suddenly as though he’d been in a daze all this while. “What a dreadfully exciting morning, don’t you think? You’ll be the talk of the palace for months, my dear, as the diplomat from Volstov who tested the Emperor himself!”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been some kind of morning, anyway.”
“It’s so splendid that I don’t know how I shall bear it,” he murmured, his eyelids fluttering shut. For him it might’ve been all some grand, gay dream. For me, it’d ended up as anything but.
“He tried to kill me,” I said, not because I thought I could trust Caius, but more because I didn’t have anyone else to tell.
Caius opened his eyes again, and I could see the milky outline of his bad eye through the fall of his hair.
“Oh, my dear,” he said. “I know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAMORU
Of all the things I’d managed to prepare myself for in the past few days, the one thing I wasn’t anticipating was Kouje’s behavior that afternoon on the road to the border crossing.
Ke-Han land was partitioned according to the pattern originated by the old domains hundreds of years ago. When my ancestors swept across the land on horseback, consolidating their power and subsuming each territory into our vast empire, what had once been separate castle towns and the land that surrounded them became prefectures. To this day they remained cordoned off by the great walls, which transected the Xi’an landscape like the stitching in a farmer’s patchwork cloak. Now, the prefectures were run once more by lesser lords and defended by their retainers; the only difference was that the lords each answered to the Emperor, and their duty was to serve the empire first and not themselves.
The greatest wall of all, which surrounded the capital city, was nearly thirty feet high. Until then, it had been the only one I’d ever seen with my own eyes, though I was told that, because of the walls, our country itself was one of the greatest wonders of the world.
As apprehensive as I was about crossing the border, I did wish to see that great wonder for myself, to observe for myself the famed checkpoint towers. I was no child, but it struck me as somehow sad that I, once a prince of the Ke-Han, had so little knowledge of what had been my own land.
Up ahead of us, Jiang and Inokichi had stopped by the side of the road to rest and water their horses; Kouje and I dismounted to do the same. It was a beautiful road, if barren and somewhat lonely. There was something to be said for the comfort of a road well traveled, though I was glad we’d passed so few riders that day. As much as it had unsettled me to live like a wild demon in the forest, I missed the shelter of the trees and was unaccustomed to so much open air, and so much sun.
“Here,” Kouje said, wringing out a cloth in the stream and offering it to me. I pressed it against my burning forehead, and sighed in relief. I wanted to ask him if the sunlight bothered him—if he felt on fire from the inside out, or suffered the pounding headache that came from a long morning riding through the heat, or if he was sore all over from riding—but I felt uncomfortable speaking in front of Jiang and Inokichi, so said nothing.
“Little flower you’ve got yourself there,” Kichi said, and though Kouje stiffened, I attempted to remind myself that it was his own peculiar way of paying me a compliment. I didn’t understand it—there was no poetry at all within it—but I would have to accept it. “Real delicate. Ladylike. Is she married?”
“She’s still young,” Kouje managed, tension lacing his voice. I allowed myself to pat him gently on the arm.
“My brother is quite protective,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation somewhat. I could allow myself, in this disguise, to speak with some of the delicate language from the palace. After all, I was a woman, and I felt no need to become someone like Old Mayu just yet.
“Ah, say no more,” Kichi said, winking at me in a way that I supposed was meant to be congenial.
It occurred to me that I had very little understanding of the way that men and women communicated with one another in an informal setting. I had a great deal to learn. And perhaps Kouje did as well, for I could practically feel the tension radiating from him