manage that,” Parijahan said. Anna nodded in agreement.
“Everything else will be easy,” Malachiasz said. “A simple spell, nothing more.”
“A simple spell that the High Prince won’t see straight through?” Nadya asked. Her stomach roiled at the thought of wearing his magic on her skin for the next few weeks.
“Not if I’m the one writing it,” he replied.
“That reeks of overconfidence,” she muttered.
He smiled slightly. “That’s not the right word for that context, but you’re close.”
Nadya winced. This was never going to work.
“We can get into the palace by forging paperwork.”
Before Nadya had a chance to ask how they were possibly going to accomplish that, Rashid perked up.
“Leave that to me. I worked as the Travasha’s scribe in my youth. There is very little I cannot forge.”
Nadya glanced at Parijahan for confirmation. She just grinned.
“If she says she’s from a border town her accent will be less noticeable. Reasonable explanation will hide just about anything from unsuspecting eyes,” Malachiasz said.
“But that will put her close enough to Kalyazin to instantly be suspicious,” Rashid argued.
“If I’m traveling with two Akolans anyway, would it not stand to reason that I be from somewhere close to both borders?” Nadya interjected.
Malachiasz nodded thoughtfully then abruptly stood and left the room.
“Where’s he going?” Nadya asked, forgetting she was supposed to be speaking in Tranavian.
“Tekyalzaw jelesznak!” She heard Malachiasz call from the other room. Wrong language.
She rolled her eyes.
He came back and unrolled a map on the table, using his spell book to hold it down on one end and Rashid’s elbow on the other. After frowning at the Tranavian side, he tapped at a point near where the Tranavian border met Akola.
“?aszczów,” he said. “It’s just far enough from Kalyazin that you won’t be instantly suspect, but near enough that a holdover of a Kalyazi accent might be possible.”
“Are there any low royalty in the area?” Parijahan asked.
Malachiasz shook his head. “Low nobility only. Inconsequential. The nearest low prince is in Tanów, which is farther north.”
“So, it would be easily explained if Nadya didn’t know all the finer points of court life,” Rashid said.
“If Józefina didn’t know, exactly,” Malachiasz confirmed.
“Is that my name?” Nadya asked. “Did you come up with it yourself?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Józefina Zelenska. Your father, Lu?jan, has tragically departed this world, but he died fighting for his country. Your mother, Estera, is an invalid, and,” he paused, thinking, “you have a younger sister named Anka.”
Nadya blinked. “Did you just come up with all of that?”
Malachiasz raised his eyebrows. “Yes, why?”
How many false realities has he constructed for himself? she wondered. If all he had was his name and his magic, how many nights had he lain awake and wondered where the people he might have called family were? Who they were? This was easy for him. Just another false family that would never be real. She had to stop herself from crossing the suddenly paltry distance to where his hand rested on the table, black lines of ink tattooed on his pale fingers. The urge to give some small scrap of comfort to her enemy startled her enough that she dropped her hand down to her lap to better pretend like it never happened. His quick glance at the spot where her hand had once been only made her feel more like she was doing something she shouldn’t.
Rashid shifted away from the map and Malachiasz gently shoved him back down so it wouldn’t roll up.
“Can you cast magic without using those beads?” Malachiasz asked.
She fingered her necklace. “Not really.”
“We’ll have to figure out how to work around that. What about,” he waved a hand over his mouth, “the symbols? Those make it too obvious you’re using magic.”
“Oh, like how you cut your arm open and bleed over everything? Very subtle.”
Parijahan snorted. Malachiasz’s expression wearied.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’ll speak to Marzenya. Perhaps she and I can come to an agreement,” Nadya said.
“Also, if Rashid and Parijahan are posing as part of my entourage—”
“I’m much too pretty to be a servant,” Rashid said with a sigh.
Malachiasz shot him an amused look. “You could pose as nobility—”
“No, Malachiasz,” Parijahan said quickly. “Too much paperwork. We’re already risking it with Nadya. I don’t want a keen slavhka who visited Akola’s courts recognizing me, and I definitely don’t want my Travasha hearing word that I’ve reappeared, so let’s change the context. I pose as Nadya’s maidservant, I hide in plain sight. I can swallow my pride for a short time.” She smiled wryly. “And so can