The sounds of their footsteps faded in the opposite direction. I leaned against the rock to glean strength from the mountain itself before I returned to my lord’s side.
My worst fears had been confirmed. There was nothing to do but move forward.
“Kouje,” said Mamoru, brightening the moment he saw me. He tucked a stray length of hair behind his ear with fretful fingers. “What is it?”
“I do not know what your brother intends,” I told him. I had no reason to burden him in his state with information, but I had only the horse to speak to—and my lord was far cleverer than I. For the time that he was still cogent, still himself, I needed to consult with him. I needed his permission for what I sought to do next. “And I admit that I am… afraid of what he will do.”
Mamoru was quiet, though his fingers continued to twitch; he bit at his nails, a habit he’d never had, as though he barely noticed what he was doing. “Do you think the fighting’s started again?” he asked at last. “Do you think the talks have failed because Iseul’s been so distracted with trying to find me?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, though it was just like my lord to blame himself for starting a war when he was as far removed from the capital as a field mouse himself. “I admit that I cannot think of any other reason—any good reason—for some of our best soldiers to be stationed in the Cobalts unless they are planning some sort of… attack.” I drew a deep breath. “Mamoru—you and Volstov share a common enemy.”
Mamoru watched me with fevered eyes. His voice was dry. “What did you hear?”
“Your brother will kill you unless I find some magic to stop him,” I said. “There are magicians just beyond this mountain range. But I do not know what I can barter for your safety.”
There they were: all my worries, spread before him. I could no more shield him from the truth than I could think of a solution myself, and so we must counsel with one another for inspiration.
“I am a prince,” Mamoru said. “Which means I must think of my people before myself. Our focus should not be on what we might barter for my safety, but rather, how we might still preserve the peace negotiated first by my father before his death. Iseul has dishonored his memory by betraying that—betraying the wishes of our father—and stationing these men in the mountains as if to start another war on the heels of the first! If Iseul will not think of our people, then it must fall to me.” His cheeks flushed again, though this time, I feared, it was due to a different kind of fever altogether.
I was shocked. Since our flight from the palace I had only ever thought of what my lord had lost in terms of station and a proper home. It had never occurred to me what the people had come so close to losing—a leader who cared enough to think of them before himself.
He was like a rare gem, my lord Mamoru, and I knew then—as I had most assuredly known before—that I would follow him to my very death if that was what he wished.
I did not speak of any of that.
“We will barter our knowledge of the enemies in the pass for my…” Mamoru swallowed thickly, as though it pained him. “… life, I suppose.”
“And you think they will believe us? Or even understand us?”
Mamoru blinked. “Every man, no matter his mother tongue, understands the truth,” he said, as though this should have been evident. Then he added, “Besides, I’ll make them believe us.”
I stared at my lord, his arm healing from where I’d struck him and his hair wild with the previous night’s ride to the mountains. His lips were chapped, and his face was dirty. I’d never seen a more perfect heir, his clothing torn and stained with mud.
He looked every inch the prince.
I was going to carry him into the belly of the dragon in order to save him.
“There is another way,” I told him. “Come.”
There was another branch to the fourteenth pass. One that had been tunneled deep into the earth long ago, to keep it safe from dragonfire, and most who had worked on it had been killed in the dragon’s final assault on the city. Not even many among the Ke-Han army