by Devin Madson
Takehiko’s eyelids drooped, the eyes behind them seeming to glaze in fatigue. “Can we go home now, Mama?” he said. “I want Juno.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, my heartbeat seeming to have taken over from the oligarch’s, racing in its place. I wanted to ask what he had done but feared the answer. The boy ignored the man curled upon the floor, not so much as glancing at him when I scrambled to retrieve my blood-stained dagger.
I am doing what my mother wants, he had said.
I held out my blood-stained hand for his, closing it upon his slick little fingers though I wanted to pull away. Only the crackling of the brazier sounded in the room. It might have been best to hide my tea bowl so it appeared the oligarch had been alone, but Gadjo knew better and would be back any moment with the surgeon. Better to leave before they arrived. It was one thing for them to think I had killed the man, but to perhaps discover something else upon examination of the body...
No one intercepted us in the passage, nor at the door. It had been a long time since I had opened a door for myself and I stifled a giggle, sure I must be going mad.
“Your Highness. Your Majesty,” said Koto as we stepped out into the chill night. It had started to snow, light flakes settling upon the guards’ helmets. The palanquin’s oiled cover sagged beneath the growing weight, but as Takehiko climbed onto the mounting block the carriers pulled it tight to bounce off the snow. “Back to the palace, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, Koto. And quickly. Prince Takehiko is tired.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
He wanted more, but now was not the time. Too many eyes. Always too many eyes.
Brushing aside the curtain with my unbloodied hand, I climbed in after Takehiko, grateful for the dark, close comfort the vehicle afforded. Takehiko had already curled up upon the furs, but this time he was facing the other way, his head in the lap of another. A cry for the guards froze to my tongue.
“Your Majesty,” a deep voice said as the palanquin rose with a jolt.
“Nyraek,” I said, and for a brief moment my heart soared. “I see you retain the loyalty of my guards. I might have to speak to Koto about that.”
“Koto was my second too long to give his loyalty to another.”
The observation that the only person Koto would ever give his loyalty to was himself, I left unspoken. “That must keep you warm at night.”
A moment of silence fell, but without being better able to see his face it meant nothing. “How is General Kin managing in my place?” he said as the palanquin picked up speed.
“Well enough,” I said. “His Imperial Majesty takes him everywhere and leaves Koto to guard the rest of us.”
Nyraek grunted. “A mark of favour indeed,” he said, a bitter note there though perhaps only because it was expected. I had wished for him often since his exile, wished for someone to share my burdens and to hold me when fear came in the night, but the Emperor had taken that away, too.
Silence remained as we passed through the narrow streets, and though the darkness hid his face it also hid my troubles. And Lord Epontus’s blood. Soon enough a passing light allowed a glimpse of handsome features, but his eyes were downturned to the sleeping boy in his lap. There his hand patted the curls seemingly without thought.
“I’ve heard you take him with you often,” Nyraek said once we returned to darkness.
“You mean Koto tells you I take him with me often,” I said. “I think perhaps I need a new head guard.”
“Don’t play that game with me, Li.”
“What game?”
“The high and mighty empress.”
I drew myself up. “It might have slipped your memory, Nyraek, but I am a high and mighty empress.”
“Not for much longer, I hear. No, not Koto this time. There are whispers. Just as there were always whispers about us. About...” His hand stilled in the boy’s hair. “You have to stop using him, Li.”
“Why? He knows when people are lying and that is something I need to know.”
“I know why you take him, but you have to stop. You might be able to convince some that you are just a devoted mother, but since you never took Yarri or Tanaka anywhere with you, at best they will think you are more devoted to Takehiko because he is not Emperor Lan’s son.”
My heart thudded as hard as it had back in Lord Epontus’s sitting room. “Prince Takehiko Otako is the son of the Great Emperor Lan Otak—”
“Don’t give me that kasu, Li.”
“He was formally accepted. It is signed.”
“And well for him, but I know my own blood as does anyone else who looks at him.” Nyraek lifted one of the boy’s arms and drew back the silk sleeve. A birthmark stood upon fair skin – three horizontal lines crossed by a diagonal. He had been schooled never to show it. Ever. “It is fine while he is young,” Nyraek went on allowing the sleeve to fall back. “But he will only get stronger and once he is old enough to form lasting memories you risk him Maturating. He needs to be with me.”
I suppressed the instinct to grip Takehiko’s arm. “No,” I said. “He is an Otako and needs to be with his mother.”
“Li—”
“How is your son, Lord Laroth? He must be nearing manhood now, surely.”
“Twelve, I think.”
“You think?” I laughed, hating the brittle cruelty. But I needed to hurt him, to spill my fear and anger before it consumed me. “You cannot even look after one son. Why would I let you have mine, too?”
By this time we had reached the broader streets about the palace where strings of lanterns hung overhead, bringing diffuse light to our silk-hung hideaway. It etched a scowl upon his handsome face, a scowl I remembered all too well. For years it had been there, always watching, always protecting. I could not pinpoint the moment it had changed, when he had begun to linger, when I had smiled, when the times the Emperor didn’t need the commander of his Imperial Guard had become joyous meetings hidden away from the court and its prying eyes. But there are always people watching, listening, whispering, and when I grew heavy with child again I was not the only one who doubted.
“You’re afraid,” he said, breaking the silence. “Why?”
“Don’t you dare do that to me.”
His scowl deepened. “It never bothered you before. Why now? Are you hiding something from me?”
The question meant that for all his loyalty Koto had told him nothing. I could tell him about the seer, but he would only laugh. He might then put his arms around me, might take the fear away with a touch of his hand, but that would not stop the march of fate.
“You have been away too long,” I said, letting my gaze drift to the necklace that hung free of his tunic ‒ an elaborate eye he’d commissioned from the imperial jeweller. What had once comforted seemed now to mock.
“I did not go because I wished to. I went because my Emperor commanded me to go. He would have killed me had I stayed, might still do so now if he finds out I’m here.” He spread his arms wide. “See how much I trust you? I am wholly at your mercy.”
“Hardly. He would just use it as an excuse to execute us both. I think you knew that when you came. I don’t need your strange sight to see some of what you see.”
He bowed his head, the gesture was respectful and yet mocked like the eye pendant. He had always been contradictory. “Perhaps I did know that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. Tell me why you’re afraid.”
“Because I don’t want to die.”
The palanquin ducked back into darkness and halted. “Your Majesty,” came Koto’s voice through the silk. “We are near the gates.”
“I have to go,” Nyraek said, gently shifting the still sleeping Takehiko off his lap. “But I’ll be in touch. And though I am no longer formally the commander of your guard, I promise nothing is going to happen to you while I am alive to protect you. Yes?”
He gripped my hand, and though he frowned as I tucked the other into my sash he said nothing. Like sunlight spreading over my skin, a warmt
h of reassurance chased the chill of fear, its price the tightening of his features and the grim set of his jaw. An exchange.
He let go, waited, but all I could do was nod and chase his retreating form with a smile. Yet despite the warmth he had gifted, my smile faded once the curtain fell back into place. Fear eked back.
“It’s too late for that,” I whispered as the palanquin moved on. “You were gone too long.”
The sound of the servant bringing fresh coals in the morning did not wake me because I was not asleep. Footsteps. The thud of the fuel box. Then scraping. Curled up beneath my feather duvet, I watched dawn light sprinkle through the decorative shutters to fall like snow.
No one had seen us return, Koto too well used to organising secret trysts to fail now. Takehiko had gone sleepily off to the nursery while I hissed warnings in Koto’s ear. Epontus had not been persuaded. He had been a threat and I had killed him. It was all he needed to know and he had taken it with a bow and a grim nod of satisfaction. He had wanted to bring the ministers in at the beginning. Now he would get his chance.
More scraping. A shuffling step as the servant moved around, trying to be as stealthy as an assassin and failing. I rolled. And sucked in a breath as the tip of a knife came to rest upon my throat. The mat had been empty but for me, yet now a chest heaved its breathlessness against my back, while at my ear a voice said: “Silence is the wisest course, Your Majesty,” his words hot upon my skin. “Anything else might see you have an accident like Lord Epontus.”
I froze, sure even a breath would cause the knife to pierce my skin.
“Good.”
The arm let go, and freed I sat up, spinning to face my assailant. “You!” I backed away, chill air nipping at my skin. “How did you get in here?”
“My secret.” Gadjo put back the hood of his cloak, and although it was forbidden he kept his gaze brazenly upon me, a lilt to a pair of full lips. “I thought you might wish to see me,” he went on when I did not speak. “Which is good because I wanted to see you.”
I glanced at the knife and, seeming to notice, he lifted it along with his brows. “Worried about this? I’m not planning to use it on you unless I have to. Like you, Your Majesty, I must protect myself. That is, after all, why you killed my master.”
“I didn’t kill him. He fell.”
“On to a knife. In your hand. Yes. I saw.” He laughed. “You think servants don’t spy when they are sent from the room? There was probably a whole gathering of them outside the doors on your wedding night.”
“That is disgusting!”
“That is the payment we take for doing the bidding of our masters all day and all night.”
His leer turned my stomach. The emperor was not the only man I had lain with, and no matter how careful Nyraek and I had been whispers had still gotten out. “What do you want from me?”
Gadjo lowered the knife and ran a hand through his short silvery hair, thick like the coat of a wild animal. “I want your son.”
“My son?”
“The boy, Takehiko.”
“What do you mean you want him? He is a Prince of Kisia not a loaf of bread.”
His silver brows lifted. “No? Do you really think he will be welcome here once the Emperor gets rid of you? He is... difficult, I hear. Different. A freak. All rumours set about by your enemies, of course,” he added, lifting his hands to placate my maternal rage. “But I saw what he did last night and I do not think it will be long before he is... quietly removed from the palace. Sent north, perhaps, to his uncle where he can lead a quieter life. But of course his carriage will be attacked on the way and the emperor will have to announce the sad news that his youngest son did not survive. Such a pity. So sad. But perhaps by then another child will be on the way, growing in the belly of Lady Jingyi Matoda.”
My hands clenched into fists, the fine nails Zuzue tended cutting into my palms. “You speak filthy lies.”
“I am merely prophesying a future that can yet be altered.”
“Who are you?”
“Gadjo, a most loyal servant of Lord Epontus of Chiltae.”
“No servant can get in here without being seen. No servant looks an empress in the eye and speaks of her son’s death. I could have you killed. Who are you?”
“I am Gadjo.”
Assuming he still lived, the Imperial Guard outside my door would hear me if I screamed, but not before Gadjo stuck that blade in my neck.
“Then I thank you for the warning, Gadjo,” I said. “But I am capable of protecting my own son. You may now leave by whatever method you arrived.”
He sat his knife upon my buckwheat pillow. “I do not leave without your son.”
My laugh was weak. Fearful. “Do you plan to just walk into the nursery and take him?”
“He is still in the nursery?”
Stupid. “He spends some of his time there,” I said, trying to claw back from the precipice. “Juno is one of the few people who can manage him.”
“And you.”
“And me.”
“Then I should take one of you with me.”
I tried for my own sneer. “He will not go anywhere with you. And the guards would kill you before you ever set foot in the room.”
“Perhaps. But I’m here, am I not? It is possible you are not so well guarded as you think.”
I folded my arms to hold in my rising panic. “Then why not just walk over there and take him?” I said, voice shrill. “Why come to see me at all?”
Those hateful brows rose again, all mocking laughter. “It would be rude not to let you know my intentions. He is your child and you are, after all, the empress. At least for now.”
“Well you have told me, now go.”
Gadjo spun the knife upon my pillow. “You don’t think I can.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you’re afraid I will.”
I kept my answer trapped, afraid of its power.
His lips split into a broad grin. “It does me good to see you afraid. To see the great Empress Li brought down to the level of mere mortals.” Gadjo rose from my mat then and I reached out as though to stop him, his only response a laugh. “And some maternal instincts. How lovely. But if you do not give me your son you will wish last night’s work undone.”
“My son for your silence, is that the deal?”
His smile widened like a wild lion. “Something like that, yes.”
“Why do you want him?”
“Who doesn’t want a boy who can kill with a touch and not leave a trace?”
Not leave a trace. Truly the perfect assassin. If the emperor found that out then a whole different future might stretch before the boy, not one in which he was quietly removed, but in which he was put to good use. I hardly knew which was worse.
“No,” I said. “You cannot have him.”
Gadjo bowed then, picking up his knife from my pillow. “Then you do not have my silence and soon you will see how dangerous a servant can be. You’re welcome to double the guard about your son or try taking him somewhere I won’t find you, but I can tell you now it is wasted effort. I will always find you. And I will be back.”
“How can—?
My jaw snapped shut. But for a lingering scent of dusty parchment and damp autumn leaves, the room was empty. The door had not slid upon its track, but I could almost believe the heavy curtain that hung before the balcony trembled.
I rushed to the nursery, heedless of the interested glances I met along the way. There Juno paced the floor soothing Princess Hana’s gusty cries, while Takehiko lay curled in a pile of blankets playing with an abacus. Click. Click. Click. He did not look up, but as I drew closer so the clicking sped.
“Your Majesty!” Juno bowed with Princess Hana still in her hands, one of her fat cheeks lying upon her nurse’s shoulder. Her little face was red and blotchy and her nose wet. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, I was not expecting you.” The woman’s eyes darted about the untidy floor, the wooden horses no doubt left there by Rikk
who wanted to be a soldier when he grew to manhood. “Quick girl, clean them up,” she hissed, waving a hand at the maid who helped her. “Then run and fetch some tea for Her Majesty.”
“There is no need,” I said, my gaze sliding back to Takehiko. All he had done was touch the man. Lord Epontus dead without even a grunt of effort. “I just came to see how my children are today.”
“Her Highness is cutting a tooth and is very unhappy about it, Your Majesty,” Juno said, bouncing the blotchy, damp baby when she started to whimper again. “Only Takehiko was more upset when he cut his first tooth. Yarri barely noticed, but then he is such a strong boy.”
The clicking of the abacus beads quickened. “Yes,” I said, thinking of the boy that was almost a man now. The boy who would cast me off as his father had done. “Prince Yarri is very like his father,” I said in a dead tone. “Tanaka, too.”
“You should be very proud of them both, Your Majesty.”
“I am proud of them all.” I walked toward Takehiko’s refuge. “I will have a moment alone with my son.”
“Of course, Your Majesty, I shall see if the princess is ready to sleep.”
I waited until the door slid closed before I knelt, close enough to touch him though I kept my hands upon my knees. The abacus beads clicked back and forth in time with the rapid hammering of my heart. Just a touch.
“Takehiko?”
The boy’s sandy hair lay tangled against the blanket, his eyes staring at nothing.
“Takehiko?”
He looked up and the snap of the beads ceased. “Yes, Mama?”
Words failed to come. How could you ask a child how he had killed a lord?
“Mama?” The beads started clicking again though he wasn’t looking at them now. “You are afraid. Very afraid. Of me?”
“Not of you, my darling,” I said, torn by the worried crease between his brows. “I know you would never do anything to hurt me. But...”
“Do you want me to kill the person who is making you scared again?”
Such wide, innocent eyes. It ought not to be his job to protect me, or to protect himself, but Gadjo had gotten in without being seen and disappeared again as though he had never existed. There was no saying when he would return or how, and when he did...
