merely turned to retrieve his robes where he’d hung them across the low wall of the stable and handed them to me. I took them, wrapping the fine robes carefully within my own to shield them from any harm, and bundling those again in a plain workman’s cloth, the kind in which a servant carried his few belongings. I waited for Mamoru to mount, then secured the bundle behind him, so as to help along the artifice that my lord was a sick servingwoman ejected from the palace until the time came when she was well again.
“If you agree, I think it best that I do most of the talking,” I said, easing the stall’s gate open. “At least until my lord learns how to speak as a servant.”
“Ah, but isn’t that a counterfeit statement?” My lord looked down at me from the horse, his hair all in disarray and his clothing plain and mended countless times over. It hurt my heart to see him so transformed, but there was a hint of a smile still upon his lips. “Servants do not speak at all, so how can I ever hope to speak as one?”
I found myself smiling, too, as I led the horse through the quiet of the stables, even as I struggled to lift the beam that sealed the door at night. My lord was clever, and he learned quickly. I did not dare to guess at what result our venture would bring, not then and perhaps not ever, but Mamoru could survive as something other than a prince. I was certain of that, if of nothing else. Perhaps he would never learn the self-deprecation inherent in our words, the coarse grammar and the apologetic tone, but he would survive.
The courtyard was silent and empty, though the spare shapes of the rock statues in the sunken garden rose up in crescents and spheres to our left. White sand crunched beneath the horse’s mammoth, shaggy hooves. Ahead, the main gate was lit with tall torches, and white paper lanterns lined the main path. I found myself holding on to the reins with an unnecessary force, though I did not speed my pace any, and I kept my breathing steady. Even so, the horse could sense the tension in my hand, and he shook his head, whinnying faintly.
I didn’t dare to look up at my lord more than once, but he had his head down, his arms crossed in front of him, as if in the clutches of some uncomfortable affliction. I could not tell whether he was as nervous as I was.
Perhaps I was betraying his trust in me by being so nervous myself.
Then we came to the palace gates, and there was no more room for nerves.
The guards didn’t ask any questions. They were trained to be as silent as the servants were. Rather, they stopped us, and waited on protocol. I was the one who must speak, to give them my statement as to who we were, and where we were going.
I’d been practicing it since the moment I’d heard Iseul’s pronouncement, though I hadn’t realized it then.
“This one’s taken ill,” I said, hardening my voice; I sounded like a fisherman, and I forced myself to ignore the shame of my lord hearing me speak so commonly. “My lord wishes for me to take her out of the palace before the diplomats get wind of it. The last thing we want is for the talks to be ended over something so foolish as her sneezing in someone’s breakfast. Or worse, if you take my meaning.”
The guard eyed my lord with some trepidation, as though worried the woman in question was going to be ill right then and there. He stepped back to confer with the other guards, who had been listening some distance away. The torchlight flickered and played off the shadows on their faces, the overhang of their antiquated helmets, which combined to give their expressions a masklike quality. If we were a theatre group, and my lord the leading actress, then the guards would be played by men in demon masks, pale white and blood red.
I felt a soft touch at my hand against the reins.
My lord was looking at me, his eyes filled with something like pleading behind the curtain of his hair. In the years during the dragon raids, there had been men who went mad with the fear and the anticipation, of waiting night after night and wondering, Would they come? There