Lord Temur looked at Alcibiades mildly—an expression I was coming to discover implied some modicum of surprise. “I think I have misunderstood something,” he said. “It is often the case when speaking your language—I understand the basic grammar well enough, but the colloquialisms, the less formal turns of phrase… I admit that I am occasionally lost.”
“That’s better than I am with your language, anyway,” Alcibiades said, on the verge of sounding amiable. “It sounds like so many hens clucking at one another, if you know what I mean.”
“You must forgive him,” I interrupted, as smoothly as I could given the circumstances. “He was raised on a farm, and apparently by wolves. What General Alcibiades meant earlier was something of an insult. He was intimating that, if you continued to compliment me or relay such praise from other sources, I would grow too proud and puff up like a peacock.”
“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,