by Jaida Jones
“You,” Josette said, “are causing so much trouble.”
“It’s Greylace,” I replied. I didn’t want to be rude, but how’d she got herself in, anyway? Besides which, I needed a new shirt, and I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. Like I had done something wrong, and that wasn’t the sort of situation in which I could feign ignorance. “He’s trouble, that one.”
“So are you,” Josette said. “These are important diplomatic proceedings. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but if things fall through here, we’re in a great deal of trouble.”
“Politicians,” I muttered, busying myself with whatever was in the closet. In the time I’d been there, Caius Greylace had slowly been infiltrating my wardrobe. There were all kinds of silks I didn’t recognize. I just wanted a shirt, damn it all, made of cotton, that I wouldn’t feel bad tearing or dribbling on. Something that felt like home and a little bit like me, and if it made the others stare, I didn’t mind one whit. “All this didn’t matter in the field, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware we were in the field any longer,” Josette replied neatly. “Unless of course you are intending to place us back there—but I myself would prefer a bit of peace.”
“Peace,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what I meant by it, though. Peace was supposed to come hand in hand with quiet, but I certainly hadn’t gotten any of that. Peace was supposed to be home: going back to the farm, maybe, and feeding the chickens, who never told you that what you were wearing was “all wrong.” Instead, I’d somehow distinguished myself to th’Esar in a way that stuck me with a vacation across the mountains, and it was really starting to irritate me. There had to be more people than just me with a Talent no one knew about. I was getting really sick of being some kind of ace up th’Esar’s sleeve.
“Yes,” Josette replied. “Peace. Which we haven’t brokered yet. If you’re going to be angry, be angry with our ineffectiveness here, not with the ideal.”
I supposed she was right.
“I’ve got to change,” I said, at a loss.
“Fine by me,” Josette replied. “I hear from Lord Temur that Lord Greylace was very interested yesterday in what performances there were down in the city. Would you know anything about that?”
“Theatre,” I said. “Not my thing.”
If she wasn’t going to leave, I couldn’t just keep standing there doing nothing, shirt in hand, like a dumb ox. If she wasn’t going to leave, I was just going to have to change right here in front of her. She was a fine, strong woman. She could handle it.
I put my hand on the top button, almost a warning, to see what she would do.
“I’m trying to decide,” Josette continued, as though she hadn’t even noticed, “whether trouble follows you around—whether you are the most unlucky man I’ve ever met—or whether you are the one who causes it.”
“I speak my mind,” I countered, lamely. “I won’t sugarcoat who I am for these fucking—”
“Temper,” Josette interrupted. “I understand your position, Alcibiades; I truly do. You were an unfortunate choice for this mission, but that doesn’t mean I will allow you to run amok, like a bull in a china shop, tearing everything down around you. What I can’t decide,” she added, softening, “is whether Caius is the one waving about the red flag. No pun on colors intended, I assure you.”
“Ah,” I said, feeling helpless. I wished Caius were there. He would have done all the talking, and they could have left me out of it. “Well.”
“Not that I believe seeing a play is something to be condemned,” Josette concluded. “I just wished you’d thought to invite me, that’s all. Are you going to change, or are you just going to stand there staring at me?”
Diplomats, I told myself. Politicians. Talents. I’d rather have chickens any day, and I didn’t care who looked twice at me about my preferences.
“Change,” I said. “Right.” Might as well actually use one of the standing screens—even if it did cut off right around my armpits, made for a smaller man than I, and one who liked floral patterns more. I stepped behind it and changed without looking at her—why was she still there, I wondered, and thought again that Caius would have known—and then I moved toward the connecting door between our rooms, mostly because I knew him and I knew he was standing there listening to everything we said, or everything she was saying, considering how the conversation had gone.
“Oh, hello there,” Caius said, standing there like a little saint. He’d already managed to change into something completely different, of course, though I noticed with some grim amusement that his hair wasn’t wet. He hadn’t yet bathed. If anything could ruffle his fur, that would. “Are you having a lovely time?”
“You might as well come in, Greylace,” Josette said, somewhat grudgingly, “since you two are such bosom buddies, and never go anywhere without each other. Far be it for me to separate you two.”
“Hold on just a…” I began, but then Caius was in the room, and I knew I’d never get another word in edgewise again.
“You look lovely this morning, Josette,” Caius said, before taking the only other seat there was. That left me to sit cross-legged on the bedding, which I did, but I sure as bastion wasn’t happy about it. This way, both Josette and Caius towered over me, and I felt like a child who was being punished.
“And you do too, as always,” Josette replied. “Now tell me what the blazes is going on.”
“How do I know you won’t go straight to Lord Temur and tell him everything I’ve told you?” Caius countered simply.
Josette looked like she wanted to throttle him, which I only halfway understood. Something was going on that I didn’t quite grasp, but they were each accusing each other just on the surface of other things that hadn’t been spoken yet. This was an entire level of diplomacy I hadn’t been made for, but here I was anyway, watching everything go down. I wished I had my sword. I wished I knew how to kick them both out, and let them go at each other on their own time.
“Are you suggesting that I’m sleeping with the enemy?” Josette demanded, once she regained her composure. “Because I’ll have you know, Greylace, that they aren’t the enemy any longer.”
“You two are very close,” Caius said.
“Indeed,” Josette replied. “Fostering good relations between sides is what I’ve been brought here to do—not brawl in the streets like a common thug.”
“I did not brawl,” Caius said.
“It’s true,” I agreed, though I didn’t know who I was defending, or why. “He didn’t. He’s much too small for that.” Caius looked deeply pleased, and I turned my eyes elsewhere, immediately regretting that I’d spoken up at all.
“You’re both behaving like idiots,” Josette said at length, “and I won’t allow it. If no one else speaks to you—admonishes you for the way you’ve been comporting yourselves—that’s fine. But I’m here to do my duty. If I wake up to the news that two of our number have been interrogated again, I’ll interrogate you both myself!”
“How delightful,” Caius said. “In that case, I think I should tell you that all our mail is being read without our consent—and, quite likely, altered.”
“Oh yes,” Josette said. “That I know. Why else do you think I have attempted to become so close to Lord Temur?”
“I had hoped,” Caius replied. “You’re such a logical sort. But then, think how romantic it would be—a lord of the Ke-Han and a magician from the Basquiat, thrown together by accident. Amidst the whirlwind of diplomacy and treason, they can only trust each other…”
“No thank you,” Josette said, just as I expressed my disgust with a low grunt.
“Well, I would support it, if you did love him,” Caius said, almost petulantly. “Nonetheless, I’m glad to see you’ve kept your head.”
“Unlike some,” Josette returned dryly. “What tipped you off to the letters?”
I listened to Caius’s explanation of the situation with some measure of disbelief and a significant amount of confu
sion. Whatever’d just happened made no sense to me, but if they’d intended to talk about this all the while, why hadn’t they come out and said something? Unless each one had some reason to distrust the other—which meant that Josette had come here because she hadn’t trusted me.
“I’m not a traitor,” I said, in the middle of Caius’s monologue about Yana.
“I didn’t think so,” Josette said, grinning.
“Indeed,” Caius added, “neither of us would ever suspect you capable of such double-dealings.”
“Was that an insult?” I asked. “Because I for one don’t think anyone should be proud of being smart enough to betray—”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” Caius said, resting his hand upon my shoulder. “Do you suppose that your lord Temur knows of what’s happening? I really will be crushed if he is not the man I believed he was.”
Josette sighed, a heavy sigh, from deep in her chest. “I don’t believe he knows. Not for the reasons you might be thinking, Greylace, so keep that to yourself, but… In my opinion, he’s not aware of it.”
“He’s one of the seven warlords,” I said, unsure. “If he doesn’t know what’s going on, then who would?”
“It might be an imperial order,” Caius murmured, in a way that made me feel like maybe we’d come to the heart of the matter at last—what we’d been trying to say all along, and what we’d had to dance all around first, while Caius tested the waters. This was what little Lord Greylace had been planning on discussing from the very beginning, and Josette and I had somehow managed to stumble right into his trap like painted marionettes.
Well, I, for one, wasn’t going to make things any easier for him than I already had. I didn’t like what was going on, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend that I understood it, of all things.
“You mean he went right around the warlords?” I asked, lowering my voice too, just in case the guards got bored with their pacing and decided to linger next to my door a little, because odds were there was something exciting happening in here.
Well, that was what they got for sticking me in a room next to a madman. That’d teach them.
“I don’t know that he would go that far, my dear,” said Caius, looking at me with the same fondness a man reserved for particularly talented house pets. “I merely believe it possible that he made the decision without their knowledge, then presented it to them as a resolved matter—one which they would have no choice but to agree with lest they seem like traitors themselves.”
Josette leaned forward, elbows braced against her knees. “What reason would he have to do something like that?”
She looked as though she was trying to work it out on her own, frowning and gazing off to one side the way she did when negotiations weren’t going our way. I knew that look. Any minute, Josette would leap up and turn the tides for us. Or at least explain things for my benefit, which no one else had bothered to do.
“Maybe he got sick of listening to their yabbering on and on about nothing,” I said pointedly. “Maybe he just wanted to get something done.”
Caius looked almost disappointed. “Do use your head,” he said imploringly. “I know you can.”
“Unless, unless…” Josette was muttering to herself, toying with her too-long sleeves. She’d been dressing in the Ke-Han style of late, which suited her about as well as it suited Caius. Whether that was another mark of diplomacy that I’d somehow missed—dressing like the enemy to flatter them or whatever—I wasn’t sure. What I was sure about was that no one, not even Caius Greylace, was going to get me into another one of those complicated dresses again. They were too damned hard to run in, and I didn’t see any of the Ke-Han warlords dressing like us. We’d only won the damn war, but we weren’t supposed to expect any flattery?
Josette suddenly sat up straight, as if she’d caught a nasty splinter somewhere unfortunate.
“Unless this isn’t the first decision he’s made without their approval,” she hissed, looking at Caius with triumph like she’d solved a riddle I hadn’t even known we were trying to solve.
“Hang on,” I said, still trying to untangle the whole mess of what was going on. Why couldn’t we just tell a person something instead of making him work it out like it was a fair question, which it wasn’t? “Why do we even care if he’s the one making the decisions? Isn’t he the man meant to be making the decisions? Th’Esar doesn’t have a court of nannying diplomats waiting around to slow down his every decision, and we do all right, don’t we?”
“But is the current Emperor really the sort of man who seems like he ought to be making decisions all on his own?” Caius inquired slyly.
I thought about the Emperor’s eyes when he’d come at me in the outdoor training grounds, and the look on his face when he’d slit the moon princess’s throat.
“He’s a madman,” I said. “Utterly cracked, or cracking, if he’s not quite there yet.”
I didn’t think that it would be a good idea to point out that I thought much the same thing about Caius. Particularly because I wasn’t so sure that I did anymore, and I sure as hell couldn’t explain the distinction between the two.
Maybe part of it was that Caius Greylace was on my side, and he seemed to like me well enough. And maybe part of it was knowing that Emperor Iseul hated me—all of us—maybe even more than I hated him, because the war had been on his soil, and it had been his city we shattered.
You couldn’t expect any fairness in war, but that didn’t mean you forgot all your grudges as soon as peace was dropped in your lap, either. I certainly hadn’t, but then again, I wasn’t supposed to be an emperor. The question—one I didn’t know how to answer, because I’d never known the man before—was what had tipped the scales. His father’s death, or his nation’s defeat?
“Think of his brother, poor creature,” said Caius, his voice taking on an odd quality, like it was coming from inside my head instead of outside of it. His lips were moving, though, and Josette was on the edge of her seat, so I could tell that she was listening, too. He was using something, though, some particular brand of his Talent. My head felt clearer, like I’d got a full night’s sleep instead of a full night’s interrogation. As Greylace dealt only in illusions, I was sure it’d wear off soon.
“You must remember how quickly things happened,” Caius went on. “One evening he was enjoying dinner alongside us, and by morning he was a traitor! You know how difficult it’s been for us to decide anything here, how etiquette demands a careful consideration of each option, weighing the positive and the negative out for endless hours. How, then, could a decision such as that be carried out so quickly unless it was made by one man, and a very powerful man, at that?”
Josette blinked, and opened her mouth as if to say something.
Caius shook his head, and dragged his little chair closer, indicating that she do the same.
“I have no reason to believe that the prince is innocent of such charges,” he went on, looking almost regretful that he couldn’t clear the little Ke-Han prince then and there, “but I have no reason to believe that he is guilty, either. And if he is not…”
“He’s doing the same thing to us,” Josette whispered, looking scared for the first time since I’d known her. “Isn’t he? That’s what you’re trying to say. He’s having our mail read… He suspects us of something.”
“I am only saying that if the Emperor suspects something, then we are in danger,” Caius said. “Just like the prince was; only he had no time to plan ahead, as we do. We know well enough that the Emperor moves speedily in the face of perceived threats, whether they are imagined or not.”
I was starting to feel a little sick to my stomach, though whether that was because of conspiracy theories or just because I hadn’t slept or eaten breakfast, I didn’t know.
“I’ll spend more time with Lord Temur,” Josette said, firm and decisive like she thought she had to make up for sounding scared before.
Except I didn’t like the sound of that plan
one bit.
“Hold on just a minute,” I said.
“That’s excellent, my dear!” Caius proclaimed. “That’s just what I was hoping for from you. I would do it myself, but you have a certain quality that I lack.”
“Yeah, more like two—” I started, only I rethought things real quick when Josette shot me a look. “What I mean is,” I said, changing tack while clearing my throat, “I don’t like this plan.”
“Really, Alcibiades,” Josette said, but she looked a little less murderous, so I guessed she wasn’t that mad at me after all.
“Well, it’s just… the way I thought of it was,” I said, trying my best not to be loud about it, “all those warlords are loyal to the Emperor. So maybe they are in on it, what with their obsession with loyalty, whatever that means in the Ke-Han Empire. And if we start sniffing around—and they’re looking for betrayal around every corner, with more than just those mirrors of theirs—then the second you step out of bounds… I just don’t like it.”
We were all silent and grim for a long moment, trying to figure, or at least I was, what we even knew about the enemy, when a few days ago they were our so-called new allies and friends.
It was different from the battlefield, where colors signaled who each man was and where his loyalties lay. It was more like subterfuge, all the espionage I’d known took place but was never a part of, even if all the chances for promotion were there and everybody knew it. It was more like the way things got in the very thick of battle, at night, when you couldn’t see what someone was wearing and you couldn’t hear what he was screaming, either, and you just had to hope you were striking out at someone who was on the other side. You just couldn’t think about it. You’d go mad, same as the Ke-Han Emperor.
“It’s the only plan we’ve got,” Josette said grimly.
We both knew she was right, Caius and I, and we sat there for a while longer, just to solidify our intentions. At least we had each other to trust—but after that, it was a free-for-all, a melee of instinct and uncertainty. It was what I’d thought I’d wanted all along—getting back to the dividing line, putting myself on one side and them on the other—but the terms were different now, and I was in Josette’s camp. I’d never had anything against Lord Temur, at least not off the battlefield.