by Jaida Jones
“That was what most troubled my mind about the matter,” Iseul said. I could hear the shifting of silks; he had not yet disrobed for the night and was still dressed in his father’s finest. He was an emperor now, and my lord Mamoru only a prince. “It would seem that Mamoru is too well suited to be used by these men, rather than capable of using them. You know as well as I how weak he is. I would cut out my own tongue before I betrayed my own brother, but I would cut out the contents of my belly before I betrayed the Ke-Han.”
“It is for the Ke-Han,” the first lord said.
A murmur of assent passed among them. An answering echo of dread sounded in my chest.
It was more than I should have heard—more than I should have stayed to hear. My allegiance was to my Emperor; he owned my loyalty, my services, my soul and heart. Though I served my lord Mamoru, it was merely to serve my Emperor before him, and to serve my Emperor was to serve the Ke-H an.
It is for the Ke-Han, I thought, grateful as I always was that my father had trained me so well. No sound could be heard when I moved through the halls; my feet were silent even on the most ancient of floorboards.
I thought of my many years of service, of Mamoru as a baby, of the first fever he suffered, which had by no means been the last. It was true that he was not as strong as his brother—the gods had been unusually kind when they made Iseul the heir and Mamoru the second son—but he was not a traitor. If he had been, I would already have known it.
In his room, two doors from mine, my lord Mamoru was no doubt already asleep for the night. He had been proud of himself today; I’d watched him as he sat, learning the Volstovic vowels that so confounded me, in the long days and weeks that followed our defeat. I’d guided him in battle, taught him archery and the sword, and, when he was much smaller, held his hand through fevers or changed the final words of the saddest stories to keep him from weeping.
As my father had wished it, I’d endeavored to be a servant not only worthy of his name but worthy of the Emperor.
To know that my lord was in danger was to feel the point of the sword against my own throat. If the threat had come from any other source, I would have taken up all my weapons, in spite of the terms of the diplomats’ treaty, and hunted the men behind it down like criminals and dogs. As with all prior attempts, my lord Mamoru would never have known the precariousness of his own life in these dark hours.
But Iseul’s words were spoken for the good of the empire, and I was merely a servant. What was my will worth, against that of an emperor?
CAIUS
It was my first evening with the Ke-Han, and already the second prince’s bodyguard had tried to kill me. Things would have been much more intriguing if it had been the second prince himself, but when one was in the midst of exotic, curiously refined savages, one took what one could get.
Alcibiades, however, was still having a fit of pique over it.
As he made it very plain that he actively disliked me—he hadn’t come around just yet, and he was stubborn as a mule and smelled like one, too—I had no idea why he was making such a fuss over it.
“In fact,” I was in the middle of explaining, “everything’s gone rather better than I thought it would have by now.”
As a response, Alcibiades managed an indelicate grunt. I’d learned, however, the sound was his particular and special form of communication. One had to adapt if one wanted to find any sort of conversation at all. I had already garnered a reputation among some of the other diplomats, so Alcibiades—grunting, mulish aroma and all—would have to suffice for the moment.
I did what I always did: I continued talking. “Why, didn’t you expect the sparks to fly?” I asked, knowing full well I would get no more than a grunt in return. From what I gathered, not only was Alcibiades in a poor mood, he was also hungry. He’d barely touched his food at dinner. No doubt he’d expected bread and cheese and bleeding meat, and was disappointed to discover the subtle flavors of Ke-Han cuisine. Either that, or all the half-raw fish. “If it wasn’t someone else who gave the first offense, I thought for certain it would be you.”
That seemed to surprise him. “Me?” Alcibiades demanded. Although it sounded distinctly gruntlike, it was almost certainly a word; I counted that as a triumph, and made a mental note of the time and place. Late evening, my quarters in the palace. When we’d returned after the lovely meal, I’d immediately opened the adjoining door between our rooms so that we might chat better.
“You were wearing red,” I pointed out.
“Good color,” he replied.
I sighed, though I wasn’t really exasperated. He was more than just a character, the recently promoted General Alcibiades; he had an interesting sense of what was allowed (offending all the Ke-Han by wearing Volstov’s colors in the midst of a diplomatic mission) and what wasn’t (admiring the second prince’s very fine jade necklace).
“One almost thinks you want to be recalled,” I said slyly.
Alcibiades looked at me sharply, and I wondered if I hadn’t hit the mark, after all. Something about his expression reminded me of how the second prince’s bodyguard had seized my arm. You wouldn’t think it to look at men so solidly built—that they could do anything so quickly—but there were Alcibiades and the bodyguard, both proving me wrong.
There was nothing so wonderful as being proven wrong. It gave one all manner of chances to adapt and solve the riddle, that one might be right the next time. I relished the thought.
Alcibiades’ stomach made a loud and unruly sound.
“Perhaps,” I ventured, “you might abandon your dreams of being recalled in favor of actually eating some dinner occasionally?”
“It wasn’t even cooked!” Alcibiades proclaimed. A full sentence this time. Perhaps the hunger was forcing him to let his guard down. The theory, if it proved true, was rather a thrilling prospect. Why, by morning he would be speaking in paragraphs!
“At least you can rest assured that at breakfast there is very little likelihood of your bowl containing more fish. They don’t seem like the type to repeat a performance—or a meal, for that matter.”
Alcibiades rubbed his stomach, almost like the great shaggy dog I’d first imagined him to be. “I’d even settle for rice, at this hour,” he said.
I looked out the window. I hadn’t noticed it before, since it operated in much the same way as the sliding doors, yet wasn’t made of rice paper but dark, polished wood. The moon hung like a slice of some pale exotic fruit in the sky. It was the perfect sort of night for a midnight raid on the kitchens. Granted, this wasn’t my country estate, but it was always possible to sniff the kitchens out, and they were the one place in any country that never closed down completely for the night. What if the Emperor got peckish? It would never do to be caught off guard.
I didn’t have much experience in raiding Ke-Han kitchens, of course, but I’d done that sort of thing often enough during my term in exile. Food was essentially the same everywhere you went, once you got right down to the bare bones of it. It didn’t matter one whit whether the Ke-Han pantries were stocked with rice or with bread. Except, of course, to men like Alcibiades.
I stood up, quite glad that I hadn’t changed for bed after all, even if my night set was brand-new, blue silk, to match all the rest.
It was the longest I’d gone without experiencing the need for some variety in my clothing, but I suspected that had something to do with the finery of the garments I wore and the utter foreignness of their shape and style.
Why, it might even take weeks to tire of them. If so, I had grossly overpacked.
Alcibiades looked at me with a carefully concealed measure of hope, as if he thought that I was finally going to sleep, and he could at last retire, or at least close the adjoining door between us. He’d been eyeing it for some time. Fortunately for him, I was in a generous mood, and of no mind to hold such a thing against him.
“Let’s go and find some rice, then!” I said, with the air of someone embarking on a wonderful adventure. A
lcibiades seemed like the type of man who needed that sort of nudge in the right direction.
“What?”
It was almost as if the man hadn’t been following.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never gone to the kitchens past nightfall,” I said, though I was privately imagining that Alcibiades probably hadn’t.
He grunted, which I took to mean that I’d imagined correctly.
“I’m used to eating my fill at dinner, that’s all,” he went on, after the fact.
His hunger was most promising if it meant that I wouldn’t have to spend the bulk of my time translating Alcibiades’ grunts into proper words. I wasn’t any good as an interpreter. I slipped my hands underneath his arms and tugged him to his feet. I’d have never managed it if he hadn’t been so surprised, but then I’d rather been expecting him to be heavier than he was.
It was far too early for him to be wasting away to nothing in any case.
“The sooner we leave, the sooner you eat,” I said.
The palace halls were darkened when we slid the door to my room open. At one junction, far off in the distance, I could see a lantern-bearer, his lamplight reflecting in the mirrors set at each corner of the corridor and lighting their way like a staircase of stars around the twists and bends of the narrow corridor.
“Do you think they ever get a terrible scare, seeing their own reflections in the middle of the night?” I asked.
Alcibiades looked at me, then looked at the lantern-bearer. He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said.
I nudged him with my elbow, fishing again for an entire sentence. “Wouldn’t it frighten you?”
“I’m not afraid of myself,” he said. “Or the dark. So I guess not, no.”
I nodded, taking his arm in a swift gesture. “I didn’t think so.”
It wouldn’t have scared me, either.
As we passed the palace servants, the lanterns lit the change on their faces from a nearly uniform expression of utter boredom to one of concern and slight confusion. Perhaps if they’d known the words to ask us what we were doing, they would have done so. As it was, they merely watched us, hiding their bafflement as best they could after their initial shock. We must have seemed like ghosts in the night to them, unused as they were to our presence.
That cemented it. While I was there, I would almost certainly have to learn the Ke-Han language more idiomatically. It was nearly unbearable to think of all the gossip I might miss out on over something so silly as a language barrier.
I drew close to Alcibiades once we’d passed the lantern-bearers, and the hallways grew dark once more.
“Don’t you think this will put us under suspicion?” I asked him. “Two men from Volstov, out and about in the night, sneaking through the halls of the palace? If anything untoward should happen, they’ll surely blame us!”
“Don’t sound so delighted about it,” Alcibiades muttered, trying to shake me off. Then, as if it were an afterthought, one too good to pass up simply through stubborn reticence, “I’m not too used to exile, that’s all.”
“And I am?” I asked, still too cheerful at the thrill to be annoyed by the insult. I was used to people insulting me. They did it all the time. The best thing of all to do was act as though you hadn’t heard it, or even worse, as though it didn’t bother you. The one thing gossips and rumormongers enjoy the least is feeling ignored. “Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”
That time, when Alcibiades grunted, I took that as an inquiry as to how it had been, living in exile since I was fourteen. I had sixteen different tales depending on who it was doing the asking, but for Alcibiades, I thought I would be indulgent and go with the honest truth. Some men appreciated the strangest things.
“How kind of you to ask,” I said, peering down one tight, dark hallway. I could smell rice. At least, I hoped that was what I could smell. If it wasn’t, then I was very confused. “It wasn’t all that terrible, really. Mostly, it was just boring. You know how that is.”
Alcibiades looked at me with a baffled expression, as though he felt we were occupying and acting out two very different conversations. “What are you talking about?” he asked, confusion getting the better of him.
I liked it when he frowned. “Exile, of course. Terribly boring. One must depend solely on the kindness of others, to write letters and answer them in return. I was restricted to an estate in the old Ramanthine countryside. You can imagine what that was like. Or perhaps you can’t, in which case you ought to be terribly thankful. In any case, you really must pay better attention, my dear, or else we’ll never get anywhere.”
“This is ridiculous,” Alcibiades said. “I’m going back to bed.”
I held up my hand in protest. “But we’re completely lost. And besides, I was just about to tell you about the dog.”
“The—what?” I’d got the better of him at last, though who knew how long I’d manage to continue coaxing responses out of him? It was best if I pressed my advantage right then.
“Why, the one you remind me of, that is,” I said. I ducked quickly around one corner, sensing the sound of footfalls somewhere in the distance. From behind a closed door, I heard someone yawn; I could see, through the squares of rice paper, a candle as it was snuffed, followed by murky darkness. It was beautiful there, if a little damp, and the wood floors were very smooth beneath my slippered feet. It was possible, in a place like that, to traverse the entire hallway without making any sound. What a delightful prospect that was. All manner of people could sneak up on one that way, or listen to what one was saying. I felt sorry for them if they were listening to us. I was being amusing, while all Alcibiades could manage or muster were a few pained words here and there, and noises that sounded unpleasantly as though he had indigestion. “He died a while ago,” I went on, shaking my head. “The dog, I mean. But he was yellow, and before he got very old and started relieving himself on the furniture and I absolutely couldn’t stand him anymore, I liked him very much. The dog and all the letters: That was how I entertained myself.”
Alcibiades just stared at me. I could make out his broad, simple features in the darkness. I smiled.
“During exile,” I repeated, for his sake. “I did have parties, of course, but with the most impossibly boring people, without any imagination. Once I ordered tigers from the jungle and had them in cages and one woman fainted! Of course, that was after I let the tigers out, but they didn’t really eat anyone. For tigers, they were disappointingly tame.”
“You wanted the tigers to eat people,” Alcibiades said. It didn’t really sound like a question, so I could only assume he’d made his mind up about the matter.
“Not at all,” I said. “Well—not really. It would have made a mess, and it’s hard to keep good help in the countryside. Ah! Here we are, I think.”
Alcibiades nearly crashed into me as I stopped short in front of another one of those beautifully crafted sliding doors—these weren’t papered, but solid wood, and looked more native to the palace—more solidly, fiercely Ke-Han—than the other, flimsy creations had.
“I thought we were lost,” Alcibiades said.
“Oh, we are,” I agreed. “But now we’re lost by the kitchens.”
“Oh,” said Alcibiades. Then, as if I were suffering from the same lack of attention toward this conversation he had been suffering from, he added: “I’m starving.”
“Yes, my dear, I’m quite aware,” I told him. I had no intentions of sleeping in such close proximity to a man whose stomach was infinitely more talkative than he was. It was far worse than the tigers! “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, do I? This wasn’t my idea,” Alcibiades retorted, though he didn’t sound half as cranky as he had a moment ago. Perhaps the prospect of food was placating him. “Smells like food, anyway.”
“See? No matter what else people say about me, I’m very good with directions.”
“After we were lost,” Alcibiades reminded me mulishly.
&nbs
p; “Well, we made it here anyway,” I said, in a tone that I hoped might dissuade Alcibiades from pursuing any further argument in the matter. “Shall we search the premises?”
He nodded, and I slid the door open. It was heavier than it looked.
Alcibiades stepped past me once the door was open, then stopped and turned about.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. He seemed about to start rooting through the various wooden cupboards both above and below the countertops, so I thought it prudent to step in after him and look for a lamp—instead of falling into a dead faint at his attempt at manners, however stilted and reluctant, which was my other option.
“You, General Alcibiades, are very welcome,” I informed him, standing on the tips of my toes to skim the top of the cupboards for a lamplight.
The kitchen was rather a small affair considering it served the entirety of the palace, but it was immaculate, and—judging by Alcibiades’ sounds of pleasure as he stuck his head into the nearest cupboard—it was well stocked.
“Shouldn’t call me that,” he said, crouching down to slide open a small grain closet. “There isn’t anything to be a general of, these days, and promotions after the fact don’t count for nothing.”
“Don’t count for anything,” I said helpfully. “Aha! Here, wouldn’t you rather search with some light?”
“There’s a lamp over there,” Alcibiades said, though his voice was mysteriously muffled.
I heard a suspicious rustling sound from the cupboard.
“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on eating uncooked rice,” I began. Then my ears detected a sound that was decidedly not Alcibiades filling his stomach with all manner of indigestible foodstuffs. It sounded like a whisper, in the soft, foreign tongue that I’d come to recognize, if not understand. A light passed just in front of the door, pale and faltering. Not one of the lantern-bearers, then.
I was glad I hadn’t yet lit the lamp. Curiosity propelled me toward the half-open door when abruptly I felt a hand on my arm, wrenching me back.
