Shadow Magic

CHAPTER TWO





ALCIBIADES

According to Caius Greylace, it wasn’t a show of solidarity or support for Volstov that the new Emperor had this big red spot on his robes, but that didn’t stop me from feeling better about how eager everyone was to turn colors. I was the only man wearing red at the dinner, save for the Emperor and Caius, who was wearing what looked like some kind of red bow in his hair.

“It’s a local hair ornament,” Caius said.

To my way of thinking, though, he looked too much like one of those stuffed bears you win for your childhood sweetheart at a fair. But, I had to admit, out of everyone who was trying to affect the Ke-Han style of dress and failing, Caius Greylace was the only one who didn’t look like a giant, ass-backwards fool. So that might have been one reason why the crazy little snake had been added to this mission in the first place.

Other than that, the new Emperor’s way of dealing with us was not to talk at all for the first half hour of the meal—as though he thought he could make us crack just by sitting up straight as a rod, with all eyes on him, taking his food from his poison taster and eating it like he was king of the world and not, in fact, the Emperor of a conquered country.

“Isn’t the young prince nice-looking, though?” Caius murmured at my left, putting a hand on my elbow and almost making me drop my bowl of half-cooked food. It wouldn’t have made much difference. I didn’t have a poison taster, and I wasn’t eating it.

I gave Greylace a look that put across all my disgust. He cooed happily, like a pigeon.

“It’s remarkable they’re brothers, that’s all I mean,” Caius murmured demurely. It was a whisper so quiet, I didn’t even know how I heard it.

I hadn’t even noticed another prince. I knew there was one, of course, since before we’d left the country some ’Versity experts had tried their best to teach us which end was up by drawing us all a helpful little chart of the hierarchy in the Ke-Han. The Emperor was at the top, of course, and his two sons below him; beneath them were seven lords that, for whatever reason, he favored more than the rest. I didn’t have to know the whys of it, just who I was supposed to bow lowest to.

Of course, the Emperor had seen fit to off himself—which put us in quite the situation, arriving so awkwardly on the very day of his death. The Ke-Han didn’t seem to hold that against us. At least, not yet.

The man Greylace was indicating sat just as straight as his brother, with white stone jewelry in his hair and around his throat. Maybe if the Ke-Han had spent a little less time dressing themselves in the morning and a little more time planning out their strategies, we wouldn’t have won the war. Never mind the fact, of course, that they’d been tricky enough to see that we nearly lost.

Anyway, next to the Emperor, the younger prince looked like a pale ghost. Since I wasn’t eating, and since Caius didn’t seem at all inclined toward leaving me in peace until I answered his question, I thought about what he’d said. The younger prince’s face seemed more expressive than the Emperor’s did, that was for certain. He looked more like a person, and less like the stern-eyed statues we’d seen standing in the outer gardens.

“He’s smaller,” I said, since I couldn’t say half of what I wanted: that he looked less full of himself, too. Such things went against the spirit of diplomacy, and who knew who was listening and for what purpose?

“Aren’t you eating that?” Caius wanted to know, gesturing toward my plate. “It has the most divine flavor!”

“It looks like—” I stopped myself partway, poking at the bowl with one of the little sticks they’d given us to eat with. They were dainty and delicate and slippery, and I’d managed to snap the other one in half earlier. I was half-expecting my meal to poke back, but it just sat there, soggy, like it didn’t care one way or another whether I ate it, which was pretty much in line with what I’d learned about the Ke-Han so far. “Well, I’m full anyway.”

“Then you won’t mind if I help myself,” Caius reasoned, merrily plucking away whatever pale, uncooked thing had landed in my bowl to begin with.

The unofficial leader of our merry band, a man by the name of Fiacre, had told us all beforehand that anything we didn’t recognize was most likely fish, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I guessed he was of a more diplomatic nature than I was though, since at the table just next to ours he was eating everything off his plate and chatting to Wildgrave Ozanne about something that had happened on the way over. Next to him, Josette and Marcy were having some kind of tête-à-tête over something that had eight wriggly legs.

There was some luck in the world after all. That creature hadn’t landed on my plate.

It seemed to me that any man among the Ke-Han wouldn’t be too broken up over the loss of a diplomat, however mysterious the cause of death.

Dinner—endless, uncomfortable, and quiet, since no man dared to say anything so long as the Emperor wasn’t talking—ended with a funny, moss-colored dessert that Caius Greylace insisted was melon-flavored gelatin. My stomach, meanwhile, was growling like one of our long-lost dragons. After the plates were cleared, the man who’d stood out to greet us held up his hand for attention. I guessed he’d been assigned the unhappy position of herding us diplomats until further notice. I wondered what he’d done to piss off the Emperor, getting stuck with a job like that.

“There will be a short recess after dinner for our most esteemed Emperor to prepare himself for the talks,” the shepherd said.

Greylace leaned away from me to murmur something to Marcelline about hiding silverware in their napkins to prepare for an ambush. It wasn’t my type of humor, but at least it made me feel a little better about being so suspicious of the Ke-Han Emperor’s good intentions. If there had been silverware, I might’ve even gone for that sort of thing myself, even though I didn’t have the Talent Marcy did. She could command metal like a breeder gave orders to his pups. It was a beautiful thing to behold in wartime, but that was neither here nor there.

I didn’t know what we needed with magicians at all, now that the war was over, but I wasn’t the sort of man chosen to make decisions. It was the soldier in me, bred in too early and nothing to be done about it now but to follow orders. Maybe I’d be able to scare up some food during this recess.

My growling stomach bode ill for any peacocks I might run across in the courtyards.

Caius Greylace slipped his arm through mine as we stood up, and I nearly flipped him over the table.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” I told him.

He laughed, the infuriating little snake. It was a high and tinkling laugh that reminded me that he’d been a member of th’Esar’s court back at home and I hadn’t. Of course, all that nobility amounted to a hill of beans when we’d both been sent packing to Xi’an, and at least common blood like mine didn’t stoop to marrying first cousins or closer.

“Do you think we’ll have time to change before the talks? Although I’d hate to exhaust my wardrobe on the first night, only to be caught wanting later on.” Caius touched the bow in his hair fondly, chattering on without much care as to whether or not I was listening.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Depends on how long it takes the Emperor to ready himself, whatever that shit means. Do you think he’ll be changing?”

“Oh, no,” Caius said, and he looked so certain that I believed him immediately. “That’s traditional dress for the evening; he won’t be changing out of it. Do you know, I heard that, according to custom, the Ke-Han should still be in mourning for their Emperor? Only we’ve arrived early and forced them to speed along their proceedings. They’re a marvelously adaptable people, don’t you think?”

I could think of a few words I had for the ritual-obsessed Ke-Han, and “adaptable” wasn’t one of them. I grunted, just to show I’d heard him.

“No, you’re right, I don’t think I’ll change,” Caius said. “At least, not until I’ve spoken to their tailors. I’m assuming most of the men are wearing green and not blue because they don’t want to offend anyone.” He finished this with a pointed look at my army jacket. F*ck him, I thought. Little rat didn’t know what it meant to be a soldier, and I wasn’t about to sweep all that I knew the Ke-Han were capable of under the carpet just yet.

I adjusted my collar, which wasn’t too tight, and took stock of my surroundings. There weren’t any windows in the place, since it was right in the middle of the palace and surrounded on all sides by the narrow halls—no good for making a quick exit, should the talks turn sour. It felt like being boxed in, like the tunnels in the Cobalts had been modeled after the palace itself.

As far as the Ke-Han were concerned, there wasn’t a friendly face to be found in the crowd. In fact, there wasn’t a face at all in the crowd that didn’t wear a mask of stony indifference, save for one, and that was what surprised me. It was the younger prince himself.

Things were pretty awkward, I’ll give them that, but that was to be expected. Except that Fiacre and another member of the Basquiat, Josette, seemed to be drawn to the younger prince like a horse to the feed, and when I looked over in their direction, they were actually talking to him. Josette was laughing. I shot a glance at Lieutenant Valery, who himself was looking pretty annoyed and pained by Casimiro, who’d somehow snagged himself a conversation with one of the bowing, scraping servants. He’d caught this one midscrape, and she had her head down like she wanted to plan an escape but couldn’t decide whether or not she’d be breaching etiquette. Damn, talking to Casimiro was bad enough when you understood the language. I couldn’t help but think it’d be worse if you were a foreigner.

Marius stood leaning up against the wall and speaking in low tones with Wildgrave Ozanne. They were both observing Fiacre’s discussion with the prince with interest, but also like they were too smart to go over there and get in the line of fire themselves.

The younger prince was flanked by a man who looked as put out by this whole situation as I was. I couldn’t tell how unhappy he was from his face but from the set of his shoulders. He was a soldier, and there was something resigned and tense in the way he held himself—like he thought he was going to be attacked, too.

“Now, that’s hardly fair,” Caius said, almost like he was getting ready to sulk. “I thought it was the height of rudeness to go up and talk to a member of the royal family.”

“Just the older prince,” I replied, distractedly.

It was obvious, at least to me, that while the Emperor was maintaining his mystique or whatever it was he thought he was going to accomplish with this recess, he’d left things up to his more personable younger brother, who was probably making polite conversation about the weather and the price of silk with two of our most esteemed diplomats.

From the looks of the Emperor—from what kind of man he obviously was—it was likely a good thing, I thought, that he wasn’t in the room to see how nicely his younger brother got on with the men and women from Volstov.

“Come,” Caius said, without any warning, giving my arm a fierce tug. I almost flipped him again. That time, it was harder to squash the instinct. It wouldn’t do to make a scene, and the last thing I wanted was to give th’Esar any more reason than he already had to exile me. Not that a diplomatic mission was exile, but it might as well have been, and after it was over I was looking forward to a good long rest back home. I didn’t need to give anyone any reason to be pissed off with me. After all, I’d only just got back from the front lines, to find myself in the thick of it once more. Somehow or another, I’d managed to piss somebody off. Killing a member of the Basquiat in front of all the Ke-Han warriors in the middle of treaty talks, no matter how much I wanted to or how easy it would have been, wouldn’t look nice on my résumé.

So I managed not to kill Caius Greylace. But barely.

“We simply have to talk to him, don’t you agree?” Caius asked. And, for an incredibly small creature, I had to admit, he was also incredibly strong. He made good use of his size, too, squeezing up next to Josette as though he’d been there all along.

The man flanking the prince narrowed his eyes, like maybe he was thinking about flipping Caius Greylace over, if he got any closer. He was a bodyguard then, or whatever the Ke-Han equivalent of that was. His hair was all thick black braids, pulled back into a complicated twist that left them to spill neat as you please down his back—though unlike the Emperor, he didn’t have any fancy jade dangles to make noise when he moved. Didn’t matter though, since from what I’d learned, it was the braids that were important. Something like our version of medals of honor. The man, whoever he was, had been a soldier. I thought it would have been pretty f*cking hilarious if we’d recognized one another, but the truth was that all the Ke-Han looked the same to me, and this poor bastard was probably thinking the exact same thing about us.

“I am very pleased to hear you enjoyed the dinner,” the smiling prince said, his words softened and masked by a heavy accent. Still, there was something about the way he looked so delighted to be speaking our language that you couldn’t help feeling a little of it too.

“Oh, the dessert was especially wonderful,” Josette told him. “And so light! I expect I’ll have to be refitted for all my dresses by the time we leave.”

The prince laughed politely, like he’d understood maybe half of what Josette had said, or at least enough to know that it was a pleasantry.

“Who intends to leave?” Caius asked. “You put us so to shame with your hospitality, I’ve half a mind to stay here indefinitely once the talks are over.”

The prince trained his eyes on us, uncertain for a moment while he tried to sort out the words. I thought about that glimpse we’d got of the Emperor, his brother, as compared to the lamb in front of us, lips moving silently like he was reading a book. He looked more like a foreign ’Versity student than a prince. His brother, on the other hand, had looked every inch like haughty royalty. Maybe it skipped the second-born.

“Thank you,” the prince said carefully. “It is my—it is our hope—that you feel comfortable here.”

Caius ducked in a deep and graceful bow. “I’m Caius Greylace.” He elbowed me in the stomach, just above the hip, which I guessed meant I was supposed to bow too.

Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get him for it later, though.

“This is my companion,” he went on, like we were there together or something.

“Alcibiades,” I said gruffly, because it was too late in the day to be getting into titles, and besides, I didn’t have one.

The prince nodded, taking in the latest display of prostration on my part with clever dark eyes. I didn’t trust him, not for a minute, but then he had fewer braids in his hair than the man who stood beside him. He was more a prince than a warrior, yet.

“This is Prince Mamoru,” Fiacre said, looking pleased to have something to say. “Haven’t managed to catch the name of his stalwart companion yet, but ah, he seems very… tall.”

Prince Mamoru’s eyes lit up with happiness, probably at recognizing his name in among all our messy foreign words.

“Mamoru,” he said, resting a hand against his chest.

He was delicate enough that he reminded me a little of Greylace, though he was certainly quieter, and heaps more reserved—so a Greylace I would have better liked to have around.

“Prince Mamoru,” Caius repeated, replicating the accent and the strange round R like he’d been practicing the language for years. “Might I say quite candidly that I am simply in awe of your jewelry? It’s incomparable to anything in Volstov!”

He reached out a solicitous hand, likely to admire one of those bracelets, or maybe just to make another sweeping bow—I wouldn’t ever be sure, since the man standing next to the prince seized Caius’s wrist with the speed of a practiced soldier.

I found myself reaching for my sword, before I remembered two things: that the war was over, and that it was forbidden for us to carry a weapon within the Emperor’s palace.

Josette’s smile slid off her face like a piece of creamed eel. Prince Mamoru’s eyes went wide. Caius Greylace looked as though he’d never had as much fun in his entire life, even when the man released him, and bowed lower than I would have thought he’d been capable of. He murmured something in a low voice, rough and alien. I could only presume it was an apology.

Fiacre caught my eye and nodded toward the door. The Emperor had arrived, standing with his seven separate bodyguards, or poison tasters, or whatever the hell they were.

“I suppose we’d best take our seats,” Josette said. Her smile was back in place, but it was a diplomat’s mask of a smile, and there was no authenticity to be found in it at all.

The man muttered his foreign apology again before standing and ushering the prince to his seat.

Caius turned to me with the air of a fisherman who’d caught lobsters in his trap.

“That was thrilling,” he whispered, as we moved away to take our seats. “Didn’t you think so? I wonder who that man is. He moved so quickly! Perhaps he was a general, or some other manner of warrior servant. He was so strong.”

“‘Thrilling’? He almost killed you,” I pointed out, just in case Caius hadn’t noticed that part.

“I know that,” Caius said. “Why else do you think it was so delightful?”

He was the only person it was my misfortune to know who would have said almost being killed by a Ke-Han bodyguard was “delightful” or “thrilling.” I was beginning to despair for all of Volstov, if this was what was happening to our nobility. And I was beginning to despair for myself, if this was any example of how the rest of the talks were going to go.

The younger prince had taken his seat once more. I could see him from where I was quite clearly, and his bodyguard, too, in case he wanted to try anything again. I may not have had my sword with me, but then again, he didn’t either. The way I saw it, we could still manage to figure out how to kill each other properly with just our hands.

Prince Mamoru murmured something to his brother, then bowed deeply to him. It made me feel all kinds of uncomfortable to know that we were transacting our business with a people who made their brothers bow to them on a point of formality.

Then the Emperor Iseul lifted his hand.

Even though his father had just died—even though he was new to it, and he had a hell of a lot to prove—he held himself like he’d been doing this all his life, or at least like he’d been waiting for it that long.

“Now,” he said, in a voice made all the more formal by its stilted Volstovic accent. “Lords and Ladies of Volstov, our esteemed guests: the Ke-Han welcome you.”

And the way he said that, I thought, folding my arms over my chest and getting ready for a long night, made it obvious that he was the Ke-Han. Even though he’d been a prince this morning, he was an emperor now. But those were just the times we lived in.





KOUJE

My lord Mamoru was kind. It was always almost impossible to apologize to him.

My forehead scraped the floor of his personal chambers nonetheless. When we’d been younger, and my lord more outspoken, he’d commanded me once to stop my bowing—which, after a long week that made no sense to either of us, I’d explained to him was like asking a fish to live out of water, or a songbird to keep silent. If I’d done my duty as his servant poorly, then it was my job to appease the natural order of things by begging his forgiveness.

“It was a misstep,” I said, my hands in fists at either side. “It was clear he did not intend to harm you. I should not have acted so rashly.”

“Kouje,” my lord said, “surely you’ve apologized enough.”

That was the trouble with my lord: He was too kind. The Emperor had known it, and had done what he could accordingly. My lord Iseul, too, had tried to stamp it out. Some men, however, were made to be like Iseul, and some men like Mamoru. You could no more have taught my lord imperiousness than you could have taught me to stop bowing.

“Indeed, nothing came of it,” Mamoru went on, unplaiting the jade from his hair and setting it upon a low, dark table. It was worn with the polish of true craftsmanship, the fine patina of age. He’d had it since he was a child, and dressed—as was sometimes the custom with second sons—in the swaddling clothes of a little girl, to see him alive and unharmed through his first five years.

Assassins targeted sons but left daughters in their cradles.

I bowed my head again. “My lord,” I protested, “if there is some fitting punishment for the offense…”

“Shall I make you scrub the floors all night?” my lord asked. There was a warmth in his voice I knew well; it meant there was a fond twinkle in his dark eyes. That he was, in some ways, laughing at me. If I would stop my obsequies and lift my head, then we might laugh together.

But things were different now, more serious. I could not laugh off what I had done as simply as I laughed off other, smaller transgressions. My lord Mamoru was lenient with me, but I had no cause to be lenient with myself.

“My lord knows that they have already been scrubbed twice over for the arrival of our guests,” I said, with as little humor as I could manage. It was still more of a jest than I should have allowed. Having known my lord since his birth, however, had instilled in me some traitorous familiarity that, try as I might, I found incredibly difficult to stamp out.

Mamoru laughed outright this time, the sound of it soft and welcoming. It filled the silence in this part of the palace, where all the servants were either asleep or busying themselves with their last duties before bed. The wing of the palace that had once housed the princes—and was now for Mamoru alone—was kept separate from the newly disruptive intrusion of the delegation from Volstov.

“I suppose there is no fitting punishment at all for what you’ve done then,” Mamoru mused. When I lifted my head, there was a faint smile upon his lips, his braids undone around his face.

When my lord had been much younger, that face had resembled a pale, round moon, or perhaps a mountain peach.

“My lord,” I said, bowing my head again, this time in thanks.

“You might call my servants in to ready me for bed,” Mamoru said. He did not often acknowledge my thanks for his actions, as though he felt that were the only way to behave and not something to be thanked for in the first place. “I’m certainly not going to be able to get out of all this by myself.”

I kept my smile hidden in the left corner of my mouth. My lord had never done very well with formal dress.

“I’ll alert them at once,” I said. “Do try not to create a situation, in my absence.”

It was an old joke between us, in the days when Mamoru had been much more my charge and mine alone, and the weight of the responsibility had made me reluctant to leave him for even a moment.

“I won’t become tangled in my sleeves,” he assured me, with the same faint hint of a smile.

The palace halls were empty and darkened, since the prince had already retired, and there was no one else in that wing who would have need of the servants to bear lanterns. I knew my way by memory, turning at first to the left, summoning Mamoru’s servants, then back up to the prince’s room, where my own quarters were stationed two doors away. It was close enough to hear any approaching dangers, but the distance still bothered me some nights.

On that night, with the taint of unease still shadowing my heart, I did not like the two doors’ distance between my lord and me. Yet, I grudgingly admitted to myself, he was a man grown now, and I could no longer sleep at the foot of his bed.

There was a soft, scuffling noise in the hall up ahead, the source of which I could not make out. I felt instinctively for my sword before privately cursing the laws of diplomacy that had disarmed us, along with the party from Volstov. There was no sword, only a short, ornamental fan stuck into the sash at my waist: a gesture of goodwill to our guests from the conquering nation.

I heard the noise again, closer then, like an unwelcome footfall. But all the servants here were trained explicitly well to serve the prince in a ready manner, swift and silent. Whoever it was approaching was no servant. I pressed myself back against the wall and waited for a shape to appear.

When it did, it became apparent that the approaching noise had been a man, and that it was a man who had drunk too much of our wine.

He said something unfamiliar, coarse and sharp; no doubt it was a curse. And then, upon seeing me, he reached out to grab my arm with unfathomable familiarity. I recoiled before remembering myself, my duty, and what I had done earlier to shame my lord.

The man’s face was foreign, which meant that he too was a member of the diplomatic envoy. I couldn’t afford to offend anyone else so soon. Perhaps he only needed to be led back to his part of the palace. I wasn’t among the servants assigned to herd the Volstovics hither and yon as though they were stray peacocks and not people at all.

“You’re lost,” I said, though it was plain that at least half the men and women from Volstov did not understand our tongue. Interesting, then, that we should have worked so hard and so diligently at learning theirs.

This one seemed to, however, or at least he straightened up and began looking about back and forth, as if confused as to which direction he’d come from.

“Your quarters are this way,” I added.

A firm hand could sometimes bridge what language could not.

Since the man demonstrated no desire to let go of my arm, I curbed my temper and began the task of leading him down the hall, past the servants’ quarters, and out of the prince’s wing entirely. He said something in Volstovic, and he stumbled once when I rounded a corner too swiftly, but the drink had made him amenable. No doubt he was not used to the strength of Ke-Han wine.

We passed the very same room in which the Emperor had conducted his talks, as well as the great hall that led up to the Emperor’s private quarters. There had been some furor over housing the delegation from Volstov so close to the Emperor, but Iseul himself had declared it be so, stating that he was not afraid and nor should any of us be, since the Volstovics were there on a mission of peace and diplomacy, and hospitality alone could rebuild what centuries of warfare had undone.

To house them elsewhere would have betrayed a lack of conviction on our part.

We had only just rounded the corner, my charge and I, when I caught the first glimpse of soft lanternlight. The servants had doubtless been instructed to stay about later in this part of the palace, perhaps to see to it no diplomat from Volstov lost his way as the man by my side had done.

I took the man’s hand from my arm. He seemed to calm once he’d noticed the lantern up ahead. He made a sluggish gesture, starting down the hall before pausing—an inelegant lurch in his motion—to turn around.

“Thank you,” he said, halting and crude in our language.

I bowed as low as was proper and watched to make sure the servant up ahead had taken notice of him.

We were in an important stage in our country’s rebuilding, perhaps the most important. I knew it as well as any other man in the palace. Still, as I turned to make my way back to the other end of the palace, I couldn’t help thinking how I would welcome the day when the delegation from Volstov left us forever. As things stood, their presence was too much like the threat of a headache lingering at the back of my mind.

When I reached the center point of the palace there was a gentle light spilling down the corridor that led to the Emperor’s suites. I felt the same curiousness that had overtaken my heart at the dinner—a nameless dread, all the more powerful because it was nameless as of yet.

I couldn’t see any lantern-bearing servants, which meant the light must have been coming from the Emperor’s rooms somewhere up ahead. I wondered if perhaps another man or woman from Volstov had become turned around. If that was the case, then it was my duty to ask the Emperor what service I might do him. It was possible, too, that my apprehension came solely from the drunkard’s invasion, from knowing that a foreign diplomat could easily stumble into the Emperor’s chambers. Whether he meant to do ill or had merely swallowed too much wine at dinner did not seem to matter much.

I had no wish to spend my night ferrying diplomats from one end of the palace to another, but my duty had nothing at all to do with what I wished.

There were no servants lining the hall to the Emperor’s private audience chamber, which adjoined his private quarters, but I could see the outline of the lantern-bearers through the rice-paper walls, just as I could see the kneeling outline of three men set before the Emperor, and the four kneeling behind them. It was an audience of the seven lords, I conjectured—though of course, I couldn’t be certain.

What did seem certain was that the Emperor would not be needing my services for such an audience.

“It grieves my heart deeply, even deeper still to make such a decree so soon after the death of our father.” That was Iseul. His voice was unmistakable. My heart began to contract in my chest.

“You are quite sure, my lord?” The question came from one of the seven, his voice less certain in the matter than Iseul’s, but I could recognize the timbre of loyalty.

“Quite,” Iseul said, the word like the sharp edge of a sword.

“You saw the way the young prince was speaking with the delegation from Volstov. Forgive me, my lord, but it’s the truth. And if the Emperor himself doesn’t think he can be trusted, then it isn’t for us to question.”

“Too true,” murmured another lord.

“It’s settled,” Iseul spoke, and his voice held no room for doubt. “As of this evening, Prince Mamoru is deemed a traitor to the realm, to be routed at any cost.”

I knew then why I had felt the heaviness in the air as an approaching thunderstorm, for now I was surely a man trapped in the very heat of it, lightning tearing the familiar shape of the sky I knew so well into jagged strips.

“Be discreet,” Iseul went on, “and be cautious. We wish for this matter to be dealt with swiftly, but we are loath to think of how our negotiations might be disrupted if the diplomats from Volstov were to learn of such a traitor in our midst.”

“Or how they might turn such knowledge to their advantage,” another lord cautioned.

“That was what most troubled my mind about the matter,” Iseul said. I could hear the shifting of silks; he had not yet disrobed for the night and was still dressed in his father’s finest. He was an emperor now, and my lord Mamoru only a prince. “It would seem that Mamoru is too well suited to be used by these men, rather than capable of using them. You know as well as I how weak he is. I would cut out my own tongue before I betrayed my own brother, but I would cut out the contents of my belly before I betrayed the Ke-Han.”

“It is for the Ke-Han,” the first lord said.

A murmur of assent passed among them. An answering echo of dread sounded in my chest.

It was more than I should have heard—more than I should have stayed to hear. My allegiance was to my Emperor; he owned my loyalty, my services, my soul and heart. Though I served my lord Mamoru, it was merely to serve my Emperor before him, and to serve my Emperor was to serve the Ke-H an.

It is for the Ke-Han, I thought, grateful as I always was that my father had trained me so well. No sound could be heard when I moved through the halls; my feet were silent even on the most ancient of floorboards.

I thought of my many years of service, of Mamoru as a baby, of the first fever he suffered, which had by no means been the last. It was true that he was not as strong as his brother—the gods had been unusually kind when they made Iseul the heir and Mamoru the second son—but he was not a traitor. If he had been, I would already have known it.

In his room, two doors from mine, my lord Mamoru was no doubt already asleep for the night. He had been proud of himself today; I’d watched him as he sat, learning the Volstovic vowels that so confounded me, in the long days and weeks that followed our defeat. I’d guided him in battle, taught him archery and the sword, and, when he was much smaller, held his hand through fevers or changed the final words of the saddest stories to keep him from weeping.

As my father had wished it, I’d endeavored to be a servant not only worthy of his name but worthy of the Emperor.

To know that my lord was in danger was to feel the point of the sword against my own throat. If the threat had come from any other source, I would have taken up all my weapons, in spite of the terms of the diplomats’ treaty, and hunted the men behind it down like criminals and dogs. As with all prior attempts, my lord Mamoru would never have known the precariousness of his own life in these dark hours.

But Iseul’s words were spoken for the good of the empire, and I was merely a servant. What was my will worth, against that of an emperor?





CAIUS

It was my first evening with the Ke-Han, and already the second prince’s bodyguard had tried to kill me. Things would have been much more intriguing if it had been the second prince himself, but when one was in the midst of exotic, curiously refined savages, one took what one could get.

Alcibiades, however, was still having a fit of pique over it.

As he made it very plain that he actively disliked me—he hadn’t come around just yet, and he was stubborn as a mule and smelled like one, too—I had no idea why he was making such a fuss over it.

“In fact,” I was in the middle of explaining, “everything’s gone rather better than I thought it would have by now.”

As a response, Alcibiades managed an indelicate grunt. I’d learned, however, the sound was his particular and special form of communication. One had to adapt if one wanted to find any sort of conversation at all. I had already garnered a reputation among some of the other diplomats, so Alcibiades—grunting, mulish aroma and all—would have to suffice for the moment.

I did what I always did: I continued talking. “Why, didn’t you expect the sparks to fly?” I asked, knowing full well I would get no more than a grunt in return. From what I gathered, not only was Alcibiades in a poor mood, he was also hungry. He’d barely touched his food at dinner. No doubt he’d expected bread and cheese and bleeding meat, and was disappointed to discover the subtle flavors of Ke-Han cuisine. Either that, or all the half-raw fish. “If it wasn’t someone else who gave the first offense, I thought for certain it would be you.”

That seemed to surprise him. “Me?” Alcibiades demanded. Although it sounded distinctly gruntlike, it was almost certainly a word; I counted that as a triumph, and made a mental note of the time and place. Late evening, my quarters in the palace. When we’d returned after the lovely meal, I’d immediately opened the adjoining door between our rooms so that we might chat better.

“You were wearing red,” I pointed out.

“Good color,” he replied.

I sighed, though I wasn’t really exasperated. He was more than just a character, the recently promoted General Alcibiades; he had an interesting sense of what was allowed (offending all the Ke-Han by wearing Volstov’s colors in the midst of a diplomatic mission) and what wasn’t (admiring the second prince’s very fine jade necklace).

“One almost thinks you want to be recalled,” I said slyly.

Alcibiades looked at me sharply, and I wondered if I hadn’t hit the mark, after all. Something about his expression reminded me of how the second prince’s bodyguard had seized my arm. You wouldn’t think it to look at men so solidly built—that they could do anything so quickly—but there were Alcibiades and the bodyguard, both proving me wrong.

There was nothing so wonderful as being proven wrong. It gave one all manner of chances to adapt and solve the riddle, that one might be right the next time. I relished the thought.

Alcibiades’ stomach made a loud and unruly sound.

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “you might abandon your dreams of being recalled in favor of actually eating some dinner occasionally?”

“It wasn’t even cooked!” Alcibiades proclaimed. A full sentence this time. Perhaps the hunger was forcing him to let his guard down. The theory, if it proved true, was rather a thrilling prospect. Why, by morning he would be speaking in paragraphs!

“At least you can rest assured that at breakfast there is very little likelihood of your bowl containing more fish. They don’t seem like the type to repeat a performance—or a meal, for that matter.”

Alcibiades rubbed his stomach, almost like the great shaggy dog I’d first imagined him to be. “I’d even settle for rice, at this hour,” he said.

I looked out the window. I hadn’t noticed it before, since it operated in much the same way as the sliding doors, yet wasn’t made of rice paper but dark, polished wood. The moon hung like a slice of some pale exotic fruit in the sky. It was the perfect sort of night for a midnight raid on the kitchens. Granted, this wasn’t my country estate, but it was always possible to sniff the kitchens out, and they were the one place in any country that never closed down completely for the night. What if the Emperor got peckish? It would never do to be caught off guard.

I didn’t have much experience in raiding Ke-Han kitchens, of course, but I’d done that sort of thing often enough during my term in exile. Food was essentially the same everywhere you went, once you got right down to the bare bones of it. It didn’t matter one whit whether the Ke-Han pantries were stocked with rice or with bread. Except, of course, to men like Alcibiades.

I stood up, quite glad that I hadn’t changed for bed after all, even if my night set was brand-new, blue silk, to match all the rest.

It was the longest I’d gone without experiencing the need for some variety in my clothing, but I suspected that had something to do with the finery of the garments I wore and the utter foreignness of their shape and style.

Why, it might even take weeks to tire of them. If so, I had grossly overpacked.

Alcibiades looked at me with a carefully concealed measure of hope, as if he thought that I was finally going to sleep, and he could at last retire, or at least close the adjoining door between us. He’d been eyeing it for some time. Fortunately for him, I was in a generous mood, and of no mind to hold such a thing against him.

“Let’s go and find some rice, then!” I said, with the air of someone embarking on a wonderful adventure. Alcibiades seemed like the type of man who needed that sort of nudge in the right direction.

“What?”

It was almost as if the man hadn’t been following.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never gone to the kitchens past nightfall,” I said, though I was privately imagining that Alcibiades probably hadn’t.

He grunted, which I took to mean that I’d imagined correctly.

“I’m used to eating my fill at dinner, that’s all,” he went on, after the fact.

His hunger was most promising if it meant that I wouldn’t have to spend the bulk of my time translating Alcibiades’ grunts into proper words. I wasn’t any good as an interpreter. I slipped my hands underneath his arms and tugged him to his feet. I’d have never managed it if he hadn’t been so surprised, but then I’d rather been expecting him to be heavier than he was.

It was far too early for him to be wasting away to nothing in any case.

“The sooner we leave, the sooner you eat,” I said.

The palace halls were darkened when we slid the door to my room open. At one junction, far off in the distance, I could see a lantern-bearer, his lamplight reflecting in the mirrors set at each corner of the corridor and lighting their way like a staircase of stars around the twists and bends of the narrow corridor.

“Do you think they ever get a terrible scare, seeing their own reflections in the middle of the night?” I asked.

Alcibiades looked at me, then looked at the lantern-bearer. He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said.

I nudged him with my elbow, fishing again for an entire sentence. “Wouldn’t it frighten you?”

“I’m not afraid of myself,” he said. “Or the dark. So I guess not, no.”

I nodded, taking his arm in a swift gesture. “I didn’t think so.”

It wouldn’t have scared me, either.

As we passed the palace servants, the lanterns lit the change on their faces from a nearly uniform expression of utter boredom to one of concern and slight confusion. Perhaps if they’d known the words to ask us what we were doing, they would have done so. As it was, they merely watched us, hiding their bafflement as best they could after their initial shock. We must have seemed like ghosts in the night to them, unused as they were to our presence.

That cemented it. While I was there, I would almost certainly have to learn the Ke-Han language more idiomatically. It was nearly unbearable to think of all the gossip I might miss out on over something so silly as a language barrier.

I drew close to Alcibiades once we’d passed the lantern-bearers, and the hallways grew dark once more.

“Don’t you think this will put us under suspicion?” I asked him. “Two men from Volstov, out and about in the night, sneaking through the halls of the palace? If anything untoward should happen, they’ll surely blame us!”

“Don’t sound so delighted about it,” Alcibiades muttered, trying to shake me off. Then, as if it were an afterthought, one too good to pass up simply through stubborn reticence, “I’m not too used to exile, that’s all.”

“And I am?” I asked, still too cheerful at the thrill to be annoyed by the insult. I was used to people insulting me. They did it all the time. The best thing of all to do was act as though you hadn’t heard it, or even worse, as though it didn’t bother you. The one thing gossips and rumormongers enjoy the least is feeling ignored. “Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”

That time, when Alcibiades grunted, I took that as an inquiry as to how it had been, living in exile since I was fourteen. I had sixteen different tales depending on who it was doing the asking, but for Alcibiades, I thought I would be indulgent and go with the honest truth. Some men appreciated the strangest things.

“How kind of you to ask,” I said, peering down one tight, dark hallway. I could smell rice. At least, I hoped that was what I could smell. If it wasn’t, then I was very confused. “It wasn’t all that terrible, really. Mostly, it was just boring. You know how that is.”

Alcibiades looked at me with a baffled expression, as though he felt we were occupying and acting out two very different conversations. “What are you talking about?” he asked, confusion getting the better of him.

I liked it when he frowned. “Exile, of course. Terribly boring. One must depend solely on the kindness of others, to write letters and answer them in return. I was restricted to an estate in the old Ramanthine countryside. You can imagine what that was like. Or perhaps you can’t, in which case you ought to be terribly thankful. In any case, you really must pay better attention, my dear, or else we’ll never get anywhere.”

“This is ridiculous,” Alcibiades said. “I’m going back to bed.”

I held up my hand in protest. “But we’re completely lost. And besides, I was just about to tell you about the dog.”

“The—what?” I’d got the better of him at last, though who knew how long I’d manage to continue coaxing responses out of him? It was best if I pressed my advantage right then.

“Why, the one you remind me of, that is,” I said. I ducked quickly around one corner, sensing the sound of footfalls somewhere in the distance. From behind a closed door, I heard someone yawn; I could see, through the squares of rice paper, a candle as it was snuffed, followed by murky darkness. It was beautiful there, if a little damp, and the wood floors were very smooth beneath my slippered feet. It was possible, in a place like that, to traverse the entire hallway without making any sound. What a delightful prospect that was. All manner of people could sneak up on one that way, or listen to what one was saying. I felt sorry for them if they were listening to us. I was being amusing, while all Alcibiades could manage or muster were a few pained words here and there, and noises that sounded unpleasantly as though he had indigestion. “He died a while ago,” I went on, shaking my head. “The dog, I mean. But he was yellow, and before he got very old and started relieving himself on the furniture and I absolutely couldn’t stand him anymore, I liked him very much. The dog and all the letters: That was how I entertained myself.”

Alcibiades just stared at me. I could make out his broad, simple features in the darkness. I smiled.

“During exile,” I repeated, for his sake. “I did have parties, of course, but with the most impossibly boring people, without any imagination. Once I ordered tigers from the jungle and had them in cages and one woman fainted! Of course, that was after I let the tigers out, but they didn’t really eat anyone. For tigers, they were disappointingly tame.”

“You wanted the tigers to eat people,” Alcibiades said. It didn’t really sound like a question, so I could only assume he’d made his mind up about the matter.

“Not at all,” I said. “Well—not really. It would have made a mess, and it’s hard to keep good help in the countryside. Ah! Here we are, I think.”

Alcibiades nearly crashed into me as I stopped short in front of another one of those beautifully crafted sliding doors—these weren’t papered, but solid wood, and looked more native to the palace—more solidly, fiercely Ke-Han—than the other, flimsy creations had.

“I thought we were lost,” Alcibiades said.

“Oh, we are,” I agreed. “But now we’re lost by the kitchens.”

“Oh,” said Alcibiades. Then, as if I were suffering from the same lack of attention toward this conversation he had been suffering from, he added: “I’m starving.”

“Yes, my dear, I’m quite aware,” I told him. I had no intentions of sleeping in such close proximity to a man whose stomach was infinitely more talkative than he was. It was far worse than the tigers! “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, do I? This wasn’t my idea,” Alcibiades retorted, though he didn’t sound half as cranky as he had a moment ago. Perhaps the prospect of food was placating him. “Smells like food, anyway.”

“See? No matter what else people say about me, I’m very good with directions.”

“After we were lost,” Alcibiades reminded me mulishly.

“Well, we made it here anyway,” I said, in a tone that I hoped might dissuade Alcibiades from pursuing any further argument in the matter. “Shall we search the premises?”

He nodded, and I slid the door open. It was heavier than it looked.

Alcibiades stepped past me once the door was open, then stopped and turned about.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly. He seemed about to start rooting through the various wooden cupboards both above and below the countertops, so I thought it prudent to step in after him and look for a lamp—instead of falling into a dead faint at his attempt at manners, however stilted and reluctant, which was my other option.

“You, General Alcibiades, are very welcome,” I informed him, standing on the tips of my toes to skim the top of the cupboards for a lamplight.

The kitchen was rather a small affair considering it served the entirety of the palace, but it was immaculate, and—judging by Alcibiades’ sounds of pleasure as he stuck his head into the nearest cupboard—it was well stocked.

“Shouldn’t call me that,” he said, crouching down to slide open a small grain closet. “There isn’t anything to be a general of, these days, and promotions after the fact don’t count for nothing.”

“Don’t count for anything,” I said helpfully. “Aha! Here, wouldn’t you rather search with some light?”

“There’s a lamp over there,” Alcibiades said, though his voice was mysteriously muffled.

I heard a suspicious rustling sound from the cupboard.

“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on eating uncooked rice,” I began. Then my ears detected a sound that was decidedly not Alcibiades filling his stomach with all manner of indigestible foodstuffs. It sounded like a whisper, in the soft, foreign tongue that I’d come to recognize, if not understand. A light passed just in front of the door, pale and faltering. Not one of the lantern-bearers, then.

I was glad I hadn’t yet lit the lamp. Curiosity propelled me toward the half-open door when abruptly I felt a hand on my arm, wrenching me back.

I hadn’t heard him move, but Alcibiades was standing with his back against the wall, and he had his hand over my mouth. As if I would be so consummately foolish as to speak at a moment like that! I wanted to bite him. Perhaps I would settle for making him dream about uncaged tigers the whole night long—though that, I recognized, was not the sort of thing a man did to a new friend. I had grown uncivilized from my time in exile after all, knowing now the proper time to use my visions for revenge and when not to.

From what I could see through the crack in the doorway, there were two men standing in the hallway. They wore plain robes the color of the sky at midnight, but their sashes were all embroidered in the same style as the Emperor’s robes. They were no servants.

The silver of weapons glinted at their sides in the faint light. Was that what Alcibiades had seen? Perhaps, ever the soldier, he might even have been able to smell it. I could think of no other reason for his curious bout of discretion since he was hardly likely to fear that our little pantry raid would cause an international incident. Then again, we were in no way armed. If not discreet, then at least Alcibiades was prudent—or maybe simply practical.

The men outside the door bent their heads together in murmured conversation. They seemed to be conferring over something very serious, whatever it was, since they hadn’t even employed the use of servants for light and were instead carrying their own. I could feel Alcibiades breathing against the top of my head, even and slow, as though he was willing his stomach to keep from growling. I only hoped he wasn’t going to get any rice in my hair.

In unison, the men lifted their heads. One of them, with neatly manicured facial hair, lifted his hand and made a hurried gesture. There was the soft sound of clanking metal as the two men broke into a slow run. To my surprise, they were followed by at least five more, all of them similarly outfitted. Each was carrying a sword.

I didn’t hold my breath as the strange procession went past, but I could feel the beat of my heart positively hammering in my chest with curiosity. Had the servants who’d seen us alerted the Emperor to some foul play?

The only damper on the occasion was Alcibiades, who was still holding on to me like a farmer with an errant stoat. I bit his hand. It tasted like rice.

Alcibiades cursed, using a word I hadn’t heard before. That was unexpected. Then he dropped me, which I had expected, and gave me an awful look.

“You needn’t look so wounded,” I told him. “Anyway, I’m certain they’re just the guards. Perhaps we’ll be at the center of another incident! And all before morning, too.”

Alcibiades didn’t seem nearly as thrilled at the prospect, but then, I was rather resigned to the fact that nothing at all seemed to thrill Alcibiades.

“I thought that no one was supposed to carry a weapon,” he said. “Not us, and definitely not the Ke-Han.”

“Perhaps they’re guards,” I said. “Perhaps they were told there were mice in the pantry.”

Alcibiades wasn’t amused by my little joke. He had yet to grow accustomed to my particular brand of humor. I shrugged it off as he peered around the half-open door, searching the now-dark halls for any further signs of armed men.

It was curious, I had to admit; or, at least, I was unused to living in a place where the halls needed patrolling in the middle of the night. I could feel all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end—a truly pleasant sensation.

“Now, now,” I murmured, “it isn’t that surprising, really. No doubt they’re here to protect us, as well as the royal family.”

“I’d rather they let us protect ourselves,” Alcibiades snapped back at me from over his shoulder.

“Do you think they would be so foolish as to disarm every man in the palace completely?” I asked, tapping the corner of my mouth with my forefinger. My thoughts were always crowded, and the smallest physical reminder always helped me to organize them. “That would leave them open not to foreign attempts, but native ones. I hear that the royal family has a history of near-death experiences with assassinations. Why, there is the oddest custom—the first son, of course, is the heir, and must be raised in his father’s image with the strictest of manly pastimes, whatever those are. But should there be a second son, or more, they dress them up as little, wide-eyed daughters until they’re of an age where people will start to notice something’s not right, almost as a policy of insurance. Apparently, among the Ke-Han, there is a general rule floating about: that it’s completely unnecessary to assassinate daughters.”

“How f*cking pleasant,” Alcibiades said, biting the words out.

“Actually, it’s quite clever. All things considered.”

After a long pause, during which I could practically hear the wheels in my general friend’s head turning, Alcibiades managed to speak again. “So you’re telling me,” he said, a little slowly, and a little disgusted, too, “that the prince we met tonight spent the first five years of his life thinking he was a girl?”

“Well, I don’t know the exact details,” I admitted, “but I’m sure it was something like that.”

“This place,” Alcibiades said, shaking his head and brushing rice from the corner of his mouth, “is three-ways f*cked.”

Even though I could have told him that it was the same in every country and every culture—that shock was only a matter of what type of f*cked you were and weren’t used to—I was inclined to agree with him.