by Jaida Jones
He’d made it clear as mud, I thought, but I kept that to myself.
Caius paused, and I could almost see the change coming over him, like some kind of invisible comb made to sort out and straighten anything that had gone astray in his momentary fit of temper. I made a joke of it often enough, but there was madness in the Greylace blood. It was common enough knowledge, and it was little things like this that reminded me of it. Something just wasn’t right—like a dragon with a bolt gone missing. Couldn’t trust him, even if you wanted to.
Which I didn’t.
“My apologies,” he said, in a low, calm voice. “What I mean to say is that someone has clearly written this letter in place of your dear Yana.”
His robes pooled elegantly around him when he ducked to pick up the fan, and his knives. I defnitely wasn’t anywhere near calm anymore.
“What are you saying?” I demanded. Not the most eloquent, but he made it damn hard. “She’s not in trouble, is she?”
“I should think not,” Caius replied. “At first I thought that she might have taken ill; that the unusual tone was the product of dictation, perhaps. I worried for her health, and wondered if I ought to write to someone—have a doctor sent out to visit her in the country. You absolutely cannot trust country doctors, my dear; we both know that much. And since she’s so very important to you—you’ve had so much weighing upon you of late, I didn’t want to worry you—I thought to keep it to myself. Perhaps rewrite the letter so that you wouldn’t notice anything was off, either, while I took care of things.”
“Wait,” I said. “Greylace. Just how often are you reading my private things?”
“You’re welcome,” Caius went on, smooth as buttermilk. “It was very kind of me; but I do it because I’ve grown so fond of you, and since you refuse to take care of yourself, the burden falls on those long-suffering souls like myself and Dear Yana. However, Alcibiades, I do not think that Yana is ill.”
“Course not,” I muttered, though I was relieved nonetheless. The letter was crumpled and small in my hands, themselves stiff from so much practice with a foreign blade. “She’s got a constitution like a bull.”
“Naturally, as all fine women do,” Caius acquiesced. “So it was with a mixture of relief and dread that I continued to theorize. What sort of change might come over a woman, a woman like Dear Yana, strong as a bull and set in her particular grammatical ways, to alter her tone so drastically as to sound like…” Caius trailed off, then waved in the direction of the letter with a pained expression—the sort of face he pulled when he saw some kind of outfit that, he said, was indicative of poor workmanship. “Well, like that,” he concluded at last, and chose that moment to take my favorite chair all for himself.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I didn’t know. It could always have been the madness talking—except I knew that it wasn’t. Caius Greylace was absolutely, without a doubt, at least three cards short of a deck, but he was smart as a whipcrack and he wasn’t about to create a conspiracy where none existed.
“Exactly,” Caius said. “Neither did I, really, so I don’t blame you for being at a loss.”
“Well,” I muttered. “If you’ve got the solution, we don’t need a dialogue about it.”
“Humor me,” Caius Greylace said.
“Don’t I always?”
“Not really,” Caius said, and clapped his hands together. “All right then, I will tell you, but only if you promise to have breakfast with me. I’ve already ordered it, and some nice soap that you can use when you bathe and shave today. How does that sound?”
“You’re bribing me,” I replied.
“Only a little bit,” he admitted.
I sat back in my uncomfortable Ke-Han chair, eyeing the letter in question. The handwriting was exactly right, loop for loop; the paper was the same as always, coarse and from the countryside, heavy and stiff and nearly impossible to tear. But everything else was wrong. It just didn’t sound like her—and Caius, of all people, knew why. How long had he been snooping through my things? And when had he found the time to do so? I wondered if he spent most of his time sneaking around my room while I was sleeping—last night, for example, when I was practically dead to the world—and the very idea made me shudder. At least I knew that he was on my side. It was clear now that he could have killed me, with one of those fan-knives, for example, at any time he wanted.
So he considered me quaint, like a pet. Worth keeping around for whatever happened next. Almost the same as I considered him, except I was sane and he was loopy as Yana’s letters.
“Breakfast, huh?” I said.
“I think I have managed to procure us some fried eggs,” Caius added. “I left extremely specific directions with the servants. And everyone is all too ready to give the great hero what he wants. You are a hero now, you know. I am sure the Emperor will wish to speak with you at some point today—I’ll go with you, of course; I don’t trust you alone with people.”
“Neither do I,” I agreed, almost overwhelmed. The headache was coming back.
Without speaking, Caius was suddenly standing and gliding across the room, quick as you like, to stand by me. He ruffled his fingers through my hair—he was actually touching me, but now that I’d finally started to get used to him, I was going to have to kill him—and pressed his thumbs against my temples, where the blood pounded all too hot.
Everything stilled and cooled; the world slowed around me. It was like the night before, with the incense and the wine and the music. It was like being in another place, on the bastion-damned moon, floating out into the night among the stars. For all I felt imaginary at that one moment, I might as well have been a painting on a standing screen: some bowlegged crane or a flower-dusted pine tree, bent and knotty with age.
He was pulling his mind magic on me.
“What’re you…” I muttered, trying to struggle against it as he pulled a blanket up over my slumbering brain. “Stop that… Tickles…”
“I’ll be more careful,” he murmured. “It is only that I thought I might cure your headache. I’ve had my share of them myself, you know.”
“Stop it,” I said, but even I could hear my voice held no conviction.
“Besides,” Caius went on, his voice hushed, “this way, we are closer, and I may speak to you in private. It is my suspicion that Yana Berger wrote to you as she always does, with the peculiar patterns she always did, but that someone has intercepted her letter to you and rewritten it.”
I struggled against the sleepy heaviness in my head. At least it didn’t hurt anymore, but that didn’t make it any less impossible to think. “Why would anyone do that,” I said. “It’s just Yana.”
“Someone paranoid enough to screen all our letters,” Caius said.
A little shiver ran down my spine, the fingers of some unseen hand, and I didn’t even once suspect it was part of Caius Greylace’s Talent. “Tabs’re being kept on us,” I snarled. “Aren’t they?”
“That was the very same conclusion I came to, myself,” Caius said, “as I pondered this dilemma while you drooled into your pillow.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“Fuck,” Caius Greylace agreed. “What a horrible word that is, but I suppose it will serve. In this instance only, mind; I don’t approve of it otherwise.”
“You’re not…” I began, but Caius clucked.
“I’m not Yana?” he supplied.
“What about my letters to her?” I demanded. “Have they been changed?”
“That I have no way of knowing,” he replied. “I do hope, however, you haven’t been indiscreet, and that, if you have had any private information, any suspicions, you have kept them to yourself and away from her. We don’t want to draw any further suspicion; you’ve already caused a great deal of commotion. And, exciting as it may be, now that all eyes are on the dashing hero Alcibiades, it makes it very difficult for us to investigate anything at all.”
“Your,” I managed, forcing my brain to work. “Your Talent—Y
ou’re a velikaia. Why don’t you find out who’s pulling this shit, and we’ll—”
“We’ll what, Alcibiades?” Caius asked.
I snorted. “I’ve a few ideas,” I said. “Just leave that part to me.”
“My Talent doesn’t exactly work that way.” Caius sighed. For a moment I saw that familiar, fleeting pout pass over his features, and I was almost comforted by how familiar they were, the only thing I recognized anymore amidst all the smoke and mirrors, the hanging scrolls and the standing screens, the painted doors that slid open to reveal everything rotting away behind the gilded colors. “It is much more complicated than all that. If only things were different… But they aren’t, and I am as I am, and we must do things more slowly. Perhaps that’s for the best—it will give you time to cool your heels. Think of the bright side, my dear: Yana Berger is safe and sound with her chickens and your brothers, and we are the ones who may keep her that way!”
With that, Caius Greylace removed his hands and my headache from my head. I was caught with a sudden dizziness I couldn’t shake off, and by the time my thoughts had cleared, he was once again sitting in the only comfortable chair. Damn him, I thought, but there was some respect there.
He was useful, anyway. And clever.
“So what now?” I asked, folding the offending letter and setting it down on the table beside me.
“Breakfast, I imagine,” Caius replied, his lips spreading into a soft grin with a flash of pearly white teeth behind it. “And then we shall sit down to compose a long and detailed epistle to dear Yana telling her how wonderful things are in the Ke-Han Empire.”
MAMORU
“You,” the playwright said, waving me over. “That’s right, you. I don’t bite, unless I’m playing substitute for the fox. That man of yours keeps a close eye on you; we both know it. But I’ve a line or two that needs testing.”
If Kouje had been beside me, he would have bristled at the tone the man chose to take with me, even if he didn’t mean anything by it. As it was, most of the group had managed to rope Kouje into hard labor as we stopped for the night, hauling trunks of costumes and juggling sticks and the like from the back of one cart to another. He’d been given time enough only to cast one helpless look over his shoulder toward me before Aiko pulled him in the direction of working for our suppers. And, of course, the border crossing.
The wall rose high above us in the night, illimitable and fearsome. If we could just get across it, then we would be all right; I knew it deep in my bones. But for the moment it stood between us and our escape, and I was as frightened of it as I had been of the Volstov dragons. It was on the same scale and, beyond that, it meant just as much—a cruel, stark metaphor, the symbol of oppression.
Yet it was only a wall.
I’d been left to myself, or so I’d thought; apparently there were rare few among the group’s number that were useless, and I and the playwright were together in that count. In the distance, I heard one of the actors shouting, and the sound of Kouje’s voice answered him, clear and stronger.
“Well?” the playwright asked. “It’s not like you’ll be of any help lugging boxes. You’d break as soon as look at some of those coarse creatures—and I’m only talking about the women, ha-ha!”
I approached the playwright, who was in the midst of reading through a long scroll of rice paper and chewing upon a length of bamboo—which, I realized upon closer inspection, was actually serving as his pen.
“I’m not an expert,” I began, but the playwright hushed me with one hand.
“All the better,” he said. “If I can win you over, then I’ve got anyone on my side. You catch my drift?”
“Ah,” I agreed, and, after a moment, sat upon an empty trunk, folding my hands in my lap. The trunk belonged to the playwright—whose name was Goro, I thought; or at least, that was what Aiko had called him—and he didn’t seem to mind. Besides which, he was too caught up in the writing to notice anyone sitting on anything.
“The prince and his loyal retainer—not ours, of course,” Goro intimated, brushing stray hairs back into his ponytail. “From back in the day; I’ll find a reference, make it work, attract all the right sorts of attention and none of the wrong if I’m lucky. And if I’m not…” His eyes twinkled. “Be famous forever, I suppose.”
“Go on,” I encouraged, though I felt suddenly uncomfortable. There were stock plays, of course, familiar stories that could be repurposed for relevance according to current events—but they also worked to circumvent the law, since any writer could claim that they were merely staging a revival of an old favorite, and it had nothing at all to do with the current state of affairs. It also made the creation of a new play a relatively quick affair: The structure was all there to begin with. Perhaps I ought to give him suggestions.
Then again, perhaps not.
“They’re in the mountains on this one, fighting a demon—you know what, I’ll just set the stage for you. Where’s Ryu? Probably off getting drunk as a lord and badgering all the women. It’s nothing without the music. But think of it like this: They’ve just evaded the guards from the palace, and the two of them are making their way up the mountainside to call upon their ancestors for assistance.”
As Goro spoke, his face transformed into a specter, a fascinating play of light and shadow upon features as still as though they were part of a blank mask. This was no ordinary playwright, I supposed; but it was nonetheless quite strange to see someone else imagining the very story I was living.
At least there had been no mountain demons. Not yet.
“The prince is caught,” Goro continued, striking the hero’s pose. “And I was torn on this line—do you think he ought to say ‘Halt!’ or something a bit more poignant? The poetic hero’s popular these days, but with these country bumpkins—”
“All right, Goro, that’s enough,” Aiko said, coming up behind him. “You’ve got two good hands. Why don’t you ever use them?”
“I’m creating something marvelous,” Goro said, with a flourish and a bow. “There are men in this group that’ll kill to play the prince’s role.”
“I’m far more fond of the loyal retainer,” I said, almost quiet enough that neither of them would hear.
“Come on,” Aiko said. Her gaze was sharp and clear; but that might well have been the starlight. “I’ll save you from this ruffian. They’ve got your husband lifting the heavy stuff now. Little did you know we’d be kidnapping you like this.”
“It was all a part of Aiko’s cunning plan,” Goro added, saluting me with his makeshift pen. “Then again, what isn’t?”
“We’re very grateful,” I said quickly, hoping that I hadn’t ruined their clever jesting with my own earnest interruption.
I had always loved playacting, but it seemed that I was still no good at playing anything but serious. It was all I’d been trained for.
“That’s just because you aren’t the one doing the lifting, am I right?” Goro winked at me, settling himself against the trunk I’d been sitting on.
“All right,” said Aiko, slipping her arm through mine. “This one’s not up for being recruited. You’ll have to get your inspiration from the same place everyone else does.”
I saw Goro throw his hands up in exasperation as Aiko pulled me, gently but insistently, away. It was hard not to feel just slightly regretful. Though I knew the idea was foolish, I couldn’t help but wish that perhaps Kouje and I might stay on there awhile—among the sounds of people and not birdcalls in the night, rustling animals through the brush startling me awake at every turn. Laughter was a comfort, and so much sound was like a shield. Perhaps it would be too much to ask that Kouje act, of course, but there were many other talents to choose from. Perhaps he might be a sword dancer—one of those graceful yet deadly entertainers.
Yet, when I tried to imagine it, all I could conjure up was Kouje looking plaintively at me from the sidelines, as though even inside my own head he disapproved of the matter entirely.
I couldn’t
help but sigh. It caught Aiko’s attention as we drew nearer to the fire they’d built, and the sharp, rhythmic sounds of trunks being unloaded or rearranged.
“They’ll have him currying the horses next, if you aren’t careful,” she said, but she was smiling, so that I was fairly certain she was joking. Mostly.
I settled myself carefully next to her on the ground, arranging my robes with care. It had been ages since I’d last donned women’s clothing; so long ago that I scarcely remembered it at all. I was perhaps fortunate, then, that my clothing at the palace had been infinitely more complicated than what I was wearing. I’d stand out awfully if I were tripping over my own feet everywhere we went.
“I don’t think he’d mind it, to be honest,” I said quietly, sharing a smile of my own. “He’s used to hard work, and he has a fine hand when it comes to horses.”
Aiko’s eyes took on that bright, clever look again, that made me feel almost uneasy, as though I’d given away something I ought to have kept hidden. Something of my discomfort must have shown on my face, because the look soon softened before it disappeared entirely. Aiko stretched her legs out in front of her, reaching her feet toward the fire and tilting her head back to look up at the sky.
“Might rain tomorrow,” she said. “Clouds make for a warmer night, but there’s no telling what they’ll bring in the day.”
I looked up too, disappointed. It had been so long since I’d seen the stars. I ought to have been grateful for the opportunity to look at all.
“You’d be no good for the role, you know.”
Confused, I turned my head to glance at her. How could she wear such clothes, I wondered. They would never have allowed that in the palace. And yet she looked so comfortable—as though she didn’t realize it was improper.
“The loyal retainer,” she elaborated, waving a hand to where we’d left Goro, bamboo brush pen stuck behind his ear as he muttered to himself. “You said you preferred him, didn’t you?”
