by Jaida Jones
Like Caius Greylace didn’t know already he was perfectly capable of handling a lion or two. If I could trust the stories—and I was more and more sure than ever that I could—then he’d already handled his fair share of them.
Lord Temur said something in a low undertone that I didn’t quite catch, but I gathered from Caius’s tinkling laughter that it was the height of Ke-Han wit.
Josette gave me a baffled look, which was as clear an indication as I was going to get that she thought Caius as nutty as I did. Maybe it was best to let our fine Lord Temur deal with him all night, though it’d give him a really odd cross section of the diplomats.
If anytime, that was my chance to escape.
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Josette, a suspicious look in her eye. “You’re not bolting and leaving me here with Greylace and one of the seven Ke-Han warlords.”
“I think he likes you,” I said.
Caius and Lord Temur were walking up the white sand path, and coming to the garden that contained all the strange stone statues. We were going to have to run to catch up to them. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind the idea. I’d been waiting all day to stretch my legs.
Josette gave me a look that suggested if she hadn’t been such a diplomat, she’d have punched me square in the jaw for that last remark. Then she started off down the pathway, leaving me to catch up with her. I didn’t offer her my arm when I did, but she took it anyway.
I didn’t really see the purpose in going to a zoo at night, especially when it was nearing dark already, the sky stained a mottled blue-purple, like the ribbon Caius was wearing in his hair. (Knowing him, he’d probably calculated what night looked like, and picked out a ribbon that morning to match.) At least the air didn’t get a chill in it as soon as the sun went down, the way it did in Volstov. That was one positive thing I could say for the Ke-Han and their country though I wasn’t going to be making a habit of it or anything.
Up ahead of us, I could hear Caius’s fluttering laughter as they discussed the price of tea, or the artwork in the diplomats’ rooms, or the quality of silk, or all the trivial what-have-yous that Caius liked to talk about. I couldn’t tell from Lord Temur’s voice whether he was bored out of his mind or just plain bemused. From what I’d heard of the Ke-Han language, it was common to speak all in monotone. I guessed it went along nicely with not having any expression on your face, so that nobody could ever tell what the hell you were actually thinking. I couldn’t even imagine what he thought of Caius’s theatrical Volstovic.
Josette pointed to a distant hill, some ways outside the garden where a bunch of fat, colorful flowers was growing. “Oh, look!” she cried, sounding more like Caius than I’d ever heard her. “Chrysanthemums!”
Lord Temur turned around at that, his eyebrows raised. I didn’t like how he understood everything we were saying so easily. Some might have looked at it like a gesture of goodwill, but to me it just felt like spying. The ’Versity scholars had explained that the Ke-Han language was one that took years to perfect, and that speaking it halfway was loads worse than not speaking it at all, but I couldn’t help feeling like we were at a disadvantage, since the Ke-Han could retreat behind their soft, hurried consonants, and we had nowhere to hide at all.
“They are a symbol of the Emperor’s reign,” said Lord Temur, shielding his eyes from the setting sun to look up at the chrysanthemum garden. “No one else is permitted to cut them.”
“Ah, I see,” said Josette, and she looked more disappointed than I’d have thought, over a handful of too-big flowers.
“He’s better than a guidebook,” I muttered under my breath.
Caius shot me a reproving look. It figured that he would have freakish hearing on top of his freakish everything else.
“We have nearly reached the menagerie,” said Lord Temur. “As I have assured your companion, all the lions are safely within their cages tonight.”
It wasn’t so much the lions that gave me cause to doubt, but then I supposed there wasn’t much harm in going to look at a bunch of animals, of all things. Besides, there were three of us and one of him, so if things got ugly, we could just feed him to something that liked fresh meat and hope for the best.
The gates of the menagerie were wrought-iron bars, shaped into a graceful and purposeless design, the way the Ke-Han seemed to like best. The stone walls were a clean white—the sort that only stays clean for a year or so, maybe, before the elements get to it.
Then I remembered how Caius had been prattling on about the menagerie being destroyed in the dragons’ last attack on the city—at least I thought that was what he’d been talking about, since I’d been trying to get to sleep at the time. The reason everything looked so new and shiny was because they’d only just rebuilt it.
They’d done a decent job, I supposed. There was white gravel all along the pathways, and bright, spidery-thin vines that draped down the white walls on the inside. There were dainty orange flowers blooming here and there, and a white sign at a fork in the path that said which animals were in which direction. At least, that was what I assumed it said, since the thing was written in the Ke-Han language, which meant that it looked like a game of noughts and crosses to me, but there were shadow-pictures of animals next to the foreign words, so my guess couldn’t be too far off the mark.
In the distance, I heard the sharp call of a bird that wasn’t a peacock.
Caius looked thrilled.
“Which should we see first, my dears? The lions? I see there are leopards also, how fearsome!”
“Yes, terrible,” said Josette. “I’m sure we’ll find ourselves all aquiver.”
“What sort of bird was that, do you suppose?” I asked, since it didn’t matter to me one way or another which animals we saw first. Though it wasn’t the sort of thing a person could say outright—for the sake of diplomacy and all—I would rather have seen the menagerie just after it’d been destroyed, with the animals running every which way, loose and fierce and proud. They wouldn’t look the same in cages, and, as much as I didn’t like the idea of lions roaming free all around me, I liked the idea of them behind bars even worse.
“There is a section devoted entirely to the songbirds,” Lord Temur explained, patient as anything, like he hadn’t just been sitting through the same bastion-damned long day as the rest of us. “They were the young prince’s favorite. Ah.” He paused, apparently remembering what the talks that day had been all about in the first place, and turned toward the other fork in the pathway. “Perhaps my companions would like to see the cats of prey? I regret to say that we have not yet replaced the white tigers that were lost to us earlier this year, but we have all the rest.”
Things were changing pretty fast there within the Ke-Han, you had to admit, and it was a miracle most of them were able to get up in the morning and go about their business properly, much less keep those blank looks on their faces and hold their heads up high. I didn’t envy them their position one bit, but we’d given them what they deserved. They’d taken enough land, conquered too many people, and got greedy. All we’d done was make sure they didn’t get any farther than the Cobalts. Took us long enough, too.
“The black panther was once considered a god,” Lord Temur continued, to the sound of Caius’s delighted “oohs” and Josette’s sharp “ah!” “A long time ago, though he is still respected in deference to the old ways. You can still read of his mighty place in some of the historical scrolls.”
“Do you think we will be allowed to see the libraries?” Caius asked delightedly, missing the point entirely. “My grasp of your language, my lord, is rudimentary at best, but perhaps you would be willing to allow me to usurp your time for the cause of history?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Lord Temur replied, because he had to.
Meanwhile, I was watching the black panther. If he had once been a god, then it looked like he still knew it—somewhere, anyway, beneath all the lazy indifference. He was lounging on a low-hanging, stout branch, one paw dangling over t
he edge and his graceful tail just brushing the ground. He was watching us like we didn’t matter to him one way or another, and it wasn’t because of the bars that he felt so easy.
But the bars were still there, after all, and he was still behind them. God or no, he was a zoo animal, and we were there to make a show out of him, not pay our respects.
Volstov had its own menageries, of course, and its own fair share of caged animals. Still, as the panther lifted its half-lidded slit eyes to me and yawned, I didn’t like the feeling the whole thing gave me, not one bit.
MAMORU
The dim, terrible happenings of the night before—as remote and impossible as the actions of puppets on the stage—should have dissolved the moment I opened my eyes. They felt like a nightmare.
They were not.
When I woke, I barely knew where I was; all I did know was that I was cold and that my arm was stiff and twisted beneath me. Something soft was beneath my head, but the rest of my body felt as though I were lying on a bed of twigs.
I moved, my arm useless, as though I were a veteran of war who’d lost it in the fighting.
Kouje was somewhere, close by as always, and he would tell me where we were and what news the morning brought. I didn’t remember falling asleep. The last memory I did have of the night before was the steady rhythm of the Volstov mount beneath me and the rustle of the wind through the trees all around us, like women gossiping at court.
Were they already gossiping about me?
I sat up, brushing leaves out of my hair while my hand tingled back into feeling. I’d been lying on the ground, underneath the protection of a maple tree; the bundle of my clothes, wrapped around with Kouje’s and then with a plain workman’s cloth, had been under my head to serve as a pillow. The horse was nearby, tethered to a low branch, stomping lazily and poking his nose into the underbrush. He was hungry. My stomach tightened in sympathy. I was hungry, too.
There was a soft rustling from the bushes near us, and I felt a sudden fear take hold of my chest, causing my heart to pound double where it had been nearly calm. Moments later, Kouje emerged from between a parting in the brush, two rabbits held within his hands and a look on his face that suggested he wished for the quiet surroundings of the palace, where there were no bushes at all to rustle and signal his approach. His braids were undone.
“I hope I did not wake you, my lord,” he said.
“You should have,” I countered. It was true, not merely a childish fit of willfulness. If everything that had passed the previous night was true, then I could no more afford to sleep in than I could allow Kouje to go on indulging me as though I were still a prince. I’d conceded all rights to that title the moment I’d left the palace.
I felt a curious melancholy throbbing in my chest as the beat of my heart slowed, but I paid it no mind.
Kouje put the rabbits down and knelt in front of me beneath the bower of the maple. For a moment, it would have been easy to close my eyes and imagine we were back at the palace, or even on a campaign for the war, and had been separated from our men by a storm the night before. But my clothing was rough and unfamiliar under my fingers, and my back hurt from sleeping on the hard ground, and I could not hide the truth from myself.
It would only make the inevitable conclusion worse.
“Rise,” I told him, swallowing down my darker thoughts. “We don’t have time for such formalities, Kouje. Please rise. I see you’ve brought us breakfast.”
Kouje lifted his head, looking apologetic where he might have looked proud. After all, he’d woken before me, and had managed to catch us a meal while I continued sleeping. If anyone should have looked apologetic, it was I.
“I know it is a meager offering, my lord,” Kouje began, “and we have nothing to season them with, but I thought… if you were hungry…”
“They look very fine,” I said, not allowing him to continue. “Why, I’m quite sure we had worse fare in the mountains, come to think of it.”
Kouje laughed quietly, making me feel infinitely better about my small joke. There had never been a worse time to make light of a situation, I felt sure, but that was what drove me to it. I knew that Kouje would never indulge in such humor, but in doing so myself I kept him from becoming overly somber.
It seemed all the more important that we look after one another, and all the more important that I coax Kouje out of the habits that the palace had bred into him. Such deference from him to me, as I was clothed, would certainly lead to us getting caught; if not there in the forest, then inevitably somewhere else.
“I shall prepare them, then,” Kouje said, and rose once more.
I watched him first twist what remained of his braids back out of his eyes, then roll up his sleeves. He bent to gather dry moss and sticks from the underbrush, bundling them together in his fists until he had enough to strike a fire with the flint from his pouch. I looked away when he pulled out the knife, hating to display such weakness. Tomorrow, I told myself, feeling my own hair as one snarled knot at the nape of my neck. Tomorrow, I would be the one to prepare breakfast.
“Kouje?” I set my fingers to the careful task of working the knots out of my hair, one by one.
I wasn’t looking, but I heard the pause in his work. “Yes, my lord?”
“I’ve been thinking. If I am truly to master this disguise, then you mustn’t bow to me, not even in private.”
“My lord,” Kouje began, sounding strangled, as though I’d just suggested he cut off the heads of all seven warlords.
I pressed on ruthlessly. I had to be ruthless. That was what Iseul had always wanted from me, though perhaps it was a joke of the gods that events had driven me to it at last. “And you mustn’t call me ‘my lord’ anymore, either. Don’t you see, Kouje? We’re bound to… give the game away when it matters most. You’re so in the habit of it already; I am as well. I need you to help me, or else I fear we’ll never—Well. I believe it’s for the best if we both learn to unlearn what was customary at the palace.”
Kouje was silent after that. I could hear the crackling of the fire and the sizzle of the rabbits on their sticks, but there was no reply to what I’d said. I turned once I’d completed my braid, with the sinking feeling that I’d gone too far or said too much.
Kouje knelt in front of the fire, his eyes closed, buried deep in thought. His hands weren’t tending to the rabbits anymore, but to his own hair, methodically removing each braid from its place and undoing them, one by one. All at once, I felt a fierce rush of grief run through me, for the loss of my father and now of my brother, too, the subjects and lands that had been ours to shepherd and protect. My friends. My room in the palace. The walk by the gardens. The way the light came in through the window and woke me.
We had lost so much over the course of the years, then had finally faced true defeat at the end of the war. I’d earned my braids alongside Kouje, fighting to honor my father and our country. I’d stood with him as he earned braids of his own. Watching him as he removed them from his own hair was like watching the magician’s dome destroyed in a blaze of dragonfire and smoke. It was like having the years of my life, each triumph, scattered worthless at my feet, so many broken twigs upon the forest floor.
The fire snapped, sending a hiss of sparks up into the air. The rabbit was dripping fat into the flames. I felt as though I couldn’t breathe.
“Your breakfast is ready, my lord,” said Kouje. His hair was kinked from its long confinement, and loose as I had never seen it before. He offered me the smallest of smiles, his own habit from our days at the palace; this, however, was one we could allow. “I apologize. Mamoru.”
The air was awkward between us, and we were separated suddenly by more than just the sound of the fire. Still, for now, this awkwardness would have to serve. Eventually, Kouje would grow better used to speaking my given name, and I would grow better used to hearing it.
No one ever called me by my proper name, save for my father and my brother, but one was dead and the other wished
for me to join him. There was only Kouje left to me.
It was the strangest breakfast I’d ever eaten, which was not to say it wasn’t satisfactory; it was merely that fresh meat in the morning wasn’t my usual fare. I thanked Kouje for it nonetheless, and ate my full share. Anything less would have made him worry. Besides which, I was hungry.
What I wouldn’t have done, though, for a bowl of rice.
After that, Kouje obliterated all signs of our presence, brushing leaves this way and that and destroying the fire he’d set to cook the rabbits. He spoke very little, save to ask me if I would like to bathe. He must have sensed my reluctance, as well as its reasons—we were too close to the palace yet and I didn’t want to risk any delay. He didn’t mention it again.
Then, we rode.
The farther we went, the more I was certain we were straying farther still from any path I’d ever known. I felt as though I were running away because I very much was, but the loneliness I felt beyond that was not simply due to all I had lost: It was due also to all I didn’t know. Even the trees were unfamiliar to me, and I began to realize that I would evermore be the stranger.
“Where do you think we’ll go?” I asked, loud enough to distract myself from my thoughts. I was sorry for it when the birds above us in the tree branches flapped their wings, a few of them even taking sudden flight.
Kouje didn’t admonish me, though I thought perhaps he should have. His silence told me everything.
After a little while, however, he did speak. “We’ll travel as far away as we can from the palace,” he said, his words more quiet and more circumspect than mine had been. I was glad to listen to him talk; if only he were a man better suited for idle conversation. “It takes us a considerable distance out of the way, but…” He paused for a moment, listening to something deeper in the woods, then relaxed. I would have to do my best to distract him from his own worries, I realized—even if I was able only to chatter on foolishly about the weather. He was tense as a drawn bow behind me. “I’d thought to take you to a small fishing village near the mountains,” he concluded at last. “I should have consulted you, but it seemed the best plan last night.”
