Page 5 of Betrothed to the Emperor (Emperor’s Assassin #1)

Five

“ N o.” I turned away, finding a chair near my bed.

The room was too awkward for the bird to comfortably fly, but it managed to coast from my dresser to the bed frame before dropping to the ground and hopping up to me where I sat.

I considered the bird. It was a typical raven: dark feathers that moved between black and iridescent blue. Its eyes were intelligent, but it had the same greedy glint as the rest of its kind. A long, hooked beak was half threat, half indication of how far it would go for food.

In the wild, ravens even ate the young of seabirds, consuming eggs or chicks. They were opportunistic, greedy creatures, and I missed all of the ones I’d left at home with an ache like an icicle in my heart.

“Do you have a name?” I had slipped back into Northern automatically. I didn’t even know if I could animal speak in the Imperial tongue.

Some animals did have names, although many refused to tell humans what theirs was. The bird looked at me, its head cocked to the side.

“We are very far from the north,” it said finally.

“We are.” I nodded, watching the bird. “Have you met other animal speakers here?”

“Why did you come?” The bird’s question was incisive, but I wasn’t about to admit the true reason for my being in the middle of the Imperium, even to a bird, even in a language the servants didn’t understand.

“Loyalty to the Northern Kingdom and the Silver City.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees to bring me closer to the bird. The bowl of sliced meats was cradled in my hands. “Because my mother promised my sister to the emperor.”

The bird opened its mouth, but instead of screeching, it made a soft clucking noise. “You may call me Terror.”

“Terror,” I said slowly.

“That is what you may call me.” The bird hopped, flapped its wings once, and landed on my shoulder. “Now. I want my payment.”

“I have no fish,” I said.

“Pah. They said all northerners have fish. Fish everywhere. In your pockets. In your furs.” Terror tilted its head, eyeing me suspiciously as though I was hiding random fish in silken imperial finery. I couldn’t even fit a handkerchief or a garrote in these pockets. How was I supposed to fit a fish ?

“What did you mean that you would tell them my secret?” I asked.

“I heard you and your sister,” Terror said. “I listen.”

“You do.” I picked up a piece of cooked meat with my fingers and offered it over to the bird. It ate it with one snap of its beak. “What else do you hear?”

“I hear lots of things,” the bird said. “What do you want to know?”

The weight of Terror on my shoulder settled unfamiliarly. It wasn’t uncommon in the north to let a raven perch on your shoulder as it told you castle gossip, but that was usually when you were wearing thick furs or leathers. The silk of imperial clothes was too thin, and I felt his claws digging into my muscles.

“I need to know every secret in the palace. I am new here, and there is much I don’t understand. Knowing who to trust would be a great help.” I shifted, trying not to disrupt the bird. “And I want to know who else here animal speaks.”

“Feed me some more, and I will tell you everything you want to know. We could be great allies.” He nuzzled close, and to an outsider, it might have looked affectionate, but as a northerner, I was all too aware of how sharp his beak was and how close it was to my ear.

With a sigh, I stood, returning to the table in the other room. Nohe raised both eyebrows but was too well trained to say anything. As I settled in my chair, Terror grumbled at the breakfast spread.

I tried all the food on the table, offering Terror some morsels when he asked. Everything was delicious, flavors I had never experienced before, only seen described in Lord Fuyii’s books.

The array of salty and sweet meats, along with a spongy plant that soaked up the tart sauce it had been cooked in, was filling. The only thing that tasted like home was a bowl of seaweed mixed with cooked barley. As I ate, my mind remembered crispy seaweed, dried and salted during the summer months and eaten when the winter had frosted over most of the bay.

Eventually, the serving boy came back, blinking in surprise when he saw the enormous bird on my shoulder.

“Is that the bird that was at his window?” the serving boy whispered. “Nohe, did he take in a wild bird? Are the stories about the Northern Kingdom true?”

“Hush.” Nohe smiled, although it looked tense. She helped the boy set out the tea, pouring a cup for me.

I felt even more awkward with both of them along the wall, watching me eat, but I forced myself to grow used to it. When I finished, I sat back, remembering to use the hand motion that indicated I was done.

After the boy cleared away the table, she bowed low. “Is there anything else you need today, Your Highness?”

“No,” I said. “I will be exploring today and will let you know if I need any direction.”

The servants took it as a dismissal, even without the hand gesture I knew they were expecting. Nohe directed the serving boy, and the two of them left with all the plates and utensils. The room was quiet when they left, the only sound was the birds outside, still making noisy work of the insects they ate.

I stood, and Terror fluffed his feathers in irritation.

Carefully avoiding dislodging him, I went into the empty room that looked designed for practice of various sorts. “Now. Tell me who else you talk to.”

“People.” Terror fluffed his feathers again. “People who know the value of my words.”

“What people?” I asked sharply. “Where are they?”

Were there northerners in the Imperial Capital? Why hadn’t Mother told me? Why hadn’t she given me and Eona? the benefit of that information?

“They are not always here. They move frequently.” Terror began to preen, muttering his next words into the feathers under his wing. “Often on ships not docked in the harbor.”

“Smugglers and criminals,” I said, my words sharper when I realized that there were no other northerners here, just criminals with enough north in their blood to do a bit of magic. They probably didn’t even have enough to fully understand Terror. “You wanted me to give up two whole fish for the possibility that some smuggler would care that Eona? and I… what? What secret do you think you know?”

Because if the bird had heard what I was really doing here, it wouldn’t be bargaining for fish. Even birds knew the value of an emperor’s assassination.

“She gave you a dragon egg.” The raven lifted its beak. “You have a dragon egg!”

“I do not.” My words were cold, my gaze fixed on him. Killing a raven would hurt. Their claws and beak would break my skin, tear my new clothes, but I could do it. “My sister gifted me coins and a family heirloom. And that is it.”

Terror tossed up his head. “Pah. Perhaps I did not see correctly. Perhaps it was just a northern carving. Perhaps, for my dear friend, Prince Airón, I will forget what I know.”

“Are we friends, Terror?” I watched the bird, unsure if I trusted it. “My friends do not threaten me with made-up lies.”

“I deal honestly, unlike some of my brethren.” Terror shrieked again. “Do you deal honestly with your friends ?”

“Do you know anything that will help me learn the intricacies of the court?” I pressed. “Or any details about the emperor I should know as his spouse?”

“Well”—Terror fluffed his feathers—“I can begin watching. He’s not the most interesting person in the palace.”

“Who is?” I asked.

“The cooks. The servants. They’re always gossiping, and sometimes they leave out food when they’re distracted.” Terror spread his wings and fluttered to one of the pegs on the wall that had been intended to hang something but served him perfectly as a perch. “A few of the lords plotting to get more power.”

“So, the same as everywhere else,” I said.

“Not everywhere. I have been to many places, and few are as frightened of their master. Even the bread shop in town where the owner beats his servants. They do not fear his rage as the people here fear the emperor.” Terror pulled a feather free from under his wing.

“Interesting,” I said slowly. “This emperor or the last one as well?”

“This one. And they feared him more when he was a prince and had his father’s ear.” He screeched loud. “See? See? I can be useful. Now. Fish.”

“Alright,” I sighed. “Fish.”

I stopped in my room to collect the rabbit skin pouch and the precious egg inside. I tied it to the long strips of fabric that formed a sash at my waist. In the mirror, the jacket didn’t fall as cleanly as a true Imperial would wear it, but it looked good enough.

Returning to the sitting room, I found a servant at the doorway. He jumped when he saw the bird on my shoulder, eyes wide. “Prince Airón!”

“I’m going to take a walk. Do I need a chaperone?” I asked, unsure what the rules were for the male betrothed of the emperor.

Lord Fuyii had been detailed in how demure Eona?’s behavior would have to be. It had been one reason we’d been sure the plan would work. I would be allowed to stay as her chaperone, to guard her purity until marriage. But did the same rules apply to a man?

“No, of course not,” the servant said. “But I can ask Nohe if she can give you a tour of the palace…”

He ended on a hopeful note, and I waved him off. “No, don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”

Awkwardly, the servant opened the door for me, and I headed down the hallway to the stairs and back to the main floor. Looking around, I tried to gauge where I was. Turtle House seemed divided into two parts. Upstairs, Turtle House was living quarters for guests. Of which, as far as I could tell, I was the only one in residence.

Downstairs were the large rooms where Eona? and I had been left waiting. It was linked to the throne room and audience chambers by a long hallway. They were likely in an entirely different building.

The emperor’s living quarters were in a separate building, but Fuyii said it was next to the more public areas of the palace. I needed a better map than the rough one I’d been able to sketch out based on his ramblings.

I was able to exit Turtle House through one of the sliding doors, hastily opened by another servant who had been dusting a nearby sculpture. Then I was outside, breathing in fresh air, gravel crunching under my feet.

While the front of Turtle House opened to a path that connected it with the other palace buildings, the back opened into a private courtyard. In the center was a pond with two large, colorful fish swimming lazily around lily pads.

“These will do,” Terror said, pushing off my shoulder and launching into the air.

“No,” I said sharply.

The bird circled above me, and I wasn’t sure it heard.

“Not these. These are decorative. Not bred with fat and meat in mind. Let me get you ones designed for dinner.” I looked up and saw Terror staring down at me.

With an annoyed cry, the bird landed on a branch of a nearby tree. I walked the edges of the garden, glancing in the windows and seeing rooms of luxury that existed for such strange purposes as music or sitting .

The tree outside my window stretched upward, its branches easily cresting the roof. That would be an escape, if I needed to make one.

When I walked back into the house, through the same door I’d entered the courtyard, there was a strange man waiting for me. Imperial clothes tended toward colorful, a rainbow in shades that even the gods had never seen.

But this man wore a shift of pale white, the color of a cloud on a sunny morning. It was so translucent I could see his toned legs and firm body underneath. He wore none of the undergarments in the imperial style, although he’d wrapped a dark cloth around his groin for modesty.

He bowed to me without the triangle of his fingers. Instead, he put two fists together, touching in front of his chest.

When he looked up, his bright green eyes met mine thoughtfully. With his long beard and no hair, he did not fit the mold of an imperial. He didn’t fit the mold of a northerner either.

Terror had stopped his pouting and flew through the open door, startling the servant before landing on my shoulder again.

“Who is that?” the raven croaked.

“An air mage?” I had spoken in Northern automatically, and the air mage smiled at me.

“Yes, I’m glad to make your acquaintance, Prince Airón. I am Velethuil.” He bowed again, fists pressing together over his chest. “Although, if you say simply, ‘the air mage,’ everyone will know who I am.”

“I didn’t know any citizens of Ristorium still spoke Northern,” I said.

“We must keep in practice for our close allies , the Northern Kingdom. Even if I haven’t had cause to speak Northern for decades. One never knows when one might meet a friend.” He smiled at me, the meaning under his words so clear he might as well have spoken it aloud.

“Your accent is good,” I said.

“A compliment to my teachers,” he said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with any northerners when it was possible. I fear both my Northern and my Risto have degraded greatly.”

Looking at him, I tried to gauge his age, but his face was unwrinkled. He must have been barely out of childhood when the Imperium had crashed through the Blood Mountains, killing all the blood mages and leaving Ristorium open to invasion. The air mages had fled to their sky islands, beyond the reach of the Imperium and its ground forces.

My mother had told me that only those in Ristorium who still had fairy in their blood were able to make the journey to the islands. The rest had not been so lucky.

“The air mage? Singular? You are the only one here?” I asked. On my shoulder, Terror clenched his feet once, but I didn’t need his warning to understand this was a dangerous conversational path.

“As someone who was once new here myself, I thought perhaps you might enjoy a tour. Lord Sotonam is not known for thinking of others, and I often found asking him questions only led to mockery.” He had the mild smile of a monk, and I was glad for the warning he gave. Not that I needed it, but it showed that he knew the situation I was in and was willing to help.

“He wants something,” Terror croaked in my ear. “Humans always do. In that way, ravens and people are the same. Only you couch your wants and greed in friendship. Ravens have no friends.”

“I would appreciate a tour,” I said.

Velethuil might want something, but at least he was offering to help, and finding out what he wanted would give me a much better understanding of the court. With another smile, Velethuil led us out an exterior door and onto the broader expanse of the Mountainside Palace.

“The palace is, in its own way, a smaller version of the Imperium.” Velethuil gestured to the lake. “Have you ever seen a map of the Imperium? Or, that is, the older Imperium, before the war of imperial expansion?”

I nodded, remembering the shape of it, the two major bodies of water: Heron Lake and Mountain Thrown Lake. Heron Lake, north of the Capital City and the Mountainside Palace outside it, was fed by rivers from the Blood Mountains. The emperor’s second estate, the Lakeshore Palace, was to the east, on the edge of Mountain Thrown Lake, practically touching the border with Krustau.

“The lake here is meant to represent Heron Lake.” Velethuil gestured to the water. “There is a larger one at the edge of the property that shares a shape with the Mountain Thrown Lake.”

Lord Fuyii had said something similar, but in the north, it had been impossible to imagine. Now, I looked around and realized that there were green buildings representing the forests that surrounded the Capital City and tall purple buildings representing Dragon’s Rest Mountains and the Krustau Mountains to the east.

“Interesting,” I said thoughtfully. “So, I am sleeping in one of the buildings representing the forest. Where does the emperor sleep?”

Velethuil pointed to one of the tall purple buildings representing Dragon’s Rest Mountains next to Turtle House and the public rooms. “The Imperial chambers are at the top of that building. They are locked every night when the emperor goes to sleep, and no one can get in or out until he wakes in the morning.”

The building was windowless up until the very top. The rock exterior was smooth, as though it had been polished to a slick shine. Nothing would be able to climb it. No trees reached the top.

So, catching the emperor while he was asleep was impossible unless I was in the room with him when it was locked for the evening. If I couldn’t seduce him before our wedding, even the emperor couldn’t hide from our wedding night. Not that he had seemed to want to hide from it or from me.

I wished I’d been trained in seduction like Eona?. My only experience with lovemaking was a few quick fumbles with one of the boys my own age who had been invited into my father’s hunting party. There was little chance that the Emperor of the Southern Imperium was going to be impressed by a rough handjob and some desperate kissing.

What would the emperor expect instead? Or would he expect to take what he wanted from me, leaving me pleasured and used?

My distraction was unremarked upon by Velethuil, who continued his tour as though I was paying attention to which of the buildings had been built during the reign of which emperor and which noble families lived in the massive buildings inside the walls of the Mountainside Palace and which were relegated to houses outside the walls.

“Each of the generals is granted rooms in the palace. All of the ministers. The council was once granted rooms second only to the emperor’s until… of course, you know.” Velethuil gestured to a set of buildings that looked as though they could have been a palace themselves. The buildings were layered around each other, green with pointed roofs like trees in a forest. Now that I looked, various bridges stretched between the buildings like vines or branches.

The Mountainside Palace was called a palace, but from my view, it acted like a small city, containing several kitchens, laundries, three separate bathhouses, a jeweler, the seamstress and her workers. There was a legion of servants who lived and worked in the palace. If the Imperial Capital were to burn down around it, the Mountainside Palace, with its high walls and private farmland, would easily survive.

“Thank you for the tour,” I said thoughtfully. My mind was mapping all the different ways I could get into and out of the buildings and coming up with one cold fact: none of this meant anything if I was unable to find out where the emperor would be and when he would be there. “I am grateful for your help. I do have one question: how did you get here?”

Velethuil’s smile twitched and he turned his face into the slight breeze coming off the lake. “Well, that’s a story best told by my patron.”

“Your patron?” I asked. Terror clenched his claws tight on my shoulder, and I winced, turning toward him, but saw what he was trying to indicate. In the middle of the lake, a low building was illuminated by electric lights. Music and laughter from partygoers carried over the water. Velethuil had been circling the lake as we spoke, leading me toward one of the four bridges that led to the center.

“Yes. General Kacha.” Velethuil indicated the party. “Look, there he is.”

“There he is,” I said, glancing slightly at Velethuil. So. This general wanted to meet me, but he either wasn’t willing or wasn’t able to approach me directly, so instead, he sent a bait I wouldn’t be able to resist: an air mage also trapped in the Mountainside Palace.

Now, I had a choice of whether to spurn him or see what he wanted. Father said in hunting, you always knew what the predators wanted, but in a court full of them, I knew they didn’t want territory or food, not in the way a borealis wolf did. So, I would see what this predator wanted with his carefully laid trap. And then, I would see if what he wanted and what I wanted were in line and how I could use that to survive.

After all, I had promised Eona? that I would try to.

“I suppose I can’t get out of meeting him, can I?” I asked. I turned a smile on Velethuil, but his expression was grim.

“No, you can’t. As one prisoner to another, this is a task best finished quickly.” His lip peeled back from his teeth. “He is asking you nicely now to meet.”

“And I don’t want to see how he asks when it isn’t nice?” I turned back to look at the distant party.

“No. You don’t,” Velethuil said. “Are you going to play his game?”