Shadow Magic (32 page)

“A red peacock,” Lord Temur said.

“The best kind of peacock there is,” Alcibiades agreed.

“The Emperor,” Josette said.

Immediately, the air in the dining chamber changed. The Emperor had a certain fearsome presence that consumed all the air in any room he entered; even when he’d stepped outside to observe Lord Temur and Alcibiades as they sparred, he’d managed to steal my breath away. Of course, I didn’t like him, not even for the barest moment. It was something about his eyes; he reminded me of a panther on the prowl, a beast of prey in the jungle, the sort that pretended to be sleeping up until the very instant before you found it at your throat. He moved with the same lazy, intentional grace. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if he had falsely accused his younger brother; he seemed just the type. The poor little thing, I thought, out in the wild with only his loyal retainer to protect him! It must have been dreadful, as accustomed as he was to all the comforts and luxuries of palace life. I did hope he’d managed to escape.

But all that was mere speculation; the pondering of an otherwise unoccupied mind. I didn’t share my suspicions with anyone, not even Alcibiades.

Imprudence and pride had seen me banished from the Esar’s court once before. I’d suffered long, dreadful years in the countryside, with nothing more to occupy my time than counting sheep and gossiping
with dreadful chatelains, or teasing their equally dreadful sons and daughters. Despite my exotic new surroundings, and despite my exotic new companions—and though I could have been the center of such grand, infamous scandals without even trying—I wished to get through my stint as a diplomat with as little incident as possible.

Perhaps, I mused, I shouldn’t have followed through with the matching red outfits.

Yet the decision had already been made, the coats exquisitely tailored, and there we were in the Ke-Han dining chamber as the Emperor made his appearance. I had, as they liked to say in the country, made my bed in the stables and had no right to complain about sleeping with the sheep.

As on all other nights, everyone assembled bowed low over the tables. Even Alcibiades was game enough to follow suit, though that might have been less because of his new coat and my unexpected showing of Volstovic nationalism, and more because he wasn’t actually drinking water but rather the clear, sweet Ke-Han wine. It was meant, as far as I could tell, for those who were too easily affected by the redder, richer draft—for children and the infirm—but Alcibiades had been knocking it back as though it were water. It was bound to be an interesting night.

I knew the exact moment when Emperor Iseul caught sight of us, like two red peas in a pod. To his credit, his expression revealed nothing—though when, of course, had I ever expected it to?

It was a dangerous little game we were playing, for I knew by then that the Emperor was prone to fits of passion despite the rigidity of Ke-Han protocol. He was fastidious and immaculate and dangerously powerful, but just like the Ke-Han wrapping paper in that he was shot with flashes of silver and gold—the colors of obsession and madness. All great men, I supposed, in positions of great power, must have been in some form or another exactly like him. How could I, little Caius Greylace, presume to know what it was like to be raised as a second-in-command, the replacement for my father should anything happen to him in battle, trained within an inch of perfection, with all my servants whispering to me since birth that I was descended from the gods themselves?

Even I’d gone mad once or twice, so the gossip said, and I was merely an Esar’s cat’s-paw. It was a tragic fact of the Greylace family
that we were bred for beauty and Talent but little true function besides that. My great-aunt had been a famed beauty, and my mother, the second Lady Greylace, had been the rival of the formidable Lady Antoinette before the former’s mysterious and very private death. I myself was nothing so fancy: raised in the palace due to some lingering fondness for my mother on the part of the Esar, until one of his men had caught me practicing my Talent in the eastern wing of the palace.

I was seven at the time.

“Fernand tells me he saw you with a
tiger
in the eastern corridor,” the Esar had said, his beard the color of spiced wine.

“Not a real tiger,” I’d admitted, to my great disappointment. “I made him.”

Looking back, I couldn’t help but wish I’d announced the thing with more grandeur, but what does a child know of such artifice?

“Show me,” the Esar had said. “If you prove yourself useful, then you may have all the tigers you could ever want.”

Royal blood—whether you were inbred or not—was always distinctly corrupt.

I reveled in the Emperor’s aura despite that, for I had never felt such a presence in all my life, nor seen such impeccable grace firsthand. He was better than any actor, with greater stage presence, and he dwarfed us all in comparison. We were not fit to sit in a room with him. He believed this, as did most of his men, and the sheer force of that belief was beginning to convince even me.

Beside me, Lord Temur bowed lower than the rest of us, and I had to wonder what punishment he had received, outright or oblique, for being carried away with Alcibiades the other morning. At least, bless his heart, he hadn’t tried to kill the general. And Alcibiades was going to have to practice harder if he ever intended to be quick enough on his feet to present Emperor Iseul with any real challenge.

The Emperor ascended to his place on the dais at the far end of the room and lifted one hand, palm outward—the signal for us to cease formalities and commence eating. Lord Temur continued to keep his head low for a moment longer than the rest of us.

“This is the best water I’ve ever had,” Alcibiades murmured to me, in what he may have thought—poor dear—was a whisper.

“Must be from the mountains,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “How does your new coat suit you?”

“Fits better in the shoulders,” he admitted, and less grudging than I would have thought him capable of being. “Like the epaulettes, too. A bit above my station, I think, but not too much so.”

“Are you doing it for a purpose?” Lord Temur asked, as calm as you like. He spoke our tongue better than he gave himself credit for, which I supposed was all part of his tactic to encourage us to talk more freely around him. “I do hope,” he added, without turning to look at either of us, “that you do not mistake my question for rudeness. I have a genuine curiosity when it comes to such Volstovic displays. We are each proud countries, but in a different fashion from one another.”

“Greylace here likes the color better,” Alcibiades said. He’d even stopped tugging at his collar—though I realized a moment later and to my chagrin that he’d undone the top button while I wasn’t looking.

“I like variety in my wardrobe,” I confirmed, sipping meekly at my tea. “Besides, I always find it better to wear red near autumn.”

“That way you match the leaves,” Alcibiades provided.

“Yes, my dear, that’s quite enough, thank you,” I said.

“Lord Temur,” Josette said, brown eyes keen as she reached toward Alcibiades’ setting to confiscate the clear wine and, I noted, pour a little for herself, “I believe that my two companions are what is known in Volstov as ‘characters.’”

“Ah,” Lord Temur said, though I could tell he honestly had trouble with this new and unfamiliar idiom. “Characters, you say? Perhaps… from a play?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Josette set Alcibiades’ bottle down on the opposite side of her own table, so that he’d need to make a clumsy lunge for it to retrieve it, and pointedly ignored his dirty looks. “They are—somewhat over the top in the same way. Do you understand that?”

Lord Temur regarded us for a long moment. At length, he replied, “Completely.”

Alcibiades favored Josette with a look that suggested he thought her the worst of traitors, and gazed sadly at what wine was left in his cup.

I patted his hand, and used that extremely opportune moment to turn our conversation around.

“Speaking of characters, my dears, can anyone give me any more detail on this play that’s slated for our entertainment tonight?”

Josette shook her head, and Lord Temur leaned forward, his voice
pitched low and careful, though whether this was because it was taboo to speak about plays before they occurred, or whether he merely did not wish to spoil the surprise for the other men and women around us, I couldn’t guess.

“It is one of the old classics,” he said, “about the princess who lives in the moon.”

“She must get very lonely,” Alcibiades whispered loudly. His eyes were wide with inebriated sincerity.

Josette clucked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s only a story, Alcibiades.”

“No, in this case the general is correct,” Lord Temur said, correcting her gently. “It is rather a sad tale, about one who has a home but can never return to it without feeling a great loss for the man she has fallen in love with.”

“Ah,” said Josette, sobering up considerably, despite her foray into the bottle of wine she’d appropriated from Alcibiades.

Lord Temur nodded. “In some sense, it is a story about homes and the loss of them. I do wonder at the choice of program; would not a comedy have been best? But likely it has no real meaning behind it. The play is one of our most popular. If at any time you are interested in learning more of our history, you will find it mentioned in all the classics.”

There was a faint shadow of an expression on Lord Temur’s face—one that I was beginning to associate with something very close to anxiety. I wondered if it were the poor second prince he was thinking of, who had certainly lost
his
home, though not for any love. If that was what the Emperor meant by showing us the play, then it was deviously cruel of him.

Somehow, this did not surprise me. Perhaps it was because I’d seen him fight that I felt with such certainty all the things I’d only been able to speculate upon before. I had no understanding of the way a prince of the Ke-Han was raised, of course, but when I thought of how that sweet little creature had smiled at Josette’s joke without understanding the half of it, and the careful way he’d shaped his words to sound like ours, I thought perhaps that it wasn’t the way they’d been raised at all. Some things were simply born in the blood.

“So wait,” Alcibiades said, with more interest than I’d heard him exhibit all night. “This princess. She lives on the moon?”

“That sounds
lovely,”
I said hurriedly. “We’ve been so looking forward to seeing a theatre performance. Why, we were nearly to the point of hiring out a carriage and going back to the theatre ourselves, weren’t we, my dear?”

“Yeah,” Alcibiades said, rather startling me with his agreement. If that was the effect clear wine was going to have on him, I would have to have a bottle sent to his room every evening; then we could take evening constitutionals, or gossip about the day’s events together. It would do wonders for our friendship. “Well, it’ll be a nice change from all the singing, no mistake about that. Caius, what in bastion’s name are you
kicking
me for?”

I smiled, hastily and winningly. “It was an accident, my dear.”

“The food’s coming out,” Josette said, sounding as grateful as I felt. We couldn’t have planned its timing to be more felicitous.

While I was rather enjoying this new side of Alcibiades, it was probably for the best that he find something to occupy his mouth with rather than talking. It was one thing to create a sensation just by the clothes one was wearing and quite another to be impolitic. I wasn’t entirely certain that Alcibiades was on his guard enough at the moment to catch his little slips.

I would have to catch them for him, I resolved. Even if it did mean resigning myself to kicking him under the table all night long. That was what friends were for.

Alcibiades looked up hopefully at the twin rows of servants bearing food. Each was carrying our starters, which of late had been clear soups, or small bowls of white rice. His favorite, to date, had been a broth poured over hot, flat noodles that we’d not seen replicated, but hope sprang eternal in his simple heart.

It was rather sweet, really. He was so earnest.

That night, it seemed, we were all in for rather a lovely surprise, as what the servants put down in front of each of us was a round dish with three cooked dumplings in the center. They were floating in an inch of delicious-smelling broth, and looked plump, as if they’d burst as soon as you attempted to pick one up. They weren’t fried, like the kind we’d enjoyed in the capital, but they looked just as mouthwatering. I sincerely hoped that Alcibiades would find three an ample number.

“You must be very careful with these,” Lord Temur counseled us. He
had a rather pleased look about his eyes and mouth, which I supposed passed for a large and winning smile among Ke-Han warlords. He knew as well as I did that dumplings were Alcibiades’ preferred fare, at least when it came to Ke-Han delicacies. “The soup that they are filled with is quite hot, and you will burn your tongue while eating them, unless you take the proper care.”

“Armphg,” said Alcibiades, waving a hand in front of his mouth and reaching for the water pitcher like a man possessed. His cheeks were nearly so red as to match his coat.

Josette hid a laugh behind her hand and eyed her own dumplings with considerably more circumspection.

“That is most prudent advice,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You must eat them like this,” Lord Temur said, once Alcibiades had emptied two glasses of water, and his eyes were less bright, his cheeks less crimson. “If you place it on your spoon, and pierce the wrapper like so with the end of your stick, the broth inside will fill your spoon like soup, making it far easier to cool with your breath.”

There was a moment’s silence after that as Josette, Alcibiades, and I all endeavored to follow Lord Temur’s sage advice. After some demure—and not so demure, in Alcibiades’ case—slurping, we’d managed the dumplings well enough; the broth inside was nearly sweet for a tantalizing moment, before it turned spicy, and we were all pleasantly surprised.