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  Hal began to blush, and quickly after that he looked away, ducking his head to hide it against my shoulder. I was sure that, considering how close we were, he was bound to hear the pulse at my throat beating wild and desperate for him.

  The sound of the fire crackling, eating away at the poor ruined skiff, must have obscured the sound. I allowed myself to move my hand, to rest it against his pale back ghosted with freckles. His fingers tightened against my shoulder.

  We should have spoken about it. We should have said something. We should have done anything other than curl against each other in silence, frozen in time, doing neither one thing nor the other.

  I held my small triumph close about me like the mantle of a warrior, and said instead, “That was an adventure, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” Hal said. There was sadness in his voice, deep and dark.

  I rested my nose against his temple and stared beyond him at the fire. We were holding each other because it was practical; I loosened my embrace though I didn’t let go entirely.

  Soon enough I could hear the even keel of Hal’s breathing as it slowed. The storm had ended, and Hal was sleeping. When I tried to move he protested, mumbling in his sleep, and buried his face against my throat as if I were both his pillow and his bed.

  I didn’t fall prey, as I’d thought I would, to unhappy thoughts. Instead I followed Hal’s example and slept comfortable and deep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ROOK

  So the morning after the professor spent the whole day trying to school us in appreciating other people’s feelings, with his whole face looking extra special on account of the big blue handprint, Adamo rounded us up and sat us down in a circle in the common room, where the professor—no longer blue, all the more the pity—was waiting for us.

  “Right,” he said, like he was facing down a whole horde of Ke-Han. “Today we’re going to try something different.”

  For a long time no one spoke, and it got pretty uncomfortable, and I was grinning the whole time.

  “Ah,” Balfour said finally. The little snot. “What’s that, then?”

  “We’re going to play roles,” the professor replied, “in order to better understand those who are different from us.”

  Another silence. This time, though, it was Luvander who spoke up. “You mean like . . . role-playing?” he asked, all incredulous.

  “Yes,” the professor said. “Exactly.”

  “But isn’t that like when the redhead’s been a very naughty schoolgirl and the brunette’s also been very naughty and they’re spending all this time being punished by the blonde, who does it all with spanking—” Luvander began, but Adamo cleared his throat all of a sudden, and I supposed I’d have to ask Luvander for the rest of the story later, and who he’d been to see, and who I should ask for to make it happen.

  The professor also cleared his throat. We were all looking at him now, and every man thinking the same thing: basically, that we weren’t playing schoolgirls for him or with him, no way and no matter if th’Esar himself commanded it be done.

  “No,” he said patiently, though I could see him grinding his teeth and on the edge of his patience. “No, that isn’t the—Those aren’t the roles we’re going to be playing.”

  “What other roles are there?” Compagnon asked, probably ’cause he didn’t have the imagination our fine genius of a professor had.

  I was almost busting my seams, I was laughing so hard.

  “You’ll soon see,” said the professor. And, just like that, he was handing out these pieces of vanilla-colored paper to each of us—the stiff, good sort, with something written on each. When he stopped in front of me and handed me mine, whatever the fuck it was, he gave me a kind of smile I didn’t like, no matter which way I turned it, and not just on account of the more general dislike I had for his entire face.

  “Now,” the professor went on, returning to his place at the center of the circle, “you’ll find that on each of these cards I’ve distributed is a name.”

  “It’s not my name on this card,” said Compagnon.

  “No,” the professor confirmed. “Indeed, none of your names is on any of the cards.”

  “So they’re all our roles,” said Raphael.

  “Exactly. Three points for you, Raphael, for that apt assessment,” the professor said. Raphael looked way too pleased with himself after that, and the rest of us a little sour that we were playing a game with points, that none of us had known it before now, and that Raphael was already winning. “The rules and information are as follows. One: The names and the cards have been distributed completely at random. Two: If you ask to exchange your card for another, three of your points will be deducted. The purpose of the game is to represent the character, the emotions, the viewpoints, and the sensitivities of the name written on the card currently in your possession. Each time you make an astute and insightful observation as to the nature of your particular role, you will be awarded three points. Whoever first achieves thirty points will win the game.”

  “Excuse me,” said Niall, “but my card says on it ‘That Whore Rook Insulted the Other Day for Having Ugly Breasts.’”

  “Indeed,” said the professor. “Indeed, it does.”

  “Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife,’” Balfour said, looking at me, then at the professor, then just looking real distressed at no one in particular.

  “Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat,’” Adamo said. “So I guess you’d best sit here by me.”

  I didn’t want to know what was written on my card, but I guess I had to look so I would know the right way to kill this whoreson standing here in front of us all, smug as you like. I flipped my card over. It read, “Margrave Royston,” that fucking Cindy magician.

  “I’m not doing it,” I said. “Fuck you. Take these cards and fucking shove ’em. I’m not doing it.”

  “Ah,” said the professor, “that puts you at negative three points and Raphael at positive three, and everyone else at zero.”

  “I feel,” Ace said, sudden and sly, “that as the ‘Prince of Arlemagne,’ I’m kind of in a tight spot right about now, don’t you think? What with everyone gossiping about me, even though I managed so cleverly to place all the blame on that ever-so-foolish Margrave of mine.”

  “Indeed,” the professor said. “Very astute. Three points for you as well, Ace.”

  “And I,” Balfour piped up, “I definitely didn’t enjoy being called a whore in front of so many of my peers, or . . . or treated so abominably by that heartless airman of the Dragon Corps!”

  “Two astute observations,” the professor said. I was beginning to get the feeling he was all Cindy, one hundred percent, and was sort of especially hot for fucking Balfour. “That’s six points, I think.”

  “Maybe, as ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife,’” I said, with a real nasty sneer, “you shouldn’t’ve acted like a whore to avoid getting called one.”

  “I don’t know if the ‘Margrave’ would have said that, actually,” said Adamo, and the professor looked as pleased as spiced wine.

  “Well I wouldn’t know,” I said, feeling boxed in at all sides. “Seeing as I ain’t no Mary Margrave.”

  “Oh, no one said you were,” snapped Jeannot, short and sharp, like a current through the air. He was a quiet one, Jeannot, but he got serious real fast, and faster when he thought someone was wasting his time. “I, as ‘Chief Sergeant of the Airmen,’ wish to get through this with as little incident as possible.”

  Adamo made a sound in his throat like he was growling, amused and happy as an old dog.

  “Excellent,” said the professor. “Thank you, Jeannot. Three points.”

  “I guess, as one of the ‘Handlers’ down where the dragons are kept, I’d like it if no one tried to tell me how to do my job,” piped up Merritt, with a pointed sort of look at Ivory, who’d been known on more than one occasion to pitch a fit at his muck-boys if Cassiopeia got touched wrong. But, if you asked me, Ivory was a little touch
ed wrong in the head, so it all washed clean in the end.

  The professor nodded, made a note real quick in that damned book of his that let us all know Merritt’d got his points, too. Something in the air shifted somehow, changed the way it did when you were on a raid and had to get primed for the fight to come. There were points adding up, fucking Balfour was in the lead, and all fourteen of us keen on winning now that there was something to win.

  I knew the professor had planned it just that way on purpose, the way he’d planned my card on purpose, so I just kicked back in my chair. I wasn’t going to play his game, not even with negative three points.

  “As ‘Provost,’” Compagnon said eagerly, “I really wish people would stop breaking the rules. It’d make my life a sight easier and I could kick back and enjoy the sweet little paycheck th’Esar tosses me every other week.”

  “A little obvious, but I’ll grant it to you,” said the professor, in a voice that sounded like he thought he was being really gracious. Staring at him reminded me of one other rumor I’d heard about the magician, when he wasn’t biting the pillow with foreign Nellie princes.

  “If I were the Margrave Royston,” I said grandly, grinning from ear to ear, “I’d blow up your ’Versity-stuffed head and dance in the gray matter.”

  Someone who sounded an awful lot like Ghislain made a disapproving sound. I didn’t care, I still thought it was clever as foxes and no two ways about it.

  “Well,” said the professor after a moment. His mouth was drawn small and tight, so any words that came out looked forced. “I suppose I have to give you points for at least being accurate on his Talent.”

  “Suppose you do,” I said cheerfully.

  “That puts you at zero,” he snapped, and crossed something neatly out in the ledger.

  “I’m pretty sure Rook hurt my feelings, saying I had ugly breasts,” Niall said, diving into the silence headlong, and his pronouncement was punctuated by Compagnon dissolving into a fit of giggles. “I mean, he’d paid me and everything, sure, but what about my feelings? Just because I’m a whore doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings,” he concluded, enjoying himself far more than seemed natural.

  “Ah, yes.” The professor stopped looking angry pretty quick, turned to smile at Niall. He did that to everyone, looked straight at them when they were talking as if it made any kind of a difference. “That is almost two observations I think, Niall. You’re at six.”

  Adamo cleared his throat. “As ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat,’ I’m still fuming mad that anyone would be not only stupid enough to sleep with my wife, but also to slap her ass and call her as good as a Hapenny whore in front of everyone.”

  “I’d imagine so,” agreed the professor with that stupid little smile of his.

  Did they teach him how to do that in the ’Versity? I wondered. Maybe that stupid face cut it with a passel of school brats, but here it was just out of place, same as the rest of him.

  “Yeah, and it’s all your fault we’re here in the first place,” I jeered, but I shut up real quick when Adamo shot me a glare.

  “Suppose it’s mine too, seeing as I’m th’Esar,” Ghislain said. “I had a real difficult time of it, pleasing everyone sharpish in that meetin’ room, and it didn’t help having two incidents with Arlemagne happening around the same time, either. Guess it was the only thing I could do.”

  “Very good,” said the professor, and he sounded so happy I thought he was going to piss his pants again. “Wonderful observations. That definitely makes six.”

  “I’m ‘Head Mademoiselle at Our Lady of a Thousand Fans,’ and I wish people would stop asking me ‘how much,’ because I’m quite happily married,” said Luvander. There was a sort of quiet that settled over the room after this, with no one able to decide whether they wanted to laugh or not, and everyone turning to look at him. “What?” He sat up straight in his chair, looking ticked off. “It’s true.”

  “Well, that’s news to me,” admitted the professor. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Hey now,” I said. “What’s stopping the rest of us from just making stuff up and spoon-feeding it to you, huh?”

  “The goodness of your hearts,” he replied dryly, in a tone that I didn’t like at all. It thought far too much of itself, that one.

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Luvander spun around in his chair.

  “As a ‘New Recruit’ to the Dragon Corps, I’m either really fucking lucky or doomed or both, and after my first week it’s like enough to be the latter even if no one’s pissed in my boots yet.” Magoughin smiled, looking particularly proud of himself.

  Balfour was looking a little pale, like that hadn’t all been years ago anyway, and him with a new pair of boots whenever he wrote home for one.

  “Ah,” said the professor, looking a little under the weather himself all of a sudden, like getting his boots all fouled was something he hadn’t thought of yet. It was almost sad, really, him with such an active imagination and all. “Well, very good, three points for you, Magoughin.”

  “Um,” said Evariste. “My card says, ‘That Kid Ghislain Hit on the Head When He Dropped Merritt’s Boots out the Window.’”

  “It was really an accident,” said Ghislain mildly.

  “Yes,” said the professor.

  “Well, I guess my head hurts,” finished Evariste.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know if I’d exactly call that an astute—”

  “If I’m th’Esarina, I probably wish my husband wouldn’t make so many trips to the ’Fans,” cut in Raphael, clearly eager to take his lead all over again. He paused. “Because it violates the sanctity of our marriage. You know, we took vows.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “‘Violates the sanctity’? Why not just put on the damned dress and a tiara, Raphael?”

  He sniffed. “It’s not my fault that you’re losing, Rook,” he said.

  “Actually, talking of marriage, I’m still very angry with my wife,” said Adamo, and Balfour looked over at him for a moment, all hurt-like before he got ahold of himself, and that was nearly when I lost it. This game was going to drive us all mental.

  “All right, I get it now,” said Evariste again, quickly. “I wish whoever had been dropping heavy boots had been more considerate of . . . who might have been standing there. Below. I wish they’d looked.”

  “Yes, that’s much better,” said the professor, scribbling away like mad in that notebook of his. I wanted to snatch it right out of his hands. “Both of you, well done.”

  “As a Member of the Basquiat,” said Ivory at last, in a bored sort of tone, “I am—depending on my political interests—watching this situation with the diplomat from Arlemagne unfold with interest. I want to see how th’Esar will handle it, certainly.”

  “As th’Esar I’m thanking the bastion one of yours got mixed up in the mess with Arlemagne,” Ghislain threw back at him. “Evens us out nice and square, don’t you think?”

  “Was Margrave Royston a member of the Basquiat?” Balfour slipped out of character, not that he was nearly nice-looking enough to play the diplomat’s wife.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Ace grinned at me with a mouth full of teeth that were just asking to be broken.

  “I’m not fucking playing,” I said.

  “Well you’ve managed to raise your score to an even zero,” said the professor, calm as you please. He seemed to have decided that if we weren’t going to let him sleep proper through the nights, then he might as well not bother being all careful and polite with us. It even worked; some days he didn’t even stink so obviously of fear and rage.

  “I cry myself to sleep at night,” Niall spoke up, touched by a sudden inspiration. “I ask countless clients whether they think my breasts look all right, and if they hesitate for even a moment, I know that terrible airman was right.”

  “Hang on,” said Compagnon. “How do you know she cries at night?”

  “Well I’m elaborating, aren’t I? It’s one of the skills of the theatre,
” replied Niall, in a voice like he thought it was obvious instead of totally insane.

  “Has anyone won yet?” Merritt leaned forward in his chair. Maybe he expected the professor to show him his book when he held it that close to his chest, like it was his baby or something.

  “No one’s got to thirty yet, no,” he answered, and studied the page for a moment. His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Niall’s in the lead, though.”

  Almost like they’d planned it, everyone started shouting at once, Raphael even doing some ridiculous high sissy voice that he thought made him sound more like th’Esarina.

  Right then, I knew I’d have to start making a list of my own, in order of noses that needed breaking so I didn’t off and kill anyone ’cause of pent-up steam.

  And I’d start with the professor—wipe that smug grin off his face for once and for all. I flexed my fingers in anticipation. It was going to feel real nice after all of this.

  HAL

  Though I expected him to read what had nearly happened right off my face the moment I set foot inside the castle, all the chatelain actually said was that we’d best be more careful next time and not wander so far off—as if we were both his children, no less—and then he sent us on our way, my heart still pounding fit to break inside my chest. I’d almost kissed the chatelain’s brother. I knew I still wanted to, but no one had guessed it.

  Royston, meanwhile, didn’t say anything at all.

  This distressed me more than I could say, and above the unsteady rhythms of my heartbeat, nervousness began to creep into my blood instead of a fever. Perhaps it was a fever of another sort, a fever I’d been too busy with my books to experience until now, but it transformed me: I was at once too large for my skin and too small to find myself. I answered Royston’s silence with a shamed silence of my own and longed for him to say anything at all. When I dared sneak glances at his face, I could find no clues in his expression that would illuminate his thoughts; rather, he was unreadable as a text in ancient Ramanthe, and I no scholar well versed enough to translate this unfamiliar language.