by Jaida Jones
“Of course, we would have to pick one of the more popular lords.” I sighed, murmuring my complaint to Alcibiades behind the fall of my sleeve. “He’s much too sociable for a Ke-Han warlord.”
“I thought that was what you liked about him,” Alcibiades countered in a maddening fashion.
He reached over me to spear one of the fried dumplings that had somehow begun cropping up at our table. Alcibiades did well enough with his sticks, even if he did use them as if they were weapons instead of eating utensils. I couldn’t help but think that his improved mood had a great deal to do with the fare, though that in turn was doubtless more to do with my helpful little suggestions to Lord Temur—all of them exquisitely tactful—than any hint the cooks might have taken from Alcibiades’ plates of fish going back untouched.
Josette, on my left, took a sip of her tea, watching our quarry with an expression that I might have termed intimate concern were I feeling more romantic about the whole thing. Really, she almost made it too easy for me. She was much like Alcibiades in that fashion, poor thing. Some people just couldn’t keep anything to themselves.
“Are we sure this is the proper way to go about things?” Josette asked.
“Oh, surely not proper,” I said, unable to keep the smile from my lips, “but it will be simplest. And it’s dreadfully efficient. I’m a bit out of practice since the war ended, and unlike Alcibiades, I haven’t had any opportunity for fun.”
“Fun,” Alcibiades snorted. “I wouldn’t call it that, exactly.”
I was starting to take the impression that my companions were experiencing what amounted to a softening of the heart. It was not quite a change of heart, since Alcibiades at the very least could be counted on to stick to a decision once he’d made it, but I could still tell that the poor dears were having doubts. Even to men such as Alcibiades, hardened on the battlefield, my Talent was a questionable force. When asked directly, the most explanation that people could manage was that it didn’t seem “quite fair,” all things considered.
That was all right. It was an attitude I’d grown rather used to in my eighteen years of living at the palace, and subsequently in exile. I was an ally, but not trusted—a necessary weapon, whose means were considered underhanded and whose actions left a considerably sour taste in most people’s mouths. The fact that I enjoyed my work seemed to be what distressed them the most, but I was good at it, and I made it a point always to enjoy the things I was good at.
So I was quite prepared to go through with our plan, even if it meant losing the friendships I’d cultivated there. I held no real illusions about the strength of such relationships, anyway, knowing full well that Josette only put up with me because my good general did, and that Alcibiades only put up with me because he was, bless him, an endearingly simple creature to baffle, and I thrust myself into his company more often than not.
That, and I considered us friends. He would simply have to forgive me my transgressions. And he would, given enough time.
Besides, it was terribly cumbersome living beholden to the whims and expectations of other people. I’d gone dreadfully overboard in my enthusiasm on first arriving within the Ke-Han capital, and it was time to prune back what had bloomed.
Everyone made their jokes about the instability on my mother’s side of the family, but the truth was it made things very difficult when one came out of a spell of madness to find one’s life all askew. It had happened once, just before my period of exile, but I was grateful for that one—it meant I had to recall very little of my first few weeks therein. I sometimes felt as though I spent at least half my time putting things to right again. It could be exhausting, but there were moments that made it quite worthwhile.
Getting the chance to exercise my powers was certainly one of those moments, and in the week that followed our decision, I confess that I trailed Lord Temur like a lynx, lithe and hungry.
It had been so long since my last prey.
As luck would have it, my opportunity came just as I was nearly ready to give up altogether and ask Alcibiades’ aid in knocking Lord Temur over the head.
I was sitting at my vanity table, unhooking the clever wooden fastenings of the hair ornaments I’d borrowed from Josette without permission, when the door connecting mine to Alcibiades’ slid open, and the general himself appeared.
If I hadn’t already been sitting, I’d have fallen over with shock.
“My dear!” I said, rising at once and casting the little lacquered butterflies onto the desk. “If I’d known you were coming, I might have waited to undo myself. Come in, come in.”
I rushed over to take him by the arm, lest he change his mind before entering and duck out again straightaway. To my continuing shock, he allowed himself not only to be pulled into the room proper, but pressed into a nearby chair as well.
“You’ve got a bug in your hair,” he said, staring up at me.
“Oh!” I said foolishly, running a hand through my hair for the stray clasp. There it was, caught at the back. I fished it out, careful not to let it snag. “Well, fancy that. I completely missed it. Have you come to be helpful? Because there’s a knot in this sash that I can never seem to quite—”
“Josette says we’re doing it tomorrow,” he blurted out, interrupting me in the middle of turning around.
“Are we?” I asked, whirling around again at once to face him. I hadn’t meant to look so eager, but the fact remained that I had begun to think we’d never have an opportunity at all.
“You don’t have to look like it’s your birthday come early,” Alcibiades grunted, but there was a small, hard smile on his face that I hadn’t seen before.
“But you couldn’t have planned it better if it had been my birthday,” I told him earnestly, clasping my hands together.
“You’re an odd bird,” Alcibiades said, in a way that made me think that perhaps it was a compliment, coming from him.
“The very finest of peacocks, my dear,” I said. “Now I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, I’ve a great deal of preparation to do for tomorrow.”
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the look on Alcibiades’ face was almost disappointed.
“All right,” he said, rising to his feet. “Just so long as we can get this over with.”
“I do hope it doesn’t bother you, my dear,” I said, softening considerably. “As I know how traditional you like to be about things.”
“If it were up to me,” Alcibiades began, then cut off, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Since it’s not.”
“That’s the most sensible you’ve ever been,” I replied, patting him on the shoulder.
It was only when I returned to the task at hand—the clips for my hair—that I noticed that my hands were shaking.
I was often asked what it meant to be a velikaia by the men and women who came to visit me during my “sojourns” in the countryside—all of them lonely, silly people desperate for gossip to get them through the country life. If it wasn’t chasing down poor, helpless little foxes during hunts—I liked to rescue them and keep them in my own private menagerie—then it was sitting about wondering what was happening in the capital, that distant, glowing, glorious zenith of social importance.
Some asked only for news of the Esar and the Esarina; this margrave or that; the latest news from Thremedon, and who was wearing what, and who had married whom—the usual trifling bits and bats we all longed for. Myself, I must necessarily admit, included.
But some, the poor creatures, had no idea about real manners at all. After a time, everyone found some way, tactful or not, to ask the questions they were so desperate to have answered.
What did it mean to be a velikaia? Were all the rumors they’d heard—bastion-only-knew from whom—true?
I always answered the question about the rumors first, because that really was the more interesting. Yes, I had been involved with the incident of Margrave Aulame; but no, his pretty young wife did not kill herself because of it. Yes, I
had begun to assist the Esar when I was only seven years old; but no, I had assuredly not played a part in the untimely death of the Arlemagne duchess who married the Esar’s eldest son. Yes, I had played a significant role in information garnered during the war—but really, it wasn’t all that grisly; just asking questions and receiving answers, more quickly than if I did not have my Talent.
And as for my Talent…
That was another matter entirely. They really ought to have asked Mme. Antoinette about that. But seeing as most country lords and ladies, desperate for some taste of the urban life, did not have the opportunity to ask Antoinette for themselves, it was up to me to provide the information.
What did it mean to be a velikaia? For me, the fascinating question always was, what did it mean not to be a velikaia? It was merely a chance happening, the well water that ran like pedigree through my blood. It was only that my family had sought, through various means, to keep that blood as pure and our Talents as keen as possible. It was good business sense more than it was madness—the madness that had developed over time, and of which I, perhaps, was a product.
All it required was a little blood spilled. I couldn’t go about reading minds hither and yon; that would have been so very messy. Once blood was exchanged, however—and this was where rumors of torture, knives, scars, et cetera, came in—it was a different matter, and the mind was, to use a favorite phrase, as open as a book.
Or—I could add this to my repertoire—as linear as a hand scroll.
No doubt, Alcibiades had some terrible ritual all planned out in his mind since, for a man who displayed very little imagination, he was nevertheless prone to flights of fancy. I knew well enough what he might be envisioning. When it came time to speak with Lord Temur, he’d be at the ready, sword drawn, waiting for me to tell him to go out and kill a goat and bring its blood, along with the legs of thirteen frogs and the eyes of thirteen snakes, back to the ceremony room. But all we needed was something as simple as a needle, a pinprick at Lord Temur’s finger, and I would know what I needed to know.
Country folk were always so superstitious. At least, in Thremedon, everyone worth talking to knew exactly what I was capable of. They also knew that the most frightening Talent was that which required no fanfare at all, that which slipped unnoticed to lie beside you at night and whispered hello from the other side of the pillow.
It wasn’t mind reading. It was the art of pure compulsion—a charisma no man could refuse. Those under my influence always told me what I needed to know, and that was why I had always been so useful to the crown.
I barely even noticed the second knock on my door though I did turn at the sound of the door sliding open.
There was Alcibiades again, looking nervous and somewhat like a recalcitrant child. He might well have been about to admit to me that it was he who’d stolen the cookies, and he couldn’t live with the guilt of it any longer. I softened as I looked at him.
“Yes, my dear?”
“It really doesn’t bother you?” he said.
I blinked. “What doesn’t bother me?”
Alcibiades gestured with one enormous hand as though he were trying to grasp the words from midair. “All this,” he settled on finally. “All these tricks. It doesn’t bother you to just take what you want from him?”
I smiled thinly. “Not at all,” I replied.
That appeared to be both the wrong and the right answer, for Alcibiades was quiet and grim and gray as a bleak sunrise. Like a day in the country when all was set to rain for the next week, and not even the thrill of the hunt—a hunt I’d orchestrated to futility by rescuing all the foxes beforehand—could offer illumination in the darkness.
“We’ve all done terrible things for our country,” I said, trying to keep the blow as gentle as possible and remaining cheerful as ever, so that he wouldn’t worry. “You and I for Volstov; Lord Temur for the Ke-Han. Does it really make so much of a difference that you and he have done those things while looking your enemy in the eye, and I’ve conducted my business in the shadows?”
“I thought it did,” Alcibiades said. “Let’s just get this entire mess over and done with. How are you planning to… you know…”
“Corner him?” I asked, and Alcibiades nodded, not quite looking at me. I did hope this wouldn’t affect our relationship. I did hope he could pull through his misgivings. Things would be so awful—so awfully boring—without him. “I plan on using this,” I continued, and held up a particularly sharp hairpin.
“Sometimes…” Alcibiades muttered, but he didn’t finish his sentence.
We met Josette and Temur in the gardens the next morning, at what was still left of the menagerie that had once been the greatest in the land.
“… so you see,” Temur was explaining to Josette, “that when the one raid came that close to the palace, the glass was shattered, and there was chaos in the streets as the rarest white tigers, lions long caged, elephants tossed into a frenzy of fear for their young, and even peacocks desperate to escape the flames, ran out into the streets.”
“I hear that the younger prince was caught in that terrible tragedy,” Josette said, ever the perfect diplomat.
“Ah,” Lord Temur replied, with a reticence I understood. Then, noticing me and my companion, he turned and bowed stiffly in greeting. “I see that we are blessed with company.”
“You know him,” Alcibiades grunted out. “Always has to be where the party is.”
“I just love peacocks,” I added, playing along. At least, that was what I thought I was doing. One could never tell when Alcibiades was being ingenious or merely surly.
“There are many here who, given the opportunity, would gladly donate a peacock to your cause,” Lord Temur said. He was always so flattering—a real gentleman. It was a pity that I did have to use subterfuge on a man so honorable, but I was not as tangled in my morals as some. Much like those peacocks, I did not enjoy being kept in a cage when the fire was near. Much like those peacocks, I would have done anything within my ostentatious nature to escape with my life.
“Oh dear,” I said, the hairpin spilling from my sleeve and clattering upon the blue-tiled walkway beneath me. “I seem to have dropped my—Oh, that is most kind of you, Lord Temur, you really shouldn’t!”
It was the sharpest hairpin I could find, sharpened yet further. Personally, I was quite proud of my handiwork, and I was certain that even Lord Temur could have appreciated the time and effort I’d put into the piece. He leaned down deftly, with all the honor bound up tight as coils within him, to retrieve my bauble, and when he pricked his thumb, I didn’t even see him flinch.
Ke-Han warriors were a fascinating study. I wished that I could spend the rest of my life among them—but then, Alcibiades would never have approved of that. All he wanted to do was go home to dear, sweet Yana. To each his own, no matter how banal.
“Oh my,” I said, as the pin was returned to me. “You seem to have pricked yourself. I do feel awful about that.” My fingers, small and white, slipped against his, which were long and dark and callused from a lifetime of the sword. The Ke-Han army was also comprised of skilled archers, madmen with the longbow, and Lord Temur was no peacock himself—not an ornamental piece, like so many at Thremedon or the surrounding countryside, but the real blade, meant for combat. “Come here, Josette,” I continued, as Alcibiades loomed like a disapproving shadow just beside me, curious despite himself. “You must come help me with Lord Temur’s wound!”
I did hope I wouldn’t let anyone down.
“It is nothing, Lord Greylace,” Lord Temur said, and I could tell that he was amused at the fuss I was making. Yes, I wished to agree, the diplomats from Volstov are so very particular when it comes to the little things, like an accidental scratch, or being kept prisoner. “You make a mountain out of a—what is your phrase?”
“Molehill,” Alcibiades supplied softly.
Temur’s blood, a mere drop, stained my fingertips. It was all the closeness I needed to begin, and when
I caught his eyes, they stilled immediately. They were a very deep brown, and not black at all, as I first assumed.
Somewhere deep in the menagerie a bird cawed. Animals always knew more than men when something was not right.
“Lord Temur,” I said softly. “I have a few simple questions to ask of you.”
Temur blinked once, twice, three times, sensing danger himself, but every movement was as slow as if it had been first passed through a jar of honey. “Greylace,” he said, slowly.
“Is that it?” I heard Alcibiades hiss to Josette, and then, “Ow,” which meant she must have elbowed him to be quiet.
I admired Josette. If we’d been rooming next to one another, we might have been the best of friends already—but fate had put General Alcibiades and me together more than once, and it was fate I’d chosen to guide me in this endeavor.
“Our letters, Lord Temur,” I said. “Who has been reading our letters?”
Temur was silent for a long time, fighting with himself and, of course, fighting with me. I didn’t know what it felt like on the other side—I could only feel the tension in a conquered mind as the body struggled to keep tight reins on its wayward thoughts, as the lips tried to refuse the commands from the brain. But I knew that a man born and bred on straight-backed duty would be more difficult to crack.
But I had cracked many a Ke-Han lord before. The only difference was that I’d spoken to Lord Temur before the session began.
“Perhaps you would like to sit down,” I suggested, and, on my signal, Josette and Alcibiades moved quickly forward to assist me, ushering Lord Temur to one of the spindly-wired benches that lined the tiled walkways. “There,” I said, as I eased him down. “Isn’t that much better?”
“Yes,” said Lord Temur.
The answers always came more quickly when the question was innocuous. With some men, it was a simple matter of asking the easy questions until they became so used to the answering that they didn’t realize your last question concerning the weather had really been concerning the defenses of the city wall. I wasn’t depending on that technique for Lord Temur, since he’d already proven that he was more than proficient in our language, and a little more familiar with me personally than I’d have liked.
