“Toran,” he said, “what happened to your family?”
“Some nights, it gets so dark, I worry I won’t ever wake up. I can’t stand looking in mirrors.” Another pastry. “And sometimes, I hear things.”
“What kinds of things?”
Pause.
“Just nightmares. I have a lot of them.”
“I know.” Jaime lowered his voice. “I’ve heard.”
“I wake you?”
“I’ve probably woken you and the whole city with mine, according to Sojin.”
Toran laughed dryly. “I get what you’re going through, ‘cos I think I’m going through something similar. Only my war is mostly in my head.”
“I’ll ask Lady Prescilla for a mirror. We’ll put it across from your bed. I’ll show you, you’re not too horrible looking.”
“Any worse looking than you?”
“Not as fat as you.”
A snort of laughter. “Not as tiny as you, little man.”
“You know, I didn’t want to say it, but I’m glad I’m not alone.”
Toran Binn held out his hand, his large, double-lidded eyes finding Jaime’s in the dark. “Let’s find the sun together?”
“Yeah,” Jaime whispered. “And the light.”
They shook, their hands sealing onto each others’ tightly.
Chapter Thirteen
Lady Prescilla came several days later, announcing that Lord Florin wanted to invite him over for dinner—but the fresh bruises on her wrists made Jaime freeze.
“Prince, is everything alright?”
He stood at the center of the staircase. When she followed his eyes, she abruptly pulled the train of her sleeves higher.
“I should ask you, my lady.”
“I am fine.” She looked away. “Will you come?”
Florin wouldn’t . . . would he?
His head whirled. Suddenly, he remembered the night the Archpriestess’s soldiers took hold of his mother. The way one son of a bastard struck her face. Jaime trembled with fury.
“Who?”
“Please.” She smiled uncomfortably. “Let the matter alone.”
“Did Florin—”
“I said, let it alone.”
The steel in her voice cut through the heat in his shoulders. Jaime relented, nodding without a word.
“It would honor my husband and me greatly if you join us tonight.”
He forced a smile. “I’ll come to dinner, my lady.”
A small skiff awaited them on the Estos River. Together, they sailed away from the agora and into the northernmost outskirts of the town, where the garbage-filled roads drained into airy pastures. An array of poplars saluted them as they passed. The warm breezes carried the earthy smell of the Lord Mayor’s horses, grazing quietly, their coats as burnished as the moon.
Gods.
The foreignness of this city pulled his chest taut all over again. Reminding him how far away the wild kingpines of home were. The way the whole mountain whispered as frigid airstreams passed through their branches. A selfish part of him wanted that back. He was done with the huffs and snappy comments of an airpriest who despised him.
Lady Prescilla’s soft hand fell on his shoulder, as if she understood his thoughts.
Half an hour later, the Menander’s villa glowed on the opposite bank. Pink bougainvillea flowers hugged the colonnade. But despite its pastoral beauty, gloom hung over their jetty.
A servant greeted them at the doors, and another led them through the fountained garden that opened up before a colonnade walkway. The sky was warm. Silver moonlight limned the clouds.
Jaime’s mouth fell open.
It was like walking through a dream. The frescoes on these walls showed a shy, boyish Florin offering a peony to Prescilla. This swept into an autumn painting where both lovers rode together on a white stallion into a storm of windflowers.
He stopped and drank in the fresco.
Jaime ached for this.
True love.
You’ll never have it. You chose to give up everything to fight the King. You know you can’t defeat him. And that’s okay. At least you’ll die trying. That’s more important than something as childish as true love.
He forced himself to walk on.
As soon as they stepped into the andron, mouthwatering smells liquified his senses. Infinite dishes glittered the center table: dates and figs the size of his eyeballs; mussels and rare Kyros eels basting in cumin. The center plate flourished pig’s belly roasted in fragrant siphilum and vinegar. Dessert was flat cake drizzled in steaming honey. He’d never experienced a formal dinner in an andron—that was reserved only for politicians, famous philosophers, and nobles. Hilaris probably had plenty back in Lord Gaiyus’s villa.
Something groaned loudly.
“Sorry.” Jaime’s ears warmed.
Lord Florin smiled, rising from one of five couches positioned in a U. “We are honored to have you, Prince.” He bowed. “It is long past due for a meal together.”
Lady Prescilla curtsied. “Long past.”
He stayed in place, wary. The lady’s bruises still in the back of his mind. But Prescilla seemed to sense this, and she offered him a smile to put him at ease.
Finally, Jaime bowed low. “Thank you, my lord and lady—”
“No need to bow to us, my Prince.” Florin offered a hand to the vacant couch in the middle of the U. “Please.”
He took his place, wobbling over the formalities of the Jaypan upper class. Nobles ate reclining.
So weird.
At home, Jaime and his mother always sat at their table for meals.
Everything looked right: Florin wore his white Mayor’s toga wrapped in a sash of silver and purple, which complemented his wife’s lilac dress. Lady Prescilla led polite inquiry about how he was liking Arcurea.
Nothing overtly out-of-place.
Except Prescilla didn’t mention his training at all. And more incense was burning than usual in the holder at the center of the table. Florin’s smiles were scarce. Pursed lips, sagging eye bags. A noticeable physical distance walled husband from wife. It was a glaring contrast to the way Jaime first met them—always holding hands, always standing close together. The air seemed pregnant with thunder.
Jaime wiped his mouth. “No more about me. How are both of you? That day with Lord Haigen—”
“The past is the past,” the Mayor said. “I understand Lord Jaypes has higher purposes for his ways. Forgive my manner, my Prince. Our minds and hearts have been absent. We have not been serving you as we should—”
“No.”
They stared at him as he breathed into his hands.
“Can we . . . just be honest with each other? What Haigen did was my fault. Sojin’s right. I’m responsible for the Royal Decree.”
Florin looked away. “My love, why don’t we bring it out now?”
Prescilla whispered sharply, “It is not to give, I told you.”
“We already discussed—”
“No.”
Jaime sat awkwardly as Florin abruptly stood and called for the servant. Lady Prescilla seethed in silence.
What in the four gods is going on?
After a moment, the servant returned with a long, narrow box. Florin took it and held it out to him.
“Come closer, Jaime. Silla and I wanted to give you a gift.”
“A . . . gift?”
Jaime swallowed a lump of goat cheese and opened the lid.
A translucent cloak glittered inside, its sleeves wide and airy. He lifted it up. And coughed on his cheese. The cloth cascaded down to his knees, fine and light as cattleskin parchment.
“Thanks, but what is it?”
“A windcloak,” said Florin. “During the days of the Ascaerii reign, when a child came of age, his pare
nts would bestow him with one. It enabled him to ride the Kingdom’s air currents. Most were mapped out by our ancestors long ago; there are thousands. Every time you see an airmarker, it means a current is nearby. They look a bit like headstones.”
Jaime’s eyes lit up. “I’ve seen a few of them before. There’s one outside Townfold, by my foster papá’s grave.”
The Mayor nodded. “And there is a marker outside our city. That is for Luna, a local current. Travelling by current is faster than any horse in the realm.”
“Good skies, Florin.” Prescilla shot to her feet and tossed out an arm. “Look outside at the air currents. Fourteen years it has been since any child could wear a windcloak without getting shredded into pieces. And now, with this banestorm that’s smothering the Air Kingdom—”
“My love,” Florin grit his teeth, “you are embarrassing us—”
“Embarrassing us? Does the city know I write your speeches—or would that embarrass them?”
Florin slowly rose to his feet. Prescilla’s whole body was shaking. The Mayor crossed the room and took her arm.
Jaime sucked in a breath.
Prescilla Menander burst into sobs. Her husband took her other shoulder and gently led her to the doorway.
What is going on?
Florin called one of the servants to take her upstairs. As her choking cries faded, the Mayor relit the incense on the table, cupping his face into his hands.
“I am so sorry, Prince.”
The sudden blossom of incense wracked his lungs, but Jaime came to sit by him. “What happened, my lord? Is it . . . something I did?”
“It is nothing you did.” The Mayor stared at an invisible stain on the ceiling. “You are a Sage, perhaps Jaypes’s last. We feel very pressured to help you succeed.”
Jaime reached over for the gift box and handed it back to Florin. “I can’t take this. This belongs to your son . . . doesn’t it?”
Florin shook his head. “Aulos is your age, but he is not our Holy Lord’s chosen emissary. It would honor him for you to have this. Prescilla, too. I apologize that it has been a difficult week for all of us.”
All of us.
Suddenly, he understood why they invited him for dinner. They knew about what happened between him and Priest Achuros. Their mutual refusal to talk to each other.
The weight of the gift pulled at the strings in his chest.
My family.
Jaime used to think “family” meant the people you shared blood with, or in his case, the people he shared a house with. Hida was once his entire family, but now she was gone. Hilaris left him for Gaiyus. His blood-father left him for the throne.
All this time, Jaime thought he was alone.
But love for the Menanders swelled deep in his heart, hurting every fiber of his skin. For the first time in his life, he realized he could have more than one family. It was a gift that he had been born an orphan—because he could choose his family. As many as he wanted.
“Thank you,” Jaime whispered.
Florin’s towering height left the couch and came down to his eye-level.
“There is an old legend. It goes like this: A warrior-hero named Jaypes Ascaerii told his tribe he was going to ride out to quell a banestorm. They laughed and sneered at him. His chieftain told him, ‘You cannot overcome this storm.’ And do you what the warrior said?”
I know this story.
Smiling through his tears, Jaime quoted Hilaris the night before his death: “He said, ‘I am the storm.’”
Florin nodded. “You are the storm.”
“I’m sorry about what I said.”
Jaime’s sandals stopped outside the temple, but all he saw was Achuros’s back to a pillar.
“I want to try again.”
A long pause.
“Sorry is not enough,” the priest said. “You are not ready.”
Jaime circled the pillar till they were face-to-face. “Look, I was upset over what Lord Haigen did—and a lot of things that happened since last fall. But I’ll stay here and meditate every day till I make the bond—”
Priest Achuros held up a hand and turned away. “Boy, all you have shown me is that you neither understand or respect the elements. You are not ready.”
“Well, what about you?” he seethed. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You were out here playing the flute and drinking while Lord Haigen’s forces Florin to eat horse manure—”
The priest’s voice flared. “You come to me expecting help, then throw accusations my way. You’re no better than the entitled whoreson who sits on our throne! Gods have mercy! I’ll hang myself if you’re truly the one Lord Jaypes chose to replace him!”
Despite the urge to strangle the priest, Jaime sighed.
“You know what?”
The priest was already storming back into the temple.
“You’re right.”
Priest Achuros stopped.
Jaime fell to a kneel and bowed his head. “When I promised the city I would stay to learn Air, I knew I had to make this worth it. For my mother’s life.” He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know how to be Prince, but I want to learn. I need to. From you.”
The priest’s iron brows furrowed.
Suddenly, the medallion thrummed against his chest. Jaime startled, taking it out from under his chiton. Something compelled the priest to reach out and take it. As soon as the old man’s hands touched its vibrating energies, an image flashed across Jaime’s vision.
A young boy with dark hair and stormy eyes kneeling before the airpriest, in the same way, saying similar words, in another time and place.
The vision vanished the next second.
Jaime blinked.
Priest Achuros stumbled backwards.
“You saw it too?” Jaime breathed.
“Who are . . . ?”
Jaime stood. “Who what?”
“You remind me of someone I use . . . used to know.” The priest gripped the fan tucked in his sash. Then he shook his head. “It was a long time ago. Never mind.”
The priest’s fingers were shaking slightly.
“Very well, let’s try again. Sit.”
Jaime obeyed. Priest Achuros looped the medallion back over his neck.
“Left hand gripping your right thumb. Good. Now tuck both hands in your lap. Perhaps I should have begun our first session with clearer instructions. Today, try focusing on nothing but the wind. We’ll pick up from there.”
He closed his eyes and levelled his breathing. It was easier to shut noise out since Arcurea was quiet today. Still, his legs went numb after twenty minutes, and his breathing grew strained the more he paid attention to it. The priest was merciful enough to allow him to take a short break and move after the second hour.
“Your Grace,” he said.
“What am I, a bloodstained arch-wench that you should address me that way?”
“Achuros.” Cough. “What’s going on between Florin and Prescilla?”
“She carries Lord Haigen’s seed.”
Jaime stopped in mid-stretch. “What? How do you know?”
“I am an airpriest,” Achuros snorted. “By the grace of Air, I felt another avai pulsing in her.”
Jaime shook his head. “But that means—”
“That means Lord Haigen will be back in the spring to take what he thinks is his. Child and mother.”
Suddenly, Jaime understood the bruises—and the tension between both Menanders last night.
What would Florin do to the daimyo?
What could Florin do without breaking his disguise of loyalty and jeopardizing Jaime’s life? So long as Jaime trained with Achuros, no one could know he was here, especially the royal authority.
“I’ll help Florin kill him,” Jaime vowed.
The airpriest smiled wryly. �
��Unless you make the bond before then, Haigen will kill you. That you can be sure of.”
Chapter Fourteen
On the way home, a surprise awaited Jaime in the agora.
His stomach plummeted.
A hundred mounted city guards were amassing outside the civil buildings. They lugged supplies onto wagons yoked to oxen, fitted on their cuirasses, kissed their lovers goodbye. There was talk of sea travel to the west coast to avoid Jaypes’s mountains.
He had to find out what was happening.
Jaime skipped behind a clothesline hanging behind the apartment-stores.
Chori, Sojin’s son, was at the edge of the marketplace, mounted on his own black gelding. The boy was fully armored and bore the military honor of carrying the royal standard. Even with just his small kendao, he looked enviously impressive from up high.
Jaime cleared his throat.
Chori’s eyes darted to the square of diaphanous cloth, then to his skinny legs below it.
“Where are you going?” Jaime said.
The boy reined his gelding closer. “Oh, it’s just you. Lord Haigen is out crushing rebellions in the central plains, and we offered to bring him reinforcements.” Chori raised his head smugly. “I’m going out to fight.”
“I thought Lord Haigen’s our enemy—”
“Keep your voice down, you fool.” Chori glanced at the motley bodies clogging Panathea Way. “That’s not really why we are leaving. My father’s going to meet an old friend, the Lord Mayor of Korinthia City. When we come back in the spring, we’ll be leading five thousand men.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? You’ve been nothing but a liability ever since you came. My ba’s not going to wait on the Air Alliance anymore. Lord Gaiyus is dead, he has to be. After Ba petitions our allies in Korinthia for an army, he’s going to lead the march on Mount Mynati’s silver mines himself. We’ll force the King to surrender and end the war without you.”
His chest spiked. “The Mayor’s allowing this?”
“Sure.” Chori sneered. “You’re disposable. After we come back, Ba’s handing you over to the Archpriestess—”
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