Spy's Honor

She withdrew her hand. Rebuffed again. “Why wasn’t it taken from you when you were enslaved?”

“Because it’s worthless.”

“Yet you care about it.”

“If you had but a handful of possessions,” said Janto, “you would care about them too.”

“Fair enough.” If only she could figure him out. She was almost certain he liked her, but he wouldn’t touch her. Maybe it was just Tamienne. “Look, I won’t be here for the next few days.”

“Oh?”

“Augustan Ceres is coming. . . .”

Janto’s jaw dropped.

Rhianne blinked and considered how that must sound to him. “It has nothing to do with the war,” she amended. “That’s still ongoing. But Augustan has been recalled for a few days. For his betrothal.”

Janto’s eyes narrowed. “To whom?”

“Me,” Rhianne said in a small voice.

Janto was silent for several seconds. “Did you have any choice about this?”

“Of course not. Do you think a Kjallan imperial princess gets to choose her marriage partner?” It was the one enormous downside of being what she was. That she would have to marry one man for political reasons while secretly craving another, wholly unsuitable man.

“She might, perhaps, choose among several eligible suitors.”

“Well, that is not what happened,” said Rhianne. “And as for his being a monster, I would like to point out that you are Mosari and have an extraordinarily biased opinion.”

“You are quite correct,” said Janto.

Rhianne eyed him. His response was proper and polite, yet it chafed. For the past few days, he had not hesitated to push back when he’d disagreed with her, and she’d rather enjoyed arguing with him. He reminded her of Lucien, the sort of man she could enjoy an easy back-and-forth with and not worry that, like Florian, he was going to lose his temper, or, like so many of the lower-ranking men around the palace, he would be intimidated by her rank and refuse to challenge her. But now he was simply agreeing with her even when she knew perfectly well he didn’t, and she feared it was because he felt sorry for her.

She felt sick to her stomach. “So I won’t be here tomorrow or the day after. We can meet again in three days.”

Janto nodded, and they began their language work.

They weren’t far into it before Rhianne began to regret her choice of book. The first mythological tale was an adventure story in which the three gods, portrayed as brothers, overcame a series of trials by relying on their separate strengths. First, the Soldier defeated a giant serpent by stabbing it with his pike. Then the Sage negotiated with an evil rhinoceros and helped it by solving a problem with a polluted water supply; afterward, it allowed them to pass. The Vagabond got them past a troll by challenging it to a boasting game. The story was clever, but . . . “This is offensive,” she told Janto.

“Offensive?” said Janto. “How?”

“It portrays the gods as equals,” said Rhianne. “The Sage, in this story, is just as effective as the Soldier, and so is the Vagabond, while in reality—”

“That’s the whole point,” said Janto. “The story demonstrates that peaceful negotiation or trickery can accomplish as much as brute strength.”

“Yes, yes, well done, but in so doing it portrays the Sage and Vagabond as the equals of the Soldier, when in fact the Soldier is the primary god and the Sage and Vagabond are his subordinates—”

“Only Kjallans believe that,” said Janto. “Surely you know that belief is not universal. It’s not shared by Riorcans or Sardossians or Inyans, and it’s certainly not shared by my own people. We consider the gods to be equals. Brothers, in fact.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s sacrilegious.”

“To us, it’s offensive for you to elevate the Soldier above the other two gods.”

“Well.” She glanced at him. “Perhaps your country—and Riorca—are losing to our forces because your sacrilege offends the gods.”

Janto went very still, and a flush of anger crept up his cheek. “We are losing, and Riorca has already lost, because your forces outnumber ours ten to one.”

Rhianne bit her lip. It pained her to torment him, but he sat there pitying her, as if he were superior. How could he be so calm, so proud, so secure in himself, when he was a slave and his country was about to be conquered? Shouldn’t she be the one pitying him and explaining to him the error of his ways? “Kjall was not always a large country, you know. Long ago, my ancestors occupied only the southwestern corner of the continent—this corner, where Riat sits now. We conquered our neighbors. We grew and became prosperous because the gods willed that we should. I forgive you for your anger, because you’ve been taken from your homeland, and I can only imagine how painful that must be. But like it or not, the Soldier demands that strong nations should rule weak ones, as the Soldier himself rules over the Sage and the Vagabond.”

“And your emperor,” said Janto. “Did he attack Mosar because the Soldier told him to or because he coveted our sugar crop?”

“It’s not my place to question the emperor.”

“I wonder, do you support this philosophy yourself? Larger nations should rule smaller ones?”

“I said stronger nations should rule, not larger nations.”

“But it is Kjall’s size that gives it the advantage over Mosar.”

Rhianne shook her head. “Not only size. Our military tactics and training are superior.”

“How can you know, when you know so little of Mosar?”

She gave him a sour look.

“You are a woman,” continued Janto. “Do you believe women should be ruled by men because men are physically larger?”

“That’s . . . not the same thing.”

“I fail to see the difference. I think the Soldier as envisioned by your people is something of a bully.”

“Stop it!” He hadn’t even raised his voice, yet his words were like knives. Her family had ruled Kjall for generations. He was wrong. Biased. Of course he was; he was Mosari. “You’re twisting my words around! At least on Kjall we don’t engage in unnatural practices like casting our souls into animals.”

“I assure you, on Mosar we find it equally strange that you cast your souls into inanimate objects.”

“Gemstones,” corrected Rhianne.

“Last I heard, gemstones were inanimate objects,” said Janto. “Our scholars have researched the origins of magic, and we have reason to believe that the first mages used animal familiars, that the type of magic we practice on Mosar is the oldest and most time-honored and is what the gods intended us mortals to use. Your riftstones are, we believe, an aberration—a means of gaining the magic through an unintended and inappropriate pathway, and one that lacks some of the benefits of soulcasting. After all, you can have no telepathic bond with a gemstone.”

“Telepathic bond?”

“Do you not know?” said Janto. “A Mosari mage shares a telepathic bond with his animal familiar and can speak to him through the bond.”

She blinked. “But what would you have to say to an animal?”

“After soulcasting, it’s not an ordinary animal. It carries part of one’s soul, and it’s sentient. It will be one’s companion for the rest of one’s life. How can a lifeless riftstone compare to that?”

Rhianne looked at him sharply. He spoke with such conviction that she could swear he had once been a mage himself. “You know an awful lot about it for a palace scribe.”

“The Mosari palace is full of mages,” said Janto. “Just like the Imperial Palace.”

Rhianne reached for the gold chain that hung around her neck and withdrew, from beneath her syrtos, a glowing purple amethyst. “Our riftstones aren’t exactly lifeless.”

Janto stared. “Is that your riftstone? What sort of mage are you?”

“A mind mage,” she said.

“Confusion and forgetting spells? That sort of thing?”