Shadow Magic (24 page)

It was hard to practice without a weapon. I’d had every man from th’Esar on down try to explain to me just how it was a good idea to visit a country that still loathed us without any arms to speak of, but no one could see the wisdom in what I had to say. Instead, they’d told me that was what we had men like Greylace for, whose weapons weren’t the sort that could ever be put down. And men like me, though I didn’t like to think about it, and probably wouldn’t unless I fucking had to.

So what it amounted to was, th’Esar wanted us to give the appearance of being unarmed. Still, we had
some
backup defenses, just the kind that were invisible, and not the kind used by those who’d done any actual fighting in the war or anything like that.

Not having a sword threw off my entire balance in the exercises. A sword’s got a certain heft to it that a soldier had to get used to if he ever wanted to catch the enemy napping. Without a sword, my hands moved too quickly. Without that added weight, I overcompensated once or twice and stumbled over the crescent-shaped footstools that were strewn around my room once more, like the maids were trying to box me in. I’d requested them, and now they too were working against me.

On the third day this happened, I heard a quiet tutting sound from the next room over. I nudged the footstool aside with the toe of my
boot and went on, ignoring what I’d heard—though by now, I knew the sound all too well.

Maybe if I ignored it, Caius Greylace would just go back to sleep. If luck was with me, I’d be able to finish
and
sneak in a quick bath before everyone else woke up.

Luck, as it happened, had abandoned me yet again. I heard the unmistakable sound of the door sliding open, soft as a whisper, and before I had time to pretend I hadn’t seen him, Caius Greylace was standing in the doorway, wrapped up in a cocoon of white silk robes with the front pieces of his hair pinned back like a woman’s. It was disconcerting to see both his eyes so clearly, since he normally took great pains to hide the one he’d lost the use of during the sickness. He peered at me sleepily with one green eye, the other one murky and white and without any focus or direction.

“I daresay, my dear, that you could wait until a decent hour to begin moving furniture around.” He yawned, his little pink tongue reminding me of a cat’s, and looked around the room. All at once, his expression changed from bemused and sleepy to curious, and I felt a sinking feeling within my chest, as though I would never have a moment’s peace again.

“What
are
you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, though the battle was already lost.

He ignored me, and wandered in to perch himself on one of the small chairs I hadn’t managed to knock over yet. It figured that
he
wouldn’t be too big for them the way I was, even though they’d been put in my room to begin with. Then he yawned again, covering his mouth like a Ke-Han lady did with a fan.

“Carry on,” he said, with what he probably imagined to be a regal air.

“If you’re so tired, then you ought to go back to bed,” I told him, but I knew it was hopeless to try to talk Caius Greylace into doing
anything
.

Best just to get on with things.

I did, doing my best to ignore Caius the way I ignored how wrong the exercises felt without a proper sword in my hand. I told myself that the most important thing was working up a sweat, and feeling that sweetly uncomfortable ache in my muscles that meant I was using them, not sitting around on a cushion all day while my ass got a little more numb and my arms and legs turned to cooked Ke-Han noodles.

I was just about finished when Caius started to clap. I’d done a pretty good job at forgetting he was there, so that the noise startled me out of the neat routine. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my peace of mind back enough to remember what came next. It was hard work, sparring without a partner.

“Oh, that was
marvelous,”
Caius said, twirling a loose bit of hair between his fingers. He looked thrilled to the bone, and too excited to sit still. “I’ve never seen soldiers training before. This explains all the noise you’ve been making. Do you plan on doing it every morning? Perhaps you should; it really does look as though you’re in need of some practice.”

“Looks better with a sword,” I told him, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. “Works better, too.”

“Ah, I see,” Caius said, nodding. He rested his chin on one hand, watching me with his off-putting, mismatched eyes.

“Also,” I added hastily, not knowing why I felt compelled to explain myself to him anyway, “it’s better with two people. That way you’ve got someone to fight back against. It keeps you thinking.”

“Fascinating,” Caius said, drawing the silk of his robes more tightly around him. Then he stood up as though he’d heard some wake-up bell I hadn’t. “Shall we dress for breakfast, my dear?”

He turned and swept through the door that joined my room to his like a little lord, his robes trailing down past his feet in a way that was probably planned, if I knew him. And I did, unfortunately.

The next morning, he showed up before I’d even started my warm-ups. He was carrying a sword. It was a strange blade, thin and curved at the very end, like the sword-maker had got distracted and pulled away too soon. He was holding it all wrong, bundled up in his arms like he thought it was a baby or a cat, and not a real metal blade, sharp and nastiest at the tip.

“Where did you get that?” I asked. It was nearly as big as he was.

“Well,”
Caius said, looking ever so pleased I’d asked. He was wearing green robes that morning, and his hair wasn’t clipped back over his bad eye, which meant that he must’ve been planning to interrupt and not just jarred cruelly from his beauty sleep. “I asked around, you know, and that charming lord who’s always shouting—Lord Jiro, I believe—said he had a son about my age, and it was every boy’s duty to carry a sword, or something to that effect. I admit my understanding of
the conversation waned toward the end of it. Anyway, his servants dropped by my room later that night, and they were
ever
so kind enough to provide me with this.”

He held out the sword like it was a dead cat; only it was heavy, because he was holding the hilt with both hands, and swaying under the weight of it. I wanted to laugh, but what I wanted to do even more was to take the sword. I did.

I was surprised to find that it was lighter than any blade you’d have found in Volstov, and thin like I’d thought it was. When I pulled it out of the sheath, I saw that there was one blunt side and one sharp. All the more useful for when you wanted to maim your opponent rather than kill him, I supposed. I was surprised, also, that the Ke-Han could ever decide which side to use without summoning a council of a hundred, but then maybe that was why they’d lost the war.

Caius sat down on the crescent seat again, watching me expectantly. I swung the sword through the air experimentally, making a pass here, a block there. It was a good sword.

“It’s still better with two,” I said, calling out to Caius the same way I’d called out the city boys who’d gathered around the barracks to lean over the fences and watch us fight. If he was going to sit in, he might as well learn something from it—if he could.

Caius’s eyes went wide, as though I’d genuinely shocked him.

“I’ll go easy on you and everything,” I said, though privately I was thinking,
not that easy
. His being a magician, even a reluctant watery one, meant that I’d heard my fair share of rumors about Caius Greylace in my time, and despite his looks, he could definitely take care of himself, spoiled lightweight or not.

“Oh my,” he said, fluttering like a lady just asked for her first dance. “Wouldn’t the guards think the worst of us again? I’d hate to cause any commotion.”

Ever since my little mishap with the guards, I’d noticed, they tended to patrol up and down our hallway with greater care, and took their time loitering right outside my doorway since they didn’t know the truth of it, that the whole thing had been Caius’s fault. All the other diplomats had their theories as to why, since no one knew the real reason except me, Caius, and Lord Temur, and there wasn’t one of us opening our mouths on the matter. Still, we were wasting time, and I
wasn’t about to be put off from the one thing that kept me sane by a bunch of overexcitable, unintelligible guards.

“You can use the scabbard,” I said, holding it out to him. “It’s about the same size as the sword.”

“That’s hardly fair; it’s not really the same at all,” he said. “And you’re such a great brute—you’ll have quite the advantage over me!”

He took it by the end, like a fishmonger carrying his catch of the day. I waited for him to do something—maybe stand a little straighter, or hold it up as if it were a real sword. Anything.
Something
. Instead, all I got was a coquettish look.

“My dear, I do believe you’re staring at me.”

“You’re holding it all wrong,” I told him, as if that was completely obvious, which up until then I would have said that it was.

“Oh,” Caius said, looking at me and then at the sword. “Well fancy that!” He adjusted his grip, fiddling for a moment with his long, wide sleeves before settling on something that looked marginally more normal.

“Haven’t you ever held a sword?” I asked him. I was getting that sinking feeling again.

“Well, I haven’t ever had to,” he said. “I’ve held knives. Well, they were more like letter openers, but they were decidedly knife
like
. You needn’t worry, I’m sure I’ll pick the trick up sooner or later.”

I began to reevaluate the situation. “Maybe you’d better sit this round out,” I said.

“Well, if you insist,” Caius said, and went back to his perch. I noticed, though, that he held on to the scabbard—probably because it was the same color as his outfit, and he liked that sort of fussy little detail.

Eventually, after a couple of days, I was able to forget that Caius Greylace was there at all. He kept quiet—the only place he ever managed to—almost like he actually respected what I was doing, though there was no real way he could’ve appreciated it properly, since he’d never been a real soldier, himself. Maybe the true understanding was lacking, but at least he was able to hold his tongue, like maybe he thought he was watching a performance at the local theatre, and he didn’t want to disrupt the performer. I was no more than entertainment to him, though; that much was certain.

“I daresay you look much happier with that awful thing than in the company of your friends,” Caius said, after the third morning.

“What friends?” I asked, but I was grinning while I asked, and wiped the sweat off my brow.

The next morning, Caius was dressed all in blue—just to spite me, I figured, since there was no other reason for it. He opened the door and clapped his hands together. “Wonderful news,” he said, and immediately I was wary. “Well you needn’t look as though I’ve gone mad,” Caius continued, pouting enormously. “It’s only, I’ve found a better place for you! So you won’t break any more stools.”

“I’ve only broken one,” I said. The remnants of the stool in question—I’d stepped on it the day before—were piled in the corner of the room, far enough out of the way that I wouldn’t splinter the wood any further.

“Two,” Caius corrected me.

“Now, that’s not fair,” I said. “The other one’s barely cracked. It doesn’t count.”

“Nevertheless,” Caius said, “I’ve the solution to the problem. Why ever do you refuse to trust me?”

Because you’re a two-wheeled carriage, if you know what I mean
, I thought. It didn’t matter whether I said it or not; Caius Greylace could sense an insult as sure as if you’d really spoken it.

“Well, you might as well just
see
it,” he reasoned, taking me by the arm and dragging me toward the door. “And I do believe you
will
like it.”

Letting Caius surprise me was a piss-poor idea, I thought, but suddenly, I was curious. He’d been almost tolerable the past few days. What if the Ke-Han air was getting to him, making him… sane? Well, saner, I thought, because he was still dressing like the belle of the ball, but there were some problems no amount of good weather could cure. Little lord Greylace was cracked.

But, as it turned out, I’d misjudged him.

“There,” Caius said, satisfied, after leading me through the twisting halls of the palace, enough so that I’d got thoroughly lost.

I didn’t know how he’d done it, but we were in a quiet, empty garden; the walls of the palace shielded it from the rapidly rising sun, and the ground was covered by bleached white stone. In fact, it looked a lot like he’d brought me to a place where I could train in the cool morning air, in private, in peace. Whether or not he’d done it for himself—giving
me a better stage to make the show more entertaining—didn’t matter much to me.

“I
thought
so,” he said, judging by my lack of response. “And what’s more, I’ve brought visitors!”

That was where he lost me. For a moment or so, I’d even been grateful.

“Visitors?” I asked.

“I just couldn’t help talking about it,” Caius went on, as though I didn’t need any further explanation, even though, between the two of us, I wasn’t the
velikaia
. “Even though you do break stools, it’s quite enjoyable to watch. You see, my dear, I was in the middle of a fascinating conversation with Josette about Lord Jiro’s battle history—she is so wonderful to talk to about these things; you ought to try it sometime—and I happened to let it slip that you were in the midst of preparing for another war, or so it seemed, the way you were behaving. Then, because she looked rather alarmed at the prospect, I had to explain everything…which was when Lord Temur overheard our conversation and suggested that, instead of practicing inside your room and breaking all the furniture the Ke-Han had to offer, you might prefer to practice somewhere you can do it properly, and without splinters.”

“He suggested I practice here,” I said, caught up in the whirlwind of illogical progression that was just Caius’s way of going about his everyday life.