Shadow Magic

CHAPTER THREE





MAMORU

Of the years of the dragon riders, those years of chaos before my father’s empire fell, I remember one thing more clearly than the rest: the color of a raid night. The fires came close enough to scorch the air, and the air was made heavier still with sweat and fear. No man knew if—when—the dragons would come to the capital itself. How could we tell what those mysterious creatures were made of? How could we know what they would be capable of, given enough time?

But what I remembered most of all was the city after the final battle, when that which we were all dreading came to our very doorstep, and the dragons tore down each age-old wall with one flick of their massive, metal tails.

In the quiet aftermath of destruction, after the damage had been contained and the last of the fires extinguished, the sulfurous air choked our throats; no amount of burning incense could quite blot out the smell. It woke you in the night, or haunted you like a ghost, clinging to your clothes and your hair and even your skin. It impregnated all the silk. Most of it, my father had burned.

In the streets, animals from the ruined menagerie wandered, dazed as we were, uncaged but uncertain where to go. They reminded me of the returning soldiers—men who’d belonged in the capital once but no longer knew how to employ their own freedom.

It was a strange thing indeed to see lions hiding behind the wreckage of an old wall, or watch peacocks spill forth from the broken doorway of an abandoned house.

By some extraordinary chance, the palace itself had been relatively spared. Perhaps it was because it stood in the shadow of the great magicians’ dome to the west, now a broken, hollow shell. One of the topics under negotiation was whether or not our magicians would even be able to continue under the circumstances, with so few of their prior number and the seat of their power all but destroyed. Our society was not so based in magic as that of the Volstovics, and perhaps in times of peace the magicians would not be so needed. What had hurt us most was the loss of the dome, what it symbolized to our people and our gods. Their dome had existed ever since I could remember, since before my father’s era, and before my grandfather’s. It represented the pinnacle of perfection in architecture—an auspicious shape from all vantage points, and one that complemented the power of the elements as it harnessed them for our magicians’ use so that they might approximate the gods in power. There was great debate even among our lords whether such an edifice could ever be re-created.

Perhaps the delegation from Volstov would not allow us to. And, I wondered privately, with what magicians would we fill it? Only a bare handful remained.

The shrill cry of a peacock pierced the night air, indignant as any lord whose sleep had been interrupted.

When I’d been a child too young to venture from the palace, my father the Emperor had deemed the menagerie unsafe. There was too much open space where assassins might make their move and prove lucky. I, however, had longed more than anything to see a real lion, or a real peacock, and put up an impossible fuss, unbearable for all the servants whose misfortune it was to be assigned to me. I was so adamant that at last Kouje had resorted to playing a lion, in the days when I’d been too young to understand what a dishonor such behavior was for a warrior. I had never had what one might consider a proper nursemaid. Instead, after outgrowing my wet nurse’s care, I’d been entrusted to Kouje, both my body and my mind, so that I might learn from him a warrior’s capability and effortless strength.

There were days when I doubted that the plan had worked as well as my father had hoped. But Kouje was strong and patient, and when I was a child, he did not leave me much room to doubt.

After I’d been deemed fit to serve in my father’s best interests, I’d led the men under me with as much wisdom and strength as I knew. Being a prince meant that everything I did reflected back on the Emperor, and thus on our people—but it was more than that. Numbered among the men who served under me was Kouje, there to aid, or to make certain that I’d taken all his lessons to heart. My brother Iseul always spoke of pleasing our father, and of what was good for the empire, but I had always had a dual purpose—proving myself a credit to Kouje’s teachings as well as to my father’s bloodline.

Perhaps, in the end, that was why I did not share my brother’s strength of character. A man divided could never be as strong as a man with a single purpose.

At times, it seemed a favor from the gods themselves that Iseul had been the firstborn, since any man among us could see that he would make a much better emperor than I. I wondered how he would conduct the talks the next day, and whether he would inspire fear in the men and women from Volstov in the pale morning as he’d so clearly done that night.

“Do not lower yourself to speaking their language so easily,” he’d chided me after the talks. “Or do you not see what it means, that they have not yet taken the time to learn ours?”

“It is an insult.” I bowed my head, knowing that it was the only thing that could have caused Iseul to grow so quietly angry.

“You do what you think is best,” Iseul said, with an imperial wave of his hand. He’d learned that from our father, but had only just begun to employ the gesture. It spoke more than his words. “But if you continue to bow so low, you will be a discredit to this house; you will poison our name.”

Iseul had never spoken to me so coldly before, but I could only assume it was the strain of his responsibilities weighing on him. Not only did he have to adjust to his new role as Emperor, but he had to supervise me, as well, to make sure I committed no dishonor to our house.

It was a true gift and a boon that I had not yet done so. At least even Iseul admitted that I had some head for strategy. But if I did, it was all through Kouje’s teachings and through picture scrolls of the histories. I could use a bow, but none so well as most of my brother’s men. I had no cleverness with a sword, nor strength, either.

“You are like a prince of old, when we were more than warriors,” Kouje once told me. I might well have been no more than thirteen at the time.

“When we were less, you mean,” I countered.

“And what skill have I with the brush?” Kouje asked. “Were I given twice my own age to master calligraphy, do you think I could manage it?”

Kouje had no hand for the arts, that was true. His broad palms were callused, and his fingers blunt and strong. Yet the Emperor, I knew, would not accept my watercolors—unfolding images of cranes and clouds, of imagined mountains.

“I’m going to run away to the mountains,” I told Kouje firmly, in the clutch of a terrible sulk. How he bore with me during those awful years, I’ll never know.

“Will you be needing my services there as well?” he asked, not daring to smile at me. I was not entirely insufferable, but I had my moments of jealousy, same as all children. “There are demons in the mountains, you know, with long, terrible claws. They like to kidnap beautiful young princes—never to be seen again.”

When I had nightmares that night and for weeks after, he regretted it, but I refused to let him apologize. He’d rallied my spirits, at least, as he always did.

In the many years since then, I’d done my part. All I wanted was to keep my men safe, or feel Kouje clasp my shoulder after a well-chosen tactic proved invaluable. My brother was the warlord, and I was in awe to see him Emperor, so fiercely proud, recognizable, and yet suddenly a complete stranger to me. He’d changed in an instant, as though the brother I’d known had been but a shadow cast from the future.

It was a hard night for sleeping. My thoughts were too tangled. I could feel the cool breeze stir against my face, as on so many nights before.

It was then that I mourned for my father.

Kouje was not there. He would not see me in my moment of weakness, and I was glad for that. We were long past the time when I could allow him to comfort me, and my unhappiness would only trouble him, without allowing him any means to undo it.

My father had not, in his way, treated me as most fathers treated their sons, second or no. But that was to be expected. My father was not a man: He was an emperor. I hadn’t been the son he wanted, but I was the son he’d been given, and while he and Iseul were better suited for each other—silent even at private dinners in the same grave manner, with wills as swift and fierce as the gods—he had been the father I was given.

Had I ever thought that we would lose? What haunted me was the question that implied: Had he?

It was thus that I fell asleep, or must have, with my cheeks streaked by tears as though I was once again a child. It had been a very long time indeed since I’d last cried myself to sleep—and then Kouje had been there, one hand on my back, the other making shadow creatures dance across the far wall.

Sometime later, I heard the sound of the door in my room slide open. It was Kouje, or must have been, protective as he was, come one last time tonight to check on me before at last allowing himself to sleep. No footfalls followed, but Kouje was quieter than a cat when he chose to be. Those times were either of utmost importance, or to see to it that he didn’t wake me. If he ever differentiated between the two, I didn’t know.

I wished, distantly, as though through a dream, that he would simply go to sleep, but the sound of the door sliding shut with his exit never came.

My father and my brother after him had instincts. They could sense, as a great cat in the mountains could sense its prey, a coming storm, enemy troops, an assassin in the house. For the first five years of my life, I’d been raised far differently than they; it was because of this that I could not sense my own danger like a warrior’s scars aching during the rainy season.

I was just drifting back to sleep when a hand, rough with use of a sword, closed over my mouth.

I could no more see in the darkness than I could scream around the suffocating palm. Something smelled familiar, but I couldn’t distinguish it. Then, I was being dragged to my feet, out of my bed, and into the darkened hall.





KOUJE

During the time of the dragons, I’d spent many a night indulging in the barest artifice of sleep. I would lie prone, the covers over my body and one hand on my sword, but I would not sleep. It was what my body required for rest, but I could not term it restful.

The day they came over the wall, flying straight for the center of the city with fire all around them, was something I dreamed of often. The war had ended, but I still had not found my rest.

When the palace was first designed, it was built with separate, smaller corridors for the use of servants, so that the Emperor might never have to trouble himself with encountering one in the hall. They had long since been closed over, boarded up when it was decided they were too much an invitation for assassins, but there was one less closely guarded than the rest. It was the passage the hostlers used most often when conveying news of their lords’ horses to the main palace, and was tolerated only because the door was impossible to find unless you knew it was there.

It was my duty to know the palace better than I knew the veins lining the back of my own hand.

That was the way I took my lord Mamoru, my heart pounding fiercely as though it sensed the wrongness in my current actions. It beat as a fish’s heart must, upon finding itself on dry land for the first time. Perhaps what I was doing would prove just as fatal, but I could no more will myself to choose another course than I could will myself to sleep at night.

I kept my hand over Mamoru’s mouth, half-carrying him through the passageway and half-dragging him. He’d stopped kicking and beating at my shoulders with his fists, but whether it was because he’d caught sight of my face and calmed somewhat, or because he’d gone rigid with terror, I didn’t know.

It had been so long since I’d last comforted my lord that I’d forgotten the art of it. And, admittedly, kidnapping him in that fashion was something beyond a sad tale, or a bruised shoulder. Besides, we hadn’t the time for it.

The stables were dark, filled wall to wall with foreign horses, all of which were exhausted from the ride over the Cobalts. It was there that I released my lord, catching his arm as he stumbled and gasped shallowly for breath.

“Kouje!” he cried, still wide-eyed with fear. “You nearly scared the life out of me. What are you doing?”

I wished that I could tell him without harming him. I wished, too, that I knew fully what I was doing.

Instead, I bowed as low as I could—as low as I knew how to. The straw littering the ground scratched at my nose and the smell of horse overwhelmed me, but I pressed my hands flat to keep them still.

“Forgive me, my lord. I would not do such a thing—I would never have dreamed of it—only…” I trailed off, for I could not find the words to tell him. After all, I knew, better than anyone, perhaps, how deeply Mamoru admired his brother. One would even have to say that Mamoru loved Iseul. If that day had never come, I might never have had the need to express my own, more private concerns about the reciprocity of those feelings. I had always known that Iseul was cold, ruthless in a way that his father had not been, and hard in a way that was difficult to understand. Perhaps in giving him the benefit of the doubt—any man my lord loved as much as Mamoru did Iseul could not be without merit—I had missed the signifiers up until that point. I had failed in my duty to protect him from the closest threat of all: that of his own brother.

I could not find the words. My lord had only just lost his father. To eliminate what family he had left in one fell swoop, with a handful of overheard words, was truly too cruel.

It was not a servant’s job to abide by what he found the most desirable, however. It was a servant’s duty to live only for his lord’s existence. To do what he could to ensure that existence. To keep his lord strong.

I could hear Mamoru’s breathing begin to even out and the soft sound of his slippers against the straw as he paced, confused and upset at having been so disrupted.

“Kouje,” he said, imploring me with everything in his tone to offer some explanation for my actions. He knew that I was not prone to flights of fancy. In fact, on more than one occasion, he’d rebuked me for being overly serious. Perhaps he thought now that I’d gone mad. It had happened to other, stronger men during the course of the war. “Kouje, please.”

I had to give him some explanation. I’d known that all along, but I hadn’t prepared myself properly; I hadn’t had the time.

“My lord,” I said, lifting my head, “your life is in danger. We must leave the palace at once.”

Mamoru shook his head, his face clouded with bewilderment. It took him a moment to speak—how I longed for the days when he was too young and my duty was to shield him from knowledge of the attempts, not inform him of them. “We must tell my brother,” he said at last. “The Emperor must be informed of all such threats. He’ll protect me. I know Iseul hasn’t been emperor very long, Kouje, and he’s been distracted with the negotiations, but… I still trust him to execute his duties. We must go to him, and you will tell him what you know.”

The words clogged my throat, threatening to choke me. I could not speak, not yet.

“Kouje,” Mamoru tried again, more gently. “If it troubles you, then I can speak with Iseul. You may tell me, and I will have an audience with him.”

I shook my head. Something in my eyes must have frightened him then, for he took a step away from me.

“It isn’t a member of the delegation,” he said, his own eyes widening. “It couldn’t be that you think—Oh, Kouje, the talks—the treaty—it will all be ruined!”

I could not let him labor under misimpressions any longer. If I did, the subsequent truth would be crueler still. At last I stood, and took my lord by his thin shoulders. I could say it all at once; they were only words. “My lord,” I said, willing my voice to be like iron, without flesh or blood behind them, “the Emperor is the one who made the decree.”

For a moment, Mamoru looked at me as though I had gone mad. Then his features changed from disbelief to confusion.

“You’ve misunderstood something,” he said, his voice not quite so steely, but with its own, stubborn conviction. “Or I have. What is it that you think you know?”

I did not blame him if he didn’t believe me. I had never lied to him—but then, I was only a servant. It was not unexpected that he would believe his brother’s character before my word, no matter the situation. But his was not a situation that allowed choice. I’d already made the decision for him. It went against my Emperor and my country, and it meant my life.

“I will take you from here by force,” I said. I could not bear to look at him. “If you will not go willingly, then I have no other choice.”

“Kouje.” My lord was nearly pleading with me. If it were any other place, and any other time, I would have looked toward him sternly; he would have known that now was when he commanded, rather than implored. Perhaps he remembered my old lessons, for after a moment he straightened, set his shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “Kouje, you will tell me what you know.”

My lord’s command was law. It was almost a relief to obey it. “Earlier this night, the Emperor called his council,” I said, my hands in fists at my side. “It was by accident that I heard them—you may punish me for the breach in conduct as you see fit, but only once we are away from here. The Emperor spoke to his seven lords, and accused you of treason.” If I separated each word before I spoke them, then I would not hear all that I was saying. It was easier, that way, to break my lord’s heart. “The Emperor spoke of a plan. He said that his younger brother was conspiring against him, and for that, he had forfeited his life.”

Mamoru shook his head. “But Kouje,” he whispered, “I have done nothing.”

I bowed. I was always grateful for protocol in moments of uncertainty. “I know that, my lord.”

“He must have misunderstood,” my lord continued, as though he hadn’t heard me. “Earlier, he reprimanded me for speaking the diplomats’ language—perhaps that’s why he thought…?” There, my lord paused for a long moment. One of the diplomats’ horses, in a stall close by, snorted and stamped his hooves. I considered, for a moment, stealing one of them—for the men at the gate would not recognize the foreign horse, and it might ease our escape.

When my lord spoke next, it startled me from my thoughts. There was new strength in his voice, new purpose.

“We must go to my brother at once,” he said, and his words caused my heart to sink in my chest. “We will explain to him—I will explain to him—I will prove that I am loyal. If he asks for any trial, I will give myself over to the test. He will know that I serve him, even if it—”

“Even if it kills you,” I said. My own voice had no color to it; the sound made the Volstov horses uneasy.

“If he thinks I’m guilty of this crime, then I cannot run from him,” Mamoru confirmed. “A guilty man flees. An innocent one returns to prove his innocence.”

Everything that he said made sense. It was calm and reasoned, the way I had endeavored to instruct my lord to make all his decisions. Mamoru was able to see reason where I could not.

Yet what I had neglected in my teachings was how reason gave way in the face of madness, and to Mamoru it surely must have seemed madness that had led to Iseul’s decision.

I could not give voice to my deepest fear, since I had no proof to make it manifest. My lord had no eyes with which to look upon Iseul’s faults, his unreasonable qualities, the terrible things he’d done during the war, all for the good of the Ke-Han. As he proclaimed this latest decree to be, only now it gave me reason to question all the others.

What manner of monster had the Emperor held in check? I could only wonder at how Iseul had changed since his father’s death and brought his true self to light. I had only my instincts, shaped over the years to know always what action was necessary, and to sense when something was wrong in the night. I had protected my lord’s life with a sword and a ready hand for all my adult life. There was nothing I knew so well as my duty, but the argument that I wished to give my lord was one I trembled to think on.

I have done nothing, my lord had said, and I had told him that I knew it.

The cold timbre of Iseul’s voice as he had given the order had told me that he knew it, too.

“My lord,” I began carefully.

“I need to speak to my brother,” Mamoru said. There was a cold glint in his eyes that for a moment reminded me of the Emperor’s iron will.

Before I could stop him, Mamoru had started back into the passageway. He moved at a swift run, and I cursed myself for not having the foresight to prevent that from happening although I do not know if I would have been able to bind my lord’s hands and feet even if I had been gifted with such foresight.

I ran after him, as silently as I could, and sent a prayer to whatever gods that might still be watching over the prince that no one would hear us.

I caught up to him as the passage made a crooked turn to the left, just before it emerged into the palace. He turned as if to shake me off, then stopped at the soft murmur of voices from up ahead. I didn’t put my hand back over his mouth, nor did I wrest him away from the wall and carry him bodily back to the stables, which was what I longed to do. Instead, I held tightly to his arm just above the elbow and listened.

“Maidar has already roused his men,” said a man with a strong, harsh voice like wood being chopped. “Do you really believe there’s any point bringing yours as well?”

“I believe in not taking chances,” said another man. His voice was familiar to me, since I’d heard him issuing orders to his servants from the high table all night. It was Lord Temur, of the western prefecture.

“Come,” said the first man, “do you truly think it will be all that difficult? There was a time when you couldn’t say it, may the Emperor’s spirit rest peacefully, but the prince is weak. It’s like sending wolves in after a lamb.”

My lord let out a startled breath, and I tightened my hold on his arm. I wished that I could have protected him in some better way. If only I could tighten a hold around his chest to keep it from bursting at the knowledge.

“He was clever enough to conspire against his brother,” Lord Temur pointed out. He’d sat next to my lord at dinner, and I’d done nothing. The knowledge was nearly unbearable. I had my sword with me—earlier, I’d thought to carry Mamoru away with me, and would never have left without some means to protect him. I could have done something, and I wanted to, but for my lord’s sake, I held back.

The other man laughed—a quiet, shriveling sound. “You don’t believe him capable of something like that, do you? No. I think the Emperor has his reasons, and we merely abide by them.”

I felt a tugging at my sleeve in the dark. Mamoru had wrapped his fingers tight around the fabric, and was holding on with all his strength, as if he feared he might faint otherwise. I grasped his shoulder with the hand I’d left free. Sometimes even the strongest of lords needed help to stay on their feet.

“Yet,” there was hesitation in Lord Temur’s voice, even if it was slight, “of all the men who believed this change in power might affect them poorly, I never believed it would be the younger prince on whom the Emperor would turn his sights first.”

There was a silence from within the palace, and I wished dearly to be able to see what was happening. Then the other man spoke.

“Who can fathom the will of emperors?”

My lord turned to me, his face hidden in the close shadows of the passage. When he’d been younger, I had always known what my lord was thinking simply by the expression on his face. As he grew older, and the necessity to hide his thoughts became unavoidable, I had developed other ways of knowing: from the tilt of his head or the way he held his shoulders. I had always known what my lord was thinking, even before he told me.

Standing with him in the dark, still robed for sleep and with his hair loose, the braids scattered, I felt only an overwhelming sense of loss radiating around the pair of us.

I didn’t know what Mamoru was thinking. Without the experience, I couldn’t.

Once again, no sound issued from the palace, no footsteps approaching or receding to alert us to the presence of the lords who’d spoken. If I dared, I would have offered some words of comfort to my lord, but the walls in the palace were thin for a reason. It was then that Mamoru released my sleeve and turned back the way we’d come—back toward the stables.

My only relief came with the knowledge that the lords we’d overheard had not spoken as if anything were amiss. No one had yet discovered my lord’s flight. If I could be glad of my actions at all that night, I could at least commend myself for acting quickly.

It was time we needed to distance ourselves from the palace. I didn’t know how Iseul would hunt us, though I knew as well as any how clever a general he’d been in the war, and a fiercer man in battle, besides.

I was a mere servant by comparison, but I would die before I let any harm come to Mamoru.

That was the choice I had made.

My lord looked very small in the large, airy stables. He stood next to one of the Volstov horses, his head bowed in deep thought, or in deep sorrow. I would have cut out my own heart before ever I harmed my lord’s so, but to save his life, such hurts were necessary. I could only trust that he would be strong enough to survive them, that I had not been weak in training him. At least, I thought, with the wild desperation of a man who has abandoned one duty for another when he’d once been able to serve both, my lord had made his decision. We were there in the stables; he was determined to flee.

“My lord,” I said.

“We’ll take this horse.” Mamoru lifted his head, his voice that of a commander on the battlefield—the very lord whom I’d served under for years. In his face, I saw the Emperor himself, a resemblance that had never shown itself before.

If I could have comforted him the way a hostler comforts a horse by touch, I would have been glad to do it. But my lord stood some distance away from me, remote and unapproachable. I’d brought dreadful news to him, and he might yet blame me for betraying his brother and his empire simply by favoring my loyalty to him.

“If you permit me to make a suggestion,” I offered, as though we were playing a game of stones, or he were laboring over a troublesome page of calligraphy. I’d thought things through almost too well, and my lord knew it; his eyes on me were keen and sharp.

“Go on,” he agreed.

“I would not suggest it under any other circumstances…”

“Go on, Kouje,” my lord said again.

Use the old trick against the men who invented it, I thought to myself. It seemed fitting, a small and private revenge, but I couldn’t phrase my words that way for Mamoru. “A disguise,” I explained, as carefully as I could. “In order to make it past the gates. If we are dressed as servants, then even when questioned, no man will truly think to take note of us.”

“Two men riding out on the eve that the prince and his retainer disappear?” Mamoru asked. “Kouje, I don’t think—”

“We do not necessarily have to be two men riding out, my lord,” I said. “They are poor clothes, and hardly fitting for a prince, but the woman who wore them first kept them clean and in good repair. They should fit you well.”

“And for yourself?”

“Something less fine than my banquet clothes,” I admitted. It was a shame to acknowledge how much I had prepared without first consulting him, but fear for his life had panicked me. At least, I told myself, what mattered was Mamoru’s safety and not how able I was to be proud of myself.

“You’ve thought of everything,” my lord said, his usual sweet mirth replaced by a dull dispassion. He moved like a little ghost, away from the horse, to rest one hand against the wall. “What if I had not come?”

“I would have returned the garments to their proper place,” I replied. “No one would ever have noticed them missing.”

“They’ll notice them now. Perhaps someone will piece together the mystery…?”

I shook my head. “My lord Iseu—The Emperor will not truly have the time or the inclination, if you are missing, to listen to a servant complain about her missing garments, my lord. I should have left money, but I was… I didn’t think of it.”

Mamoru stepped forward. His feet were bare, and I should have put my hands beneath them where he walked to keep the soles from being pricked by hay or sullied by dirt. Before I could offer myself, or at least the maid’s cotton slippers, my lord had moved away from the wall to rest that same supporting hand against my arm.

“You have truly thought of everything,” he said, and this time, it was more in gratitude.

“I thought that we might tell the men at the gate that you’ve taken ill, and I was charged with the duty of taking you from the palace as quickly as possible before day broke and the diplomats heard of it,” I said, offering my lord the clothes. They were thin, and he took cold easily. I didn’t like it, but I could bring his finer robes with us, and perhaps barter with them for something warmer, and shoes that would better serve him. I had no further plan yet. My sister had married a fisherman. Perhaps, if all else failed, I would learn to fish. It was ridiculous and implausible; my lord was a prince, and a fisherman’s hut would kill him soon enough, or crush all the beauty out of him. For now, it would serve as a transitory destination. I was rescuing him. That was all I could think of. “While the delegation from Volstov is under the Emperor’s care, he cannot allow even the smallest of threats to escape his notice.”

Mamoru reached out to me for the maid’s clothes, then hesitated. “The Emperor will find us,” he said.

I could not hope to protect him, or so he must have thought, against his brother’s far reach, against the age-old network of spies, against the soldiers he would send to search us out like wild dogs. Yet I was bound to serve my lord as always. Perhaps I was being too prideful, too sure of my abilities. I was no more than a servant, and the gods favored Iseul. In his veins ran their blood.

In Mamoru’s, too, I told myself, as I handed him the maid’s clothes.

“It will take him some time to send any men after us,” I reasoned, as my lord stepped behind an empty stall to undress; I could hear the sound of silk moving against silk, and the crunch of old, brittle hay beneath his feet. I wondered if I had time to go back and find boots for him, and knew even as I thought it that I did not. “He will be busy with the delegation and the treaty, and it will take some doing for him to explain why you are missing. It will take longer still for him to gain permission to send armed men after us, since with the delegation present he will be reluctant to act too precipitously.”

That, and my lord had made a favorable impression on the delegates, where I had read nothing but fear and discomfort on their faces while conversing with Iseul. That manner of impression would not have harmed him in the Ke-Han way of thinking, but it might just work in our favor when it came to the delegates’ being comfortable with lending Iseul free rein. He was Emperor still, but we were under the thumb of Volstov until otherwise notified.

I could see my lord’s eyes in the darkness. They were very pale, and very bright, and dark all around with shadows. I stepped into a shadow of my own to change, careful not to dirty my finest clothes. They’d be worth at least one pair of boots; that way, I would keep Mamoru’s fine things for as long as I could.

“Diplomatic talks are always impossible,” Mamoru agreed. Though he sounded subdued and resigned, there was faint strength remaining in his words, and an almost desperate humor. “It would take them days just to decide whether or not to open a window, much less—Much less chase down an errant traitor-prince.”

“You know them better than I,” I said, allowing a tight smile. That was no time for jests or laughter, and so of course we needed them more than ever. It was much akin to battle humor.

After a minute, Mamoru stepped out from behind the stable wall. It was easy enough to see that, despite the shabby clothes, he was every inch the prince, from his posture to the grace of his hands to his very complexion. He’d drawn his hair back clumsily, and covered it with a shawl. I felt my ribs tighten around my heart. My lord was never clumsy. It meant that his hands had been shaking.

But perhaps his clumsiness would work to our advantage, though it hurt me to think of using my lord’s distress for any good. There was a certain cruelty in such resourcefulness, despite its practical uses. Iseul was resourceful that way in battle, and though it won him much acclaim, it still sat poorly with lesser men.

I smiled again at my lord, this time mastering the attempt.

“My lord, do you remember the theatre groups who would entertain at the palace?”

Mamoru looked at me with confusion, but nodded. “I do.”

“I thought that perhaps, if you thought of this as… something similar, if you imagine yourself an actor, you might affect the posture of a servingwoman, and one who is ill, besides.”

It was the only way that I could think to counsel my lord against betraying himself with his movements, his very being. I could not tell Mamoru to be anything other than a prince, but if I could see it so clearly, then others certainly would. Therefore, he would have to think of his disguise as more than that. It was a role, and one that our very lives depended on his playing. I could only trust in my lord’s skills, as he was trusting in mine.

“Ah, I see,” my lord said. “I do not yet look the part.”

“My lord,” I began, “it isn’t—”

“If I do not, there is no need to spare my feelings,” my lord chided. “Here: I will try it better.” After a moment’s pause, he crossed his arms over his chest and bent nearly double, as though attempting to shield himself from a great wind. The parts of his hair that hung loose from the braids shielded his face, and gave him a rather haphazard and common appearance, very much like a servingwoman who’d worked nonstop throughout the day, with no time to pause and fix her hair once more into its proper place.

He was better at adapting than I had even hoped. Perhaps the gods, in their own way, were on our side after all.

“That’s very good,” I said, warm where I hadn’t allowed myself to be before. “Nearly perfect, my lord.”

Mamoru lifted his head. In his eyes, I could see the shadows of a faint gratification at such praise, even in the midst of such a situation as ours. “Thank you, Kouje,” he said, and I knew it was not entirely for my compliment.

“My lord is a virtuoso,” I said, turning my eyes to the various horses, some of which had awoken at even our quiet conversation, and stared at us now with baleful eyes. Best to take one of the diplomats’ horses, I thought, since it would not be so easily recognized by the guards who manned the gate at night. They knew all the lords’ horses, and I did not trust my lord with a lesser beast. Perhaps the horse we took would even give Iseul some other, more pressing matters to deal with, since a member of the delegation from Volstov would surely question the loss of his mount. Iseul could not give the impression of caring too little for his guests, and so any affront dealt to them would have to be managed most publicly, and with all his resources.

I didn’t truly believe that a missing horse would be our miracle, but my lord and I were in need of help wherever we could ask it. At best, it would provide a momentary distraction.

“I think we should take this horse,” my lord said. It was the one he’d suggested earlier, a strong-looking animal with a russet coat. Indeed, it looked more like a farmer’s draft horse than a lord’s mount: perfect for two servants traveling out of the palace.

My approval must have shown on my face, for my lord did smile then, though it was a small and fleeting thing. I saw it as a victory all the same.

My plan would not work without Mamoru behind it. If he did not believe in me, it made no sense for us to leave in the first place.

“Give me your robes,” I said. “If my lord will mount first, then I might walk alongside the horse.”

My lord looked as though he meant to protest, but he merely turned to retrieve his robes where he’d hung them across the low wall of the stable and handed them to me. I took them, wrapping the fine robes carefully within my own to shield them from any harm, and bundling those again in a plain workman’s cloth, the kind in which a servant carried his few belongings. I waited for Mamoru to mount, then secured the bundle behind him, so as to help along the artifice that my lord was a sick servingwoman ejected from the palace until the time came when she was well again.

“If you agree, I think it best that I do most of the talking,” I said, easing the stall’s gate open. “At least until my lord learns how to speak as a servant.”

“Ah, but isn’t that a counterfeit statement?” My lord looked down at me from the horse, his hair all in disarray and his clothing plain and mended countless times over. It hurt my heart to see him so transformed, but there was a hint of a smile still upon his lips. “Servants do not speak at all, so how can I ever hope to speak as one?”

I found myself smiling, too, as I led the horse through the quiet of the stables, even as I struggled to lift the beam that sealed the door at night. My lord was clever, and he learned quickly. I did not dare to guess at what result our venture would bring, not then and perhaps not ever, but Mamoru could survive as something other than a prince. I was certain of that, if of nothing else. Perhaps he would never learn the self-deprecation inherent in our words, the coarse grammar and the apologetic tone, but he would survive.

The courtyard was silent and empty, though the spare shapes of the rock statues in the sunken garden rose up in crescents and spheres to our left. White sand crunched beneath the horse’s mammoth, shaggy hooves. Ahead, the main gate was lit with tall torches, and white paper lanterns lined the main path. I found myself holding on to the reins with an unnecessary force, though I did not speed my pace any, and I kept my breathing steady. Even so, the horse could sense the tension in my hand, and he shook his head, whinnying faintly.

I didn’t dare to look up at my lord more than once, but he had his head down, his arms crossed in front of him, as if in the clutches of some uncomfortable affliction. I could not tell whether he was as nervous as I was.

Perhaps I was betraying his trust in me by being so nervous myself.

Then we came to the palace gates, and there was no more room for nerves.

The guards didn’t ask any questions. They were trained to be as silent as the servants were. Rather, they stopped us, and waited on protocol. I was the one who must speak, to give them my statement as to who we were, and where we were going.

I’d been practicing it since the moment I’d heard Iseul’s pronouncement, though I hadn’t realized it then.

“This one’s taken ill,” I said, hardening my voice; I sounded like a fisherman, and I forced myself to ignore the shame of my lord hearing me speak so commonly. “My lord wishes for me to take her out of the palace before the diplomats get wind of it. The last thing we want is for the talks to be ended over something so foolish as her sneezing in someone’s breakfast. Or worse, if you take my meaning.”

The guard eyed my lord with some trepidation, as though worried the woman in question was going to be ill right then and there. He stepped back to confer with the other guards, who had been listening some distance away. The torchlight flickered and played off the shadows on their faces, the overhang of their antiquated helmets, which combined to give their expressions a masklike quality. If we were a theatre group, and my lord the leading actress, then the guards would be played by men in demon masks, pale white and blood red.

I felt a soft touch at my hand against the reins.

My lord was looking at me, his eyes filled with something like pleading behind the curtain of his hair. In the years during the dragon raids, there had been men who went mad with the fear and the anticipation, of waiting night after night and wondering, Would they come? There were no more dragons now, but in Mamoru’s eyes I recognized some of that same fear. He did not know how long he must wait, or even what he was waiting for. It was why he had reached out to me in the first place.

I closed my hand over his and held it tight while we waited.

The guard we’d spoken to broke away from the rest to stand in front of us once more. He looked at me, then the horse and then my lord, all with a scrutiny that I would never have allowed if we had been our true selves.

Then, just as I’d become certain that Mamoru would bruise my fingers with the grip he held them in, the guard nodded, and the gate began to open.

“Get out,” the guard said, with a nod toward the gate.

I fought down the urge to take him to task for speaking so rudely to my lord, but Mamoru gripped my hand with his own pale fingers and hunched over the horse’s neck with a quiet groan. Instead of reprimanding the fool, I thanked him.

Then we were outside the palace.

The last time we’d ridden out of the palace together, my lord had been on his own horse. The sun had been high in the morning sky, the air crisp with the fall of autumn, and he had led his own company of foot soldiers and flag bearers, nearly seven hundred men in all under his command.

My lord shivered, and I led the horse on in silence until the palace walls were the vaguest of shadows behind us, and farther still. I couldn’t be too careful.

The road we were on led deep into the heart of the city; if we continued to travel on it, we would reach the old dome by dawn. If we’d but had the time, I would surely have stopped and offered up a prayer there, for our safe passage. It was a familiar route, and a well-traveled one.

I led the horse off the road and under the bower of a maple tree. Its leaves looked black as dry blood in the pale moonlight.

“If you will permit me, my lord,” I whispered, as Mamoru bent his ear to my lips, “I must join you on the horse for now. We will travel faster that way, else I would never suggest it—”

“We are no longer in the palace,” Mamoru replied. I could see only half his face, the shape of a scythe moon; the rest was turned away from me. “Act practically rather than on protocol.”

“My lord,” I consented, and swung myself onto the mount behind him. The horse protested for a moment, but merely out of laziness; he was a mammoth beast, and after the first huff of annoyance, he settled into an easy trot. I wished to ride him faster, but the path was a trail too easy to follow. I urged him instead to the trees. It would be a while before we reached the mountains, but we had a better chance of hiding there than in the larger towns along the main roads, and the idea of being caught out in the open did not sit easy with me. I was a servant first and foremost, but I was also a soldier, and one trained to look to the skies, at that.

The Emperor was a different enemy we were fleeing, but Iseul was as formidable as a dragon and twice as clever as its rider.

After a few moments’ stiffness, still curled like the ailing serving woman around himself, my lord relaxed. Sometime after that, he allowed himself to lean back against my chest.

“It seems like something out of an old play,” he said, very softly, but even the sound of his own voice seemed to startle him, as though he hadn’t known how loud a whisper could be in an empty darkness.

When I’d comforted him on the eve of his first battle, he’d had the strength of an army and his birthright behind him. He was fighting for an empire.

I was silent now, the wind blowing his hair against my neck, the horse moving at a steadfast gait. I wondered how he would run, if pressed to it, for he wasn’t a horse built for racing but rather for heavy loads. It was lucky in some ways and a worry in others.

No one will learn we are gone yet, I told myself. We needed only to disappear, and that required subtlety, not speed.

Sometime in the endless night, I heard Mamoru whisper, “Have we chosen the proper course?”

I had no answer for him, and said nothing. Soon enough, he fell asleep.