by Jaida Jones
I could hear Mamoru’s breathing begin to even out and the soft sound of his slippers against the straw as he paced, confused and upset at having been so disrupted.
“Kouje,” he said, imploring me with everything in his tone to offer some explanation for my actions. He knew that I was not prone to flights of fancy. In fact, on more than one occasion, he’d rebuked me for being overly serious. Perhaps he thought now that I’d gone mad. It had happened to other, stronger men during the course of the war. “Kouje, please.”
I had to give him some explanation. I’d known that all along, but I hadn’t prepared myself properly; I hadn’t had the time.
“My lord,” I said, lifting my head, “your life is in danger. We must leave the palace at once.”
Mamoru shook his head, his face clouded with bewilderment. It took him a moment to speak—how I longed for the days when he was too young and my duty was to shield him from knowledge of the attempts, not inform him of them. “We must tell my brother,” he said at last. “The Emperor must be informed of all such threats. He’ll protect me. I know Iseul hasn’t been emperor very long, Kouje, and he’s been distracted with the negotiations, but… I still trust him to execute his duties. We must go to him, and you will tell him what you know.”
The words clogged my throat, threatening to choke me. I could not speak, not yet.
“Kouje,” Mamoru tried again, more gently. “If it troubles you, then I can speak with Iseul. You may tell me, and I will have an audience with him.”
I shook my head. Something in my eyes must have frightened him then, for he took a step away from me.
“It isn’t a member of the delegation,” he said, his own eyes widening. “It couldn’t be that you think—Oh, Kouje, the talks—the treaty—it will all be ruined!”
I could not let him labor under misimpressions any longer. If I did, the subsequent truth would be crueler still. At last I stood, and took my lord by his thin shoulders. I could say it all at once; they were only words. “My lord,” I said, willing my voice to be like iron, without flesh or blood behind them, “the Emperor is the one who made the decree.”
For a moment, Mamoru looked at me as though I had gone mad. Then his features changed from disbelief to confusion.
“You’ve misunderstood something,” he said, his voice not quite so steely, but with its own, stubborn conviction. “Or I have. What is it that you think you know?”
I did not blame him if he didn’t believe me. I had never lied to him—but then, I was only a servant. It was not unexpected that he would believe his brother’s character before my word, no matter the situation. But his was not a situation that allowed choice. I’d already made the decision for him. It went against my Emperor and my country, and it meant my life.
“I will take you from here by force,” I said. I could not bear to look at him. “If you will not go willingly, then I have no other choice.”
“Kouje.” My lord was nearly pleading with me. If it were any other place, and any other time, I would have looked toward him sternly; he would have known that now was when he commanded, rather than implored. Perhaps he remembered my old lessons, for after a moment he straightened, set his shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “Kouje, you will tell me what you know.”
My lord’s command was law. It was almost a relief to obey it. “Earlier this night, the Emperor called his council,” I said, my hands in fists at my side. “It was by accident that I heard them—you may punish me for the breach in conduct as you see fit, but only once we are away from here. The Emperor spoke to his seven lords, and accused you of treason.” If I separated each word before I spoke them, then I would not hear all that I was saying. It was easier, that way, to break my lord’s heart. “The Emperor spoke of a plan. He said that his younger brother was conspiring against him, and for that, he had forfeited his life.”
Mamoru shook his head. “But Kouje,” he whispered, “I have done nothing.”
I bowed. I was always grateful for protocol in moments of uncertainty. “I know that, my lord.”
“He must have misunderstood,” my lord continued, as though he hadn’t heard me. “Earlier, he reprimanded me for speaking the diplomats’ language—perhaps that’s why he thought…?” There, my lord paused for a long moment. One of the diplomats’ horses, in a stall close by, snorted and stamped his hooves. I considered, for a moment, stealing one of them—for the men at the gate would not recognize the foreign horse, and it might ease our escape.
When my lord spoke next, it startled me from my thoughts. There was new strength in his voice, new purpose.
“We must go to my brother at once,” he said, and his words caused my heart to sink in my chest. “We will explain to him—I will explain to him—I will prove that I am loyal. If he asks for any trial, I will give myself over to the test. He will know that I serve him, even if it—”
“Even if it kills you,” I said. My own voice had no color to it; the sound made the Volstov horses uneasy.
“If he thinks I’m guilty of this crime, then I cannot run from him,” Mamoru confirmed. “A guilty man flees. An innocent one returns to prove his innocence.”
Everything that he said made sense. It was calm and reasoned, the way I had endeavored to instruct my lord to make all his decisions. Mamoru was able to see reason where I could not.
Yet what I had neglected in my teachings was how reason gave way in the face of madness, and to Mamoru it surely must have seemed madness that had led to Iseul’s decision.
I could not give voice to my deepest fear, since I had no proof to make it manifest. My lord had no eyes with which to look upon Iseul’s faults, his unreasonable qualities, the terrible things he’d done during the war, all for the good of the Ke-Han. As he proclaimed this latest decree to be, only now it gave me reason to question all the others.
What manner of monster had the Emperor held in check? I could only wonder at how Iseul had changed since his father’s death and brought his true self to light. I had only my instincts, shaped over the years to know always what action was necessary, and to sense when something was wrong in the night. I had protected my lord’s life with a sword and a ready hand for all my adult life. There was nothing I knew so well as my duty, but the argument that I wished to give my lord was one I trembled to think on.
I have done nothing, my lord had said, and I had told him that I knew it.
The cold timbre of Iseul’s voice as he had given the order had told me that he knew it, too.
“My lord,” I began carefully.
“I need to speak to my brother,” Mamoru said. There was a cold glint in his eyes that for a moment reminded me of the Emperor’s iron will.
Before I could stop him, Mamoru had started back into the passageway. He moved at a swift run, and I cursed myself for not having the foresight to prevent that from happening although I do not know if I would have been able to bind my lord’s hands and feet even if I had been gifted with such foresight.
I ran after him, as silently as I could, and sent a prayer to whatever gods that might still be watching over the prince that no one would hear us.
I caught up to him as the passage made a crooked turn to the left, just before it emerged into the palace. He turned as if to shake me off, then stopped at the soft murmur of voices from up ahead. I didn’t put my hand back over his mouth, nor did I wrest him away from the wall and carry him bodily back to the stables, which was what I longed to do. Instead, I held tightly to his arm just above the elbow and listened.
“Maidar has already roused his men,” said a man with a strong, harsh voice like wood being chopped. “Do you really believe there’s any point bringing yours as well?”
“I believe in not taking chances,” said another man. His voice was familiar to me, since I’d heard him issuing orders to his servants from the high table all night. It was Lord Temur, of the western prefecture.
“Come,” said the first man, “do you truly think it will be all that difficult? There was
a time when you couldn’t say it, may the Emperor’s spirit rest peacefully, but the prince is weak. It’s like sending wolves in after a lamb.”
My lord let out a startled breath, and I tightened my hold on his arm. I wished that I could have protected him in some better way. If only I could tighten a hold around his chest to keep it from bursting at the knowledge.
“He was clever enough to conspire against his brother,” Lord Temur pointed out. He’d sat next to my lord at dinner, and I’d done nothing. The knowledge was nearly unbearable. I had my sword with me—earlier, I’d thought to carry Mamoru away with me, and would never have left without some means to protect him. I could have done something, and I wanted to, but for my lord’s sake, I held back.
The other man laughed—a quiet, shriveling sound. “You don’t believe him capable of something like that, do you? No. I think the Emperor has his reasons, and we merely abide by them.”
I felt a tugging at my sleeve in the dark. Mamoru had wrapped his fingers tight around the fabric, and was holding on with all his strength, as if he feared he might faint otherwise. I grasped his shoulder with the hand I’d left free. Sometimes even the strongest of lords needed help to stay on their feet.
“Yet,” there was hesitation in Lord Temur’s voice, even if it was slight, “of all the men who believed this change in power might affect them poorly, I never believed it would be the younger prince on whom the Emperor would turn his sights first.”
There was a silence from within the palace, and I wished dearly to be able to see what was happening. Then the other man spoke.
“Who can fathom the will of emperors?”
My lord turned to me, his face hidden in the close shadows of the passage. When he’d been younger, I had always known what my lord was thinking simply by the expression on his face. As he grew older, and the necessity to hide his thoughts became unavoidable, I had developed other ways of knowing: from the tilt of his head or the way he held his shoulders. I had always known what my lord was thinking, even before he told me.
Standing with him in the dark, still robed for sleep and with his hair loose, the braids scattered, I felt only an overwhelming sense of loss radiating around the pair of us.
I didn’t know what Mamoru was thinking. Without the experience, I couldn’t.
Once again, no sound issued from the palace, no footsteps approaching or receding to alert us to the presence of the lords who’d spoken. If I dared, I would have offered some words of comfort to my lord, but the walls in the palace were thin for a reason. It was then that Mamoru released my sleeve and turned back the way we’d come—back toward the stables.
My only relief came with the knowledge that the lords we’d overheard had not spoken as if anything were amiss. No one had yet discovered my lord’s flight. If I could be glad of my actions at all that night, I could at least commend myself for acting quickly.
It was time we needed to distance ourselves from the palace. I didn’t know how Iseul would hunt us, though I knew as well as any how clever a general he’d been in the war, and a fiercer man in battle, besides.
I was a mere servant by comparison, but I would die before I let any harm come to Mamoru.
That was the choice I had made.
My lord looked very small in the large, airy stables. He stood next to one of the Volstov horses, his head bowed in deep thought, or in deep sorrow. I would have cut out my own heart before ever I harmed my lord’s so, but to save his life, such hurts were necessary. I could only trust that he would be strong enough to survive them, that I had not been weak in training him. At least, I thought, with the wild desperation of a man who has abandoned one duty for another when he’d once been able to serve both, my lord had made his decision. We were there in the stables; he was determined to flee.
“My lord,” I said.
“We’ll take this horse.” Mamoru lifted his head, his voice that of a commander on the battlefield—the very lord whom I’d served under for years. In his face, I saw the Emperor himself, a resemblance that had never shown itself before.
If I could have comforted him the way a hostler comforts a horse by touch, I would have been glad to do it. But my lord stood some distance away from me, remote and unapproachable. I’d brought dreadful news to him, and he might yet blame me for betraying his brother and his empire simply by favoring my loyalty to him.
“If you permit me to make a suggestion,” I offered, as though we were playing a game of stones, or he were laboring over a troublesome page of calligraphy. I’d thought things through almost too well, and my lord knew it; his eyes on me were keen and sharp.
“Go on,” he agreed.
“I would not suggest it under any other circumstances…”
“Go on, Kouje,” my lord said again.
Use the old trick against the men who invented it, I thought to myself. It seemed fitting, a small and private revenge, but I couldn’t phrase my words that way for Mamoru. “A disguise,” I explained, as carefully as I could. “In order to make it past the gates. If we are dressed as servants, then even when questioned, no man will truly think to take note of us.”
“Two men riding out on the eve that the prince and his retainer disappear?” Mamoru asked. “Kouje, I don’t think—”
“We do not necessarily have to be two men riding out, my lord,” I said. “They are poor clothes, and hardly fitting for a prince, but the woman who wore them first kept them clean and in good repair. They should fit you well.”
“And for yourself?”
“Something less fine than my banquet clothes,” I admitted. It was a shame to acknowledge how much I had prepared without first consulting him, but fear for his life had panicked me. At least, I told myself, what mattered was Mamoru’s safety and not how able I was to be proud of myself.
“You’ve thought of everything,” my lord said, his usual sweet mirth replaced by a dull dispassion. He moved like a little ghost, away from the horse, to rest one hand against the wall. “What if I had not come?”
“I would have returned the garments to their proper place,” I replied. “No one would ever have noticed them missing.”
“They’ll notice them now. Perhaps someone will piece together the mystery…?”
I shook my head. “My lord Iseu—The Emperor will not truly have the time or the inclination, if you are missing, to listen to a servant complain about her missing garments, my lord. I should have left money, but I was… I didn’t think of it.”
Mamoru stepped forward. His feet were bare, and I should have put my hands beneath them where he walked to keep the soles from being pricked by hay or sullied by dirt. Before I could offer myself, or at least the maid’s cotton slippers, my lord had moved away from the wall to rest that same supporting hand against my arm.
“You have truly thought of everything,” he said, and this time, it was more in gratitude.
“I thought that we might tell the men at the gate that you’ve taken ill, and I was charged with the duty of taking you from the palace as quickly as possible before day broke and the diplomats heard of it,” I said, offering my lord the clothes. They were thin, and he took cold easily. I didn’t like it, but I could bring his finer robes with us, and perhaps barter with them for something warmer, and shoes that would better serve him. I had no further plan yet. My sister had married a fisherman. Perhaps, if all else failed, I would learn to fish. It was ridiculous and implausible; my lord was a prince, and a fisherman’s hut would kill him soon enough, or crush all the beauty out of him. For now, it would serve as a transitory destination. I was rescuing him. That was all I could think of. “While the delegation from Volstov is under the Emperor’s care, he cannot allow even the smallest of threats to escape his notice.”
Mamoru reached out to me for the maid’s clothes, then hesitated. “The Emperor will find us,” he said.
I could not hope to protect him, or so he must have thought, against his brother’s far reach, against the age-old network of spies, against the sol
diers he would send to search us out like wild dogs. Yet I was bound to serve my lord as always. Perhaps I was being too prideful, too sure of my abilities. I was no more than a servant, and the gods favored Iseul. In his veins ran their blood.
In Mamoru’s, too, I told myself, as I handed him the maid’s clothes.
“It will take him some time to send any men after us,” I reasoned, as my lord stepped behind an empty stall to undress; I could hear the sound of silk moving against silk, and the crunch of old, brittle hay beneath his feet. I wondered if I had time to go back and find boots for him, and knew even as I thought it that I did not. “He will be busy with the delegation and the treaty, and it will take some doing for him to explain why you are missing. It will take longer still for him to gain permission to send armed men after us, since with the delegation present he will be reluctant to act too precipitously.”
That, and my lord had made a favorable impression on the delegates, where I had read nothing but fear and discomfort on their faces while conversing with Iseul. That manner of impression would not have harmed him in the Ke-Han way of thinking, but it might just work in our favor when it came to the delegates’ being comfortable with lending Iseul free rein. He was Emperor still, but we were under the thumb of Volstov until otherwise notified.
I could see my lord’s eyes in the darkness. They were very pale, and very bright, and dark all around with shadows. I stepped into a shadow of my own to change, careful not to dirty my finest clothes. They’d be worth at least one pair of boots; that way, I would keep Mamoru’s fine things for as long as I could.
“Diplomatic talks are always impossible,” Mamoru agreed. Though he sounded subdued and resigned, there was faint strength remaining in his words, and an almost desperate humor. “It would take them days just to decide whether or not to open a window, much less—Much less chase down an errant traitor-prince.”
“You know them better than I,” I said, allowing a tight smile. That was no time for jests or laughter, and so of course we needed them more than ever. It was much akin to battle humor.
