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“Nice dress,” he murmured.
Arelia’s skin flushed ever so slightly. “I hate it. It doesn’t have pockets. But the dye is quite rare. Stone-ground from Ogfaso shells and left to dry for three months before it can be mixed with squid ink to form a dye this pigmented. Smells like rotting eggs.”
Sufiyan nodded with bemusement or perhaps mockery. It was hard to tell. Arelia huffed in annoyance, likely assuming it was mockery.
“Mater Andricar says she upset you.” Arelia turned to Quil. “She wouldn’t tell me more than that.”
“Ah…well…” Quil considered what to say. As a court engineer,Arelia went all over the city, and heard things others didn’t. But if she knew about his betrothal and hadn’t told him—
Sufiyan let out a sound of impatience. “Mater Andricar told Quil he’s going to be betrothed and I’m trying to persuade him to tell the Empress to stuff it.”
“Betrothed?” Arelia’s gasp was so genuine that Quil knew she’d been as ignorant as he. “There must be some explanation. She wouldn’t ask you to do anything that wasn’t within the scope of your duties.”
“You Martials,” Sufiyan muttered, “and your bleeding duty.”
“MayI remind you that you are half Martial yourself.” Arelia’s pale eyes flashed, a rare show of temper.
Quil caught a glimpse of his aunt’s armor. She was heading for the balcony.
The prince left his friends to their argument and edged through the crowd, keeping his face stony to discourage further conversation.
Once outside, he wished for his cloak. Winter’s chill had penetrated even this far south, and Quil shivered. The palace gardens stretched beyond the carved stone of the balcony, lit by hundreds of tiny lamps.
Quil knew three ways into the gardens, four ways out, two of which only he and the Empress used.
Back when they were close, she’d shown him. That was when she told him everything. He’d enjoyed his visits to Navium, Serra, Antium—all the cities where she had residences. The Empress moved constantly. Quil used to think it was because she got bored.
It’s because every city has ghosts, she’d told him once, when they walked along the shores of the River Rei.If I stay too long, they grow angry, and bother me.
He’d not understood how his fearless aunt might be bothered by a few ghosts. After all, she’d taught him how to escape a room with one door and a dozen guards blocking it. How to traverse a city’s rooftopsand disappear in a crowd, height be damned. How to navigate by starlight and raise a sail and shoot a bow and ride seventy-five miles in a day without killing himself or any horses.
Your best and most reliable protection is this.She’d tap his head when he was a boy. And these.She’d take his hands, so much smaller than hers.Never depend on anyone else to keep you safe, nephew. You keep them safe instead.
Together with Elias, she’d made him into a Mask without him having to spend a day in Blackcliff Military Academy.
Yet she still had guards trailing him. She made decisions for him. She didn’t talk to him. Not anymore.
“Nephew.” Aunt Helene appeared out of the darkness. “What troubles you?”
She was so calm. It made him want to scream. When Sufiyan and his sister Karinna were bickering incessantly a month ago, Laia lost her temper and told them that if they didn’t shut it, she’d put a nest of Ankanese jumping spiders in their boots. Would that Quil could shout at his aunt without caring who heard, and she could threaten him with poisonous beasties, the way normal people did.
“Were you going to tell me that you’re marrying me off?” he said.
His aunt stared at him with her mouth half-open, and Quil was briefly hopeful she would laugh and ask him where he’d heard such a ridiculous rumor. Then she did the oddest thing. She glanced first to the doors of the balcony, and out into the lamplit shadows of the garden. Her mouth hardened.
“Indeed, I received a dispatch from the Kegari Triarchy. One of the Triarchs has a daughter who—”
“Were you going to tell me?” Quil cut her off. “Or drag me to meet my bride the day I was to marry?”
“You’re being dramatic. How long have you known?”
“I— That’s what you ask me? After planning this behind my back?”
“I am asking,” the Empress said, each word edged in exasperation, “because the Kegari stopped responding to us in the fall, and we can’t get any information about what’s going on. Tas was trying, but—” She shook her head. “How long?”
“I found out today,” Quil said. “Mater Andricar mentioned it. Of all the people you could choose from, Empress, why the Kegari? All we know about them is that they enjoy internecine massacres and stealing their neighbors’ grain.”
“Zacharias.” Aunt Hel’s voice was low, urgent, and she stepped closer. “This isn’t what you think. The Kegari—”
