I didn’t like a second of it. I didn’t like it especially because the whole East Wing of the palace, which was where I’d be spending bastion-only-knew how much time, stank of some particular incense that burned my throat and my eyes. It was real distracting, and I didn’t doubt that they were doing it on purpose. Ke-Han was made up of tricky bastards.
“In any case,” Caius continued, moving neatly around a corner, then pausing to wait for me to join him, “I believe we’re staying above the… eastern gardens? Is it the eastern gardens? The peacock certainly was a distraction. I wonder if we can have one brought in especially for entertainment. They’re very rare, but I would so like a closer look.”
“Heard the Ke-Han eat them,” I ground out.
The servant leading us paused for a moment, but it was only because we’d fallen behind and it was his duty to wait for us. I picked up my pace, and this time it was Caius who hurried to keep alongside me, rustling all the way.
“Eat peacocks?” he asked. One of his eyes was queerly discolored, and being looked at by him felt like you were having a conversation with two different people, and both of them equally insane.
“Right,” I said. “Eat peacocks.”
I’d heard the rumors about Caius Greylace, the same as any. Kept as the Esar’s pet lapdog practically since birth, for his Talent in visions and his lack of qualms about using them to get information. He tortured anyone who possessed information and quite a few people who didn’t, if the rumors were anything to go by. Then, because he was young and wild, he went after some other poor bastard at court—the reason changed depending on who you asked, but the result was always the same—and drove him mad without blinking an eye. Well, not even the Esar could overlook that sort of thing, so he was banished quicker than a flash, exiled at fourteen and not brought back until three years later, when everyone’d been recalled for the final push. Just before we’d all gone and got slammed by that blasted plague.
He didn’t look so mad as they made him out to be, though—in fact, he just looked small and very pale, with an odd habit of pursing his lips between sentences—but I set no store by appearances. They didn’t mean as much as the deeds a man did.
His were a little queerer than most, but then we’d all done worse than we might’ve wanted, during the war.
“I doubt that’s true,” Caius rallied swiftly, adjusting one of his sleeves. “I believe you’re being truculent.”
The servant stopped a second time, saving me from having to make any kind of reply, and hooked the lamp in a sconce by another of the Ke-Han’s many useless paper-square doors. They didn’t have any locks, and for the servant to let us in, he had to go through a complicated dance of kneeling, sliding the door open, and finishing off, for no reason I could see, by bowing so low his forehead was pressed to the ground.
The whole thing made me uncomfortable.
Caius, on the other hand, seemed right at home. I guessed it had something to do with how he was used to being exiled—and maybe being sent to nanny a conquered nation was a step up from where he’d been last time. It wasn’t my place to judge.
The servant didn’t budge.
“Well,” Caius said, “either they have grossly underestimated our number, or we’re in the same room.”
“Maybe he’s waiting for us to do something,” I replied.
There was no telling if the servant spoke our language or not, and I was pretty sure neither of us spoke his. Chances were we could stand there all night doing nothing while he got intimate with the floor or maybe started kissing our boots for good measure, and I’d never get my chance to sit alone for even a fucking minute, just piecing things together inside my own head and figuring out how it was I’d landed here, when all I’d wanted was to go home.
The war was over, but I was still surrounded by Ke-Han. The world was too funny like that sometimes, only I couldn’t see my way toward laughing along with it.
“Ridiculous,” I snapped, and reached for the lamp myself.
The servant looked up as if to protest, but then scrambled quickly away, bowing his head like his life depended on it. Maybe it did; I didn’t know. The lamp, even though it