by Jaida Jones
Sure enough, I heard a grunt of displeasure at my back, though he was discreet enough to keep it subdued, at least. There was something to be thankful for.
“It is the… I am not sure what the word is in your language,” Lord Temur said, no doubt sensing this new tension. I should have liked to get to know Lord Temur a little better, but it was impossible to know where to begin with these Ke-Han men. “The storyteller? Perhaps narrator is more accurate, though it holds a double meaning in our language. She begins the story for the actors and the audience.”
“Lucky me,” Alcibiades muttered under his breath, and I leaned back nonchalantly to elbow him in the ribs.
From our table, even above the screens that the theatre troupe had set up, the Emperor’s face was visible. He looked neither entertained, nor bored, nor put out in the slightest by the music. I wondered if there were anything at all that could put an expression on Emperor Iseul’s face. Then I remembered the duel between the Emperor and General Alcibiades and felt the keen prick of interest once more.
It was at times like that when I wished our instruction had been more specialized to deal with the current Ke-Han dynasty, and not simply the various ways one was expected to bow to them. What background, for example, had these men experienced? How many years of despising us had carved their features to be so fierce and so fine in our presence? What had Emperor Iseul been like as a child? I knew he had not been timid and uncertain, but more than anything, I longed for the intimate details of daily life, not the masks we saw, like so many layers of makeup, as though the Emperor might just as well have been a princess hidden in the moon, so remote from us was he.
“It’ll be a little hard to understand what they’re saying, don’t you think?” Alcibiades hissed at me.
“It’s about the mood, my dear,” I said. “Please try to concentrate.”
Alcibiades looked disappointed—perhaps he was expecting me to agree with him on everything, once I’d demonstrated such a grand display of solidarity—but he did as he was asked. If we were lucky, the wine’s effects were wearing off, or he was doing his best to imagine himself in an indeterminate elsewhere, a simple place, undisturbed by Ke-Han song.
“Ah,” Lord Temur said. “Here are the suitors.”
They filed out one after the other, each more resplendent than the last. They held themselves with dramatic poise—an adopted nobility that in some ways echoed Emperor Iseul’s posture or Prince Mamoru’s elegance, but which were at the same time merely shadows of the real thing, reflections caught in a clouded mirror. The first suitor was dressed in scarlet—I heard Alcibiades snort with amusement at my side—the second in emerald, the third in rich blue sapphire, the fourth in silver, and the fifth in gold. Their faces were indistinct, all white with shocks of red at their lips and cheeks, their thick black brows high on their foreheads, and angled to create an imperious effect. There might have been the slightest hint of mockery in their precise motions—after all, they were mimicking the imperial class, without belonging to it—but there was such delicacy in each step, each tilt of the chin or curl of the finger, that one was caught up in the beauty as if one might suddenly drown in it.
Without so much as the slightest cue, they all removed from their opulent sashes equally opulent paper fans and unfurled them all at once, obscuring their faces.
That was when the moon princess appeared.
There was no mistaking her—or him, I supposed, but it was impossible to remember that—though she was dressed in pale grays accented with lavender, the color of a fine morning mist hung low above the grass. She was not nearly so bright as her suitors were, but her poise was positively celestial. I found myself transfixed—I would have to order robes in the Ke-Han style of fabric in exactly that color at the very next opportunity—attempting, as best I could, to study the way she crossed the makeshift stage from right to left, then right again, as though she were floating bare inches above the floor.
“Beautiful,” Josette said. I could do no more than agree with her. The only one of us who looked skeptical was Alcibiades, no doubt because he couldn’t allow himself to forget her secret. It troubled him, I surmised, that anyone should appear as anything he was not.
She moved like a cloud crossing paths with the moon, her lips and nails the same deep, blushing red. The music, as played by the “narrator,” fanned the fire in our hearts by quickening pace, though the woman who played was no longer singing. The words, I supposed, would have to be found in the princess’s every movement, one hand lifting, then the other, changes so minuscule they should not have mattered.
What an artist the actor was. I never doubted for a moment that this was a woman before me, a princess fallen from grace with the stars, who would soon learn to live without them—only to be returned to the heavens once more, without a say in the matter.
“Wait,” Alcibiades said, and I could have throttled him for the disruption. “What’s that?”
I was just reaching over to quiet him by any means necessary, even if I had to go so far as to cover his mouth with my hand, when I, too, saw what he was talking about. How Alcibiades, still half-inebriated and hardly paying proper attention to the play itself, had managed to notice the knife hidden in the moon princess’s fan, I’ll never know. All I did know was that suddenly Alcibiades had leapt to his feet, knocking our dainty table over in the process, and was suddenly part of the play in progress. Or was it that the play had suddenly become all too real?
Another woman, one of our party, gasped. Josette, whose composure was magnificent, especially for a lady of true Volstovic heritage, did not. I did, however, feel Lord Temur tense beside me, reaching for a blade that unfortunately was not strapped to his side.
But Alcibiades, bless his heart, moved more quickly than all the rest, more quickly even than the Emperor’s guards themselves. I was more proud of him than I’d ever been of anyone, which was more proud than I had any right to be.
It was all over very quickly, though the moments etched themselves like scenes from a storybook, individual woodblock prints, across my vision. Alcibiades, breaking through the group of young actors portraying the suitors, who had, I saw then, cleverly formed a blockade against the majority of the diners to obscure the moon princess’s actions; Alcibiades, grasping the moon princess’s wrist, regardless of the dagger she held; Alcibiades, throwing himself between the Emperor and, it would seem, death itself, clad all in smoky, luxurious gray, while the music ended sharply on a jarring note; Alcibiades, acting as though that was what he had always been trained to do, and not, in fact, a terribly incautious whim.
The dagger fell to the floor, and the noise seemed to wake everyone from their slumber. Although I did not blame them, for I, too, felt as though I’d been caught in a spider’s web of dreams, the food and the incense and the music a deceptive spell thrown over us all to keep us sluggish and too slow.
The Emperor’s personal guards were the first to act, forming a ring around the Emperor’s dais with provisional blades at the ready. The warlords were next, catching the brightly colored actors and musicians as they ran, presumably for their lives, now that their ruse had failed. Lord Temur leapt from his position beside me, quicker than all the rest save for my brave general, and caught one suitor by his carefully lacquered hair, and another around the throat. Josette, without so much as lifting a brow, tripped a musician as he ran past and I, in a fit of desire to contribute, finished him off with a soup bowl to the head.
It was Alcibiades, though, who had the distinct honor of presenting the would-be assassin to the Emperor, one arm twisting behind him, the beautiful fabric of his costume torn at the sleeve.
Emperor Iseul’s nostrils flared.
“I am… in your debt, General Alcibiades,” he said at length, when the commotion had died down somewhat, and all the members of the troupe had been rounded up. “You have done the empire a great service.”
“I…?” Alcibiades said, looking all around nervously, as though he’d only jus
t realized what it was he’d done. The would-be assassin, the beautiful moon princess, struggled for a moment against his hold, then went entirely limp. Alcibiades held on to him in the same way he held on to all beautiful things—as though he were somewhat afraid of their beauty. None of us could bear to look at them, nor could we bear to look away from them. “Uh, I mean. Your Highness.” All eyes were on him, and it was as though he’d only just understood it. It was also making him quite uncomfortable.
For someone who so obviously did not like to stand out in a crowd, I noticed that Alcibiades had a curious way of going about things.
“It is your honor,” the Emperor continued, his voice ringing clear and purposeful, “to mete out adequate punishment.”
“To… mete out…?” Alcibiades began.
The penalty–I tried to mouth to him, as Josette dragged the fallen musician to his feet and held his arms behind his back—for an assassination attempt upon a member of the Ke-Han royalty is death.
Gruesome death, I added, remembering with an illicit thrill down my spine the level to which the Ke-Han had refined torture. They were even better at it than I was. As gruesome as is humanly possible.
“The penalty is death,” Emperor Iseul said, inclining his head once in Alcibiades’ direction. “It is your choice to decide how this traitor is executed. If you wish it, it is your hand that may do the honor.”
“I…” Alcibiades began. He looked toward me, then, almost as though he were a drowning man casting about for a lifeline. I was surprisingly touched, until I realized he was probably looking to me because I was the only person he knew who had ever killed a man in cold blood, and he needed someone with experience to tell him what came next.
It was very curious that he was the soldier, and I was not.
“I,” Alcibiades said again, “I think… your Highness, that is, I believe…since the attack was on your life, it would be better if you…”
“Ah,” the Emperor said, stepping past his guards, and down off the dais. All eyes were now on him, including, I noted, the actors’. Theirs, however, held not a curious gaze, but one of steady, thwarted hatred.
Emperor Iseul, on the other hand, did not appear fazed at all. From what I understood of Ke-Han emperors and princes, such attempts were quite common; Emperor Iseul might well have grown used to them before he was ever past boyhood.
“I am yet further in your debt,” the Emperor said, bowing his head more deeply. He walked calmly in a circle, starting by Alcibiades’ side before coming to stand by the moon princess. The dagger—very nearly the assassination weapon—lay on the floor beside him.
I knew already what he would do next, but I held my breath nonetheless as he bent down to pick the blade up by the hilt, letting it dangle between them like a dead thing.
Then he slit the moon princess’s throat.
One of the suitors cried out from where Lord Temur held him pinned. I could almost have imagined it to be a continued scene from the play, if I’d wished it, but this was far too remarkable to be anything but reality. My eyes went immediately to Alcibiades. That was not because I found the idea of blood distressing, but because I thought his would be the most interesting reaction. More important than that, I was feeling some modicum of concern for the poor man, who had brought himself to the Emperor’s attention twice in such a short period of time. I couldn’t even bring myself to be jealous, as I might normally have been under the circumstances.
Earning favor with royalty was one thing. Earning attention from a man who might remember your face above all others the next time he had a fit of temper was quite another. I felt rather alarmed for Alcibiades, his eyes trained carefully at nothing as the moon princess’s blood was spilled, soaking the delicate gray and lavender robes to a dark, murky red. The color palette was completely ruined, and all the attention couldn’t have been very healthy for Alcibiades.
The Emperor inclined his head toward our general one last time, before the doors at the front of the hall burst open, and the dining room was filled with fierce, blue-clad guards. The general didn’t so much as flinch, though his mouth was set in an unhappy line. Alcibiades was too honest to benefit from the Ke-Han skill of making a mask out of one’s face, I thought, and at least Emperor Iseul was too distracted to notice how uncomfortable he’d made him, still clutching the moon princess’s sleeve. At last, one of the Emperor’s bodyguards—and they must have been cursing my brave friend, for what fools he’d made them all look—lifted the moon princess’s limp body by one arm and carried her off. Josette turned her head aside as they passed in front of us, but I couldn’t help looking, myself. It was curious to see the actor’s face, registering blankness beneath the mask of makeup he wore, now stained and smeared with blood. The white makeup had been smeared just under the chin, revealing the shock of darker skin, surprisingly vulnerable.
The soldiers all moved aside for the bodyguard carrying the body, and he disappeared from the dining room. I wondered where he was taking it. I couldn’t recall what the Ke-Han did with their honored dead, let alone their assassins.
“Take them all away,” said Emperor Iseul, his voice loud but calm, as if he’d just spent the day in deep meditation. “I will dispose of them later.”
The musician moaned involuntarily with fear. Or perhaps he’d simply become aware of the bump on his head from my soup bowl. Either way, Josette tightened her hold on his arms.
Gruesome death, I thought again, and pressed the pads of my fingertips together that I might not become lost in imagining it. Perhaps I might even offer my services to the Emperor. I would have to ask Alcibiades what he thought of the idea, if he ever saw fit to come back to our table. Indeed, as the guards streamed into the room, wrestling the captives away from the warlords, and from Josette, who looked almost disappointed she wouldn’t get a chance to punish the musician herself, Alcibiades stood at attention in front of the Emperor’s dais still, a pool of blood at his feet. The ruined screens were arranged around him like fallen soldiers in a failed battle, some of them with blood sprayed across their scenes of soft, dusky evening.
Perhaps he was waiting to be dismissed, I thought. If that were the case, he’d be waiting a very long time, since the Emperor had already swept away to speak in low tones with his captain of the guard, a man with fearsome eyebrows and an even more fearsome expression.
It was up to me to collect him, then. Resolved, I picked my way carefully around the guards, as they manhandled the would-be assassins out the door and the tables that had been overturned in the ensuing frenzy. I approached from the side, so as not to chance staining my slippers with blood, and slipped my arm through the general’s, our hero of the hour.
“I do hope, my dear, that you haven’t got anything on your coat,” I murmured.
Alcibiades started, as though I’d startled him from some waking sleep. He took in the rapidly unraveling scene around us, then the puddle of blood at his feet.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, and pulled me with him against the current of guards robed in blue and into the hall, where the sounds of commotion and chaos were muted, distant through the night’s tranquil silence.
CHAPTER NINE
KOUJE
My lord was not speaking to me. I would have liked to think that there were many reasons for that. We were both thinking about the best way to bypass the border crossing, for example, and did not wish to disturb one another. I had a feeling, however, that I knew the truth of the matter, which was that he had yet to forgive me for my fit of temper in the village. And there was no reason why he should have.
Even knowing as I did the insult paid to my lord by Jiang—filthy bastard dog—I could hardly excuse my actions. Better to have held my tongue, along with my hands, and have got us safely through the checkpoint.
Mamoru had done so well in adapting to his new station, despite his noble upbringing and the absence of all the things he’d once held dear. I could not afford to do less, to shame him by being unable to tu
rn aside my duty as it was to protect him. The only difficulty was that I did not know what manner of man I was without my duty to Mamoru, first and foremost. Not when I had gone against the Emperor himself to fulfill it.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked. It was a cursory question, one that had as much to do with keeping my lord well as it did with ascertaining his temperament.
“No,” my lord answered, managing to convey how angry he was with me by that one word, itself like a blow.
“Ah,” I nodded, judging our progress by the distance from the wall. We would cross the border well before nightfall. There was that, at least, to be thankful for.
We rode on, the silence weighing heavily on my heart for all the times before when we had made games of guessing what birds there were in the trees above us, or what animal rustled in the bushes by the roadside. My lord had always been so cheerful in times past, and I had taken it away from him. I feared that if I allowed him to dwell too long on the things that made him unhappy, the well of his misery would rise up and swallow him whole. There was so much that he had lost, after all, and it was only his immutable spirit that kept him strong.
“We should stop here,” I said at last. “Even if you are not thirsty, the horse will need to be watered.”
My lord said nothing, only allowed his slender shoulders to rise and fall with grudging consent.
I dismounted behind him, leading the horse to the stream that was hidden just off the road. The clouds over our heads were a gathering dark, and I hoped that it would not mean rain before nightfall. When it came to helping my lord down, he took my hands—stiff as they were, the knuckles cracked from each unrefined blow—but refused to look at me.