Shadow Magic (18 page)

“How
is
everyone back home?” I asked, looking at the screen set up by the far wall. His had cranes upon it, whereas mine had a splash of maple branches. “Your mother? Your father?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Alcibiades replied curtly.

I cast a quick glance at the desk, only to find that Alcibiades had put his shoulder squarely in the way, blocking my line of vision. I could see the back collar of his shirt very well, but nothing at all beyond that, not even what his handwriting looked like.

That shift, however, was his undoing. It was a fatal strategy, very inadvisable; I’d have to rebuke him for it afterward. It protected the letter he was in the midst of writing very well, of course, but it left open his entire left flank—where the letter he’d received was resting underneath the inkwell. It was very common paper, brown and heavy, and the
penmanship was round and flowery, so it was almost certainly from a woman, but adorably hesitant, as though the writer didn’t often find herself in the position of having to write anything at all, much less something so long as a letter.

I would have to act quickly—and carefully, too, unless I wanted to spill all the ink.

“I say!” I exclaimed, feigning a great deal of interest. “That woman has fish spilling from her hair. Did you know that your room has a print of the sea goddess?”

Alcibiades grunted, but didn’t look up. That was good, since I couldn’t risk any change at all in his posture. Not when he’d left such a perfect opening for me. I inched closer,
so
pleased I’d decided to have some slippers made up in the Ke-Han style, since they were so perfect for moving silently across boarded floors.

“Mine only has a winter landscape,” I said in a desolate voice.
“Do
let’s switch! I think mine would suit your room much better, what with the cranes and all. I’m surprised they mixed sea and air in the same room anyway. It must have been a mistake. Will you help me to take it down, my dear?”

Alcibiades wasn’t even listening to me anymore, though he’d hunched his shoulders more tightly, as though even then he was working to create a barricade against me with his own body. His pen scratched away dutifully against the page. I almost felt sorry for him, but then, he was a soldier, and it would do him good to remember that one had to go on the offense, occasionally.

I plucked the letter nimbly from the desk and scanned it eagerly.

Alcibiades whirled around immediately, the most murderous of expressions on his face. “Put that
down,”
he growled, grabbing for it.

I slipped just out of reach, still reading the letter. It was the sort of thing that would have been aided by the use of two good eyes, and not the one I had to make do with. Fortunately, Alcibiades was the sort of man you didn’t need
any
eyes for, only a good sense of hearing, since even when he was in his own room he refused to remove his boots and he made terrible thundering noise everywhere he went.

Dear Al
, the letter began. That was as far as I’d read before Alcibiades launched himself at me like an enormous beast, and I was forced to dart around behind the desk to read further.

“‘Hope you are eating well,’” I read delightedly. “‘No one cooks like
your Yana,’” was that a word from country dialect? I’d have to look it up, “‘but you should eat anyway on account of your little fat belly not going away.’”

I paused, breathless with delighted laughter. Then, Alcibiades overturned the desk with a tremendous crash and I was forced to wriggle out from underneath the chair to keep from being crushed.

“‘Do not allow your temper to run away with you like one hundred angry fire ants,’” I read on, pressing myself flat against the wall. It was to avoid Alcibiades’ wrath as much as it was to hold myself up while laughing. He threw the inkwell at my head and I scampered away. It shattered against the far wall, splattering ink everywhere.

“Your temper, my dear! Your temper! It says it in the letter!”

“I’m warning you, Greylace, just give the letter back and no one gets hurt.”

I had never seen Alcibiades so excited about anything in my life. His face was red, and his eyes were alive with the prospect of having me spitted and roasted over an open flame. I simply
had
to keep reading.

“‘Do your Volstov and your Yana proud. It is great honor to be chosen for such special journey. And feed your horse nothing but apples, apples are the chosen food for the King of Horses,’” I managed, before I choked on my own laughter. From what I’d learned of the Ke-Han court, it was appropriate to hide one’s laughter behind a sleeve or a fan, whichever one happened to have on hand at the time. However, survival instincts bid me ignore that particular rule, so that I was set to laughing quite openly in the center of the room, in a way I didn’t normally make a habit of. It was a most unseemly display, but for a very special occasion.

Alcibiades swore, and kicked at one of his crescent-shaped chairs that had fallen over in all the commotion.

“‘Wear your socks!’” I shrieked. Tears were beginning to roll down my face. This was better than a holiday, better than
ten
birthdays, and I found that I didn’t care at all that my face might have been as red as Alcibiades’ by that point. “‘Otherwise’! ‘Your feet get cold’!”

“It’s summer,” Alcibiades groused. “And humid as fuck here anyway. There isn’t any cold to be found. Give the damn thing back.”

He still had that murderous gleam in his eyes, but he was losing steam. That was the problem with men his size, they tired themselves out too quickly stomping about and making a dreadful ruckus. I darted
up to the dais from which Alcibiades had moved his sleeping mat and collapsed there, out of breath and out of laughter.

“‘Take very seriously this mission of diplomacy. Take very seriously your health, or else you will sprout mushrooms from your ears and become like a mossy stone that has no rolling left to do.’”

Alcibiades sat down on the floor, clearly plotting my demise for a future date. It was almost sweet really. He was so
earnest
about it. Perhaps he’d realized that I’d nearly finished the letter anyway, and there was no point in trying to keep me from reading the rest.

There was an enormous black inkblot on the far wall. If I squinted, it looked something like a butterfly.

“‘Listen to your Yana, and you will always be happy, healthy, and fat. Yana Berger.’”

I sighed, feeling utterly emptied of everything and tremendously satisfied with myself. I would have to find a comb very shortly, and I would have to go over my clothing very carefully to make sure no errant drops of ink had landed on the silk, but all in all, it had been a very successful venture. I rolled my head to face Alcibiades, peering at him over the rumpled paper of the letter.

“Who’s
Yana
?” I asked, in the tones of someone about to break open a terrible scandal.

“No one,” Alcibiades grunted. He crossed his arms over his chest like a sullen child.

“Oh, come now.” I sat up. There was a faint freckle of ink on my right sleeve, but I’d already decided it was worth the sacrifice. This outfit was a new one, and not entirely as flattering as it might have been. I was going to call the Ke-Han tailors soon, in any case. Now that everyone bent over backward to make sure that Alcibiades, the diplomat with the stolen horse, had everything his heart desired, I would tell them Alcibiades had sent for them, and they were sure to come more expeditiously and do a better job, at that. “You’re telling me that this kindly soul, whoever she is—who took the time to write you this very… unique letter full of heartfelt sentiment and best wishes for your health—is no one? This lovely dame, who counsels you so very wisely to hold your temper because it is—so true, so true—like ants? Can this delicate flower be no one?”

“All right,” Alcibiades said in an exasperated tone. His cheeks were
still bright red, though whether it was from exertion or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell. He was a fascinating creature. I was beginning to think of him less and less like the dog I’d once owned; although he’d just set to ruining a room like a misbehaved animal, he was far more difficult to train. “Just don’t talk about her, all right? I didn’t mean she’s no one. Just that she’s no one
you’d
know.”

“I can’t tell whether that’s a jab at my station or an outright lie.” I tapped my chin to order my thoughts where they’d got loose from me in all the excitement. My robes were creased—another mark against them. “I’ll take it as a lie, I suppose. Perhaps you are…
embarrassed
to speak of her? Your dear, sweet Yana, who cautions you to wear your socks? How heartbroken she would be to learn of your reticence when it comes to speaking of her!”

“She as good as raised me from a sprog,” Alcibiades finally said, though he spoke as though the words were being dragged from him by torturer’s hooks. “After my parents were carried off, what with one thing or another.”

“Carried off by one thing or another?” I asked. “Were they eaten by mountain birds?”

Alcibiades gave me a filthy look. Perhaps my excitement over discovering Yana had caused me to overstep my bounds, and I attempted to look appropriately apologetic. “My mother had bad lungs,” Alcibiades ground out at last, “and my father had a wound from a threshing accident that he never quite got over. After that it was just Yana to look after my brothers and sisters and me. We never did quite figure out what country she hailed from, but my mother had her in to help with the twins when they were born, and she never left.”

“How ghastly!” I said, imagining Alcibiades as a chubby young man crouched in a hovel with an army of brothers and sisters around him, all clamoring for food. It was very clear the lady was foreign from the way she wrote, but possibly he hadn’t also noticed that she’d taken leave of her senses. “I didn’t know you were a farmer.”

Alcibiades looked at me sharply. “Didn’t say I was.”

“Well, I assumed,” I clarified. “From the accident with the thresher.”

“That was my father,” Alcibiades said. “I’ve been a soldier since I was old enough to leave home, and I haven’t looked back.”

“Ah, of course,” I said. “That explains a great deal.”

Alcibiades gave me another dirty look. “Not every one of us can be raised like th’Esar’s little lapdog,” he said, a bit more unkindly than he ought. After all, I’d presumed that we were only having a bit of fun.

“I
am
sorry about your parents,” I managed, very generously. Perhaps that would placate him. “Here, would you like your letter back?”

I held it out to him, as a peace offering between us. After a moment of staring warily at my hand, he snatched it back. I noticed, with a touch of affection, that he smoothed out one of the crumpled edges when he thought I wasn’t looking.

“Well, that was fun,” I continued, when he showed no signs of replying. “We ought to do that more often. Have you told our dear Yana about me yet? I am, after all, a significant part of your life here during the Important Diplomatic Mission.”

“I’ve told her I’m being driven insane by a tiny madman named Caius Greylace,” Alcibiades replied.

That would have to suffice. “I do hope she approves of me,” I said helpfully. Alcibiades merely shook his head and sighed, as though he were afflicted by some incurable disease.

That was when the Ke-Han guards burst into our room.

Alcibiades, ever the soldier, nearly killed one with his chair, and there was a great deal of shouting from all parties in their respective languages, and pointing, and more chair brandishing, while I stood behind Alcibiades and offered words of encouragement and tried to decipher what the guards were saying, before we were able to determine what was going on. My ability to speak their language was shaky at best, and with all of them yelling at once it was impossible to understand half of what they were saying.

Thankfully, Lord Temur arrived to sort things out. He did so in an extremely dashing manner, stepping into the room with one hand held up palm forward, and roaring a command loud enough to make the sliding doors shake in their grooves.

The guards stopped shouting. Alcibiades almost put the chair down, but then thought the better of it. I remained where I was, although I waved to Lord Temur over Alcibiades’ shoulder.

“Now,” Lord Temur said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“We’re being attacked, that’s what the trouble is!” Alcibiades growled.

“Well, that is,” I explained, translating from Alcibiades into more
common speech—the sort that human beings employed when successfully communicating with one another—“we were having a bit of a romp, you see, and then all of a sudden there were guards everywhere, can you imagine?”

Lord Temur paused to make a careful assessment of the situation. His eyes flicked over the room, surveying the ink spot on the wall and the shattered inkwell beneath it, the overturned chairs, the desk perched on the stool and the sleeping mat barricade by the door separating Alcibiades’ room from mine. At length, he turned to one of the guards and spoke with him quietly, before focusing once more on us.

“There has been fighting here?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” I said. “We were just being friendly.”

Lord Temur surveyed the scene before him once more, then looked to us again for some explanation.

“I tried to keep him out,” Alcibiades said gruffly, as though I were a wayward kitten that had to be kept out of the room lest I get at the drapes. It was dreadfully unfair of him. His neck was red, and I could see his pulse pounding at his temple, but at least, finally, he
did
put down the chair. I was glad. It was frightfully embarrassing to be in the palace with a companion who insisted on using furniture as bludgeons. What would Yana Berger have said?

“Ah,” Lord Temur replied, as though this had explained everything. “I see. Yes.”

Alcibiades breathed a slight sigh of relief. “Sorry for, ah,” he attempted, “any disturbance we might have caused.”

“It is a lucky thing I was passing by,” Lord Temur said, waving a dismissive hand at the guards, who bowed low to us, then to him, and filed out of the room one after the other. “Else who knows how long this… misunderstanding… would have continued.”