by Callie Bates
He flashes a reflexive grin. “Oh, that’s all over. His Imperial Majesty forgave me some weeks ago. We had the most touching scene in the Hall of Glass, where he nodded once to me in the crowd and I bowed deeply.” He pats my shoulder. “Shall I fetch a doctor?”
“No…no.” I try to push myself upright. My head swims. Bardas grabs me, steadying my arm around his shoulders. I test my legs gingerly. I’ll have some nasty bruises tomorrow.
“Anything broken?” Bardas asks.
I shake my head, making it spin slightly again. But I manage to take one step forward, then another. Out on the avenue, a group of people pass us, laughing and talking.
Bardas tracks my gaze. “You must have offended someone.”
I can only grunt. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize Augustus Saranon’s handiwork. Who else has the authority to call off the imperial guards and douse torches that should otherwise be lit? He must have summoned his thugs the moment he left me.
Did he act alone? Or does the emperor know? I can’t imagine Emperor Alakaseus condoning this petty violence, but…he wasn’t very happy to see me.
It takes far more effort than it should to reach the street, and once there, I have to stop and wheeze. As soon as I’m alone at Aunt Cyra’s, I can heal this damnable rib, but it’s going to be a long walk there.
“Thank you,” I manage, trying to reclaim my arm. “I’ll let you…enjoy…your evening.”
“I’m not letting you walk alone!” he exclaims with genuine horror. “I doubt you’d make it half a block without collapsing like a drunk. And I’ve no desire to rescue your dead body from the gutter if those thugs come back for more. Besides, it seems as if you could use a friend.”
I grunt a laugh, but I’m touched. It seems like more kindness than anyone has shown me in a while. Bardas and I have always been cordial, even if Leontius views him as a nuisance. We ought to have been good friends: two boys who didn’t fit into the court, both interested in reform politics. But saving Leontius’s life swept me away from all that—from what, I’ve often thought, I really am.
“I could call a chair, or a coach,” he offers, but I shake my head. Walking will be faster. Bardas shrugs, awkward with my weight on his shoulder. We start walking again. “Everyone thought you were quite heroic leading the rebellion in Eren, until the stories about your Ereni sorceress started crossing the sea.” He begins to laugh. “Really, Jahan? A sorceress? Is she seven feet tall, as they claim, with a crown of fire?”
I just grin, though it makes the blood crack beneath my nose. A carriage rushes past us, but otherwise the night is cool and quiet. It makes the pounding in my head bearable.
“I was sorry to hear about Finn Dromahair’s death,” Bardas says. “Couldn’t your sorceress have done something to save him?”
I shake my head. “Battle…accident.” But this is far more kindness than the emperor, Augustus, or Zollus bothered to offer toward Finn’s memory, and it surprises me. “Didn’t think…you knew him.”
“Only by sight, but I think it’s a great shame when people must die in the name of the cause they fight for. It makes the victory—well—is it bittersweet, or harder-earned? I suppose you’re the one who would know.”
“Both,” I manage. I tell myself the dampness in my eyes is from pain.
We hobble past a house, its high, shadowed gables more massive than anything in Eren or Caeris. My clogged nose is clearing enough to smell winter roses and woodsmoke and orange blossoms. It’s everything I’ve missed, but I didn’t think I would come back to so little.
“Listen,” Bardas says. “It would be disingenuous to pretend I can’t guess who set those brigands on you tonight. He’s no friend of mine, either, you know. Neither of them is.”
“I…know.” Augustus and Phaedra despise their stepmother as a second-class social climber and, by extension, Bardas. They’re always digging for gossip to discredit her. Last year a rumor circulated that they commissioned an artist to create lewd drawings of Firmina; before that, she was supposedly stealing jewelry from courtiers like a petty thief. The emperor seems completely oblivious to the fact that his own children want to destroy her.
Bardas nods. “If you need a friend, you know where to find me.”
“Thank you.” After the last few days, I feel more touched than my inadequate words can say.
Aunt Cyra’s house comes into view on the corner, lit up like a midwinter tree. Silhouettes move across the windows in the dining room. I groan. It’s just my luck she’s hosting a dinner party.
“Ah,” Bardas says, noting the people and the noise, too. “Perhaps the back?”
We make our way around to the alley, where the rattling of dishes and pans in Aunt Cyra’s kitchen sets up a din. Both of us have to pound on the door before we’re heard, and then the maidservant who answers screams at the sight of me. The cook comes running and gasps. “Lord Jahan! You’re back! What on earth happened to you?”
“He fell afoul of Aexione,” Bardas explains. “It happens to us all, sooner or later.”
The cook just blinks at him, but she and the maidservant help wrangle me upstairs to the bedchamber that used to be mine. The maidservant goes running for hot water and washcloths, while the cook returns to the kitchen to alert the household to my return, as if they haven’t already witnessed the commotion.
“I’ll send for a doctor,” Bardas tells me. “You look peaked.”
I wave a hand, though every movement stabs pain through my upper torso. “No…need.”
He frowns at me, then shrugs. He glances at the door. “Look, Korakides, I doubt you’ll be in any state to attend, but…I’m throwing a party the night after tomorrow, at the Deos Deorum.”
I wheeze, trying not to laugh. “I’ve heard…about your…parties.”
“Oh, don’t be like that!” he protests. “They’re not for the nobles. They’re for people like us. And I have an orator coming whom you may know. Lucius Argyros.”
I go still. I’m aware of, like a sudden heat, the paper stuck in my pocket, beneath the gore and grime.
How does Bardas Triciphes know that I know Lucius Argyros? Maybe he asked someone about the courses I took at the University of Ida. Maybe he knows that I sat in Argyros’s lecture hall, watching him fix his spectacles on the end of his nose and speak more eloquently than anyone I had ever heard about the rights we all deserve.
He’s watching my reaction. “You have more friends in Ida than you know. Pantoleon Chrysales, for instance, will be quite eager to see you.”
I don’t trust the reassurance I feel. It makes me wheeze harder. “You know…Pantoleon?”
“Oh, I make it my business to know everyone worth knowing. And Pantoleon most definitely is. Remember, two nights hence. Come at ten, if you can.”
There’s a noise in the hallway—an entire army of servants, from the sound of it. Without another word, Bardas ducks out and I’m left to wonder who he knows, and what he wants.
* * *
—
THE SERVANTS REFUSE to leave me alone. First the maid insists on dabbing away the blood under my nose—though my hands still work perfectly well—and then I’m dragged down to the bathing chamber and unceremoniously ordered out of my filthy clothes. The hot water feels shockingly good, though I have to bite my lip against groaning at the pain of my cracked rib. Clusters of potted green plants sit about the tiled bathing chamber. When the manservants finally leave me to soak in peace, I reach for the living energy of the plants. Knit together, smooth and snug, I whisper at my rib. At first it’s sluggish, so I tug harder at the green power, letting it run through my veins. With a sick snap, the rib clicks together. I ignore the tears pricking my eyes. The pain pales to a dull ache.
I open my eyes and flinch. Two of the plants have withered. The others don’t look so good, either.
If Elanna knew this is how
I use my sorcery, at least anywhere save Eren…I shake off the thought, but the guilt lingers. I don’t know how I’ll explain the plants’ demise. Perhaps Aunt Cyra, ever efficient, can make them disappear without anyone suspecting a thing.
A mirror glints on the wall across from me. I sit up, though I’d rather linger in the copper tub. But it’s late, and I need to contact Elanna before she starts to worry.
A knock raps at the door before I can lever myself up. “Jahan?”
It’s my aunt, and she sounds concerned. Next thing I know, the manservants have invaded the bathing chamber again. I’m helped out of the tub, wincing at the bruises starting to mottle my torso. I must have only had enough power to heal the rib, not the bruises. A towel is thrust into my hands, followed by a shirt, loose trousers, banyan robe and slippers. I cast a last glance at the mirror, but while I might be able to duck away from the manservants, there’s no evading my aunt.
She’s pacing in the corridor like a small, vigorous brigantine at full sail, her silver-streaked coiffure towering and her silk skirts billowing. One look sends the manservants scuttling back to clean up the bathing chamber. I slink toward her. I feel as though I’m fifteen again, come to Aexione from the Britemnos Isles with little but the clothes on my back, sick and begging her to take me in.
She jerks her chin at the sitting room. I limp inside. The room is dark, save for two thin tapers on the sideboard. Aunt Cyra busies herself lighting more candles. I pour us each sherry from the cut-glass decanter; I know what’s good for me.
But my aunt doesn’t claim her drink. She closes her eyes and explodes a breath. “Who did it?”
“I didn’t get their names. We didn’t really have the chance for conversation.”
Aunt Cyra fixes me with a bright, black-eyed stare, and I feel myself quail just as I did the first time I met her. She terrified me then; I was certain she’d summon witch hunters and dust her hands of me. She didn’t, of course—though I suppose there’s nothing to prevent her doing so now if I thoroughly irritate her.
I hunch a shoulder in a shrug. She deserves the truth, and she’d suss it out fast enough on her own anyway. “Our dear friend Augustus Saranon sent them to say hello.”
“Augustus,” she mutters, her nostrils flaring with disgust. Then she points at the velvet settee. “Holy Aera, sit down! You look ready to collapse.”
I sit with relief, my body aching. I’m still holding both sherry glasses; I sip out of one.
She sighs, then pulls up a footstool and sits in front of me, rubbing a hand over her cheek. She smells of food and drink, and I remember the supper party I interrupted.
“Auntie, your guests must be missing you,” I begin. “I can take rooms elsewhere—”
She flaps a hand. “Nonsense. They can manage well enough without me. You’re not going anywhere.” She pauses, looking at me. “But you shouldn’t have come back.”
I wince. “Yes, that’s been a popular opinion today.”
“Oh, darling, I’m glad to see you, of course.” She pats my knee. “But these riots in Ida—pro-sorcery, anti-sorcery, everything. Have you not heard? The witch hunters are cracking down. This is not…” She doesn’t say the word safe. “This is not being careful.”
She’s right, of course. I think of the day I came here, fifteen years old, shaking from opium withdrawal and terror. When the servants left us, my aunt grasped my wrist and asked baldly if I had come to Ida by sorcery. A bit, I told her, because part of what had driven my sailboat wasn’t ordinary wind. Her grip on my wrist had tightened. She brought her face close to mine, so that I couldn’t look anywhere but into her eyes. I will shelter you, she whispered. But do you understand what will happen if anyone guesses what you are? If you use what you have been taught?
I understood; Madiya had seen to that.
Now I know better than ever. And I know what will happen to her, this upstanding paragon of Aexione society, if my secrets are revealed.
“Oh, Auntie.” I smile at her. “Am I ever careful?”
“Often,” she says. “You are usually careful.” She leans back with a sigh. “I told you what would happen if you left.”
She did. My aunt didn’t want me to go to Eren; she thought it was a fool’s venture. You’ll lose your standing. You’ll lose everything you’ve gained. Do you want that?
In a way, maybe I did.
Her hands move restlessly over her skirt, smoothing the embroidered silk. “The witch hunters went looking for your brother. The fool gave them the slip. The gods alone know where he’s hidden himself, but now they’ll suspect you.”
“Oh,” I say, “I’ve already made the acquaintance of two of them. They provided me escort back to Aexione.”
Aunt Cyra’s gaze snaps to my face.
“The grand inquisitor himself examined me, and pronounced me clean.” I can’t quite meet her eyes. Guilt digs through me. Even if Alcibiades Doukas has acknowledged my innocence, I’m still putting Aunt Cyra at risk. I clearly don’t have Leontius’s protection. Augustus’s thugs could come here. The emperor agreed to treat with me, but for how long? I can’t risk my aunt after everything she’s done for me. I fumble for the right words. “I had to come back. It’s the only way I can see to prevent war with Eren.”
My aunt goes very still. Slowly, she says, “Jahan Korakides, do you mean to tell me you’re here representing a foreign nation?”
I offer her a grin. “The emperor accepted it, more or less.”
“Because you talked circles around him, no doubt.” She snorts. “Does your Ereni sorceress actually believe you have this kind of influence? Are you really her only hope?”
My gaze drops back to the sherry. The liquid quivers. I want to disappear into it.
“Surely you’ve discovered Leontius has forsaken you? He gave away your apartments—”
“Yes. I’m in disgrace.”
She nods. “You’ve lost your influence with him. I don’t know who else will back you.”
“Lees and I are friends,” I snap. “Friends forgive each other.”
Her expression tells me I’m being a fool. “He has the melancholy. He’s spent weeks talking to no one at all but his gardeners. He won’t forgive you for choosing an Ereni witch over him.”
I swallow. Guilt seems to dig in around my sore ribs. “Contrary to rumors, he’s not in love with me.” At least, I’ve never seen real evidence of it. But Leontius is so reserved—what do I know?
“How does a young man, who’s never had a real friend before, react when his first true friend abandons him? A prince, at that? Now you’re back, but you’ve come to use your influence—with him. Why should he think you care for him at all?”
I stare back at the sherry, swallowing hard. I want to tell her she’s wrong. I want to laugh it off. But in my gut, I’m afraid she’s right.
“Then,” she continues relentlessly, “there are the riots in Ida—”
“Oh, yes,” I interrupt. “They met us at Imperial Harbor. They seemed to be the only people glad to see me.”
My aunt purses her lips. “There’s an—ugliness about those people. You haven’t seen them as I have.” She jerks her chin downstairs, toward her dinner guests. “The Kourtunes are taking their possessions and retreating to their country estate.”
I sit up straight. “They’re leaving Aexione?” No self-respecting courtier leaves Aexione voluntarily.
“Melisandra whispered to me that they may even take ship for Agra, or Baedon. Somewhere outside the empire’s boundaries. There was a Paladisan lord lynched on his own estate a few weeks ago, by his own field-workers. They said he had never paid his taxes, but had taxed so much of their income they could no longer eat the food they grew.” She shudders. “I’ve ordered meetings with the overseers and the field-workers at our Tyana Pontica estate. But I might have to go myself, to make sure they’re
dealing with matters as they should.”
I must be staring. My aunt hasn’t gone to Tyana Pontica, where the Potazes wheat and barley are grown, in years.
“You see?” she says. “In Aexione, it’s as if none of the rest is happening. Matters go on as they always have. The court. The dancing. The gambling. The money. In Ida, people are starving, and here Emperor Alakaseus built that miniature palace for Firmina Triciphes. Your reformer friends keep writing about it in their pamphlets, saying we need a revolution like the one in Eren. I don’t think they know what they’re inciting.”
“Hmm.” I can see why this alarms my aunt, who depends on the blind subservience of the common people for her wealth and way of life. The Tyana Pontica estate alone makes her one of the richest independent women in the empire, not counting her investments in trade and banking. But I wonder how different Paladis’s rebels are from the ones in Eren who spoke out against King Antoine. Quentin claimed we’d inspired Ida’s reformers, after all.
Aunt Cyra sighs. “I can tell I’ve failed to suitably impress you with the difficulty.”
“I’m here to sue for peace. A rebellion within Paladis might force it to happen.”
“Don’t be so sure. There’s nothing like a good, self-righteous war to take people’s minds off revolt.”
“True.” I pause. Maybe my friendship with Leontius is in danger, and I don’t enjoy the influence I once did. I do have one advantage, though. “But Elanna’s magic is extraordinary. If anyone can defeat the black ships, it’s her.”
My aunt eyes me. “Are you in love with her?”
I laugh. “I should have known that rumor would precede me.” But I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the truth, even to Aunt Cyra. I want to say that Elanna is courageous and fierce and brilliant; I want to tell her about El’s magic and how much I miss her. But perhaps Cyra is right. Perhaps I did mislead El in telling her that my influence could stop war. Perhaps I’ve run back to Paladis simply to avoid telling her all my secrets. I think of how she looked at me when I left, as if she didn’t truly believe I would come back to her. Perhaps El isn’t the one I’ve been deluding; perhaps it’s myself.
