which meant she must have elbowed him to be quiet.
I admired Josette. If we’d been rooming next to one another, we might have been the best of friends already—but fate had put General Alcibiades and me together more than once, and it was fate I’d chosen to guide me in this endeavor.
“Our letters, Lord Temur,” I said. “Who has been reading our letters?”
Temur was silent for a long time, fighting with himself and, of course, fighting with me. I didn’t know what it felt like on the other side—I could only feel the tension in a conquered mind as the body struggled to keep tight reins on its wayward thoughts, as the lips tried to refuse the commands from the brain. But I knew that a man born and bred on straight-backed duty would be more difficult to crack.
But I had cracked many a Ke-Han lord before. The only difference was that I’d spoken to Lord Temur before the session began.
“Perhaps you would like to sit down,” I suggested, and, on my signal, Josette and Alcibiades moved quickly forward to assist me, ushering Lord Temur to one of the spindly-wired benches that lined the tiled walkways. “There,” I said, as I eased him down. “Isn’t that much better?”
“Yes,” said Lord Temur.
The answers always came more quickly when the question was innocuous. With some men, it was a simple matter of asking the easy questions until they became so used to the answering that they didn’t realize your last question concerning the weather had really been concerning the defenses of the city wall. I wasn’t depending on that technique for Lord Temur, since he’d already proven that he was more than proficient in our language, and a little more familiar with me personally than I’d have liked.
One matter on which Alcibiades and I might have agreed upon immediately was that all this business of diplomacy certainly had made our jobs more difficult.
“Now,” I said, brightening. “This is much friendlier, isn’t it? I do hate to be a bore and go on repeating myself, but since you refrained from answering me the first time, I’m afraid I must ask again. Who has been reading our letters?”
Lord Temur swallowed, and wet his lips with his tongue.
With a touch of regret—I had hoped, however foolishly, to get through this without applying too much force—I leaned forward, filling his field of vision so that there was only my face to focus on.
Behind me, I could hear Alcibiades give a sigh, though whether it was out of impatience or disgust, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t afford the distraction of trying to parse his unexpectedly layered mannerisms at the moment, though. I had a duty there. Not to the Esar, but to myself-—and to Alcibiades as well, whether he knew it or not—and surely that was the most important sort of duty a man could ask for.
I pursed my lips, regretting that I hadn’t been given the opportunity to learn more of the colloquial Ke-Han language. I’d picked out the word the lords used whenever the demon of their Emperor was floating about, and I knew the most academic form, the old dialect used for plays, but no more common tongue.
“The Emperor?” I asked gently, like leading foxes from the hunt. “Is it his command?”
Lord Temur’s jaw clenched, and I sighed a little, myself. If he was going to make things difficult, then I supposed there was no way around it. I twitched the fabric of my sleeve back above the elbow, and pressed cool fingers to his temple.
His pupils dilated sharply like an unexpected eclipse, and for a moment I thought I might have gone too far too quickly. There was no point in worrying about what had been done, though, and certainly no point in mentioning it to the others. Best to concentrate on the matter at hand until we’d got what we needed out of him.
The rest I would deal with later. If there was anything left to deal with, of course.
“The Emperor is having our mail read,” I said, taking a new tack with this unforeseen change in winds. “Does he suspect us of something?”
“This… is treason,” Lord Temur managed, his lips stiff around the foreign words. “For all of you, and… myself, as well.”
“That does not answer my question,” I said shortly, feeling the beginnings of impatience growing within me. I