CHAPTER ONE

ROYSTON

That morning, I awaited my arrest in Our Lady of a Thousand Fans. I wasn’t alone, but it seemed I might as well have been, for the young man in the bed next to me was asleep. He had no particular reason not to be—after all, it wasn’t his future upon which fell the shadow of impending arrest—and though I found that I could not look at him, neither did I begrudge him the repose.

It was rather a curious situation in which I’d found myself. Truth be told, I’d considered myself clever enough to avoid such entanglements altogether. Yet the problem with doing foolish things was that it was quite often impossible to tell what was foolish and what wasn’t until you’d swum too far out to turn back again. After that point, it was either carry on or drown.

Of course, you were hanged either way if another man stood up to accuse you of doing all manner of things you were relatively sure you hadn’t.

And that was the thing about men: They could so easily change their minds, become frightened of what might happen to them, and throw you to the wolves. If you were very, very unlucky, they might even do all three.

At least—if you were more than passably wealthy—you might be able to go out in style.

I was waiting that morning for the footfalls I knew were coming. They were neither the trained, delicate rhythms of Our Lady’s skilled professionals nor the uneven steps of sated patrons, but rather those that held all the surety and sharpness of a man of the law. The man who was coming for me was one who did not need to hunt his quarry because he knew very well where it would be. Though my offense was by all accounts a serious one, the way in which it must be handled would demand a touch of finesse. Most political matters did, though it was a philosophy lost on some men.

Despite my assumptions, I couldn’t have said quite what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the Provost of the city himself, leaning in the doorframe as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

There was a large mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed—for people who liked that sort of thing, I supposed—ornately framed in dark cherrywood. So I saw the scene as it must have appeared to him: the lines forming thin and faint at the corners of my eyes, gray hairs glinting at my temples more obviously than I’d have liked in the late-morning sun. I thought ruefully of how little I deserved those marks of age, and how well I had won them, for a man just past thirty-five years of age. Next to me the young man slept on, his tanned shoulders smooth, his mouth open and vulnerable. I tilted my head, fingers measuring the dark unkempt edges of the beard creeping over my cheeks and under my chin.

I’d not had the time to shave before—and after, it had seemed like something of a trifle. After my betrayal by Erik, many things had seemed a trifle.

“Margrave Royston,” said the Provost. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

“Not particularly,” I said.

His nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt cloves that permeated the air, and I could sense how very badly he wished to tell me to stop smoking. His excellent comportment prevented him from doing so; or perhaps it was his keen attention to protocol. Nevertheless, there were those who believed the Esar had made a grievous error in letting a commoner enforce his laws. The Provost was a man of the Charlotte district, center-born and center-bred. The people liked him because he didn’t put on airs, and everyone else liked him because he minded his own business—with the exception, of course, of those rare occasions when the noblesse went out of their way to do something exceedingly imprudent or alarming; and then his intervention was required.

There was a bowl carved from black stone on the nightstand, in anticipation of the possibility that the wealthy patrons of Our Lady might need a place to put their cuff links or jewelry. I myself had adopted it as an ashtray, a purpose for which I felt it was peculiarly suited.

“You’d better get dressed,” the Provost continued, removing a round, gold watch from his pocket. “There’s a ruling to be had.”

“So soon?” I didn’t know myself whether the surprise in my voice was feigned or genuine. I decided on the third option, which was trousers, and got out of bed. “Dmitri, I must say the efficiency of this nation in condemning a man is simply astounding.”

The Provost continued to examine his pocket watch with somewhat forced interest. “Your duties within the Basquiat will be assumed by another, in accordance with the sentencing.”

“Sentencing?” I caught a glimpse of myself again in the mirror, hair dark and sleep-wild, half-dressed, white shirt voluminous and untucked, my nose stark and sharp and the new lines tight around my eyes and mouth. I’d lost my cuff links under a mound of ash. I looked exactly as I felt: a man thrown off center.

“Oh. There’s no official trial,” Dmitri said quickly, casting a glance upward. Finding me more or less decent, he nodded and tucked the watch away into some invisible pocket. “We just thought it might be time for a little, ah, chat.”

His attitude confirmed my worst fears.

We stepped outside together, and I looked about at the city I loved.

Our Lady of a Thousand Fans was situated in the heart of Miranda. Most will tell you it’s the palace, or even the Basquiat, that’s the real center of the city’s uppermost district. In truth, it all depends on where you’re coming from, or what attracts you most.

You can tell a lot about people by the details they choose to employ when describing Volstov’s capital.

If you ask anybody who’s anybody, though, they’ll tell you that if you wish to get through the city and not end up hopelessly lost, it isn’t at the palace or Our Lady that you want to begin. Leaving from the Basquiat is actually easiest, taking the Whitstone Road, which leads in a counterclockwise direction through ’Versity Stretch, past the Rue d’St. Difference and its countless milliners—elaborate hats being very much in fashion this season, the sort with lace veils, wide brims, and feathers—along with all the other shops. The Rue is just on the edge between lower Miranda and upper Charlotte, so once you’re past the merchants’ quarter you’re smack in the middle of Charlotte herself, teeming and fat-voweled and cocky. No one much cares what you do in Charlotte so long as you’re not doing it to a friend or member of the family. Once you accustom yourself to Charlotte’s indifference, she will adopt you as her son or daughter, so long as you look after yourself and don’t stray too close to Mollyedge.

It was a principle that could be applied to any of the three sister districts, for each had its own boundaries, as well as its own consequences for dealing with those who strayed too close to them.

The Provost’s hansom had windows, at least, and for that I was thankful. I had the odd idea in my head—pervasive no matter how I tried to distract myself—that this might be the last time I got to examine the city I so loved with such reverent attention. I’d had the same feeling with Erik the last occasion I’d met with him, though at the time I hadn’t paid my misgivings much mind.

In the end I didn’t blame Erik. Volstov was accepting of such dalliances, while Arlemagne took the opposite approach. And Erik was an Arlemagne prince. He was under edict, and he did no credit to his royal family nor to the time-honored tradition of diplomacy for which Arlemagne was famous. On top of all that, we hadn’t exactly been careful—a fact for which I blamed myself—making eyes at one another in broad daylight, in the streets, in the middle of the Basquiat. My only surprise was that no one had noticed us sooner.

If I were being ruthless in my honesty, I would admit that it was not the only surprise I had felt over the matter, but I had told myself it was pointless to wrestle with such thoughts beyond what good they could do me. Arlemagne had no understanding of Talents: a magician’s particular aptitude within a given field. The same man who could pull a stream from its bed could not create enough heat to boil water unless he did it the same as the rest of us, with a stove, or by building a fire with his own two hands.

Likewise, a man whose skills lay chiefly with combustion would have to rely on his own considerable charm, rather than his Talent, to seduce any sort of prince.

Erik had capitalized on the ignorance of his countrymen and saved himself a great deal of grief in doing so. Really, it should not have surprised me. He was boundlessly clever; one almost wanted to admire him.

Now, in the absence of what regret I’d not yet allowed myself to feel, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss concerning Thremedon City herself, her twisting uneven skyline and its gentle sloping toward the sea.

We jostled around a corner, the Provost staring at his watch with the keen interest of a man determined not to be late or one who was extremely uncomfortable with the situation at hand. From the fervor he was devoting to the task, I had to assume that, wherever we were heading, it was certain to be a room full of self-important men, waiting to decide my fate. I normally had nothing against self-importance, but the idea that, at this moment, someone could be settling a sentence upon my head was both disquieting and invasive, as though the private events of my life had all too quickly become public.

I might have considered this fact before involving myself with Arlemagne’s heir, but I have always been much cleverer in retrospect.

There were certain freedoms allowed to men of the Basquiat—men of privilege and wealth. I wondered if this would help my case. But there were some limits to that freedom for which one couldn’t be pardoned. I’d never been at the center of an international incident before. On the periphery, perhaps—skirting around the edges like the proper young madames keen on avoiding puddles in the street—but this time was different. Displease the wrong people, and even your connections can’t save you. Displease the wrong country, and—well, I would find out shortly.

I refused to blame Erik. Panic was a natural reaction; it could make you stupid, selfish. I’d seen it often enough. It was a rare man who had the natural proclivity to do the right thing when the wrong one might save him a share in the punishment or blame. Erik had been young. In his place and at that age, I might well have done the same.

This was a lie—I knew even as I thought it—but it was a lie that gave me some comfort.

Our carriage halted in front of the Esar’s palace: a long, low-ceilinged building of cream and gold. The Provost got out before me and held the carriage door, so I knew that things couldn’t be so dire as all that. Still, it was with a sense of slow, settling disaster that I stepped onto the Palace Walk.

For the first time in a long while I felt utterly powerless to shape my surroundings.

“It’s this way,” said the Provost. He tapped me once on the shoulder, then took the lead. I followed him, for I could go no other way.

 

ROOK

The only reason we got punished the way we did was ’cause th’Esar was spitting mad for too many reasons that had nothing to do with me and what I’d done. All of a sudden and out of nowhere, we were getting slapped with a ruler on the wrist, only there was a whole lot more of a ruckus about it, and it was th’Esar himself instead of some prissy-pants schoolma’am doing the slapping. I mean, we were all called in—me and the rest of the boys—and lined up on these uncomfortable chairs that smelled of old velvet and dust, and made to wait in this place Balfour (his voice reminding us he’d been raised with all the privileges of a thoroughbred bitch) said was Punishment’s Antechamber. And even I had to admit it: That seemed about right. Nobody said anything to us, just gave us a couple of dark looks before making us wait, no doubt so we could think long and hard about what we’d done. They were scowling at me in particular, seeing as how I’d been the one to do it, and everyone knew.

I wasn’t sorry. None of the boys were, either—I could see it in the way they were scowling right back. Th’Esar was just pissed and looking for someone to blame it all on. Because we were having enough trouble with Arlemagne without all this on top of the rest, Ghislain’d said, and Adamo’d just shook his head like maybe he wished he’d been a part of it and maybe he was real glad he hadn’t been, and maybe it didn’t matter either way since he was called in for it with the rest of us.

The thing was, I didn’t know she was married.

She wasn’t so fine and so sweet-curved as I couldn’t’ve found somebody else—and better—to tickle that night. But she was married to a diplomat, which was what made it so bad, so when I tried to pay her like she was a common whore, she got wild as a wet cat on me, screaming and throwing things and breaking vases. I thought she was a whore, the way she’d tarted herself up, but apparently that was just an Arlemagne’s way: powder on everything and too many undergarments, the kind of teasing frippery you only see in Our Lady and which I normally don’t have time for. Her breasts were incredible, though—big and round and soft and warm—and I spent a lot of time letting her know how incredible I thought they were. Even if I did think it was a commercial exchange, she might’ve been grateful instead of screaming rape all over, like that’s what you can do if you’re a woman when things go sour and you feel a slight.

She called me all kinds of things in her raw-edged Arlemagne voice, all kinds of incredible things I passed on afterward to Magoughin, who collected that kind of talk. But then all of a sudden there was a diplomat with some ridiculous mustache knocking down our door like he was going to kill us, and I almost had my knife in him, all the boys laughing and whooping it up, when Adamo got his arms round me and dragged me off, both of us cursing up a storm.

Which led us to where we were, too early for my tastes, ready to take our lumps from th’Esar—which is what they call him in the streets, on account of there being one too many e’s in the title otherwise—and nobody happy about it, except me, since at least I’d seen some action and was feeling pretty good despite the situation.

“So what about this fuck-up with the little Cindy?” I asked, ’cause I knew I could fish it out of Jeannot, who loved gossiping about the noblesse better than the noblesse did themselves.

Jeannot sighed. “Rook,” he began.

“Fine,” I said, amending. “The Margrave, then. Biting the pillow with one of Arlemagne’s princes? Everyone’s talking about it. I just figured you’d know the sordids.”

“Heir apparent,” Jeannot replied. “He was ‘biting the pillow’ with Arlemagne’s heir apparent.”

“Fuck,” I said, and whistled.

Balfour gave me a look like I’d offended him something awful, which was ridiculous, seeing as he’d been one of us long enough that no man could call him rookie. Besides which, I’d found better names for him since, and he knew what to expect from me.

“It won’t be anything serious,” said Ace, who never thought anything was serious unless he was in the air, and even then he was keeping score. But I didn’t know whether he’d been listening to us or whether he was trying to reassure himself about the punishment that was waiting for us just on the other side of th’Esar’s door.

Evariste took it as the second meaning, and didn’t bother answering. He was only ever half-listening to anything anyone ever said, anyway. “They never punish the Margraves.”

“They never punished us before, either,” I pointed out. “Where the fuck is fucking Niall?”

The ninth of our company had talked his way past the guards, pleading a weak bladder, but I didn’t think it’d have worked for anyone else. Niall came from soldiering blood; they recognized their own and favored him as such. Unfair fucking world, but Niall was tight in a pinch, especially when the pinch required sweet-talking. Even now he was probably reading the rags on one of th’Esar’s own porcelains or, better yet, milking information from a maid somewhere with his hand right on the teat.

Besides the boys, there wasn’t much to look at in the Antechamber, just blank walls painted the same puke tan every which way you stared. Raphael said it was supposed to be calming, the color, so as to soothe the wild psychopath within, but Raphael talked like that all the fucking time, like he’d read one too many fancy books as a kid and the words had left him addlepated. Anyway, I figured the men that designed the room wanted anyone waiting to think long and hard on what they’d done, instead of letting them relax by filling the place with fancy picnic scenes so they could sit and think “What a lovely painting” and not “If Merritt goes on tapping his foot like that, I’ll kill him.”

“She did have amazing breasts,” Ace said finally, before he kicked Merritt in the shin, at least solving that problem.

His topic was a pleasing one, though it always set me on edge to be agreeing with anything Ace had to say. But I guess even disagreeable men could come together over a nice pair of breasts.

I smiled, fierce and smug. Along the line of chairs, one or two bodies shifted like they had something important to say but couldn’t see their way toward saying it. I crossed my arms and dared them to go on and get it off their chests, but anyone who wanted to protest at being called in on my account had missed his chance when it’d first happened. ’Course, they may’ve been discouraged by my knife and my temper at the time, but that just meant they were prudent.

Had to be prudent to fly with the Dragon Corps.

Niall came skidding back into the room, looked relieved and then disappointed that we were all sitting exactly where he’d left us. He took the empty seat, fussing with the high collar of our uniform. “Esar’s tied up in some big to-do a ways down. Very top secret. Something to do with a Margrave and the prince of Arlemagne?”

“Heir apparent,” I told him, in a foul mood now because this was no news, and I hated hearing the same rumors twice. “Seems he’s bent as a—”

“Rook,” Adamo cut in, calm as ever, but with a promise in his tone for anyone who took that calm as anything like weakness.

“Friend of yours?” I asked, and then I closed my mouth. Adamo’d always said I had more guts than good sense. Why anyone’d want or need the latter, I couldn’t imagine, but Adamo was too big for arguing with.

“As a matter of fact, he is,” said Adamo, like he knew I’d just been mouthing off and hadn’t been expecting that.

Before it could get nasty, or interesting—or both—the heavy doors at the end of the room gave way. The kid who’d opened them looked barely thicker than the doors themselves, but he wore the frip and cut of a man in the service of th’Esar.

“We’re ready for you,” he said.

Compagnon snorted, triggering a ripple of amusement through the rest of us as we stood, ranged more or less shoulder to shoulder with the exception of our punier members.

No one was ever ready for us, I thought. Not even th’Esar himself.

 

HAL

The story began the way all the old legends began:

 

This is only a story. Whether there is some truth to it is for the discerning reader to decide.

Many years ago, in a distant land, there was born a most extraordinary young man to two entirely mundane parents. With his parents being such simple country creatures, it came as no surprise that young Tycho was born without any magical powers to speak of, let alone a Talent of his own. Perhaps it was this absence that caused his behavior, queer and brash at once, as though he did not understand that he too was meant for a common life, and wished to rail against the stars that had ordained his purpose.

Tycho was many things before he was the Brave. Just short of twenty years, he lost his nose while outmatched in a duel with a magician. It is said that the lady they fought over was so impressed with his foolhardy courage that she implored her father—a silversmith—to craft the young Tycho a nose of precious metals to wear instead.

She was a beautiful lady, unmarried and kindhearted. Therefore she was precisely the sort of lady any man would start a duel over, and even a man so peculiar as Tycho was not immune to her charms.

What happened next was unclear; whether the lady held Tycho’s favor for the good she’d done him, or whether he had so indisputably impressed her that night. Whatever the case, it is certain that they made an impression on each other, for they came to be engaged over the course of the next year. Tycho visited his lady’s house to ask after the progression of his fine new nose, and soon he grew accustomed to taking her walking in the gardens or through the streets of the city.

“We should be married in a garden,” he would say to his lady.

“Yes,” said the lady, for that was what she always said.

They might have been married the very next month, for the lady’s father had finished his work on Tycho’s fine nose, and there was no reason for any further delay. However, the magician who had taken Tycho’s nose in the first place had a delicate sense of honor, which had been dealt a frightful hurt over losing the lady when he’d won the duel.

He came to Tycho’s wedding, dressed all in black velvets with a splash of white lace at his throat. There he placed a curse on the bride, that before the year’s end harvest she would fall ill and become a lady entirely of stone.

“Your body will become as cold as your heart!” the magician cried, and he disappeared before any member of her family could reach his rapier in time.

The lady was most distressed over this news. She fretted all through the reception and would take no cake, nor drink any wine.

“I will take care of this,” Tycho said, for her father had many books, and he himself was incredibly learned.

“Yes,” said the lady, for that was what she always said.

They enjoyed no honeymoon, and the newly married couple went to none of the fine summer festivals that year. Tycho spent his days locked away in the study of their small home, poring over his vast library for any spell that might counter what the magician had done. His lady wife interviewed hundreds of magicians in their parlor, asking them each what might be done about the curse placed upon her, and if there was anything that might be done to keep a lady’s body flesh and blood the way it was meant to be.

Every day, the magicians shook their heads and left the house regretful. Every night, Tycho would unlock the window casement in his study and climb to the roof of their house to sit with his wife and gaze at the stars.

“The harvest comes soon,” Tycho said, stretching his fingers to trace the shape of a horse’s head in the sky.

“Yes,” said his lady, for that was what she always said.

The summer ended, and it came time for the year’s end harvest. Magicians from all four corners of the world visited Tycho’s house, but none of them was able to offer a single suggestion that could offset the magician’s curse. The lady’s mother came to stay at their house and to look after her daughter, while Tycho expanded the time he spent with his books, reading through them like a man caught up in some terrible fever.

“There must be something,” he said to his lady’s mother.

“A pity you had no children,” replied the old woman.

The harvest came. The men and women on their farms scythed their fields and reaped their wheat, and one morning Tycho woke to find his lady wife a gray weight beside him, stony and silent.

A great heaviness settled over his own heart that day, as though some part of him had turned to stone as well. He set his lady in the garden, where they had taken their first walks and spoken their first vows. Then he locked the doors to the house they had shared and left the village where he had been born and raised.

The events of those years are not well documented. It is said that Tycho was searching for the magician who had cursed his wife, or that he was searching only to forget his wife entirely. Some accounts insist that Tycho encountered a dwarf and took to keeping him as a kind of jester, to lift his spirits. Others say that he took to riding a moose, stating that it traveled much faster than even the swiftest of horses.

Of the many differing accounts of these years, it may be argued that the most true is the very first: that he sought to take his revenge on the magician who had so cruelly stolen his lady wife.

No one knows how many years it took for Tycho to find the magician. The only certainty can be that he did, one dark, chill night very far from home. Night was when the magician traveled best, since his clothes were black and his horse a fine black gelding.

The magician saw only a flash of silver—Tycho’s nose in the dark—before he was dragged from his horse and the rapier plunged into his chest.

“This is for my wife,” said Tycho the Brave.

The magician in black said nothing at all.

Tycho the Brave took the magician’s horse, and spurred him toward his old home. Who can say why he decided to return? Perhaps it was the notion of spring in the air, and the promise of rain in the clouds. All around, the land spoke of new beginnings, and the ground was green and fertile when at last he arrived.

Tycho the Brave brought the horse around to stable it in the back, and stopped in wonderment at what he beheld. The stone statue was gone from the garden, and there was a woman singing in the kitchen, sweet-faced and dark-haired.

It was his own lady.

She came running out of the house when she saw him, and stretched her hands out to clasp his own.

“You broke the curse,” his lady said.

“I killed the magician,” Tycho the Brave countered. While possessed of a curious befuddlement at this turn of events, he was nonetheless thrilled beyond the telling. “Is that what’s done it?”

“Yes,” said his lady, for that was what she always said. She took him by his hands, and led him back into their home, where they celebrated his return in a manner as befits a husband and wife, and they were very happy until the end of their days.

 

The stories I read to my young cousins always ended the same way, just as they always began the same way, and sometimes I wondered about them. Was it really possible to be simply happy until you died of gout, or old age, or some kind of nefarious poisoning? It seemed to me that a man like Tycho the Brave—more peculiar than brave, to my own private thinking—would have had a very difficult time staying out of trouble entirely. There were other tales about him, romans filled with them in the library, so I could only assume he hadn’t.

Perhaps his wife didn’t mind it so much. She must have been a very different woman from the chatelain’s wife, my adoptive mother, who would have run screaming in the opposite direction from even so much as a whisper of magician’s curses. She didn’t approve of my reading romans.

The Margrave Royston was related to me very distantly through marriage, because he was the chatelain’s brother. And this was why he came to stay with us of all people, in the middle of Nevers—between Nevers and Nowheres, as most liked to call it.

As far as my place in Castle Nevers was concerned, there was some business of third cousins and thrice removals, but no one could keep it straight, not even the chatelain himself. Most of the time we figured it didn’t matter, and the little lords and lady of the house called me no less than Cousin, while the chatelain and the Mme addressed me by name when they addressed me at all.

We had barely three days’ notice of the Margrave’s arrival. Upon receiving the news, the entire house was thrown into a whirlwind of excitement, Mme going into fainting spells every two minutes about how we’d never be ready in time, and all the servants bearing the brunt of the real business. The chatelain wasn’t pleased for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the cause of his brother the Margrave’s sudden imposition. The scullery maids were all whispering about it, but everyone quieted before I ever had a chance to sort this troublesome business out. Instead, I made a point of keeping out of sight and out of mind, since I was in the middle of a new roman about the Basquiat itself and wanted to read in peace.

Eventually, the chatelain found me.

“Damn it, boy, what are you doing there?” he called up to me, arms folded, standing beneath my tree. I nearly fell off the branch and only managed to catch myself just in time. I wasn’t keen on falling, not again, since the first time I had I’d done considerable damage to my wrist.

“Oh, well,” I said. “Didn’t want to be in the way.” Then, I realized it was very awkward talking to the chatelain this way, and clambered down the trunk.

The chatelain looked at me with some bafflement—a big man, broad-shouldered, good-natured but often red in the face about something or other. I was quite fond of him, though there were a rather large number of people who found themselves put off by his bellowing.

“Well,” he said. “Hal, you’ve a leaf in your hair.”

So I had. I combed it out as quickly as I could with my fingers, book tucked under my arm and threatening to slip all the while. “Sorry,” I said.

“At your age,” said the chatelain, “you’ve no business still reading in trees. Well, no matter. We have something to discuss.”

I walked beside him on the bank of Locque Nevers for a time while he said nothing and worked his large jaw. The upset with his brother had unsettled him. I was unsure of what to do or say, and so did and said absolutely nothing, which seemed the best option.

At last, the chatelain took a deep breath, clasped his hands together, and said, “The Mme and I will be trusting you to take care of him.”

I didn’t have to ask who. “Oh,” I said, and without thinking, “in—Well, how?”

“You may have noticed that your room is situated very close to the guest’s chamber,” the chatelain explained. “My brother is . . . not impressed by country life, nor was he crafted as a person to respect or uphold any of our . . . country values.”

“Ah,” I said, when it appeared I needed to confirm I was listening.

“He thinks they’re damn backward,” the chatelain clarified. “Already, there is some suspicion among the servants concerning members of the Basquiat. Besides which, my brother is by no means an inconspicuous man. It is this decided lack of inconspicuousness that has returned him to us in the first place, and will no doubt cause a considerable volume of misunderstandings in the coming weeks until he is once again . . . accustomed to our lifestyle here.”

“Ah,” I said again. I was coming to understand this better, though he was speaking as if he were uncomfortable, and therefore without his usual brusque clarity. At its simplest, I realized the chatelain wanted me to treat the Margrave as I would have treated his sons and daughters: half-schooling and half-nannying.

I didn’t think this was the best of plans, but it wasn’t my place to air these concerns.

“Yes,” said the chatelain, even though he’d agreed to his own statement and nothing more. Perhaps he’d seen the understanding on my face, for Mme often commented I was as easy to read as a book. Though I was uncertain as to whether my adoptive patroness could read at all, and couldn’t keep from wondering whenever she used this expression.

Still, I didn’t think the Margrave would appreciate being treated as a child by one not so long departed from that state himself. This was not my observation to make, and yet I couldn’t help but hope that the chatelain would realize this for himself.

All I knew about the man—save that he was the chatelain’s brother—was that he was a Margrave, which meant that he was a magician who’d done great service for the Esar in one way or another. The title was usually awarded to a man who had distinguished himself in the war. What I’d read about the Basquiat offered little help, for I felt that any man sensational enough to be a member of the city’s elite assembly of magicians would find no amusement in the country. Many people referred to the Basquiat as the heart of Volstov—to the Esar’s displeasure—as their meeting place stood second only to the palace in scale and architectural marvel.

How anyone could leave all that excitement for a place as simple as Nevers, I didn’t know.

Then I remembered that it had not been his choice to begin with, and a dark cloud settled over my heart as swiftly as the weather can change on a summer’s day. Dealing with the Margrave would be far worse than even dealing with William, the chatelain’s middle son.

Wind stirred my hair, in want of a cutting, and made little eddies and ripples on the lake’s smooth surface. The chatelain had been standing silent for some time now. I found myself wondering after his thoughts. I’d never had a brother myself, and so I had nothing to be used for comparison. He seemed agitated, which was usually left to the Mme, and what was more, he had nothing to say for himself, which I thought terribly strange.

“He’ll likely be rude,” the chatelain said at last. He too was studying the lake, as though it might offer some helpful wisdom to deal with what I was privately beginning to view as the coming storm, throwing our little household into disarray.

I nodded, to show that I’d heard him.

“He’s a good man,” he continued, with a conviction that assured me he believed at least this about his brother. “A good man. Not as good as some, and certainly not as sensible, but his heart’s in the right place.”

I was relieved to hear this, as there had been a section in the roman about the very early founders of the Basquiat, two of them with their hearts removed entirely and stored elsewhere for safekeeping.

“I’ll look after him,” I said, with more courage than I felt. There were some days, after all, when I felt that I was inadequate to bear the responsibility of the chatelain’s sons and daughter. His brother, some small rebellious part of me insisted, was asking too much. I’d already decided the Margrave would see straight to my purpose and would hate me on sight.

But I’ve always found that it’s best to prepare for the worst possible eventuality in any given scenario. Then you can only be pleasantly surprised.

Three days went by faster than I could possibly have imagined, with the servants shooing me out of every room I could find in which to take refuge, even the ones we never used. The children were the only ones who seemed pleased, referring to the Margrave as Uncle Roy. To the children, he was preceded only by his reputation for lavish gifts. Mme, on the other hand, developed a tight look about her mouth whenever he was mentioned, and the lines only grew deeper as the days went on.

Breakfast on the fourth day was one of the most awkward meals I’d ever had at the table, rivaling the time Alexander had eaten too much ice cream and been sick all over me and his birthday cake.

The Margrave would be arriving by carriage, we’d been told, and the letter had held a date but no specific time.

The chatelain fiddled absently with his silver coffee spoon.

From the drawing room, where the windows were wide and the view was best, we at last heard a small shriek and the patter of shoes as Emilie went running to the front door in a manner unbefitting a lady, exactly the way Mme had warned her against.

There was a short silence. Then, chaos broke loose in a clamor of scraping wood, chairs being pushed back from the table so the three boys could follow their sister in a most undignified rabble. I hoped that it did not reflect on my own influence in any way. At least I wasn’t yet their tutor.

“Well,” said the chatelain, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin. “I suppose we should go and ensure my brother’s well-being in the face of the young herd of elephants I’ve apparently raised.”

I nodded and got up from the table too quickly, almost knocking over my chair.

The lines around Mme’s mouth looked as deep and permanent as if they’d been carved with a chisel, but she rose with enviable grace. Together, the three of us stepped into the hall and made our way to the front door, where the Margrave was waiting for us.

 

ROYSTON

The terrible thing about the country—and this was why I’d left in the first place—is that you can’t spit sideways without hitting a sheep. They’re smelly, cruel creatures, malevolent and unclean. They clog the roadways, chew their cud, and clutter the landscape, abundant as the grass—gray and misshapen and utterly depressing. My brother’s castle in Nevers was exactly like every country castle on the continent, and I was jostled by the country roads, nauseated by the country smells, and assaulted by the country architecture, so that I arrived late with a headache sharp between my eyes.

My brother’s men were waiting to greet me, suspicious eyes sidelong and unwelcoming, though they were dressed as if they did indeed know what civilization was. Then all at once my brother’s children, two of whom I’d met when they were on holiday in Miranda some years earlier, were piling out the door into the sunlight, shrieking my name and kicking up dust.

“Have you brought anything for us?” the girl asked. She was the youngest; I hadn’t met her before, though I had sent her a tiger rug once, much to the distress of my brother’s simple wife. I tried to remember her name, but I found I could not.

“I might have done,” I replied, stepping back to avoid letting her clamber up my leg as if it were a tree trunk.

“Emilie!” I knew before lifting my head that this was the wife come out to greet me. I procured my pocket watch for the eldest of my nephews to examine, while Emilie jumped away from me and smoothed out her skirts, her cheeks bright red.

“It’s no trouble,” I said.

“She must behave as befits her,” the wife sniffed, keeping her distance. “I know standards are . . . different in the city, but in the country a young lady’s upbringing is a serious matter.”

“Naturally,” I replied.

The house was ugly but large, with a sloping shingled roof over the old castle walls and windows like gaping eyes. I shuddered to think what it would be like inside during the winter, when the snow was deep and the wind sharp. The courtyard was neatly kept, the stable far enough from the house that at least the smell of animals would not invade our living quarters except in the height of summer, and nearby I could hear the Locque Nevers rushing desperately onward. I felt a momentary kinship with the river, as if we were both aching yet helpless to escape, bound each in our own way to our eternal, shackling paths. But I was no poet, nor was I a river, and at some point I presumed the waters of Locque Nevers would reach the sea—whereas I was here indefinitely, with no similar prospects of escape.

One of the younger boys, William, was busy trying to break and not to break my pocket watch all at once. My brother had gone to see to the horses, which I’d expected of him, and I was glad he remained the same as ever. Too much change isn’t good for a man. It troubles him and hinders him from digesting his meals properly. However, it left the wife, the children, the servants, and me alone together, and not one of us able to speak.

“Well,” the wife said at length, though it seemed every word she spoke pained her, “these are the children.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “They are indeed.”

“Alexander is the eldest,” said a new voice, warm and uncertain. “William is about to break your pocket watch.”

I refocused my attention just over the wife’s shoulder and noticed someone unfamiliar hanging back not as a servant would, but neither like a true member of the family. I decided right away that he must have been no more than a distant cousin, which was why no one had seen fit to trim his hair.

“Then there are Etienne and Emilie,” he went on, shifting a poorly bound roman from under his left arm to under his right.

“Emilie and I have already met,” I said.

“Etienne is shy,” the young man explained, shrugging. He had a strange sort of grace about him, the unusual and post-adolescent combination of complete self-consciousness and blissful distraction. He bore it well despite the hair.

“Which we will very soon break him of,” the wife added sharply. She seemed to be on the verge of having the vapors.

“Like a horse, I presume,” I replied, and then added smoothly, coming up to take her hand and press it against my lips in my most formal of bows, “I am your servant, Mme, in all things. Your hospitality overwhelms me. I shall repay it any way I can.”

“Oh, well,” she said, fluttering like a poor man’s peacock—a rooster with too much tail for its own good but a rooster nonetheless. “You’re family, of course.”

I was, for good or for ill. “And who is this?” I asked, gesturing to the young man. I realized now the dreamy air that hung about him—like dust motes in a shaft of light—must have been a reflection of the great and secret desire he was harboring even now: that he wished to be elsewhere, reading his book, completely unbothered by our posturing.

“Who? Oh, Hal,” the wife said. “He’s to be Alexander and William’s tutor, when Alexander comes of age.”

“Next summer,” Alexander said proudly.

“Very good,” I replied, distracted. The tutor-to-be was pale but freckled along the bridge of his nose, and he was neither awkward nor shy but acutely polite. I shook his hand. “What are you reading?”

“This? Nothing,” he said, and endeavored to hide it from me.

“Hal very much enjoys his romans,” the wife said. She was sniffing again.

I thought about offering her a handkerchief, then discarded the notion. It would not do to offend my brother’s wife all at once. There would be no sport left for later on, and now that I was in the country, I needed to ration my amusements as meagerly as I could.

Instead, I offered the youth a thin smile, taking advantage of his preoccupied state to lift the badly concealed volume from his hands. It was uncouth of me, but I did not expect to be reprimanded by the lady of the house, who had already made it quite evident that Hal was not among her chief priorities.

“Oh,” he said, not sounding distressed but merely surprised.

The roman was a familiar one, though not the most widely respected or circulated collection of information on the Basquiat. The author had taken several creative liberties with the origins of the thing, for one, and there was scarcely even a mention of the Well. It skirted the matter of its overzealous guardians entirely, save a small notation that they called themselves the Brothers and Sisters of Regina. Yet I raised an eyebrow, surprised in turn, for I hadn’t expected to find any touchstone to the city here.

“Are you interested in the Basquiat, boy?” I smoothed my fingers down the roman’s spine, judging how long it would be before the pages began to fall out. Cheap books were a terrible shame, and no doubt a result of spending all your money on sheep.

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, that is—I do like to read.”

My brother’s wife made a soft, clucking sound, the rooster emerging again in quiet disapproval.

“When I’m not studying, of course,” Hal corrected himself before he smiled openly and unself-consciously. “I have a lot to learn before next summer. I’m sorry about your pocket watch.”

“William!”

I’d scarcely had the time to turn around before I heard the faint wrench of machinery. Minute pieces of clockwork sprang out in every direction, raining down on the steps and over my young nephew’s shoes. If I closed my eyes, it was almost a musical sound, like the chimes some magicians hung in their windows to ward off bad luck.

When I opened them, I was still in the country.

“That’s all right,” I said, as the boy in question raised round saucer eyes to his mother, then me. This one I had met before, though it seemed in the passing years he’d grown wild. There was an unhappy set to his mouth, halfway between rebellion and a fit of sulking. I felt an instant kinship with him and ruffled his hair where a handshake might have done. “Never mind,” I said, and in my own selfish way it might have been to keep Mme my sister-in-law from punishing him, as she seemed so keen on doing. “I have others for you to break.”

When he smiled, I saw that he was missing a tooth.

“Ah, Roy.” My brother’s voice sounded bell-clear across the grounds. I turned to greet him as he came striding toward us. The chatelain, my estranged country blood, had grown a little wider over the years, spread, settled into his skin. His face was red as it had ever been, suggesting either a very good constitution or a very poor one. Or perhaps it was sunburn.

I wondered if, living in the country, my face would grow as red. I would have to kill myself, I decided; I would take death before growing to resemble something so round and red as a tomato. I said none of this, however, and merely held out a hand for my brother to shake. There had been too many years and too many miles between us to foster an embrace, and even with our kinship it seemed a folly to pretend otherwise.

“I’ve come to be a burden,” I said, the jest falling flat as it left my lips.

My brother’s broad face creased with uneasiness. I struck his shoulder genially, in keeping with the ancient custom of male bonding that I abhor and was quite content to leave behind at seventeen. “I’ve just been introduced to your lovely children, brother. You’ve been very productive.”

“Yes,” he said, looking around at my impromptu welcoming committee as though gathering his bearings. I could almost see the workings of his mind, laid bare as my broken watch. Then he offered a smile, though it came less easily than either Hal’s or William’s. “Welcome to Castle Nevers.”

I tried to keep the disdain from my face as I examined the house in a broad sweep once again. Surely the house could only be called a castle in the loosest sense of the word. It had been a castle once, but now it resembled its former self about as closely as I resembled a member of the Basquiat—which is to say, not at all.

“Well,” my brother continued, anxious to be elsewhere. “We were just in the middle of breakfast. We’ll have someone show you to your room.”

As if reminded suddenly of some hidden cue, the tutor—Hal—nodded and smiled at me again. I didn’t know how anyone could smile so often, especially at a complete stranger who’d stolen his book. Perhaps he was simple.

I trusted my brother not to leave me, much less his children, in the hands of anyone incapable, however. He knew the limits of my patience as far as fools went, and I couldn’t see my sister-in-law trusting her precious ducklings to anyone she deemed unfit.

They filed inside in a staggered line, the girl holding hands with her brother, Etienne-whom-I-had-not-met, with William stepping determinedly upon the backs of Alexander’s shoes.

This left me alone on the steps with Hal, not quite a tutor, not quite a relation. He moved past me and crouched to examine the remains of my pocket watch.

“That was very kind of you,” he said, carefully sweeping the pieces of the watch into a neat little pile on the path. “Not to be cross with William.”

I eyed him. “You have servants for that, do you not?”

“Oh,” he shrugged, as though it weren’t important. “That’s all right, I’ve almost finished. William makes so much mess throughout the day, I hate to burden them with extra work if I don’t have to.”

I nodded after a moment, as though this made sense, which it didn’t. “Would you like your book back?”

“Please,” he said, looking up in surprise as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

“I suppose the country can’t be so very terrible,” I said insolently. “Is there at least a library in the house?”

“Oh,” said Hal. “No.” He must have been frightened by what my face did then—quite of its own accord—for he added quickly, “But your brother, the chatelain, has bought a good many books for my education, and for Alexander’s.”

I shielded my eyes against the glare of sunlight, looking out into the trees. There was a dreadfully large number of them, and like the sheep they were everywhere.

Our esteemed Esar had phrased my exile thus: that it would be relaxing, that it would be a quiet place to consider my actions, and that—were I lucky enough to be called back one day—I would return from it as I would from a jaunt to the islands, refreshed and with a revised perspective on my country and my duties as a citizen. The particular tone of his voice implied that I would not be so lucky as to be called back anytime soon, if at all. Thus, here I was, trapped as if I were jailed, my only recourse children and children’s books, a woman I hated, and a brother I barely knew. The truth was evident. I’d never felt so indulgently sorry for myself, not even when I was much younger.

At least, in those days, I hadn’t known what it was like not to feel helpless.

 

ROOK

“So he says, ‘I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole,’ and the whore says, ‘Which one, my lord?’” The usual chorus of halfhearted laughter greeted Magoughin’s conclusion—the sound of Compagnon’s just shy of a giggle, I always thought, and rising above the rest because as soon as you said the word “whore” he was off, no matter whether the joke was funny or not, and Luvander slapping his leg like he hadn’t heard that one three times already. I didn’t care a minute for any of it, because Ace and I were playing darts, and you can’t let Magoughin’s whore jokes or nothing distract you when you’re playing darts with Ace, seeing as how distraction leads to almost taking one of Ivory’s eyes out with a throw gone sour.

The truth was, nobody wanted to do any thinking about what was in store for us, and nobody wanted to do any thinking about how we hadn’t been up in the air since the cold front hit. Or, to be more precise, since we wiped out the Blue Horde just outside of Lapis and left the whole Ke-Han licking their wounds like the dirty bitches they were. They’d taken back the Kiril Islands after that, and it’d set th’Esar roaring mad, but there wasn’t a thing we could do since the Islands were so far out seaward that there was hardly any chance of getting out there, let alone there and back all in one flight. Anyway, the Kiril Islands had changed hands more times than good coin in a whorehouse, so it wasn’t like we wouldn’t be getting them back one of these days. The Dragon Corps couldn’t fight all of Volstov’s battles for her, but if we could’ve, there wouldn’t have been a dispute over the Kirils in the first place. Leastways, not any kind of dispute that could be backed up with solid firepower. Simple truth was, the Ke-Han didn’t have an air force at all, much less one as fucking precise as ours, as fucking deadly. And so th’Esar and all of Volstov needed us real special—but they didn’t need us if we weren’t fighting, and since we weren’t fighting, everyone was edgy, like we were all balanced on the blade of the knife and if anyone moved for certain one way or the other, we were all screwed at both ends.

I wasn’t worried. Just because the Ke-Han were quiet since Lapis didn’t mean they weren’t going to get loud again, and soon. They always bounced back, neat as you like, and th’Esar knew that, too. He wouldn’t squander his surest bet; he wasn’t going to send us into exile like old Mary Margrave, which was what they were calling the Cindy down around Mollyedge, where they could get away with it, and I was all for the nickname seeing as how he was queerer than a three-chevronet. The corps was a different matter. We were needed in the city with our dragons polished and ready to respond like always, in case anything came up real sudden, so like I said, I wasn’t worried about horseshit like that.

But it all still kept me guessing, same as the rest, what th’Esar was going to do about us, since the Arlemagnes were pissed off already due to the incident with their cindy-prince and the Margrave. Maybe I shouldn’t have slapped the diplomat’s wife on the ass in public and maybe I shouldn’t have tried to pay her after the sex, but the point was: She was asking for it, wearing a dress like that, and so how was I supposed to know who she was? You don’t wear a dress like that and not expect to get all kinds of attention, and none of it from your husband. You buy a dress like that to make it happen, and she knew it same as I did. Th’Esar knew it, too.

“Shit,” Ace said, because he’d missed the mark. It was worrying Ace, too, which was where the line between us was drawn. Ace got worried; I didn’t. Sometimes it didn’t make a difference, but by my count I was three points ahead of him, and it was only on bad days that went below two. Worrying was why: Ace doing it and me not.

“What if we are exiled?” Balfour was asking Jeannot. Balfour was also fiddling with his gloves, taking them off and putting them back on again, and if I hadn’t been busy aiming for bull’s-eye, I would’ve aimed at his head.

It was true that the diplomat—who had a name, only I preferred to call him Mr. Mustache—was kicking up a real fuss, and wouldn’t be satisfied until he thought his honor avenged. I’d offered a duel so he could win it back, but he didn’t seem too keen on that option, and th’Esar was still talking things over with the bastion and some of the members of the Basquiat he actually trusted.

Jeannot took Balfour’s gloves away. It wasn’t a permanent solution, not as permanent as I’d have gone for, but it’s been said I have less patience than most. “They won’t exile us,” he said, for maybe the eight thousandth time.

“Yeah, it’s not like we all slept with her,” said Ghislain, laughing wickedly and ducking swift as a shadow to miss my dart as it ricocheted off the wall where his head had been.

“That counts as your shot,” said Ace.

“Like hell,” I said, and marched over to find where it had landed.

Evariste hissed for quiet, sounding for all the world like someone’s grandmother, or an angry goose, or both. I didn’t know why he bothered; no one could ever beat Adamo at chess, even if he gave you the first three checks and a fair head start. I didn’t know what for he was kicking up such a fuss, his defeat hanging so obvious around him the way it was. See it often enough and defeat gets a certain look to it, a certain smell; gets so that you can predict it as easy as the old coots in lower Charlotte predict the weather. Anyway, no winning man tears at his hair so. Evariste would like as not be bald by thirty if he kept that up, a fact I took upon myself to remind him of as often as possible.

“I’m not waiting forever,” Ace piped up.

“Talk about waiting forever,” Raphael snarled, too out of sorts even to come up with something appropriately cindy to say about the great hands of time and men wasting away to nothing. Ghislain toed my dart across the floor. I picked it up.

We weren’t made to wait, the fourteen of us. Th’Esar knew it, had us trained all but a few from the age when most milksuckers are still firmly attached to their mama’s teat. Keeping us pent-up—and even worse, keeping us on the ground—was like lighting the fuse to a powder keg. Eventually something was going to blow up, and when it did, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Maybe he’s forgotten about us,” said Merritt, counting out beats against his jiggling knee, then scribbling on a sheet of paper.

“He won’t really exile us,” said Balfour again to Jeannot, not a question, but like he needed to say it.

Some years back, when the war was real bad, we’d seen a lot of fugees—people with no place to go, no homes, just mowed right down by the Ke-Han. Probably it was because we hadn’t been the only country to go to war with the Ke-Han, just the only one able to hold out worth a damn. That was just what happened when you ended up sharing a border with crazed, greedy bastards who didn’t know they’d got enough land once they had it and were always peekin’ their damned heads over the mountains to see what else there was. Never mind if there were other people living there. The Ke-Han’d done well enough in building themselves a big blue empire, or whatever the fuck it was they were after until they ran up against us. The people they’d displaced repeated themselves a hell of a lot when they talked though, like they needed to hear something more than once for reassurance. Now, Balfour was no fucking shell-shocked fugee but occasionally he did this, like we’d traumatized him or something.

No one ever listened to my clever theory that he was really a girl in disguise. I even took his pants off once to prove it, but it just pissed Adamo off.

Jeannot only handed his gloves back, like he had access to some infinite well of patience—maybe that fairy-story Well the magicians were always on about. “He won’t. We’re still at war, even though things have quieted down for now. If word got out that th’Esar had done away with Volstov’s dragons, I can’t imagine what the people would do.”

I could. It’s not every man who can say a riot’s been held on their account, but if th’Esar was somehow persuaded into doing something so damn foolish as to send us all packing, then I knew at least fourteen who could and would. No one took care of business like we did, and no one could fly those dragons like we could. The Basquiat had seen to that, and now they were paying for it. Good. Let them pay. We went down to the wire for our country when they needed us, and now some prissy little diplomat wanted to tell me what ass I could or couldn’t slap?

It was in these low years, the lulls between open conflict, that th’Esar was hardest on us. We’d been fighting for longer than I’d been around, and longer even than Adamo’d been flying. As far back as I cared to know, the war had started when Volstov had moved in on the Ramanthines without taking any of their outstanding grudges into account. Fucking lousy sort of thing to inherit, this war with the Ke-Han, but th’Esar’s family was inbred as any right-proper nobility, and it wasn’t out of bounds to assume his great-great-granddaddy had been more insane than cunning. Plus, the dirty Ke-Han bastards had gone in and taken the Kiril Islands while Volstov’d been busy with the Ramanthines, which kind of sidestepped any issue of peace between the two of us. It was kind of convenient, seeing as without the war, there wouldn’t have been any Dragon Corps to begin with. It was just these quiet patches that got us into trouble, when the Ke-Han lay low planning their next attack and acted like they’d leave us alone to do it. I knew as soon as the Ke-Han came crawling like vermin over the Cobalt Mountains, th’Esar’d come back to us with his tail between his legs, kissing ass like that Margrave he banished.

“I should have just killed her husband,” I said to no one in particular, shouldering Ace out of the way to line up my shot.

“Because murder’s better than adultery?”

“It’s only adultery if you’re the one who’s married, Niall.”

“Wouldn’t be anyone to complain about it though, would there?” Compagnon often thought he was speaking softer than he actually was. It got him into more than a few fistfights.

“Dunno,” said Magoughin, with characteristic and therefore irritating amusement. “She seemed pretty vocal.”

Didn’t matter what country they came from, the upper class were always screamers.

“Bull’s-eye!”

Ace had the gall to look surprised. He examined the board carefully, as though there were any doubt where my aim was concerned. People could and did shout bloody murder about my comportment and lade-da, but the skills were never in question.

“Best out of three?”

 

THOM

The lay of Thremedon City—a shortening and bastardization of Three Maidens, which is what it was in the old Ramanthe—is a difficult one for foreigners in the Volstov to accustom themselves to. It often startles the new wave of foreign exchange studying alongside me at the ’Versity each year that there are some who live their entire lives without cause to go past Mollyedge, either out or in. More than once, while giving a tour, I’ve explained that the reason for this is the powerful force of segregation and old customs, and that the prejudices at work on us today are far stronger even than those of class. They have had well over a hundred years to steep, after all, from the year when Volstov pressed its considerable advantage in hitting the already-exhausted Ramanthine forces from behind. Their victory was absolutely guaranteed, since whatever powers the Ramanthines would have called upon to defend themselves had already been spent on their own bitter struggles with Xi’an—the mother country of what was now commonly known as the Ke-Han Empire.

From a strictly militaristic viewpoint, it was a brilliant move by the man who was then th’Esar, since there was little loss on the Volstovic side of things. From the viewpoint of the Ramanthines, and those who still considered themselves direct descendents, it was an act of aggression that remained unforgivable some hundred-odd years later. When we were renamed Thremedon by the Volstov more than a hundred years ago, those who still called themselves Ramanthine were the poor and penniless citizens of Molly, who had nothing to lose through the claim.

Most living below the Mollyedge referred to the leader of Volstov as th’Esar, cutting out the extra vowel for what they considered a simplification of speech. This was usually accompanied by a derisive hawking of spit onto the ground, or the floor, or wherever you happened to be standing at the time. As a general rule, in Molly, it made little difference. Things were much better along the ’Versity Stretch—cleaner for one, though the people there still referred to him as th’Esar, and I’d never learned anything different. To be honest, I’d never imagined it would matter. I certainly hadn’t thought, when Marius said “Thom, sit down, I think I’ve found you the project of a lifetime,” that I’d be heading anywhere near the palace.

This is what comes of befriending magicians.

When th’Esar wanted something done, he wanted it done now, and though there were members of the Basquiat he’d listen to, I imagined it took an awful lot of convincing to get him to accept that a student in the university could be the solution to his problems.

What had happened was, I was up late working on a paper when Marius walked in. Normally he knocked, so the way he slipped in and shut the door behind him coupled with the look he wore told me something was wrong. Something was up, they’d have said down in Molly, but I’d spent a lot of time getting the slang and the slur out of my voice—and when it comes to relearning everything you know, you couldn’t slip up, not even inside your own head.

“Evening, Thom,” said Marius.

“Good evening,” I said, and stood quickly. There was only one chair. In terms of seniority, talent, and pretty much everything, that chair was rightfully Marius’s.

“No, Thom,” Marius said. “Actually, I think you’d better sit.”

“It’s not the scholarship,” I said, feeling my heart sink like lead somewhere deep into my stomach. I thought I’d earned the renewal—Marius said it was as good as signed, sealed, and delivered to my doorstep—but sometimes when you were dealing with scholarship officials, signed and sealed occasionally did not deliver, no matter how much of a sure thing it was.

“What? No, Thom. That’s not what I’ve come here to talk about.”

Ah, I realized, getting a closer look at his face; and then I did sit down, because I knew I had to. “What’s happened?”

“You’re aware of the . . . incident,” he began.

Because it was peacetime—or as close to peacetime as we’d seen in a hundred years—there’d been more incidents lately than I could count on the fingers of one hand, and possibly on the fingers of two; I’d been too busy to keep track of them all. It was end of term, and my research nearly done. Such was the life of the able-bodied and able-minded student, and besides which, I’d never stepped inside the palace, nor seen the noblesse any closer than out a window or by accident in shops when Marius was kind enough to take me along, and let me look, and advise me not to touch.

In other words, I knew there had been incidents, a significant number of them, because no one had anything else to worry about. For the life of me, however, I couldn’t fathom to which incident my mentor was referring.

He must have read as much on my face: bewilderment, confusion, apology. He sighed and waved his hand. “The most famous one,” he said. “The Dragon Corps. Surely you have heard—”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “The diplomat’s wife.”

“Arlemagnes,” Marius groaned, and heaved a weary sigh. “I’ve been in damn talks for the past forty-eight hours. The man wants their heads.”

“Well we can’t give him that,” I said, and felt stupid almost immediately after.

“They’re the only thing standing between us and the Ke-Han,” Marius confirmed. “Well, the corps and the magicians, of course, but the Ke-Han also have magicians. The corps is vital. Everyone knows it. We’re in a bind, Thom.”

I paused. “But what—”

“Does this have to do with you?” Marius drew both hands through his hair, looking tired. I realized, shamed, that I hadn’t offered him anything to drink or eat, but from the worry drawn in sharp lines about his mouth, I knew he wouldn’t have accepted anything. It was often—though luckily not always—business first, with Marius; business before anything else. “A good question. Yes. Well.”

I waited for it, saying nothing.

Marius coughed, swallowed, and looked for a moment very sorry himself. “You’re an incredibly clever young man, Thom,” he began carefully. “And with the right initiative—or if someone else saw the opportunity you yourself had no way to see, if they saw it, right there, before them, waiting to be taken—” He broke off and shook his head, clearly angry at himself. “No,” he said, changing tacks. “Thom, I’ve volunteered you.”

“For what?”

“To rehabilitate the corps,” he said. “It’s your thesis, isn’t it?”

“Well,” I attempted, “not exactly.”

“The Esar, his esteemed and incredibly wealthy highness, will give you more funding than you could ever have dreamed of,” Marius said evenly, his dark eyes bright. He was on the younger side of very old, but he looked in that moment as vital and powerful as any of the younger magicians, despite the gray streaking his hair and beard. “You will never have to bank on scholarships again. If you can do this—if you can do this—you will be a national hero, and the Esar ecstatic, and the Arlemagnes less damn loud, and the corps more diplomatic, and everyone so happy their jaws ache with grinning.”

“And if,” I said, swallowing hard, “I don’t do this?”

“That’s not an option,” Marius said. “I’m sorry. It’s an opportunity, Thom. The best you’ll ever get.”

“Oh,” I replied. “That’s why it’s so terrifying.”

And then, quick as that, Marius had me in his hansom, and was hurrying me through the carpeted halls, everything gilded or real gold. And then we were in private audience with th’Esar—the Esar—himself.

It was all like a dream, really. Or perhaps a nightmare. I was uncertain as to which this could possibly be.

The foreign diplomat from Arlemagne said things mostly in his own unfamiliar language. He was angry, though on a topic much more personal than that of his sovereign’s dalliances. He frequently burst into tirades in a broken tongue I could barely understand (though I’d been trained in both Arlemagnes’ tongue and old Ramanthe), hurling threats and the occasional writing implement around the unexpectedly small bastion room.

I was trying as hard as I possibly could not to stare at my surroundings, or to look around the room any more than was strictly necessary. We’d studied the bastion in school, of course, though I’d never thought that I would be lucky enough to chance on ever entering. It was one of the oldest buildings in Thremedon, and one of the only original Ramanthine edifices that had been permitted to remain instead of being destroyed like the rest.

The reasoning behind this was quite simple. The bastion was built to be a fortress. In the unsteady years when Volstov’s rule was yet settling in, there had been countless rebellions, men and women fighting for Ramanthe in the streets of the city itself. The then-Esar had needed a place to put them all, and the bastion was just as good at keeping people in as it was at keeping people out. It was the largest and most famous prison we had. It had housed more historical figures than I could count. It was a piece of history.

At least the diplomat wasn’t throwing anything that could cause any true damage, I comforted myself.

I got the sense that almost everyone in that room wanted to tell the man with the mustache to calm down, only they were afraid of triggering some unstoppable upset that would send our country tumbling into war with not only the Ke-Han but with all of Arlemagne as well.

All I could think, in my inimitable intelligence, was: But they’re supposed to be our allies come spring.

Opinion differed on whether we truly needed allies at all. We had been at relative peace for so long now that the prevalent attitude in the city was that we would win the war within the year. Among the most common—and least charitable—sentiments was the idea that Arlemagne was only joining with us now that it was clear who the victor would be in our seemingly unending conflict.

I was glad Marius had not sent me in alone. Politics were his affair, and despite a glowing recommendation, I felt certain that, without his presence, I would not have been allowed a foot in the door.

At last, the cuckolded diplomat ceased his ranting, his face bright red and his shoulders heaving, and all eyes in the room turned to me.

“I’m told,” said th’Esar, whose face before this I’d only ever seen on coins and miniatures, “that you might have a solution?”

I bowed lower than I’d ever bowed before in my life and nodded weakly. Of course, you cannot say no to a king.