Alcibiades’ next question was better than my own. “Does he have our blood?”
Temur fell silent; darkness flickered across his eyes, and I knew how they must be burning now, desperate just to blink. “The warlords are the most dutiful,” he whispered. These weren’t his own words, but a speech he’d memorized long ago. “Seven of them there are, and honored most beside the Emperor. Each gives his blood at the first; each gives his life at the last.”
“What does that mean?” Alcibiades hissed. He was going to break my concentration, and Lord Temur’s, and there would be no slipping through the cracks again. “I don’t want poetry, I want answers!”
“Duty,” Lord Temur said, then he collapsed.
KOUJE
It was sometime past the heat of midday, while the sun cast jagged shadows all throughout the pass, that I heard the crunch of gravel from behind us.
The passes had long since been cleared, one through twenty-seven. I assumed it was an animal of some sort, a mountain lynx, or perhaps one of the big rams the people living in the borderlands hunted for food. But what I heard next was speaking, though—real words from real voices in my own native tongue. It was a man, a low, muttered complaint that made my blood freeze in my veins and my heart stop short with the shock of it. I had enough presence of mind to wrench our horse sideways by its reins, pulling at Mamoru by the sleeve, and dragging them both off the pathway into the sanctuary of the rocks.
“Kouje,” Mamoru whispered, his voice hoarse from the ravages of his illness. He straightened up, taking his weight from my shoulder to lean against one of the smooth blue boulders while I led the horse off farther still so that he wouldn’t be spotted from the road. “I heard—Was that you speaking? It seemed so far away…”
“I don’t know,” I said under my breath, answering his unspoken question. “There shouldn’t be anyone around here.”
The gravel crunched again, and that time I saw the boot responsible, crouched as I was beneath an overhang of rock. Mamoru ducked lower behind the rock as I tried desperately to see and not be seen. The man was clad in a soldier’s uniform, cloth dyed cobalt blue. Dressed that way, he was nearly invisible against the backdrop of the mountains.
He rubbed his palms together and crossed his arms, staring out at nothing.
I couldn’t see his face, which might have been for the best. He might well have been one of my fellow soldiers—a comrade in arms.
“Might as well have sent us to the ass-end of the world,” he grumbled, and I heard a short laugh from somewhere behind him.
My heart skittered sideways with sudden panic. How many of them were there?
“Better than them up at the eighth pass,” said his companion. “Not even a hint of a hope of action there. Least we’re going to be useful.”
“If there’s ever any use for us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A man can see the entire capital from here. Thremedon. Like being an eagle, watching a mouse. We’ll be useful, and that’s enough insolence from the likes of you.”
The soldier’s companion passed into view. He was an unshaven, sharp-looking man, with a long scar that traveled raw and ugly from the corner of his eye back past his hairline. His hair was braided like a general’s and parted like a hero’s.
Next to me, I felt Mamoru go still as the stone he leaned on.
“That’s General Yisun,” he gasped in a voice like a ghost’s. “He served under Iseul for the duration of the war. But he’s… He went back to live with his family.”
I held my finger up to my lips, and Mamoru quieted, though he still tormented the ragged hem of his sleeve.
I cast about for anything I might use as a weapon, should it come to that. A large rock. More large rocks. I didn’t think that any kind of rock would be much help against the man who had allegedly trained the eldest prince in place of his father. I’d heard of him, of course, but my own service had kept me with Mamoru and not among Iseul’s retinue of servants and soldiers. I’d only seen him in passing, but I knew enough of his reputation to feel the bile rise in my throat.
I put my hand on Mamoru’s shoulder, signaling that we had best move farther off the path and attempt to keep going. I couldn’t imagine what