Spy's Honor

caused when I concealed the fact that I was the Crown Prince of Mosar. Out of necessity, I dodged questions and withheld information about my family and upbringing. But there’s no longer any need for secrecy. If you’d like, I can answer those questions now.” He smiled hopefully.

Rhianne sighed. He wanted to reconcile with her, for what purpose she wasn’t certain. To assuage a guilty conscience? Because he wanted something else from her, maybe at the negotiations? Or did he want to resume their love affair? “I’m not interested.”

His smile faded. “The name Janto is real,” he said, apparently determined to talk about himself anyway. “It’s a common Mosari name, the one my mother gave me, and the one my friends and family use. At the age of fourteen, when I achieved soulcasting, I was granted the zo name Jan-Torres. It’s formal—more a title than a name.”

That was actually surprising, and something of a relief, since she’d thought the name Janto was a fake. But she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to encourage him.

He soldiered on gamely. “Most of the things I told you in the garden were true. Obviously I’ve never been a scribe. But I was a language scholar, and I do speak five languages. It was part of my education as a prince, but I showed a natural aptitude, and beyond that, I was just really interested in languages. My brother, Kal-Torres, was the rough-and-tumble type, always wanting to wrestle or run a race or practice swordplay, and I always had my nose stuck in a book. I came here not because I was a trained spy—I wasn’t—but because I was a shroud mage and my nation was desperate. I was in charge of Mosari Intelligence, but I’d had the post for only a short while and I had no field experience, so to avoid getting in trouble I stuck as much to the truth as I could. Most of what you know about me is genuine.”

He paused. Rhianne eyed the ferret sitting in his lap. “Why are you a shroud mage rather than a war mage?”

Janto’s eyes lit. “You’re right to wonder. I was meant to be a war mage. It’s traditional. The Mosari king’s first son is always a war mage, and his second son a sea mage. If there’s a third son, he’s another war mage, and so on. In the zo creche, they had an albino brindlecat waiting for me. Albinos are rare, and they save them for the royal family. I was visiting the creche regularly, feeding my intended brindlecat and getting to know her, and then something happened. Are you familiar with the problems we have regarding ferrets and soulcasting?”

Rhianne shook her head.

He stroked Sashi absently. “Ferrets are . . . difficult animals. They refuse the soulcasting bond nineteen times out of twenty. That success rate is just too low, after putting a candidate through all the training and bonding work, and then you end up having to start over with a different animal, and the candidate is set back a year or two. That’s why we have so few shroud mages. Nowadays we don’t even attempt to bond someone with a ferret unless the ferret shows a natural affinity for the candidate. We keep ferrets in the zo creche and essentially wait for them to choose someone. Which a lot of them never do.”

“Are you saying Sashi chose you?”

“He did,” said Janto. “I walked past his cage several times a day, every day, to visit my brindlecat. And Sashi literally flung himself at the bars of his cage, trying to get at me. It created a dilemma, because the albino brindlecat had been set aside for me, and for me to become a shroud mage instead of a war mage violated tradition. But we have this concept in Mosar of quanrok. There’s no Kjallan translation. It means, more or less, gods decide. We feel that sometimes the gods make decisions for us through familiars. My father and mother and some of the zo handlers and I came to an agreement that the gods had made a decision on my behalf. They wanted me to take Sashi as my familiar, not the brindlecat, and so I did. And I became a shroud mage.”

His story raised half a dozen questions, about quanrok and this concept of an animal refusing the bond, but Rhianne kept them to herself.

“Any other questions?” asked Janto.

She shook her head.

Janto rose from his chair and took her hands, encouraging her to rise.

She stood, with some reluctance, since clearly he was up to something. He was being kind and, she had to admit, a little bit charming. But gods curse him, he was still her enemy. Her jailer.

“There’s one last thing I want to talk to you about before the negotiations begin this afternoon,” said Janto. “Before I head home to Mosar.”

“What?” There went the butterflies in her stomach again.

“I know this is the worst possible time I could be doing this. But please understand, there is no other time. In a couple of days, I’ll be gone, and once I go—”

“Doing what?” she demanded.

He swallowed. “Rhianne, since the moment I laid eyes on you in the Imperial Garden, I’ve been enraptured by your beauty. At the time, I was blinded by my prejudice toward Kjallans. But as I grew to know you better —”

“Janto, no!” Oh gods, he was proposing.

Twin lines of worry appeared in his forehead. “Let me finish before you make your decision. As I grew to know you better, I witnessed your bravery and your compassion for people from all walks of life. When I saw firsthand the steadfastness of your heart, my feelings grew from admiration to love. I would be honored if you would consent to marry me and rule by my side as the queen of Mosar.”

She pulled her hands away. “I can’t marry you!”

Janto, looking more sad than surprised, moved his hands awkwardly to his sides. “What is your objection?”

“You lied to me! You betrayed me!” Her hands shook. Her voice shook. What was wrong with her? This should be easy, telling him to go home to Mosar. “You took my riftstone and locked me up like a prisoner.” Gods, the tears were starting. She brushed them away.

“I thought you knew why I had to do those things,” said Janto. “You have the biggest heart of any woman I’ve ever known. Can you not find room in that heart to forgive, to understand my circumstances?”

Rhianne choked on sobs. “Just go.”

“It would be good for our nations! Both yours and mine. It would promote peace between them. If you won’t accept me for my own sake, would you accept me for the sake of Kjall and Mosar?”

Fury rose like bile in her throat. “Is that why you asked? Because it would be good for Mosar?”

He lowered his brows. “You know why I asked.”

She shook her head.

Janto turned. “I’ll see you at the negotiating table.”

38

Janto arrived a little early for the council meeting, with Kal-Torres and a clerk in tow. He’d chosen a Kjallan council room for the negotiations, well-appointed but small, with an oval-shaped table in the center. Admiral Llinos and his adviser were already present.

Llinos clasped wrists with Janto and began to regale him with the tale of his battle in the harbor with the Kjallan ship Relentless. Janto sat down to listen, while Sashi climbed to the top of Janto’s chair to nap and Gishi perched on the top of Kal’s chair.

Admiral Durgan entered and took his seat. Janto nodded at Durgan and received a nod in return.

“We lost the foremast over the port bow—,” Llinos was saying.

“Starboard,” corrected his adviser.

“You were not on board, Eurig.”

As Llinos’s tale continued, Rhianne entered the room, escorted by a contingent of guards, and sat at the far end of the table. Janto stole glances at her, each one sending a shiver of yearning down his spine. Her expression was neutral, but a tremor in her hands betrayed her nervousness. He wanted to go and speak to her, but there was nothing left to say. She couldn’t forgive him, and she didn’t love him anymore.