large ones, but apparently not. Everyone in the palace slept so late that there didn’t seem to be any point in doing anything else.
That was when I’d had my brilliant idea. Instead of going back to sleep, I started going through some of the exercises we’d been taught in training camp during the years before a man became a fit enough soldier to fight on the battlefield. It was the sort of thing every man practiced in the lull between battles, so they wouldn’t get rusty in the interim. Being rusty meant life or death—usually the latter, when being in shape counted for something. I was rusty as an old iron gate just by letting myself go so long, but that was what living among the Ke-Han did to a soul, I supposed. Especially with a madman next door.
The only exercise I’d had lately was avoiding Caius Greylace at dinner, or barring the door against him with whatever I could find to wedge it closed.
It was hard to practice without a weapon. I’d had every man from th’Esar on down try to explain to me just how it was a good idea to visit a country that still loathed us without any arms to speak of, but no one could see the wisdom in what I had to say. Instead, they’d told me that was what we had men like Greylace for, whose weapons weren’t the sort that could ever be put down. And men like me, though I didn’t like to think about it, and probably wouldn’t unless I fucking had to.
So what it amounted to was, th’Esar wanted us to give the appearance of being unarmed. Still, we had some backup defenses, just the kind that were invisible, and not the kind used by those who’d done any actual fighting in the war or anything like that.
Not having a sword threw off my entire balance in the exercises. A sword’s got a certain heft to it that a soldier had to get used to if he ever wanted to catch the enemy napping. Without a sword, my hands moved too quickly. Without that added weight, I overcompensated once or twice and stumbled over the crescent-shaped footstools that were strewn around my room once more, like the maids were trying to box me in. I’d requested them, and now they too were working against me.
On the third day this happened, I heard a quiet tutting sound from the next room over. I nudged the footstool aside with the toe of my boot and went on, ignoring what I’d heard—though by now, I knew the sound all too well.
Maybe if I ignored it, Caius Greylace would just go back to sleep. If luck was with me, I’d be able to finish and sneak in a quick bath before everyone else woke up.
Luck, as it happened, had abandoned me yet again. I heard the unmistakable sound of the door sliding open, soft as a whisper, and before I had time to pretend I hadn’t seen him, Caius Greylace was standing in the doorway, wrapped up in a cocoon of white silk robes with the front pieces of his hair pinned back like a woman’s. It was disconcerting to see both his eyes so clearly, since he normally took great pains to hide the one he’d lost the use of during the sickness. He peered at me sleepily with one green eye, the other one murky and white and without any focus or direction.
“I daresay, my dear, that you could wait until a decent hour to begin moving furniture around.” He yawned, his little pink tongue reminding me of a cat’s, and looked around the room. All at once, his expression changed from bemused and sleepy to curious, and I felt a sinking feeling within my chest, as though I would never have a moment’s peace again.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, though the battle was already lost.
He ignored me, and wandered in to perch himself on one of the small chairs I hadn’t managed to knock over yet. It figured that he wouldn’t be too big for them the way I was, even though they’d been put in my room to begin with. Then he yawned again, covering his mouth like a Ke-Han lady did with a fan.
“Carry on,” he said, with what he probably imagined to be a regal air.
“If you’re so tired, then you ought to go back to bed,” I told him, but I knew it