Spy's Honor

A flush crept up Rhianne’s cheeks, and she looked away, muttering something about needing wine.

Janto had been half joking. Of course he’d like to sleep with her, but she was a Kjallan princess and he was a Mosari spy. That he was also a crown prince didn’t signify, given that their nations were at war and he couldn’t reveal his identity. Their lives were on different trajectories. He had no wish to put her in a situation that might cause her grief. A kiss was one thing, bedsport another.

He waited while she retrieved her jug of wine and poured herself a glass. Her blushing intrigued him—she seemed as embarrassed as he was.

Was she a virgin? He didn’t know what the rules were for Kjallan princesses, but when he’d kissed her, she’d been so tentative, and her pulse had fluttered under his hand like the heartbeat of a bird. Most Mosari women went to the marriage bed sexually experienced, and he’d heard it was the same in Kjall, but perhaps the imperial family was different. If she was a virgin, and Augustan was to be her first lover . . . well, one could only hope Augustan was a gentler man in the bedroom than his reputation on the battlefield suggested.

“Wine?” Rhianne’s hand trembled as she offered him a glass. “Let’s stick to business. We’re here to help the slave women. Nothing else.”

“Of course.”

“Wait here,” said Rhianne, setting down her glass. “I’m going to send word to someone who may be able to help us. You’d better hide your animal.” She indicated Sashi. “My friend doesn’t know what you are.”

“Right.” He shrouded Sashi.

Rhianne left, and Janto sipped his wine, looking about, trying to settle his mind on something, anything except the bed in the middle of the room. His eyes lit on the ruins of a bedroom chair. Its damask upholstery was shredded, the wood deeply scored. Horsehair littered the ground beneath it. He blinked. What in the Soldier’s name?

Rhianne padded softly back into the room.

Janto indicated the chair. “What happened there?”

She followed his gesture. “Oh. Whiskers got carried away.”

“Whiskers?” Comprehension dawned. “Is that what you call the brindlecat?”

“I figured she ought to have a name.”

“Yes, but Whiskers? I told you to cage that animal.”

Rhianne wrung her hands. “I know, but she’s so little. And there’s something wrong with her. She’s not eating.”

Janto looked around the room, searching for the cat. “What are you feeding her?”

Rhianne surprised him by extracting the scowling kitten from underneath a settee and thrusting the animal at him. Even he had to take sympathy on it. The poor thing was skin and bones.

Gods, keep her away from me! squealed Sashi, who leapt from Janto’s shoulder and fled to the far end of the room.

She can’t see you, Janto assured him.

She can smell me.

Janto held the kitten firmly, just in case.

“I tried a lot of things,” said Rhianne. “Every kind of meat I could think of, raw and cooked. Fish. Milk. Cream. She won’t have any of it.”

He ran his hands along the kitten’s protruding ribs. The creature sniffed thoroughly along his shoulder, where Sashi had been, and hissed. “And how are you feeding her?”

“I put the food on a plate or in a bowl and leave it for her.”

“Ah. You have to feed her by hand.”

“Three gods, why?”

He set the kitten on the floor. “Because she’s a brindlecat. Whiskers here was surely raised in the zo creche on Mosar as a future familiar for a war mage. When brindlecats are very young, still in the nest box, their keepers surround them with meat laced with bohr leaf. Bohr leaf has no detectable scent, but it induces vomiting. Meanwhile, they’re fed clean meat by hand. Soon they learn never to touch anything unless it comes from a keeper’s hand. At sexual maturity, their habits are refined even more, and they’re fed only by their intended zo partners. We can’t have enemies soul-sundering our war mages by tossing their familiars tainted meat.”

“I didn’t realize she’d be so complicated to care for,” said Rhianne.

“I told you, she’s not a house cat.”

Just then, from back in the receiving room they heard the heavy scrape of the bar being drawn and the door opening. A man’s voice called, “Rhianne?”

“That’s my cousin,” Rhianne said softly. “Let me do the explaining.” In a louder voice, she called, “In the bedroom, Lucien!”

Janto nearly spilled his wine. Lucien? Her cousin? Was Rhianne bringing the Imperial Heir into his presence? He craned his neck for a look as her cousin entered the bedroom.

Lucien was a black-haired, fresh-faced teenager with a wooden leg who walked with the aid of a crutch. He wore imperial dress and a loros wider than Rhianne’s, though not so wide as the emperor’s. Yes, this was the heir.

On Mosar, the rumors flew about this man, and they were so contradictory that an accurate picture of him could hardly be constructed. He was brave. He was cowardly. He had strong opinions. He never said a word. He was rebellious. He supported the emperor.

Lucien spied Janto and stopped short. “Three gods, Rhianne.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” she said.

“How did you get him past the door guards?” said Lucien.

Rhianne shrugged. “We found a way.”

His eyes narrowed. “You did bring him in through the front door . . . didn’t you?”

“Of course. This is innocent. I just want to help Janto find a way to stop the overseer from assaulting the slave women.”

“Talk to Florian,” said Lucien. “I don’t have that kind of authority, but he does.”

“I tried talking to Florian. He doesn’t care about the slave women.”

“Rhianne!” cried Lucien. “You can’t solve everybody else’s problems! Not Morgan’s, and not the slave women’s.”

“Why not?”

“Because Florian—”

“Florian should be solving these problems, because he’s the emperor, and he has the power to do it,” said Rhianne. “If he won’t do the job, I’ll find a way to do it for him.”

“Just because there’s an injustice in the world doesn’t mean you have to fix it. You take too much on yourself. You didn’t create the problem—”

“Lucien, if everybody thought that way, what kind of world would we live in?”

“Think of the danger! If Florian saw us here with this man—”

“What’s he going to do?” snapped Rhianne. “Marry me off to Augustan and send me to a conquered province full of rebels who hate me? That would be a fine punishment.”

Lucien, defeated, sank into a chair. “We’ll discuss this later. What do you want from me?”

Rhianne gestured to Janto.

“We need a way to discourage the slave overseer from attacking the women,” said Janto. “I fought him off once, but my assumption is he was back at it the next night. We need a way to discourage him permanently. The overseer himself must report to someone. If that person were to order him to stop—”

“Could you go to Florian?” Rhianne asked Lucien. “Or someone else in the chain of command? Nobody listens to me.”

Lucien rested his forehead on his palm and shook his head. “No. I’m in more trouble with him right now than you are, and if I . . . no.”

“Rhianne, what about your magic?” said Janto. “Could you plant a suggestion or something? Make him decide not to attack the women anymore?”

Lucien’s eyes glinted with anger. “Her Imperial Highness is not getting personally