I knew what she saw. I was nothing more than a slightly darker shadow behind her. She shook her head, turning back to the water.
An owl hooted from somewhere up in the rigging of the ship, and Iradîo waved it off.
“You always were like that,” she said. “You might say you resented Yorîmu’s teachings, but I know you loved them.”
I stepped alongside her, leaning against the railing. “Maybe. What were you and the Kennelmaster discussing?”
“Techniques,” Iradîo said finally. “How to manage a kennel of spies. How to manage the flow of information to the ones we’ve pledged our loyalty to.”
“I don’t know that Mother would like you discussing her with the Imperium’s master of spies,” I said. Northern felt strange on my tongue after speaking the barbed imperial language for so long. Eonaî and I had practiced our Imperial over and over again with each other and with Lord Fuyii.
We had practiced it with Mother, who had learned the language to better understand her enemies. Eonaî had become fluent, not just in the language itself, but also in the nuance, and the ability to insult without being explicit, to imply without tipping her hand.
I had only ever learned the language, and it had been Tallu’s tutelage and watching the way he spun circles around his own court that had taught me more than a word-for-word translation.
“I wasn’t speaking of your mother,” Iradîo said.
I went still, watching her carefully. I remembered what I hadthought earlier in our journey, before we had even set off for Tavornai. She and I could each start anew. We could change who we were trained to be. But it was more than that. It wasn’t simply that she and Icouldchange.
I hadchosento change. She had been forced into it, and then my mother had sent her… Only, no, my mother never would have sent her spymaster south. How had I not understood all that my cousin’s presence implied?
“Mother doesn’t know where you are,” I said.
Iradîo smiled thinly, the straight line of her lips illuminated by the moonlight.
“Eonaî showed up—the crown princess returned!—and you lost the position you had been training for from the time we were born.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her, the way her face slowly froze, her pursed lips becoming a tight clench of her jaw. “You would never be the northern queen. What position did mother offer you? Advisor?”
“The same. Spymaster. She suggested I go south to Dragon’s Rest Mountains, do my work from there and report home only when I had news.” Iradîo chuckled. “All those years training to be her successor, only to be exiled for my trouble.”
“Mother couldn’t have known that her plan was going to go so awry.” But the words tasted sour. I wondered how Eonaî felt. She had been promised an early death, and before that she would be given to a man whose predilections were monstrous. And, instead, now she was expected to take our mother’s place, be the northern queen and keep the fractious clans from tearing themselves apart without the threat of the Imperium to keep them united.
“You think I blame your mother?” Iradîo shook her head. “I blameyou. I blame the emperor you love so dearly that you’re willing to risk the north for him.”
“Do you?” I asked, because I could hear self-recrimination in her words, the irritation that ate up her throat like bile.
“No. I blamemyself,” she said.
In the northern tongue, we had three words that meantmyself. There was myself, meaning your physical body. There was the self that you were when you actually meant your position within your own clan, distinguishing you as a single piece of the larger puzzle of your kin. Then there was the word that meant your innermost self, the piece of you that no one else could possibly know, the piece of you that was separate from your clan. For Eonaî and me, this lastmyselfhad truly always beenourself, plural and singular together. Until Tallu, I had never allowed myself that singular identity. What was the point when it only meant loneliness?
Iradîo used the last, most subtle, meaning. She blamed her innermost self, her soul. And she had no twin to share the weight of it.
Water lapped the hull of the boat, and the hum of our motor was audible. I watched the stars, tracing familiar constellations that looked different this far south.
“What will you do?”
“I pledged my loyalty to you.” Iradîo looked up at the stars, then down at the deck. “What choice did I have? Where else could I go?”
“You could have stayed in the north. You could have fought for your position,” I said.
“And throw the clans’ alliance into chaos? Most of the clans would back me. They’re already suspicious of Eonaî. She’s too imperial for their tastes. But how could I deny your mother her daughter? How could I do that to her?” Iradîo cleared her throat, hiding her broken voice. “How could I do that to the two of you?”
All through our childhood, we had been ghosts. Kept safe and pristine, untouchable. What did you do when a ghost came back to life?
“So even though Mother didn’t send you, you’re here for her?” I asked.
“I’m here for all three of us. We are children of the war, even though we never fought in it.” She looked away from me, her eyesfollowing the dark ocean. A sailor passed behind us, holding a lantern.
Our shadows grew long, disappearing into the endless waves of ocean. There was a distant splash of some nocturnal sea creature.
