rest: the color of a raid night. The fires came close enough to scorch the air, and the air was made heavier still with sweat and fear. No man knew if—when—the dragons would come to the capital itself. How could we tell what those mysterious creatures were made of? How could we know what they would be capable of, given enough time?
But what I remembered most of all was the city after the final battle, when that which we were all dreading came to our very doorstep, and the dragons tore down each age-old wall with one flick of their massive, metal tails.
In the quiet aftermath of destruction, after the damage had been contained and the last of the fires extinguished, the sulfurous air choked our throats; no amount of burning incense could quite blot out the smell. It woke you in the night, or haunted you like a ghost, clinging to your clothes and your hair and even your skin. It impregnated all the silk. Most of it, my father had burned.
In the streets, animals from the ruined menagerie wandered, dazed as we were, uncaged but uncertain where to go. They reminded me of the returning soldiers—men who’d belonged in the capital once but no longer knew how to employ their own freedom.
It was a strange thing indeed to see lions hiding behind the wreckage of an old wall, or watch peacocks spill forth from the broken doorway of an abandoned house.
By some extraordinary chance, the palace itself had been relatively spared. Perhaps it was because it stood in the shadow of the great magicians’ dome to the west, now a broken, hollow shell. One of the topics under negotiation was whether or not our magicians would even be able to continue under the circumstances, with so few of their prior number and the seat of their power all but destroyed. Our society was not so based in magic as that of the Volstovics, and perhaps in times of peace the magicians would not be so needed. What had hurt us most was the loss of the dome, what it symbolized to our people and our gods. Their dome had existed ever since I could remember, since before my father’s era, and before my grandfather’s. It represented the pinnacle of perfection in architecture—an auspicious shape from all vantage points, and one that complemented the power of the elements as it harnessed them for our magicians’ use so that they might approximate the gods in power. There was great debate even among our lords whether such an edifice could ever be re-created.
Perhaps the delegation from Volstov would not allow us to. And, I wondered privately, with what magicians would we fill it? Only a bare handful remained.
The shrill cry of a peacock pierced the night air, indignant as any lord whose sleep had been interrupted.
When I’d been a child too young to venture from the palace, my father the Emperor had deemed the menagerie unsafe. There was too much open space where assassins might make their move and prove lucky. I, however, had longed more than anything to see a real lion, or a real peacock, and put up an impossible fuss, unbearable for all the servants whose misfortune it was to be assigned to me. I was so adamant that at last Kouje had resorted to playing a lion, in the days when I’d been too young to understand what a dishonor such behavior was for a warrior. I had never had what one might consider a proper nursemaid. Instead, after outgrowing my wet nurse’s care, I’d been entrusted to Kouje, both my body and my mind, so that I might learn from him a warrior’s capability and effortless strength.
There were days when I doubted that the plan had worked as well as my father had hoped. But Kouje was strong and patient, and when I was a child, he did not leave me much room to doubt.
After I’d been deemed fit to serve in my father’s best interests, I’d led the men under me with as much wisdom and strength as I knew. Being a prince meant that everything I did reflected back on the Emperor, and thus on our people—but it was more than that. Numbered among the men who served under me was Kouje, there to aid, or to make certain that I’d taken all his lessons to heart. My brother Iseul always spoke of pleasing our father, and of what was good for the empire,