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  The men outside the door bent their heads together in murmured conversation. They seemed to be conferring over something very serious, whatever it was, since they hadn’t even employed the use of servants for light and were instead carrying their own. I could feel Alcibiades breathing against the top of my head, even and slow, as though he was willing his stomach to keep from growling. I only hoped he wasn’t going to get any rice in my hair.

  In unison, the men lifted their heads. One of them, with neatly manicured facial hair, lifted his hand and made a hurried gesture. There was the soft sound of clanking metal as the two men broke into a slow run. To my surprise, they were followed by at least five more, all of them similarly outfitted. Each was carrying a sword.

  I didn’t hold my breath as the strange procession went past, but I could feel the beat of my heart positively hammering in my chest with curiosity. Had the servants who’d seen us alerted the Emperor to some foul play?

  The only damper on the occasion was Alcibiades, who was still holding on to me like a farmer with an errant stoat. I bit his hand. It tasted like rice.

  Alcibiades cursed, using a word I hadn’t heard before. That was unexpected. Then he dropped me, which I had expected, and gave me an awful look.

  “You needn’t look so wounded,” I told him. “Anyway, I’m certain they’re just the guards. Perhaps we’ll be at the center of another incident! And all before morning, too.”

  Alcibiades didn’t seem nearly as thrilled at the prospect, but then, I was rather resigned to the fact that nothing at all seemed to thrill Alcibiades.

  “I thought that no one was supposed to carry a weapon,” he said. “Not us, and definitely not the Ke-Han.”

  “Perhaps they’re guards,” I said. “Perhaps they were told there were mice in the pantry.”

  Alcibiades wasn’t amused by my little joke. He had yet to grow accustomed to my particular brand of humor. I shrugged it off as he peered around the half-open door, searching the now-dark halls for any further signs of armed men.

  It was curious, I had to admit; or, at least, I was unused to living in a place where the halls needed patrolling in the middle of the night. I could feel all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end—a truly pleasant sensation.

  “Now, now,” I murmured, “it isn’t that surprising, really. No doubt they’re here to protect us, as well as the royal family.”

  “I’d rather they let us protect ourselves,” Alcibiades snapped back at me from over his shoulder.

  “Do you think they would be so foolish as to disarm every man in the palace completely?” I asked, tapping the corner of my mouth with my forefinger. My thoughts were always crowded, and the smallest physical reminder always helped me to organize them. “That would leave them open not to foreign attempts, but native ones. I hear that the royal family has a history of near-death experiences with assassinations. Why, there is the oddest custom—the first son, of course, is the heir, and must be raised in his father’s image with the strictest of manly pastimes, whatever those are. But should there be a second son, or more, they dress them up as little, wide-eyed daughters until they’re of an age where people will start to notice something’s not right, almost as a policy of insurance. Apparently, among the Ke-Han, there is a general rule floating about: that it’s completely unnecessary to assassinate daughters.”

  “How fucking pleasant,” Alcibiades said, biting the words out.

  “Actually, it’s quite clever. All things considered.”

  After a long pause, during which I could practically hear the wheels in my general friend’s head turning, Alcibiades managed to speak again. “So you’re telling me,” he said, a little slowly, and a little disgusted, too, “that the prince we met tonight spent the first five years of his life thinking he was a girl?”

  “Well, I don’t know the exact details,” I admitted, “but I’m sure it was something like that.”

  “This place,” Alcibiades said, shaking his head and brushing rice from the corner of his mouth, “is three-ways fucked.”

  Even though I could have told him that it was the same in every country and every culture—that shock was only a matter of what type of fucked you were and weren’t used to—I was inclined to agree with him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAMORU

  Of the years of the dragon riders, those years of chaos before my father’s empire fell, I remember one thing more clearly than the rest: the color of a raid night. The fires came close enough to scorch the air, and the air was made heavier still with sweat and fear. No man knew if—when—the dragons would come to the capital itself. How could we tell what those mysterious creatures were made of? How could we know what they would be capable of, given enough time?

  But what I remembered most of all was the city after the final battle, when that which we were all dreading came to our very doorstep, and the dragons tore down each age-old wall with one flick of their massive, metal tails.

  In the quiet aftermath of destruction, after the damage had been contained and the last of the fires extinguished, the sulfurous air choked our throats; no amount of burning incense could quite blot out the smell. It woke you in the night, or haunted you like a ghost, clinging to your clothes and your hair and even your skin. It impregnated all the silk. Most of it, my father had burned.

  In the streets, animals from the ruined menagerie wandered, dazed as we were, uncaged but uncertain where to go. They reminded me of the returning soldiers—men who’d belonged in the capital once but no longer knew how to employ their own freedom.

  It was a strange thing indeed to see lions hiding behind the wreckage of an old wall, or watch peacocks spill forth from the broken doorway of an abandoned house.

  By some extraordinary chance, the palace itself had been relatively spared. Perhaps it was because it stood in the shadow of the great magicians’ dome to the west, now a broken, hollow shell. One of the topics under negotiation was whether or not our magicians would even be able to continue under the circumstances, with so few of their prior number and the seat of their power all but destroyed. Our society was not so based in magic as that of the Volstovics, and perhaps in times of peace the magicians would not be so needed. What had hurt us most was the loss of the dome, what it symbolized to our people and our gods. Their dome had existed ever since I could remember, since before my father’s era, and before my grandfather’s. It represented the pinnacle of perfection in architecture—an auspicious shape from all vantage points, and one that complemented the power of the elements as it harnessed them for our magicians’ use so that they might approximate the gods in power. There was great debate even among our lords whether such an edifice could ever be re-created.

  Perhaps the delegation from Volstov would not allow us to. And, I wondered privately, with what magicians would we fill it? Only a bare handful remained.

  The shrill cry of a peacock pierced the night air, indignant as any lord whose sleep had been interrupted.

  When I’d been a child too young to venture from the palace, my father the Emperor had deemed the menagerie unsafe. There was too much open space where assassins might make their move and prove lucky. I, however, had longed more than anything to see a real lion, or a real peacock, and put up an impossible fuss, unbearable for all the servants whose misfortune it was to be assigned to me. I was so adamant that at last Kouje had resorted to playing a lion, in the days when I’d been too young to understand what a dishonor such behavior was for a warrior. I had never had what one might consider a proper nursemaid. Instead, after outgrowing my wet nurse’s care, I’d been entrusted to Kouje, both my body and my mind, so that I might learn from him a warrior’s capability and effortless strength.

  There were days when I doubted that the plan had worked as well as my father had hoped. But Kouje was strong and patient, and when I was a child, he did not leave me much room to doubt.

  After I’d been deemed fit to serve in my father’s best interests, I’d led the men under me with a
s much wisdom and strength as I knew. Being a prince meant that everything I did reflected back on the Emperor, and thus on our people—but it was more than that. Numbered among the men who served under me was Kouje, there to aid, or to make certain that I’d taken all his lessons to heart. My brother Iseul always spoke of pleasing our father, and of what was good for the empire, but I had always had a dual purpose—proving myself a credit to Kouje’s teachings as well as to my father’s bloodline.

  Perhaps, in the end, that was why I did not share my brother’s strength of character. A man divided could never be as strong as a man with a single purpose.

  At times, it seemed a favor from the gods themselves that Iseul had been the firstborn, since any man among us could see that he would make a much better emperor than I. I wondered how he would conduct the talks the next day, and whether he would inspire fear in the men and women from Volstov in the pale morning as he’d so clearly done that night.

  “Do not lower yourself to speaking their language so easily,” he’d chided me after the talks. “Or do you not see what it means, that they have not yet taken the time to learn ours?”

  “It is an insult.” I bowed my head, knowing that it was the only thing that could have caused Iseul to grow so quietly angry.

  “You do what you think is best,” Iseul said, with an imperial wave of his hand. He’d learned that from our father, but had only just begun to employ the gesture. It spoke more than his words. “But if you continue to bow so low, you will be a discredit to this house; you will poison our name.”

  Iseul had never spoken to me so coldly before, but I could only assume it was the strain of his responsibilities weighing on him. Not only did he have to adjust to his new role as Emperor, but he had to supervise me, as well, to make sure I committed no dishonor to our house.

  It was a true gift and a boon that I had not yet done so. At least even Iseul admitted that I had some head for strategy. But if I did, it was all through Kouje’s teachings and through picture scrolls of the histories. I could use a bow, but none so well as most of my brother’s men. I had no cleverness with a sword, nor strength, either.

  “You are like a prince of old, when we were more than warriors,” Kouje once told me. I might well have been no more than thirteen at the time.

  “When we were less, you mean,” I countered.

  “And what skill have I with the brush?” Kouje asked. “Were I given twice my own age to master calligraphy, do you think I could manage it?”

  Kouje had no hand for the arts, that was true. His broad palms were callused, and his fingers blunt and strong. Yet the Emperor, I knew, would not accept my watercolors—unfolding images of cranes and clouds, of imagined mountains.

  “I’m going to run away to the mountains,” I told Kouje firmly, in the clutch of a terrible sulk. How he bore with me during those awful years, I’ll never know.

  “Will you be needing my services there as well?” he asked, not daring to smile at me. I was not entirely insufferable, but I had my moments of jealousy, same as all children. “There are demons in the mountains, you know, with long, terrible claws. They like to kidnap beautiful young princes—never to be seen again.”

  When I had nightmares that night and for weeks after, he regretted it, but I refused to let him apologize. He’d rallied my spirits, at least, as he always did.

  In the many years since then, I’d done my part. All I wanted was to keep my men safe, or feel Kouje clasp my shoulder after a well-chosen tactic proved invaluable. My brother was the warlord, and I was in awe to see him Emperor, so fiercely proud, recognizable, and yet suddenly a complete stranger to me. He’d changed in an instant, as though the brother I’d known had been but a shadow cast from the future.

  It was a hard night for sleeping. My thoughts were too tangled. I could feel the cool breeze stir against my face, as on so many nights before.

  It was then that I mourned for my father.

  Kouje was not there. He would not see me in my moment of weakness, and I was glad for that. We were long past the time when I could allow him to comfort me, and my unhappiness would only trouble him, without allowing him any means to undo it.

  My father had not, in his way, treated me as most fathers treated their sons, second or no. But that was to be expected. My father was not a man: He was an emperor. I hadn’t been the son he wanted, but I was the son he’d been given, and while he and Iseul were better suited for each other—silent even at private dinners in the same grave manner, with wills as swift and fierce as the gods—he had been the father I was given.

  Had I ever thought that we would lose? What haunted me was the question that implied: Had he?

  It was thus that I fell asleep, or must have, with my cheeks streaked by tears as though I was once again a child. It had been a very long time indeed since I’d last cried myself to sleep—and then Kouje had been there, one hand on my back, the other making shadow creatures dance across the far wall.

  Sometime later, I heard the sound of the door in my room slide open. It was Kouje, or must have been, protective as he was, come one last time tonight to check on me before at last allowing himself to sleep. No footfalls followed, but Kouje was quieter than a cat when he chose to be. Those times were either of utmost importance, or to see to it that he didn’t wake me. If he ever differentiated between the two, I didn’t know.

  I wished, distantly, as though through a dream, that he would simply go to sleep, but the sound of the door sliding shut with his exit never came.

  My father and my brother after him had instincts. They could sense, as a great cat in the mountains could sense its prey, a coming storm, enemy troops, an assassin in the house. For the first five years of my life, I’d been raised far differently than they; it was because of this that I could not sense my own danger like a warrior’s scars aching during the rainy season.

  I was just drifting back to sleep when a hand, rough with use of a sword, closed over my mouth.

  I could no more see in the darkness than I could scream around the suffocating palm. Something smelled familiar, but I couldn’t distinguish it. Then, I was being dragged to my feet, out of my bed, and into the darkened hall.

  KOUJE

  During the time of the dragons, I’d spent many a night indulging in the barest artifice of sleep. I would lie prone, the covers over my body and one hand on my sword, but I would not sleep. It was what my body required for rest, but I could not term it restful.

  The day they came over the wall, flying straight for the center of the city with fire all around them, was something I dreamed of often. The war had ended, but I still had not found my rest.

  When the palace was first designed, it was built with separate, smaller corridors for the use of servants, so that the Emperor might never have to trouble himself with encountering one in the hall. They had long since been closed over, boarded up when it was decided they were too much an invitation for assassins, but there was one less closely guarded than the rest. It was the passage the hostlers used most often when conveying news of their lords’ horses to the main palace, and was tolerated only because the door was impossible to find unless you knew it was there.

  It was my duty to know the palace better than I knew the veins lining the back of my own hand.

  That was the way I took my lord Mamoru, my heart pounding fiercely as though it sensed the wrongness in my current actions. It beat as a fish’s heart must, upon finding itself on dry land for the first time. Perhaps what I was doing would prove just as fatal, but I could no more will myself to choose another course than I could will myself to sleep at night.

  I kept my hand over Mamoru’s mouth, half-carrying him through the passageway and half-dragging him. He’d stopped kicking and beating at my shoulders with his fists, but whether it was because he’d caught sight of my face and calmed somewhat, or because he’d gone rigid with terror, I didn’t know.

  It had been so long since I’d last comforted my lord that I’d forgotten the art of it. And,
admittedly, kidnapping him in that fashion was something beyond a sad tale, or a bruised shoulder. Besides, we hadn’t the time for it.

  The stables were dark, filled wall to wall with foreign horses, all of which were exhausted from the ride over the Cobalts. It was there that I released my lord, catching his arm as he stumbled and gasped shallowly for breath.

  “Kouje!” he cried, still wide-eyed with fear. “You nearly scared the life out of me. What are you doing?”

  I wished that I could tell him without harming him. I wished, too, that I knew fully what I was doing.

  Instead, I bowed as low as I could—as low as I knew how to. The straw littering the ground scratched at my nose and the smell of horse overwhelmed me, but I pressed my hands flat to keep them still.

  “Forgive me, my lord. I would not do such a thing—I would never have dreamed of it—only…” I trailed off, for I could not find the words to tell him. After all, I knew, better than anyone, perhaps, how deeply Mamoru admired his brother. One would even have to say that Mamoru loved Iseul. If that day had never come, I might never have had the need to express my own, more private concerns about the reciprocity of those feelings. I had always known that Iseul was cold, ruthless in a way that his father had not been, and hard in a way that was difficult to understand. Perhaps in giving him the benefit of the doubt—any man my lord loved as much as Mamoru did Iseul could not be without merit—I had missed the signifiers up until that point. I had failed in my duty to protect him from the closest threat of all: that of his own brother.

  I could not find the words. My lord had only just lost his father. To eliminate what family he had left in one fell swoop, with a handful of overheard words, was truly too cruel.

  It was not a servant’s job to abide by what he found the most desirable, however. It was a servant’s duty to live only for his lord’s existence. To do what he could to ensure that existence. To keep his lord strong.