Shadow Magic (7 page)

Prince Mamoru murmured something to his brother, then bowed deeply to him. It made me feel all kinds of uncomfortable to know that we were transacting our business with a people who made their brothers bow to them on a point of formality.

Then the Emperor Iseul lifted his hand.

Even though his father had just died—even though he was new to it, and he had a hell of a lot to prove—he held himself like he’d been doing this all his life, or at least like he’d been
waiting
for it that long.

“Now,” he said, in a voice made all the more formal by its stilted Volstovic accent. “Lords and Ladies of Volstov, our esteemed guests: the Ke-Han welcome you.”

And the way he said that, I thought, folding my arms over my chest and getting ready for a long night, made it obvious that he was the Ke-Han. Even though he’d been a prince this morning, he was an emperor now. But those were just the times we lived in.

My lord Mamoru was kind. It was always almost impossible to apologize to him.

My forehead scraped the floor of his personal chambers nonetheless. When we’d been younger, and my lord more outspoken, he’d commanded me once to stop my bowing—which, after a long week that made no sense to either of us, I’d explained to him was like asking a fish to live out of water, or a songbird to keep silent. If I’d done my duty as his servant poorly, then it was my job to appease the natural order of things by begging his forgiveness.

“It was a misstep,” I said, my hands in fists at either side. “It was clear he did not intend to harm you. I should not have acted so rashly.”

“Kouje,” my lord said, “surely you’ve apologized enough.”

That was the trouble with my lord: He was too kind. The Emperor had known it, and had done what he could accordingly. My lord Iseul, too, had tried to stamp it out. Some men, however, were made to be like Iseul, and some men like Mamoru. You could no more have taught my lord imperiousness than you could have taught me to stop bowing.

“Indeed, nothing came of it,” Mamoru went on, unplaiting the jade from his hair and setting it upon a low, dark table. It was worn with the polish of true craftsmanship, the fine patina of age. He’d had it since he was a child, and dressed—as was sometimes the custom with second sons—in the swaddling clothes of a little girl, to see him alive and unharmed through his first five years.

Assassins targeted sons but left daughters in their cradles.

I bowed my head again. “My lord,” I protested, “if there is some fitting punishment for the offense…”

“Shall I make you scrub the floors all night?” my lord asked. There was a warmth in his voice I knew well; it meant there was a fond twinkle in his dark eyes. That he was, in some ways, laughing at me. If I would stop my obsequies and lift my head, then we might laugh together.

But things were different now, more serious. I could not laugh off what I had done as simply as I laughed off other, smaller transgressions. My lord Mamoru was lenient with me, but I had no cause to be lenient with myself.

“My lord knows that they have already been scrubbed twice over for the arrival of our guests,” I said, with as little humor as I could manage. It was still more of a jest than I should have allowed. Having known my lord since his birth, however, had instilled in me some traitorous familiarity that, try as I might, I found incredibly difficult to stamp out.

Mamoru laughed outright this time, the sound of it soft and welcoming. It filled the silence in this part of the palace, where all the servants were either asleep or busying themselves with their last duties before bed. The wing of the palace that had once housed the princes—and was now for Mamoru alone—was kept separate from the newly disruptive intrusion of the delegation from Volstov.

“I suppose there is no fitting punishment at all for what you’ve done then,” Mamoru mused. When I lifted my head, there was a faint smile upon his lips, his braids undone around his face.

When my lord had been much younger, that face had resembled a pale, round moon, or perhaps a mountain peach.

“My lord,” I said, bowing my head again, this time in thanks.

“You might call my servants in to ready me for bed,” Mamoru said. He did not often acknowledge my thanks for his actions, as though he felt that were the only way to behave and not something to be thanked for in the first place. “I’m certainly not going to be able to get out of all this by myself.”

I kept my smile hidden in the left corner of my mouth. My lord had never done very well with formal dress.

“I’ll alert them at once,” I said. “Do try not to create a situation, in my absence.”

It was an old joke between us, in the days when Mamoru had been much more my charge and mine alone, and the weight of the responsibility had made me reluctant to leave him for even a moment.

“I won’t become tangled in my sleeves,” he assured me, with the same faint hint of a smile.

The palace halls were empty and darkened, since the prince had already retired, and there was no one else in that wing who would have need of the servants to bear lanterns. I knew my way by memory, turning at first to the left, summoning Mamoru’s servants, then back up to the prince’s room, where my own quarters were stationed two doors away. It was close enough to hear any approaching dangers, but the distance still bothered me some nights.

On that night, with the taint of unease still shadowing my heart, I did not like the two doors’ distance between my lord and me. Yet, I grudgingly admitted to myself, he was a man grown now, and I could no longer sleep at the foot of his bed.

There was a soft, scuffling noise in the hall up ahead, the source of
which I could not make out. I felt instinctively for my sword before privately cursing the laws of diplomacy that had disarmed us, along with the party from Volstov. There was no sword, only a short, ornamental fan stuck into the sash at my waist: a gesture of goodwill to our guests from the conquering nation.

I heard the noise again, closer then, like an unwelcome footfall. But all the servants here were trained explicitly well to serve the prince in a ready manner, swift and silent. Whoever it was approaching was no servant. I pressed myself back against the wall and waited for a shape to appear.

When it did, it became apparent that the approaching noise had been a man, and that it was a man who had drunk too much of our wine.

He said something unfamiliar, coarse and sharp; no doubt it was a curse. And then, upon seeing me, he reached out to grab my arm with unfathomable familiarity. I recoiled before remembering myself, my duty, and what I had done earlier to shame my lord.

The man’s face was foreign, which meant that he too was a member of the diplomatic envoy. I couldn’t afford to offend anyone else so soon. Perhaps he only needed to be led back to his part of the palace. I wasn’t among the servants assigned to herd the Volstovics hither and yon as though they were stray peacocks and not people at all.

“You’re lost,” I said, though it was plain that at least half the men and women from Volstov did not understand our tongue. Interesting, then, that we should have worked so hard and so diligently at learning theirs.

This one seemed to, however, or at least he straightened up and began looking about back and forth, as if confused as to which direction he’d come from.

“Your quarters are this way,” I added.

A firm hand could sometimes bridge what language could not.

Since the man demonstrated no desire to let go of my arm, I curbed my temper and began the task of leading him down the hall, past the servants’ quarters, and out of the prince’s wing entirely. He said something in Volstovic, and he stumbled once when I rounded a corner too swiftly, but the drink had made him amenable. No doubt he was not used to the strength of Ke-Han wine.

We passed the very same room in which the Emperor had conducted his talks, as well as the great hall that led up to the Emperor’s
private quarters. There had been some furor over housing the delegation from Volstov so close to the Emperor, but Iseul himself had declared it be so, stating that he was not afraid and nor should any of us be, since the Volstovics were there on a mission of peace and diplomacy, and hospitality alone could rebuild what centuries of warfare had undone.

To house them elsewhere would have betrayed a lack of conviction on our part.

We had only just rounded the corner, my charge and I, when I caught the first glimpse of soft lanternlight. The servants had doubtless been instructed to stay about later in this part of the palace, perhaps to see to it no diplomat from Volstov lost his way as the man by my side had done.

I took the man’s hand from my arm. He seemed to calm once he’d noticed the lantern up ahead. He made a sluggish gesture, starting down the hall before pausing—an inelegant lurch in his motion—to turn around.

“Thank you,” he said, halting and crude in our language.

I bowed as low as was proper and watched to make sure the servant up ahead had taken notice of him.

We were in an important stage in our country’s rebuilding, perhaps the most important. I knew it as well as any other man in the palace. Still, as I turned to make my way back to the other end of the palace, I couldn’t help thinking how I would welcome the day when the delegation from Volstov left us forever. As things stood, their presence was too much like the threat of a headache lingering at the back of my mind.

When I reached the center point of the palace there was a gentle light spilling down the corridor that led to the Emperor’s suites. I felt the same curiousness that had overtaken my heart at the dinner—a nameless dread, all the more powerful because it
was
nameless as of yet.

I couldn’t see any lantern-bearing servants, which meant the light must have been coming from the Emperor’s rooms somewhere up ahead. I wondered if perhaps another man or woman from Volstov had become turned around. If that was the case, then it was my duty to ask the Emperor what service I might do him. It was possible, too, that my apprehension came solely from the drunkard’s invasion, from knowing that a foreign diplomat could easily stumble into the Emperor’s chambers.
Whether he meant to do ill or had merely swallowed too much wine at dinner did not seem to matter much.

I had no wish to spend my night ferrying diplomats from one end of the palace to another, but my duty had nothing at all to do with what I wished.

There were no servants lining the hall to the Emperor’s private audience chamber, which adjoined his private quarters, but I could see the outline of the lantern-bearers through the rice-paper walls, just as I could see the kneeling outline of three men set before the Emperor, and the four kneeling behind them. It was an audience of the seven lords, I conjectured—though of course, I couldn’t be certain.

What did seem certain was that the Emperor would not be needing my services for such an audience.

“It grieves my heart deeply, even deeper still to make such a decree so soon after the death of our father.” That was Iseul. His voice was unmistakable. My heart began to contract in my chest.

“You are quite sure, my lord?” The question came from one of the seven, his voice less certain in the matter than Iseul’s, but I could recognize the timbre of loyalty.

“Quite,” Iseul said, the word like the sharp edge of a sword.

“You
saw the way the young prince was speaking with the delegation from Volstov. Forgive me, my lord, but it’s the truth. And if the Emperor himself doesn’t think he can be trusted, then it isn’t for us to question.”

“Too true,” murmured another lord.

“It’s settled,” Iseul spoke, and his voice held no room for doubt. “As of this evening, Prince Mamoru is deemed a traitor to the realm, to be routed at any cost.”

I knew then why I had felt the heaviness in the air as an approaching thunderstorm, for now I was surely a man trapped in the very heat of it, lightning tearing the familiar shape of the sky I knew so well into jagged strips.

“Be discreet,” Iseul went on, “and be cautious. We wish for this matter to be dealt with swiftly, but we are loath to think of how our negotiations might be disrupted if the diplomats from Volstov were to learn of such a traitor in our midst.”

“Or how they might turn such knowledge to their advantage,” another lord cautioned.

“That was what most troubled my mind about the matter,” Iseul said. I could hear the shifting of silks; he had not yet disrobed for the night and was still dressed in his father’s finest. He was an emperor now, and my lord Mamoru only a prince. “It would seem that Mamoru is too well suited to be used by these men, rather than capable of using them. You know as well as I how weak he is. I would cut out my own tongue before I betrayed my own brother, but I would cut out the contents of my belly before I betrayed the Ke-Han.”

“It is for the Ke-Han,” the first lord said.

A murmur of assent passed among them. An answering echo of dread sounded in my chest.

It was more than I should have heard—more than I should have stayed to hear. My allegiance was to my Emperor; he owned my loyalty, my services, my soul and heart. Though I served my lord Mamoru, it was merely to serve my Emperor before him, and to serve my Emperor was to serve the Ke-H an.

It is for the Ke-Han
, I thought, grateful as I always was that my father had trained me so well. No sound could be heard when I moved through the halls; my feet were silent even on the most ancient of floorboards.

I thought of my many years of service, of Mamoru as a baby, of the first fever he suffered, which had by no means been the last. It was true that he was not as strong as his brother—the gods had been unusually kind when they made Iseul the heir and Mamoru the second son—but he was not a traitor. If he had been, I would already have known it.

In his room, two doors from mine, my lord Mamoru was no doubt already asleep for the night. He had been proud of himself today; I’d watched him as he sat, learning the Volstovic vowels that so confounded me, in the long days and weeks that followed our defeat. I’d guided him in battle, taught him archery and the sword, and, when he was much smaller, held his hand through fevers or changed the final words of the saddest stories to keep him from weeping.