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Two

“ I am not your assassin.” I kept my voice flat but knew that he could see something in my face, something that made him smirk. I could not assassinate him, no matter how much I had planned and tried. But that didn’t mean I was his to order around.

“I know your mother sent you here to kill me.” Tallu turned my hand over, examining the scars and calluses from years of training.

“If I were your mother and I had seen what happened to Ristorium, the destruction in Forsaith, or the devastation we left behind in Tavornai, I would have done the same thing.

You did good work with Rute. With him out of the picture, my cousins and all the councilors who we summoned for the wedding will fight amongst each other for the position of heir apparent until the end of the one-month celebration.

“Unfortunately for both of us, stopping the imperial war machine will not be that easy. Help me discover who among the military is trying to overthrow me, who is hiding this world-ending weapon, and kill them. With that, we can cripple the Imperium.”

“Why doesn’t your military trust you?” I asked.

“Because they believe I killed my father. It’s in every look, every whisper. It’s in the reports I get that say nothing upon nothing.” Tallu gestured to a stack of paper on one of the side tables. He approached it, glaring down at the sheets.

“But you didn’t,” I said, feeling the truth of the words, flashing back to the way he’d said his father died choking on his own blood.

“No.” Tallu thumbed through the stack of paper, then straightened it again with his fingertips.

“Well, everyone thinks you did.” I waited. Did Empress Koque and his brother Prince Hallu ever make him pause? Did the idea of the young empress and her infant son suffering the same fate ever enter his mind, or was it always his father, the monster he’d inherited his dragon bone throne from?

“I know,” Tallu said shortly. “I still didn’t.”

“You loved him too much to murder him in cold blood?” I asked dryly. “Did he give you toy soldiers made from the bones of defeated enemies? Entertain you with the variety of screams a man can make when being tortured to death?”

As soon as I said it, I wanted to snatch the words back, bite off my own tongue. Yor?mu had always said that if I failed to kill the emperor as he slept, it would only be because I just had to comment on his snoring.

“No. I didn’t love my father. But his death complicated things.” Tallu’s nostrils flared. “When my father oversaw them, the generals tolerated his direction. Now, they think I killed my father, which makes them wonder if I’m going to kill them next. It emboldens them to challenge my authority.”

“So kill them,” I said. “You have the Emperor’s Dogs at your disposal. Kill them all.”

Tallu shook his head. “I cannot trust them.”

“Your Dogs?” I looked over my shoulder, even though I had heard the metal door lock. I knew that Sagam and Asahi were on the other side, that it was just me and Tallu in this room. “Why not?”

“Because none of them were my Dogs first. All of them were my father’s.” Tallu looked over my shoulder as though to see the Emperor’s Dogs on the other side of the locked door.

“They’ve promised to lay down their lives for you. But you don’t trust them? Instead, you trust me.” I couldn’t even phrase it as a question, my incredulity at the idea making it impossible to understand Tallu’s thoughts. I clarified in case he’d forgotten. “The man here to kill you.”

“I trust you,” Tallu agreed. His eyes held me like one of the bindings his father had used on his lovers.

I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. “Because you were sent here to kill me, and you didn’t when you had the chance.

You are not stupid enough to believe that merely killing me will sow war in the Imperium.

I think you’re smart enough to know what we need to do. ”

If that was why he wanted to believe I hadn’t killed him, perhaps I could believe it, too. That had to be why I had hesitated, why I hadn’t let my blade plunge into his throat.

I swore. “Well, Emperor. It looks like we have our work cut out for us.”

Assuming I trusted him. But what other choice did I have?

He was right. Killing him now meant war with the Northern Kingdom. The machine he’d shown me could wipe out the Silver City. But if he was letting me have a go at his generals, that would give me the time and the leverage to create chaos, to push everyone who wanted power into seeking it.

Then I could kill him. Which I would have no problem doing. Absolutely no problem.

“So, we discover which of your military commanders has a secret project that will conquer the continent. We try to figure out if your Dogs are loyal to you or if they’re still loyal to their dead master.

And then I assassinate whoever is disloyal in your government.

Is that about the size of it?” I raised my eyebrows.

“We also need to find out who did kill my father,” Tallu said. “Because, in all likelihood, they’ll come for me next. And I cannot afford to die until the airships are destroyed.”

“And as soon as that’s done, you’ll happily lie down and let your father’s assassin slit your throat?” I couldn’t help the twist of incredulity in my voice.

“More likely, they’ll poison me. That’s how they killed my father, my brother, and the empress.” Tallu grimaced.

“Right, he or she might as well keep on theme,” I said.

“That’s a lot of spy work you want us both doing.

You know, having me fight three-on-one and win isn’t the best way for me to collect information.

It would have been better if they saw me as helpless.

Now they think I’m another dog in your kennel. ”

Tallu didn’t even pretend to not know what I was talking about. “I wanted them to see you as I do.”

“And how do you see me, Emperor Tallu?” I asked slowly.

“Incredibly dangerous,” he said, his eyes fixed on my lips, and I licked them without thinking. “The greatest gift that anyone has given me. The greatest loss the north has ever taken was losing you.”

I stared at him, unable to breathe from the bands around my ribs. He spoke as if he meant it, as if I were there to save him rather than kill him. I had to break the tension, break the honesty that had overtaken both of us.

“You know it has to be General Kacha, right?” I puffed out my chest, hanging my arms to the side, mimicking the general’s exaggerated way of speaking about his own conquests. “Now I have an air machine! Now I will conquer all the nations!”

“Perhaps. It would be easier if it was him.” Tallu looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, and I swore I saw a slight smile on his lips. “You aren’t the only one annoyed by his bragging.”

“It’s not just bragging. Velethuil is under his thumb.

I can’t tell how far that loyalty goes, but I would bet the air mage isn’t the only powerful foreigner General Kacha wants owing him favors.

” I watched Tallu’s profile, observing the way his chest rose once before he thought better of whatever he was going to say and looked down again at the stack of papers.

“There are five generals of import, and each of them has commanders underneath them. Discovering which of them is hiding this is not an easy task,” Tallu warned. He tapped the table in front of him, but it didn’t seem to be a nervous gesture, merely a thoughtful one.

“No.” I took a step forward. “No, I don’t suppose it is. So, what’s the plan of action?”

“You need to leave yourself available so that someone might try to approach you. It needs to be clear that you would be open to such a conversation.” Tallu looked down, then back up at me, and his gaze left me breathless.

I still didn’t understand it, the way he said he trusted me, the way he seemed to mean it.

I didn’t trust him , even though it felt like I had to because I had no other options.

Was that the same thing? When I knew I had to at least pretend I believed him, was it even close to the same thing as trust?

“You think that whichever general is in charge of the air machines is going to randomly approach me when I’ve made it to consort and can live a life of pampered leisure?” I pulled my lips to the side skeptically.

“They will, or maybe the person who killed my father. Or maybe even some other faction in court that I don’t know about yet.

” Tallu took a step closer, and I felt it buzz over my skin.

Perhaps the electricity contained inside him could move over the distance between us, sending me into sensory overload.

“They’ll want a way to get to me. After what I did to the Emperor’s Council, no one has been taken into my confidence.

That means that you will be in high demand.

They’ll know that we spent the night together. That will mean something.”

“You know, it will take more than one night,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“It will take more than one night to convince them that you confide in me. Maybe tonight I learned what you prefer in bed,” I stepped even closer, watching as Tallu’s eyes went wide, enjoying putting him off-balance.

“I learned what makes you moan and scream. But to be let into your confidence? To have you tell me things? We’ll need more than one night together. ”

Tallu’s breath was abnormally even, a slight hitch when I said moan barely enough to change the rhythm. He swallowed. “You want to arrange more time together?”

“You and I know that secrets whispered in bed take more than one evening to spill, however satisfying the experience.” I let my gaze fall to his plush mouth, then back up to his eyes. “Your enemies know that, too.”

“You want to start sleeping here every night?” Tallu said.

“We’ll need time together anyway to discuss what we learn,” I said.