or another whether I ate it, which was pretty much in line with what I’d learned about the Ke-Han so far. “Well, I’m full anyway.”
“Then you won’t mind if I help myself,” Caius reasoned, merrily plucking away whatever pale, uncooked thing had landed in my bowl to begin with.
The unofficial leader of our merry band, a man by the name of Fiacre, had told us all beforehand that anything we didn’t recognize was most likely fish, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I guessed he was of a more diplomatic nature than I was though, since at the table just next to ours he was eating everything off his plate and chatting to Wildgrave Ozanne about something that had happened on the way over. Next to him, Josette and Marcy were having some kind of tête-à-tête over something that had eight wriggly legs.
There was some luck in the world after all. That creature hadn’t landed on my plate.
It seemed to me that any man among the Ke-Han wouldn’t be too broken up over the loss of a diplomat, however mysterious the cause of death.
Dinner—endless, uncomfortable, and quiet, since no man dared to say anything so long as the Emperor wasn’t talking—ended with a funny, moss-colored dessert that Caius Greylace insisted was melon-flavored gelatin. My stomach, meanwhile, was growling like one of our long-lost dragons. After the plates were cleared, the man who’d stood out to greet us held up his hand for attention. I guessed he’d been assigned the unhappy position of herding us diplomats until further notice. I wondered what he’d done to piss off the Emperor, getting stuck with a job like that.
“There will be a short recess after dinner for our most esteemed Emperor to prepare himself for the talks,” the shepherd said.
Greylace leaned away from me to murmur something to Marcelline about hiding silverware in their napkins to prepare for an ambush. It wasn’t my type of humor, but at least it made me feel a little better about being so suspicious of the Ke-Han Emperor’s good intentions. If there had been silverware, I might’ve even gone for that sort of thing myself, even though I didn’t have the Talent Marcy did. She could command metal like a breeder gave orders to his pups. It was a beautiful thing to behold in wartime, but that was neither here nor there.
I didn’t know what we needed with magicians at all, now that the war was over, but I wasn’t the sort of man chosen to make decisions. It was the soldier in me, bred in too early and nothing to be done about it now but to follow orders. Maybe I’d be able to scare up some food during this recess.
My growling stomach bode ill for any peacocks I might run across in the courtyards.
Caius Greylace slipped his arm through mine as we stood up, and I nearly flipped him over the table.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” I told him.
He laughed, the infuriating little snake. It was a high and tinkling laugh that reminded me that he’d been a member of th’Esar’s court back at home and I hadn’t. Of course, all that nobility amounted to a hill of beans when we’d both been sent packing to Xi’an, and at least common blood like mine didn’t stoop to marrying first cousins or closer.
“Do you think we’ll have time to change before the talks? Although I’d hate to exhaust my wardrobe on the first night, only to be caught wanting later on.” Caius touched the bow in his hair fondly, chattering on without much care as to whether or not I was listening.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Depends on how long it takes the Emperor to ready himself, whatever that shit means. Do you think he’ll be changing?”
“Oh, no,” Caius said, and he looked so certain that I believed him immediately. “That’s traditional dress for the evening; he won’t be changing out of it. Do you know, I heard that, according to custom, the Ke-Han should still be in mourning for their Emperor? Only we’ve arrived early and forced them to speed along their proceedings. They’re a marvelously adaptable people, don’t you think?”
I could think of a few words I had for the ritual-obsessed Ke-Han, and “adaptable” wasn’t one of them. I grunted, just to show I’d heard him.
“No, you’re right, I don’t think I’ll change,” Caius said. “At least, not until I’ve spoken to their tailors. I’m assuming most of the men are wearing green and