Shadow Magic (10 page)

It was a true gift and a boon that I had not yet done so. At least even Iseul admitted that I had some head for strategy. But if I did, it was all through Kouje’s teachings and through picture scrolls of the histories. I
could use a bow, but none so well as most of my brother’s men. I had no cleverness with a sword, nor strength, either.

“You are like a prince of old, when we were more than warriors,” Kouje once told me. I might well have been no more than thirteen at the time.

“When we were less, you mean,” I countered.

“And what skill have I with the brush?” Kouje asked. “Were I given twice my own age to master calligraphy, do you think I could manage it?”

Kouje had no hand for the arts, that was true. His broad palms were callused, and his fingers blunt and strong. Yet the Emperor, I knew, would not accept my watercolors—unfolding images of cranes and clouds, of imagined mountains.

“I’m going to run away to the mountains,” I told Kouje firmly, in the clutch of a terrible sulk. How he bore with me during those awful years, I’ll never know.

“Will you be needing my services there as well?” he asked, not daring to smile at me. I was not entirely insufferable, but I had my moments of jealousy, same as all children. “There are demons in the mountains, you know, with long, terrible claws. They like to kidnap beautiful young princes—never to be seen again.”

When I had nightmares that night and for weeks after, he regretted it, but I refused to let him apologize. He’d rallied my spirits, at least, as he always did.

In the many years since then, I’d done my part. All I wanted was to keep my men safe, or feel Kouje clasp my shoulder after a well-chosen tactic proved invaluable. My brother was the warlord, and I was in awe to see him Emperor, so fiercely proud, recognizable, and yet suddenly a complete stranger to me. He’d changed in an instant, as though the brother I’d known had been but a shadow cast from the future.

It was a hard night for sleeping. My thoughts were too tangled. I could feel the cool breeze stir against my face, as on so many nights before.

It was then that I mourned for my father.

Kouje was not there. He would not see me in my moment of weakness, and I was glad for that. We were long past the time when I could allow him to comfort me, and my unhappiness would only trouble him, without allowing him any means to undo it.

My father had not, in his way, treated me as most fathers treated their sons, second or no. But that was to be expected. My father was not a man: He was an emperor. I hadn’t been the son he wanted, but I was the son he’d been given, and while he and Iseul were better suited for each other—silent even at private dinners in the same grave manner, with wills as swift and fierce as the gods—he had been the father I was given.

Had I ever thought that we would lose? What haunted me was the question that implied: Had he?

It was thus that I fell asleep, or must have, with my cheeks streaked by tears as though I was once again a child. It had been a very long time indeed since I’d last cried myself to sleep—and then Kouje had been there, one hand on my back, the other making shadow creatures dance across the far wall.

Sometime later, I heard the sound of the door in my room slide open. It was Kouje, or must have been, protective as he was, come one last time tonight to check on me before at last allowing himself to sleep. No footfalls followed, but Kouje was quieter than a cat when he chose to be. Those times were either of utmost importance, or to see to it that he didn’t wake me. If he ever differentiated between the two, I didn’t know.

I wished, distantly, as though through a dream, that he would simply go to sleep, but the sound of the door sliding shut with his exit never came.

My father and my brother after him had instincts. They could sense, as a great cat in the mountains could sense its prey, a coming storm, enemy troops, an assassin in the house. For the first five years of my life, I’d been raised far differently than they; it was because of this that I could not sense my own danger like a warrior’s scars aching during the rainy season.

I was just drifting back to sleep when a hand, rough with use of a sword, closed over my mouth.

I could no more see in the darkness than I could scream around the suffocating palm. Something smelled familiar, but I couldn’t distinguish it. Then, I was being dragged to my feet, out of my bed, and into the darkened hall.

During the time of the dragons, I’d spent many a night indulging in the barest artifice of sleep. I would lie prone, the covers over my body and one hand on my sword, but I would not sleep. It was what my body required for rest, but I could not term it restful.

The day they came over the wall, flying straight for the center of the city with fire all around them, was something I dreamed of often. The war had ended, but I still had not found my rest.

When the palace was first designed, it was built with separate, smaller corridors for the use of servants, so that the Emperor might never have to trouble himself with encountering one in the hall. They had long since been closed over, boarded up when it was decided they were too much an invitation for assassins, but there was one less closely guarded than the rest. It was the passage the hostlers used most often when conveying news of their lords’ horses to the main palace, and was tolerated only because the door was impossible to find unless you knew it was there.

It was my duty to know the palace better than I knew the veins lining the back of my own hand.

That was the way I took my lord Mamoru, my heart pounding fiercely as though it sensed the wrongness in my current actions. It beat as a fish’s heart must, upon finding itself on dry land for the first time. Perhaps what I was doing would prove just as fatal, but I could no more will myself to choose another course than I could will myself to sleep at night.

I kept my hand over Mamoru’s mouth, half-carrying him through the passageway and half-dragging him. He’d stopped kicking and beating at my shoulders with his fists, but whether it was because he’d caught sight of my face and calmed somewhat, or because he’d gone rigid with terror, I didn’t know.

It had been so long since I’d last comforted my lord that I’d forgotten the art of it. And, admittedly, kidnapping him in that fashion was something beyond a sad tale, or a bruised shoulder. Besides, we hadn’t the time for it.

The stables were dark, filled wall to wall with foreign horses, all of which were exhausted from the ride over the Cobalts. It was there that I released my lord, catching his arm as he stumbled and gasped shallowly for breath.

“Kouje!” he cried, still wide-eyed with fear. “You nearly scared the life out of me. What are you doing?”

I wished that I could tell him without harming him. I wished, too, that I knew fully what I was doing.

Instead, I bowed as low as I could—as low as I knew how to. The straw littering the ground scratched at my nose and the smell of horse overwhelmed me, but I pressed my hands flat to keep them still.

“Forgive me, my lord. I would not do such a thing—I would never have dreamed of it—only…” I trailed off, for I could not find the words to tell him. After all, I knew, better than anyone, perhaps, how deeply Mamoru admired his brother. One would even have to say that Mamoru loved Iseul. If that day had never come, I might never have had the need to express my own, more private concerns about the reciprocity of those feelings. I had always known that Iseul was cold, ruthless in a way that his father had not been, and hard in a way that was difficult to understand. Perhaps in giving him the benefit of the doubt—any man my lord loved as much as Mamoru did Iseul could not be without merit—I had missed the signifiers up until that point. I had failed in my duty to protect him from the closest threat of all: that of his own brother.

I could not find the words. My lord had only just lost his father. To eliminate what family he had left in one fell swoop, with a handful of overheard words, was truly too cruel.

It was not a servant’s job to abide by what he found the most desirable, however. It was a servant’s duty to live only for his lord’s existence. To do what he could to ensure that existence. To keep his lord strong.

I could hear Mamoru’s breathing begin to even out and the soft sound of his slippers against the straw as he paced, confused and upset at having been so disrupted.

“Kouje,” he said, imploring me with everything in his tone to offer some explanation for my actions. He knew that I was not prone to flights of fancy. In fact, on more than one occasion, he’d rebuked me for being overly serious. Perhaps he thought now that I’d gone mad. It
had happened to other, stronger men during the course of the war. “Kouje,
please.”

I had to give him some explanation. I’d known that all along, but I hadn’t prepared myself properly; I hadn’t had the time.

“My lord,” I said, lifting my head, “your life is in danger. We must leave the palace at once.”

Mamoru shook his head, his face clouded with bewilderment. It took him a moment to speak—how I longed for the days when he was too young and my duty was to shield him from knowledge of the attempts, not inform him of them. “We must tell my brother,” he said at last. “The Emperor must be informed of all such threats. He’ll protect me. I know Iseul hasn’t been emperor very long, Kouje, and he’s been distracted with the negotiations, but… I still trust him to execute his duties. We must go to him, and you will tell him what you know.”

The words clogged my throat, threatening to choke me. I could not speak, not yet.

“Kouje,” Mamoru tried again, more gently. “If it troubles you, then I can speak with Iseul. You may tell me, and I will have an audience with him.”

I shook my head. Something in my eyes must have frightened him then, for he took a step away from me.

“It isn’t a member of the delegation,” he said, his own eyes widening. “It couldn’t be that you think—Oh, Kouje, the talks—the treaty—it will all be ruined!”

I could not let him labor under misimpressions any longer. If I did, the subsequent truth would be crueler still. At last I stood, and took my lord by his thin shoulders. I could say it all at once; they were only words. “My lord,” I said, willing my voice to be like iron, without flesh or blood behind them, “the Emperor is the one who made the decree.”

For a moment, Mamoru looked at me as though I had gone mad. Then his features changed from disbelief to confusion.

“You’ve misunderstood something,” he said, his voice not quite so steely, but with its own, stubborn conviction. “Or I have. What is it that you think you know?”

I did not blame him if he didn’t believe me. I had never lied to him—but then, I was only a servant. It was not unexpected that he would believe his brother’s character before my word, no matter the situation. But his was not a situation that allowed choice. I’d already
made the decision for him. It went against my Emperor and my country, and it meant my life.

“I will take you from here by force,” I said. I could not bear to look at him. “If you will not go willingly, then I have no other choice.”

“Kouje.” My lord was nearly pleading with me. If it were any other place, and any other time, I would have looked toward him sternly; he would have known that now was when he commanded, rather than implored. Perhaps he remembered my old lessons, for after a moment he straightened, set his shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “Kouje, you will tell me what you know.”

My lord’s command was law. It was almost a relief to obey it. “Earlier this night, the Emperor called his council,” I said, my hands in fists at my side. “It was by accident that I heard them—you may punish me for the breach in conduct as you see fit, but only once we are away from here. The Emperor spoke to his seven lords, and accused you of treason.” If I separated each word before I spoke them, then I would not hear all that I was saying. It was easier, that way, to break my lord’s heart. “The Emperor spoke of a plan. He said that his younger brother was conspiring against him, and for that, he had forfeited his life.”

Mamoru shook his head. “But Kouje,” he whispered, “I have done nothing.”

I bowed. I was always grateful for protocol in moments of uncertainty. “I know that, my lord.”

“He must have misunderstood,” my lord continued, as though he hadn’t heard me. “Earlier, he reprimanded me for speaking the diplomats’ language—perhaps that’s why he thought…?” There, my lord paused for a long moment. One of the diplomats’ horses, in a stall close by, snorted and stamped his hooves. I considered, for a moment, stealing one of them—for the men at the gate would not recognize the foreign horse, and it might ease our escape.

When my lord spoke next, it startled me from my thoughts. There was new strength in his voice, new purpose.

“We must go to my brother at once,” he said, and his words caused my heart to sink in my chest. “We will explain to him—
I
will explain to him—I will
prove
that I am loyal. If he asks for any trial, I will give myself over to the test. He will know that I serve him, even if it—”

“Even if it kills you,” I said. My own voice had no color to it; the sound made the Volstov horses uneasy.

“If he thinks I’m guilty of this crime, then I cannot run from him,” Mamoru confirmed. “A guilty man flees. An innocent one returns to prove his innocence.”

Everything that he said made sense. It was calm and reasoned, the way I had endeavored to instruct my lord to make all his decisions. Mamoru was able to see reason where I could not.

Yet what I had neglected in my teachings was how reason gave way in the face of madness, and to Mamoru it surely must have seemed madness that had led to Iseul’s decision.

I could not give voice to my deepest fear, since I had no proof to make it manifest. My lord had no eyes with which to look upon Iseul’s faults, his unreasonable qualities, the terrible things he’d done during the war, all for the good of the Ke-Han. As he proclaimed this latest decree to be, only now it gave me reason to question all the others.

What manner of monster had the Emperor held in check? I could only wonder at how Iseul had changed since his father’s death and brought his true self to light. I had only my instincts, shaped over the years to know always what action was necessary, and to sense when something was wrong in the night. I had protected my lord’s life with a sword and a ready hand for all my adult life. There was nothing I knew so well as my duty, but the argument that I wished to give my lord was one I trembled to think on.