his would be the most interesting reaction. More important than that, I was feeling some modicum of concern for the poor man, who had brought himself to the Emperor’s attention twice in such a short period of time. I couldn’t even bring myself to be jealous, as I might normally have been under the circumstances.
Earning favor with royalty was one thing. Earning attention from a man who might remember your face above all others the next time he had a fit of temper was quite another. I felt rather alarmed for Alcibiades, his eyes trained carefully at nothing as the moon princess’s blood was spilled, soaking the delicate gray and lavender robes to a dark, murky red. The color palette was completely ruined, and all the attention couldn’t have been very healthy for Alcibiades.
The Emperor inclined his head toward our general one last time, before the doors at the front of the hall burst open, and the dining room was filled with fierce, blue-clad guards. The general didn’t so much as flinch, though his mouth was set in an unhappy line. Alcibiades was too honest to benefit from the Ke-Han skill of making a mask out of one’s face, I thought, and at least Emperor Iseul was too distracted to notice how uncomfortable he’d made him, still clutching the moon princess’s sleeve. At last, one of the Emperor’s bodyguards—and they must have been cursing my brave friend, for what fools he’d made them all look—lifted the moon princess’s limp body by one arm and carried her off. Josette turned her head aside as they passed in front of us, but I couldn’t help looking, myself. It was curious to see the actor’s face, registering blankness beneath the mask of makeup he wore, now stained and smeared with blood. The white makeup had been smeared just under the chin, revealing the shock of darker skin, surprisingly vulnerable.
The soldiers all moved aside for the bodyguard carrying the body, and he disappeared from the dining room. I wondered where he was taking it. I couldn’t recall what the Ke-Han did with their honored dead, let alone their assassins.
“Take them all away,” said Emperor Iseul, his voice loud but calm, as if he’d just spent the day in deep meditation. “I will dispose of them later.”
The musician moaned involuntarily with fear. Or perhaps he’d simply become aware of the bump on his head from my soup bowl. Either way, Josette tightened her hold on his arms.
Gruesome death, I thought again, and pressed the pads of my fingertips together that I might not become lost in imagining it. Perhaps I might even offer my services to the Emperor. I would have to ask Alcibiades what he thought of the idea, if he ever saw fit to come back to our table. Indeed, as the guards streamed into the room, wrestling the captives away from the warlords, and from Josette, who looked almost disappointed she wouldn’t get a chance to punish the musician herself, Alcibiades stood at attention in front of the Emperor’s dais still, a pool of blood at his feet. The ruined screens were arranged around him like fallen soldiers in a failed battle, some of them with blood sprayed across their scenes of soft, dusky evening.
Perhaps he was waiting to be dismissed, I thought. If that were the case, he’d be waiting a very long time, since the Emperor had already swept away to speak in low tones with his captain of the guard, a man with fearsome eyebrows and an even more fearsome expression.
It was up to me to collect him, then. Resolved, I picked my way carefully around the guards, as they manhandled the would-be assassins out the door and the tables that had been overturned in the ensuing frenzy. I approached from the side, so as not to chance staining my slippers with blood, and slipped my arm through the general’s, our hero of the hour.
“I do hope, my dear, that you haven’t got anything on your coat,” I murmured.
Alcibiades started, as though I’d startled him from some waking sleep. He took in the rapidly unraveling scene around us, then the puddle of blood at his feet.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, and pulled me with him against the current of guards robed in blue and into the hall, where the sounds of commotion and chaos were muted, distant through the night’s tranquil silence.
CHAPTER NINE
KOUJE
My lord was not speaking to me. I would have liked to think