by Amy Raby
“You wouldn’t have found it in there,” said Rhianne. “It was older and in storage.”
He shook his head and stared at a spot off in the trees, looking pale and sick. “You’d know where to look. His name was Ral-Vaddis. Doesn’t matter if you know now.”
Rhianne bit her lip. He looked desolate, parched of his usual spirit. Surely he must have known the spy would be dead. But if he’d come here to search for the man, he must have harbored some hope that the man lived, and she’d smothered that hope. He’d greeted her with a kiss, and all she had to offer him was crushing disappointment. She wished she could kiss him again, but clearly his mind was on other things. “I’m afraid the rest of what I have to say isn’t much cheerier. I couldn’t get anywhere on stopping Micah. I tried, but . . . well, it didn’t work.”
“What did you try?” asked Janto.
“I asked the emperor to intervene, and he refused.”
“Surely that’s not the only way to solve this problem.”
Rhianne hesitated. She hadn’t planned to pursue this further once Florian had turned her down. But Janto was so upset about the dead spy, and he was going to lose his entire country soon. She hated to disappoint him again, and he was right. There had to be another way. “I know someone who’s a great tactical thinker. He might have an idea.”
Janto turned to her, his face lighting with a shred of hope.
“We can talk to him together, maybe come up with a plan. If it’s not something I can carry out, it might be something you could, with your shroud, or . . . who knows. If I arrange to have the door opened for you, can you sneak into my rooms?”
“How are your rooms warded?” asked Janto.
“There’s an enemy ward across my door, attuned to me. You should be able to pass that. I would hope you could.”
“I can pass it. What about wards in the halls? And how do I find your rooms?”
She drew him a quick map in the dirt. “There are no wards in the halls. Only across doorways.” She eyed him significantly. “But there will be invisibility wards in the hallways if anyone suspects there’s a shroud mage operating in the palace. That’s how your Ral-Vaddis got caught, and you’ll get caught too if you don’t leave. I’m giving you two more days before I raise the alarm.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Then we’ll work quickly. You’d better get back so you can open the door for me.”
13
Janto believed he had found the entrance to Rhianne’s rooms. Before the arched doorway stood her bodyguard, Tamienne, and another orange-garbed Legaciattus. Two huge, black ironwood doors stood sentinel as well, barred shut through heavy silver rings as thick as Janto’s wrist. One might think Rhianne was a prisoner in her own chambers.
Janto waited in silence until a tapping of footsteps down the hall indicated the arrival of a uniformed servant, who bore a jug of wine on a tray. The guards removed the bar and, grasping the silver rings, dragged the doors open to let the servant through. Janto trailed after him.
Inside was a receiving room, lavishly furnished with couches, chairs, and carved tables. Rhianne lounged on one of the chairs, reading a novel. With a flick of her wrist, she indicated an end table, and the servant placed the wine upon it.
Janto, unable to reveal himself until the servant left, wandered in farther and placed Sashi on the floor to give the place a sniff. An arched entryway led from the receiving room to a sitting room with a well-stocked bookcase and seating for ten people or more.
I smell brindlecat, said Sashi.
Janto remembered the brindlecat Rhianne’s fiancé had given her. Now he scanned the room with alert eyes, searching for the predator. A ferret was no match for a brindlecat kitten. He saw no signs of it, but such creatures loved to hide and spring on their prey unawares. Ride on my shoulder, just in case. Janto lowered his arm, and Sashi scampered back up.
The door shut behind the departing servant. Rhianne rose to her feet, looking around eagerly, and Janto released his shroud. “Alligator,” he said.
She turned, and a smile lit her face. He started to speak, but she pressed a finger to her lips, beckoned, and moved through the archway into the sitting room.
Janto followed her as she passed under a second archway into an enormous bedroom. He swallowed and stared at the bed, a cream and gold monstrosity piled high with goose down pillows.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said Rhianne. “This is the farthest room from the door guards and the place we’re least likely to be overheard.”
Janto hoped his embarrassment didn’t show. “I would not dream of debauching an imperial princess of Kjall. Unless, of course, she wanted me to.”
A flush crept up Rhianne’s cheeks, and she looked away, muttering something about needing wine.
Janto had been half joking. Of course he’d like to sleep with her, but she was a Kjallan princess and he was a Mosari spy. That he was also a crown prince didn’t signify, given that their nations were at war and he couldn’t reveal his identity. Their lives were on different trajectories. He had no wish to put her in a situation that might cause her grief. A kiss was one thing, bedsport another.
He waited while she retrieved her jug of wine and poured herself a glass. Her blushing intrigued him—she seemed as embarrassed as he was.
Was she a virgin? He didn’t know what the rules were for Kjallan princesses, but when he’d kissed her, she’d been so tentative, and her pulse had fluttered under his hand like the heartbeat of a bird. Most Mosari women went to the marriage bed sexually experienced, and he’d heard it was the same in Kjall, but perhaps the imperial family was different. If she was a virgin, and Augustan was to be her first lover . . . well, one could only hope Augustan was a gentler man in the bedroom than his reputation on the battlefield suggested.
“Wine?” Rhianne’s hand trembled as she offered him a glass. “Let’s stick to business. We’re here to help the slave women. Nothing else.”
“Of course.”
“Wait here,” said Rhianne, setting down her glass. “I’m going to send word to someone who may be able to help us. You’d better hide your animal.” She indicated Sashi. “My friend doesn’t know what you are.”
“Right.” He shrouded Sashi.
Rhianne left, and Janto sipped his wine, looking about, trying to settle his mind on something, anything except the bed in the middle of the room. His eyes lit on the ruins of a bedroom chair. Its damask upholstery was shredded, the wood deeply scored. Horsehair littered the ground beneath it. He blinked. What in the Soldier’s name?
Rhianne padded softly back into the room.
Janto indicated the chair. “What happened there?”
She followed his gesture. “Oh. Whiskers got carried away.”
“Whiskers?” Comprehension dawned. “Is that what you call the brindlecat?”
“I figured she ought to have a name.”
“Yes, but Whiskers? I told you to cage that animal.”
Rhianne wrung her hands. “I know, but she’s so little. And there’s something wrong with her. She’s not eating.”
Janto looked around the room, searching for the cat. “What are you feeding her?”
Rhianne surprised him by extracting the scowling kitten from underneath a settee and thrusting the animal at him. Even he had to take sympathy on it. The poor thing was skin and bones.
Gods, keep her away from me! squealed Sashi, who leapt from Janto’s shoulder and fled to the far end of the room.
She can’t see you, Janto assured him.
She can smell me.
Janto held the kitten firmly, just in case.
“I tried a lot of things,” said Rhianne. “Every kind of meat I could think of, raw and cooked. Fish. Milk. Cream. She won’t have any of it.”
He ran his hands along the kitten’s protruding ribs. The creature sniffed thoroughly along his shoulder, whe
re Sashi had been, and hissed. “And how are you feeding her?”
“I put the food on a plate or in a bowl and leave it for her.”
“Ah. You have to feed her by hand.”
“Three gods, why?”
He set the kitten on the floor. “Because she’s a brindlecat. Whiskers here was surely raised in the zo crèche on Mosar as a future familiar for a war mage. When brindlecats are very young, still in the nest box, their keepers surround them with meat laced with bohr leaf. Bohr leaf has no detectable scent, but it induces vomiting. Meanwhile, they’re fed clean meat by hand. Soon they learn never to touch anything unless it comes from a keeper’s hand. At sexual maturity, their habits are refined even more, and they’re fed only by their intended zo partners. We can’t have enemies soul-sundering our war mages by tossing their familiars tainted meat.”
“I didn’t realize she’d be so complicated to care for,” said Rhianne.
“I told you, she’s not a house cat.”
Just then, from back in the receiving room they heard the heavy scrape of the bar being drawn and the door opening. A man’s voice called, “Rhianne?”
“That’s my cousin,” Rhianne said softly. “Let me do the explaining.” In a louder voice, she called, “In the bedroom, Lucien!”
Janto nearly spilled his wine. Lucien? Her cousin? Was Rhianne bringing the Imperial Heir into his presence? He craned his neck for a look as her cousin entered the bedroom.
Lucien was a black-haired, fresh-faced teenager with a wooden leg who walked with the aid of a crutch. He wore imperial dress and a loros wider than Rhianne’s, though not so wide as the emperor’s. Yes, this was the heir.
On Mosar, the rumors flew about this man, and they were so contradictory that an accurate picture of him could hardly be constructed. He was brave. He was cowardly. He had strong opinions. He never said a word. He was rebellious. He supported the emperor.
Lucien spied Janto and stopped short. “Three gods, Rhianne.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” she said.
“How did you get him past the door guards?” said Lucien.
Rhianne shrugged. “We found a way.”
His eyes narrowed. “You did bring him in through the front door . . . didn’t you?”
“Of course. This is innocent. I just want to help Janto find a way to stop the overseer from assaulting the slave women.”
“Talk to Florian,” said Lucien. “I don’t have that kind of authority, but he does.”
“I tried talking to Florian. He doesn’t care about the slave women.”
“Rhianne!” cried Lucien. “You can’t solve everybody else’s problems! Not Morgan’s, and not the slave women’s.”
“Why not?”
“Because Florian—”
“Florian should be solving these problems, because he’s the emperor, and he has the power to do it,” said Rhianne. “If he won’t do the job, I’ll find a way to do it for him.”
“Just because there’s an injustice in the world doesn’t mean you have to fix it. You take too much on yourself. You didn’t create the problem—”
“Lucien, if everybody thought that way, what kind of world would we live in?”
“Think of the danger! If Florian saw us here with this man—”
“What’s he going to do?” snapped Rhianne. “Marry me off to Augustan and send me to a conquered province full of rebels who hate me? That would be a fine punishment.”
Lucien, defeated, sank into a chair. “We’ll discuss this later. What do you want from me?”
Rhianne gestured to Janto.
“We need a way to discourage the slave overseer from attacking the women,” said Janto. “I fought him off once, but my assumption is he was back at it the next night. We need a way to discourage him permanently. The overseer himself must report to someone. If that person were to order him to stop—”
“Could you go to Florian?” Rhianne asked Lucien. “Or someone else in the chain of command? Nobody listens to me.”
Lucien rested his forehead on his palm and shook his head. “No. I’m in more trouble with him right now than you are, and if I . . . no.”
“Rhianne, what about your magic?” said Janto. “Could you plant a suggestion or something? Make him decide not to attack the women anymore?”
Lucien’s eyes glinted with anger. “Her Imperial Highness is not getting personally involved in this, Mosari. She has too much of a tendency to let her heart override her good sense.”
“It wouldn’t work,” said Rhianne. “My suggestions are short in duration and limited in their power. They can’t change how a man thinks or alter his behavior over the long term.”
“Killing him or crippling him is out of the question,” said Janto. “Other considerations aside, there’d be an investigation. What we really want is to frighten him somehow. Humiliate him.”
Suddenly, Lucien looked up. “Perhaps the sackcloth treatment.”
“What’s that?” asked Janto.
“If an officer bullies his men too much, they gang up on him one night, stuff him in a sackcloth bag, and beat on him with hollow training staves. The staves leave bruises but don’t break bones. It isn’t exactly legal, but it’s an old tradition, and most people look the other way when it happens. It reminds bad officers that their purpose is to lead, not to be tyrants.”
“That might work,” said Rhianne.
“Can we get staves and sackcloth?” asked Janto.
“I can,” said Rhianne. “Do you think the slave women will agree to take part?”
“I don’t know,” said Janto. “I’ll ask a friend.”
“If women are going to carry this out, you might want something heavier than hollow staves,” said Lucien.
“They’ll hit harder than you think, Cousin,” said Rhianne. “And we can’t risk killing him; that would lead to an inquiry. Do you suppose visible bruises will be a problem? It will be better for all of us if Micah keeps the attack a secret, but he won’t be able to if the evidence is on his face.”
“Just don’t hit him in the head,” said Lucien. “After you put him in the bag, protect his head with something. A helmet would work, but in the army they prefer an empty chamber pot. And stop saying we—you’re not to be personally involved, Rhianne.” He leveled an icy stare at Janto. “Mosari, if you want to carry this out, fine. But if anything happens to Her Imperial Highness, I’m holding you responsible.”
“I would never let anything happen to Her Imperial Highness,” said Janto.
Rhianne picked up Lucien’s hand and squeezed it. “You won’t say anything to Florian, will you?”
“Of course not,” said Lucien. “Cousin, it’s time for this Mosari to go back to wherever he comes from. And you come back with me. I want to talk to you.”
14
As Rhianne headed to Lucien’s rooms, trailed by her perfidious tattletale of a bodyguard, she debated just how much she could and couldn’t tell her cousin about Janto, since it was clear he intended to ask. She had never in her life kept secrets from Lucien, and it killed her to start now, but she couldn’t tell him Janto was a spy. That was too big a burden for Lucien to carry.
The guards opened the doors to her cousin’s chambers. She took a deep breath as she entered.
Lucien paced the floor. Leaning on his crutch, he waved at Tamienne. “Out. This is a private discussion.” He gestured at his own guards, and everybody departed, closing the doors behind them.
Rhianne strode across the room and flung herself onto one of Lucien’s couches. “Why can’t I make her do that?”
“The privileges of rank.” Lucien sat across from her. “Look, you can’t keep getting involved in these things. First there was the seamstress with the blackmail problem—”
“I got her out of that mess fine, and I just used forgetting spells all arou
nd, so where’s the harm?”
“Then the stableboy who was being abused—”
“Got him out too, and no harm done there either.” Rhianne smiled. “Who’d have known our little trip to the Consualian Games would have led to all this?”
“You’d better not have told that Mosari fellow about the Consualian Games. Or the hypocaust.”
“Of course not.”
Lucien relaxed a little. “Then there was Morgan, and now this Mosari fellow.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Cousin, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, but sometimes when you get a bug in your ear about something, you lose all sense of reason.”
“I know it’s something you don’t understand,” said Rhianne. “But you’re not me. Florian did a terrible thing to my mother, and I’ve grown up without her, and I don’t know where in the world she is.” Her voice broke, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ll never find her. But somehow I feel that when I help these other people Florian has harmed, then maybe, just maybe, I’m making her proud.”
“Rhianne,” he said softly, “I know she’s proud of you. I’m proud of you. And I will always keep your secrets. I just worry. It’s one thing to help out the less fortunate of our own people, but that Mosari—he’s an enemy. You told me you weren’t going to have any more to do with him.”
“After we get this problem solved, I’ll never see him again.”
Lucien sighed. “Who is he really, and why does he call you Rhianne?”
“He used to be a scribe in the Mosari palace. He’s educated. Very knowledgeable, very intelligent. I enlisted him to teach me his language.”
“If he’s a palace scribe, I’m a ditch digger. That man is Mosari nobility, or at least he used to be. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“I suspect that as well,” said Rhianne. “But it doesn’t matter. His country will be conquered, and when that happens, it won’t matter what family he came from.”
“On the contrary,” said Lucien. “When we conquered Riorca, we purged their aristocracy down to the last man, woman, and child. Augustan will do the same in Mosar. If your Mosari is part of that aristocracy, he needs to conceal his ancestry. He’s not doing a very good job of that now.”
