Lord Yiilipo stood, his expression assessing, eyes moving around the room, trying to read what his response should be through the reactions of courtiers around him. His wife, clearly more familiar with the court, was faster on the uptake.
She stood, touching his elbow briefly until he raised his arm for her to place her hand in the crook of his elbow. Then she led them both closer to Tallu’s seat until they were in front of our table.
Once in front of Tallu, she bowed, as low as was physically possible, her fingers forming a triangle. Yiilipo was only a moment behind her, and both of them stayed bowed until Tallu gestured with three fingers to the seat Domusho had abandoned. There was a fraught, hesitating moment, but then Yiilipo sat, his wife taking the seat Domusho’s nearest loyalist abandoned quickly at Tallu’s sharp glance.
And with that, the power in River Otter Province changed. By the end of the dinner, all of the important people from Otter Cub City had turned their attention to Yiilipo and his wife. All of those Domusho had assumed would be loyal to him were now bowing in front of Yiilipo.
When Domusho left dinner, I watched as one of the blood mages trailed him. It would be easier if he did something obviously disloyal, but we might have to satisfy ourselves with him traveling with us to Tavornai, away from the province he had hoped to rule over backed by Tallu’s power.
That night,after dinner, I lingered on one of the many balconies that overlooked the city. The expansive view let me see all the way from Domusho’s estate to the edge of the city, where lights flickered and the houses were packed so close together that the glittering lanterns looked almost like fireflies in the grasses.
Behind me, Asahi shifted. I turned. “One of Sagam’s sisters lives in Otter Cub City, doesn’t she?”
For a moment, masked and cloaked in shadow, Asahi looked like a statue, frozen in place. After a long beat, he nodded.
“Won’t he visit her?” I asked. “I’m not sure when His Imperial Majesty will pass this way again.”
“He’s training with the Kennelmaster,” Asahi said. “They went into the city.”
I could hear, under Asahi’s voice, a razor edge of something. Resentment or anger or jealousy.
His mask hid any evidence of what the feeling might be.
“And they won’t meet with his sister?” I asked.
Asahi gave me a look, everything hidden behind his mask, his eyes in deep shadow, but even without being able to see them, I could recognize annoyance in the tilt of his head.
“No,” I said, “I suppose they wouldn’t, unless she is secretly a member of the Kennel.”
Asahi inclined his head, and I considered his silence.
“He was the best choice,” I said quietly. “The Kennelmaster wouldn’t agree to train you, and Tallu couldn’t trust Gotuye.”
“Because of my father? Is that why?” But Asahi didn’t sound angry. So his upset wasn’t that he had been passed over.
“You’re afraid that this will trap Sagam even more?” I asked.
“The Kennelmaster’s position is one that is only abandoned in death,” Asahi said. “No emperor can risk letting loose the man who knows all of his secrets and who holds the reins to his spies. He is not some horse put out to pasture, or a dog that one can let sleep in front of the fire in its old age.”
“The Kennelmaster is dying,” I said bluntly. Some night insects began to sing, cutting the silence around us with their music. “He is dying, and the emperor needs someone capable in that position. Who would you have had him choose?”
Asahi looked aside, his chest rising and falling.
“If he asks for his freedom, the emperor would grant it.”
Asahi let out a sound that might have been a snort, but it was muffled by his mask. “He will not.”
“Then accept that he is the one the emperor knew he could rely on. His Imperial Majesty has every faith in Sagam.”
I couldn’t tell from the silence what Asahi was thinking, but eventually, he dropped his head, his chin nearly touching his chest. I took it as assent.
We traveled on,but the mood among the courtiers who had tied their own power to Tallu’s had shifted. In the next province, Tallu lent his support to the courtier who had followed him, even going so far as to let the man fly Tallu’s ruby and gold colors above his massive estate when we stayed there. It drove a rift into the alliance of merchant guilds who had begun dividing power among themselves.
Tallu trusted the lord he backed little, but he trusted the guilds less. According to the blood monks and the ravens, the servantswere happy under their current lord, and the farmers were pleased that he never demanded taxes in years when they lost their crops to disease, instead dipping into his own coffers to pay whatever was owed to the emperor.
In comparison, the merchants were known for kidnapping any electro mage children whose parents weren’t willing to sell them, and lending money at too-high interest rates.
With one courtier displaced from the rule of his province and another reinforced, Tallu’s court grew wary and uncertain, and doubt flowed through it in a sickly, thick miasma. More members of court visited Empress Koque and me as various courtiers tried to find the right route to Tallu’s affections. Koque was careful never to promise any favor, and I played the fool when asked directly who Tallu planned to support.
