“No one could do better than you, Nohe,” I said. “I will be awaiting you at the Lakeshore Palace.”
She swallowed, nodding, and I turned away before I displayed an improper emotion between servant and master. My heart squeezed with relief. We moved through the forest more swiftly, not needing to worry about alerting the military camp. Our horses were exactly where we had left them, and it took only a moment to saddle them and mount.
Riding hard, it was a day and a half back to the Lakeshore Palace, although Commander Rede admitted it would probably take General Saxu’s battered forces at least a week to arrive.
The drawbridge lowered soon as the guards saw us, and we rode straight into the courtyard. We had barely dismounted, the Kennelmaster stumbling before he grabbed hold of his saddle and locked his knees, when Quuri rushed toward us.
“Your Imperial Majesty. The dwarven king has answered your summons.”
Two
“And what is his response?” Tallu asked, allowing servants to fasten his robe over his travel-stained clothes, his crown presented on a velvet cushion and placed on his brow, despite the sweat and dust from our hard ride. Three days to get there and back, and we’d had only an hour of sleep between us. His eyes were shadowed, cloudy with exhaustion.
“Your Imperial Majesty, he ishere,” Quuri said. “He arrived hours after your departure three days ago.”
Tallu straightened, his eyes clearing as he focused on her. “King Vostop is here?”
“Empress Koque has been entertaining him while they waited for your return.” Quuri’s voice was mild, so bland that you could have missed the disapproving flick of her fingers that she quickly hid when she caught my raised eyebrow. Quuri was usually too formal to express her disapproval in any of the blunter ways a servant might in the Imperium.
“Where are they?” Tallu asked. We’d arrived at midafternoon, the sun just starting to hide behind the walls of the palace, shadows darkening the inner courtyard.
“They are having a picnic in the garden,” Quuri said. She kept her censure stifled with both hands clasped behind her back.
“I should see him,” Tallu said.
“You should take a bath and change,” I said, pointedly looking his clothes up and down. The dark uniform of his Dogs looked imposing, even covered in fine sandy dust from the road. With his maroon cloak and crown, he looked severe, dangerous. “King Vostop is our ally, is he not?”
Tallu huffed a soft laugh and nodded. “He is.”
“Then we should not approach him looking as though you’ve ridden days on a war horse to meet him in battle.” I leaned in, making a point of sniffing Tallu. “Your scent alone might be considered an offense that drives both our nations back to war.”
“Your point is well taken, husband,” Tallu said, low and throaty. I would have told him thatIdid not mind his scent, that I would happily have spent several days in bed enjoying it with him, but we were surrounded by servants and even I had more propriety than that.
Tallu turned, and his servants swept him away to his rooms, Asahi and Sagam following behind. I looked toward Commander Rede, unsurprised to find he was already speaking with Quuri, likely arranging rooms for his men and preparations for Saxu and the forces coming. The Kennelmaster leaned against a wall. Even with his face hidden behind a mask, it was clear the journey had tired him out. The last Dog, Gotuye, lingered near him.
I hesitated. His obvious weakness made now a good time for an offensive move, but it was almosttooobvious. If the Kennelmaster was playing a game, making a show of weakness only to force me to show my own intentions toward him was an excellent opening play. If I tried to attack him now or tried to force him to give up his power, he would know I was an enemy. If I helped him, then we were bound together.
There was also the chance that he was genuinely weak, which raised another host of issues.
I walked away. The strain of the past few days had been enough that I had no interest in playing the Kennelmaster’s games.
In my quarters, I let my servants strip me down, making sure they knew to return the clothes to me when they were laundered. I missed having the clothes that I brought from the north on hand, but the Dogs’ were close enough, even if the fit was tighter at the stomach and ankle.
My mind spun with everything that needed to be done even as the bath maid scrubbed me down in the shower, then led me to the bathtub, already filled with warm water. At my direction, half of the servants assigned to me had been reassigned to Koque and Hallu, including the maid who had been muted when the Dogs removed her tongue.
Even with only half of my staff, my quarters were still more crowded than they had been in the Northern Kingdom, and the sheer number of servants with easy access to me left me feeling as though a noose were closing around my throat, tightening every time another person came inside a space I could barely call my own. The bath maid continued washing, and I wondered if we had made the right decision.
Leaving General Saxu alive meant the Imperium would endure. Even wounded, a living enemy was a dangerous one. And Saxu had proved himself an enemy that my parents could only fight to a standstill. The north had never beaten him.
If he wasn’t secretly here to hurt Tallu, he was only our enemy because he wanted the Imperium to survive when we didn’t. Until we revealed that, I had to hope that he would remain our ally. I closed my eyes, enjoying the soak for a moment longer.
Tallu and I had needed to see General Saxu and his forces ourselves. After everything that had happened with General Maki, we could no longer trust that what we were told was the truth. Still, part of me wished we had gotten on our horses after seeing his army and just… left.
Someone cleared her throat, and I opened my eyes to see Iradîostanding in the doorway, Naî perched on her shoulder with a nearly smug expression on her face.
I held in a sigh, trying to keep my expression as neutral as Tallu’s when I told the bath maid that that was all. She said nothing, keeping any opinions she had about my meeting with my cousin in secret to herself. When she was gone, I raised my eyebrows, and Naî deigned to climb down off of Iradîo’s shoulder and check that we were alone.
Returning, she perched at the edge of the tub, raising one paw above the water.
