Spy's Honor

harvested, and you’ve got to climb way up to find an eligible nest.”

“You’ve done this personally?”

“Oh yes,” said Janto. “You’re a coward if you don’t. The cliff claims a few lives each year, but it wouldn’t be exciting if it weren’t a bit dangerous. It’s not easy clinging to the rocks with your fingertips while the birds’ wings beat in your face.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Rhianne’s lunch, a crystal tray piled with cold venison, soft cheese, biscuits, oranges, and sliced apples.

“You want some of this?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say no to it.”

She set the tray down between them, and they shared.

“Have you ever been to Sardos?” asked Rhianne.

“No.”

“Their language is a lot easier than yours. The pronouns aren’t so ridiculous.”

Janto’s eyebrows rose. “You speak Sardossian?”

“Yes. Bellam khi oberym.” Good morning, my alligator.

He laughed and answered, “Qua oberym, bellam khi iquay.” I understand, my alligator. Good afternoon to you.

“How many languages do you know?”

“Five.”

Her jaw fell. “Five?”

“Mosari, Kjallan, Inyan, Sardossian, and Riorcan. Except my Riorcan is awful. Maybe we should say four and a half.”

“And you’re a palace scribe? Seems to me your talent is wasted.”

“Languages are more of a personal interest for me, but I’ve done translation work and foreign correspondence.”

Translation work and foreign correspondence? She didn’t doubt he’d done plenty of that, but as a palace scribe? That seemed less and less likely. She’d been suspecting for a while, and now she was convinced: this man was Mosari nobility.

* * *

Lucien was at his Caturanga board when Rhianne found him, playing a game with some minor official she knew vaguely by sight but not by name. Lucien gave her a cursory glance. “Give us a few minutes. The game’s almost over.”

She nodded and retreated to a couch to thumb through his books.

Behind her, she heard the sounds of the game finishing and the two men discussing it, their voices raised in passion—it appeared Lucien had won. Then the official left, and Lucien limped over on his crutch and wooden leg. “No one around here can give me a challenge anymore. You should play more.”

“Caturanga?” Rhianne rolled her eyes. “That’s a man’s game. I couldn’t be less interested.”

“Nonsense,” said Lucien. “There’s a woman tearing up the tournament circuit in eastern Kjall as we speak. What are you here for? Is it time for the tetrals?”

“Not yet. I came to ask you about something else.”

“Make it quick. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour.”

“I sort of got in an argument with someone about the war in Mosar, and I think I came off looking like a fool.”

“With Augustan?” Lucien shook his head. “He’s the commander of the invasion. If you argue with him about that war, you are a fool.”

Rhianne considered correcting him, but she decided against it. Lucien might not approve of her discussing the war with a Mosari slave. “I realized I don’t know that much about Mosar. Or even much about Kjall, politically and economically. I think the histories I’ve read were . . . shall we say, self-serving. Florian doesn’t involve me in meetings the way he does you, and—well, you know a great deal. You’ve got your own ideas. You’re opposed to the war, for example.”

“You don’t want to hear my ideas. They’re unpopular. Treasonous.”

“But they’re right. Aren’t they?”

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“I want to hear them.”

“All right, but it’s on you.” He pointed an accusing finger at her. “Don’t complain to me if you repeat this stuff to Florian and he goes up like a pyrotechnics display. In fact, you’d better not repeat anything to him at all.”

“Of course I won’t,” said Rhianne. “So why is the war in Mosar a bad idea?”

“Because we can’t afford it.”

“You’ve already lost me. We have an enormous army, and we’re a wealthy nation.”

“Right on the first count, wrong on the second,” said Lucien. “We’re a poor nation, and the size of our army is part of the reason for it. Our economy is based on plunder, tribute, and slave labor. We invade a neighboring nation, plunder their wealth, take slaves, and extract tribute from them henceforth. But the tribute payments don’t grow—in fact, they diminish over the years because the captured provinces do not flourish under the harsh conditions we impose on them. We solve the problem of our dwindling treasury by invading someone else, but after we conquered Riorca, there wasn’t anyone else left. We have the entire continent.”

“So we invaded the island of Mosar,” said Rhianne.

“Yes, and now you see how uncreative Florian’s thinking is. Invading Mosar is a stopgap solution, and we’ve reached the point where our constant wars are making our problems worse, not better,” said Lucien. “We have to face the real problem, which is that our empire is too far-flung and too backward—”

“Backward?”

“You’ve never been to Sardos or Inya. If you had, you’d know they’re ahead of us. The Inyans can build bridges the likes of which we can only dream of, and the Sardossians—well, Sardos is a bit of a mess, but I assure you they don’t leave so many of their natural resources unexploited.”

“What do you mean we don’t exploit our resources?”

“Just one example,” said Lucien. “There are mines in Riorca, rich mines where we could be extracting iron and copper and gold, but they’ve been shut down for decades because of the unrest in that part of the country. If we could stabilize the north, calm the unrest—but no, Florian sends our troops overseas to conquer Mosar.” He shook his head. “And speaking of Mosar, they’re ahead of us too. They’ve got musket technology far superior to ours. Their weapons are breech loaded, not muzzle loaded.”

“But if we take Mosar, it will be good for us. Won’t it? We can copy their muskets.”

“It won’t be good for us,” said Lucien. “In the short term, yes, there’ll be plunder, and we can copy the musket design. But Riorca has been a nightmare to manage. We conquered it decades ago, and there are still pockets of rebellion. And they’ve got the Obsidian Circle assassinating our people. You think it will be any easier with Mosar? It will be worse. The farther away the conquered nation, the harder it is to manage from Riat. You’ll be in the middle of that mess, you and Augustan. We would do better to pull out now, establish some favorable trade agreements with Mosar, and focus on stabilizing the north.”

“This is a lot more complicated than I imagined.” Would she and Augustan really be stuck in the middle of an unstable, violent mess when they tried to govern Mosar? She’d thought the worst of her problems would be a husband she didn’t get along with. She hadn’t considered that she might also be dodging assassins and rebels.

“I’ve barely scratched the surface.” Lucien gave her a weak smile. “And I’ve got to go to my meeting. Would you like to come along? If you sit in on these meetings, you’ll pick up a lot. And if you’ll be trying to help govern a conquered Mosar, you’ll need it.”

“I suppose I should.” Janto had coaxed her to look beyond the simplistic explanations she’d heard from her tutors, the ones that glorified Kjall and skirted around all the tough questions that had nagged at her even as a child. On a gut level, she’d always known those explanations did not make sense. She was ready to discover a more complex reality.