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  It was true that the diplomat—who had a name, only I preferred to call him Mr. Mustache—was kicking up a real fuss, and wouldn’t be satisfied until he thought his honor avenged. I’d offered a duel so he could win it back, but he didn’t seem too keen on that option, and th’Esar was still talking things over with the bastion and some of the members of the Basquiat he actually trusted.

  Jeannot took Balfour’s gloves away. It wasn’t a permanent solution, not as permanent as I’d have gone for, but it’s been said I have less patience than most. “They won’t exile us,” he said, for maybe the eight thousandth time.

  “Yeah, it’s not like we all slept with her,” said Ghislain, laughing wickedly and ducking swift as a shadow to miss my dart as it ricocheted off the wall where his head had been.

  “That counts as your shot,” said Ace.

  “Like hell,” I said, and marched over to find where it had landed.

  Evariste hissed for quiet, sounding for all the world like someone’s grandmother, or an angry goose, or both. I didn’t know why he bothered; no one could ever beat Adamo at chess, even if he gave you the first three checks and a fair head start. I didn’t know what for he was kicking up such a fuss, his defeat hanging so obvious around him the way it was. See it often enough and defeat gets a certain look to it, a certain smell; gets so that you can predict it as easy as the old coots in lower Charlotte predict the weather. Anyway, no winning man tears at his hair so. Evariste would like as not be bald by thirty if he kept that up, a fact I took upon myself to remind him of as often as possible.

  “I’m not waiting forever,” Ace piped up.

  “Talk about waiting forever,” Raphael snarled, too out of sorts even to come up with something appropriately cindy to say about the great hands of time and men wasting away to nothing. Ghislain toed my dart across the floor. I picked it up.

  We weren’t made to wait, the fourteen of us. Th’Esar knew it, had us trained all but a few from the age when most milksuckers are still firmly attached to their mama’s teat. Keeping us pent-up—and even worse, keeping us on the ground—was like lighting the fuse to a powder keg. Eventually something was going to blow up, and when it did, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “Maybe he’s forgotten about us,” said Merritt, counting out beats against his jiggling knee, then scribbling on a sheet of paper.

  “He won’t really exile us,” said Balfour again to Jeannot, not a question, but like he needed to say it.

  Some years back, when the war was real bad, we’d seen a lot of fugees—people with no place to go, no homes, just mowed right down by the Ke-Han. Probably it was because we hadn’t been the only country to go to war with the Ke-Han, just the only one able to hold out worth a damn. That was just what happened when you ended up sharing a border with crazed, greedy bastards who didn’t know they’d got enough land once they had it and were always peekin’ their damned heads over the mountains to see what else there was. Never mind if there were other people living there. The Ke-Han’d done well enough in building themselves a big blue empire, or whatever the fuck it was they were after until they ran up against us. The people they’d displaced repeated themselves a hell of a lot when they talked though, like they needed to hear something more than once for reassurance. Now, Balfour was no fucking shell-shocked fugee but occasionally he did this, like we’d traumatized him or something.

  No one ever listened to my clever theory that he was really a girl in disguise. I even took his pants off once to prove it, but it just pissed Adamo off.

  Jeannot only handed his gloves back, like he had access to some infinite well of patience—maybe that fairy-story Well the magicians were always on about. “He won’t. We’re still at war, even though things have quieted down for now. If word got out that th’Esar had done away with Volstov’s dragons, I can’t imagine what the people would do.”

  I could. It’s not every man who can say a riot’s been held on their account, but if th’Esar was somehow persuaded into doing something so damn foolish as to send us all packing, then I knew at least fourteen who could and would. No one took care of business like we did, and no one could fly those dragons like we could. The Basquiat had seen to that, and now they were paying for it. Good. Let them pay. We went down to the wire for our country when they needed us, and now some prissy little diplomat wanted to tell me what ass I could or couldn’t slap?

  It was in these low years, the lulls between open conflict, that th’Esar was hardest on us. We’d been fighting for longer than I’d been around, and longer even than Adamo’d been flying. As far back as I cared to know, the war had started when Volstov had moved in on the Ramanthines without taking any of their outstanding grudges into account. Fucking lousy sort of thing to inherit, this war with the Ke-Han, but th’Esar’s family was inbred as any right-proper nobility, and it wasn’t out of bounds to assume his great-great-granddaddy had been more insane than cunning. Plus, the dirty Ke-Han bastards had gone in and taken the Kiril Islands while Volstov’d been busy with the Ramanthines, which kind of sidestepped any issue of peace between the two of us. It was kind of convenient, seeing as without the war, there wouldn’t have been any Dragon Corps to begin with. It was just these quiet patches that got us into trouble, when the Ke-Han lay low planning their next attack and acted like they’d leave us alone to do it. I knew as soon as the Ke-Han came crawling like vermin over the Cobalt Mountains, th’Esar’d come back to us with his tail between his legs, kissing ass like that Margrave he banished.

  “I should have just killed her husband,” I said to no one in particular, shouldering Ace out of the way to line up my shot.

  “Because murder’s better than adultery?”

  “It’s only adultery if you’re the one who’s married, Niall.”

  “Wouldn’t be anyone to complain about it though, would there?” Compagnon often thought he was speaking softer than he actually was. It got him into more than a few fistfights.

  “Dunno,” said Magoughin, with characteristic and therefore irritating amusement. “She seemed pretty vocal.”

  Didn’t matter what country they came from, the upper class were always screamers.

  “Bull’s-eye!”

  Ace had the gall to look surprised. He examined the board carefully, as though there were any doubt where my aim was concerned. People could and did shout bloody murder about my comportment and lade-da, but the skills were never in question.

  “Best out of three?”

  THOM

  The lay of Thremedon City—a shortening and bastardization of Three Maidens, which is what it was in the old Ramanthe—is a difficult one for foreigners in the Volstov to accustom themselves to. It often startles the new wave of foreign exchange studying alongside me at the ’Versity each year that there are some who live their entire lives without cause to go past Mollyedge, either out or in. More than once, while giving a tour, I’ve explained that the reason for this is the powerful force of segregation and old customs, and that the prejudices at work on us today are far stronger even than those of class. They have had well over a hundred years to steep, after all, from the year when Volstov pressed its considerable advantage in hitting the already-exhausted Ramanthine forces from behind. Their victory was absolutely guaranteed, since whatever powers the Ramanthines would have called upon to defend themselves had already been spent on their own bitter struggles with Xi’an—the mother country of what was now commonly known as the Ke-Han Empire.

  From a strictly militaristic viewpoint, it was a brilliant move by the man who was then th’Esar, since there was little loss on the Volstovic side of things. From the viewpoint of the Ramanthines, and those who still considered themselves direct descendents, it was an act of aggression that remained unforgivable some hundred-odd years later. When we were renamed Thremedon by the Volstov more than a hundred years ago, those who still called themselves Ramanthine were the poor and penniless citizens of Molly, who had nothing to lose through the claim.

  Most living bel
ow the Mollyedge referred to the leader of Volstov as th’Esar, cutting out the extra vowel for what they considered a simplification of speech. This was usually accompanied by a derisive hawking of spit onto the ground, or the floor, or wherever you happened to be standing at the time. As a general rule, in Molly, it made little difference. Things were much better along the ’Versity Stretch—cleaner for one, though the people there still referred to him as th’Esar, and I’d never learned anything different. To be honest, I’d never imagined it would matter. I certainly hadn’t thought, when Marius said “Thom, sit down, I think I’ve found you the project of a lifetime,” that I’d be heading anywhere near the palace.

  This is what comes of befriending magicians.

  When th’Esar wanted something done, he wanted it done now, and though there were members of the Basquiat he’d listen to, I imagined it took an awful lot of convincing to get him to accept that a student in the university could be the solution to his problems.

  What had happened was, I was up late working on a paper when Marius walked in. Normally he knocked, so the way he slipped in and shut the door behind him coupled with the look he wore told me something was wrong. Something was up, they’d have said down in Molly, but I’d spent a lot of time getting the slang and the slur out of my voice—and when it comes to relearning everything you know, you couldn’t slip up, not even inside your own head.

  “Evening, Thom,” said Marius.

  “Good evening,” I said, and stood quickly. There was only one chair. In terms of seniority, talent, and pretty much everything, that chair was rightfully Marius’s.

  “No, Thom,” Marius said. “Actually, I think you’d better sit.”

  “It’s not the scholarship,” I said, feeling my heart sink like lead somewhere deep into my stomach. I thought I’d earned the renewal—Marius said it was as good as signed, sealed, and delivered to my doorstep—but sometimes when you were dealing with scholarship officials, signed and sealed occasionally did not deliver, no matter how much of a sure thing it was.

  “What? No, Thom. That’s not what I’ve come here to talk about.”

  Ah, I realized, getting a closer look at his face; and then I did sit down, because I knew I had to. “What’s happened?”

  “You’re aware of the . . . incident,” he began.

  Because it was peacetime—or as close to peacetime as we’d seen in a hundred years—there’d been more incidents lately than I could count on the fingers of one hand, and possibly on the fingers of two; I’d been too busy to keep track of them all. It was end of term, and my research nearly done. Such was the life of the able-bodied and able-minded student, and besides which, I’d never stepped inside the palace, nor seen the noblesse any closer than out a window or by accident in shops when Marius was kind enough to take me along, and let me look, and advise me not to touch.

  In other words, I knew there had been incidents, a significant number of them, because no one had anything else to worry about. For the life of me, however, I couldn’t fathom to which incident my mentor was referring.

  He must have read as much on my face: bewilderment, confusion, apology. He sighed and waved his hand. “The most famous one,” he said. “The Dragon Corps. Surely you have heard—”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “The diplomat’s wife.”

  “Arlemagnes,” Marius groaned, and heaved a weary sigh. “I’ve been in damn talks for the past forty-eight hours. The man wants their heads.”

  “Well we can’t give him that,” I said, and felt stupid almost immediately after.

  “They’re the only thing standing between us and the Ke-Han,” Marius confirmed. “Well, the corps and the magicians, of course, but the Ke-Han also have magicians. The corps is vital. Everyone knows it. We’re in a bind, Thom.”

  I paused. “But what—”

  “Does this have to do with you?” Marius drew both hands through his hair, looking tired. I realized, shamed, that I hadn’t offered him anything to drink or eat, but from the worry drawn in sharp lines about his mouth, I knew he wouldn’t have accepted anything. It was often—though luckily not always—business first, with Marius; business before anything else. “A good question. Yes. Well.”

  I waited for it, saying nothing.

  Marius coughed, swallowed, and looked for a moment very sorry himself. “You’re an incredibly clever young man, Thom,” he began carefully. “And with the right initiative—or if someone else saw the opportunity you yourself had no way to see, if they saw it, right there, before them, waiting to be taken—” He broke off and shook his head, clearly angry at himself. “No,” he said, changing tacks. “Thom, I’ve volunteered you.”

  “For what?”

  “To rehabilitate the corps,” he said. “It’s your thesis, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” I attempted, “not exactly.”

  “The Esar, his esteemed and incredibly wealthy highness, will give you more funding than you could ever have dreamed of,” Marius said evenly, his dark eyes bright. He was on the younger side of very old, but he looked in that moment as vital and powerful as any of the younger magicians, despite the gray streaking his hair and beard. “You will never have to bank on scholarships again. If you can do this—if you can do this—you will be a national hero, and the Esar ecstatic, and the Arlemagnes less damn loud, and the corps more diplomatic, and everyone so happy their jaws ache with grinning.”

  “And if,” I said, swallowing hard, “I don’t do this?”

  “That’s not an option,” Marius said. “I’m sorry. It’s an opportunity, Thom. The best you’ll ever get.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “That’s why it’s so terrifying.”

  And then, quick as that, Marius had me in his hansom, and was hurrying me through the carpeted halls, everything gilded or real gold. And then we were in private audience with th’Esar—the Esar—himself.

  It was all like a dream, really. Or perhaps a nightmare. I was uncertain as to which this could possibly be.

  The foreign diplomat from Arlemagne said things mostly in his own unfamiliar language. He was angry, though on a topic much more personal than that of his sovereign’s dalliances. He frequently burst into tirades in a broken tongue I could barely understand (though I’d been trained in both Arlemagnes’ tongue and old Ramanthe), hurling threats and the occasional writing implement around the unexpectedly small bastion room.

  I was trying as hard as I possibly could not to stare at my surroundings, or to look around the room any more than was strictly necessary. We’d studied the bastion in school, of course, though I’d never thought that I would be lucky enough to chance on ever entering. It was one of the oldest buildings in Thremedon, and one of the only original Ramanthine edifices that had been permitted to remain instead of being destroyed like the rest.

  The reasoning behind this was quite simple. The bastion was built to be a fortress. In the unsteady years when Volstov’s rule was yet settling in, there had been countless rebellions, men and women fighting for Ramanthe in the streets of the city itself. The then-Esar had needed a place to put them all, and the bastion was just as good at keeping people in as it was at keeping people out. It was the largest and most famous prison we had. It had housed more historical figures than I could count. It was a piece of history.

  At least the diplomat wasn’t throwing anything that could cause any true damage, I comforted myself.

  I got the sense that almost everyone in that room wanted to tell the man with the mustache to calm down, only they were afraid of triggering some unstoppable upset that would send our country tumbling into war with not only the Ke-Han but with all of Arlemagne as well.

  All I could think, in my inimitable intelligence, was: But they’re supposed to be our allies come spring.

  Opinion differed on whether we truly needed allies at all. We had been at relative peace for so long now that the prevalent attitude in the city was that we would win the war within the year. Among the most common—and least charitable—sentiments was
the idea that Arlemagne was only joining with us now that it was clear who the victor would be in our seemingly unending conflict.

  I was glad Marius had not sent me in alone. Politics were his affair, and despite a glowing recommendation, I felt certain that, without his presence, I would not have been allowed a foot in the door.

  At last, the cuckolded diplomat ceased his ranting, his face bright red and his shoulders heaving, and all eyes in the room turned to me.

  “I’m told,” said th’Esar, whose face before this I’d only ever seen on coins and miniatures, “that you might have a solution?”

  I bowed lower than I’d ever bowed before in my life and nodded weakly. Of course, you cannot say no to a king.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HAL

  The chatelain’s brother wasn’t eating.

  I didn’t really think it was my place to coax him to accept food like a sick cat, but leaving plates by the door wasn’t advisable either because one of the dogs was bound to eat the food before Margrave Royston—Uncle Roy to the children—ever deigned to touch it.

  The situation didn’t seem about to get better, and I didn’t seem about to get any smarter. I had a bowl of the Mme’s favorite stew in one hand, a book tucked under my arm, and a closed door right in front of my face. I had to shift things a little and nearly dropped the bowl, but after a minute of awkward struggling, I managed to knock against the door with my right elbow.

  From within, I heard the Margrave sigh. This was not a good sign. The week before he’d been possessed of energy and defiance enough to swear, but since he’d begun to boycott food he’d graduated to sighing only, and the chatelain spent most of his time shouting at everyone he could because, I suspected, he was worried the same as I was.

  “Dinner,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else, and then, “if you wouldn’t mind. If it’s not too much trouble, I mean.”