by Callie Bates
I swallow.
He smiles, and again I have the sense he’s recognized me. “Now, you may be thinking that you are not sorcerers. But any one of you may have talent for it, if you only try. It is our birthright, given to us by our gods—the Idaean gods we worshipped before the Paladisans claimed them, the great beings who brought sorcery into the world so humans could use it. Let us show Emperor Alakaseus that this is one thing he may not claim for us—our divinely given right and ability to practice magic!”
The crowd erupts with cheers.
I feel ill. Argyros is going to get arrested for this. He must know that.
Around me, people begin to move. I realize belatedly that Pantoleon is climbing the stairs. I hurry after him and, as we reach the top, seize the back of his coat and drag him into the shadows of the mezzanine despite his greater height.
“What did you tell him?” I demand in a whisper.
He grins. He’s so excited he doesn’t seem to register my anger. “The truth, Jahan. I told him the truth. About my father, about you, about the histories we’d uncovered—”
A light seems to explode inside my head. “You told him about me?”
The smile slides off Pantoleon’s face. Slowly, he says, “You’ve been in Eren these six months, winning a rebellion for your sorceress. And you’re still hiding what you are?”
“Who did you tell?” I demand.
Pantoleon recoils. “Only Argyros. The secret’s safe with him.”
“It’s my secret, not yours!” I almost shout, and Pantoleon stares at me. I don’t think I’ve ever shouted at him before. I don’t shout at anyone, let alone my closest and most sensible friend. The only friend who’s ever understood how to really keep a secret. And now look what he’s done.
He’s getting angry. “At least I’m telling the truth, not spending my life sitting on secrets I’m too afraid to let out!”
I’m vibrating with rage now, and by the looks of it so is he. “I’ve done what I had to. How else am I supposed to return to court and win peace?”
Pantoleon’s nostrils flare. Quietly, he says, “You could have come to me.”
“Oh? What would you have done, written a treatise?”
“I mean,” Pantoleon says, an edge in his voice, “you could have come to us, the reformers. It wouldn’t have taken much intelligence for your Ereni to realize we’re organizing to do what they did. I thought that’s why you were here tonight. I thought you’d come to help us.” He snorts. “I should have known better.”
My teeth grind together. I can’t stand this disdain from Pantoleon of all people, who won’t even practice the smallest magics. I lower my voice. “Is that what Rayka did? Have you suborned him into helping you?”
Pantoleon blinks at me, and I see him realize what I mean. “No, Jahan. I…”
“You what? What did you do?”
My friend’s jaw bunches. Quietly, he says, “Nothing. I haven’t seen your idiot brother in months.”
“Then where is he? Hiding with the sorcerers here in Ida?”
Pantoleon is shaking his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about him. I don’t know where he is.”
I swing away, clenching my fists at my temples. All the gods, where the hell is my brother? I simply can’t believe he’d have allowed himself to be taken by witch hunters, and I don’t think Alcibiades lied to me. Which means he’s either run somewhere very far indeed—or he’s gone back to Madiya. Where is she? What if, in my failure to bring Lathiel to Ida, she reclaimed him, too? If she has both my brothers again, I don’t think I can bear it.
Her whisper floats into my head. Jahan.
Not now. I groan aloud. Pantoleon—the damned traitor—has backed up a step, watching me warily. Now his gaze flickers behind me.
I spin around. Bardas Triciphes is approaching with a smile. He claps his hands. “Lord Jahan! I’m so glad you joined us tonight. Does this mean—”
I look past him. Argyros is also approaching, eyebrows raised above his spectacles. He, too, smiles.
The truth smacks me in the face: This is what they want. Revolution. That’s why Bardas asked me here; that’s why Empress Firmina encouraged me to come. They want to change Paladis, and they want to do it with sorcery. All the gods—how much does the empress know? Has Pantoleon told them all, even her, what I really am? I can’t believe he would betray my trust that fully.
So they—Pantoleon and Argyros, at least—want me to publicly declare myself a sorcerer. I can see it in Argyros’s anticipatory expression. Pantoleon has told him the truth, almost certainly.
Bardas is talking to me, but I can’t seem to hear him. There’s a rushing in my ears. I think of Alcibiades Doukas and the witch he drove mad. Of how Faverus sweated at the idea of torturing a sorcerer. Of Madiya, refusing to even go into Pira town. I feel all the holes in my memory, and I know that’s what they would do to me. They would turn my mind into one gaping blankness.
I came here to win peace for Elanna. I didn’t come here to lead a revolt—not one doomed to failure. There’s no way these reformers can stand up against the power of the emperor, his ministers, and his army.
“No,” I say aloud. Bardas jerks back with a startled “Sorry?”
But I’m already striding away, practically running through the crowd. My heart beats an uneven tattoo. At the bottom of the atrium, I glance back. I thought Pantoleon would follow me; I almost wish he would. But he’s still standing up there, beside Bardas and Argyros, looking down at me amid the crowd.
I don’t owe them anything, not even an explanation.
I push away through the crowd, out into the night. The city throbs around me; laughter and shouts echo over the Channel behind the Deos Deorum. The air, thick with the scents of perfume and brine and excrement, tastes sour in my mouth. I can’t stay here a minute longer.
I commandeer my horse from the Potazes townhouse and ride out, compressing space along the road, tugging space back like a curtain so I can move faster, faster. By the time I return to Aunt Cyra’s house in Aexione, it’s deep in the night. The gelding and I ghost through the silent town. I rub the horse down and set him up in his stall, careful not to wake the stableboy, then go into the still house.
I halt in front of the mirror in my bedchamber, staring into my own silhouetted reflection. I call Elanna’s face into my mind’s eye, seeing the riot of her wind-tousled hair, the brilliance of her smile, the way her eyes crinkle. “Elanna,” I say aloud.
There’s no answer. “Rayka,” I say. “Rayka!”
Nothing.
Softly, I venture, “Lathiel?”
He doesn’t answer. I don’t know why I thought he might trust me enough to follow me here.
I drop my forehead against the cool glass. I whisper, “El. El.”
But no reply comes through the darkness, not even Madiya’s incessant whisper. I’m alone with the echo of my own voice, my forehead smearing the empty glass.
CHAPTER NINE
A pounding fist on the door wakes me. “Lord Jahan!”
I fumble upright. I don’t remember getting into bed. I fell asleep fully dressed, the raven mask digging into the back of my head. Golden bars of sunlight stripe the coverlet, and the clock on the mantel chimes twelve times.
A manservant sticks his head around the door. “Sir, you’re wanted at the palace.”
“Wonderful.” I rub my forehead. It’s probably the empress, ready to take me to task for refusing Bardas’s offer of help. I snort. Some kind of help. I knew their generosity wouldn’t come without strings attached.
Yet I suppose I can’t simply ignore the summons. After all, in storming out of the Deos Deorum last night, I cast aside the one option left to me. Now no one at all will offer me—and Eren—aid.
I drag myself off the bed. Perhaps the reformers and I can come to an agr
eement, particularly if Pantoleon and Argyros keep their mouths shut about my secrets. But I’m not going to race over to the palace in my rumpled black suit. They don’t need to know how desperate I am.
I order a bath, but have hardly lowered myself into the steaming water when a fist bangs on the bathing chamber door. “Jahan!” Aunt Cyra says. “Don’t ignore the emperor’s summons!”
The emperor? I slosh upright. Clearly I jumped to the wrong conclusion; it’s not Firmina who summoned me, but her husband. What does Alakaseus Saranon want from me? My arrest, probably.
Or maybe he’s decided to negotiate. Maybe Firmina and Horatius prevailed on him.
I take the fastest bath of my life. Aunt Cyra’s waiting in the corridor, tapping her foot, when I emerge. “Finally,” she says. “I won’t ask what possessed you to ride back to Aexione through the dark, but it’s as well that you did. The emperor sent a message more than an hour ago.” She glances pointedly at the clock. “He wants you to attend him at once.”
“You didn’t wake me…”
“I thought you were still in Ida! Then the staff told me you’d returned and trailed dust all the way into your bedchamber.” She snaps her fingers at me. “Eat something and get dressed.”
“Do we know what he wants?”
She shrugs. “His page didn’t deign to provide that information. Quick! The carriage is waiting.”
I hurry into a fresh suit, not even arguing with the manservant over its screaming peacock-blue color, and seize a cup of spiced tea and a date-studded roll on the way out the door. As Aunt Cyra promised, a carriage is waiting. I jump inside. It lurches forward so fast I’m thrown back against the cushioned seat. The tea sloshes everywhere. I’m now nearly two hours late to my summons, and milky-brown flecks stain my coat’s embroidered lapels. I mop them up with my handkerchief. I’ll just have to be presentable enough.
If the emperor knew about my visit to Ida last night, I’d have been woken by witch hunters this morning, or the imperial guard. He must be summoning me to negotiate.
A footman meets my coach at the palace’s inner gate. I dive after him into the perfumed corridors, winding up a back staircase to avoid the crowds. He deposits me at the Salon of Meres. I straighten my coat cuffs, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart. More footmen open the doors.
I step within. The emperor’s dog barks, then settles with a resigned air. Emperor Alakaseus, along with Augustus, Captain-General Horatius, the minister of state, and several others make an industrious tableau around a massive oak table.
I make my bows, but the emperor and his colleagues are too busy with papers and pens to take any notice. I start to clear my throat when a flash of pale silk velvet catches my eye.
Phaedra Saranon raises an eyebrow at me. She’s seated by the fireplace, though the room isn’t cold, drinking a cup of chocolate. It leaves a faint mustache on her upper lip. She’s fairer than her brother, probably because she abhors the sunshine. “Well, if it isn’t the Korakos,” she says frostily. “Poor you. I heard some thugs beat you up. What a good thing darling Stepmother’s cousin was there to save you! The one useful thing he’s ever done.”
“Yes,” I say, “Bardas was quite heroic. I can’t imagine who sent those people.”
She dabs the chocolate off her lip with a napkin. “I heard you were in Ida last night at one of his nasty little gatherings. Oh, don’t look surprised. You’re a very recognizable figure, even in a mask.”
I pretend this doesn’t send a jolt of fear through me. So Phaedra Saranon has decided it’s worth her while to have me observed—so she can find some way to ruin me, presumably. Why can’t she find a more productive hobby?
“Perhaps you should go sometime,” I say. “You might learn a thing or two.”
She sniffs, but I’m spared a response because the emperor finally notices I’ve arrived.
“Korakides!” Emperor Alakaseus claps his hands twice while I make another bow. “Come, join us.” He’s positively garrulous. “Planning to attend the public court this afternoon?”
I pause. Captain-General Horatius shoots me a look. Clearly there’s something I don’t know—Augustus is smirking, and so is Phaedra—though I can’t imagine why the emperor wants me to attend the public court he holds every Atrydia. I used to have to go with Leontius, every second time it was held. It’s always phenomenally tedious—or, if the emperor decides to make a statement, excruciating. Like the time the witch hunters brought in that sorceress they’d sent mad.
A flush runs all over my body. Maybe that’s what the emperor’s planning to do, again. Maybe the witch hunters have found new blood. It could be my idiot brother.
Or Elanna.
“Well?” the emperor says, and Augustus laughs. Phaedra sends him a small smile.
I realize I’ve let the silence lapse. Hastily, I bow. “Naturally, I will attend, if it pleases Your Imperial Majesty.”
The emperor positively beams. “Oh, it does. Now.” He gestures me closer. “We were just discussing the terms of our peace accord with Eren.”
My footsteps slow. Horatius flickers another glance at me and shakes his head. His plan must have failed. How is Alakaseus Saranon planning an accord, then?
“Peace?” I say. “Terrifying witch and all?”
“Peace is the natural state of civilized nations,” the emperor replies winningly.
My neckcloth is too tight; it’s smothering my breath. I try to shove down the suspicion rising in me. If they had captured Elanna, I would know, wouldn’t I? Somehow she would be able to tell me, wouldn’t she?
But she hasn’t answered my calls through the mirror for five days. And the emperor of Paladis would not be so pleased with himself if Elanna still posed a threat. Either she’s been wounded on the Tinani border, or they’ve captured her.
I need to control myself. Emperor Alakaseus is talking, but the rushing in my head drowned out some of his words.
“We’ve been drafting a list of terms,” the emperor is saying, gesturing at a secretary scribbling furiously. “You will want to discuss these with your queen, of course. Or rather, with Eren’s current reigning monarch. Lord Euan, what do you wish to do about the girl?”
My head jerks up. I didn’t see him when I came in, but he’s standing right there, on the other side of the table. Sophy’s father, and Finn’s. Euan Dromahair. The would-be king of Caeris. The king, as El says, of air.
“I shall adopt her as my heir, since fate has robbed me of my son.” Euan Dromahair, tall and dour and saturnine, doesn’t even really look at me. “If, of course, she proves suitable.”
I clear my throat, trying to ignore the pulsing under my ribs. “Am I correct in understanding that your terms demand Queen Sophy cedes her throne to…” I can’t call him her father. Ruadan Valtai was a father to her, not this man. “Lord Euan?”
The emperor just smiles.
The room seems too close. I’m sweating. Phaedra Saranon is watching me with a tiny curl of her lips. This isn’t a negotiation. These aren’t terms, they’re demands. Requirements. Something must have happened to Elanna. Otherwise they’d never think they could just go in and install Euan Dromahair on the throne.
“But,” I say. I may have said it once already. “You would loathe Caeris and Eren, Lord Euan. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s exceedingly cold, and the food is terrible, and no one bathes, and the people…you would not find the people to your liking. They do not live in the Idaean style.”
Finn’s father merely looks at me, his long bloodhound’s face dour. If I wondered whether he blames me for his son’s death, I know now.
The minister of state intervenes. “Sophy Dunbarron is a bastard child, Lord Jahan. She was not raised to a throne. It is only right to let her father rule—he is, after all, the true king.”
The true king? I want to laugh. Euan Dromahair has spent
his life living on the charity of the Paladisan emperors, complaining about how he should be king of Caeris. Sophy Dunbarron was raised by Ruadan Valtai—and if anyone ever ruled Caeris, it was him. “Perhaps we can compromise. The people have elected Queen Sophy in the traditional way. It is, after all, what they fought for.”
The minister of state pushes up his spectacles. “Elected? Indeed?” He looks amused. So do several others.
The emperor does not. His face is cold.
Captain-General Horatius is watching me with interest.
It galls me, the arrogance of these men’s beliefs that they have the right to determine who controls lands and nations and lives. I want to demand what they’ve done with Elanna, or what they know. But if I play my hand too obviously—if they completely dismiss me as a witch-lover—we risk losing everything.
And yet looking at their well-fed, self-satisfied faces, I remember why I fought beside the Caerisians and Ereni in the first place.
“Yes, elected.” I look at the emperor when I say it. “Not all nations conduct their business in the Paladisan manner. You may want to consider the consequences of imposing your laws and customs on a people who govern themselves differently. How much more land does Paladis need to accrue? How much more resentment from the people you’ve conquered? The people of Eren and Caeris rose up against the Eyrlais. What makes you think they won’t fight to keep the freedom they’ve won for themselves? What makes you think you won’t face another insurrection?”
There’s a silence. The emperor’s face is flushed. They all seem shocked by my boldness, and I am a little, too. Six months ago, I would never have spoken this way in the emperor’s presence—or, indeed, anywhere he might hear of it.
But I’m tired of placating this short, querulous man who happened to be born into the right family and lived to inherit a throne he did nothing to deserve. I’m tired of him thinking he can do what he wants, because he wears the imperial diadem, because he commands the black ships, because he oversees the witch hunters.
