by Callie Bates
There’s a whisper behind me—silk slippers on the parquet floor. I spin around just before Augustus Saranon’s silver-tipped cane can whack me between the shoulder blades. It taps my chest instead.
I stare at Leontius’s younger brother. He smiles back at me.
“What a charming greeting,” I say. “Have you taken to jumping courtiers and hitting them like a highwayman?”
He shakes his glossy hair. Augustus received all the good looks and charm Leontius didn’t, and he never passes up an opportunity to show them off. “You aren’t a courtier, Korakides, you’re a parasite. What did you say to my father?”
I bare my teeth in a grin. “We exchanged some pleasantries about the weather, mainly.”
Augustus’s eyes narrow. His smile slips. He looks sullen now, which suits him better. It’s hard to imagine why he was their mother’s favorite. I’m glad I never met her; she clearly had terrible taste.
“Well,” I say, “delightful as this has been—”
The cane swings back up, pinning me in place. I pretend not to feel the servants’ gazes on my back, staring. “Not so fast,” Augustus says. “I know your game, Korakides.”
I find myself laughing, even though I know I shouldn’t. The gods alone know what Augustus thinks he knows, though if he suspects the truth of my sorcery and duplicity, he’ll have my liver pickled and set out for wolves to dine on. “That’s not difficult to discover. You might ask anyone at all. Cross-and-circle has always been my favorite game.”
He visibly grinds his teeth. “You know what I mean. You’ve been holed up with that witch in Eren. You probably plotted to kill Finn Dromahair together.”
What? My mouth falls open; I wonder what sort of stories Augustus Saranon has been bandying about in my absence. Lightly, I say, “Finn was my friend, which is far more than you can say about him. I’m surprised you even know his name. In any case, everyone knows I went to Eren to teach the Eyrlais a lesson for your father.”
That catches him off guard. He lowers his cane with a frown, and I take the opportunity to step away.
“My father didn’t deputize you to proliferate sorcery!” he splutters.
“He deputized me to depose the Eyrlais. Which I did. Great fun, rebellions. All the running about, waving pistols and shouting for liberty.” I glance behind him. The corridor looks empty, but I know better than to trust the Saranons. “What a shame your sister didn’t join us.”
Augustus glowers at me, which I take to mean Phaedra is otherwise occupied. Small mercies. He says, “If you’re back here to bolster my brother’s miserable public image, think again. All of Paladis knows he’s unfit to rule. He’s proved that amply in your absence.”
I halt my attempt to edge away down the corridor. What has Leontius done now? But I’m not fool enough to ask Augustus that question and give him the opportunity to gloat.
“Not at all,” I say instead. “I’ve come back for the food, mostly. The cuisine in Eren—”
Augustus interrupts me, smug now. “He hasn’t written to you, has he?”
I’ll be damned if I’ll tell Augustus that Leontius hasn’t sent me a single note. “In fact, I’m going to see him just now. I’m sure he can tell me anything he left out of our communications—”
Augustus sticks up a finger. “He hasn’t participated in a single public dinner in six months. Father offered him a commission to restore the naval defenses at Kasia Harbor. He refused.” Another finger. “During Father’s birthday celebration last month, he said not one word. All the work has been left up to Phaedra and me. We gave speeches. The people love us.”
I suppress a snort, even though this news makes me uneasy. The people don’t love Augustus. They love the stories about him; his drunken escapades and titanic love affairs with half the women in court always make the gossip papers. The people love Augustus the way they love to see a mansion in flames: It delights them to see the dissolution of all that wealth and privilege.
And Phaedra is even less lovable, if that’s possible. She’s a paragon of the dubious Paladisan virtues of purity and reserve; she has never taken a lover or set a foot wrong. A marble statue has more warmth. Yet, for whatever reason, Augustus adores her.
“How gratifying it must be to know the people love you,” I say. “It must make up for knowing you’ll never ascend the throne.”
Augustus draws himself up, as cold and angry as Phaedra. “I know what you did, Korakides. Remember that. And I have power you can’t even imagine.”
He turns to stalk away. I call after him, “I believe you’ve invented some fiction about me. I hope it gives you much pleasure.”
He just holds up his hand, shaking the cane at me. I turn the other direction, rolling my eyes. The gods alone know why Augustus thinks he has the right to make up stories about me.
But what he said about Leontius does worry me. I knew Leontius wasn’t happy when I left—he put his back to me and refused to speak—but I didn’t think it would lead to a public demonstration. Augustus relished telling me that story far too much.
I need to find Lees. Now.
* * *
—
EVEN AT THIS late hour, the palace’s gleaming corridors are filled with laughter and courtiers drunk on champagne and intrigue. I slip past the knots of conversation and whispers in alcoves. I might as well be as invisible as Lathiel for all the notice they take of me. You’d think someone would have something snide to say about my Caerisian tweed, but if a single glance follows me, they disguise it quickly.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come this way. I walk faster. I know plenty of these people. A few months ago, they would have called out to me, either to joke or to curry favor with Leontius, or both. Perhaps, in my foreign clothes, missing a barber for too long, they simply don’t recognize me.
Once, I wouldn’t have minded. But after that conversation with Augustus, it makes me uneasy.
Leontius isn’t among them, of course. Nor will he be in the garden this time of night, and he certainly won’t be gambling over cards in the grand salons or flirting with the exquisitely mannered daughters and sons of Aexione’s nobility. If I know Leontius—and after two years of nearly indivisible friendship, I do—he’s tucked away in his own chambers, probably poring over a treatise on irrigation designs or The Journal of Botanical Studies. Will it comfort him to know that, across the water in Eren, Elanna also reads the latter? She and I have discussed it almost as comprehensively as I have with him.
Finally I reach the grand staircase leading down to the ground floor, where Leontius’s apartments face the Palm Garden. A man is just coming out of the crown prince’s chambers, the candles glaring off the diamonds scattered through his hair and sewn into his velvet suit. He seems preoccupied; the line of his mouth is too long. But then he sees me and all that vanishes into genteel astonishment. He lifts his eyebrows. “Jahan?”
I find myself matching his tone. “Zollus.”
His gaze sweeps me up and down. “What are you wearing?”
I shake out my arms. “This? It’s the height of fashion in Eren and Caeris.” I try a smile, but he doesn’t return it.
“We didn’t know you were back,” he says, almost accusatory. Zollus Katabares has never really approved of me. He’s a true Paladisan blue blood, from the signet ring on his smallest finger to his languorous pronunciation of everything. His family has served the empire as Dukes of Paphlonia for generations, since Paladius the First stormed out of Edonis. Zollus himself is one of Leontius’s Companions, the age-mates assigned to him practically from birth. Leontius shook most of the others after Chozat, but Zollus hung on like a barnacle. My departure probably made him ecstatic—finally, Leontius wouldn’t have been able to shelter behind his friendship with me, but would have been forced to deal with Zollus directly. Although if Augustus is right, Leontius hasn’t done much to bolster anyone’s reputati
on, least of all his own.
“I was in disgrace,” I say mildly.
“Was?” Zollus arches an eyebrow. “Did His Imperial Majesty change his mind?”
“He’s deciding.” I pause, wondering just how much to scandalize Zollus. “Eren’s sent me here to secure an alliance. I’m benefiting everyone now, really.”
Zollus draws himself up, shocked. “You swore allegiance to the bastard queen? Have you lost your mind?”
“Oh, no,” I say cheerfully. “I’m still a loyal Paladisan subject.”
“Korakides”—he draws out the syllables of my surname as if this might encourage me to listen—“that doesn’t make a damned bit of sense. You can’t represent both.”
I smile. “Why not?”
He stares at me, his disapproval pressed as sharply as the cravat he wears. The desire to be anything other than a Paladisan courtier must be so far outside his realm of comprehension it resembles lunacy.
“Well, it’s been a pleasure.” I take a step forward. “I’m sure Leontius—”
“He’s asleep,” Zollus retorts. He doesn’t move aside. The footmen on either side of the door stare at us and away.
I’m so close to Zollus now that I can smell his orange-and-ambergris cologne. One of us has to move, and unless I persuade him with magic, it’s got to be me. But Leontius isn’t asleep at this hour. What makes Zollus think he has the right to block my access to my friend?
Then I remember how Leontius put his back to me. His unrelenting silence over the last months. Maybe he wants Zollus to keep me away. I swallow hard.
“You must be sleeping with the witch,” Zollus says abruptly. “There’s no other conceivable reason why you would remain in that backward country. Look at you. You’ve gone savage.”
A laugh bursts from me. “Savage?”
“You’d have done better to take up with that Dromahair boy,” Zollus says. “He was pretty enough. But he was such a bore…”
I feel as though I’ve been kicked. “His name was Finn. And he’s dead, Zollus.”
He makes a face. “A shame, for his looks. No great loss, for his conversation.”
Heat burns up the back of my neck. I shouldn’t let Zollus get under my skin; he talks this way about everyone—except, of course, Leontius. But I’m tired of having Finn’s death thrown in my face. “You have no right to say such things. You barely even knew him!”
“Oh, well, the gods will absolve me this once.”
His tone finally registers with me: not vicious, but angry. He’s affronted that I went off and chose an Ereni rebellion over the tedious peccadilloes of Aexione. He resents it. He’s even angry that I chose Elanna rather than Finn, because Finn at least grew up in Paladis and had, therefore, the veneer of respectability. Even though Zollus hardly deigned to speak to Finn because he wasn’t a full Paladisan citizen.
Quietly, I say, “Has it occurred to you that Finn and I went to Eren because it was the right thing to do?”
“Don’t lecture me about right and wrong!”
I feel abruptly weary down to my bones. Zollus isn’t going to move from the door, and if Leontius doesn’t want to see me, so be it. “Fine,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”
Zollus snorts, but he doesn’t say anything. He just folds his arms. I feel him watching me walk away.
I must see Leontius, but it will just have to wait for morning. I’ll find him in the garden. He’s more likely to talk to me with his feet in the soil. Now I can have a bath and supper, and sleep in my own bed.
I climb up to the second floor, to a pair of doors covered in filigreed vines. A footman stands outside them, watching me approach. I don’t recognize him. Did Aunt Cyra reassign him in Basil’s place, or did Leontius replace my man with someone new?
“How long have you been waiting here?” I joke with him. “Six months?”
The footman just stares at me. He makes no move to open the door, so I reach for the handle myself.
“Sir!” he exclaims. “These apartments belong to the Count and Countess of Lamea.”
But I’ve already pushed open the door. The sitting room is bright with candles, and a startled maid rises from a pile of mending.
“Sir!” the footman protests again.
I slam the door shut. Why is someone else—a maid?—in my rooms? It has to be a mistake. But a look at the footman’s aghast expression tells me it’s not.
They’ve given away my rooms.
They might as well have put a sign on the door saying JAHAN KORAKIDES IS IN DISGRACE. Courtiers vie to have apartments in the palace; the Baron of Policastro fell down in a fit when he lost his. Leontius fought to secure these rooms for me after we came back from the campaign in Chozat. Even though I’d saved his life and people were writing songs about it, nobody wanted to give some provincial Britemnosi a three-room apartment in the palace of Aexione. But Leontius prevailed. It’s been my home for two years.
No wonder Zollus snorted when I said I was going to bed. He knew exactly what awaited me here. What on earth have I done to make Leontius publicly demote me? Is he that angry with me for going to Eren? Angry enough to send the message this way, instead of to my face?
Maybe he never expected me to come back.
The footman is still gaping at me. But what can I do? I can’t demand my rooms back. In the end, we’re all just servants of the imperial family and their whims. I’ve always known that my privileges could be taken away at a snap of Leontius’s fingers.
“Please convey my apologies to the maid,” I say to the footman, and then I walk away.
* * *
—
THEY MUST HAVE sent my things to Aunt Cyra’s house. I’ll go there. And with any luck, Lathiel will soon arrive with my luggage from the Celeritas. Yet I can’t help feeling, as I descend another staircase into the Argent Court, that I’ve been kicked out. Discarded, the way all the courtiers said I would be, sooner or later. It’s not the welcome I envisioned. I thought the rejection would come from the emperor and his ministers, not from the prince who so stubbornly claimed me as his friend.
Jahan, Madiya whispers, and coldness burns up my spine.
No. But I almost wonder if I should answer her. I need to find her. I have to stop her from ever harming my brothers again. And if I find her, perhaps I can find Rayka. I hope Lathiel took the risk I offered him and is on his way here, but if not…
I cross the courtyard, making for the arched exit to the Avenue of Oranges. After the brightly lit palace, the archway is little more than a pit of darkness.
Jahan.
But even if I find her, how will I stop her? Would I strangle the last magic out of her, to keep her from whispering into my head? I don’t want to physically harm her. The idea revolts me. I don’t even know if I can take her magic away. But if I could, that would make me no better than the witch hunters. And yet, if there was a way, if it would protect my brothers…
I hesitate. The darkness under the arch blinds me. It’s odd—torches should be blazing here, too—
The blow catches me in the jaw. Pain shocks my face. I stagger backward, gasping, into a pair of waiting hands. Another blow pounds my gut. I thrash, but the man behind me keeps a hard grip on my shoulders. The first assailant kicks my legs. I push back, only to get another punch to my nose. My head snaps back. Blood leaks, bitter, into my mouth. What the hell is this? Who would jump me in the Argent Court?
More blows rain into my stomach, my ribs. I’m groaning, the pain spreading, trying to keep upright, trying to wrestle myself away from the man holding me. I jam an elbow back into his ribs. He grunts but holds on to me.
Let me go, I demand, pushing at him with all the persuasion I can. His grip loosens just a fraction. I swivel and bring my fist up under his chin, just as the other fellow strikes me in the back. Nothing but shadows. I try to slide away, but o
ne of them catches me all the same. I go flying onto the cobblestones. Another blow strikes the back of my head.
“Hey!” a man shouts. Running footsteps echo across the Argent Court. Light flares.
One assailant plants a final kick in my gut. Then they run.
I push myself onto my elbows. My entire body is screaming with pain. I should go after them, work some magic, figure out who the hell they are, but I don’t think I can move. As if I needed a more thorough removal from the court.
My rescuer crouches in front of me. Through tearing eyes, I glimpse a striped silk coat and the knife-edge of an Idaean profile.
“Korakides?” he says. “Is that you?”
I don’t recognize the voice, but I feel myself grinning like a lunatic. “To the life.”
“All the gods, you’re a bloody disaster. Who…?” He’s looking after the assailants. If they have any wits, they’re long gone by now. “Where are the guards?”
I sit up, spitting a gob of blood. “That’s a…fair question.” I can’t seem to get my breath; my diaphragm is sharp with a splintered pain. Those bastards must have cracked one of my ribs. I reach for the power to heal myself, but, as with the lantern I struggled to light on Pira, nothing happens. Eren’s abundant magic made me complacent. Now I’ll have to steal energy from a plant—or a person—but I’m not about to attempt that in front of my erstwhile rescuer. If he had the faintest inkling…
“They doused the torches, too.” The fellow is holding a guttering taper. He must have snatched it from a candelabra somewhere. Now he digs a handkerchief from his pocket and thrusts it at me. “You make enemies awfully fast, you know.”
Now that I’m sitting more or less upright, the rush of blood from my nose slowing, I recognize him with a kind of stupefied relief. “Bardas…Triciphes?” I can’t stop wheezing. The empress’s cousin is the last person I expected to see, especially after the emperor dismissed him from court for espousing radical views and throwing scandalous parties at his palace in Ida. “Thought they…kicked you out…of here.”