Yanked from her thoughts, Michiko blanched at the idea of facing Lavinia even in practice. That tremor, as much as anything else, seemed to satisfy Lavinia, at least for the moment. “I certainly hope the next time you won’t fail us.”
Would she? Michiko wasn’t sure she would have the courage to try something like that again, especially knowing that Lavinia could force her to spar whenever she liked. Michiko stumbled out of the embassy, barely seeing what was in front of her as her mind played and replayed Lavinia’s brutal attacks on Kris during their duel.
Chapter 2
Kris
As wonderful as winning the Gauntlet had felt, this was even better. Kris had helped their friends, they had helped their island, and all within days of becoming a warder. Buying round after round of delicious tea for Ojo and Adechike and of course themself felt like the perfect way to celebrate, but also something more. Laughing at one of Adechike’s jokes next to Ojo, Kris started to feel that maybe bladecraft wasn’t the most important part of being a warder and maybe, just maybe, they could be good at these other parts too.
Not only that: it might be fun.
It was not until they had finished their noodle bowls and were halfway through the third round that Kris noticed Ojo wasn’t enjoying himself as much as they were. He answered when spoken to directly, and looked content when sitting back and watching Kris and Adechike chatter, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Soon after, he drained his cup and said good night.
“But it’s still early,” Kris protested.
“Perhaps for you young people.” Ojo smiled and clapped them on the shoulder. “Thank you again, Kris. It’s a great thing we’ve managed today. Someday you will understand how great. For now, just accept my thanks.”
Bemused, Kris watched Ojo walk out, nodding to Shun as he went. “He seems so serious these days.”
“It’s not you.” Adechike was also watching his mentor leave. “Penelope leaves tomorrow.”
Kris gasped. “Really? And he spent all that time here on his last night with her? He should have said something!”
“It’s fine,” Adechike said. “He wanted to be here, at least for a bit.”
Kris started to giggle.
“What?” Adechike asked.
“I was wondering how he could feel sleepy after all that tea.”
Adechike tried to hold it in, then lost the fight and burst out laughing. “Sleeping,” he managed to say, “is probably not the priority.”
“To Ojo and Penelope!” Kris said. “Wait! We need to toast them with something stronger than tea.”
“We do,” Adechike agreed, signaling the server for alcohol.
The plum wine only increased their enthusiasm.
“To the productive, fruitful, mutually beneficial friendship between our countries!”
“To flight!” Kris offered.
“To trade!” Adechike responded.
“To Quloo!”
“To Rumika!”
“To Twaa-Fei!”
“And warders!”
“Except Lavinia.”
“I’m so happy this has worked out,” Kris said, after Adechike had recovered from spitting plum wine out his nose. “It’s going to be great. And we can build on this deal, you know, talk about another installment if you need more.”
“It must be an enormous mine,” Adechike marveled. “You should be careful, though—you don’t want to extract too much and end up sinking, like us.”
“Oh—” Kris hesitated, realizing they were on the point of blurting out something that was supposed to be a secret. “Well, I guess you’ll find out soon enough anyway. It’s not from a mine. I mean, it is from a mine, but not all of it. No, wait, that’s not what I mean either.”
Adechike was giggling again. “I think you need more wine,” he said, motioning at the waiter.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Kris said, then had to beckon the waiter back. “Yes! Wine, yes. The aerstone!” They leaned over the table to get closer to Adechike. “The reason we have so much, and that it’s so pure, is not because of the mine, but because of the process.”
“The process?” Adechike repeated.
“So, there’s this amazing group of scientists at Kalanika University. They invited me to visit after I was chosen to come stand the Gauntlet—” Kris paused to take a gulp of wine. “I still can’t believe I won! I’m a warder!”
“To the Gauntlet!”
“To the Gauntlet! As I was saying, they have figured out a way to refine aerstone to get greater potency from less of the raw material. Lee Tramin, one of the lead scientists on the team, told me they think they may be able to get up to a seventy-five-percent increase if they keep improving the process!”
“That’s . . .” Adechike was stunned almost into sobriety. “That’s world-changing!” He blinked. “And they’re already doing this?”
“How do you think we’re able to sell you so much aerstone? We’ve built a refinery at Orsa. It’s still small, but if we’re able to expand as we plan . . .” Unable to express in words the amazingness of this, Kris threw their arms wide.
Adechike still couldn’t get over it. “That’s just amazing! It’s— I almost can’t believe it!”
“Oh yeah.” Adechike’s tone suggested honest pleasure, not actual disbelief, but it reminded Kris that they were talking loudly about something they shouldn’t have mentioned at all. “We should probably not tell too many people about this. For the moment, I mean.”
“Of course!” Adechike agreed. “And—congratulations! I bet if you had told people about that before the Gauntlet they all would have voted you in.”
“Or invaded us,” Kris muttered, but quickly cheered up again. “Anyway, I didn’t need the help!”
“To blades!”
“To blades!”
Chapter 3
Michiko
Tears stung Michiko’s eyes as she walked the streets of the upper island of Twaa-Fei. She couldn’t stay in the Kakute embassy any longer, avoiding Kensuke and wondering if all of the embassy staff saw her as a traitor. She knew she should probably go down to one of the lower islands where she would be more anonymous, but the thought of crowding into one of the lifts was not appealing.
Then she saw the turret of the Ikaran embassy. She remembered Takeshi’s fight with Kris. He had almost looked stressed, which was an odd way to lose a match for an Ikaran. Maybe Michiko wasn’t the only one struggling with her role in the empire. On impulse, she turned at the entrance to the Ikaran embassy and rang the bell.
Takeshi opened the door himself, and looked even more surprised to see Michiko than she was to see him.
“Oh, um . . . ,” Michiko started. “Sorry to bother you. I just—”
“Please,” Takeshi finally managed. “You’re not bothering me at all. Please come in.”
That wasn’t entirely true, Michiko saw when they got to Takeshi’s rooms. She had clearly interrupted him. A distiller was smoking on a hot plate of some kind, and next to it an elongated spoon had been laid beside a beaker with fluids of several different colors layered within it.
“I didn’t realize you were a chemist,” Michiko said.
“Oh—not really. I dabble.” Takeshi sounded embarrassed, but Michiko figured it was just bashfulness: if he really didn’t want her to know, he wouldn’t have brought her in here. “Would you like tea?”
“Um.” Michiko eyed the hot plate.
“From the kitchen!” Takeshi laughed, and pulled a bell cord. “Please sit down.”
Michiko gingerly moved a stack of tomes, discovering an upholstered chair underneath. “Thank you,” she said.
Takeshi looked at her expectantly.
Michiko was not sure how to bring up treason. “How are things in Ikaro?” she hazarded.
Takeshi blinked, shrugged. “The usual, I suppose. People were a little unnerved by the ordeal surrounding the Golden Lord.”
That was it! The perfect opening. But just then there was a knock on the door, a
nd a woman with a servant’s sash poked her head in. Takeshi said something to her in a language Michiko didn’t understand, and she nodded and then disappeared.
“What language was that?” Michiko asked.
“What? Oh. Well, we can’t afford to bring Ikaran servants, so I hire people from Twaa-Fei.”
“And they speak a different language?”
“Some.” Takeshi seemed amused by her interest. “There’s a neighborhood here of people descended from refugees of Zenatai, and they try to keep the language and customs alive. Jodi speaks Sky, of course, and quite good Mertikan, too, but I like practicing.”
“A whole neighborhood from Zenatai?”
“Descended from, yes. It’s fascinating.” He coughed slightly. “I help out at their clinic, so I’ve gotten to know a few people. I’ll take you sometime if you’d like to meet them.”
“That would be very interesting.” Michiko wasn’t sure how to respond to these unexpected depths from Takeshi. It had never occurred to her to do anything here besides be a warder, and occasionally relax from being a warder. With Lavinia around, that really seemed like enough.
There was an awkward pause. Michiko caught Takeshi’s eyes straying back to his equipment, but she couldn’t leave now. At a minimum she had to drink the tea. She tried to think of a way to bring up her concerns, but the mention of Zenatai had spooked her. It was the familiar horror story told to all children of the island nations: we must avoid war, or we could all be destroyed.
It was, now that she thought about it, a useful tale for maintaining an empire.
“What are you working on?” she asked finally.
“Oh, this?” Takeshi glanced at his equipment as though he had forgotten it. He couldn’t wait for me to ask, Michiko realized. “I’m doing some research on birthrights.”
“Birthrights?” It had never occurred to Michiko that birthrights could be a topic for scientific inquiry. Birthrights just were.
Apparently she was not alone in that. “Yes, birthrights! Nobody has really studied them in any systematic way. Did you know that we still have no idea why they are tied to birthplace, or even how they happen at all? There must be some interaction with the environment of different islands, but there is still a complete dearth of research. . . .”
Takeshi was so involved, he didn’t seem to notice when the servant returned with the tea. She aligned the cup in front of Michiko with a formality that she thought was a little excessive, but then she remembered that the woman—or her ancestors, at least—was from Zenatai. Maybe that was how they used to do it there.
“What we really need is more data,” Takeshi went on. “I’ve been studying blood samples from as many different birthrights as I have been able to get. I still don’t have a Kakute representative though.” He paused hopefully, but Michiko was still distracted by thoughts of Zenatai, empire, and war, and didn’t notice. Takeshi coughed slightly. “Maybe—it’s a completely harmless procedure, almost painless, very quick—if I could just take a little of your blood, it would be very helpful to have a sample from Kakute?”
“Oh!” Michiko’s first impulse was to help him—does that, too, come from Mertika’s influence? she wondered—but what would her blood tell him about her birthright? What if he could somehow connect to her ancestors? What if he learned that the Golden Lord was her grandfather?
“Sorry,” Michiko said, getting up so quickly, the pale remains of her tea sloshed in the cup. “I have to go. Maybe some other time? Good luck!” And before Takeshi could stop her, she was gone.
Chapter 4
Penelope
Penelope awoke at dawn, as her mother had trained her to do when she was a child.
She smiled involuntarily; soon she would have a child to teach the ways of life to, just as her mother had taught her.
If it was a girl. Please, please let it be a girl.
Usually she rolled out of bed immediately, but today she gave herself an extra thirty seconds to listen to Ojo breathing softly through his mouth. He was so soft in many ways, and yet he had an amazingly firm system of principles—for a man. Firm in other ways too; the conception process had been very enjoyable.
Penelope twisted her legs off the bed and bounced to her feet. As always, Ojo opened his eyes when she did so. Today, however, he didn’t smile or roll immediately out of bed to join her.
“Good morning!” Penelope tried to let her voice tell him, so she wouldn’t have to put it into words: I don’t want to talk about how much you’re going to miss me. She would miss him too, of course, but there was no use talking about it. They had both known this day was coming. Besides, it was the way of things. Many of Penelope’s friends—those lucky enough to find a sire they were fond of, at any rate—had gone through something similar. Still, she leaned over to give Ojo a quick kiss on the lips.
“Morning,” Ojo said. He couldn’t even say it was good for politeness’s sake. Penelope could see him searching for some other comment to make. She saw his eyes flick to her trunks, already packed and corded in the corner of the room.
“How did it go with the Rumikan yesterday?” she asked, to forestall him. Ojo hated it when she referred to people by a characteristic rather than by their name, but it wasn’t rude on Vania, and besides, Kris was hardly at a level to merit great respect yet. The Gauntlet performance had been decent, with a lucky chance during her own match, but that wasn’t all there was to being a warder.
Ojo grimaced and sat up while Penelope moved into the alcove to splash water onto her face from a basin. “It went well,” he said, once she could hear him again. “We have our trade deal.” Penelope leaned out to look at him, an eyebrow raised: he was being very free with that information. “The ships have sailed,” Ojo added. “It is already in process.”
Still bad luck to talk about it before it was complete, but maybe Quloi had a different set of superstitions. “Congratulations,” Penelope said. “Will it be enough?”
“Perhaps.” Ojo turned away from her to pull his shirt over his head, and Penelope watched the muscles in his back. He really was a dear, even if he insisted on moping about the fact that she wasn’t giving up her wife, culture, and child’s birthright to stay with him. Penelope sighed: men. But Ojo was one of the better ones, and she hoped their friendship would survive. She hoped he would survive.
“Take care,” she advised him. “Mertika may take this deal as an aggression.”
Ojo emerged from his shirt, scowling. “Only because they think the Maelstrom revolves around them! Considering a trade deal between two unrelated nations as an act of aggression against them!”
“They are frightened of you,” Penelope said as gently as she could. “They remember what you did to Zenatai.”
Ojo’s face grew even more severe. “That was centuries ago.”
“Of course. But fear lingers, especially among those desperate for ascendancy. They know your bladecraft is strong, and they believe you still have resources to vie with theirs. You are a threat to them.”
Ojo sagged back onto the bed. “Not really.”
“Don’t let them know that,” Penelope advised. “If they see your weakness, they may hurry a confrontation.” She knelt beside him to get her face at his level. She wanted to be sure he listened to this. “I trust you and would fight by your side—you know that.” From the expression on his face he hadn’t known it, and she hurried on before they could get caught up in all the painful sentiment she wanted to avoid. “But I am not the only leader in Vania. We are not yet decided where we will fight if this becomes a war.”
“Surely you wouldn’t take Mertika’s side? They’re a danger to you as well; your colleagues must see that!”
“I wouldn’t.” Penelope made a face. “I’ve met Lavinia. But from Vania’s perspective, Mertika has done nothing to threaten us.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” Penelope agreed. “But we will not shrink from battle. I do not know where we will fight. But I can assure you that we will.”
Chapter 5
Kris
“Anyone home?” Kris pounded again on the door of the Ikaran embassy. The evening was cool, and they bounced on their toes while they waited. They had to keep in shape, after all: they were a warder now, and a challenge to a duel could come at any time. Kris was in the middle of an extended thrust with an imaginary blade when Takeshi opened the door.
“Good evening,” Kris said, straightening but unable to wipe the goofy smile off their face. They loved being a warder. “How is your Mist-Day?” They remembered they were supposed to be apologizing. “Er, I mean, how are you feeling? Did the wound heal well?”
“Uh, fine.” Takeshi rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, then glanced toward the interior of the embassy. “Sorry, I was busy, and I wasn’t sure what that knocking was.”
“Not many visitors?” Kris asked sympathetically.
“There’s a bell,” Takeshi pointed out.
He sounded amused rather than annoyed, and Kris laughed. “Good thing there wasn’t an observational skills component to the Gauntlet.”
Takeshi smiled in return, if a little uncertainly.
“Look,” Kris said, “I still feel terrible about the duel.” Takeshi raised his hands as if to demur awkwardly, but Kris pushed on. “I came to see if you wanted to join me for a drink at the Autumn Leaf?”
Takeshi looked back inside again.
Kris smiled their winningest smile. “I know there’s a lot I can learn from you. And, more, a lot that our nations can learn from each other. Besides, you helped me heal. Let me repay you.”
After a moment Takeshi gave in. “I guess I could use a break.”
Kris was careful to get them one of the more secluded tables in the Autumn Leaf—they had an uncomfortable feeling that the night before, with Ojo and Adechike, they might have been less than discreet.
Kris sensed that Takeshi wouldn’t want to be thanked or apologized to overmuch, so during the first two rounds they kept up a steady patter of insignificant gossip, general pleasure at becoming a warder, and banal touristy comments about Twaa-Fei. It was only when Takeshi was on his third Ikaran whisky that Kris started in. “Listen, I need to apologize again. There was so much confusion and, well, pomp after the Gauntlet that I lost track of things, but I don’t want you to think that I did it on purpose.”
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