it seems you’ve helped us quite neatly in avoiding that particular difficulty,” I pointed out, not to be contrary, but because it genuinely baffled me. Were there people going out of their way to help one another on the roads, now that they’d been made so difficult to travel? I didn’t know if I believed it. I didn’t know if my nature would allow me to.
“Like I said,” Aiko shrugged. “I get a feel for people.”
“You can get a feel for me any day, Aiko,” someone called across the caravan.
“Shut it, Goro,” she said, seeming not put out at all.
“We’re grateful,” Mamoru said, with a glance toward me. “We… my husband’s sister, her condition is very poor indeed. And they were so close when they were children. We’re not certain how long she’ll last, so we can hardly afford delays.”
“Oh,” said Aiko, raising one eyebrow as I turned to look at Mamoru in surprise.
He stared straight ahead, his expression betraying nothing but a restrained amusement around his mouth and in his eyes. He was enjoying himself. He would have done well in a traveling theatre group such as that one. I could only hope that my own surprise and amusement would not show too readily on my face.
“Yes,” I said, shaking my head sadly to remind myself that, no matter what new turns this game with my lord took, I had a terribly ill sister. “I am fortunate, however, to have a wife so caring as to make the journey with me.”
“Most would stay at home,” Aiko agreed, though there was something in her voice that suggested she was not one of them.
“Oh, not at all,” said Mamoru, taking my hand. When my lord had been very much younger, he had been vociferous in his approval of the actors who came to the palace, and more than once had declared it would be his calling in life. It pleased me to see him taking up the role with such enthusiasm, that I had been able to give him something after all, in the midst of taking so much away.
“I don’t mean to imply that my husband is an untrustworthy creature, of course, but if you were married to one this handsome, would you think to send him on such a long journey unaccompanied?” Mamoru shook his head gravely. “Certainly not!”
Aiko laughed, not bothering to hide her amusement behind her hand.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “Just married, I take it?”
“Why, what if he were to run into the prince and his retainer?” Mamoru went on, growing more excited. “I might lose him forever to his sense of duty.”
Aiko’s eyes sharpened at this. “What do you mean by that?”
Mamoru lifted his chin, looking so like the prince I knew that it hurt my chest. “My husband knows something about the character of men. You might say that he, too, has a feel for people.”
Aiko leaned her head in closer to mine, and Mamoru did the same.
“What have you heard of the prince?” she asked us.
“Likely less than you,” I said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had taken.
“I’ve heard that his retainer is seven feet tall,” she said, folding her knees beneath her, and lowering her voice to a whisper. “That he fights mountain lions in the north, and wrestles sea monsters into submission in the south at once.”
“Really?” Mamoru asked, his eyes bright as he settled in closer. “Would you care to tell me more?”
ALCIBIADES
I had a splitting headache, like I was back in the Basquiat being held captive during the fever. And all the rest—the Ke-Han, our victory, the diplomatic mission, the plays, the bell-cracked Emperor, Caius—was some dream I’d come up with in my delirium.
The Ke-Han could’ve defeated us with their clear wine.
“Oh Alcibiades!” The all-too-familiar voice of Caius ever-loving Greylace—unfortunately not a dying man’s hallucination—came singsonging to me. It got right between the eyes and settled there, lancing at my brain with remorseless good cheer. “It’s mail time, and Dear Yana has written you again with news from home!”
I rolled over and buried my face against the pillow. No, I thought. Not “no thank you,” and not “come back later,” but an unflinching no. It wasn’t just that it wasn’t the time, but never. I’d never get used to him, nor to the way I felt; nor would I ever start feeling like a man again beyond the dull throbbing between my ears where my brains were supposed to be. They’d been there once, but the