“Am I the krill?” I asked, my lips pulled down.
“With those two, would youwantto be their prey?” Iradîo asked pointedly.
I considered. “No.”
“Then focus on what you should be worried about, rather than my opinion on your position in the natural order of the ocean.”
“Krill,” I muttered unhappily.
Iradîo followed me back into the main room where a pair of servants sprang apart at the sight of us. One let her eyes drift back and forth between us, and I hid a wince. To a fellow northerner, we might look like family, but in the south, we both simply looked likenortherners. Meaning, the emperor’s consort had been having an intimate conversation in a language they likely couldn’t speak, while he was naked, with a strange woman.
Neither said anything as they dressed me, and I considered what gossip must be flowing around the palace. Iradîo seemed unconcerned, settling on a couch and letting Naî curl in her lap when the dragon got tired of sulking in the bathroom.
“Has the emperor summoned the Krustavian King yet?” I asked in Imperial, when the silence began to wear on me.
“No, not yet,” Zolle, one of the servants, said. “He asked for you when you were bathed.”
There was an insult in her tone, something not even that subtle, as though a northerner could never truly be clean. In her seat, Iradîo straightened, her eyes sharp as she examined the servant. Zolle continued with the complicated knots at my waistband and then stood back, waiting for the other servant tofinish with my boots before she took a jacket off the bed and presented it for my approval.
I nodded, watching her in the mirror. “I am so grateful that General Saxu was able to save some of the servants from the Mountainside Palace.”
Her fingers faltered for a moment, but she continued pulling the jacket straight, while the other servant bit her lip, tying the jacket to the waistband of my pants in the imperial manner.
“Some of the servants?” Zolle asked, her head bowed respectfully. I couldn’t catch her eyes in the mirror, and kept my gaze fixed on the top of her head.
“Yes. I hope it will lessen the workload of the servants assigned to me and Empress Koque. I know being split between the two of us, the duties might be too much to handle.”
“Oh, no, I assure you, it’s not, Your Highness.” Zolle finished her work and stepped back, bowing low, her fingers triangled.
I made a soft humming noise, neither agreeing nor arguing against her reassurance. When both servants stepped back, I dipped my head in appreciation before walking out into the hallway and heading for Tallu’s rooms. Iradîo fell into step beside me.
“They may not have ill will toward Emperor Tallu,” I murmured, “but I am not as reassured about their feelings toward me.”
“I will have the birds keep an eye on her.” Iradîo adjusted her grip on Naî, letting the dragon climb her shoulder. “They’ve grown more brazen.”
“I worry that their fear of me is wearing off. Perhaps I should have let the Kennelmaster torture a few when Coyome died from poison.” But the joke felt sour. I wondered if they could not reject Tallu, so instead they took their helplessness out on me. A northerner would be too much a fool to understand when he was being insulted, after all.
Servants moved out of our way as we walked the hall, theirbows turning them into invisible statues. I tried to fix all of them in my memory, tried to keep track of who should be here and who looked strange, but felt their faces slipping through my tired mind.
Finally, we reached Tallu’s rooms, and I waited for the guards outside them to open the doors, unsurprised to see both Sagam and Asahi already inside, eyes moving across the room as though an assassin was about to jump free of the stone carved walls.
With four Krustavians in the palace, perhaps onewas.
“Did you get a chance to bathe?” I asked them.
“When our relief arrives,” Sagam answered.
“Well, try to stand downwind of the Shadow King when he meets with Tallu.” I watched as Tallu’s servants circled him, adjusting the fall of his clothes, the ties on his robe. “We’ll have enough problems meeting with King Vostop without adding offending his sense of smell.”
“We will keep that in mind.” Sagam nodded his head in a half bow that both indicated his agreement and hid his amusement.
Asahi had turned to examine Iradîo, his narrowed eyes catching on the wolf’s claw she wore openly at her waist. With so few Dogs, it had been convenient to present Iradîo as a replacement guard. My own personal defender, sent by the King of the Northern Kingdom to protect his son, an insurance that I would survive long enough to make sure no war broke out between north and south.
But both Sagam and Asahi had seen me fight and knew better than nearly anyone else what violence I was capable of, and how little I needed a guardian.
Finally, Tallu’s servants stepped back. He still wore his father’s colors, but had stopped looking so stiff in them, as though time had mellowed that first, horrified moment when he had looked in the mirror and seen his murdered father staring back at him.
The servants presented him with his crown, and Tallu bowed his head to accept it onto his brow, the gold lighting up his bronze skin.
