blindly, even in the face of such a leader as our Emperor.”
“That’s batty,” I said, disappointed because maybe I’d sort of almost got my head around not minding Lord Temur, only it turned out he was as crazy as the rest of them.
He shrugged.
“Those are our ways,” he said. “They may seem strange or unfathomable to you, but they remain very important to us.”
“But surely even someone as set in tradition as yourself, Lord Temur, must see that the Emperor has gone too far,” said Caius, spinning it a lot more delicately than I’d have done given the chance.
“Why do you think I’m allowing you to keep me here?” Lord Temur asked, giving us a look like maybe we were a little slow. “It is hardly an ideal place for confinement. Why, I might have escaped at least half a dozen times over now if I were not here by my own consent.”
“Now wait just a minute,” I said, and then stopped confusing the matter because it actually made sense.
Caius smiled—a thin little reptilian smile that made him look mad as the Emperor himself. Somehow I didn’t mind it as much on him.
“Well,” he said, like we’d all been having tea together, “I suppose this makes us comrades of a sort. How thrilling.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m really thrilled.”
“I am concerned for your Margrave Josette,” Lord Temur said after a moment, when everyone’d been thinking about all the people other than us they’d have preferred as comrades at that moment in time. “If she asks too many questions about your leader, and if it is the Emperor who is behind his disappearance…”
“Fuck,” I said, standing up immediately.
Caius followed me with his lone eye cold and strange, catching me for a moment and holding me in place. As little as two weeks ago, he would’ve definitely taken something like that as sure proof of some kind of love affair—and if not that, then at least something to drive Josette crazy babbling about. But it was like we’d unleashed some kind of beast in him with his Talent, like the snake that had got into our Well and poisoned everything in the night. He was different.
It was eerie.
“I’ll keep a weather eye on our guest,” Caius said, smiling thinly. “You go and play the hero. Drag her back kicking and screaming if you have to, which I suspect you might. And do try not to attract any attention if you can, though I know that’s your specialty.”
I nodded, though I still wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about leaving Lord Temur in the custody of Caius like that.
“Do not worry about my well-being,” Lord Temur said.
I snorted again. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I won’t.”
The hallways of the Ke-Han palace were as serpentine as ever, and the mirrors reminded me like always that no matter what we did, we were being watched. Those were the same halls Fiacre had been walking hours ago for all we knew, feeling safe and cocky as any blue-blooded diplomat had to in order to put on a good show of it. I was a soldier and, for once, that made me feel less like a fox in the henhouse and more like I was in my element. Though if the Emperor really had gone mad, I wasn’t skilled enough with a sword to best him one-on-one—barring divine intervention or, more likely, a sizable portion of foul play.
Things were grim, simple as that. We didn’t need signs like a Ke-Han warlord up and changing sides on us to tell me how grim, either. I didn’t take to being held captive—though who did? It was tighter than the Basquiat in the narrow halls with no windows, and Fiacre’s room was quiet from within.
The guard in front of his door watched me coolly with eyes trained beyond emotion. None of that’d ever sat well with me because I had no talent for it, but I cleared my throat and tried, anyway, to be polite.
“Did a woman come by here?” I asked. “The Margrave Josette?” I gestured vaguely as to her proportions—about this high, this wide, hair this long—and the guard pointed soundlessly down another hall.
“The menagerie,” he said, and bowed as low as if I’d been a visiting emperor.
It all felt so unclean. That was the trouble. Caius sitting on Lord Temur, mirrors winking at me from the corners, and that guard watching me all the way until I turned the corner.
Just walk slowly, Alcibiades, I told myself. Everything’s fine.