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