Shadow Magic

CHAPTER FOUR





ALCIBIADES

So, the prince was missing.

Caius woke me that morning by shaking my shoulders and laughing delightedly; I was too dazed and too damn tired to ask him at first why he’d come in, much less why he was sitting on my bed. He was the one who broke the news to me, and how he’d known it first before everyone else, I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

“Isn’t it incredible?” he said, beaming from ear to ear. It was the sort of smile that looked like it hurt. “If you don’t get out of bed now, my dear, then we’re going to be late.”

All I could think about was how we’d been out of bed last night, and how delighted Caius had sounded at the thought of our getting blamed for one scandal or another. The day had only just started, and already I was out of sorts.

I managed an undignified but satisfactorily indifferent grunt; it must have sounded enough like a question that Caius continued as though I’d asked him, pretty as you please, to explain himself more thoroughly.

“The Emperor has called an emergency meeting! Well, wouldn’t you? I suppose he wants us all to be there so he can make sure we’re with him when he acts. I imagine he knows we don’t trust him enough yet that it might spoil the talks to have him hauling off and acting on his own over something this important. He says that the poor young thing is a traitor—can you imagine? A traitor! And I was only just complimenting him on his choice of jade—and that he’s been plotting against us all this time.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me,” I managed, watching as Caius launched himself from my bed and began combing his hair—with my comb, in front of my mirror. “Maybe all that dressing him up like a daughter made him mad or something.”

“Oh, who knows,” Caius replied. “I can’t imagine that sweet little creature betraying anyone. Still and all, we’re all to be the Emperor’s counsel in the matter. Of course, he can’t decide what to do about Prince Mamoru on his own, now that we’re in attendance. Alcibiades, we’re a part of the Emperor’s grand council!”

I’d barely got out of bed, and suddenly I was supposed to decide the fate of some idiot Ke-Han prince who’d overstepped his mark? The Ke-Han could do whatever they liked, for all I cared, so long as they left me out of it.

“No thank you,” I said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Caius was back at my bedside in an instant, wearing a look of pure horror on his face. Perhaps he thought to rap my knuckles with my comb, which he still held. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “It’s a direct order!”

“So we’re taking orders now, is it?” I asked, turning my back on him and wishing there were a proper pillow to be found there—that I might either cover my head and drown out the sound of his voice, or hit him square between the eyes with it. I had an awful crick in my neck from the little wood block that served as my Ke-Han pillow, and I hadn’t slept all that well, either, with my head nearly falling off it every time I turned this way or that. A man had to be comfortable, and I was in no mood to be ordered anywhere by an emperor whose culture had come up with a pillow like that. It was remarkable they were able to sleep at night, much less conquer whole countries and give our armies such a good run for such a good long time.

Or maybe this pillow was just reserved for special guests, in which case the second prince could assassinate every last member of the Ke-Han council, and I’d be right behind him on it.

“I don’t see why you insist on being so peevish,” Caius said, in a tone that suggested he might have been pouting. I didn’t want to know what a pout looked like on that precocious little face. “Since we both know you’re coming and that’s final, it doesn’t make any sense for you to put up such a fuss. It’s only embarrassing for you later when you think of the scene you caused, and all for nothing!”

“Get out of here while I get dressed, then,” I snarled, ready to fling the rock-hard pillow at his head if necessary, but he was already skipping out of the room.

“Ten minutes!” he cooed back at me, like a songbird.

I rubbed the back of my neck, which was stiff and sore, and thought about whether or not I could barricade the adjoining door at night with what meager furnishing my room’d been allotted.

Anyway, that was how I’d wound up in a grand council—and I’d never seen a more mismatched, ill-suited group of surly and impassive faces all crammed together into the same room—listening to the Emperor give some speech about how his brother was a traitor and in some cases you had to cut off your own right hand for the greater good of the rest, should it fall to rot. Josette looked about ready to fall to rot herself, like she’d still have been asleep if it had been up to her, and she kept twiddling at the fancy Ke-Han hair ornament that she’d pinned up her curls with. Marius, seated next to her, seemed wide-awake, but he was frowning down at the table like he wanted it to be the Emperor.

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like what I was hearing, then.

Sure, it was the Emperor’s own brother, and he probably knew the situation better than I could from the outside. But the point remained—and here was what stuck in my throat—that I just wasn’t ready to sit back and eat everything he fed me. There was something about the way he was talking, something about the way he held himself, that stank.

Even Caius, crooked in the head as he was, could tell that the second prince wasn’t the sort of man who would just up and betray his brother out of the blue. He’d been blushing the other day at the banquet, just because he’d managed to pronounce a few Volstov words right. And it’d been his bodyguard, not he, himself, who’d gone for it when Caius got too close.

The sort of man who wasn’t on the defensive in the slightest wasn’t the sort who was plotting something.

In short, the Emperor was selling—and pretty hard, too—but I wasn’t buying. Not yet.

Then I thought I caught my name, which made me snap to attention quick as anything—though part of that was to do with the elbow Greylace had thrown into my side. He was a sharp little lizard, and I was going to pay him back for that. Just as soon as I figured out what was going on.

One of the red-faced lords seated next to the Emperor was speaking. He looked like a kettle ready to whistle, trembling slightly with the force of his words. Or maybe it was just his reaction to the Emperor, who was looking at him with intent interest. I was real glad that the Emperor’d never had cause to look at me like that, but I was even more glad that I wasn’t the man next to him, who seemed to be experiencing his own personal rainstorm of spittle.

“Not that I wish to cast aspersions,” he went on. “I merely wanted to bring it up as a matter of course so that we might dismiss the possibility up front and get along with our business.”

I was still lost. Casimiro snorted, his hands folded against the table. Josette was staring daggers at me, and Greylace was sitting still as a little doll, neat and unhelpful as you please.

That was just great.

Fiacre opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think the better of it and turned to me.

“General Alcibiades, I imagine, can explain himself quite capably.”

Just as I was thinking that I might have to toss pride aside for sense—and kick myself for it later—Josette shifted in her seat and sat up straight.

“This is all so silly,” she began, drawing a fan out of her sleeve as though she was embarrassed, which was about the most ridiculous thing I could imagine, since I was pretty sure Josette hadn’t been embarrassed since the day she was born. “I’m afraid it’s my fault, only General Alcibiades is too much the gentleman to place the blame on a woman. The fact of the matter is we were all up quite late together, the three of us, discussing what a lovely reception we’d been given in your honored palace. I quite lost track of the time, so that it was well past midnight when I sent him and Caius Greylace back to their rooms.”

The Emperor raised his eyebrows and settled back into his seat. There was a smile on his face, but it wasn’t a kind one.

“They were seen near the kitchens,” he pointed out, as if commenting on some minor mistake Josette had made in an equation, and not like he knew she’d just spun that whole story out of nothing, which she most definitely had.

“Surely you can’t expect everyone to have memorized their way through your magnificent palace already,” Josette said coyly, but with a hint of steel.

The Emperor tilted his head, resting it against forefinger and thumb while he gazed at Josette like he was trying to decide whether or not to have her removed from the room. Caius laid his hand against my arm underneath the table, and I was so keyed up I almost hit him. Tensions like that always made my blood run hot—it was like the calm before a battle.

Then just like that, the Emperor nodded and shifted to sit up straight once more.

“Lord Jiro, I thank you for your concern, but I do not believe any man or woman from the delegation was responsible for the disappearance of my brother. We are all… united in our wish for peace, and such an act would make our talks impossible.”

Fiacre nodded, not betraying one way or another how he felt about the matter, but I was pretty damn sure he was going to be chewing Josette’s ear off the next time we adjourned.

I tried to catch her eye, but she was waving her fan back and forth and wouldn’t look at me.

“Back to the matter at hand,” the Emperor said, leaning to one side to reach for a sheaf of papers.

When he moved, his jewelry swung, and I caught sight of something he hadn’t been wearing the night before. It was a strange little necklace, with what looked like a red pendant at the end of a thin silver chain. Except that as I caught sight of how it refracted the light, and how the color changed depending on which way he moved, I realized it wasn’t a pendant at all, but a little vial of blood dangling pretty as you please and resting just over his heart.

That was just creepy, any way you sliced it. I’d have to ask Marcy later if she’d seen it.

“… in the best interests of Volstov,” the Emperor was still rattling on. His translator was hard pressed to keep up with him. “Gentlemen and ladies, surely you must understand our distress. We have done our best to prepare for your arrival, only to encounter such a betrayal. We will do all we can to protect the terms of the provisional treaty. If you give your permission—for in the spirit of the relationship we hope to foster, we would not act without it—we will employ all our might to unearth the traitor and bring him before a bipartisan court—a court both Ke-Han and Volstovic, for we would have none other.”

Caius, sitting next to me, sat up straighter. No doubt he was just excited about the idea of getting to decree a real, live Ke-Han beheading. Across the table from me, Ozanne looked rather pale.

“Of course we understand your position,” Fiacre responded, when it was our turn to speak. He had a nice, friendly voice, but it sounded smart, too; the sort of man you wanted to be head of your peace talks because he was slippery but he didn’t sound it, at first. Real smooth. And he’d shrewdly chosen a translator who managed to echo his diplomat’s tone. “And we do not wish a traitor of any kind to run loose in your kingdom. And yet we question the wisdom of releasing so many soldiers in pursuit of him. Surely, to show such an armed presence will merely…”

And so it went, on and on, long past what should have been breakfast and even through what I could only guess was supposed to be lunchtime. By the time there was any kind of pause, my stomach had turned into a tightened, empty fist and it was making the kinds of noises that were sure to offend some petty Ke-Han lord having a real bad morning—one who was just looking for a fight.

“Lunch?” Caius offered, and for once, I actually agreed.

Back in our rooms, we ate our rice—I was going to get sick of that very soon, I could tell—and, glad to have something in my belly at last, I made the mistake of asking him if he’d seen that queer necklace the Emperor had been wearing. Marcy’d disappeared, and I guessed it had been on my mind more than I’d thought.

“He wasn’t wearing it last night, as far as I could see,” I added, trying to shovel my rice into my mouth straight from the bowl with those infernal sticks. There was no other way to use them, I was sure of it.

“He wasn’t,” Caius agreed, then, on sudden inspiration, jabbed his own sticks excitedly toward my face. He was going to have to stop tempting me to hit him and call it simple reflex. “Oh! I know what it might be. Have you heard of the Ke-Han blood magic?”

“Rumors,” I admitted, however grudgingly. Those were the kinds of stories that had been told around the campfire—born of fear and breeding more fear. A soldier told those stories to other soldiers so it was easier to hate the enemy. “Blood magic” had a definition that varied, depending on who was telling the story that night, and though it might’ve had some grounding in truth once upon a time, it’d grown beyond that. One time it had to do with killing lions and drinking their blood; another it had to do with how the magicians in the lapis city worked their magic by using blood as ink when they practiced their calligraphy. I’d stopped listening to the stories a long while back since I didn’t need any more reason to hate anyone, especially the Ke-Han.

It was the sort of information I’d needed to purposefully put from my mind in order to embark on this trip without taking my grievances up with th’Esar himself. As a reward, I might have said, for all my good services to the crown, d’you think I could have had a damn vacation and not some more f*cking work? And, promptly, I’d’ve been banished from my home, which, after years of fighting, was the last thing I wanted. So I’d swallowed the memories and kept biting my tongue.

Only the very phrase brought back campfire nights, in the belly of some mountain, listening to the rumble of the dragons overhead, or the howl of the trebuchets as they let each new fireball loose.

“You’re wearing a curious expression,” Caius said.

“Don’t like the rice,” I answered.

“Hm,” Caius said, not entirely satisfied, but clearly not yet willing to be deterred from imparting what he saw as vital information. “In any case, I read all about it when I was in exile, you know. Fascinating people, the Ke-Han, with their odd little rituals and their quaint ideas. If Iseul’s wearing that vial of blood—oh, if only we could ask him!—it probably isn’t his.”

“All right,” I said. “How d’you figure that?”

“Because the magic is very simple, really,” Caius said. “In many ways, it operates as a microcosm of the way in which they poisoned our Well: If you poison the river, you poison the whole ocean. Contaminate the source—in this case a mere few drops of blood—and it’s possible to kill the man who owned it. Or so the book said. I’m sure that’s vastly oversimplified, but until I can learn to translate Ke-Han texts…” He shrugged delicately. “Brilliant, though, isn’t it?”

I thought of lying prone in the Basquiat, wondering how long it would take me to die, listening to the god-awful coughing move like it was catching from cot to cot, and how I had a power in me—something to do with water, real useful Margrave Royston had said, then never bothered elaborating on, the horse’s ass—that I’d never asked for and didn’t want, running like blood through my veins and making it easier to strike me down without so much as a warning.

Brilliant wasn’t exactly what I’d call it.

Twisted, maybe. Tortured. The product of a people we’d been fighting and hating—both, maybe, for equally good reasons—for generations. And f*cked. I put my rice bowl down.

“Not hungry?” Caius asked, though something in his eyes suggested he’d sensed his blunder and was actually perplexed as to how he’d offended me this time. I didn’t bother acknowledging it and just looked away, since, sitting so close, it was easy to see how strange his eyes were. They were different colors, one of them green and the other one, carefully hidden behind the fall of his silky hair, a pale, murky white.

“Finished,” I gritted out.

“Good!” he said, all good cheer suddenly restored. “Because we’re going to be late.”

The last thing I wanted was another few hours of listening to Fiacre and the Emperor go back and forth, with the occasional addition by Josette or another member of our merry band, while the rest of the Ke-Han warlords kept silent as the grave. But that was what I got. I was going to fall asleep in the middle of it all if it went on too much longer, and that was a hard enough task to manage, since they had us set up in parallel lines facing each other down the length of a long, stuffy room, sitting on nothing more than uncomfortable pillows. It was worse than Volstov diplomacy, which was sheer torture if you caught the men from the bastion on a day for arguing taxes. But at least, in Volstov, they had the decency to provide you with chairs.

One of my legs had lost all feeling, and I’d stopped listening entirely, when suddenly everyone was putting something to a vote.

I looked around the room, desperate for some clue. What were we deciding on? It was still only the first day of deliberation, so it couldn’t have been anything that crucial, but the look on the Emperor’s face implied otherwise. He looked determined behind that stony mask, a statue carved out of pure iron will.

“Don’t worry,” Caius whispered. “It’s for whether or not we should spend the rest of the day trying to decide how many men should go after the prince, or retire for now and finish the day that was planned for us, before this… unforeseen event arose. The Emperor himself isn’t voting, however—it’s bad form.”

The way I saw it, the Emperor was clearly hoping for the vote to go toward the former. If he could keep us trapped there even an hour or so longer, he’d probably wear Fiacre down into agreeing on a number. If we started afresh the next day, new stubbornness would have set in after the night, and it would be harder to convince our men of anything.

I already knew which way I was voting.

The other men and women from Volstov must’ve been thinking along the same lines as I was, since the vote came down to retiring for the night. Maybe they were just tired; I didn’t care. I took grim satisfaction in being able to think I’d thwarted the Emperor. Maybe it was petty, but then again I’d never told anyone I was the man for this sort of job. It’d just been decided for me, and I was going to play it the way I saw fit, short of getting into any real trouble.

“Ah, fresh air,” Caius said, standing next to me and breathing in deeply before letting out a fluttery little sigh. I’d heard women make that kind of noise. “Well! What do you think we should do now?”

“What should we do?” I spluttered, since I’d been looking forward all day to finally shaking him off once night rolled around.

“I thought,” Caius went on blithely, “that we might request guidance to the menagerie. Of course, it won’t be what it was before the war—so many of the animals were lost or killed, you know, during the final attack of the dragons on the capital—but I still hear it’s uncommonly beautiful. Just the sort of relaxation we need after a hard day deliberating, don’t you agree?”

I didn’t, and I had half a mind to tell him exactly what I did agree to. And none of it involved him.

Except he’d turned his back on me almost immediately and, in the midst of the crowd—stony-faced warlords and passive servants and stretching men and women from Volstov, all of whom suddenly looked just as tired and uncomfortable as I felt—he was waving down some hapless creature.

“Menagerie!” he said, gesturing wildly with his arms. I thought he looked like a bird—but that was probably what he was going for. “Animals? We’d like to go there.”

The servant shook his head. No doubt he thought the pale-skinned sprite was mad. He was right.

Caius sighed, and said something I didn’t understand. Half of it sounded like a question and half of it sounded like a command, but all of it sounded like the Ke-Han.

“Seems you’re a little too fluent,” I said.

“Oh, I know the odd elementary phrase here and there,” Caius replied.

“And ‘Would you take us to see the menagerie’ is one of them?”

Caius’s lips twitched unevenly, the left corner lifting higher than the right. He looked like an imp. “I learned what I thought I’d need,” he said. “And as you can see, it’s served us both. This patient young man is going to show us the peacocks.”

“You’re going to see the menagerie?” Josette asked, suddenly beside us. “You know, I think that’s just the thing I need this evening. Is it very far?”

Caius tapped the side of his jaw with one finger. The nail was a perfect oval, manicured like that of a woman at the Fans. “It isn’t too far a walk, from what I recall. Certainly the sort of brisk evening stroll to put color on a lady’s cheeks.”

“You should enjoy it too, then,” Josette said wryly.

I’d never minded Josette, at least. If I was lucky—which I wasn’t, but I still liked to hope—then he’d talk to her all night and leave me right out of it.

“You will pardon my intrusion,” a Ke-Han-accented voice said from just behind me, “but if you are going to the menagerie, then it is only fitting you should be taken there by a guide, and not a servant.”

I turned, not liking the way he spoke—he was too confident at it, for one thing, and a confident man of the Ke-Han set off all kinds of alarms, no matter how much I’d supposedly trained myself out of those old soldier’s reactions.

It was the lord who’d sat to the left of the Emperor. He’d been introduced the night before, and when I tried to remember, the name came back to me as one of the most important in the quick tutorial the ’Versity students had given all the diplomats who didn’t know their asses from their elbows: Lord Temur.

Caius, of course, was ecstatic.

“Would you offer your services to us, my lord?” he asked, like a blushing maiden entertaining her suitor. “I’ve been so looking forward to seeing the peacocks!”

He was laying it on a little bit thick, I thought, but Lord Temur proffered a faint, unreadable smile. A civility, as far as I could tell, but at least he was trying. His hair boasted more braids than the young prince’s had, but fewer than his formidable bodyguard’s. I was starting to judge men by the quality of their hair—a peculiarity I didn’t altogether enjoy noting in myself, but it was useful there. Lord Temur looked fierce, but fewer braids meant that he was more of a diplomat than he was a soldier. Or maybe he had men to do all his soldiering for him. I didn’t know, and I didn’t plan on making polite conversation with the man until I could find out.

“That’s very kind of you to offer,” Josette added, ever the diplomat. I thought that the lord hadn’t so much offered himself as given a shrewd counsel, but that was the danger in coming too close to the swirling tornado of conversation that was Caius Greylace. Even an important Ke-Han warlord wasn’t immune to getting swept up, turned all about, and spat back out again whenever the storm grew tired of its latest plaything.

But Lord Temur didn’t seem too concerned about that though he couldn’t have realized the danger yet. Instead of running for the hills, he extended to Josette the same thin smile he’d given Caius and offered his arm. There was just enough time for Josette to look surprised then flattered before Caius launched himself into the gap between them like a small, very well-groomed dog doing a trick with a hoop.

“You are too kind,” he murmured, beaming that grin that made him look more like a jack-o’-lantern than a person. He laid his hand delicately on Lord Temur’s arm like he was used to getting that sort of treatment. “Oh! What a lovely fabric.”

I didn’t think that Lord Temur was the sort of man who concerned himself with what fabric his robes were made out of though there was no way of telling that from the expression on his face. Disregarding that smile, I hadn’t ever seen his face lose its calm, blank stare. Not even during the talks.

“The menagerie is this way,” he said, and bowed, before turning around and starting off. Caius looked pleased as punch.

“Now, you mustn’t think me rude, but are you quite certain that all the lions are safely within their cages?” he asked.

Like Caius Greylace didn’t know already he was perfectly capable of handling a lion or two. If I could trust the stories—and I was more and more sure than ever that I could—then he’d already handled his fair share of them.

Lord Temur said something in a low undertone that I didn’t quite catch, but I gathered from Caius’s tinkling laughter that it was the height of Ke-Han wit.

Josette gave me a baffled look, which was as clear an indication as I was going to get that she thought Caius as nutty as I did. Maybe it was best to let our fine Lord Temur deal with him all night, though it’d give him a really odd cross section of the diplomats.

If anytime, that was my chance to escape.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Josette, a suspicious look in her eye. “You’re not bolting and leaving me here with Greylace and one of the seven Ke-Han warlords.”

“I think he likes you,” I said.

Caius and Lord Temur were walking up the white sand path, and coming to the garden that contained all the strange stone statues. We were going to have to run to catch up to them. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind the idea. I’d been waiting all day to stretch my legs.

Josette gave me a look that suggested if she hadn’t been such a diplomat, she’d have punched me square in the jaw for that last remark. Then she started off down the pathway, leaving me to catch up with her. I didn’t offer her my arm when I did, but she took it anyway.

I didn’t really see the purpose in going to a zoo at night, especially when it was nearing dark already, the sky stained a mottled blue-purple, like the ribbon Caius was wearing in his hair. (Knowing him, he’d probably calculated what night looked like, and picked out a ribbon that morning to match.) At least the air didn’t get a chill in it as soon as the sun went down, the way it did in Volstov. That was one positive thing I could say for the Ke-Han and their country though I wasn’t going to be making a habit of it or anything.

Up ahead of us, I could hear Caius’s fluttering laughter as they discussed the price of tea, or the artwork in the diplomats’ rooms, or the quality of silk, or all the trivial what-have-yous that Caius liked to talk about. I couldn’t tell from Lord Temur’s voice whether he was bored out of his mind or just plain bemused. From what I’d heard of the Ke-Han language, it was common to speak all in monotone. I guessed it went along nicely with not having any expression on your face, so that nobody could ever tell what the hell you were actually thinking. I couldn’t even imagine what he thought of Caius’s theatrical Volstovic.

Josette pointed to a distant hill, some ways outside the garden where a bunch of fat, colorful flowers was growing. “Oh, look!” she cried, sounding more like Caius than I’d ever heard her. “Chrysanthemums!”

Lord Temur turned around at that, his eyebrows raised. I didn’t like how he understood everything we were saying so easily. Some might have looked at it like a gesture of goodwill, but to me it just felt like spying. The ’Versity scholars had explained that the Ke-Han language was one that took years to perfect, and that speaking it halfway was loads worse than not speaking it at all, but I couldn’t help feeling like we were at a disadvantage, since the Ke-Han could retreat behind their soft, hurried consonants, and we had nowhere to hide at all.

“They are a symbol of the Emperor’s reign,” said Lord Temur, shielding his eyes from the setting sun to look up at the chrysanthemum garden. “No one else is permitted to cut them.”

“Ah, I see,” said Josette, and she looked more disappointed than I’d have thought, over a handful of too-big flowers.

“He’s better than a guidebook,” I muttered under my breath.

Caius shot me a reproving look. It figured that he would have freakish hearing on top of his freakish everything else.

“We have nearly reached the menagerie,” said Lord Temur. “As I have assured your companion, all the lions are safely within their cages tonight.”

It wasn’t so much the lions that gave me cause to doubt, but then I supposed there wasn’t much harm in going to look at a bunch of animals, of all things. Besides, there were three of us and one of him, so if things got ugly, we could just feed him to something that liked fresh meat and hope for the best.

The gates of the menagerie were wrought-iron bars, shaped into a graceful and purposeless design, the way the Ke-Han seemed to like best. The stone walls were a clean white—the sort that only stays clean for a year or so, maybe, before the elements get to it.

Then I remembered how Caius had been prattling on about the menagerie being destroyed in the dragons’ last attack on the city—at least I thought that was what he’d been talking about, since I’d been trying to get to sleep at the time. The reason everything looked so new and shiny was because they’d only just rebuilt it.

They’d done a decent job, I supposed. There was white gravel all along the pathways, and bright, spidery-thin vines that draped down the white walls on the inside. There were dainty orange flowers blooming here and there, and a white sign at a fork in the path that said which animals were in which direction. At least, that was what I assumed it said, since the thing was written in the Ke-Han language, which meant that it looked like a game of noughts and crosses to me, but there were shadow-pictures of animals next to the foreign words, so my guess couldn’t be too far off the mark.

In the distance, I heard the sharp call of a bird that wasn’t a peacock.

Caius looked thrilled.

“Which should we see first, my dears? The lions? I see there are leopards also, how fearsome!”

“Yes, terrible,” said Josette. “I’m sure we’ll find ourselves all aquiver.”

“What sort of bird was that, do you suppose?” I asked, since it didn’t matter to me one way or another which animals we saw first. Though it wasn’t the sort of thing a person could say outright—for the sake of diplomacy and all—I would rather have seen the menagerie just after it’d been destroyed, with the animals running every which way, loose and fierce and proud. They wouldn’t look the same in cages, and, as much as I didn’t like the idea of lions roaming free all around me, I liked the idea of them behind bars even worse.

“There is a section devoted entirely to the songbirds,” Lord Temur explained, patient as anything, like he hadn’t just been sitting through the same bastion-damned long day as the rest of us. “They were the young prince’s favorite. Ah.” He paused, apparently remembering what the talks that day had been all about in the first place, and turned toward the other fork in the pathway. “Perhaps my companions would like to see the cats of prey? I regret to say that we have not yet replaced the white tigers that were lost to us earlier this year, but we have all the rest.”

Things were changing pretty fast there within the Ke-Han, you had to admit, and it was a miracle most of them were able to get up in the morning and go about their business properly, much less keep those blank looks on their faces and hold their heads up high. I didn’t envy them their position one bit, but we’d given them what they deserved. They’d taken enough land, conquered too many people, and got greedy. All we’d done was make sure they didn’t get any farther than the Cobalts. Took us long enough, too.

“The black panther was once considered a god,” Lord Temur continued, to the sound of Caius’s delighted “oohs” and Josette’s sharp “ah!” “A long time ago, though he is still respected in deference to the old ways. You can still read of his mighty place in some of the historical scrolls.”

“Do you think we will be allowed to see the libraries?” Caius asked delightedly, missing the point entirely. “My grasp of your language, my lord, is rudimentary at best, but perhaps you would be willing to allow me to usurp your time for the cause of history?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Lord Temur replied, because he had to.

Meanwhile, I was watching the black panther. If he had once been a god, then it looked like he still knew it—somewhere, anyway, beneath all the lazy indifference. He was lounging on a low-hanging, stout branch, one paw dangling over the edge and his graceful tail just brushing the ground. He was watching us like we didn’t matter to him one way or another, and it wasn’t because of the bars that he felt so easy.

But the bars were still there, after all, and he was still behind them. God or no, he was a zoo animal, and we were there to make a show out of him, not pay our respects.

Volstov had its own menageries, of course, and its own fair share of caged animals. Still, as the panther lifted its half-lidded slit eyes to me and yawned, I didn’t like the feeling the whole thing gave me, not one bit.





MAMORU

The dim, terrible happenings of the night before—as remote and impossible as the actions of puppets on the stage—should have dissolved the moment I opened my eyes. They felt like a nightmare.

They were not.

When I woke, I barely knew where I was; all I did know was that I was cold and that my arm was stiff and twisted beneath me. Something soft was beneath my head, but the rest of my body felt as though I were lying on a bed of twigs.

I moved, my arm useless, as though I were a veteran of war who’d lost it in the fighting.

Kouje was somewhere, close by as always, and he would tell me where we were and what news the morning brought. I didn’t remember falling asleep. The last memory I did have of the night before was the steady rhythm of the Volstov mount beneath me and the rustle of the wind through the trees all around us, like women gossiping at court.

Were they already gossiping about me?

I sat up, brushing leaves out of my hair while my hand tingled back into feeling. I’d been lying on the ground, underneath the protection of a maple tree; the bundle of my clothes, wrapped around with Kouje’s and then with a plain workman’s cloth, had been under my head to serve as a pillow. The horse was nearby, tethered to a low branch, stomping lazily and poking his nose into the underbrush. He was hungry. My stomach tightened in sympathy. I was hungry, too.

There was a soft rustling from the bushes near us, and I felt a sudden fear take hold of my chest, causing my heart to pound double where it had been nearly calm. Moments later, Kouje emerged from between a parting in the brush, two rabbits held within his hands and a look on his face that suggested he wished for the quiet surroundings of the palace, where there were no bushes at all to rustle and signal his approach. His braids were undone.

“I hope I did not wake you, my lord,” he said.

“You should have,” I countered. It was true, not merely a childish fit of willfulness. If everything that had passed the previous night was true, then I could no more afford to sleep in than I could allow Kouje to go on indulging me as though I were still a prince. I’d conceded all rights to that title the moment I’d left the palace.

I felt a curious melancholy throbbing in my chest as the beat of my heart slowed, but I paid it no mind.

Kouje put the rabbits down and knelt in front of me beneath the bower of the maple. For a moment, it would have been easy to close my eyes and imagine we were back at the palace, or even on a campaign for the war, and had been separated from our men by a storm the night before. But my clothing was rough and unfamiliar under my fingers, and my back hurt from sleeping on the hard ground, and I could not hide the truth from myself.

It would only make the inevitable conclusion worse.

“Rise,” I told him, swallowing down my darker thoughts. “We don’t have time for such formalities, Kouje. Please rise. I see you’ve brought us breakfast.”

Kouje lifted his head, looking apologetic where he might have looked proud. After all, he’d woken before me, and had managed to catch us a meal while I continued sleeping. If anyone should have looked apologetic, it was I.

“I know it is a meager offering, my lord,” Kouje began, “and we have nothing to season them with, but I thought… if you were hungry…”

“They look very fine,” I said, not allowing him to continue. “Why, I’m quite sure we had worse fare in the mountains, come to think of it.”

Kouje laughed quietly, making me feel infinitely better about my small joke. There had never been a worse time to make light of a situation, I felt sure, but that was what drove me to it. I knew that Kouje would never indulge in such humor, but in doing so myself I kept him from becoming overly somber.

It seemed all the more important that we look after one another, and all the more important that I coax Kouje out of the habits that the palace had bred into him. Such deference from him to me, as I was clothed, would certainly lead to us getting caught; if not there in the forest, then inevitably somewhere else.

“I shall prepare them, then,” Kouje said, and rose once more.

I watched him first twist what remained of his braids back out of his eyes, then roll up his sleeves. He bent to gather dry moss and sticks from the underbrush, bundling them together in his fists until he had enough to strike a fire with the flint from his pouch. I looked away when he pulled out the knife, hating to display such weakness. Tomorrow, I told myself, feeling my own hair as one snarled knot at the nape of my neck. Tomorrow, I would be the one to prepare breakfast.

“Kouje?” I set my fingers to the careful task of working the knots out of my hair, one by one.

I wasn’t looking, but I heard the pause in his work. “Yes, my lord?”

“I’ve been thinking. If I am truly to master this disguise, then you mustn’t bow to me, not even in private.”

“My lord,” Kouje began, sounding strangled, as though I’d just suggested he cut off the heads of all seven warlords.

I pressed on ruthlessly. I had to be ruthless. That was what Iseul had always wanted from me, though perhaps it was a joke of the gods that events had driven me to it at last. “And you mustn’t call me ‘my lord’ anymore, either. Don’t you see, Kouje? We’re bound to… give the game away when it matters most. You’re so in the habit of it already; I am as well. I need you to help me, or else I fear we’ll never—Well. I believe it’s for the best if we both learn to unlearn what was customary at the palace.”

Kouje was silent after that. I could hear the crackling of the fire and the sizzle of the rabbits on their sticks, but there was no reply to what I’d said. I turned once I’d completed my braid, with the sinking feeling that I’d gone too far or said too much.

Kouje knelt in front of the fire, his eyes closed, buried deep in thought. His hands weren’t tending to the rabbits anymore, but to his own hair, methodically removing each braid from its place and undoing them, one by one. All at once, I felt a fierce rush of grief run through me, for the loss of my father and now of my brother, too, the subjects and lands that had been ours to shepherd and protect. My friends. My room in the palace. The walk by the gardens. The way the light came in through the window and woke me.

We had lost so much over the course of the years, then had finally faced true defeat at the end of the war. I’d earned my braids alongside Kouje, fighting to honor my father and our country. I’d stood with him as he earned braids of his own. Watching him as he removed them from his own hair was like watching the magician’s dome destroyed in a blaze of dragonfire and smoke. It was like having the years of my life, each triumph, scattered worthless at my feet, so many broken twigs upon the forest floor.

The fire snapped, sending a hiss of sparks up into the air. The rabbit was dripping fat into the flames. I felt as though I couldn’t breathe.

“Your breakfast is ready, my lord,” said Kouje. His hair was kinked from its long confinement, and loose as I had never seen it before. He offered me the smallest of smiles, his own habit from our days at the palace; this, however, was one we could allow. “I apologize. Mamoru.”

The air was awkward between us, and we were separated suddenly by more than just the sound of the fire. Still, for now, this awkwardness would have to serve. Eventually, Kouje would grow better used to speaking my given name, and I would grow better used to hearing it.

No one ever called me by my proper name, save for my father and my brother, but one was dead and the other wished for me to join him. There was only Kouje left to me.

It was the strangest breakfast I’d ever eaten, which was not to say it wasn’t satisfactory; it was merely that fresh meat in the morning wasn’t my usual fare. I thanked Kouje for it nonetheless, and ate my full share. Anything less would have made him worry. Besides which, I was hungry.

What I wouldn’t have done, though, for a bowl of rice.

After that, Kouje obliterated all signs of our presence, brushing leaves this way and that and destroying the fire he’d set to cook the rabbits. He spoke very little, save to ask me if I would like to bathe. He must have sensed my reluctance, as well as its reasons—we were too close to the palace yet and I didn’t want to risk any delay. He didn’t mention it again.

Then, we rode.

The farther we went, the more I was certain we were straying farther still from any path I’d ever known. I felt as though I were running away because I very much was, but the loneliness I felt beyond that was not simply due to all I had lost: It was due also to all I didn’t know. Even the trees were unfamiliar to me, and I began to realize that I would evermore be the stranger.

“Where do you think we’ll go?” I asked, loud enough to distract myself from my thoughts. I was sorry for it when the birds above us in the tree branches flapped their wings, a few of them even taking sudden flight.

Kouje didn’t admonish me, though I thought perhaps he should have. His silence told me everything.

After a little while, however, he did speak. “We’ll travel as far away as we can from the palace,” he said, his words more quiet and more circumspect than mine had been. I was glad to listen to him talk; if only he were a man better suited for idle conversation. “It takes us a considerable distance out of the way, but…” He paused for a moment, listening to something deeper in the woods, then relaxed. I would have to do my best to distract him from his own worries, I realized—even if I was able only to chatter on foolishly about the weather. He was tense as a drawn bow behind me. “I’d thought to take you to a small fishing village near the mountains,” he concluded at last. “I should have consulted you, but it seemed the best plan last night.”

“It’s better than hiding in the mountains with the tricksters and the foxes,” I pointed out.

“I suppose that was my thinking yesterday,” Kouje agreed.

The horse’s hooves beat out an inexorable rhythm beneath us. I couldn’t bear to listen to it, the amiable beast bearing me toward an unnamed elsewhere. I pressed on through the thicket of conversation for that reason alone. “This fishing village,” I said. “How do you know of it?”

“My sister married a fisherman,” Kouje said, after a long, taciturn pause. “She lives there. It would… be something, for a time.”

I harbored a momentary warmth. “Have you been there before?”

“Never had time,” he admitted. “But I do know where it is, well enough, at least, to find it.”

“Will we… will we stay there, do you think?”

A mosquito buzzed by my ear, and a moment later sang at the horse. He whinnied unhappily, flicked his tail once or twice, and Kouje reined him in, guiding him in a sudden, sharp turn left. We were going west if we were to draw close to the mountains.

The mountains were where Iseul had fought; I’d been beside him in battle once, but they were foreign and remote to me, the distant and jagged symbol of separation. Men who fought in the mountains came back changed, and only on a very clear summer’s day could you even see the top of the range from the palace. They were like the great wall of an old tale, a boundary marked out by nature. My people knew them better than the soldiers of Volstov, but I myself had no knowledge of them, although some nights, when I was much younger, I would dream of being caught in the mazes that wound their way through the rock—trapped, as Iseul once described it to me, by the shifting of ancient stone.

I wondered how anyone could dwell near the mountains without living each day in their massive shadow terrified some change in the earth or breath from the gods would send them crashing down.

“I wouldn’t know how long we could,” Kouje said. “I’ve no idea how to catch fish for a living. Besides, just think of the smell.”

It took me a moment to realize he was teasing me. I hid my laugh against my rough cotton sleeve—an affectation of the court and one I’d have to shake off as well, though it seemed more than awkward to laugh into my palms. Besides which, the latter barely muffled the sound properly.

After that, we rode comfortably enough. Kouje pointed small things out to me along the way to keep us talking—such as the osmanthus trees that grew in a scattered fashion among the hardier trees, and bloomed delicate clusters of white flowers against evergreen leaves. When a bird cawed above us we would play a game to guess which type of bird it was, or if there was a rustle in the bushes that frightened us we’d guess as to whether it was a rabbit or a fox, and so on.

When we stopped at last to give the horse some rest and stretch our stiff legs, I no longer had any idea where we were, nor any idea how Kouje knew.

“How can you follow the sun under so many trees?” I asked him.

“I’ll teach you,” he said, and I agreed. After all, we had the time.

We mounted once again after no more than a brief respite and began the jostling trip anew.

It was senseless, mindless, numbing; we traveled toward a destination I’d only just begun to envision, and one which was farther away than even imagination could calculate. I wondered what the little houses looked like, if they were made of wood or straw or clay, and how the people dressed. I’d never seen a fisherman or, for that matter, a fisherwoman.

When it began to grow dark, the mosquitoes swarmed around us in earnest—whirlwinds of them that whined and stung. Kouje waved them away as best he could while I told the beginnings of the story of the monkey god and his quest to find the setting sun. We, too, were traveling west, and the story was one of Kouje’s favorites.

At last, when it was dark enough that the owls were hooting and my stomach was cramped with hunger, we stopped again by a stream where the sound of running water drowned out the cries of the night birds. Kouje led the horse to drink.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. I sensed that he was not.

“I ate very well at breakfast,” I replied, resting a hand over my stomach in the darkness to quiet it. If I said I was hungry, then Kouje would never have thought twice before he went chasing noises through the shadowy bushes. It was better if we both slept now and ate after the sun rose. “I believe I’m able to manage until morning.”

Whether Kouje believed my lie fully or not, he didn’t press the matter. I lay awake for a long time after that, hearing an errant mosquito flit past my cheek now and then, listening to the water flow over the rocks and to my stomach growling.

For the second time, I woke to find Kouje gone.

Cursing myself, I washed my face in the stream and drank from it, then washed the dust-coated hem of my stolen maid’s costume. There was dust between my toes, so I washed my feet, as well, and did what I could to clean the dirt from under my fingernails.

When Kouje returned, again with rabbits, my own shame was momentarily silenced by my hunger. Matters were less complicated in the woods. I didn’t apologize until after we both ate.

“Next time, you must wake me,” I said, helping him to destroy the site of the fire. “It isn’t a command, Kouje, it’s… it’s a request.”

Kouje looked at me as though the word was something entirely foreign to him. Perhaps it was. Then he bowed his head, but the gesture was more a concession than a display of worship. It would have to suffice, for now.

“My lord—” He stopped himself, looking frustrated and ashamed in equal measures. “Mamoru. I believe we might be best served at passing through one of the villages. We’re far enough away now that there is little chance of being caught out; littler chance still of being recognized. We might barter for better shoes for you there and… if there is any news from the palace, I would like to hear it. Thankfully gossip has more foot soldiers than your brother.”

I twined my fingers together tightly in my lap, doing my best not to betray any weakness at the suggestion of news. It was cowardly of me not to want to know anything, and to want to forget the capital existed at all, now that we’d left it.

Kouje seemed to sense my discomfort, for he stretched a hand across the distance between us and rested it against my shoulder. “We will not listen to idle gossip,” he told me. “I would not suggest we listen at all, except that… if there is any way to know how the Emperor plans to hunt us, I would like not to be caught unawares.”

Of course. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it, though I nodded, and hoped that it might be enough. I could not help my loneliness, could not help feeling as though I were being left behind somehow. Kouje was adapting to the situation much more quickly than I could hope to.

I would have to work twice as hard, I vowed, so as not to become a burden on him.

This time, when Kouje set to work dismantling the rest of our crude camp, I helped him. We dragged branches across the earth to hide where we’d slept and tossed the stones of our fire pit into the stream where I’d washed my hands and face. Kouje patted the horse down, then we were away once more. I felt the beginnings of a lingering ache in my backside, the result of near-ceaseless riding, and pushed it to the back of my mind. I would not admit such weakness, when I did not know how far off our destination was. For Kouje to think it safe, it would have to be a great distance from here, which meant a great deal more riding.

“Will your sister teach me to fish?” I asked, when the birds had fallen silent and we had no more games to fill the time.

I felt Kouje’s laugh more than I heard it behind me. “After she teaches me, perhaps.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like. It wouldn’t be like the stories, I knew that. There would be no giant peaches to fish from the ocean, no life-changing fortune sent to benefit the hardworking fishermen, since we would be fishermen in counterfeit only. It would have to be for the joy of fishing that we worked, then, and not for the hope of anything greater. We would rise early in the morning, perhaps, when a gray fog still clung to the ocean and the sun was merely a promise on the horizon. Then we would get into our little boat, and—Kouje’s sister having told us all the best fishing spots—we would go to our very favorite of them all, casting our hooks and nets for bonito and flounder. We might well spend all day long underneath the sun, out on the water, waiting for the fish to come. By then, Kouje would have learned to speak easier, and we would talk about whatever came into our heads until the fish drew our attention by tugging at the nets. Perhaps, on very good days, we would come back with eel, and Kouje’s sister would say that we were naturals at it.

Was that a life that Kouje could be content with? Was it a life that I could be content with?

I didn’t know the answer to that, yet. But I was determined to find out.

“Is there a village near here?” I asked idly, tucking hair behind my ear.

“The last time I came this way, there was,” Kouje replied. I refrained from asking him when it was he last traveled through those parts. Remembering would be too raw, yet. We could save the tale for another afternoon.

Soon enough, the trees began to thin out as we approached the village of which Kouje had spoken. It was one of the many little stopgaps between the bustling hubs of activity that were the larger cities, governed by warlords, and the capital itself, the greatest city of all. I had never been through one of these smaller villages, since the main road used by our forces to get to the mountains did not run through such inconsequential places, only past them. I couldn’t help my curiosity, then, overpowering the feeling of strangeness. As Kouje guided the horse down the open dirt path that must have been the town’s main road, I lifted my head to peer inquisitively at the shabby wooden buildings. Some of them looked as though they’d fall apart at the first strong wind, but some of them hung cheerful cloth pennants from their doorways. Now and then, the banner would proclaim this building as an inn, and that one as a teahouse.

All at once, I felt such a sharp longing for green tea that my mouth felt wet with the taste of it.

Men and women lined the streets. Here a middle-aged man swept the dirt from the street in front of his shop, and there two young women were carrying baskets laden with dirt-covered vegetables. There was a fish vendor with a head like an ax who was selling fried eel on sticks to a group of children, all of whom clamored and pushed at one another to be the first-served. In the alleyway next to his stood a woman with a parasol. Her robes were a pale mauve.

Kouje stopped our horse in front of what I judged to be a noodle house. The smells emanating from it were enough to make my knees weak, even though I’d eaten my fill of rabbit earlier that morning. I felt my stomach give a traitorous growl. Behind me, Kouje dismounted, and I found myself hoping he hadn’t heard, that he wouldn’t think me ungrateful for his efforts.

“Perhaps I might try to strike a better bargain for my formal clothing,” he said, “if you are ever again to eat something besides rabbit meat.”

“Oh, no,” I protested. “I couldn’t. Really. It’s best just to have shoes, as you said, and not to waste money on such things.” I didn’t know how long a man could go on eating rabbit once a day, but I vowed that I would do it until our situation improved, or at least until I learned to catch my own fish.

Kouje was wise, but he was also tenderhearted when he did not have to be, and at these times it was up to me to preach sense. We would need sturdy shoes to travel as far as we were going. It was hardly so urgent that I be spoiled with hot noodles.

“I did not mean to suggest we waste money, Mamoru,” Kouje said, and I was pleased that he’d remembered to use my given name. It was still a surprise to hear it sound in his voice, but one that I would overcome soon enough. He held out his hands, and I took them, getting down off the horse.

It was rather a relief to be on my own two feet once more. I resisted the urge to rub my backside, endeavoring instead not to stand up too straight, as Kouje cautioned me earlier. Those who worked all day long for their living tended to stoop, as though a great yet invisible weight bore down upon them, the memory of their physical duties. I could manage stooping well enough, but I noticed that none of the women in this village wore their hair in one long braid, but rather kept it pinned up underneath a wrap of cloth, or looped back under as a bun. I touched my own braid with a sudden self-consciousness. Perhaps I would be better served to imitate the women, that I might blend in with our surroundings all the more.

Kouje had tied his own hair back in the simple style I’d seen worn by the tradesmen who visited the palace on occasion. He’d got his hair to behave for the most part, no longer kinked from years’ worth of wearing war braids, and I wondered whether he’d doused it with river water that morning, before I’d woken up.

“Come,” Kouje said, offering me a smile I did not recognize, until I realized that it was a companionable smile, the smile of equals. Without any warning, Kouje was playing a role, and I was expected to play along.

On sudden inspiration, I took his arm.

“One can learn everything there is to know in a noodle house at noon,” I said, “because at that hour, it is only all the people too important to work that frequent the place.”

“That is from the story of Aoi the Underhanded,” Kouje said, naming one of the legends of a slippery trickster who amassed his wealth from the misfortunes of others. He was more of a highwayman than a man to be respected or immortalized in tale or song, but as children my friends and I had enjoyed his stories best of all. If Kouje knew them better than I did, it was only because he was the one who’d told them to us, so many times over that we’d grown sick of them.

I didn’t know what had made me think of it, since they were stories for children, and I was no longer a child. But as we entered the shop, it was immediately clear that Aoi the Underhanded’s sage advice was as timeless as that of any mountain ascetic.

In other words, it was a time of day where men and women more important and better-monied than we were eating. And over their food, they gossiped.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they were gossiping about me.

It didn’t surprise me for a moment that the story had overtaken us, spreading faster than a fire in the capital. News traveled more quickly, it seemed, than single men could, and anyone traveling along the main roads would have passed the word on with greater alacrity, covering more ground than Kouje and I were capable of with our circuitous and covert path through the trees.

I thought of the other scandals I’d lived through during my time at the palace—when young lady Ukifune had been courted, all too successfully, by Lord Kencho; or when Lord Chiake lost his heart, and his entire year’s stipend, to a young man from a brothel. Those sorts of stories kept men and women alike gossiping for months at a time in their separate rooms, and the subjects of their gossip could never enter a room again—that is, if they hadn’t been exiled from court for their behavior—without all the fans going up, and all the ladies there whispering behind their sleeves.

I’d always felt a mixture of unhappiness and pity when I thought of poor Ukifune, Lord Kencho, and Lord Chiake, and all the men and women who’d fallen afoul of gossip in our court.

When, if ever, would the gossip over Prince Mamoru cease?

“If you’ll excuse me,” Kouje said, suddenly halfway into the noodle house, standing with a deferent posture by the side of one of the busiest tables, “but you say there’s something happened to the esteemed younger prince?”

One of the women at the table, wearing periwinkle blue, gaped at him. She had broad, unrefined features, and especially vulgar lips. She reminded me in many ways of a bullfrog Kouje had caught for me once. I averted my gaze and stared, as so many servants did, at my feet.

“You haven’t heard about the trouble with the prince?” the woman asked, overly familiar.

One of the men slapped Kouje on the arm—which at first shocked me, until I realized it was actually a companionable thing to do—and laughed in disbelief. “You must’ve been on the road a long time, eh?”

“Sit down, and bring your girl,” another man said, taking a mouthwatering slurp of noodles from his bowl. Unconsciously, I licked my lips, then felt my cheeks coloring. At least my disguise was working well enough. “We’ll tell you everything.”

Kouje gestured me over, his pale eyes sorry for the crudeness of the motion. It was necessary, though, and I hurried over, still keeping my eyes fixed to the floor and my shoulders slightly stooped. It seemed the appropriate posture, for no one looked twice at me as we both took our seats.

“He’s stolen a diplomat’s horse and run away from the palace,” the bullfrog-woman said, clearly delighted to be the first one to break the news. “Can you believe it?”

“And he’s a traitor. Was going to kill the Emperor in his sleep.”

“I heard it was with poison. Isn’t that right, Jin?”

“Kamiya down at the tea house said no one knows what the plan was.” The bullfrog-woman slapped me in the arm, and it was all I could do not to wince and to look, instead, appropriately shocked and delighted at once at all the spectacular gossip. Kouje stiffened at my side. If this were the palace, that would have been an offense so great, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him from striking her. Here, it was a rite of passage.

I didn’t think I would be able to summon the strength or the camaraderie to slap her back, however.

“But you know what it probably is,” the bullfrog-woman went on. Her three companions nodded, and suddenly we were all bent over the table while the delicious aroma wafting from the bowls of food made my stomach seize up with hunger.

“It’s the Emperor getting rid of him,” a man with a mole on his right cheek confirmed in a whisper.

“It’s been done before,” another man agreed.

The bullfrog-woman drank from a cup of tea with a noisy gulp, then put the coarse little cup back down on the table, obviously satisfied. “I wonder where the prince is now?”

“His retainer’s gone with him,” the man with the mole added. “Loyal to the last, I say, right?” The other two men grunted in agreement, while the bullfrog-woman merely looked smug.

“Whatever the reason,” she said, taking control of the conversation once more, “the Emperor seems to think they’ll be taking the quickest route to Volstov.”

One of the men spat on the floor at the mention of Volstov, which earned a laugh from his companions. Kouje joined in too, after a moment. I couldn’t place what was so odd about the sound at first, until I realized that I had never heard Kouje laugh in such a loud and unfettered fashion before. It was nothing at all like the soft and courtly laughter he permitted himself in my company.

It made me wonder what else of Kouje I didn’t know. For the first time, I was coming to realize that, for someone whose company I’d kept through my entire life, there were great gaps in my knowledge about him.

“Why would they be heading to Volstov?” Kouje asked, his tone full of contempt for the doings of royalty and the suggestion that good decent people wouldn’t be able to fathom them.

The bullfrog-woman shrugged, and nodded toward the man with the mole.

“Shen here had trouble even getting into the village from Hojo last night,” she said, naming one of the main cities, to the south of the capital and facing the water in the direction of Tado. “They’ve set up checkpoints along all the main roads, and they’ve already reinforced the existing checkpoints between prefectures. He says it takes hours to get through now, especially if you’re traveling alone, or worse, with only one companion.”

Shen—the man with the mole—nodded, and took another slurp of his noodles. I held my hands rigidly in my lap, and willed my stomach not to give me away.

“You’d be better off if you had another woman with you, if you don’t mind my saying,” Shen pointed out, looking me up and down in a way I truly didn’t care for. “This one looks as if she’s liable to drop any minute from starvation. She’s not much for conversation either, is she?”

“It’d certainly aid the numbers problem,” said the other man, who must have been Jin. He laughed, slapping his thigh at his own little joke.

“Actually,” Kouje said, that one word so like iron that for a moment the man stopped laughing, and the bullfrog-woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kouje lower his head in contrition. “What I mean to say,” he began again, his words so deferential and so scattered with interruptions that it was all I could do not to stare at him as he cleared his throat and added extra, unnecessary phrases for sheer politeness’ sake, “is that I am hoping to find someone to barter with, that I might prevent her from—as you said—dropping dead of starvation.”

I lifted my head in protest. I was already the subject of gossip in the smallest of road-stop towns. I would have something to say against being discussed like that right to my face.

Shen only laughed, and held up his hands in the sign meant to ward off bad luck. “I didn’t mean anything by it, little miss, and you’ve a pretty enough face when you hold it up that way.”

“I’m here for bartering,” Kouje said. It was a gentle enough reminder, and perhaps I was the only one who could hear the steel behind each word. It wasn’t a threat if it didn’t have to be, but it lingered in the air along with the scent of the noodles and strong, hot tea.

The bullfrog-woman sucked her lower lip in, thinking. I found myself wondering whether or not she would emit a croak, then almost immediately felt contrite.

“It all depends on what you’re looking to sell,” she said at last.

“Some garments,” Kouje told her. “Belonging to a former master of mine.”

Her eyes flashed with amusement. “Stole them, did you?”

Jin shook his head. “Don’t mind her. Old Mayu doesn’t understand that not everyone’s got a closet full of skeletons.”

“Jin, that’s a lie,” she began.

“Just last month, weren’t you trying to convince us all that the paper-hanger who works for Ketano was stealing from him?” Jin asked, laughing.

“And the year before,” Shen chimed in, “when you said that Suzu was in love with a married man one town over?”

I wanted to tell them that Kouje wasn’t the sort of man who would steal things from anyone, let alone his own master, but I was faced with the new and terrifying knowledge that it was not my place. I’d only just begun to grow comfortable with my place as a prince over my most recent birthdays, after the battles in which I’d won my braids, and now I was unlearning each lesson as Kouje had undone each braid.

The idea of having to adapt to another role was almost more than I could bear. I kept my head down.

“Well, what of it?” Old Mayu was sulking now. I could hear it in her throaty, smoke-worn voice. “Mark my words, that’s why she hung herself in the end.”

I wondered if Suzu had been the topic of all their gossip up until I’d fled from the palace. I wondered if anyone would guess at the truth of why she’d done it, or if that elusive thing—the truth—had died along with her.

There was no argument from Jin or Shen, who both seemed to sense that they’d gone too far. It wasn’t the sort of remorse that comes from genuine regret, though, but more a fear of what would happen once Old Mayu had got over sulking and decided she was angry.

“Try the potter,” Old Mayu said to the pair of us. “Down the road from here, next to the inn’s stables. He’s been prospering of late, and his wife’s the sort who’s always bothering him to dress up once in a while. He’ll be your best bet for unloading your garments, stolen or not.”

I lifted my head just in time to see her wink at Kouje.

“Of course if he isn’t interested, you two come right back here and see me. I can’t imagine what I’ll do with only these two for conversation. It’s not every day you meet someone so interesting!”

I didn’t think that Kouje had said all that much, by way of conversation. In fact, most of the conversation had been carried by Old Mayu herself. I thought that perhaps her definition of “interesting” was different from my own.

“Thank you,” Kouje said. He stood, and didn’t wait for me before starting out of the noodle house.

I knew it was just an act, but I’d been caught unawares again, and found myself rushing after him into the light of the street outside. Kouje was standing by the horse, untying the bundle of our clothes. He looked up when I came out, and though he didn’t say anything, there was a penitent look in his eyes.

“What interesting people,” I said, to see if I could make the apology fade. “I’m glad they were so helpful, aren’t you?”

“You did very well,” Kouje said. “I almost lost my temper.”

“Only once or twice,” I said, shading my eyes against the sun and looking down the street, as though that held the secret of what the potter’s house looked like.

“When she touched you…” Kouje began.

“We’d best see the potter,” I said. “Should I stay with the horse?”

Kouje looked down the street, the same as I had, but with a different purpose. My gaze had been curious, but his was challenging and defensive at once. Perhaps, if I looked hard enough, I could see things the way he saw them: most of them threats and all of them gossipmongers.

“You’d best come with me,” he said at last, taking my hand. “News has traveled fast. We can only hope the Emperor’s riders haven’t moved so quickly.”