the Emperor go back and forth, with the occasional addition by Josette or another member of our merry band, while the rest of the Ke-Han warlords kept silent as the grave. But that was what I got. I was going to fall asleep in the middle of it all if it went on too much longer, and that was a hard enough task to manage, since they had us set up in parallel lines facing each other down the length of a long, stuffy room, sitting on nothing more than uncomfortable pillows. It was worse than Volstov diplomacy, which was sheer torture if you caught the men from the bastion on a day for arguing taxes. But at least, in Volstov, they had the decency to provide you with chairs.
One of my legs had lost all feeling, and I’d stopped listening entirely, when suddenly everyone was putting something to a vote.
I looked around the room, desperate for some clue. What were we deciding on? It was still only the first day of deliberation, so it couldn’t have been anything that crucial, but the look on the Emperor’s face implied otherwise. He looked determined behind that stony mask, a statue carved out of pure iron will.
“Don’t worry,” Caius whispered. “It’s for whether or not we should spend the rest of the day trying to decide how many men should go after the prince, or retire for now and finish the day that was planned for us, before this… unforeseen event arose. The Emperor himself isn’t voting, however—it’s bad form.”
The way I saw it, the Emperor was clearly hoping for the vote to go toward the former. If he could keep us trapped there even an hour or so longer, he’d probably wear Fiacre down into agreeing on a number. If we started afresh the next day, new stubbornness would have set in after the night, and it would be harder to convince our men of anything.
I already knew which way I was voting.
The other men and women from Volstov must’ve been thinking along the same lines as I was, since the vote came down to retiring for the night. Maybe they were just tired; I didn’t care. I took grim satisfaction in being able to think I’d thwarted the Emperor. Maybe it was petty, but then again I’d never told anyone I was the man for this sort of job. It’d just been decided for me, and I was going to play it the way I saw fit, short of getting into any real trouble.
“Ah, fresh air,” Caius said, standing next to me and breathing in deeply before letting out a fluttery little sigh. I’d heard women make that kind of noise. “Well! What do you think we should do now?”
“What should we do?” I spluttered, since I’d been looking forward all day to finally shaking him off once night rolled around.
“I thought,” Caius went on blithely, “that we might request guidance to the menagerie. Of course, it won’t be what it was before the war—so many of the animals were lost or killed, you know, during the final attack of the dragons on the capital—but I still hear it’s uncommonly beautiful. Just the sort of relaxation we need after a hard day deliberating, don’t you agree?”
I didn’t, and I had half a mind to tell him exactly what I did agree to. And none of it involved him.
Except he’d turned his back on me almost immediately and, in the midst of the crowd—stony-faced warlords and passive servants and stretching men and women from Volstov, all of whom suddenly looked just as tired and uncomfortable as I felt—he was waving down some hapless creature.
“Menagerie!” he said, gesturing wildly with his arms. I thought he looked like a bird—but that was probably what he was going for. “Animals? We’d like to go there.”
The servant shook his head. No doubt he thought the pale-skinned sprite was mad. He was right.
Caius sighed, and said something I didn’t understand. Half of it sounded like a question and half of it sounded like a command, but all of it sounded like the Ke-Han.
“Seems you’re a little too fluent,” I said.
“Oh, I know the odd elementary phrase here and there,” Caius replied.
“And ‘Would you take us to see the menagerie’ is one of them?”
Caius’s lips twitched unevenly, the left corner lifting higher than the right. He looked like an imp. “I learned what I thought I’d need,” he said. “And as you can see, it’s served us