Shadow Magic (9 page)

“After
we were lost,” Alcibiades reminded me mulishly.

“Well, we made it here anyway,” I said, in a tone that I hoped might dissuade Alcibiades from pursuing any further argument in the matter. “Shall we search the premises?”

He nodded, and I slid the door open. It was heavier than it looked.

Alcibiades stepped past me once the door was open, then stopped and turned about.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly. He seemed about to start rooting through the various wooden cupboards both above and below the countertops, so I thought it prudent to step in after him and look for a lamp—instead of falling into a dead faint at his attempt at manners, however stilted and reluctant, which was my other option.

“You, General Alcibiades, are very welcome,” I informed him, standing on the tips of my toes to skim the top of the cupboards for a lamplight.

The kitchen was rather a small affair considering it served the entirety of the palace, but it was immaculate, and—judging by Alcibiades’ sounds of pleasure as he stuck his head into the nearest cupboard—it was well stocked.

“Shouldn’t call me that,” he said, crouching down to slide open a small grain closet. “There isn’t anything to be a general
of
, these days, and promotions after the fact don’t count for nothing.”

“Don’t count for
anything,”
I said helpfully. “Aha! Here, wouldn’t you rather search with some light?”

“There’s a lamp over there,” Alcibiades said, though his voice was mysteriously muffled.

I heard a suspicious rustling sound from the cupboard.

“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on eating uncooked rice,” I began. Then my ears detected a sound that was decidedly
not
Alcibiades filling his stomach with all manner of indigestible foodstuffs. It sounded like a whisper, in the soft, foreign tongue that I’d come to recognize, if not understand. A light passed just in front of the door, pale and faltering. Not one of the lantern-bearers, then.

I was glad I hadn’t yet lit the lamp. Curiosity propelled me toward
the half-open door when abruptly I felt a hand on my arm, wrenching me back.

I hadn’t heard him move, but Alcibiades was standing with his back against the wall, and he had his hand over my mouth. As if I would be
so
consummately foolish as to
speak
at a moment like that! I wanted to bite him. Perhaps I would settle for making him dream about uncaged tigers the whole night long—though that, I recognized, was not the sort of thing a man did to a new friend. I
had
grown uncivilized from my time in exile after all, knowing now the proper time to use my visions for revenge and when not to.

From what I could see through the crack in the doorway, there were two men standing in the hallway. They wore plain robes the color of the sky at midnight, but their sashes were all embroidered in the same style as the Emperor’s robes. They were no servants.

The silver of weapons glinted at their sides in the faint light. Was that what Alcibiades had seen? Perhaps, ever the soldier, he might even have been able to smell it. I could think of no other reason for his curious bout of discretion since he was hardly likely to fear that our little pantry raid would cause an international incident. Then again,
we
were in no way armed. If not discreet, then at least Alcibiades was prudent—or maybe simply practical.

The men outside the door bent their heads together in murmured conversation. They seemed to be conferring over something very serious, whatever it was, since they hadn’t even employed the use of servants for light and were instead carrying their own. I could feel Alcibiades breathing against the top of my head, even and slow, as though he was willing his stomach to keep from growling. I only hoped he wasn’t going to get any rice in my hair.

In unison, the men lifted their heads. One of them, with neatly manicured facial hair, lifted his hand and made a hurried gesture. There was the soft sound of clanking metal as the two men broke into a slow run. To my surprise, they were followed by at least five more, all of them similarly outfitted. Each was carrying a sword.

I didn’t hold my breath as the strange procession went past, but I could feel the beat of my heart positively hammering in my chest with curiosity. Had the servants who’d seen us alerted the Emperor to some foul play?

The only damper on the occasion was Alcibiades, who was still
holding on to me like a farmer with an errant stoat. I bit his hand. It tasted like rice.

Alcibiades cursed, using a word I hadn’t heard before. That was unexpected. Then he dropped me, which I
had
expected, and gave me an awful look.

“You needn’t look so wounded,” I told him. “Anyway, I’m certain they’re just the guards. Perhaps we’ll be at the center of another incident! And all before morning, too.”

Alcibiades didn’t seem nearly as thrilled at the prospect, but then, I was rather resigned to the fact that nothing at all seemed to thrill Alcibiades.

“I thought that no one was supposed to carry a weapon,” he said. “Not us, and definitely not the Ke-Han.”

“Perhaps they’re guards,” I said. “Perhaps they were told there were mice in the pantry.”

Alcibiades wasn’t amused by my little joke. He had yet to grow accustomed to my particular brand of humor. I shrugged it off as he peered around the half-open door, searching the now-dark halls for any further signs of armed men.

It was curious, I had to admit; or, at least, I was unused to living in a place where the halls needed patrolling in the middle of the night. I could feel all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end—a truly pleasant sensation.

“Now, now,” I murmured, “it isn’t that surprising, really. No doubt they’re here to protect us, as well as the royal family.”

“I’d rather they let us protect ourselves,” Alcibiades snapped back at me from over his shoulder.

“Do you think they would be so foolish as to disarm every man in the palace completely?” I asked, tapping the corner of my mouth with my forefinger. My thoughts were always crowded, and the smallest physical reminder always helped me to organize them. “That would leave them open not to foreign attempts, but native ones. I hear that the royal family has a history of near-death experiences with assassinations. Why, there is the oddest custom—the first son, of course, is the heir, and must be raised in his father’s image with the strictest of manly pastimes, whatever those are. But should there be a second son, or more, they dress them up as little, wide-eyed daughters until they’re of an age where people will start to notice something’s not right, almost as
a policy of insurance. Apparently, among the Ke-Han, there is a general rule floating about: that it’s completely unnecessary to assassinate daughters.”

“How fucking pleasant,” Alcibiades said, biting the words out.

“Actually, it’s quite clever. All things considered.”

After a long pause, during which I could practically
hear
the wheels in my general friend’s head turning, Alcibiades managed to speak again. “So you’re telling me,” he said, a little slowly, and a little disgusted, too, “that the prince we met tonight spent the first five years of his life thinking he was a girl?”

“Well, I don’t know the exact details,” I admitted, “but I’m sure it was something like that.”

“This place,” Alcibiades said, shaking his head and brushing rice from the corner of his mouth, “is three-ways fucked.”

Even though I could have told him that it was the same in every country and every culture—that shock was only a matter of what type of fucked you were and weren’t used to—I was inclined to agree with him.

Of the years of the dragon riders, those years of chaos before my father’s empire fell, I remember one thing more clearly than the rest: the color of a raid night. The fires came close enough to scorch the air, and the air was made heavier still with sweat and fear. No man knew if—when—the dragons would come to the capital itself. How could we tell what those mysterious creatures were made of? How could we know what they would be capable of, given enough time?

But what I remembered most of all was the city after the final battle, when that which we were all dreading came to our very doorstep, and the dragons tore down each age-old wall with one flick of their massive, metal tails.

In the quiet aftermath of destruction, after the damage had been contained and the last of the fires extinguished, the sulfurous air choked our throats; no amount of burning incense could quite blot out the smell. It woke you in the night, or haunted you like a ghost, clinging to your clothes and your hair and even your skin. It impregnated all the silk. Most of it, my father had burned.

In the streets, animals from the ruined menagerie wandered, dazed as we were, uncaged but uncertain where to go. They reminded me of
the returning soldiers—men who’d belonged in the capital once but no longer knew how to employ their own freedom.

It was a strange thing indeed to see lions hiding behind the wreckage of an old wall, or watch peacocks spill forth from the broken doorway of an abandoned house.

By some extraordinary chance, the palace itself had been relatively spared. Perhaps it was because it stood in the shadow of the great magicians’ dome to the west, now a broken, hollow shell. One of the topics under negotiation was whether or not our magicians would even be able to continue under the circumstances, with so few of their prior number and the seat of their power all but destroyed. Our society was not so based in magic as that of the Volstovics, and perhaps in times of peace the magicians would not be so needed. What had hurt us most was the loss of the dome, what it symbolized to our people and our gods. Their dome had existed ever since I could remember, since before my father’s era, and before my grandfather’s. It represented the pinnacle of perfection in architecture—an auspicious shape from all vantage points, and one that complemented the power of the elements as it harnessed them for our magicians’ use so that they might approximate the gods in power. There was great debate even among our lords whether such an edifice could ever be re-created.

Perhaps the delegation from Volstov would not allow us to. And, I wondered privately, with what magicians would we fill it? Only a bare handful remained.

The shrill cry of a peacock pierced the night air, indignant as any lord whose sleep had been interrupted.

When I’d been a child too young to venture from the palace, my father the Emperor had deemed the menagerie unsafe. There was too much open space where assassins might make their move and prove lucky. I, however, had longed more than anything to see a
real
lion, or a
real
peacock, and put up an impossible fuss, unbearable for all the servants whose misfortune it was to be assigned to me. I was so adamant that at last Kouje had resorted to playing a lion, in the days when I’d been too young to understand what a dishonor such behavior was for a warrior. I had never had what one might consider a proper nursemaid. Instead, after outgrowing my wet nurse’s care, I’d been entrusted to Kouje, both my body and my mind, so that I might learn from him a warrior’s capability and effortless strength.

There were days when I doubted that the plan had worked as well as my father had hoped. But Kouje was strong and patient, and when I was a child, he did not leave me much room to doubt.

After I’d been deemed fit to serve in my father’s best interests, I’d led the men under me with as much wisdom and strength as I knew. Being a prince meant that everything I did reflected back on the Emperor, and thus on our people—but it was more than that. Numbered among the men who served under me was Kouje, there to aid, or to make certain that I’d taken all his lessons to heart. My brother Iseul always spoke of pleasing our father, and of what was good for the empire, but I had always had a dual purpose—proving myself a credit to Kouje’s teachings as well as to my father’s bloodline.

Perhaps, in the end, that was why I did not share my brother’s strength of character. A man divided could never be as strong as a man with a single purpose.

At times, it seemed a favor from the gods themselves that Iseul had been the firstborn, since any man among us could see that he would make a much better emperor than I. I wondered how he would conduct the talks the next day, and whether he would inspire fear in the men and women from Volstov in the pale morning as he’d so clearly done that night.

“Do not lower yourself to speaking their language so easily,” he’d chided me after the talks. “Or do you not see what it means, that they have not yet taken the time to learn ours?”

“It is an insult.” I bowed my head, knowing that it was the only thing that could have caused Iseul to grow so quietly angry.

“You do what you think is best,” Iseul said, with an imperial wave of his hand. He’d learned that from our father, but had only just begun to employ the gesture. It spoke more than his words. “But if you continue to bow so low, you will be a discredit to this house; you will poison our name.”

Iseul had never spoken to me so coldly before, but I could only assume it was the strain of his responsibilities weighing on him. Not only did he have to adjust to his new role as Emperor, but he had to supervise me, as well, to make sure I committed no dishonor to our house.