Shadow Magic (2009)

by Jaida Jones

  I was shocked. Since our flight from the palace I had only ever thought of what my lord had lost in terms of station and a proper home. It had never occurred to me what the people had come so close to losing—a leader who cared enough to think of them before himself.

  He was like a rare gem, my lord Mamoru, and I knew then—as I had most assuredly known before—that I would follow him to my very death if that was what he wished.

  I did not speak of any of that.

  “We will barter our knowledge of the enemies in the pass for my…” Mamoru swallowed thickly, as though it pained him. “… life, I suppose.”

  “And you think they will believe us? Or even understand us?”

  Mamoru blinked. “Every man, no matter his mother tongue, understands the truth,” he said, as though this should have been evident. Then he added, “Besides, I’ll make them believe us.”

  I stared at my lord, his arm healing from where I’d struck him and his hair wild with the previous night’s ride to the mountains. His lips were chapped, and his face was dirty. I’d never seen a more perfect heir, his clothing torn and stained with mud.

  He looked every inch the prince.

  I was going to carry him into the belly of the dragon in order to save him.

  “There is another way,” I told him. “Come.”

  There was another branch to the fourteenth pass. One that had been tunneled deep into the earth long ago, to keep it safe from dragonfire, and most who had worked on it had been killed in the dragon’s final assault on the city. Not even many among the Ke-Han army had known about its construction since it had happened so late in the war that our forces had been mostly scattered all over. It had been omitted from the treaty for that very reason—I’d only remembered it just then, and I’d spent the better part of my adult life fighting beside my prince in the war around those very mountains. It was unlikely the diplomats at court had even heard of its existence; certainly, Iseul would not have been the one to alert them to it.

  But General Yisun, who had spent so much time in these mountains many jested he’d become its guardian deity, had every reason to know of its existence. I had no real way of knowing the way was safe. What was worse, I had no better options left to me.

  I hated to take my lord into uncertain territory, a place where I might not be able to protect him, but it seemed that we had little choice in the matter.

  In the stories that my father told me of the old magic, a bond forged by fever would allow Iseul to know what Mamoru knew and see what he saw.

  We would simply have to outride him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALCIBIADES

  Lord Temur was no longer asleep in my bed.

  In point of fact, he was awake in my bed, and staring at me like I’d taken leave of my senses, which, all things considered, I probably had.

  We were at an impasse, like two opposite forces on either side of the same bridge, and neither side willing to give an inch of ground, and each with death firm in his jaw and hard in his eyes. We were enemies now, and we always had been, and, what was worse, both of us had done something that went against our codes of honor as men and as soldiers, and being Ke-Han or Volstovic had neither hide nor hair to do with it.

  We might have hated each other, but, what was worse was that we hated what we’d done to each other, and we hated that we each knew what we’d done.

  It wasn’t honorable behavior.

  We were no longer honorable men.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing that bothered Caius, of course, who’d told Josette and me—after we’d dragged Temur back through the hallways, limp as a sack of uncooked dumplings—that he had a headache and needed to lie down for a bit, so could I please look after the helpful lord until he awoke?

  “I’ll spot your shift,” Josette said. “But right now I have to talk to Fiacre.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And I think I’ll be better at explaining things to him than you will be,” she added.

  “Right,” I agreed.

  And that’s what left me on guard duty, sitting at Lord Temur’s bedside like some kind of lovesick admirer, instead of a man who’d just violated everything sacred and true about the peace between our two countries, and indeed peace itself. The only thing keeping me from going mad from shame was knowing that he and his Emperor were no better than we’d been—but that still didn’t justify what I’d done. Or what I’d helped Caius do. Or anything. Everything.

  “Lord Greylace is indeed quite talented,” Temur said. “I have never had the opportunity to see one of your—what is it? Ah yes, velikaia—I have never had the opportunity to see one of your velikaia in action. I thought I might never have the opportunity, given the peace, but I am glad that at least I have been favored in one of my more anomalous requests.”

  I didn’t even know what “anomalous” meant—it sounded filthy, if I was being honest—and it was a word in my own damned language. I grunted, just to show him I meant business and wasn’t into idle chatter with just anyone, mind.

  “You are lucky to have him as a friend,” Temur continued, his eyes fluttering shut. “It is not in a Ke-Han warrior’s nature to complain, but my head feels like a broken egg.”

  Or a shattered dome, I thought. Not my finest moment, I’d be the first to admit. “He’s not my friend,” I protested, out of habit.

  “Is that so?” Temur replied. “Hm.”

  Things were real quiet and real awkward for a long time after that, and I wished that Josette was around because she knew how to talk to these people, and to people in general, and I just didn’t. Even having Caius would have been preferable, because he would have started talking about the cuisine or the jacket Lord Temur was wearing while we broke into his thoughts like common thieves, and everything would at least have felt a little more normal.

  Which nothing was.

  Things were—to put it simply—bad. The situation couldn’t be fixed, and it was clear to us all by now that the Emperor had been planning on it all along. We’d just stepped right into his neat little trap and he’d been waiting all that time, laughing to himself, to spring it. There was no way to contact anyone outside of the capital, which meant we were prisoners of a war we’d thought, up until a few hours ago, had actually ended when we crushed the bastards.

  Except he hadn’t seen it that way. Apparently being beaten didn’t have the same definition to him.

  Lying bastard. I cursed the day Iseul was born, and it must have showed a little in the expression (more like a grimace) I was making, because suddenly Temur was talking like he was the mind reader and not “my friend.”

  “Do not think that because an emperor behaves one way he influences the behavior of all his people,” Temur said. “I, too, thought that peace was possible.”

  I snorted. “I’m not allowed to say anything,” I said finally. “Josette’ll kill me, for one. Whatever I talk about’ll just make things worse.”

  “It is not as though things can get much worse at the moment,” Temur replied, “considering you have taken me prisoner as a counteraction for being taken prisoner, yourself.”

  “Well, I don’t want to see if they can get worse,” I replied. Because, chances were and with how everything had been going, they could. And they were going to. And I didn’t want to be behind it all any more than I already was.

  If that was even possible. I wasn’t sure anymore, especially considering the company I’d been keeping lately. It was one of the things I’d have written Yana about if it’d been Yana I was writing to and not some poor bastard Ke-Han scribe stuck writing responses to our letters.

  “There are not many crimes in the Ke-Han Empire worse than holding a warlord captive,” Lord Temur said, turning his words over carefully. That wasn’t anything new. “You could attempt to assassinate the Emperor himself, of course, but as you no doubt remember, the punishment for that is considerably more dire.”

  “Your laws don’t bind us,” I told him, trying to
make it sound like I knew what I was talking about and not like I was making it all up as I went along. “What I mean is… Well, you know. We’re not the same. You can’t just stick us in the ground and call us lilies when we’re really petunias.”

  Lord Temur raised his eyebrows. “Petunias? I don’t believe I’ve seen that particular specimen in our gardens.”

  “Country flower,” I said, crossing my arms and staring down at the floor. My boots still had mud on them from our adventure at the theatre. If Josette came in, she was going to rip me a new one for talking when I’d as good as promised not to. But I was starting to think that maybe our fine captive lord was right, that there wasn’t much worse we could do than kidnapping one of the seven warlords.

  Fighting the war had been a lot damned easier when everything had been out in the open. I wasn’t made for all that subterfuge.

  “A country flower,” Lord Temur repeated. There was a funny look in his eyes when he opened them, almost like he was sharing a joke with me. “Much like I am. Wouldn’t you say so, General Alcibiades?”

  “Suppose so,” I muttered, wondering just when he’d gone and cultivated a sense of humor. Probably planned it just to throw me off for that moment. I knew enough now not to assume anything about the Ke-Han as a whole, but most of them were definitely tricky enough to try a tactic like that.

  The thing was, I’d never thought Lord Temur was one of the tricky ones. And even if I’d been wrong and he had been, after the number Caius’d done on him, I’d have been surprised if he could scheme his way out of bed, let alone getting past me. I didn’t entirely like the look of him, pale as the folding screen in my room and tired as if he’d spent the whole night out drinking, which was an image that nearly set me to laughing.

  “Am I to be kept here, then?” Lord Temur asked caustically. His eyes flicked from one wall to the other, scanning the room. “You will doubtless have many uncomfortable nights ahead of you if that’s to be the case.”

  “I’ll be just fine,” I said, because I sure as hell wasn’t about to admit that I didn’t know what we were going to do with him. “Not like your beds are all that comfortable to begin with.”

  Josette would know what to do, I told myself. Fiacre too, if Josette could get him to calm down long enough to come and see the situation for himself. I was a mite worried about our leader in diplomatic proceedings, since he did a little too much bowing and scraping for my tastes, but Fiacre wasn’t half-bad when you got right down to it.

  And we were definitely down to it.

  “Say…” I said, not really sure where I was going to go from there, or even what I was doing besides preventing Temur from asking more questions I didn’t have the answers to.

  There was a soft cough from the adjoining door and the familiar dull sound of wood sliding against wood, and without warning—which was how he liked it best—Caius Greylace arrived with impeccable timing so I didn’t have to say a thing. I was grateful for the little peacock, feathers and all.

  He was wearing white, a color he hated, but with a bright red beneath it like fresh blood on snow. Probably making a statement. When wasn’t he? Trouble was, I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to be patriotic or just plain creepy. Maybe he thought they were one and the same.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” Caius said, as if Lord Temur were a guest he’d invited for dinner and not a man he’d just spent the better part of the day torturing with visions and mind tricks and bastion-only-knew what else.

  “Been awake for a while now,” I said, feeling uncomfortable again in the face of all this pretending that everything was normal. Everything wasn’t normal. Fiacre was going to string all of us up by our privates before we could get a word in edgeways—but, knowing Greylace, the little nut would probably enjoy it.

  “That’s very good,” Caius said, slinking over to stand on the other side of my bed like a viper waiting to strike. “Perhaps then he can tell us what’s happened to our esteemed head of proceedings.”

  “Fiacre?” I asked, confused again and liking it about as much as I always did. “Isn’t he with Josette?”

  Caius shook his head, not looking away from Lord Temur, though I had to admit the warlord looked about as baffled as I was by the new revelation.

  “She’s still looking,” Caius explained. “She wanted to come in and ask Lord Temur himself whether he had any thoughts, but the poor dear has a temper much the same as yours, Alcibiades, and I felt it best—well, I may have persuaded her just a touch, just the slightest touch—that it would be the best for everyone involved if I was the one to do the questioning.”

  “Wait,” I said, “hold it there. You did what to Josette?”

  “Please try and focus on the larger picture, my dear,” Caius said, clasping his hands like he was some kind of saint and I was the troublemaker.

  Lord Temur closed his eyes again and moved to sit up. I stood the moment he shifted, one hand against my sword just in case he did something stupid. He didn’t seem like the type to make a move—too much prudence and all—but you never knew what a man was capable of after he’d been tortured. I saw Caius’s hand creep into the fall of one of his long sleeves, too, so I knew that he’d been thinking the same thing I had.

  It turned out we were both wrong. Either Lord Temur was confident in his expectation of rescue, or he wasn’t the sort of warlord who carried around poisoned arrowheads or daggers, or anything else that clumsy.

  “This is news to me, as well,” he said. “You say that your head of proceedings, Fiacre… He is nowhere to be found?”

  “Not in his rooms, nor the meeting rooms,” Caius said. He hadn’t taken his hand out of his sleeve, even though I’d sat back down. “He wasn’t seen going into the city, and he wasn’t seen at breakfast. I happen to know that breakfast is his favorite meal, even without traditional Volstov fare, so I find it all quite unsettling news.”

  I started to get a really bad feeling as Caius went on, listing all the places that Fiacre should have been but wasn’t.

  “Have you looked in the gardens?” Lord Temur asked. “He holds great affection for our fireflies, and can often be found there in the early evening.”

  “Well, you’ve just been making friends with everyone, haven’t you?” I exploded, even though I wasn’t the one conducting the investigation, and I probably should’ve waited for Caius to say it was my turn, or whatever. I was done doing things this way. I’d tried being diplomatic, and that hadn’t worked, and now what? It was all just some crazed Emperor’s ruse to get us here, spy on us, then trap us here indefinitely. I could feel the bars of the cage sliding into place and I hated it.

  The whole thing was ridiculous.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, because I had to say something as Caius and Lord Temur both were staring at me. “This whole time, he’s probably been watching us and reporting back to the Emperor with bastion knows what. How we like our tea and how many fried dumplings I bought at that stand and how many steps it took to get from the theatre district to the artists’ alley. Did you tell him about all those prints we looked at, Lord Temur? The ones that called him out for the brother-hunting madman he is? Or did you tell him about the play, and how his brother what’s-his-name is some kind of folk hero now that he’s gone and declared him a traitor? How about how many people booed when his player got up onstage? Does he know it’s common opinion that he’s about as good as a raving, conniving lunatic who—”

  “Alcibiades,” Caius said.

  I shut up. So much for not talking. I was so angry I could feel my face turning red like a lobster in boiling water.

  Lord Temur folded his hands against the blanket like it was a table, and we were having another one of those diplomatic meetings, just the three of us this time. The only thing different I could see was that there was a ring of white flesh around Lord Temur’s mouth that made him look like he’d caught fever or a plague. Somewhere in his soul, tradition meant that he should kill me for what I’d just said about his Empe
ror; and, somewhere in his soul, he also knew I was right.

  That shut me up good and proper.

  “I was…” Temur began. “Rather I am, still, quite curious about Volstovic customs and culture.” He spoke slowly but firmly with his head held up. The Ke-Han had seventeen different ways to bow, but apparently none of those applied to torturers and kidnappers. “My interest led me to speak first with Lord Greylace and Margrave Josette, both of whom seemed to harbor a corresponding curiosity about our own traditions and habits. It was through their association that I also came to meet you, General Alcibiades, and, though I can hardly expect you to believe me under the circumstances, no machinations more complicated than that.”

  His face darkened for a moment, and he looked at me.

  “Of course, my lord Emperor is exceedingly clever at using a situation to his advantage if you will take my meaning.”

  Caius made a noise like a hiss and sat down on my bed to look Lord Temur in the eyes.

  “So while we were enjoying your very fine company, you were informing him of everything we said. Something like that?”

  “It was my duty,” Lord Temur said. It was simple as that for him.

  Maybe to the Ke-Han it was, and that was what I didn’t like about them. I respected th’Esar, but when he mucked it up it was our duty as citizens to make sure he knew it, not serve him to the brink of madness and beyond.

  I’d have spat on the ground if we hadn’t been inside. As things stood, I had to settle for snorting.

  “Why tell us now?” Caius asked. “Of your own free will, even! I did a fine job on you, certainly, but there isn’t any… lingering control.”

  A silence followed, during which I started thinking of all the things that might have been happening to Fiacre if Iseul the Stark Raving Mad was responsible for his being nowhere to be found. None of them were good things. All of them were shades darker than bad.