you’d be there, leading out a Ke-Han search party yourself to find the young rascal! Then you’d be a hero of the Ke-Han people, as well as of Volstov. You’re missing out on quite the opportunity. And don’t you even want to see your new racing horses? I want to see them!”
Nothing at all emanated from the other room, though I could still hear him from where I was, my ear pressed up against the door and dreadfully bored, muttering away to himself like a madman. Eventually, the muttering stopped, but Alcibiades hadn’t yet emerged from his room, and he’d barricaded the adjoining door.
There was no question in my mind that the man needed a bit of cheering up. He was simply making it very hard for himself and me.
Inevitably, I screwed up my resolve—determined to face any obstruction that might confront me—and I managed to slide the door open. It was only halfway, but that was sufficient.
“Good afternoon!” I called, over the rolled-up sleeping mat he’d piled up as a blockade against me. He was trying so hard; I thought it quaint. “Have you had lunch yet? I’m famished!”
Nothing at all again. I fancied I could hear the sound of a quill against paper though I had to concentrate very hard to hear it.
Alcibiades was writing a letter.
I could only imagine the sort of adorable dialect he employed while penning his epistle. And to whom could the man have been writing? I was shocked, in fact, at the very idea that he could write at all. How utterly delightful! I simply had to read it.
The blockade Alcibiades had set up against me was easily scaled, and I clambered up the side of it until I could at least see over the top. I rested my chin against the top and grinned in my most alluring manner.
“Are you writing a letter, my dear? Shall I call for our lunch to be brought to our rooms?”
Alcibiades startled, nearly spilling his poor inkwell before throwing his arms over the letter and glaring in the direction of my voice.
“You look like a bloody jack-in-the-box,” he informed me.
“How jolly,” I said.
“I hate jack-in-the-boxes.”
“Mm,” I said. Not my best rejoinder, admittedly, but I was quite busy in maneuvering my way down the other side of the barricade, and I wasn’t altogether keen on losing my footing. When I reached the bottom I felt a warm satisfaction at a job well done. “Now, what do you say to some hot lunch?”
“I’m busy,” Alcibiades said. He hadn’t got up from his rather undignified position at the desk, arms crossed over the letter as if it were a state secret, and not some plain piece of paper with writing on it.
“I know, with the letter.” I nodded indulgently. Then, trying to make it seem as though I’d only just thought of it, I gasped as if with a sudden brilliant idea. “I might read it over for you, if you like!”
“No,” said Alcibiades. “You mightn’t.”
He’d propped the small desk his room had been equipped with—one which he dwarfed quite amusingly, and which no doubt would have given him an awful crick in the neck otherwise—up atop a chair, so that it was at least better suited to his size and stature. I thought that the furniture was delicate, handsomely crafted and exquisitely simple, but I had to admit that it did make Alcibiades appear a giant bear of a creature. It couldn’t have been very comfortable to work at.
On his desk were a few pieces of paper blotched with ink and a collection of old pens. Underneath the half-full inkwell, however, was the true prize: not the letter Alcibiades was currently writing but the one to which he was replying. That was my goal. Who could it be? A sweetheart back home? He didn’t seem the type. A frail and aging mother might have been more likely, or perhaps a brother; he didn’t strike me as the sort who cultivated friendships so carefully as to write letters. He wasn’t a man whose behavior encouraged you to send them.
I put my left slipper back on—it had fallen off as I scaled the barricade—and sidled closer, feigning disinterest by observing my fingernails.
“How is everyone back home?” I asked, looking at the screen set up by the far wall. His had cranes upon it, whereas mine had a splash of maple branches. “Your mother? Your father?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Alcibiades replied curtly.
I cast a quick glance at the desk, only to find that