Shadow Magic (44 page)

“I think,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “that tonight we will
be sleeping with blankets and a pillow, and that tomorrow we can buy rice for breakfast.”

That surprised a smile from him, and he paused at last so that I might help him up onto the horse.

“I hope that no one misses that pillow,” he said, covering a yawn with one hand.

I didn’t speak my next thought, partly to let Mamoru sleep if that was his desire, and partly because I had a feeling he’d make us turn back immediately if he knew that the pillow Aiko had given us had been her own.

I was getting really sick of sitting on my ass for reasons that had nothing to do with diplomacy.

Not that diplomacy hadn’t been bad enough. It was still pretty high on my list of invented Ke-Han tortures, right above having my fingernails pulled out one by one and right
below
sitting next to Caius Greylace at dinner while he cooed and cawed like a pigeon and raised all sorts of hell when I got food on his fancy sleeves.

Those sticks were impossible to eat with. That was that.

Still, I got to add a new kind of torture to my exciting list, and that was interrogation in a language I only half-understood.

No one had caught us coming out of the theatre. Caius had led us back through some kind of rat-warren maze of back alleys and side streets until we’d made it back to the palace, leading me to question how and why he knew the city this well and what all else was stuck up there in that crazy head of his.

But the palace was where we’d run into that letch, Lord Kencho, who’d probably been sneaking out to visit the pleasure district or whatever they had there in place of Our Lady of a Thousand Fans, and figured we’d blow the whistle on him if he didn’t do it to us first.

And so we were, more or less, considered traitors—to a man we
weren’t even loyal to, either—when all we’d done was go out for a night of theatre.

“You did look
ever
so slightly suspicious, my dear,” Caius said on our way back to our rooms, like all the questioning hadn’t put him out at all.

Then again, his Talent had something to do with questioning, I thought, and maybe they hadn’t managed to get a thing out of him. All I knew was that I felt real sorry for whatever poor bastard had got stuck with Caius Greylace in his quiet little interrogation room. Then I chuckled, very privately.

“Yeah, and you didn’t?” I snorted, just to emphasize how stupid
that
was.

“I
was not the one brandishing a sword and sweating like I’d just defeated the entire Ke-Han army at Dragon Bone Pass,” Caius pointed out.

“Don’t say things like that,” I barked, secretly pleased at the image it conjured. “They’ve probably got eyes on us now. If they didn’t before.”

“You worry far too much,” said Caius, and his eye flashed in a way that made me kind of happy I was on his side, and kind of
really
sorry for that poor bastard who’d been interrogating him. Poor son-of-a had no idea what he’d got into. Caius let out a little sigh, like all this had been mildly trying, and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m in need of a nice hot bath. Would you come and collect me before the talks begin? I have a feeling things are going to be especially interesting today.”

I wanted to tell him to hang the talks, and that I was going straight to bed after being kept up all night with that babble. Riot in the streets or
not
, there’d been no way for Emperor Almighty’s guards to prove we’d been doing anything more inflammatory than walking the streets at night. The sword had been a little more difficult to explain—it being an imperial guard’s sword, after all, but it was pretty amazing what kind of lying you could get by with just by playing dumb and not speaking the language.
Excuse me
and
I don’t follow
were easy enough. Little Lord Greylace would’ve been proud of the way I’d lied, right through my teeth without blinking.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just let me change my shirt.”

Only Josette was waiting for me in my room.

“My dear!” Caius exclaimed, but I shut the door neatly before he could get anything else out. Hopefully I got him right on the nose.

“You,” Josette said, “are causing
so
much trouble.”

“It’s Greylace,” I replied. I didn’t want to be rude, but how’d she got herself in, anyway? Besides which, I needed a new shirt, and I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. Like I
had
done something wrong, and that wasn’t the sort of situation in which I could feign ignorance. “He’s trouble, that one.”

“So are you,” Josette said. “These are important diplomatic proceedings. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but if things fall through here, we’re in a great deal of trouble.”

“Politicians,” I muttered, busying myself with whatever was in the closet. In the time I’d been there, Caius Greylace had slowly been infiltrating my wardrobe. There were all kinds of silks I didn’t recognize. I just wanted a shirt, damn it all, made of cotton, that I wouldn’t feel bad tearing or dribbling on. Something that felt like home and a little bit like
me
, and if it made the others stare, I didn’t mind one whit. “All this didn’t matter in the field, you know.”

“I wasn’t aware we were in the field any longer,” Josette replied neatly. “Unless of course you are intending to place us back there—but I myself would prefer a bit of peace.”

“Peace,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what I meant by it, though. Peace was supposed to come hand in hand with quiet, but I certainly hadn’t gotten any of that. Peace was supposed to be home: going back to the farm, maybe, and feeding the chickens, who never told you that what you were wearing was “all wrong.” Instead, I’d somehow distinguished myself to th’Esar in a way that stuck me with a vacation across the mountains, and it was really starting to irritate me. There had to be more people than just me with a Talent no one knew about. I was getting really sick of being some kind of ace up th’Esar’s sleeve.

“Yes,” Josette replied. “Peace. Which we haven’t brokered yet. If you’re going to be angry, be angry with our ineffectiveness here, not with the ideal.”

I supposed she was right.

“I’ve got to change,” I said, at a loss.

“Fine by me,” Josette replied. “I hear from Lord Temur that Lord Greylace was very interested yesterday in what performances there were down in the city. Would you know anything about that?”

“Theatre,” I said. “Not my thing.”

If she wasn’t going to leave, I couldn’t just keep standing there doing
nothing, shirt in hand, like a dumb ox. If she wasn’t going to leave, I was just going to have to change right here in front of her. She was a fine, strong woman. She could handle it.

I put my hand on the top button, almost a warning, to see what she would do.

“I’m trying to decide,” Josette continued, as though she hadn’t even noticed, “whether trouble follows you around—whether you are the most unlucky man I’ve ever met—or whether you are the one who causes it.”

“I speak my mind,” I countered, lamely. “I won’t sugarcoat who I am for these fucking—”

“Temper,” Josette interrupted. “I understand your position, Alcibiades; I truly do. You were an unfortunate choice for this mission, but that doesn’t mean I will allow you to run amok, like a bull in a china shop, tearing everything down around you. What I can’t decide,” she added, softening, “is whether Caius is the one waving about the red flag. No pun on colors intended, I assure you.”

“Ah,” I said, feeling helpless. I wished Caius were there. He would have done all the talking, and they could have left me out of it. “Well.”

“Not that I believe seeing a play is something to be condemned,” Josette concluded. “I just wished you’d thought to invite me, that’s all. Are you going to change, or are you just going to stand there staring at me?”

Diplomats, I told myself. Politicians. Talents. I’d rather have chickens any day, and I didn’t care who looked twice at me about my preferences.

“Change,” I said. “Right.” Might as well actually use one of the standing screens—even if it did cut off right around my armpits, made for a smaller man than I, and one who liked floral patterns more. I stepped behind it and changed without looking at her—why was she still there, I wondered, and thought again that Caius would have known—and then I moved toward the connecting door between our rooms, mostly because I knew him and I knew he was standing there listening to everything we said, or everything she was saying, considering how the conversation had gone.

“Oh, hello there,” Caius said, standing there like a little saint. He’d already managed to change into something completely different, of course, though I noticed with some grim amusement that his hair
wasn’t wet. He hadn’t yet bathed. If anything could ruffle his fur, that would. “Are you having a lovely time?”

“You might as well come in, Greylace,” Josette said, somewhat grudgingly, “since you two are such bosom buddies, and never go anywhere without each other. Far be it for me to separate you two.”

“Hold on just a…” I began, but then Caius was in the room, and I knew I’d never get another word in edgewise again.

“You look lovely this morning, Josette,” Caius said, before taking the only other seat there was. That left me to sit cross-legged on the bedding, which I
did
, but I sure as bastion wasn’t
happy
about it. This way, both Josette and Caius towered over me, and I felt like a child who was being punished.

“And you do too, as always,” Josette replied. “Now tell me what the blazes is going on.”

“How do I know you won’t go straight to Lord Temur and tell him everything I’ve told you?” Caius countered simply.

Josette looked like she wanted to throttle him, which I only halfway understood. Something was going on that I didn’t quite grasp, but they were each accusing each other just on the surface of other things that hadn’t been spoken yet. This was an entire level of diplomacy I hadn’t been made for, but here I was anyway, watching everything go down. I wished I had my sword. I wished I knew how to kick them both out, and let them go at each other on their own time.

“Are you suggesting that I’m sleeping with the enemy?” Josette demanded, once she regained her composure. “Because I’ll have you know,
Greylace
, that they aren’t the enemy any longer.”

“You two are very close,” Caius said.

“Indeed,” Josette replied. “Fostering good relations between sides is what I’ve been brought here to do—not brawl in the streets like a common thug.”

“I did not brawl,” Caius said.

“It’s true,” I agreed, though I didn’t know who I was defending, or why. “He didn’t. He’s much too small for that.” Caius looked deeply pleased, and I turned my eyes elsewhere, immediately regretting that I’d spoken up at all.

“You’re both behaving like idiots,” Josette said at length, “and I won’t allow it. If no one else speaks to you—admonishes you for the way you’ve been comporting yourselves—that’s fine. But I’m here to do
my duty. If I wake up to the news that two of
our
number have been interrogated again, I’ll interrogate you both myself!”

“How delightful,” Caius said. “In that case, I think I should tell you that all our mail is being read without our consent—and, quite likely, altered.”

“Oh yes,” Josette said. “That I know. Why else do you think I have attempted to become so close to Lord Temur?”

“I had hoped,” Caius replied. “You’re such a logical sort. But then, think how romantic it would be—a lord of the Ke-Han and a magician from the Basquiat, thrown together by accident. Amidst the whirlwind of diplomacy and treason, they can only trust each other…”

“No thank you,” Josette said, just as I expressed my disgust with a low grunt.

“Well, I would support it, if you
did
love him,” Caius said, almost petulantly. “Nonetheless, I’m glad to see you’ve kept your head.”

“Unlike some,” Josette returned dryly. “What tipped you off to the letters?”

I listened to Caius’s explanation of the situation with some measure of disbelief and a significant amount of confusion. Whatever’d just happened made no sense to me, but if they’d intended to talk about this all the while, why hadn’t they come out and said something? Unless each one had some reason to distrust the other—which meant that Josette had come here because she hadn’t trusted
me
.

“I’m not a traitor,” I said, in the middle of Caius’s monologue about Yana.

“I didn’t think so,” Josette said, grinning.

“Indeed,” Caius added, “neither of us would ever suspect you capable of such double-dealings.”

“Was that an insult?” I asked. “Because I for one don’t think anyone should be proud of being smart enough to
betray
—”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” Caius said, resting his hand upon my shoulder. “Do you suppose that your lord Temur knows of what’s happening? I really will be crushed if he is not the man I believed he was.”

Josette sighed, a heavy sigh, from deep in her chest.
“I
don’t believe he knows. Not for the reasons you might be thinking, Greylace, so keep that to yourself, but… In my opinion, he’s not aware of it.”