainer to perhaps glean some of the details.”

“Kouje,” I said, feeling a selfish desire to see him, even though it meant waking him. We’d come to a decision, however misty and distant it seemed now, and our friendship, not to mention my own duty, called for immediate action. “Yes. And after that, I—It is imperative that I speak with your Esar,” I said.

Antoinette turned her gaze toward Royston though not before I caught the flicker of interest in her eyes.

“Surely your good health is of the utmost importance at the moment, Your Highness. I’m certain the wait to cure you will not be so long as all that.”

General Yisun would not wait for my fever to recede. I was equally certain of that.

“I’m very grateful for your help,” I said, “but it is urgent.”

The translators shared another look.

“Well,” said Royston. “Let’s start by waking the poor bastard up.”

I felt another stab of guilt as two men left the room at a command from Antoinette, going to rouse Kouje from wherever he’d been slumbering in this unknown place. What had Royston called it? Basquiat. I wasn’t sure I could quite form my mouth around the word, but I felt certain I’d heard it before. No doubt it was someplace for which my people had another name—perhaps even a name far less favorable.

Not for the first time, I wished for something I’d had at the palace. It was my tutors, who’d known so much more about this foreign city than I could ever hope to learn. It seemed almost unfair that I was seeing it without them. They deserved the experience more than I did.

The room I was being held in was so unfamiliar that I had no way to translate it, either. A high ceiling, domed from within; decorations in inlaid stone that caught the light and scattered it, vibrant orange, across the floor; a high, polished door with a golden knob; ostentatious furniture, like a cabinet of some sort, also with inlaid knobs. No wonder I felt so blind there.

I drew my robes around me—at least those were familiar—and leaned back against the plump pillows. Perhaps it was difficult for me to remember the way of being a prince because I was in a strange bed, surrounded by people I’d never met and weakened by fever. When I grasped the fabric with my fingers they felt insubstantial, like water.

Somehow I knew that even all that would never have stopped Iseul from knowing how to be Emperor. It was in his blood like the fever was in mine, intractable and waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself.

“Mamoru,” said a voice, breaking me from my reverie, and I found my gaze irresistibly drawn to the door—where Kouje was standing. He looked like a ghost come down from the mountains, all pale skin and purple shadows beneath his eyes. Surrounded by finery for the first time, it was evident just how tired he was, and how thin, like an imprint of a man instead of the real thing.

I wondered if I looked much the same. More than that, I wondered how Kouje had managed to get us into the city at all, considering the fact that we looked nothing at all like Ke-Han royalty. Even a palace retainer was better kept than we were.

Even fishermen were.

I drew in a deep breath to speak and realized I was smiling.

“Kouje,” I said.

He came to stand by my bed, eyeing the men standing around us with a wary caution, as though they were something other than magicians or doctors or both. The man who talked too much—Royston—looked delicately away, though the others were not quite as polite as he. Now that I didn’t have to squint, I could see that some of them were scribbling notes, while others were examining strange-looking instruments that shone silver in the bright light. It was fascinating, in a way, and completely different from our ways of medicine, not to mention our magicians, whose power had depended greatly on the great blue dome destroyed by the dragons’ final assault on our capital.

I hadn’t been homesick in all our time on the road. I’d missed things, certainly, but the danger had still been too close, and the need for vigilance so constant, that I had never allowed myself to sit down and simply miss everything before. Now I did. It was a sobering feeling.

“How are you?” Kouje asked, so quietly that I suspected he was wary of our translators as well.

“Better,” I said, not bothering to lower my tone. “But it is morning, and they say that they haven’t quite diagnosed it yet. I’m not sure what all this is.” For the benefit of the others around us, I added, “We have no such instruments in the Ke-Han.”

Kouje’s gaze turned troubled, and he glanced away from me for a moment. Not for the first time, I felt the separation between us that had been caused by the fever. He knew things that I didn’t, things I’d missed during my delirium and wouldn’t ever have the chance to know.

If we’d still been in the forest, I’d have reached out to tug at his sleeve, drawing his attention to me that way. Yet we were in Volstov, and I could no longer act like a traveling actor, or even a fugitive. There was a protocol for refugees, especially those of royal blood, and I would not shame my ancestors by pretending to have forgotten it.

I sat up a little straighter, though the pillows helped me more than good breeding.

“Perhaps I should speak with them,” Kouje said, as though wrestling with some invisible foe in his mind. “There are things that I could tell them—things you might not remember, my lord, since you were in the grips of it.”

He had stumbled over not using my given name, so that I knew he’d remembered himself as well and was just as bound not to shame his family. It was almost funny, after how long it had taken me to convince him it was all right in the first place.

“Excuse me,” Royston said, startling me. He bowed when we both turned to meet his gaze, and when he straightened up he kept his eyes on Kouje, as though he were someone to be wary of. Then again, I rather supposed he was. I hadn’t been conscious for the scenes Kouje had caused—memories that he and Royston shared, and which echoed in the wary, intrigued amusement in Royston’s eyes.

“We couldn’t help overhearing,” Antoinette added, resting a hand on Royston’s arm. “We must insist that, if there is any information you’ve been keeping from us, now would certainly be the time to share it. It could mean the difference between a speedy recovery and, well… A speedy recovery is preferable, I believe. Especially since Your Highness expressed a desire to see the Esar as soon as possible.”

Kouje turned to look at me, surprise mixed with something else in his face. He nodded slowly.

“I will speak with you,” he said. “Perhaps while my lord prepares himself for his audience?”

There it was again, the feeling that somewhere along the way Kouje had learned something I hadn’t, and he had no intentions of sharing it with me.

“My retainer knows more of the situation than I do, it would seem,” I acquiesced. I’d trusted him for so long, and he had proven himself far better than my equal. Even if I was royalty, friendship and expediency demanded that I give him his autonomy.

“Then I shall escort you to the Esar,” Royston said, “for he is very keen to meet you.”

“And I will discuss things with your retainer,” Antoinette added. “That is, if this delegation of actions is agreeable to you.”

Kouje looked after me with a flash of panic in his eyes, then glanced to the open window, where sunlight streamed into the already bright room. He nodded to me, once.

“It is most agreeable,” I said.

“I take it that haste will also be agreeable,” Royston said, while he and Kouje helped me from the bed. I felt separated from my body still, though how much of that was the fever and how much of that was the Volstov magic, I was uncertain.

“Will you be able to stand?” Kouje asked.

“Will you?” I countered.

Beside me, Royston snorted, though not impolitely; I saw, too, that the velikaia Antoinette was stifling a smile. “Come,” she said, gesturing to Kouje. “All will go faster this way.”

“And as for us,” Royston said, “with your permission, I will teach you as we walk how to address our Esar.”

“Is he very far away?” I asked, accompanying Royston from the room. He held one arm out for me, and I wished we’d been alone, rather than accompanied by three of the men who’d been in the room when I awoke. They were not magicians, I decided just by looking at them, but guards. I was hardly dangerous in my condition, but I supposed they had no reason to believe this wasn’t a ploy of some sort.

“Not to worry,” Royston replied wryly. “It is much less difficult to address our leader than it is to address yours. No offense, of course; merely a statement of truth.”

“I understand,” I replied.

“In fact, you need only bow slightly to him to flatter his ego, and he will bow back, to flatter yours. But I doubt we’ll waste much time on formalities. The real crux of the matter is that he wishes to speak with you. So much so, in fact, that he has come to the Basquiat in order to meet with you as quickly as possible. If we have the time later, then I will explain why that is such an interesting break with protocol. Isn’t it a lucky thing that these faithful guards have no idea what I’m saying to you?”

“I have some information of interest to him,” I said.

“Ah,” Royston said. “I look forward to translating it.”

I was led down one impressive hall into one even more imposing than the last. The walls were hung with draperies, the wood carved to the very last detail, and the ceilings high. All was open to the sunlight, which shone in through enormous windows of stained glass and turned my skin all different colors as we walked. It was like passing into another world entirely.

There was too much color and too much light to appreciate the beauty beneath it. It was enough for me that I was placing one foot in front of the other without leaning too heavily on my impromptu translator, whose skill with words would have been baffling to me even if I had been in top form. Nonetheless, he didn’t look at me quite as though I were an enemy—which admittedly the three guards were—and I was grateful for that. When he spoke, it meant I did not have to.

“It’s just a few more architectural wonders this way,” Royston added, leading me into an antechamber, followed by another, followed at last by a third, each, bafflingly enough, smaller than the last, though all of them equally crammed with tables and chairs and vases full of flowers, with portraits of foreign men on every wall. In the last room, three more men were waiting for us. They were simply dressed, though only one was sitting, his hand resting upon a white cane.

Royston, alongside our guards, dropped to his knees.

“You might wish to bow, Lord Mamoru,” Royston whispered, in the Ke-Han tongue.

It had been a long time since last I bowed, and I wondered dizzily if I would topple over in the midst of the formality. Still, as I lowered my head and bent stiffly at the waist, I heard the man in the chair rise and do the same.

So, I realized. This was the Esar.

He began to speak, and Royston translated for me. “His Majesty beseeches you most politely to take a seat, for you have traveled a long way to arrive in our humble capital,” Royston said, with a touch of humor in his voice. “Please, do sit,” he added, and these appeared to be his own words. “You look as though you will collapse before you manage to say anything at all.”

I took a seat gratefully after the Esar had done the same, not sure where to place my hands. We were separated by a long, polished table of very dark wood, in which I could see my own reflection. The legs of the chair were too long, and my feet barely brushed the carpeted floor.

“Now,” Royston continued, translating once more. “He is eager to hear what you have to say—and, he adds, is in awe to meet a member of the imperial family of the proud Ke-Han at last.”

I almost smiled. We’d been enemies for four times my own lifetime, and now I was the man the Volstov Esar met. Hardly a terrifying sight. I should have sent Kouje in my place.

I lowered my head to thank him for the opportunity to speak. “Your Highness,” I said, as Royston spoke heavy Volstovic syllables beside me, “it is my honor to meet you, and, under other circumstances, I would offer more appropriate formalities than time allows me. I hope one day you will forgive me and allow me to greet you as befits your status.” The Esar lifted one hand, and smiled behind his beard—a gesture I recognized as well as Royston did. Go on. “I am a member of the imperial family, it is true, though I arrive here in this unorthodox manner. The events leading to my presence now are stranger than even a playwright might divine, but I hope you will believe my story, Your Highness, as I have no cause to lie to you.”

And then, I told him of my brother’s betrayal, of Kouje’s loyalty, and of what we had found during our flight through the mountains.

It had often been said that no man could read the emotions upon the face of a Ke-Han warrior—which was integral to every man’s training—but in that moment I saw, too, how difficult it was to read the expression on the face of the Esar of Volstov, whose clipped beard and blunt features revealed nothing, even when I told him of the troops garrisoned in the Cobalt range.

We both knew that I was betraying my brother. We could at least tell ourselves that he had made the first move in betraying us.

“Water,” the Esar said when I had finished speaking; it was a simple enough word, and I could recognize it well. “Bring the prince water.” One of his guard disappeared to comply with his request, and once again I found myself bowing to him in gratitude.

“Your Highness,” Royston said, “the troops in the mountainside will be dispatched easily enough, if the element of surprise is on our side. It is our diplomatic envoy in the capital that worries me.”

“They will have been taken hostage, of course,” the Esar said simply. “It is our royal duty to save our people.”

“Including the diplomats,” Royston said, a simple enough statement, though it was not entirely as though he was agreeing with the Esar. It seemed more as though he was attempting to remind him of something.

“We must think of what the best course of action is for all of our people,” the Esar said, and though it sounded as though they were speaking of the same thing, I knew somehow that they weren’t.

The guard brought me my water, and I took it gratefully, careful not to drink too greedily. To be truthful, I was glad to have something to occupy me beyond the tension rising in the room, thick like the air before a thunderstorm. As little as I knew of diplomacy in Volstov, I could sense well enough that my translator was speaking beyond his place, and the Esar was not particularly keen on accepting his counsel.

Royston’s easy air from our previous conversation had disappeared, and in its place was a countenance of pure steel. I had known many men with each of those attributes, but it was much rarer to find both within the same body. At any other time, I would have dearly wished for the opportunity to know him a bit better.

However, it was not the time for my own wishes. I had the Ke-Han people to think about, and as a member of the royal family it was my duty to honor the provisional treaty my father had negotiated. Surely the Esar felt the same way. As a ruler, how could he not?

“You’re going to leave them there,” Royston said, with a terrible look on his face.

“I have no other choice,” said the Esar, in his own tongue. It was a simple enough phrase that even I could understand it.

“The magicians can take care of themselves,” Royston translated as the Esar continued speaking. The undercurrent of anger in his voice was subtle, but unmistakable when compared to a Ke-Han warlord’s neutral tones. “He hopes that if we move swiftly enough, the troops in the mountains may be dispatched without the Emperor’s knowledge. It would be difficult to replicate such a feat in the capital, and he does not wish to disturb the peace that has doubtless taken root among the people in your country. He feels that sending troops through to the lapis city would only set off a panic that could set the diplomatic process back months, if not to the very beginning. As we all realize,” he added, and this was him speaking once more, “to march upon the capital, no matter what the circumstances are, would be an act of war.”

I understood, then, what had caused the change in atmosphere and what Royston was frowning about now, twisting one of his many rings over and over as though he wished it were the Esar’s neck. They were going to leave the diplomats in the capital to fend for themselves.

The cup slipped from my fingers, spilling what water remained all over the tabletop.

“He’ll kill them,” I said urgently, as one of the guards moved to dry the wood and retrieve the cup. In my fervor, I had little concern for what in the Ke-Han court would have been a humiliating breach in protocol. “My brother takes no prisoners. No warlord does. If he discovers what’s happened, he won’t bother to keep them as hostages. They won’t have a chance.”

“I’m aware of that,” Royston murmured in Ke-Han, so that I understood that while I spoke enough Volstovic to get by, the Esar did not mirror my knowledge. Royston then began to translate what I’d said, though I could tell by his gestures and the tone of his voice that he’d added in several of his own personal flourishes.

The Esar touched his clipped beard with his thumb, clearly thinking something over. He, too, wore rings—it appeared to be a common practice for men there, though it made me wonder whether the ornamentation might get in the way of their swords—and they glinted like jeweled eyes in the light of the reception room. When he spoke next his words came more slowly, though even I was not naive enough to mistake that care for hesitance. My head was beginning to swim with everything that was in it, the importance of it all under the strain of the fever. Instead of trying to understand the Esar’s words this time, I watched Royston. After all, Volstovics were not trained to hide their emotions, and my plan was the next best way of evaluating what was being said and how I was to prepare myself for a response. My translator had stopped toying with the ring, and indeed his hands were held completely still. His expression was harder to read than it had been before, and he kept his face turned from mine this time.

When he spoke next, it was with a wry smile, as though he’d tasted something bad in his food.

“He says that he understands now the need for action. He understands that for diplomacy to work between our two countries, we will need two leaders of a like mind, able to forge a future together based on trust and mutual benefit. If everything you have told us is true—and he believes that it is, based upon our reconnaissance in the Cobalts—then our solution is a simple one. What better way to earn the trust of the people than to put their beloved prince at an army’s head? If we are to send in troops to rescue our diplomats in the capital, then we must have a familiar face to allay the fears of the people about a renewed outbreak of hostilities. If they see that you are the guiding influence of this change, then they will not complain.”

“What about Iseul?” I asked, forcing my voice to be strong and even as the Esar’s was. “My brother. He will not—He would never allow such a thing. He’d die first.”

“That, I believe, is the Esar’s intent,” Royston replied, not bothering to translate for the man he served.

I felt something well up within me, like a rush of wind from the shows the magicians had once put on to entertain the royal family. It filled my lungs to bursting and made my chest ache with the sharp suddenness of it. I pressed my hands flat against the table, still damp from when I had spilled my drink, and straightened my back. Many people had been brave in order to bring me here, people who’d owed me nothing at all but had risked everything nonetheless.

Kouje, I was sure, had nearly killed himself bringing me over the mountains.

I would not lose strength and shame them all for their efforts.

“You… Your Highness intends to replace my brother with me,” I said, ignoring the fluttering of panic in my chest, like the sails of a ship picking up wind. I was not ready to become Emperor. Iseul had been right in that, if nothing else.

“Just so,” said Royston, though his expression remained unreadable.

I wanted a few days to think it over. I wanted Kouje at my side, to tell me what the wisest course of action was so that I could follow it. I wanted to go back to bed and sleep until the seasons changed, to wake up in a fisherman’s hut with little wooden boats and nets and hooks.

I had never met Kouje’s sister. As Emperor, I never would.

“Time is of the essence,” I said, ignoring the lapping of waves against the shore. “We must move as soon as I am able, as soon as you are able to gather enough men together. I do not know when my brother plans to attack, but we cannot risk an assumption of its being later rather than sooner.”

“I agree,” said Royston, and he began to speak again, translating what I’d said to the Esar while I kept my head high, my gaze level.

He nodded, with what I hoped was his approval, then said something quickly that I wasn’t able to catch.

“The main roads will take you there in a week if we send other troops to deal with the threat in the mountains. We will speed your party back as swiftly as possible. He worries only about your condition,” Royston translated. “I’ve reassured him that we’re doing our best and reminded him that magicians, as he so helpfully put it, can look after themselves.”

I smiled faintly.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m not so certain I deserve that, but I’ll accept it anyway,” said Royston. “That charmingly subtle hint is our cue to leave, in any case.”

He pushed his chair back to rise, and I followed his example, holding on to the table only slightly more than I might have preferred. If we’d been required to bow again, I might have toppled over completely, but fortunately the guards moved to open the doors before I could start calculating how rude it might have been to use one’s translator as support while showing respect for a foreign leader—and new ally.

“I’ll accompany you back to your room,” Royston said, taking my arm beneath the elbow as though it were nothing. I found myself immensely grateful for the gesture, nonetheless. “He’ll be wanting to make a speedy retreat, get home, and wash all the magician germs off him, that sort of thing.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, conscious once more of the guards traveling behind us. “I don’t quite follow.”

“You would have to be a student of Volstovic politics traveling back to his grandfather’s time in order to follow,” he explained. “Suffice it to say, that was a very rare occurrence, his coming here, topped only by your esteemed presence in our Basquiat, of course. In any case, I hope your retainer has given Antoinette sufficient information to work with. It wouldn’t be very inspiring to have you toppling off your horse somewhere in the Ke-Han countryside, now would it? You need each other—luckily—so we must find a way to keep you in prime shape.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, and it must have shown on my face since he paused, looking abashed.

“That was insensitive,” he said. “You must excuse me; royal audiences make me into something of a tactless brute.”

“It astounds me that one has that privilege here in Thremedon,” I said, and meant it.

Royston shrugged. “To an extent,” he said. “Now. Let us see to your friend.”