did so want this to go as smoothly as possible, but it had been so long since I’d been given a chance to exercise my Talent, and Lord Temur’s stubbornness was simply begging for a taste of true pressure.
I could have broken him so easily.
Instead, I took a deep breath, running my tongue along my teeth to gather my thoughts.
Lord Temur shifted on the bench, as though he wished to escape, but found he could not quite wriggle out from under my gaze.
“Yes,” he said softly, eyes fixed on mine. There was a seed of fear in his expression, though somehow I didn’t presume that I was the cause of it. “The Emperor…”
He stopped himself, nostrils flared with the effort it took to keep his mouth closed.
“Please,” I said, pressing my fingers against his temple to keep them from twitching. “Don’t make this difficult for yourself.”
He moved with a swiftness I hadn’t been expecting—since so many of my guests in the Esar’s dungeons had been chained, and therefore rendered harmless—grabbing me by the front of my robes and hauling me close.
Behind me, I heard Alcibiades cry out, and the unmistakable sound of a dagger being unsheathed; since the rules still prohibited swords, Alcibiades had taken to hiding one of my smaller weapons in his belt. If I’d had the time to think on it, I’d have been flattered. But Lord Temur made no further move to harm me, and I could hear his breathing, shallow and fixed in my ear.
“It’s all right, my dear,” I said, waving my noble protector off. I’d meant to say more, but that was when Lord Temur began to speak.
“The Emperor sees enemies around every corner,” he rasped, “and ghosts in his teacup. He has not yet managed to catch sight or word of his brother the prince, and that exacerbates his condition.”
“He has become excessively paranoid,” I agreed quietly. People always felt so much better when they were offered agreement, even and especially if they happened to be betraying their lords and countries.
“He has taken certain measures to ensure his victory over Prince Mamoru, though the council of warlords was set against using it unless matters changed so drastically that it became a necessary course of action. There are those among our number who believe that the Emperor, caught up in his imagined world of treachery, will go ahead with this plan without our agreement. It would not be the first time he has done such a thing since assuming his honored father’s responsibility. After the Emperor died…”
Josette gasped softly and put a hand against my shoulder, to steady either myself or her. I wasn’t sure, and couldn’t afford to pay enough attention to the distraction in order to tell.
I’d asked about our mail being read, and instead I had uncovered something dark and rotten at the center of the Ke-Han court. I felt like an adventurer who’d stumbled upon an ancient treasure. My fingers twitched again with the urge to break Lord Temur and draw out all the information I desired as quickly as I wanted.
Something held me back, as stubbornly as Alcibiades himself might have, had he known what I was thinking.
I had to phrase my next question very carefully.
“What is the plan?”
Close as I was I could feel Lord Temur shudder—in horror, or the effort it had taken to resist me this long.
“It is a forbidden magic,” he whispered. “The Old Way. Blood magic, outlawed as too cruel since before the war with your Volstov.”
I felt a shiver of delight pass over me. I’d read accounts of Ke-Han blood magic, but they were all ancient, and terribly outdated, with hysterical illustrations of what fate befell the men foolish enough to allow their spilled blood to pass into the hands of their enemies.
“One only needs a drop,” Lord Temur went on. “The smallest amount is enough to bring a grown man down.”
“The Emperor’s necklace,” Alcibiades said suddenly, and I felt at once admiring and annoyed that I hadn’t been the one to get it—like the cogwheels of a dragon sliding into place upon completion, when she was ready at last to take flight.
All of a sudden I was being jostled aside, and Alcibiades crouched in front of the bench where Lord Temur sat.
“That’s it, isn’t it? He’s got the prince’s blood in that freaky-looking necklace of his, and he’s going to use it to do something. Something bad.”
Lord Temur’s eyes seemed to lose some of their glassiness as he looked at Alcibiades.