Shadow Magic

Shadow Magic - By Jaida Jones


CHAPTER ONE

MAMORU

On the seventh and final day of mourning for the loss of the war, my brother Iseul came to my chambers to tell me that our father was dead.

I had been expecting the news for some time. There was ritual ensconced in the hour of his death—this, on the seventh hour of the seventh day—which made it all the more unsurprising to see the truth in my brother’s eyes, lining his mouth and hardening his jaw. The news was no shock to us. Our father had taken his life in apology for our defeat at the hands of the Volstovics, as we always knew he would; all we could do now was join him or suffer his legacy. For either of these, we were equally prepared.

My brother came with black robes and no kohl to line his eyes, rather than with knives of ceremony. I saw then that his decision had been made. In this as in all things, I would follow the path my brother had chosen for us.

Outside the window, just past the quiet gardens of raked sand and contemplation, loomed the broken roof of the magicians’ dome, like the rounded edge of a broken sky as seen from above, where the gods once sat and watched over us in dominion. It was far enough away that it looked almost like a shattered bowl overset, or a forsaken cup of tea dropped by clumsy hands. What remained of the dome was charred. Here and there the blue stone sparkled, but it was no more than feeble protest in the bleaching sunlight.

The destruction of the dome had been a particularly crushing blow to our people, though perhaps not the one the Volstovics intended. We were not a society based heavily on magic; war had forced our hand in advancing the skill of our magicians. And though in later years the dome became a perfect gathering place for the magicians, it had first been built as a temple of worship for our gods. Its demolition had been a huge blow to the morale of the people, as a symbol more than a practical structure.

Iseul pushed his fingers through his hair, each heavy braid a commendation of his prowess as our father’s general. He was on the verge of pacing, but practice kept him fearsomely still.

“The delegation arrives tomorrow,” he said. “We shall meet them as planned.”

The entire city must have known by then—or would soon know—of my father the emperor’s death. From somewhere deep in the green garden just below my window, I heard the sudden throaty wail of a songbird, trembling upon the air. The sound echoed the faint trembling of my brother’s fists, and I averted my eyes.

The dew had barely left the leaves.

“We’ll meet them as though nothing has changed,” I said, with the hint of a question.

Iseul’s eyes flashed in anger. “Nothing has changed,” he insisted.

I sank to my knees before him at once when the look in his eyes betrayed the lie. Everything had changed. Our father was dead and my brother the emperor in his stead, and I had shown grave disrespect to my new lord by neglecting to bow to him; shock had overwhelmed all memory of protocol. I struggled with my shame and could not lift my eyes.

“Mamoru,” Iseul said, in place of how he had once addressed me. Brother. “Do not do this. Rise.”

“I swear to serve you,” I said, instead of obeying him. This old custom was more important even than brotherhood. We were no longer two princes, and I had wasted too much time already without acknowledging his new place as emperor of the Ke-Han. “In seven ways I shall serve you. In seven ways I shall offer my life to you. In seven ways, if it is in my power, I shall die beneath your blade, as your blade, for your blade. May your reign be prosperous and long.” Then, closing my eyes, I strayed from the words I’d known since before I could form them with my own mouth, the prayer with which I was born. “May the people love you as I do,” I whispered. “Iseul—”

My brother held up his hand, fingers spread wide. As always, it was a small sign, but the shame I felt was assuaged by the openness of the gesture. If my brother’s fingers had been all together, I would have sensed his anger at my actions, but I had never given my brother cause to close his hand and his heart against me.

“Enough,” he said, his voice cold. He must have already been preparing, mentally, for the arrival of the delegates. “Rise.”

I did as he’d bidden me. It was as things would be between us from then on, and it was as things had always been, for I respected my brother’s elder position just as I loved him, and it stilled the quaking in my chest a little to know that not everything had changed.

“What—” I held my tongue, breathing the way I’d been taught to hide the uncertainty in my voice, my movements. “What happens now, Iseul?”

He shook his head, looking out over the gardens as though expecting to find some answer within their soothing patterns. Of course, my brother was a man who needed no such reassurance. I myself felt an unbidden longing. The sand had no need to worry as to what direction to take, what shape, what form. There was a plan in mind for the sand, and it had only to follow. My brother and I had no such luck.

I fiddled with the smooth, soft fabric of my overlong sleeves, trying not to seem as though I was waiting on my brother’s response. Surely the new responsibility was weighing heavily on his mind, and he would have a great many things to discuss with the warlords, our own diplomats, before the delegation from Volstov arrived tomorrow. The proper thing, I knew, was to beg my leave, expecting to be informed of what my new role within the negotiations would be at a later hour, when my brother had taken his time to sort it out. Knowing this, however, did not preclude my stubborn desire to stay nearby. After all, with our father dead, Iseul was all I had of family, and I the same to him—for even as the elder prince, my father had not yet seen fit to find my brother a wife. Now he was emperor, but still my brother, and I would not leave until I’d found some sign that I’d not lost him to dark thoughts of what was to come. But he would not look at me.

“Iseul,” I began, and felt reassurance opening like a blossom within me. It seemed then that I knew, from some unseen source of certainty, that everything would be healed in time for my brother and for me. For our people, for all the Ke-Han. We would put our heads together, Iseul and I, along with my father’s old advisors; and we would manage the task set to us as best we could. I hadn’t yet grown past the childish notion that there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish together. And indeed, even our father had been proud to claim that Iseul’s strengths balanced against mine so fittingly that together we made a nearly invincible pair. Today was going to be onerous for him, and I could not expect reassurances—rather it was my place now to reassure him, in his new station, for if I did not support our new emperor with all my being, then what man could be expected to do so?

We would find ourselves within this new rhythm once we’d settled into this new way of being. It was only a matter of time.

My brother’s face turned toward mine, and then to the door as Kouje cleared his throat just beyond, filling the silence my brother had left in the wake of my appeals.

“Your pardon,” Iseul said to me, sounding distant somehow, but how could I blame him? He moved with a steadiness of purpose that I longed to imitate, and slid open the door on the kneeling figure before us.

“My lord Emperor,” Kouje began, proving that news traveled faster among the servants than I’d have believed possible, and that my brother’s decision was known now throughout the great-house, if not the palace proper. “Word has been sent that the delegation from Volstov is set to arrive rather—earlier—than we anticipated.”

“Earlier,” my brother repeated.

He did not need to phrase it as a question; it was Kouje’s duty to anticipate and respond in kind.

“We believe they may be here in a matter of hours, your Supreme Grace.”

It was then that I envied Kouje’s propriety in keeping his face averted. This way, he did not have to see my brother’s expression at that moment, terrible as the gods’ fire.

“Gather the warlords,” said my brother, in a voice I didn’t recognize. It was a voice that had commanded our warriors in the mountains. “We will hold counsel in the green room.”

Kouje rose, clad all in mourning black. The sight of it seemed to remind my brother of something, for he lifted his hand—an emperor making his decision. I scarcely had time to marvel at the completeness of my brother’s transformation, as though he’d been living all his life on its cusp.

“Take the prince to be dressed,” Iseul commanded. “The seven days have passed, and the delegation must find us prepared to receive them with all due hospitality.”

Kouje bowed, though not so low as to find himself on the floor once more, and turned to me with a waiting expectation I’d come to know well.

“Iseul,” I said. I was quiet enough, but I found myself unable to keep my silence entirely. It would have been different, in the company of servants, or the other warlords; but before his death Kouje’s father had served ours as Kouje did me. While he was not of distinguished blood, he was certainly trustworthy—too trustworthy, in fact, for he had forgiven me many an error in decorum over the years. I didn’t have my brother’s facility in assuming the responsibilities of a prince, nor could I possibly imagine the weight on his shoulders now that he was emperor. Still, we were brothers. I could offer him comfort, if nothing else. “We shall persevere.”

We had no other choice beyond that, save to perish in the attempt. But I left unsaid the second half of the old warrior’s idiom, knowing it would only make my brother frown and Kouje regret teaching me such things in the first place.

“Go with Kouje,” said my brother. His voice betrayed nothing but an iron calm that so reminded me of our father that for a moment I was overcome with a sharp awareness of how things were to change between us. “Then… return to your chambers. I will send for you.”

I bowed low to my brother, the emperor. Despite his remonstrations to the contrary, it never occurred to me to act in any other way.

We parted ways without further talk, and I found myself relieved for the silence. My brother never had such troubles as I with keeping his silence or maintaining the peace of his spirit; I was always at war with myself, my father had once said, and it seemed a quality I might never entirely lose.

Kouje, too, said nothing. There were no lamps lit, nor were there servants moving swiftly and surely in preparation. The halls seemed like the winding passageways of a warrior’s tomb.

Luckily, there were tasks immediately to hand that would serve as ample distraction from this unfortunate comparison. While Kouje waited just outside the door, I slipped into the silent, hot bath that had been drawn for me, holding my breath as I sank deep inside. The water was hot enough that I felt it might scald all my skin from my bones—a clean, new birth.

I knew with certainty that my brother had been strong enough not to shed a single tear for the father we had both lost—and not only our father but our lord emperor as well. He had died the only noble death left for him, and though I mourned the victory for which we had all hoped, I could do nothing more than be a loyal son to him.

The bath was swift, and the incense already burning when I stepped out. Servants came to dry me, twisting dry the braids of honor in my hair. This, for the victory at Dragon Bone Pass. This, for the victory of the tunnels. This, for the victory of the forsaken men. This, for the victory of the auspicious moon.

I bore no scars from those battles. I was a general, a second son. I rode no horse, but did the best I could to keep the men serving me from dying. In the later months of the war, when the fighting had grown too fierce for an unexpected general such as me, the council of warlords had recommended my return to the palace. In place of earning more braids, I had attempted to set up facilities of care for those displaced by the war. It was a necessary task, and I took great pleasure in helping those who’d been caught living too closely to the Cobalts, but I was no warrior.

I imagined that I would always bear the shame of my own shortcomings held against my brother’s fiercer nature were it not for something my father said to me, less than a week before the dragons’ final assault on the capital.

“The people’s needs are never so simple as they seem,” he said, taking his favorite seat in the pavilion, built overlooking the koi pond. “Even I, with two such hands as these, could never hope to meet them all at once. My sons will not suffer with such difficulties. Your brother protects what land we have, while you provide for our subjects. Just as we cannot provide if the land is taken from us, so the protection becomes meaningless if you squander what gifts may be gleaned from it.”

My father had never been one to waste words on meaningless praise. He had never spoken to me thus before, and I sought to memorize his words even as I watched the multicolored fish swarming over and past one another like brightly colored veils, orange and white, blue and gold.

I had not returned to the pavilion since the assault on our city, but it bolstered my spirit somewhat to know that the fish would remember our conversation. That though I could no longer ask my father for confirmation of his words, there was some creature left who had been witness to them.

The women combed back what was left loose of my hair, leaving the warrior’s braids to hang tight and wet over the left shoulder. That configuration meant I was still little more than a child. There was jade in my hair, jade pierced through my ears, jade hung round my neck and clasped around my wrists. Yet it was white jade, for only the emperor could wear the green. I wondered at the sight my brother would present to the retainers of our house, and to the seven closest houses beneath us, when he stepped out into the sunlight to greet the diplomats from Volstov. I wouldn’t see him until they did.

I hoped they would tremble at the sight, proud as our father would have been. I hoped they would feel shame, or at least the barest whisper of terror.

Pride welled up in my heart, bitter and fiercely strong. Now that we were at peace, I no longer wore the robes of a warrior; nevertheless, the crest of my father’s house was woven into the fabric of my robes, the same as it was woven into the robes my brother wore.

I could almost hear my father say: This, too, is a warrior’s duty.

The servants fell away from me, all but one, who dropped to his knees and slid the door open. Kouje was waiting for me in the hall, bowing low, so that I couldn’t see his face.

I didn’t have to.

“My lord,” he said, “all is ready.”

It was then that we heard the sudden commotion from without. From where we were on the eastern side of the palace, just above the courtyard, the sound of the carriages arriving was harsh and jarring. Kouje did not even lift his head, and though the servants scattered, I held myself in place and checked my desire to run to the window and see them as they were, invaders from a distant land arriving under the colors of peace.

My hands trembled.

“My lord,” Kouje said again.

I straightened myself as my brother would have done. The trick, I knew, was to rein yourself in as you would a wild horse. A man had two hearts, one public and one private. The latter held all his truths while the former was more easily steered and more easily broken.

“The emperor is waiting,” I said. “Come.”





CAIUS

We had already reached the Ke-Han gardens, but still I had no idea who had decided that General Alcibiades should be among the delegation of peace to the capital. Presumably it must have been the Esar who made that choice, as he was the supreme ruler of all Volstov’s subjects, but I had never known the Esar to exhibit even the slightest sense of humor. Such peculiar capriciousness simply wasn’t his style, and while I was personally amused, I was also bewildered. This suggested that there must have been some other element in his decision-making process, which meant that Alcibiades had some hidden quality that did not become apparent even when one shared a carriage with him from one capital city to another.

So as yet, I could see no reason beyond accident or my own good luck for such an unexpected anomaly to have occurred right here, and in my carriage of all places.

In short, I was delighted, although I suspected the other members of our party did not see eye to eye with me on the matter. There were nine of us altogether, seemingly gathered from all corners of Volstov. Representing the magicians were myself, of course, alongside the charming Wildgrave Ozanne, and Marcelline, whom I’d met during our tiresome sojourn in the Basquiat. The two of us would have so much catching up to do, since the last time we’d spoken we’d both been somewhat under the weather.

Alcibiades, I supposed, was part of some sort of misguided military representation that included two lieutenants whose names I hadn’t bothered learning. They seemed like dreadfully boring sorts, in any case. We had a scholar by the name of Marius—another survivor from our little study group at the Basquiat—and bringing up the rear were Margrave Josette and our leader Fiacre, who I could only assume were both here to represent good common sense.

In order to somewhat soften the blow that the Ke-Han were the conquered nation—and, I presumed, in order to avoid causing an international incident wherever possible, since most of us were quite sick of war—we had retired our more garish colors. None of us wore red, the Esar’s royal color and favored for generations among the court, except as subtle reminders—hints of satin lining, perhaps, or the stripes on one general’s regulation jacket. We did this to show respect, if not deference, for we had conquered the people across the Cobalts despite how nearly they had come to conquering us.

The Ke-Han much preferred the color blue. Again, I was delighted, for blue suited my complexion much better than Volstov’s overly assertive red. During my exile, I wore blue at every possible occasion, but one couldn’t be so rash before the Esar himself. This diplomatic mission was my opportunity, therefore, to dress as I pleased, and I was one of many such peacocks trussed up in conciliatory colors—though thankfully I wasn’t one of the awkward soldiers adjusting their tight collars or the red-faced magicians frowning out the windows of their carriage.

Rather, I was dressed all in splendid midnight blue, though it was accented with the aforementioned discreet red lining, and I was thrilled to have the chance to dress so. Also, it appeared to be causing Alcibiades great displeasure, firstly because he was my lone carriage companion, and secondly, because he himself was dressed entirely in his red uniform.

When first we’d met—weeks ago during that unpleasant period of quarantine in our own Basquiat—I admit I found him somewhat akin in coloring and in shagginess to the long-haired golden dogs that were favored by the Esarina a hundred years ago, and could thus be found in every single portraiture of that period, slobbering all over everything and looking wildly pleased with themselves.

Alcibiades, however, never looked wildly pleased with himself, or indeed with anything. In the carriage, he simply looked wildly red. When I broached the subject with him—quite tactfully I thought—I was met with something resembling a horse’s snort and a brusque, “I’m Volstovic, not a bastion-bloody Ke-Han.”

I liked the man already. It was at some point between Thremedon and Ke-Han land that I decided we would be friends, although I was yet uncertain how to make this equally obvious to Alcibiades himself.

By the time we reached the Ke-Han gardens, which were both opulent and refined at once—nothing at all like the wildly overgrown greenhouses with their vibrant colors and abuse of perfectly good tulips that one is subject to in Thremedon—the strict formality of the place made me realize that there would hardly be any time for such diversions as friendship. The gardens flanked us on either side, deceptively tranquil. The palace itself rose before us, tiered roofs dark blue and black. And, standing still as little statues, there were at least fifty retainers in the bleached white courtyard, stark and square and rather like a box.

Their faces betrayed nothing. They might just as well have been statues for all their eyes revealed.

Our carriages erupted into their world with the stomping and whinnying of horses, the commotion of wheels on the sand, and the immediate chaos that began as nine delegates from Volstov stepped out of their carriages all at once.

Fiacre kept his composure best, stepping neatly from his conveyance only to turn right around and offer a hand to his carriage companion, Margrave Josette. She declined the gesture, stepping down and stirring up a delicate cloud of white dust with the prim swish of her skirts. Next, and nearest to us, was Wildgrave Ozanne, who was busily adjusting the length of his sleeves as Marcelline pursed her lips next to him, looking relatively unimpressed with the whole affair.

“Hello, my dear,” I murmured as an aside.

“Greylace,” she said, looking wary but nonetheless unsurprised.

On our other side were Lieutenants Casimiro and Valery, their names coming to me in a fortuitous coincidence with Alcibiades’ grunted greetings. They looked very uncomfortable in their new uniforms, especially Casimiro, the larger of the two. He kept glancing to one side at Alcibiades, as though to somehow divine the mystery of how he’d managed to wear his own reds across the border unscathed.

Lastly, and quite alone, that fortunate creature, came Marius, a scholar at the ’Versity as well as a magician associated with the Basquiat. In fact, now that I counted our party, the numbers were overwhelmingly in the favor of magicians, myself included. This meant that the only men without Talent were Casimiro and Valery, though Alcibiades’ Talent was as good as nonexistent for all he used it.

What a curious group. We seemed more like a circus than Volstov’s best—the soldiers looking like clowns, and the magicians from the Basquiat even more so. For a man as uncomfortable around magicians as the Esar was, he’d certainly chosen a great number of them to represent his interests. Or perhaps he merely considered us expendable, should any trouble arise.

And amidst the chaos, there was Alcibiades, a bright red thumb in the noonday heat.

I drew up close to him, the silk of my blue jacket—cut especially after the Ke-Han style—rustling about me.

“One of these men is rather unlike the rest,” I murmured, taking his arm.

He stiffened, as if I had just produced a dead mouse from his pocket. His eyes were alert, and I decided then that he must be far more intelligent than the fashionably long-haired, golden dog that I too had once owned as a pet, to see what all the fuss was about; though her eyes had been very kind, they had never once been what any man might label “alert.”

“All the same to me,” he muttered in an undertone, which was more of a reply than I’d got to many of my observations during the long carriage ride. I felt especially heartened.

He was alert, but not particularly perceptive, then, for there were certainly differences in the men ranged before us, close together as though in defensive battle formation. Surely it wouldn’t be prudent to spend all my time among the Ke-Han thinking in terms of our warring past, though, and I dismissed the thought as swiftly as it had come. Our men and women of Volstov began to arrange themselves close as well, as though they’d been prodded into a showing of proper etiquette by the Ke-Han delegation arrayed before us.

We didn’t manage to stand nearly as straight or as still as they did, though.

We’d been counseled before coming over, by three separate professors from the ’Versity no less, that the culture of the Ke-Han was one deeply fixed in ceremony and that our most royal presence the Esar would be vastly disappointed if any of our number derailed the course of diplomacy simply by erring in decorum. Subsequently, our preparation for the journey had included an intensive course in ceremony, which I had thoroughly enjoyed. There was a certain grace and purpose of reason about all their cold and calm rules that I found quite fascinating. It was a shame I’d found no one to share my enthusiasm with, but that would soon change once I’d brought Alcibiades around. It would be more difficult, perhaps, than training a dog, but then I was accustomed to such challenges.

One of the Ke-Han diplomats stepped forward—not the one I’d singled out, but the one standing just over his shoulder. He wore his hair tied back in the thick-braided style of their generals, though I hadn’t had the proper time to study the significance of each plait. Indeed, it was a shame my own hair was not quite long enough yet to adopt a similar style, for I thought myself rather in need of such a change, and surely it would be a most flattering display of solidarity. The diplomat clasped his hands and bowed low to our arrival party. Unlike our own clothing in varying patterns of the same shade, the men of the Ke-Han were dressed in many different colors, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Each, however, wore a sash of midnight blue that denoted their patriot status in what I felt was a very tasteful and stylish display. Perhaps I could speak with Alcibiades about doing the same, though perhaps that conversation would be better saved for later, once I had discerned the best possible way of phrasing it. I could be quite convincing when I put my mind to it.

“Welcome,” said the diplomat, speaking as though he could not quite wrap his tongue around our thick Volstovic vowels. The Ke-Han language was quick and darting, quite musical and lovely in its own way; but it was on conqueror’s terms that we had come, and even on foreign soil it was to be our men who dictated the terms of the treaty.

I was a velikaia, and even though my Talent lay in creating visions and not reading minds, I could still sense the animosity behind each impassive face.

“We have prepared rooms for your arrival,” the diplomat continued, slow but certain of his wording. “Shortly we will dine, then begin our talks.”

Some of the men seemed surprised at this, though I myself was only too grateful not to be leaping headfirst from carriage to conference without even so much as a hot bath in between. Whatever could be said of the Ke-Han—and I was certain I’d heard the bulk of it in recent years—their hospitality was a marvelous thing. At my side, Alcibiades snorted—though whether it was out of some specific affront or the burden of having to bear any length of time among the Ke-Han, I couldn’t say. Knowing him only as well as I did, though, I could imagine that he’d been eager to dive into the talks straightaway. Perhaps his ideal would be for us to have been finished by nightfall, though among our number there were a great many men who enjoyed the sound of their own voices a little too much for that to be a possibility.

The diplomat clapped his hands, and into the courtyard filed a line of men and women in robes the color of ripe persimmon. They bore lanterns and kept their eyes averted to the floor. Like the diplomats, they maintained a stony silence of expression that I would have admired were it not for the creeping loneliness of the thing. Surely, outside the confines of diplomacy, it would not be amiss upon occasion to express a human emotion, and I would have said as much to Alcibiades if for a moment I thought he might appreciate the irony in my words.

We were going to have such high times, he and I.





ALCIBIADES

There were seventeen ways to bow to a Ke-Han statesman, and I didn’t know a single one of them. Which, by my way of thinking, was just fine, because I wasn’t bowing to any Ke-Han, statesman or no.

The Esar had his reasons for sending me along with the rest of the diplomats, no doubt because I knew Ke-Han ground pretty well, and I suppose I was there as backup in case a sticky situation got stickier and there wasn’t anything to do about it besides reach for the sword. I guessed it was also to do with my Talent, more like a disease to my thinking, but there wasn’t really much I could do about it now. The Esar’d said that it was more likely to be useful than not, having a magician no one knew about in along with the rest of the diplomats, and I couldn’t exactly argue with him on that—much as I hated thinking of myself as a magician. There were enough of those already, and I didn’t exactly see how sending me was a big secret when more than half the people along with us had been stuck in the Basquiat right alongside me during the magician’s plague. Caius Greylace, Marcy, and Marius had even been in on the little group we’d put together to try and figure it all out—before Margrave Royston’s child-bride farm boy had gone and done it for us, that was.

Anyway, point was, it was no big secret that I had a Talent, except to the Ke-Han, and I guessed that was probably the point.

There were other military men there besides me, at least—Lieutenants Casimiro and Valery—who’d somehow got roped into this sorry state of affairs the same as I had. Casimiro was a big fellow who talked too much, and Valery was a little man who didn’t talk ever, but we respected each other well enough to stay out of each other’s hair, and that was good enough for me.

That didn’t mean I had to like this arrangement, though. It was uncomfortable days of riding in a carriage to come to a place I didn’t want to set foot in, to put on a smile I didn’t want to wear on my face, and to bow to men who’d just as soon have cut me down if everything had worked out a little differently.

It was too short a period of time to go forgiving an entire country for fighting so underhanded that they almost won. There were some tactics you never forgave.

I didn’t like their blank expressions, or the way their women hopped-to quick as soldiers might’ve, just to serve the enemy. That was the sort of behavior that made a man wonder what the women he knew back home would’ve done if the coin had fallen to the other side. Everyone in the Ke-Han palace was too f*cking polite.

At least I hadn’t slapped on enemy colors just to keep them happy. I could feel every last one of them staring at me, but I wasn’t playing any games or crawling into bed with an enemy I’d only just got the better of. This was Volstov’s victory. It was bad enough being sent there to hammer out the terms of a more lasting treaty; I didn’t have to make it worse by dressing like them and pretending I didn’t hate it just as much as they did.

Their whole palace was a tricky affair designed to be treacherous, its narrow hallways winding around each other like the individual threads of a spider’s web and its walls made of paper so thin you could see shadows passing before them, in the rooms hidden just on the other side. Whispers chased us when we got too close, and now and then the sound of a woman’s ghostly laughter followed close behind. On top of that, with all of us feeling like exhibits at the zoo, there were mirrors slanted against the ceiling, fitted into every corner where simple lamps should have been. Any sort of light you wanted came from your own personal tight-mouthed Ke-Han groveling bastard, who followed you around like he’d stab you in the back as soon as light the way for you.

We were esteemed guests, all right—so esteemed we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or do anything without having someone watching us. Well, I told myself, if they wanted to assign some poor fool the job of listening to me snore and being privy to when and where and how much I shat, that was fine by me. Chances were it’d be worse for him than it would be for me. It was a waste of everyone’s time, and I wasn’t bothering myself any by thinking about it.

“Do you know,” said Caius Greylace, coming up on me unannounced like some kind of winter ailment, “that the mirrors show you everything happening all along the halls? How clever!”

I wasn’t in the mood to praise Ke-Han ingenuity like some fat country noble might praise his favorite spaniel. Chances were, this Caius creature would get bored soon enough and find someone else to bother; it didn’t matter who, so long as it wasn’t me. I didn’t like spaniels.

“Looks like,” I said.

“I suppose they must have an awful lot of trouble with assassination,” Caius went on. He was dressed half like a woman and half like a lunatic, breezing through the halls behind our lamp-bearer, the fabric of whatever it was he was wearing swishing all the way. “Or perhaps they’re simply inbred. I hear it causes paranoia in noble bloodlines as old and as carefully guarded as theirs.”

I didn’t say anything to that at all.

We were all split up by where we slept—a fact I didn’t enjoy for a second. And I would have made it clear at the time I realized it, too, if Caius hadn’t exclaimed over a peacock wandering across the courtyard, effectively ending all conversation on the matter of lodgings.

What really set all the warning bells off in my head was the way we were put here and there, and most of us halfway across the palace from one another, with real careful regard paid to status and nothing else. Josette, Fiacre, and Wildgrave Ozanne were all quartered together in the West Wing of the palace, for example, whereas Casi and Val were somewhere in the south nearer to the stables and the menagerie. I hadn’t even seen Marcy and Marius since we’d arrived, which tickled me the wrong way. I didn’t like a second of it. I didn’t like it especially because the whole East Wing of the palace, which was where I’d be spending bastion-only-knew how much time, stank of some particular incense that burned my throat and my eyes. It was real distracting, and I didn’t doubt that they were doing it on purpose. Ke-Han was made up of tricky bastards.

“In any case,” Caius continued, moving neatly around a corner, then pausing to wait for me to join him, “I believe we’re staying above the… eastern gardens? Is it the eastern gardens? The peacock certainly was a distraction. I wonder if we can have one brought in especially for entertainment. They’re very rare, but I would so like a closer look.”

“Heard the Ke-Han eat them,” I ground out.

The servant leading us paused for a moment, but it was only because we’d fallen behind and it was his duty to wait for us. I picked up my pace, and this time it was Caius who hurried to keep alongside me, rustling all the way.

“Eat peacocks?” he asked. One of his eyes was queerly discolored, and being looked at by him felt like you were having a conversation with two different people, and both of them equally insane.

“Right,” I said. “Eat peacocks.”

I’d heard the rumors about Caius Greylace, the same as any. Kept as the Esar’s pet lapdog practically since birth, for his Talent in visions and his lack of qualms about using them to get information. He tortured anyone who possessed information and quite a few people who didn’t, if the rumors were anything to go by. Then, because he was young and wild, he went after some other poor bastard at court—the reason changed depending on who you asked, but the result was always the same—and drove him mad without blinking an eye. Well, not even the Esar could overlook that sort of thing, so he was banished quicker than a flash, exiled at fourteen and not brought back until three years later, when everyone’d been recalled for the final push. Just before we’d all gone and got slammed by that blasted plague.

He didn’t look so mad as they made him out to be, though—in fact, he just looked small and very pale, with an odd habit of pursing his lips between sentences—but I set no store by appearances. They didn’t mean as much as the deeds a man did.

His were a little queerer than most, but then we’d all done worse than we might’ve wanted, during the war.

“I doubt that’s true,” Caius rallied swiftly, adjusting one of his sleeves. “I believe you’re being truculent.”

The servant stopped a second time, saving me from having to make any kind of reply, and hooked the lamp in a sconce by another of the Ke-Han’s many useless paper-square doors. They didn’t have any locks, and for the servant to let us in, he had to go through a complicated dance of kneeling, sliding the door open, and finishing off, for no reason I could see, by bowing so low his forehead was pressed to the ground.

The whole thing made me uncomfortable.

Caius, on the other hand, seemed right at home. I guessed it had something to do with how he was used to being exiled—and maybe being sent to nanny a conquered nation was a step up from where he’d been last time. It wasn’t my place to judge.

The servant didn’t budge.

“Well,” Caius said, “either they have grossly underestimated our number, or we’re in the same room.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for us to do something,” I replied.

There was no telling if the servant spoke our language or not, and I was pretty sure neither of us spoke his. Chances were we could stand there all night doing nothing while he got intimate with the floor or maybe started kissing our boots for good measure, and I’d never get my chance to sit alone for even a f*cking minute, just piecing things together inside my own head and figuring out how it was I’d landed here, when all I’d wanted was to go home.

The war was over, but I was still surrounded by Ke-Han. The world was too funny like that sometimes, only I couldn’t see my way toward laughing along with it.

“Ridiculous,” I snapped, and reached for the lamp myself.

The servant looked up as if to protest, but then scrambled quickly away, bowing his head like his life depended on it. Maybe it did; I didn’t know. The lamp, even though it looked light enough for something made out of rice paper, was surprisingly heavy, but not half so heavy as a Volstov blade. I thrust it inside the room, which lit up bright as day.

Everything—the strange flat bed, the canopy hung above it from the ceiling, the short tables, the pillows, the screen standing in the far corner—was some shade or another of blue.

Next to me, Caius began to laugh—a gentle, curious sound that reminded me of the whispers that’d followed us all the way there.

“Yours must be the next room over,” he said. “And what is that lovely scent?”

Nothing was going to get done if we kept at it, bandying words around like we were already in talks with the statesmen themselves. From the direction the servant was bowing and scraping in, it seemed as though Caius had guessed right about where my rooms were. Without saying anything about the incense—which was like as not going to turn my eyes as red as my coat by morning and do worse to my throat—I got inside my own quarters, slid the door shut hard, and wished to bastion I was anywhere but where I was.

At least my room wasn’t so much blue as it was turquoise green, but I got the picture clear enough.

I was alone finally, so I could unbutton my collar, and there were lamps in the room at least, thank bastion, which were tricky dangling oil-and-wick affairs that took some coaxing to get themselves lit. But they weren’t going to get the best of me, not when I’d lit fires out of less and trickier besides. I got a couple of them going, shadows dancing across the walls whenever I moved this way or that. Mostly, it was just dark, because apparently the Ke-Han, with all their inventing, hadn’t seen fit to invent windows.

Maybe they just didn’t like looking out at their ruined city. For that, I didn’t blame them.

In the next room over, I could hear the sound of water being run. There were some men who couldn’t stand even a little grit on their skin, and I guessed that Caius Greylace was one of those. I didn’t think there was much time for a bath, and I didn’t much want to wrestle with the tub, either, which was round and half-set into the floor and hidden by a standing screen.

No, as far as I could see, there was nothing for it but to wait.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anywhere to sit, just a few large, seating pillows grouped together in the corners, and the bed, which wasn’t more than a pallet as far as I could see, complete with the most bastion-awful-looking pillow I’d ever seen. At least, I thought it was a pillow. It might’ve been some weird Ke-Han torture device. Whatever it was, I wasn’t sleeping on it—it was no more than a glorified slab of wood. No doubt royalty got a proper bed and pillow, but this was good enough for us Volstovics. I was sure it was just their way of thumbing their noses at us, a good little dig at the victors. Sneaky all over, that was the Ke-Han for you. Well, I was going to ask for some proper chairs.

Aside from that, there were the bath and the screen, and a low, long table and desk, and then something I guessed had to be a chair for lack of anything else it could be. It looked like a crescent moon, made all of black wood, polished so bright I thought for a minute it might’ve been metal.

It didn’t look like a room to live in. It looked more like a room for getting bowed to in, and if there was one feeling I’d learned to hate in the past few minutes, it was being bowed to.

On top of all that, there was only the one door, which didn’t settle my nerves any. Part of the wood on the wall that joined my room to Caius Greylace’s looked different, so there might have been a sliding panel.

And that was it.

My things were coming up later, but I hadn’t brought with me half as much as some of the others. To my way of thinking, this wasn’t some holiday. It was business, the Esar’s business, and I was there to serve him, not take in the sights or dress myself up like a game bird on the table.

So maybe I was predisposed not to enjoy myself, but this was enemy territory. And would continue to be until we signed more than a few provisionary treaties about islands hundreds of miles from here and dragon parts that were barely more than scrap metal now.

I was just about to break my chair down into something more comfortable when the strange panel of wood I’d noticed before slid open, nice and smooth. The Ke-Han kept their doors well oiled, which was something to note, in the service of a silence that got under my skin and stayed there.

“What in bastion are you doing?” I demanded, ready to use my chair as a weapon. It was better suited for that, just the right amount of heavy, and fitted with sharp corners at the ends.

“Are you going to hit me with that?” Caius Greylace, fresh out of a bath and smelling like roses, was standing in the open space; light from behind him poured through into my dimly lit room, and steam, too. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or terrified.”

I put the chair down. “Is something the matter?”

“Yes,” Caius said. “Something dire. Something dreadful.”

“Well?”

“I’ve no idea what you’re going to be wearing tonight,” he went on smoothly, brushing damp, pale hair out of his eyes.

“Red,” I snapped, eyeing him warily. “Why in bastion d’you want to know that?”

“No, no,” he said, waving his hand about. “Of course you’ll be wearing red; I ascertained that earlier, in the carriage. I meant what style of garment.”

“Style?” I repeated.

He gave me a look like he thought I was the insane idiot of us two, which made me wonder if I hadn’t been right in the first place when I was still thinking he was a Ke-Han assassin. I should have hit him with the chair. “Style,” he said. “Of garment. That you will be wearing. Tonight. During the festivities. In our honor. Are you suffering from some sort of postwar mental deficiency? I hear it plagues old soldiers something dreadful.”

“I’m going to be wearing red,” I repeated.

“Are you going to be wearing that?” he asked.

I figured he meant my jacket, which was fine as far as I could see, and I bristled. “Served me well enough during the war,” I ground out.

“Yes, I’m sure it did, by the look of it,” he said. “Well, if you insist. I’m not entirely sure I have anything that will match even remotely, but I suppose I shall have to do the best I can under the circumstances.”

“Best you can,” I said.

“Under the circumstances,” he concluded.

“Right,” I said. “Except—we’re matching?”

I was starting to realize that all the stories about Caius Greylace I’d heard from disreputable and reputable sources alike—about how he was seventeen different kinds of cracked, about how his parents had just as good as let wolves raise him, about how you couldn’t be near him without getting the queer feeling that you were riding the center of some wild f*cking storm—had been truths, all of them. Mostly I got that from the way he was looking at me, all uneven, because of the unevenness of his eyes.

As if he could read my thoughts—and maybe he could; I didn’t know much about that kind of thorny Talent—he pushed some hair over the bad eye, the left one, and set to examining his nails.

“Of course we’re matching,” he said. “If we’re to arrive together.”

“This isn’t dolls and houses,” I muttered.

“Oh, no,” he said, offering me a sharp-toothed smile. “It’s so much better.”





KOUJE

I was a boy when my own father died, younger than either of the princes, but better prepared, since his had been a long-fought battle with illness.

Before his condition worsened, he often took me to the river while my mother slept, her face grown thin and weary with caring for him. He towered over me, then and forever, since I never had the years in which to grow and surpass him.

“Look, Kouje,” he said to me, one large hand placed against my shoulder, his voice ragged with the cough that had taken root in his chest. “See how the river flows ever onward, pouring all it has into the distant great ocean?”

I was still young, and more interested in the sunburnt autumn leaves or the toy boats bobbing cheerfully in the current. Nevertheless, I loved my father. What was more, it was my duty to listen when he spoke.

“Our family has served the Emperor for countless proud years,” he continued. There was more gray than black in his beard, though his hair remained dark as ever, his jaw cut sharp and proud. “When I am gone, you will be sworn to his youngest son.”

My father always looked out at the river. Never at me.

I had not understood then—as I came to in later years—that my father’s message to me was a gift. In his own way, he tried to tell me that the best servant is as the river, patiently giving over everything in its body to the greater ocean. After some time, I came to understand that it was not a simple man’s will that governed this balance but nature itself. It was thus my duty and my nature to watch over Mamoru, the youngest prince, and serve our great Emperor in this fashion. I did this, to the best of my abilities, since the day my lord Mamoru was born, twenty-five years ago. At the time, I was no more than seven.

Then, sudden and violent as all things in war, matters changed.

It was not a cataclysmic change, though many would have argued the fact. When the Emperor took his own life for honor, it was a subtler change, like a shifting of weight that came over the palace where before everything had been well balanced. Our lord Iseul was of course the rightful heir to his father’s legacy, and any man with an eye for strategy could see that it was perhaps not the worst time for him to ascend to the throne. For despite our losses at the hands of the Volstov, the eldest prince had gained much respect among the people for his cunning as a general of war. If anyone could lift us from the depths of our shame and defeat, it would surely be the Emperor’s firstborn son, who was now Emperor himself. Iseul was young enough yet to begin his own era but old enough to have been tested as a warlord and found capable.

It was a better chance at rebuilding than any one man among the Ke-Han could have hoped for.

It had shattered my prince to lose his father in ways that it had not shattered Iseul. But then, that was only to be expected. Of the two, Mamoru was the more tender.

“Ready enough,” Mamoru said, from the depths of his room, “if not prepared.”

“My lord,” I said, bowing low. It was a game we often played before parties or banquets—though it was habit this time, and not youthful nervousness, which compelled the exchange.

The jade ornaments in my lord Mamoru’s hair clacked softly against one another as he stepped past me, the sound of them almost hidden in the hustle and bustle of servants rushing up and down the hall, gossiping with one another over the distant, uncultured thud of foreign boots. It seemed strange to imagine that, not so long ago, the sound would have signaled the approach of enemy troops. Perhaps the lords in charge of talks would remember that, and tactfully request that the diplomats remove their shoes.

Their doing so wasn’t entirely likely. The lords charged with governing the talks had been chosen specifically for their absence from the war itself. As I understood it, they were for the most part courtiers, men who hadn’t seen enough to personalize the conflict and so could approach peace with a clear head.

I envied them their clear heads, just as I envied them their untroubled sleep. They would not reach for their weapons at night when they heard the tremor of heavy leather boots against the floor.

The prince paused at a junction in the hall. Perhaps he, too, was ill at ease among the new flurries of activity everywhere one turned. A servant was not meant to make noise where he or she walked, but with the early arrival of the diplomats from Volstov, many of them had succumbed to near panic, and allowed their footfalls to sound heavily against the floor without care for who heard their comings and goings.

There was to be an audience that night between the diplomats and our esteemed Emperor Iseul, as well as the seven houses that held a place of honor beneath his crest. Preceding that, there would be a dinner in the Emperor’s own dining hall.

If things had been different, the death of an emperor—so fierce a warrior, so proud a man—would have disallowed feasting in all forms, and only plain rice would have been eaten so as not to offend the gods with excess while mourning.

Things, however, were as they were. No small river could change them.

I had my own interest, carefully concealed, in whether or not the men from Volstov would be able to stomach an exchange of hospitalities with our men or whether our generals would be the first to break. Certainly, there were men of the seven houses who did not have so much to lose as I had by speaking out against this occupation, however prettily clothed it came.

We came to the back entrance of the dining hall, placed specifically for those others sitting at the high table, so that no man but the Emperor himself would draw attention by crossing the room to the dais at the back. That was where Mamoru settled himself, between Lord Temur of the western prefecture, and the throne once reserved for his father. Mamoru’s place was at the Emperor’s right hand, just as it had been Iseul’s place before him.

The men and women from Volstov sat at the lower tables in groups, as moths huddled around the reassurance of a flame. Some were dressed in the Volstovic style, but wore the Ke-Han shade of blue—some show of deference, I supposed. We had a history between us of talks for peace thwarted by things so simple and yet so fundamental as the color of our clothes.

Others wore a style of clothing more similar to our own, but the similarity was undone by their broad, expressive faces and the nervous way they glanced about, as though expecting an ambush at any moment.

A man with hair the color of dried wheat laughed too loudly.

“Kouje.” Mamoru lowered his voice, beckoning me to bend my head.

“My lord?”

The doors at the front of the room opened, and Mamoru tightened his posture with the precision of a musician tuning a lute. Three of Iseul’s retainers preceded him into the dining hall, their clothing the plain dark brown robes that denoted their status as distinguished servants. The four men behind him clad in green were the Emperor’s own vassals, trained as warriors to protect their lord at any cost. Their faces, clean-shaven and hard, betrayed nothing. They were the men that the former Emperor had trusted most in all the land. It would be for Iseul to decide whether or not to retain them or to replace them with men he trusted more.

They should not have been dressed so colorfully, but the honorable dead had been forgotten in favor of the honorable future.

The newly anointed Emperor himself wore ornaments of green jade threaded through his many warrior braids. There were rings, perfect smooth circles for victories past and sharply curved pieces that resembled a fierce predator’s teeth; pins that formed the shape of a dragon, a catfish, a maple leaf. On his wrists he wore dozens of deep green bracelets, and heavy strands of stone beads around his neck. His robes were embroidered in green and gold with the symbols for strength and for power—signs the emissaries from Volstov would not be able to interpret explicitly, but which they would sense by his comportment, his posture, the very tilt of his chin. Over his heart was his father’s crest, which was now his own. The fabric beneath the needlework burned a deep, rich red—not the vulgar, glaring red of our Volstovic guests, but the color of a good wine, or the blood that flowed from a too-deep cut.

Everyone at the high table bowed as one, their foreheads scraping their plates. The diplomats from Volstov moved to stand—as was, no doubt, their poor way of recognizing a king of kings—before they too hung their heads in ungraceful bows. They numbered nine, men of all sizes—and two women, an unorthodox practice among our own people. Some were clearly soldiers, brawling men built for a good fight, while others were clearly scholars, men who had no doubt been recruited for their knowledge. There was even one who could not have been long past his boyhood, pale as the koi my lord favored so highly and dressed up like a peacock.

Iseul’s face was blank as he took his seat, his eyes as cold and as dark as flint-rock. His poison taster sat down at his side, just behind the lord Maidar from the southernmost prefecture.

Our new Emperor looked every bit the part, and I could feel my lord Mamoru’s pride in him. It was as evident as if he’d spoken it aloud.

There was no reason for the shade that rose like a mist over my heart. There was no reason why I should not have felt the same pride in my new ruler, and even a kind of gladness for this day, when we could still perform our customs with pride in the face of our enemies’ occupation. The shade was there, though, and I could do nothing but push it aside with the experience born of long practice.

Things were not as they should be. My father, even weakened by illness as he was, would still have summoned the will to refuse to dine under such an inauspicious roof.

I sat at Mamoru’s right, just behind him, that I might better taste the food as it came and before it reached my lord’s own lips. I had only been poisoned this way once before, by enemies of the Emperor’s house. It had caused a dreadful fever in my blood, rendering me unfit for duty over a long and torturous period of weeks. In the end, it was nearly a month. Such an experience, however, was made worthwhile when I considered how I had done my duty for my lord and how Mamoru had been spared the suffering.

The rice came first, and there was no taste of any malevolence to mar its clean flavor. I passed it up to the table.

Mamoru nodded his thanks, the gesture curt and mannered.

The men from Volstov were staring up at the high table still, their mouths open in awe, as though, in all their years since birth, they’d never learned to close them. If they were waiting for the Emperor to make a speech, they would be waiting a long time. Custom dictated that discussions of politics were to be had only after a proper dinner. Fire could be lit in an empty belly. In a full one, there was no room for it.

Iseul seated himself with a rustling of fabric, his taster at his left, so that no man would come between him and his brother. It was important, now more than ever, to make a show of unshakable unity.

If pressed to the point of a sword, I might have admitted that my unease did not subside throughout the course of the meal. Rather, it remained fixed firmly in my mind, impossible to ignore, like the weight in the air before a lightning storm.

I had grown up alongside Iseul. I had never been assigned to his service, but we were nearly peers in age, and as such I had been privy to his growth into a man simply because I had been doing the same thing at the same time. As such, I could recall an incident with Volstovic prisoners of war, taken captive when my lord Mamoru had been just shy of four, and I myself had been eleven. I was allowed into the great reception hall for the first time that year while my lord took his afternoon nap—his condition being particularly delicate in his earlier years—and it was there that I first saw the elder prince in full regalia, dressed every inch like the heir to the empire, and seated beside the Emperor himself with the gravest of expressions on his face.

“It is for my son to decide their fates,” the Emperor had said. “For soon enough, every decision for the well-being of this country will be his, and how else might he learn than through practice?”

The seven warlords had nodded their assent, any mistrust carefully hidden beneath their courtly masks. How could a child be trusted, after all, to understand the gravity of their situation?

The young prince had raised his head, eyes sharp and lined with kohl.

“Have them killed,” he said. “The chance for escape is too great. We fight Volstov from outside our borders, and we cannot afford to fight them from within as well.”

I could not have read any of the expressions in the room, even if I’d tried. The experienced members of court had all been trained since birth to keep everything to themselves, and as someone relatively new to palace life, I could not hope to breach those barriers. Yet I was still experienced enough to perceive that his decision had been an unexpected one.

No one, of course, expected a child to have such capacity for ruthlessness. Iseul proved himself to be a man filled with surprises from a very young age.

It was an impression I have never forgotten since—the first indication of his capabilities, but certainly not the last.

Soup came after the rice, then the fish course. All were untampered with. In my time at the palace, and with the war’s end it was my charge to look after the prince Mamoru, to taste his food for poison and to guard his person from those who would wish him ill. If I could only perform my duty well enough to take in the poison before it reached my lord, in whatever form it came, I could consider my life well spent.