Spy's Honor

stories about the gods, they treat one another as brothers.”

“I have a different sort of question for you.” Rhianne marked her place and closed the book. “How long have you been a slave?”

Janto hesitated before answering. “Why do you ask?”

“I want to know if you were captured before or during the war. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for details.”

“During,” he said.

“You fought, then, on Mosar?”

He eyed her warily. “Yes.”

“Then you have some familiarity with Augustan Ceres.”

“The commander in charge of the invasion?” said Janto. “I have the sort of familiarity that comes from fighting against him. I’ve never sat down to dinner with him.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a monster,” said Janto.

Rhianne shivered. Surely he was exaggerating. “I understand he’s in charge of the forces that invaded your country, and you would naturally harbor ill feelings toward him—”

“I don’t personally despise every enemy commander who targets my country, Princess. I understand they’re under orders and they’re doing their jobs. But Augustan Ceres really is a monster.”

“How do you mean?”

“Early in the attack, when my people saw how outnumbered we were, the royal house sent your Commander Augustan a party of envoys under Sage flag to offer terms of surrender. They were generous. Preferential trade agreements, annual tribute.”

“You can’t blame him for not accepting,” said Rhianne. “Our military men are instructed not to accept conditional surrender.”

“It’s not that. He refused to return our envoys, even though they’d come under Sage flag. He led them out on the beach and staked them, in the full view of those watching from the cliffs. In war, he is ruthless and cruel. When we took Kjallan soldiers as prisoners of war, they were more frightened of him than they were of us. They desperately did not want to be traded back. I never learned why.”

A cold knot of fear gathered in her belly. This was the man she was supposed to marry, a man who would murder a group of envoys who’d come to negotiate under Sage flag? But then, Janto would naturally be biased, and maybe she was naive about the realities of war. “You don’t know his reasons for doing what he did. He commands the entire Kjallan invading force, and you cannot know his mind. It’s not Augustan who’s ruthless and cruel. War is ruthless and cruel.”

Janto gave her a pitying look. “I cannot agree, Princess. War is harsh, but there is no call for Augustan to be cruel to his own men. For him to murder men under a Sage flag is not only dishonorable; it offends the gods. I would rather be a slave, with my honor intact, than to be wearing that man’s sandals.”

Rhianne bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. He had to be wrong. He had to. Of course he was. He was Mosari, and the Mosari hated all Kjallans, especially the ones involved in the invasion. One could hardly blame him—his country and his people were at stake. She clutched the book of fairy tales to her chest and stood. “I think I’ve had enough language work for today.”

5

Janto waited for Iolo beside the well, rubbing his arms and shivering beneath the oaks. Since his arrival on Kjall, he had yet to feel truly warm. Over his head, the full Vagabond moon, ghostly blue, shone through a tangle of bare branches. The Sage was also up, just a sliver, but the Soldier was not, which made for a dark night.

Leaves crunched along the path, and Janto turned. It was Iolo. He gestured and brought the man into his invisibility shroud.

Iolo stopped short. “That always takes me by surprise.”

“I suppose it must, my appearing out of nowhere.” Crouching, he lowered his hand to the ground and called through the telepathic link. Sashi came running from where he’d been hunting nearby in the forest and ran up onto his shoulder with a chirp of greeting. “Where’s this woman we’re supposed to meet? Sirali, right?”

“She’s jumpy,” said Iolo. “She wouldn’t meet near the slave house, so we’ve got a walk ahead of us.”

“Dark night for it.”

“Vagabond moon, though.” Iolo smiled up at the sky. “An omen for mischief.” He headed into the woods, and Janto followed.

The forest was not a natural one. The trees, evenly spaced, were all the same variety of white oak. Some smaller plants and trees had sprung up in the gaps—weeds, Janto supposed—but the cultivated forest was remarkably open, allowing easy travel.

“How does it work, your shroud?” asked Iolo.

“You’re familiar with the spirit world?”

“Yes . . . well.” Iolo looked confused. “It’s the source of all magic?”

“It’s an entirely separate world. No one understands it fully, but it exists parallel to our own. Your physical body resides in our world, and your soul resides in the spirit world.”

Iolo blinked. “Even if I’m not magical?”

“We’re all magical because we all have souls,” said Janto. “You can call magelight—anyone can—because magelight is your soul’s reflection in the spirit world. But other forms of magic are more complicated. Magic is simply a transference from the spirit world into the real world through a Rift, but opening a Rift is extraordinarily difficult. To simplify the task of magic, one creates a sort of permanent Rift that can be used at will, and one does that by soulcasting. By entrapping a part of one’s soul in another creature, or sometimes an inanimate object, one creates a fracture in the barrier between worlds.”

“Your ferret,” said Iolo. “You cast part of your soul into him. But how do you use him to create a shroud?”

“I find the fracture between worlds,” said Janto, “the one I created by soulcasting. I open it and pull it over myself like a veil, placing myself in the between-space, neither in the real world nor the spirit world. The only hint that I’m in a shroud is my vision’s a little fuzzy, and sometimes I get that rainbow effect around the edges of the veil—see there?” He pointed.

“I see it,” said Iolo. They walked in silence. Then Iolo slowed, looking about. He seemed to find what he sought—a particular tree, which he examined. He altered course. Janto squinted at the tree as he passed it. There was a score mark on it in the shape of a circle.

“Did you hear my conversation with the princess today?” Janto asked.

“Gods, no, I stayed well away. That bodyguard of hers.” Iolo shuddered.

“She asked me something strange. She asked what I thought of Augustan Ceres.”

“Who’s he?”

“The commander of the invasion—I guess you wouldn’t know if you were enslaved before the war.”

“Why would she ask what you thought of the enemy commander?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. She got mad when I told her he was a nasty piece of work. I’m beginning to think he’s her lover or something.” And Augustan didn’t deserve her, the bastard. But maybe he was misinterpreting Rhianne’s interest. She’d been asking as if she’d never met the man. Maybe he was a relative—a distant one. They were nothing alike, after all.

“You said she had seaweed for brains.”

“I take that back,” said Janto. “I never have to repeat a thing when I’m teaching her, and Mosari is not an easy language for foreigners. So she’s not stupid. Perhaps a little naive.”

“I don’t know why you talk to her at all. Isn’t it dangerous?”

Janto shrugged. “Everything I do here is dangerous. Talking to Rhianne may be the least dangerous thing I do, because while I’m not a trained spy, I am a trained diplomat. I know how to talk to people like her, so at least I’m playing to my strengths.”

“But what do you hope to accomplish? She’s not going to leak war intelligence to you. She probably doesn’t