CHAPTER NINE

ROYSTON

According to Adamo, we really were winning the war, and while I was grateful for my reprieve from country life, the facts didn’t exactly add up. There was a bad taste in my mouth about the entire business, and it wasn’t just the bloodless, bodiless white wine that seemed to have come back into fashion during my absence from the court.

“Disgusting, isn’t it,” Adamo said. “Like drinking some horse’s piss.”

“I can’t be sure if your comparison is entirely apt,” I replied as we clinked our long-stemmed flute glasses together in a toast to our similar tastes, “but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Whoreson,” Adamo said fondly. “It was a turn of phrase.”

“Oh, yes, of course it was,” I said.

Together we downed our horse piss in one great go, but I still had no better bearings on what the Esar thought he was doing. If we were winning the war, then there was no reason for him to have called me back to court because I was needed on the front. It was possible that he wanted all his forces for the last great victory, but then why was the entire city engulfed in celebration over a war we hadn’t yet exactly won? His behavior was even more baffling than usual, and I sensed some smoke screen to the entire display. The Esar himself was conspicuous by his absence for most of the night, but that in and of itself wasn’t entirely unusual, as he usually left it to the Esarina, who was very fond of fine parties, to devote her full attention toward them.

There were other faces, too—ones that I was expecting to see, a few I was expecting to have to suffer stultifying conversation with—that, though I was grateful not to be afflicted with their presence, made me more uncomfortable in their absence than the awful wine we were being served.

Something was happening this night, something very private, and as far as I could tell it pointed very much against our guaranteed victory.

For example: Both Margraves of th’Incalnion were missing. And as they were of the oldest magician blood in all of Volstov, venerated scholars in their own right and never the sort to miss a party, I was immediately suspicious. As I began to catalog the list of those missing—Barebone of Barrowright Abbey, Wildgrave Marshall from the Valence, and velikaia Antoinette were the most noticeable; I don’t believe I’d ever been to a party of the Esar’s at which any one of them was not in attendance, much less all of them absent the same night—I felt more and more uncomfortable. There was always the likelihood that Antoinette, at least, had left early as she always did. It was a possibility, however slight, that some of them had found other parties more agreeable, but it didn’t seem likely. Not all of them at once. There was something being kept from all of us, and the Esar seemed to feel that, if he put on a grand enough show, we’d be too busy drinking, dancing, gossiping, and listening to the music—not to mention watching in rapt fascination our friends and enemies disappear in odd couplings onto the balconies—that we’d none of us realize what was really happening.

“Don’t you think there’s something a little strange about all this?” I asked Adamo, turning down the truffles as they passed me by.

“What, like how we’re here and all but setting off fireworks, and nobody’s actually handed the head of the Ke-Han warlord over to th’Esar yet?” Adamo asked.

I was grateful for his straightforward manner. “Exactly.”

“Or maybe your being recalled like we’re all in desperate need of you,” Adamo added. “And—no offense, your Talent’s been real useful, so don’t take this any way toward being personal—but you’re not the only one’s been recalled, either.”

“Yes, I saw Caius,” I said. “I never thought he’d be . . . invited back. Or come back, even if the Esar paid him, for that matter.”

“And there’s Berhane, too,” Adamo added.

“Is there really?” I asked. “Bastion. Something is going on.”

“Not necessarily. Th’Esar’s the kind of man who likes things finished once and for all, and if the war’s heading in that direction, then he could just be calling back all his best and brightest for the final push,” Adamo finished. “Stop sending those truffles away.”

“My apologies.” I paused for a moment, both to think over the information as well as to summon the young man bearing the platter of truffles back to our side. Adamo plucked one off the careful arrangement of powdered sugar and lace and chewed slowly on it. I didn’t altogether agree with his logic, though what he said about the Esar made sense. He was that sort of man. “What’s your count on who’s missing?” I asked at length.

“Fifteen,” Adamo said.

“Does that number include Antoinette?”

“Sixteen,” Adamo revised. “And I’ll tell you another thing, only this is about the Ke-Han. They’re not even fighting like they used to.”

The musicians started up a cheery waltz and there was a commotion of partners being changed and fans being snapped open to flutter widely in front of flushed bosoms from which most of the powder had been worn off by perspiration. I cast an unhappy look out over the crowd, then turned my full attention back to Adamo. “I don’t see how that entirely fits in with our present collection of evidence,” I began.

“Most men about to get their tails beat in a game they’ve been fighting for over a hundred years—a game so important that losing it’s going to cost them their lives—don’t just give up fighting like all the wind’s been knocked out of them,” Adamo explained. “No, they fight like dogs. They go for the throat, the belly. They don’t just lie down in the sand and call for their mothers.”

“I take your point,” I replied. “My mistake.”

One of the members of the bastion passed too close to us then for me to be entirely comfortable with his purposes—it would have been my own fault if our conversation were overheard by all and sundry, with us discussing it in the middle of the Esar’s own ballroom—and Adamo cleared his throat, showing me he’d been thinking the same thing. This conversation was best left to another time and another place, and when we’d not been drinking so much horse piss, either.

“It’s good to see you again,” Adamo said. “And looking so healthy. For a while your letters had me thinking I needed to fly in there and pull you out myself.”

“As dashing as that would have been,” I replied dryly, “I did manage to take care of myself.”

“ ’Course you did,” Adamo said, as if he didn’t believe me for a single second. “And the new, ah, apprentice you brought with you tonight had nothing to do with it?”

“Bastion,” I swore, a little too loud for propriety. “Hal.”

“I think he was in the bathroom, last I checked, having a fascinating conversation with Raphael—he’s one of mine, flies Natalia—about third-edition gold prints,” Adamo told me. “Weirdest damn conversation I’ve ever been privy to, if you don’t mind me saying it.”

“Bathroom,” I said, then, “thank you,” then made my hurried excuses and my equally hurried way to the bathroom, where I found Hal alone—no longer, it would seem, engaged in conversation with the young airman Adamo had mentioned.

“Royston,” he said, turning at once. There were mirrors everywhere, allowing me to see him from all angles, and just where the blush began—at the back of his neck—before it suffused most of his face and eclipsed his freckles. “This must look—I mean, I intended to come back, but the whole sink is made of porcelain and marble, then I had a conversation with a member of the Dragon Corps. Did you know that Raphael collects third-edition gold prints?”

“Hal,” I said, stepping close to him at once, and taking his hands. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Why,” Hal said. “What are you talking about?”

“It seems that I abandoned you most cruelly to a night spent making idle conversation with frequenters of the bathroom,” I explained. “As curious a choice as that may have been for you to make, it was no doubt influenced by my utter selfishness this evening.”

“Not at all,” Hal said frankly. “You were glad to be back. I didn’t wish to intrude, nor did I wish to embarrass you.”

“Embarrass me?” I asked, baffled at this unexpected fear of his. “How in bastion’s name do you propose you might have done that?”

“There were,” Hal admitted, with the faintest ghost of a wry smile, “many times this evening where I have to admit I had no idea what you or your friends were talking about.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yes. That.”

“It’s very different here,” he said softly. “I know that you love it. I want to love it, too—”

“The things most worth loving take their time in giving you reason,” I told him. “I did abandon you tonight. There were matters weighing heavily on my mind, but this is no excuse.”

“I didn’t mind,” said Hal, squeezing my hands with such intractable good nature that I felt it in my chest. “I met more than one or two interesting people.”

“Did you,” I said. “Interesting people at a ball? You’ve been much more fortunate than most.”

“You’re very strange.” Hal did smile then, and it was a true smile, as true as all the ones I’d seen in the country. “You talk of your friends as if you don’t care, but I know that you missed them.”

“I am a cold and distant man,” I answered, full of contrition.

Still, I couldn’t help but be pleased that he’d noticed. Oftentimes I found that only the men I’d known longest, the ones who remained in my life throughout the years, were the ones who saw immediately to the heart of my strange deception.

Perhaps it was only my own foolish stubbornness, obligating me to conceal what it was I felt when I felt it. Hal had been the exception and not the rule in this regard.

“You aren’t,” he said, and he truly did seem happy, for all I’d left him to the tender mercies of total strangers while I satisfied both my curiosity and my insistent craving for the city life. Then he leaned up and pressed his mouth to my cheek, chaste and warm.

He was abiding by the rules I’d set down for us much better than I had wanted him to, I thought treasonously. I held him close for a moment, until a stir of voices passed the bathroom door and I was forced to weigh my desires against the potential consequences of putting Hal at the center of the storming gossip of which I knew the noblesse were so very capable. Reluctantly we separated, though I wasn’t quite quick enough to thwart my own urge to smooth the fringe from his eyes.

“Are you quite ready to leave the bathroom now?” I asked. “Or have you developed a rapport with your own reflection?”

“Strange,” he said again fondly, then turned away to examine his hair in the many mirrors. I felt a small pang of guilt, as it was a concern I’d never seen him exhibit before.

“You look fine,” I reassured him. “Better than fine, even. Luminous. Radiant.”

He laughed, exiting the room ahead of me, but I saw the flush of color at the back of his neck, and I knew that, for all my foolishness, at least the words hadn’t been in vain.

There were more people in the halls, and seemingly fewer in the grand ballroom than there had been at the height of the night’s festivities. Of course, not everyone was for dancing, and once the requisite grace period had been observed—to show respect for the Esar and his particular brand of pomp and circumstance—it was generally considered acceptable to take your leave.

So perhaps it was only my suspicious nature, or perhaps I’d only been too long removed from the city to remember the subtle particulars of concealment and subterfuge, but everywhere I looked it seemed as though there was some great mystery happening just beneath the glass. The guests stood sequestered in groups of twos and threes, speaking at volumes no louder than a whisper. Every now and then someone would laugh, high and uncomfortable, or the loose, throaty guffaw of the very drunk. I pitied whoever that might have been, for they were sure to have the most thankless of headaches in the morning. Indeed, my own head was starting to feel too large, my skull too tight in a way that I’d unhappily come to recognize. I attributed it to the stress of my return and my tenuous situation with Hal, but it didn’t make the aching any easier to bear.

What allowed me to nurture my suspicions instead of quashing them outright were the many faces I recognized and even respected. Marius of the Basquiat was there, and speaking to Berhane, whose presence alone would have surprised me if Adamo hadn’t told me himself she’d been recalled. That she would have anything to say to Marius could bode nothing but ill.

“Hal,” I said, feeling guilty even as I said it, “would you excuse me for one more moment?”

“They might be at Arnaud’s party,” Berhane was saying, in cold and brittle tones. “Or they might be elsewhere entirely. All in all I think it’s dreadfully rude of you to ask me when you know I’ve only just got back. And when you didn’t even bother to write!”

Marius had the bewildered and miserable look of a man caught without an umbrella in an unexpected downpour. “I did write,” he said, then, noticing my approach he added, “Anyway, now is hardly an appropriate time, Berhane.”

“Hello, Marius,” I said cheerfully. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Not at all!” Berhane answered. “I was just leaving.”

“That’s a dreadful shame,” I said, “since I haven’t yet had the honor of welcoming you back to our fair city.”

She paused in thought at that, smoothing her immaculate hairstyle with one idle hand. “Well,” she said, her tone softening. “I’ve heard I wasn’t the only one recalled.”

“Indeed not.” I took her hand to kiss it, thinking about how best to fish for knowledge of what my colleagues thought of the Esar’s ball and whether any of them found it as strange as I did. “I’ve heard that the Esar wants all his very finest for the battle to come, so it stands only to reason.”

Berhane fluttered a fan in front of her smile and Marius made a noise of disgust.

“Oh come now, Royston, don’t tell me this doesn’t all seem a little . . . off to you,” he said.

I shook my head, still holding Berhane’s hand. I’d discovered that the secret to getting any information out of Marius was to go through Berhane first. I’d have felt a little guiltier over it if it hadn’t been so apparent that she enjoyed the charade as much as I did. “I saw the young man you’ve been mentoring, Marius,” I said. “He looked rather green around the gills if you don’t mind my saying.”

“He’s had it somewhat rougher than you have,” Marius replied dryly. “All things considered.”

“Oh, come now, arguing when the gossip is so good? Royston, Caius was here just a moment ago!” Berhane confessed, leaning close that I might hear her whisper. “But he was called away by one of the Esar’s dreadful, smirking servants. He can’t have done anything so soon. I wonder if he’s to be given an official pardon.”

I felt my suspicions worsen, and for all Berhane’s tone was light, her eyes were sharp and unhappy. She had her suspicions the same as I did.

Marius shook his head. He looked as though he wanted to hang the pair of us, but I didn’t know for which offense. “Has your sojourn from the city caused the both of you to forget how easily one can be overheard here? Never mind it now. If there is something to discover, we can trust we’ll discover it soon enough.”

“Ever the teacher.” I sighed. “It was good to see you, Berhane.”

“Royston.” Marius’s voice caught me just as I’d begun to turn away. Berhane had dropped the act just as I had, and together we were three very grim magicians with nothing but our suspicions to hold us together. “The Wildgrave was here for about five minutes at the beginning of the ball. He excused himself from our table very quickly. Said he had some blasted fever.”

“When I arrived, I saw him arguing with Caius,” added Berhane. “And the pair of them disappeared down one of those awful corridors the Esar had built.”

I nodded, not entirely certain what to do with the information now that I’d been given it. Wildgrave Marshall was the eldest son of one of the most distinguished magician’s houses. As far as I knew, he had never been involved in any suspicious activities before. And it seemed as though Caius Greylace was appearing and disappearing as convenienced him throughout the ball, although that in and of itself wasn’t exactly unusual.

“If we discover anything,” Marius said, shaking my hand, “we’ll let you know.”

I rejoined Hal with much apology, and immediately explained my charade with Berhane to the half-baffled, half-hurt expression on his face. I even took his hand as we made our exit from the palace, too tired to pretend I didn’t want what I did and in want of comfort at that particular moment.

“Are you all right?” Hal pulled me from my reverie and I returned with a jolt as if from underwater.

“Yes,” I said, pulling my gaze away from Caius and a pale girl with blue hair by the door. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“You only looked very far off,” Hal said. “Like the way the chatelain used to say I did when I was thinking of a story I’d read earlier and where might be the best place for finishing it.”

“I was merely trying to remember the names of some of the more important people at our table,” I confessed, and felt all the better about the small deception when his face lit up as surely as one of the glowing lanterns lining the Palace Walk.

I felt an irrational wish for more time to speak with Adamo, and in private, where the long fingers of the bastion mightn’t still reach us. My old friend was refreshingly straightforward, and such secretive matters fairly overwhelmed my appetite for delicacy. For court intrigue and rumors of the war, I would take nothing but honesty from both barrels, and be all the gladder for it. Adamo understood what few men did, and he managed it somehow while never quite turning into one of the near monstrosities some of his airmen had.

“I met the man charged with rehabilitating the Dragon Corps,” Hal said, and I got the uncomfortable sense he’d said something just before it, that I’d missed a piece of his conversation while lost in my own private thoughts. “The one they were talking about. Is it true he’s just a student from the ’Versity?”

“I believe so,” I said, adding Marius to the list of people I would have to speak to shortly. Knowing Marius, I would have to bribe him to get him to admit whether he knew anything. Perhaps I would go through Berhane. “What was he like? Interesting?”

“He was,” said Hal. “Only, I think I said something wrong, and he got quite strange and left in a rush.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said, trying not to seem as distracted as I felt. “After what I’ve heard from the Chief Sergeant, I should think he ‘got quite strange’ all on his own.”

The music seemed too loud, and the chandelier too bright when we reentered the ballroom. Now that I’d begun to dwell on it, the party seemed little more than a façade. I didn’t know what it was the Esar was so keen on keeping under wraps, but I did know that he was underestimating the vast majority of my peers if he thought they wouldn’t notice.

The problem was that I’d always been a little too interested in things that weren’t any of my concern. And, punishment or no, that was a habit I found hard to overcome.

 

THOM

I’d taken leave of my senses. That was the only possible explanation. The Dragon Corps had damaged my mind so thoroughly that I hadn’t even noticed they’d done it until Rook had cornered me at th’Esar’s ball.

And I’d let him.

I’d more than let him. I’d encouraged it. I’d descended to his level.

I would no longer remember this night as the night I wore the finest clothes I’d ever owned, or the night I’d been invited to a ball—a real ball—at the palace, but rather as the night I’d thrown away all my careful restraint and let Rook get under my skin exactly the way I’d promised myself he wouldn’t.

I was meant to be better than this; I knew better, I’d been taught better. I could either think myself better educated than Rook and follow up that assumption with my actions, or I could resort to brawling with him at every turn like a common Mollyrat. Which, as he’d so astutely discovered, I was.

I held no illusions as to the truth of what Rook had told me about the piercing obviousness of my roots and where I’d come from. Much as I hated him, I couldn’t deny the simple fact that he was cleverer than most and could probably be quite sharp about keeping a secret when he thought it would benefit him. I couldn’t say the same for many of the other airmen, and I knew that if my birthright really was common knowledge, I’d have heard it in more than a few taunts already. It was simply too good to pass up—a jumped-up urchin from Molly trying to teach anyone about anything. The worst of it was that there were no notes I could refer to for this, no piece of wisdom from Marius that would help me to clear my head so that I might get back on track.

The problem was simply that I didn’t even know what track I was trying to find my way back to.

After Rook had left, I’d had to take a long moment to collect myself, breathing in the cold night air and waiting for the chill to pull me back to reality. I waited there until I could stand without the help of the rail, until the throbbing in my back had receded to something manageable, no longer a constant, heated reminder of how foolish I’d been. I’d thought I might run into Hal in the bathrooms when I ended up there again, but they’d been empty when I returned, which was probably for the best as I’d have only owed him an apology and I wasn’t feeling much for words.

It was then that th’Esar himself summoned me.

I was waylaid in the bathrooms—that my whereabouts was so easily discovered unsettled and unnerved me almost as much as what had passed a few moments before on the balcony overlooking the gardens—by one of his servants.

“His Majesty wishes to confer with you,” the messenger said, bowing low and all but tugging his forelock. He was obviously at a loss for what title, if any, he should employ when addressing me. I had as little idea as he for, of the two of us, it was quite clear to me he’d had the better breeding. Then again, as Rook had made perfectly clear, it wasn’t hard to be a better-bred man than I was.

“Ah,” I said, trying to gather my wits about me. “Yes. I shall . . . follow?”

“There is a more private way,” the servant said, still bowing. “If you will mark my lead.”

I followed him out into the hall as he walked calmly and unhurriedly past a group of three women talking to one another behind their fans. It hardly helped my composure that they were talking about Rook. I caught the barest threads of their conversation and felt my cheeks grow warm with anger.

It seemed I couldn’t escape him, not in dreams of flying or on a balcony at the ball—which was in some part supposed to have been my own small triumph, the perfect way to showcase what I’d accomplished with the airmen. I hadn’t heard any gossiping about any major and embarrassing incidents thus far, which would have seemed like its own small miracle were it not for the fact that I knew Rook had been far more occupied with tearing me down on the balcony than starting any trouble.

“Has he gone early?” one asked her closest friend. “Or do you suppose he’s found someone?”

“He can’t have done,” her friend replied, looking as miserable as I felt. “He never decides so quickly!”

“Yes,” said a third, who stifled a yawn with her dainty, silk-gloved hand. “I did think we had more time.”

Only my purpose anchored me as the servant cleared his throat, waiting for me to quicken my step to follow him, when we turned a sudden corner into an unlit hallway which, if pressed, I would have sworn hadn’t been there before.

“Come quickly,” the servant said, most politely.

I doubled my pace.

Here, the palace was almost deathly silent; it seemed that even the air possessed the same stultifying reverence as one found in a mausoleum or tomb. It was quite the contrast to the ceaseless noises of the ballroom, where the rustle of silks and taffetas, lowered voices and whispered gossip built to almost the same crescendo as the music. Even the countless flickering magic-lights had their own certain noise—a relentless, ceaseless thrumming, a music all their own—but here in the shadowy darkness of the hidden hallway, the only sounds that disturbed the absolute silence were my footsteps.

The servant’s footsteps made no sound at all.

I began to feel as if I’d entered into some secret world, one gravely different from my own. The change may even have occurred before Rook cornered me on the balcony, and I was too distracted by my own reckless temper and his taunting words to notice it.

The servant led me through the twisting halls, taking sharp turn after sharp turn, until I realized that the majority of our path was a complicated ruse designed to confuse me so completely I’d never be able to find my way in this direction again, even on pain of death.

The walls loomed narrow and tight at either side, and at times I had the slight impression that I was being led in a downward direction—countered only at times by having the slight impression of being led upward again. Occasionally I could discern certain shapes around me: the frames of paintings or heavy tapestries, a doorway, or what might have been a very old mirror. Yet as soon as I could make out what they were meant to be I’d already moved on.

At last, when I was disoriented and weary, the footman halted, turned neatly on his eerily silent heel, and bowed with a flourish to his left.

Where no doorway had been before—and this time I was all but certain—a delicate door swung inward.

“We are on time, I believe,” the servant said.

Not wanting to know what sort of punishment lay in store for making th’Esar wait, I stepped into the hidden room.

It was larger inside than I’d expected, the walls surrounding a long meeting table. At the end of the table I recognized th’Esar, who was seated and drinking dark wine from an exquisitely delicate goblet. Next to him stood a woman I vaguely recognized—all I could know for certain was that she wasn’t th’Esarina—and she, too, was drinking from a similar goblet, or at least holding it in one hand, while with the other she traced the rim round and round in deep thought. She was naturally very dark, with a sharp nose, and the makeup around her eyes and on her mouth was darker still, looking almost as black as her hair in the strange light of the room. If called upon to do so, I would have guessed she was a member of the old Ramanthe nobility; the structure of her face was nearly unmistakable. It reminded me of a portrait I had seen in my textbooks, of the velikaia Antoinette, who had been the previous Esar’s choice of bride for his son before it had been discovered that she hid a quiet Talent. The text went on to say that a marriage between the Volstovic nobility and that of the lingering Ramanthines would have been enormously prosperous, but unfortunately the plans had fallen through.

She bent down to say something private to th’Esar, and a black curl of hair slipped free of its complicated twist, resting softly against her sharp, bare shoulder.

Then they both turned and looked directly at me.

“Ah,” th’Esar said, beckoning me closer. “We have the Dragon Corps to discuss.”

I’d seen th’Esar before, but in the company of so many of his entourage that he was barely recognizable on his own. It was a foolish remnant of my childhood in Molly, but I was surprised all the same to discover that he was no more than a man—and a weary one at that, if those were more than simple shadows marring his face. He had a strong chin, and salt streaks in his red hair, and his face was powerful, if not entirely handsome.

I bowed at once.

“No need for that,” he said, waving his hand. “It’s been a long night. Full of dancing, mm? Dismissed,” he added to the woman beside him, who set her goblet down on the table, curtsied once—more for my sake, I thought, than for formality—and disappeared through one of many little doors set all along the walls.

It was without a doubt the strangest room in which I’d ever found myself.

“We called you here to discuss your progress with the corps,” he said, and motioned for me to sit. By his leave, I did so; I was grateful for the permission, since my legs were shaking. “We find you’ve done an acceptable job, since there have been no diplomatic complaints yet this night, and we have had to placate no other men on the loss of their wives.”

This was because Rook had been too preoccupied with exacting whatever punishment he thought necessary on me to go after any married woman. Should I have been grateful for that, as well? I didn’t think so and, what’s more, I wasn’t about to point out that fact to th’Esar.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I deferred instead. “I am most pleased to have served you adequately.”

“Your services may be further needed in rehabilitating them,” th’Esar continued, “once the war is over, and they find themselves . . . at loose ends.”

I bowed my head lower and said nothing at all.

“You will of course be thanked amply and suitably for your work and service to the crown,” th’Esar concluded. “We will have a man gather your notes. Perhaps we will forward your theories for publication,

just as we were inspired to fund your participation in the matter.” He paused to let the full weight of this praise sink in; I murmured my commoner’s thanks without quite listening to a word I was saying, feeling riven by how little able I was to appreciate the promotion. I’d succeeded. I was to be funded in writing my own book. Whether it was the book I wished to write or something else entirely didn’t matter. After I was finished writing it, I would be a scholar of fame and repute, and could pursue my own studies in whatever direction caught my fancy. It wouldn’t matter then where I’d come from. I would have everything I’d ever striven toward. And that was surely more important.

And yet I was utterly incapable of feeling any kind of pride at this achievement. I knew why—I could chase the numbness right back to its source—and I kept my head very low indeed, so that th’Esar would not sense from me even a moment of ingratitude.

Rook was a poison.

I could not stop thinking of him and my defeat, even now, at the precise moment of my triumph. Additionally, I had the nagging notion at the back of my mind that if I were to follow proper channels, those notes should be going to Adamo, that the Chief Sergeant was the one who would then be reporting to th’Esar. Yet I could do no more than wonder why th’Esar would have asked me to breach this protocol.

“Yet let me ask you one more thing,” th’Esar added unexpectedly, and I found myself looking up before I could help myself. “Since you have, no doubt, grown very close to our Dragon Corps these past weeks.”

I nodded, swallowing dryly. “Indeed,” I murmured, though it was a dreadful lie. “Indeed, I have.”

“Have you noticed anything . . . odd, of late? About their behavior?”

I shook my head. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the question,” I began.

Th’Esar waved his hand again, the simplest of motions striking me mute. “No,” he said. “Think carefully. This is a matter of utmost importance, and my query is one I must ask you to repeat to no one—on pain of execution, mind.” He let that sink in for a few moments. “Tell me, and consider thoroughly: Have the airmen said anything to intimate that there is something—no matter how small—amiss about the way that our war is being won?”

Even if there had been, I wouldn’t be the man to ask. I searched desperately for something to tell th’Esar, my supreme ruler and a man who balanced my life in his hand easily as he balanced his goblet, but all I could come up with was what it had been like to feel Have between my legs, or the way my stomach flew into my throat as we dove. I thought about the fierce, scuffling fights that had started up in the common room at all hours, some of them silent and over just as quickly as they’d begun, and some of them with Ghislain taking even odds and Magoughin jeering each party with equal delight. I had no idea if there was something amiss now that hadn’t been before. Their behavior was idiosyncratic at best, and even if they did have more serious concerns, I knew that they wouldn’t speak to me of all people about them.

“I see that you are uncertain,” th’Esar said, relieving me of any need to respond. “That is all right, of course. You are no airman yourself. But perhaps you might do us another service.”

I could do nothing but accept. “Your Majesty,” I said, and bowed yet another time in my chair. “I will do anything you ask of me. I am your servant in this as in all matters.”

At least I hadn’t forgotten my most basic etiquette.

Th’Esar smiled thinly. “If you would be our eyes and ears in the Airman,” he said, each word separate and distinct to give them full weight and bearing, “then I would find some way to reward you further.”

I understood his meaning all at once. I had no loyalty to the Dragon Corps; I was no member, no airman, no brother in arms. I’d suffered certain indescribable injustices at their hands, and surely each time I’d craved just such a revenge as this to be mine. Hadn’t I?

Above all, I was in no position to deny th’Esar what he wished. No one was—not even th’Esarina.

Yet neither was I in the position to be his spy among a group of men who barely even trusted me as it was, a group of men whose ringleader had pinned me into place like a collector might pin a butterfly. It was obvious which of us was fully in charge in this matter. I could no more spy on Rook than I could ignore him.

“You will do this task for us,” th’Esar said. “I will expect your reports among those on the progress of the corps’ new manners. Your service is invaluable; you are dismissed.”

I made my way out of the room in a daze, bowing obsequiously and disgusting even myself. The servant was waiting for me at the door, and I was led backward through the tangled maze of hallways and darkness until we arrived once again in the real world, where the party was still in full flush. When I turned to thank the servant for his guidance, I found he’d already disappeared behind me and I was left once more alone.

I saw Rook in the center of the dance floor, twirling a flushed young blonde, but though I watched him, I couldn’t get th’Esar or his impossible task out of my mind.

I set back for the Airman before the party was over and spent the remainder of the night on my couch, waiting for the sound of an air-raid siren—but, of course, everyone was at the palace, and the silence remained unbroken even until the first dawnlight.