Chapter 7 #3
“You need to tell Tallu,” I said. Na? returned to my shoulder, cleaning her paws, licking the blood of some other creature from the soft down between her scales. With the sun setting, our shadows were long, staining the tall grass around us a dark purple.
She turned to me, and I could see a hint of her manipulation, a hint of who she had been at court when she begged, “Can you tell him for me?” She wet her lips, her tongue moving and her throat working for a second.
“We were not… allies at court. It is possible he will see the information as a trap if it comes from me.”
She carefully picked each word, looking at me from under her lashes, checking to see how her plea had landed. She was good, but I could also hear the undercurrent of truth in her words. Lerolian had said she was terrified.
If she was using me, it was only because she was a smart enough player to have looked at the board in front of her and realized that the only way out for both her sister and her was if she convinced us of her honesty. But convincing us of her honesty was not the same as being honest.
I shook my head. “We may be allies in this, Lady Topi, but you must be able to convince Tallu as well. He is emperor. I am merely his consort.”
Her eyes narrowed, her mouth twisting. But when she looked at me, it was with an annoyed respect. “Neither one of us believes that, Prince Airón. Even the Dogs know which way their master looks these days. And it is not to the Kennelmaster or anyone else better suited to the role of adviser.”
I watched her for a moment before turning us back toward Tallu and the rest. Tallu’s private tent had already been set up, the flaps moving in the gentle breeze.
When I approached, he waved me closer, the two of us performing the dance we had perfected over the days on the road: me as the supplicant, Tallu as the grantor of my wishes.
I bowed, lowering my head, before looking up at Tallu.
“The Kennelmaster should hear this as well.”
Tallu called for him, and Topi went through her story again. The Kennelmaster fired pointed questions at her, which she begrudgingly answered. Tallu sat, watching her, his eyes fixed on her face.
That was why she had wanted me to tell her story for her. These two men would know when she was lying.
The tent had warmed by the time she finished, a small brazier in the corner glowing. I looked at Asahi, still silent in the opposite corner, his face as implacable as a mask. “Take Lady Topi back to her tent. Perhaps she would enjoy an extra serving of dinner tonight. She looks hungry.”
Topi didn’t have the strength to argue. Telling the story so many times had slumped her shoulders, made her face drawn.
She hadn’t lost the pallor that drained the gleam from her cheeks.
She and Asahi left, the open flap revealing Coyome where he lingered near the fire, clearly waiting for them.
With her gone, Asahi and Coyome taking her far enough away that she could not hear our conversation, I turned back to the Kennelmaster and Tallu, aware that I would have to break the silence between them.
“Well? Do we believe her?”
“It would be a good place for Maki to hide. The border with Krustau is porous at best.” The Kennelmaster leaned back, one thumb tucked into the waist of his pants.
“He would know that my attention should go to General Kacha in the Blood Mountains or General Bemishu in the Ariphadeus Desert,” Tallu agreed. “We will be a surprise.”
“Not for long,” I pointed out. “You said that the Lakeshore Palace has been quiet since your father’s death. Our arrival will be obvious to anyone watching the area. If we go to the palace first, then by the time we get to his camp, Maki will be long gone.”
“My men are not soldiers,” the Kennelmaster said. “And even if they were, ten soldiers against Maki’s fifty men? Those are difficult numbers even for General Saxu.”
I shook my head. “We do not need soldiers. We need assassins. We need men who can go into camp and kill or kidnap Maki before his men even wake. Then it will not matter to his men what we are offering, because they will know that it is the only option for them.” When the Kennelmaster continued to stare at me, I looked right back at him, feeling one of my eyebrows go up.
“Or are you saying that your men have never slipped into a room at night and slit a throat on imperial orders?”
The Kennelmaster’s surprise turned into amusement as he bowed his head in acknowledgment. Then, he looked at Tallu, his eyes fixed on the emperor. “Are those your orders, Your Imperial Majesty?”
Tallu was very quiet, and the brazier that had been casting light began casting shadows instead, ones that darkened Tallu’s expression, giving his high cheekbones a frigid air.
He was a sculpture made of copper and gold, as though he were back in his throne room, performing for the court that feared him without giving him the respect he deserved.
In that moment, I remembered the gilded tree Eona? and I had seen in our rooms, metal strangling nearly all of the life out of the bark and leaves beneath the gold.
Even here, he had to perform. The Kennelmaster had implied he knew Tallu’s true purpose, knew how far from the promise it truly was, but even with him, Tallu still played the part of the irreproachable emperor.
The Kennelmaster shifted, his leather armor making a soft groaning sound as it rubbed against itself. Finally, Tallu asked, “What do we think happened to Pito?”
The Kennelmaster glanced at me. I tilted my head, thinking of the letters that we’d read, the demands the general had made for dead bodies. He had used electro magic for the same necromancy as the blood mages. “You think Maki killed her and used his new powers over death to control her?”
“Unless you think he did something worse,” the Kennelmaster said.
He was already nodding. “Even among the Dogs, Maki’s reputation is grotesque.
If he has managed to use his magic and his science to find a way to control someone without killing them—to take their mind over—then that is dangerous indeed. ”
I shuddered, thinking again of Toji, the Dog I had killed to protect me and Miksha. What if such a thing could be done to a living person? What if their limbs and voice and eyes could be moved about like a puppet made of living flesh?
Tallu nodded. “It is my desire that we dispatch General Maki before we reach the Lakeshore Palace. He poses too much of a threat to leave him in the wind.”
The Kennelmaster leaned forward and pressed his fingertips together.
“Three days from now. We won’t be close enough to the Lakeshore Palace to alert anyone there, but my men will ride out that night, straight for Maki’s camp. We’ll reach it before Your Imperial Majesty reaches the Lakeshore Palace.”
Tallu nodded, letting his chin dip low enough that it was considered an official order in the complicated language of gesture the imperials spoke.
That night, when Na? woke me, her voice a singsong on an arctic wind that wrested me from my slumber, I looked at Tallu, frozen next to me.
His features were still tense, even in sleep, adding years that hadn’t been there when I had first met him.
We were too young to feel this old, and I reached over, brushing hair off his forehead.
Na? sat on her pillow, her legs crossed, wearing a robe for modesty.
“Are you ready?” she asked sharply.
I shook my head. “Tallu is aware. Not consciously, but he knows something is going on. We need to wake him and explain it, now. Here. Where no one else can hear us.”
Na? considered me. Finally, she dipped her chin, her stark white hair falling forward. Her prismatic eyes looked up at me, fangs resting on her lower lip.
“Fine. Do so.”
I gaped at her. “Do what?”
“Wake him.” Na?’s face went slightly savage, her amusement crinkling her eyes, turning them into mirrors. “Wake him, because I will not. So you must do so, or you let our work here be a torture to him.”