KOUJE

It was sometime past the heat of midday, while the sun cast jagged shadows all throughout the pass, that I heard the crunch of gravel from behind us.

The passes had long since been cleared, one through twenty-seven. I assumed it was an animal of some sort, a mountain lynx, or perhaps one of the big rams the people living in the borderlands hunted for food. But what I heard next was speaking, though—real words from real voices in my own native tongue. It was a man, a low, muttered complaint that made my blood freeze in my veins and my heart stop short with the shock of it. I had enough presence of mind to wrench our horse sideways by its reins, pulling at Mamoru by the sleeve, and dragging them both off the pathway into the sanctuary of the rocks.

“Kouje,” Mamoru whispered, his voice hoarse from the ravages of his illness. He straightened up, taking his weight from my shoulder to lean against one of the smooth blue boulders while I led the horse off farther still so that he wouldn’t be spotted from the road. “I heard—Was that you speaking? It seemed so far away…”

“I don’t know,” I said under my breath, answering his unspoken question. “There shouldn’t be anyone around here.”

The gravel crunched again, and that time I saw the boot responsible, crouched as I was beneath an overhang of rock. Mamoru ducked lower behind the rock as I tried desperately to see and not be seen. The man was clad in a soldier’s uniform, cloth dyed cobalt blue. Dressed that way, he was nearly invisible against the backdrop of the mountains.

He rubbed his palms together and crossed his arms, staring out at nothing.

I couldn’t see his face, which might have been for the best. He might well have been one of my fellow soldiers—a comrade in arms.

“Might as well have sent us to the ass-end of the world,” he grumbled, and I heard a short laugh from somewhere behind him.

My heart skittered sideways with sudden panic. How many of them were there?

“Better than them up at the eighth pass,” said his companion. “Not even a hint of a hope of action there. Least we’re going to be useful.”

“If there’s ever any use for us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A man can see the entire capital from here. Thremedon. Like being an eagle, watching a mouse. We’ll be useful, and that’s enough insolence from the likes of you.”

The soldier’s companion passed into view. He was an unshaven, sharp-looking man, with a long scar that traveled raw and ugly from the corner of his eye back past his hairline. His hair was braided like a general’s and parted like a hero’s.

Next to me, I felt Mamoru go still as the stone he leaned on.

“That’s General Yisun,” he gasped in a voice like a ghost’s. “He served under Iseul for the duration of the war. But he’s… He went back to live with his family.”

I held my finger up to my lips, and Mamoru quieted, though he still tormented the ragged hem of his sleeve.

I cast about for anything I might use as a weapon, should it come to that. A large rock. More large rocks. I didn’t think that any kind of rock would be much help against the man who had allegedly trained the eldest prince in place of his father. I’d heard of him, of course, but my own service had kept me with Mamoru and not among Iseul’s retinue of servants and soldiers. I’d only seen him in passing, but I knew enough of his reputation to feel the bile rise in my throat.

I put my hand on Mamoru’s shoulder, signaling that we had best move farther off the path and attempt to keep going. I couldn’t imagine what one of our most formidable generals was doing holed up in the mountains with an unknown number of soldiers at his disposal.

They weren’t the only group stationed, either, if what he’d said about the eighth pass was to be believed.

I paused in the middle of rising to my feet, rooted in place with half curiosity, half dread. I didn’t want to know what was going on. As far as I was concerned, Iseul had stopped being predictable the night he’d declared Mamoru a traitor. To try and understand the motives of such a man was pointless, and time was a resource I couldn’t afford to waste. Not now, when Iseul’s devilry boiled in my lord’s veins. And yet I found that I couldn’t move. I had to know.

What madness had Mamoru’s brother wrought in the time since we’d fled the palace?

Had the war begun again, in our absence?

“There’ll be a use for us, all right,” General Yisun repeated, lighting a long-stemmed pipe and puffing easily, as though he really were home with his family. “Can’t answer for the poor bastards elsewhere, but we’re set to move straight into Thremedon, soon as the Emperor’s given us the signal. Shame his attention’s been diverted by that whelp for so long, but that’ll soon be over.”

“I don’t care what else is going on, so long as we get moving soon,” said the soldier. “It’s too hot during the day and too cold during the night in these damned mountains.”

“Mind your manners before a superior officer,” said General Yisun, and he flicked his ashes into the wind. “I won’t tell you that again.”

The soldier coughed.

I straightened up slowly, ever so slowly, and gently pulled at Mamoru’s shoulder. He nodded, seemingly unable to tear his gaze away from the soldiers down in the pass, so that I had to tug at him again before he would move, stepping as softly as any servant might have.

He had picked up such an eclectic mixture of skills during our time on the run. I felt an odd flush of pride in my chest at his accomplishments, too myriad to denote with simple braids.

“I don’t understand,” he said to me, once we’d rejoined the horse, ducking and weaving through the complex of rocky outcroppings and hideaways. His voice was still shadowed with caution and the effects of the fever.

“There are soldiers in the mountains again,” I said, not that it was an answer. I didn’t understand what it meant. I didn’t see how we could understand, without seeing firsthand in the capital what Iseul was planning. My own concerns were more immediate: traveling as far as we could before the fever set in again and curing the fever once and for all.

I did my best to ignore the nagging voice in my head that wondered what General Yisun had meant by that’ll be over soon. Did he have some information regarding Iseul’s pursuit of us that I did not? All I could know was that he must have been in close contact with the Emperor. As much as I hesitated to speculate, I was beginning to fear my lord’s fever in the same way I feared his brother the Emperor. I hated the power he wielded over my lord and how we’d been blinded to it for so long.

I had to know for certain.

“Stay where you are,” I whispered, holding my hand up to Mamoru as I would have to a skittish horse. “I’m going back.”

“Why,” Mamoru said. “Wait—Kouje—”

I couldn’t listen to him. I had to learn more—for there might come a time when knowledge of Iseul’s next move would be our only salvation. And if there was more that Iseul had up his bright sleeve, I would have to be the shield between that knowledge and Mamoru.

The soldier and the general were still talking when I returned, hidden behind the rock and the lichen, my palms pressed against the rough surface, hoping against all hope that I remained hidden.

“… so that’s his trick,” the soldier was saying, before he whistled softly. “To his own brother?”

“Traitor to the country,” General Yisun replied. His voice was dry, in a way that indicated he didn’t believe that story for a moment but had no trouble agreeing to it. “There’s no punishment too harsh for those.”

“Blood magic,” the soldier said. I could feel the terror in his voice, even when he tried to swallow it down. “Have you really seen it?”

“Our Emperor wears the vial around his neck,” General Yisun said. “It’s just blood, Ichikawa. Now get back to work.”

The sounds of their footsteps faded in the opposite direction. I leaned against the rock to glean strength from the mountain itself before I returned to my lord’s side.

My worst fears had been confirmed. There was nothing to do but move forward.

“Kouje,” said Mamoru, brightening the moment he saw me. He tucked a stray length of hair behind his ear with fretful fingers. “What is it?”

“I do not know what your brother intends,” I told him. I had no reason to burden him in his state with information, but I had only the horse to speak to—and my lord was far cleverer than I. For the time that he was still cogent, still himself, I needed to consult with him. I needed his permission for what I sought to do next. “And I admit that I am… afraid of what he will do.”

Mamoru was quiet, though his fingers continued to twitch; he bit at his nails, a habit he’d never had, as though he barely noticed what he was doing. “Do you think the fighting’s started again?” he asked at last. “Do you think the talks have failed because Iseul’s been so distracted with trying to find me?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, though it was just like my lord to blame himself for starting a war when he was as far removed from the capital as a field mouse himself. “I admit that I cannot think of any other reason—any good reason—for some of our best soldiers to be stationed in the Cobalts unless they are planning some sort of… attack.” I drew a deep breath. “Mamoru—you and Volstov share a common enemy.”

Mamoru watched me with fevered eyes. His voice was dry. “What did you hear?”

“Your brother will kill you unless I find some magic to stop him,” I said. “There are magicians just beyond this mountain range. But I do not know what I can barter for your safety.”

There they were: all my worries, spread before him. I could no more shield him from the truth than I could think of a solution myself, and so we must counsel with one another for inspiration.

“I am a prince,” Mamoru said. “Which means I must think of my people before myself. Our focus should not be on what we might barter for my safety, but rather, how we might still preserve the peace negotiated first by my father before his death. Iseul has dishonored his memory by betraying that—betraying the wishes of our father—and stationing these men in the mountains as if to start another war on the heels of the first! If Iseul will not think of our people, then it must fall to me.” His cheeks flushed again, though this time, I feared, it was due to a different kind of fever altogether.

I was shocked. Since our flight from the palace I had only ever thought of what my lord had lost in terms of station and a proper home. It had never occurred to me what the people had come so close to losing—a leader who cared enough to think of them before himself.

He was like a rare gem, my lord Mamoru, and I knew then—as I had most assuredly known before—that I would follow him to my very death if that was what he wished.

I did not speak of any of that.

“We will barter our knowledge of the enemies in the pass for my…” Mamoru swallowed thickly, as though it pained him. “… life, I suppose.”

“And you think they will believe us? Or even understand us?”

Mamoru blinked. “Every man, no matter his mother tongue, understands the truth,” he said, as though this should have been evident. Then he added, “Besides, I’ll make them believe us.”

I stared at my lord, his arm healing from where I’d struck him and his hair wild with the previous night’s ride to the mountains. His lips were chapped, and his face was dirty. I’d never seen a more perfect heir, his clothing torn and stained with mud.

He looked every inch the prince.

I was going to carry him into the belly of the dragon in order to save him.

“There is another way,” I told him. “Come.”

There was another branch to the fourteenth pass. One that had been tunneled deep into the earth long ago, to keep it safe from dragonfire, and most who had worked on it had been killed in the dragon’s final assault on the city. Not even many among the Ke-Han army had known about its construction since it had happened so late in the war that our forces had been mostly scattered all over. It had been omitted from the treaty for that very reason—I’d only remembered it just then, and I’d spent the better part of my adult life fighting beside my prince in the war around those very mountains. It was unlikely the diplomats at court had even heard of its existence; certainly, Iseul would not have been the one to alert them to it.

But General Yisun, who had spent so much time in these mountains many jested he’d become its guardian deity, had every reason to know of its existence. I had no real way of knowing the way was safe. What was worse, I had no better options left to me.

I hated to take my lord into uncertain territory, a place where I might not be able to protect him, but it seemed that we had little choice in the matter.

In the stories that my father told me of the old magic, a bond forged by fever would allow Iseul to know what Mamoru knew and see what he saw.

We would simply have to outride him.