Chapter 15
Fifteen
S omeone was coming up the stairs from the ground floor. They were being quiet, and the only reason I had any idea they were coming was the light they must have been holding. I knew they held a candle because the light flickered against the walls.
If they had been holding an electric lamp, it would have been a steady light, but the flicker meant they were holding a candle. That meant they weren’t an electro mage or didn’t have access to an electric light.
I slipped under a hall table. If it was a normal person, holding the candle at chest level like most people found comfortable, the light would cast shadows under the table. Unless they bent to check for me, they wouldn’t see me.
Keeping quiet, I thought about who might be coming. The Emperor’s Dogs were all electro mages, so they wouldn’t be carrying a candle. Who else was searching the empress’s quarters, and for what purpose?
They reached the top of the stairs, and for a moment, I barely breathed. Then they came into view, and I wasn’t breathing for another reason.
Piivu held the candle and walked straight for the empress’s bedroom. Was he here to filch things? Had I hired a thief?
The thought was at once amusing and also slightly horrifying. What if he was stealing things from me that would reveal my true purpose in the Imperium? Had he found my dragon’s egg and turned it over to Tallu? He turned into the bedroom, and, curious, I crept forward.
It was well past midnight, and he would start working in only a few hours. What was he doing here?
I had my answer as soon as I peeked into the doorway. Sleeping. He had curled up on the empress’s large bed, cradling her pillow. His eyes were shut, and he was already snoring.
I stayed for a moment longer, considering the familiar way he had moved around the room. So, he wasn’t sleeping at his quarters in the Mountain Thrown buildings but instead in the quarters of Empress Koque.
I didn’t have time. As carefully as I could, I made my way back up to the attic, creeping across the planks until I reached the window. Crawling out of it was harder than swinging inside, but I managed, getting up to the rooftop and then reversing course, making it back into my bedroom before anyone noticed I was missing.
I shoved the rocks and the letters into my own secret hideaway carved in the bottom of my mattress. Then, I took a cue from Piivu and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The next morning, after breakfast, I went through another few lessons with Nohe about the formulaic phrases I would need to say at my wedding, the correct way to bow, and the correct way to accept all the gifts that we were going to be given. Then, I claimed I had a headache and needed privacy.
In my room, I pulled out everything. The rocks, the letters, the bags of coins I had left, and all of my weapons.
In the past week, I had made attempts at Krustavian forgery. I didn’t speak the dwarves’ language very well and couldn’t possibly write it, but I knew the shape of the letters and figured that a letter written in Imperial with a few Krustavian letters thrown in, as though the writer was confused about how to write in Imperial, was good enough.
The forgeries were fairly basic, acting as though Prince Rute had requested the price for an assault party and answering him with an outrageous sum. The second letter confirmed the date and time of arrival and implied that Prince Rute had helped with the border crossing from Krustau.
Now, I just needed one of the weapons that the Krustavian warriors had been wielding. Nohe had said they used it like a signet ring, meaning that when the letters were found, the military could match the seal to the hilt of the blade of a weapon they already had.
I groaned. I was running low on time. There were seven days… No, six. Six days until the wedding. Giving myself some leeway, that meant I had three days to plant the evidence and make sure it was found. Three days. Three days was doable, I assured myself.
I had done more in less time.
That wasn’t true, but I was giving myself the sort of talk one needed to hear before going into battle. No one liked going into battle and hearing, “This is going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and you’ve never done anything like it. So good luck.”
No, even in my own head, I needed to convince myself that I had done similar things before.
I put the rocks back away, setting everything as it had been, except for a handful of coins that I tucked into one of my pockets. If I was going to be bribing a guard to steal one of the Krustavian swords, I would need money.
Opening my door, I realized that my plan was shit. Because I had no way of bribing anyone, not with Asahi glaring at me, very, very aware of my every move.
“Are you feeling better, Your Highness?” His tone was mild.
I nodded. “Anxious. I would like to speak with General Saxu.”
Asahi frowned, which I could only tell because of the narrowing of his eyes. “Why?”
“Are you my social secretary now? I would like to speak with him. Where might he be found?” I blinked innocently at Asahi, knowing how it annoyed him. “Would he be in the military housing?”
Asahi nodded, and I walked through Turtle House, making him trail behind me. I could feel his displeasure, but I ignored it. I had work to do.
The military housing wasn’t that far from the Mountain Thrown buildings. As far as I could tell, only the top generals lived in the palace. The rest were housed in a base outside of the city.
The rooms in the palace were for housing the top generals and for planning military ventures. They were public-facing rooms, even as the military liked to pretend they owned them. The guards at the door didn’t wear yellow like palace guards but were instead dressed in their military uniforms, everything polished and new. This was not the armor they wore to battle.
The soldiers on duty reacted to my approach with wide, confused eyes, one turning to Asahi as though he was the one who would speak on my behalf.
“The prince would like to see General Saxu,” Asahi said, and only my week’s experience with him let me hear his displeasure at the whole venture.
“Of course, sir.” One of the soldiers bowed to Asahi, then lower to me, then straightened and fled back inside.
Shaking my head, I followed him inside, aware of how everyone stopped when they saw me. Fine. It was strange, but I was not about to wait outside like a dog expecting scraps from the evening meal.
General Saxu saw me immediately, meeting me in a large room with a table empty of anything on it. I could imagine maps and projections, piles of paperwork and little models indicating military forces.
But the imperial expansion was on hold, and all of that was gone for now.
“I would like to see one of the weapons wielded by the attackers.” I frowned at General Saxu, as though thinking very hard. “I wanted to see if there was any chance that it was actually a northern weapon. If my kingdom did launch an attack, I would like to know about it in order to warn my father that his rule isn’t as solid as he would believe.”
“Of course.” General Saxu nodded. “Would you like to see the bodies? We kept them in cold storage, although the smell is beginning to intensify. General Maki has made a request for them, but the emperor has held off until we know more.”
“Maybe. I still don’t believe they were northern. We do not mutilate our warriors in such a way.” I shook my head. “For now, the weapons should do.”
Saxu nodded, leading me down a long hallway and then two sets of stairs until we were in the bowels of the building. I understood immediately what Saxu meant about the smell: the scent of death lingered in the air. We passed closed door after closed door until Saxu turned, opening one of them.
Inside were rows of weapons. I had expected to see just the ones from the assassins in the Dragon Temple, but this was an expansive collection of weapons from the continent. Northern swords were propped up in a case, and the long chain weapon that air mages preferred hung from the ceiling. The double-bladed staffs that warriors from the Ariphadeus used sat in neat rows.
General Saxu opened a cabinet, revealing bloodied swords and spears. The blood and gore had gone a shade of brown and flaked off when he lifted one of the blades and offered it over to me. It was exactly the type of sword that I remembered from the attack, and the heft of it hit me immediately. The blade was so heavy that I never would have been able to wield it long enough to do real damage.
It was definitely Krustavian. Yor?mu had been very clear: the only way to win against a warrior from Krustau was to be more agile, faster than them. A single blow from a Krustavian blade could kill you if taken head-on. But the weight of their weapons forced them to sacrifice speed and flexibility. When they struck, there was no chance to change the direction of their blow, no way to correct if they needed to.
I ran my finger over the hilt, turning it to see the base. There was something that looked like a badger with Krustavian words around it carved into the very bottom of the hilt.
“Who was the first one who accused these men of being northerners?” I asked, suddenly very curious. They might have been dressed like northerners, but they didn’t look like us, not really. It would take a lot of alcohol to convince anyone that the soldiers we had fought were from the Northern Kingdom.
Moreover, anyone that held these weapons would have to recognize them as Krustavian, unless they were being purposely obtuse or lying.
“You ask because the weapons are obviously from Krustau,” General Saxu said.
“Yes,” I said bluntly. Eona? would have been able to read him better, to know if he was on my side, and understood that whoever had made the accusation made it in bad faith. Whoever made the accusation knew these men were from Krustau but wanted everyone to say it was the Northern Kingdom until it became true. Until they were at war with the Northern Kingdom once again.
General Saxu was a good military leader. He had been in the north; he had been in the Blood Mountains. He had fought nearly every front that the Imperium had engaged in. He considered.
“General Kacha,” Saxu said. “Before we even got the full report.”
“The emperor thinks that General Kacha and Prince Rute have nothing to do with this.” That wasn’t quite true. Tallu had said he had no evidence, and he believed General Kacha would never use foreign soldiers.
But I was fishing, and I had put out bait. Saxu knew it, too, but part of him already believed that there was a strong chance Kacha or Rute was behind this. His own instincts made Saxu take the bait.
The trick to fishing was to lay out the line and make the bait appear as appealing as possible. Then you had to wait. I was never good at waiting. Yor?mu and my mother had both been appalled at how little patience I actually had.
“We found more weapons than this,” General Saxu said. “General Kacha asked for several in order to experiment on them and determine if they were truly from Krustau—as you suggested—or if they were disguised northern weapons. He suspects you are the one fooling the emperor.”
I almost laughed. I was fooling the emperor. I was playing a game of mirrors so complicated that I barely understood what I was doing anymore. I just knew that the only way was through. Frame Rute so Tallu would execute him. Kill Tallu. And then…
“I understand why he suspects me,” I said. “But I would never do anything to endanger the Northern Kingdom.”
“ That I believe.” Saxu considered the weapon I still held. I offered it back to him, and he put it in the cupboard.
Now, I knew how to get to the weapons, but breaking in would be almost impossible. Perhaps I would have to wait until after my wedding to do it. I would need to time the guards’ shifts, and I would need to make sure that the weapons were in the same case by the time I came for them. I would have to have the wax ready, a heat source so that I could pour the wax, stamp it, and then replace the blade.
That was fine. Killing Rute after my marriage ceremony just meant Tallu and I would share a wedding night. I shivered, the idea sending a thrill of excitement up my spine.
What would Tallu do on our wedding night? Would he expect more than hands and mouths and skin? Would he expect to take all of me, to push inside me?
Saxu paused, still facing the weapons, his broad back to me. “I am a soldier of the Southern Imperium. I have been a soldier since I was a boy. I first served under Emperor Tallu’s grandfather, Emperor Rellu.”
Saxu had my full attention.
“Prince Rute also took one of the blades.” Saxu touched one of the hilts, his fingers lingering on the cool metal of the blade. “One of the soldiers who delivered them to General Kacha said he was there, and he tested the blade on a servant’s hand.”
“Prince Rute took one of the Krustavian blades?” I said, making sure I had heard correctly, even though it was impossible to ignore the image of Prince Rute and his cold, amused smile as he raised the blade and chopped off someone’s hand. “Why?”
Saxu likely could not answer what drove Rute to such cruelty, so instead, he answered the more obvious question. “Prince Rute has an affection for weaponry. He is a known collector.”
“And he wanted to collect a weapon that still has the blood of the emperor’s dead Dogs on it?” In the north, any weapons from fallen warriors would be carefully cleaned, then returned to their clan so that future warriors could use them and feel those who came before in the blade.
“He did.” Saxu’s shoulders went back. “The emperor might not believe that General Kacha and Prince Rute would be capable of such a thing, but I think you and I are highly aware of what men do for power.”
I nodded my head to General Saxu, making sure it wasn’t quite a bow. Turning, I headed out of the room.
As I walked back up the stairs, ignoring the glances of the imperial military officers I passed, I considered my options, which seemed as though they were growing fewer and fewer.
Saxu had given me an opening. There was one of the Krustavian blades that wasn’t under military lock and key. The blade that Rute had taken.
If I couldn’t find the blade, I could always plant the letters without the seal. Or I could wait until after the wedding, take my time and frame Rute properly by using one of the blades that Saxu had just shown me.
“You should be more careful.” Asahi’s severe voice interrupted my thoughts.
Blinking, I turned back to him. “What?”
“Emperor Tallu is different from his father. Emperor Millu didn’t mind when the court gossiped about him. Emperor Tallu prefers to keep his thoughts more closely held.” Asahi glared at me through his mask, and I could feel his displeasure.
“I was not gossiping”—mostly because what I had been saying was partially made up. It wasn’t that Tallu didn’t believe Rute might be behind it; it was the lack of evidence —“I was checking to see if Saxu believed as I do, that Tallu’s enemies are closer than Krustau.”
Annoyed, I stomped on. A real consort would be more careful about how they spoke about the emperor. And when Tallu had told me his thoughts, there had been an air of privacy to them, as though he wasn’t sure he could share them with anyone.
I wouldn’t feel any guilt about this. That was ridiculous.
We passed servants carrying luggage, the sweat on their brow showing it was not the first load. “The ex-emperor’s Council.”
“Yes,” Asahi confirmed. “The emperor has put them up in the housing near the military buildings.”
They would stay until the one-month celebration that marked the success of my union with Tallu. I had yet to meet any of them, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure I needed to know how evil the people who would be parceling out the Southern Imperium after Tallu’s death were.
It was hard enough knowing that perhaps Tallu wasn’t as cruel as his father, that perhaps that smile meant something.
Then, as though thinking his name made him appear like a ghost in a story, he was there. I blinked, recognizing his Dogs first, the look of four lethal men surrounding one who was even more dangerous. Tallu wore deep green, which made his russet eyes stand out, his gaze fixed on the lake.
Tallu was taller than me, and his profile showed his sharp nose and dark hair. The gleam of his skin reminded me how soft it was, how comfortable it had been in his muscled arms.
For a moment, I thought of avoiding him, continuing down the path and skirting him altogether. But that would get me nowhere. No.
“My lord,” I said, approaching where he stood on the shoreline.
He turned to me, and his mouth didn’t move, didn’t change shape, but something in his eyes softened. He nodded at me, the breeze off the lake making his curls flutter, falling over the narrow band of gold he wore on his brow. Today, his robe was dark, with gold stars stitched into it, patterned after the constellations visible in the Imperium.
“Prince Airón,” he said, his voice rough, as though he hadn’t spoken for some time. He cleared his throat. “Are you out for a walk?”
The conversational gambit was weak, and I took pity on him. “I went to see General Saxu. I wondered if I’d misremembered the weapons. I wanted to see if there were any clues about their origin.”
“You don’t think they were from Krustau?” Tallu’s brow furrowed, and I shook my head.
“The opposite. I am now even more convinced they are from Krustau.” Planting evidence involved planting seeds that evidence might be there. “I learned recently that Krustavian blades have signets on the hilts. I thought if we found any missives from the attackers, we’d know who was hiring them.”
Tallu looked away, over the water again. Pulling something from a small bowl he held, he tossed it in the water. A sea serpent reared up, its crest clearing the surface as it ate whatever Tallu had thrown.
“I still have no evidence it was Rute,” he said.
Surprised, I tried not to let it show. “But you think it was.”
“Him or one of the other hyenas you invited back to the palace.” His voice was so rough at first I thought he was angry, but then the corner of his mouth turned up, and I saw the laughter under his gaze. “Remind me why I offered to house every powerful imperial I deposed for a whole month?”
“You know, in the north, after you get married, you have to come live with your spouse and their other spouses, so if you think you can scare me with angry wedding guests , you’ve never seen a third husband trying to get his wife’s attention when the other spouses didn’t even want him in the clan.” I was grinning, and Tallu laughed sharply.
“Does that happen? I thought… well, it’s been brought to my attention that many of the rumors we rely on as truth about other countries might not be… true.” He looked out over the choppy water. The sea serpents were circling now that he’d thrown in some food. He threw another piece of meat into the water.
“Well, I think the romantic nature of many of the unions is exaggerated. Some do marry because of a romantic love they feel for all their partners, but for most, it’s just a way of strengthening their clans, of bringing in new blood and fresh ideas.” I thought about Yor?mu, my mother’s third wife and the only one she shared her bed with.
“Is that something you’d expect?” Tallu was staring at me now, and his eyes had gone narrow. His fingers were stained red with blood. “I have to warn you, I do not share.”
The moment hung tense in the air, and I could feel the pull of him. I was being dragged in, pulled by an undertow that I couldn’t escape. I didn’t want to escape.
“My dear lord,” I said quietly. “I promise that you are the only Imperial I have any interest in bedding.”
The wind off the lake snatched my words away, but Tallu didn’t make me repeat them. Wearing a satisfied smirk, he kept hold of my eyes as the sea serpents in the water grew more frantic.
I took a few steps forward, covering his hand with mine, sliding my fingers down into the bowl and picking up a slice of raw meat. Without looking, I tossed it into the water.
There was a hiss and a flurry of movement.
“You’re teasing them,” I said, staring up into Tallu’s eyes. “They want more.”
“I pity them,” Tallu said.
The words hit me, startling me out of the taut moment of flirtation that had become something heavier. I swallowed. “What?”
“I pity them. They are trapped here. They have eaten all the other fish and wildlife in the lake. They are faced with two options: cannibalism or death. And we continue to offer them just enough food to survive but no room to thrive. No space to grow. Then, when they are big enough, we eat them, and the cycle starts over again when their eggs hatch.” His eyes traced over my face, sliding away from the questions I knew were in my gaze.
Something cold settled in my stomach, and I wondered if he was talking about the Imperium: stagnant as it waited for the war to restart, for the empire to be given room to grow.
“You are emperor. You can stop that cycle.” The air was damp from the water, chilly enough that goose bumps rose on my arms.
He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I should kill them all. Kill off this group of stunted, thwarted creatures.”
I stared at him. Were we still talking about the Imperium? Tallu’s words and tone felt weighty and serious. And I didn’t want to admit to him that I wasn’t sure of his meaning.
I returned my hand to the bowl, our fingers touching, the liquid cold despite the sun. There was no meat left in the bowl.
“Would that be an emperor’s mercy?” I asked. “They need more food than this.”
Tallu straightened, his eyes finally catching mine, and whatever strong emotion he had felt was long gone. His expression was cold, and I could have kicked myself. We had been teasing only moments earlier. He had been someone I wanted to spend time with.
Now, he was the Emperor of the Southern Imperium.
“We feed them livestock from the farms.” His clipped words held none of the metaphor that he had been using earlier, and I felt as though I had failed a test. What had he been talking about if the sea serpents didn’t represent the Imperium?
He held the bowl out to his side, my fingers slipping out as he pulled it away from both of us. Two servants jogged close, one taking the bowl and the other holding out a towel. Tallu offered up his dirtied fingers, and a servant carefully cleaned them, then turned to me, doing the same.
It was impossible to forget who Tallu was. Servants in attendance, Dogs arrayed around us. Still, with the words held between us, so quiet that none of them could have been overheard, the moment had felt private, as though Tallu was talking directly to me.
“Shall we walk, my lord?” I asked.
Tallu looked at me, his eyebrows going up, whatever part of him had closed off opening again at the gentle suggestion.
He turned without a word, and I took a few quick steps to follow as we began circling the lake. The large pavilion in the center stood empty; wherever General Kacha was, he wasn’t entertaining guests at the emperor’s expense.
“Are you truly worried about the council members you brought back?” I asked, curious.
Tallu shook his head. “They seem smaller now. When I first began my campaign against them, I was no more than a boy. I wasn’t sure my evidence was enough.” His lips went flat. “I underestimated my father’s reaction to perceived disloyalty.”
Two of the Emperor’s Dogs walked ahead and two more behind. I noticed that Asahi lingered with Sagam, likely talking the logistics of having to manage two charges instead of one.
“So you didn’t watch as they arrived today?” I asked.
“I watched as they all came. They did not see me.” Tallu looked out at the lake, then back at me, his smile amused. I wondered if it was more secret passages. Was that how he knew all the secrets of his court? “Not out of cowardice. Out of a desire to hear what they would say when I was not present.”
“I would never accuse the Emperor of the Southern Imperium of cowardice,” I said, bringing a hand to my chest. “Nor trickery. Nor deception. Nor craftiness.” Tallu’s face was pulling tight with hurt that he quickly covered with blankness. “Just good sense,” I finished.
His expression was still tight, and I stopped myself before waving my hand carelessly. I was learning, slowly, that motions that meant little in the north were of great import here. “It is reasonable to be cautious and clever when your enemies are in your home. I would do the same thing. It’s why we’re inviting them here, isn’t it?”
Tallu nodded. “Yes. So far, the only ones who have arrived have been publicly very grateful for the invitation.”
“We’ll have to see who meets with them over the next month.” I doubted anyone would try in the week before the wedding, not when their position was still uncertain.
“A month and a week,” Tallu corrected. “We are not wed yet, Prince Airón of the Northern Kingdom.”
The way his lips caressed my name made me shiver. I nodded jerkily. “No, we aren’t.”
And we wouldn’t be for long, once we’d actually gone through with the ceremony, I reminded myself. I couldn’t let myself fall for this dangerous, powerful man. No matter what weakness he showed me.
I smiled back at him and reminded myself of what was absolutely true: I was going to kill him.