Page 167

Chapter 14

“Bored with me already?” Jean-Paul murmured as he dipped Imogene into the next move of the dance. She was following him seamlessly, but her expression was distracted. Hardly the emotion he was trying to evoke.

Her gaze came back to him, and she made an apologetic face and then smiled. "Not bored, no."

They were moving closer to where the emperor still stood talking to the empress, who had made a late and somewhat unusual appearance at the ball. Liane was pregnant with their fifth child, and if the rumors he had heard over the years were true, her pregnancies had been difficult and there had been losses in between. Aristides’s expression as he talked with his wife was tender. The Andalyssians had departed for bed twenty minutes or so ago, and Jean-Paul had excused himself from Aristides and gone in search of Imogene. Who now seemed more fascinated by the emperor than the dance.

"Perhaps if you tell me what is so distracting, we can solve the issue?" he said gently.

Her eyes whipped back to him again. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. Something is bothering you. If it's something I've done, I would prefer to know. If it's something larger—which I am hoping it is given your attention returning to the emperor every time we get near him—then I would say it's my duty to know."

"No, I was just wondering how the Andalyssians enjoyed the ball."

"Ever the diplomat?" he said, one side of his mouth quirking. "You can be at ease, Lieutenant. No blood was shed. They appeared to enjoy themselves. Even the Ashmeiser Elannon, and he seems to have been born with no fraction of a sense of humor."

Imogene nearly stumbled, the movement the slightest pause before he steadied her.

She was flushed from the dance, but beneath the pink, he fancied her cheeks were paler than they had been before he had mentioned the Ashmeiser.

He tightened his grasp on her waist a fraction, wanting to let her know she was safe. "You know him, the Ashmeiser?"

"He was one of the king's advisors when we were in Andalyssia," she said. "I never liked him. And he definitely didn't seem to like Illvyans. I always wondered if..."

"If?" Jean-Paul prompted, steering them around a wayward couple who had careened somewhat out of the path of the dance. This particular waltz was complicated and fast, which was good because it would mean that everybody was too busy concentrating on the steps to pay attention to anyone else's conversation.

"If there was more to our mission going wrong than just Captain Berain being an idiot. I mean, it started well enough, but then things seemed to fall apart far too quickly and for reasons that never entirely made sense. I thought perhaps the Andalyssians—or some of them, at least, as the king himself was cordial in the beginning—were undermining us. If I were to choose the Andalyssian most likely to be doing so, the Ashmeiser would be high on the list."

Jean-Paul still wasn't certain what the Ashmeiser did. Andalyssians didn't have a noble class that operated in the same way as Illvya's. They had more elaborate family obligations and ties that balanced with rank. The Ashmeiser was head of one of those families. And some sort of senior counselor to the king. A man of power. Important enough to be sent to repair relations. But if Imogene's instincts were right—and he saw no reason she would dissemble about the mission when she had been honest with him so far—he was an interesting choice of man for the job.

"Did you tell anyone of your suspicions?" he asked.

"By the time I realized, things were already bad. I included my thoughts in my report when we returned, but I had no evidence of any wrongdoing. And Captain Berain had so thoroughly made a mess of it all that no one seemed to want to go digging for any other problems."

"The Ashmeiser has been polite enough, so far," Jean-Paul said. "Reminds me somewhat of a human icicle, but he hasn’t done anything untoward."

"That's good." She chewed at her lip. "I think I heard him talking earlier. There was a group of Andalyssians talking in one of the niches." She nodded to the side of the ballroom. "I couldn't see who they were, but I knew one of the voices sounded familiar. I couldn't quite place the voice then, but I'm sure it was him."

"Did you catch anything of what they said?" Jean-Paul asked.

She shook her head, light sparking from the jewels in her ears. "My Andalyssian is very rusty. I've had no need to use it in months. Plus, they were speaking softly. There was something about time and perhaps patience, but that was it. They mentioned the capital, Deephilm, several times. They sounded..." She hesitated. "Cautious," she said at last. "Or wary, perhaps." She frowned.

"Perhaps that's not unreasonable when they're in a strange country. Face-to-face with the emperor rather than dealing with diplomats in their own territory." Still, the Ashmeiser had not struck him as a man who was easily cowed. Was he bold enough to try something foolish?

"An emperor who perhaps some of them are not reconciled to?"

"Andalyssia has been part of the empire for nearly fifty years," Jean-Paul said. "It seems a little late to be staging a rebellion."

"Perhaps," Imogene said. "But men seem to have a strange fascination with land and power."

"And women don't?"

Her mouth quirked. "I'm sure some of them are obsessed, too. But I didn't notice any women in the Andalyssian party."

She was right about that. The Andalyssians had brought no women. Which was a point against them in his book. Either they were foolish in the attitudes to women and failed to understand the information women could access that men could not in a court or they were not willing to risk their women on what was supposed to be in a peaceful mission. But that was a worry for another time. He was tired of thinking about the Andalyssians. He wanted to focus on Imogene. "What about you?"

She shrugged, which was something of a feat given the position of her hands and arms. "I have no need for vast lands or vast wealth. Do I have dreams of a successful career? Yes. But that is not the same as conquest."