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Nalis did not often dream in the course of his work, but that night in the outpost before Amalo he dreamed deeply and coldly, sodden with grief and a terrible wrenching loneliness, and in his dream he carried a star in his hands. 

It glimmered whitely in his cupped palms, light spilling between his fingers and giving the skin between them a strange gray glow, like rainclouds in the early morning. The light scattered across the frost-laden grass, faint as will-o-wisps, until it reached the edge of the field and sank into the mist there, where the land sank into the marsh they called the Edonara.

It did not appear with that name on imperial maps. When Nalis had been learning by heart the routes from Thu-Evresar to Thu-Cethor, the obscure country roads couriers sometimes took to avoid traffic between towns, he had skipped over it several times before finally locating the nearest town, and then it had only been marked as a danger, unsuitable for shortcuts. Csevet had called it a deathtrap.

Nalis had not seen the Edonara since he was fourteen years old, but he knew it perfectly, as a person always knew where they were in dreams: he stood facing the water, as he had four years before. The chills running down his back and the sweat of the fever had faded, just as they had then, and the night sky was a clear wintry black. 

Here, cradling the star he had inexplicably been given, his personal cares seemed as distant as the constellations. Nalis carried the star to the edge of the Edonara and stopped there, clutching it close to his chest and wondering at how fragile it felt, as though opening his hands would make it fly to pieces. He had never seen anything of its like: it resembled spun glass, a gemstone lit from within by maza. He wanted to ask how he had acquired it, who had entrusted it to him, but there was nobody to whom he could address the inquiry. It was only himself and the star in his hands, the endless foggy marsh and the night’s vast expanse of stars.

Cstheio Caireizhasan, hear me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me. The prayer fell into his thoughts, worn into comfortable grooves of habitual repetition. Nalis breathed slowly, as he did in meditation, and looked out into the wet saturated blackness of the mist and the darker shadows of the trees.

It was cold and silent, like the inside of an ulimeire. Nalis sat with the quiet, fear curdling in him that it would somehow hurt the star, like the chill would leach the heat from it and leave it extinguished, and had the sudden sense that he was being perceived– that the night sky and the unsolid ground and the low spongy waters of the marsh made up the lens of a spyglass centering itself on him, and he held the weight of their regard. 

He froze up, trembling. The last time he had stood here, he’d gone into the marsh in his delirium, and by some miracle had come out onto the road alive. This time, pricklingly conscious of being observed, he could do nothing but fold his legs and kneel on the frosted ground, holding the star close to his chest. 

“I am here,” he said, and the stars glittered, as remote and pristine as untrodden snow. His knees felt incredibly cold. He was unsure what he was saying, or why he was saying it, but that was often the way in dreams. “I have it with me. But I do not understand what you want me to do with it.”

He received no answer. The next moment he was in his bunk again, the one courier sheltering there that night amidst all the recent uproar, and there had been a noise in the office, where the local courier captain kept his reports. He received this knowledge on a delay: it was what had woken him up. He was sticky enough with sleep that he lit a lamp and stumbled downstairs to see what it had been, in case some other courier had come in drunk or injured. 

He would not have investigated if he had remembered why he had chosen to sleep outside of Amalo, or why the captain had stashed him in the unused bunks away from the fire. It would have been too much of a risk, with the troops from Cetho acting so aggressively with everyone in the vicinity of the city, as though the Curneisei could have made terrorists of little children and opera singers – but by the time he had recalled this, he was already at the office door, and Csevet was staring back at him, disheveled and stricken. 

“Csevet,” Nalis said. The shock had wiped the sleep from his mind, but nothing had replaced it. He was as blank as new paper, stunned past critical thought. “I thought thee dead.”

“Should I remain this close to Amalo, I certainly will become so,” Csevet said, strained and oddly cautious, and Nalis realized that he held the captain’s money-purse in his hand. Csevet as a thief was even more nonsensical than a dream of holding a star; he frowned, trying to reconcile it, and Csevet blurted, “Nalis, please , I–”

“Thou wouldst not steal for no purpose,” Nalis interrupted, guessing at what could be scaring him, and Csevet flinched. Nalis’s alarm spiked. “Captain Gorezh is unlikely to return. An there is something thou cannot handle on thine own– some blackmail, or, or threat– oh, but Csevet, I thought thou wert dead. How art thou here?”

“The Lord Chancellor bid me to watch carefully for signs of sabotage,” Csevet said. “There were signs– I begged Princess Sheveän to come with us, but I could barely acquire permission for Prince Idra to disembark, and she was certain that I meant to murder him– I have murdered, I– I apologize. I am a trifle overwrought. What I mean to say is that Prince Idra is alive, and he has charged me with bearing him to safety, since there is not currently anybody in this principality who is not implicated in this plot. Eshevis Tethimar knows that we lived, and will certainly make killing us both a priority. And so, theft! Because I had to bribe the first soldier who discovered us leaving the city, who did not recognize us. The second, I killed.”

Csevet’s hands were shaking. Nalis swallowed his horror at his words, settling instead on the hot ball of relief in his chest, and said, choosing to drop the informal so Csevet could collect himself, “Requiring money so that you may safeguard the emperor does not seem like theft to me – and for my part, Csevet, I am much more glad to see you alive. Is His Serenity with you?”

The wild, searching expression Csevet shot him at that would haunt him. The fact that his old friend was considering whether he could be trusted, or if he would value a potential reward from the newly ascended Tethimada more than his old loyalties– the equally true fact that if Csevet had already killed someone to protect Prince Idra once, the clear strategy was to kill Nalis as well, if his fealty could not be assured– 

He hated that Csevet could stare at him wondering who would win if they fought, and so he knelt inside the doorway just as he had knelt in his dream, as though he were about to prostrate himself. He put the lamp down on the floor. He placed his hands carefully on his knees, in open view.

Csevet’s ears twitched sharply down. “If I seem that frightened, I should censure myself,” he said unhappily. “I am sorry. I do not mean to scare you.”

“You have many reasons to be frightened,” Nalis said, and did not add especially with regards to Eshevis Tethimar, though he knew Csevet heard the implication. “I would help you. You know that I am loyal to the Emperor, and that I would not wish to abandon you to carry such a burden alone. I cannot prove that I haven’t turned traitor, but–”

“Thou art no more in favor of the Tethimada than I,” Csevet said tightly. He strode forward to pull Nalis to his feet and said, much quieter, nearly hysterical: “It is just that it is highly unlikely that an uncoronated child, known by his enemies to be alive, should survive long enough to claim the throne.”

“Twould be more likely with two helpers than one,” Nalis pointed out.

“Yes,” Csevet choked out. He regained his voice by the next breath and said, louder, giving Nalis the cue to prepare, “Yes, we suppose it is so. Serenity, we dearly apologize for the trouble. Nalis here is another courier, and he is able to assist us.”

The boy who came out from behind the desk had his hair in its customary knot, though the amber had been removed from his braids. His face was reddened; he had one wrist wrapped with cloth, and his clothing was rough, ill-fitting. Likely stolen, if Csevet had been rushing for a disguise, but they would not have to worry about pursuit for that reason: even if Amalo had not been occupied by imperial forces, Csevet was too thorough to leave behind evidence.

If Nalis had not had the warning of Csevet’s tone, he would not have prostrated himself quickly enough. He had avoided encounters with the imperial family, or with anybody that could have recognized him; he had not become accustomed to prostrating himself to anybody, and so it rankled, somehow, still. As though his guardian’s ghost whispered in his ear that it was below him. 

Thou abandoned thy birthright four years back, Nalis reminded himself. Art no better than any other in the Ethuveraz, and arguably much worse than most.

“You may rise,” Prince Idra told him, admirably even.

“Serenity,” Nalis acknowledged, standing with his head slightly bowed, and faltered when he caught his first real sight of the emperor. Prince Idra looked pale and sick, tear tracks evident. He had lost his mother less than a day ago, and his father and grandfather and uncles less than a week before that, and now his sisters were in the hands of the usurper who had taken their place.  

“Mer Aisava tells us that you are an imperial courier,” Prince Idra said, and for the sake of his age and grief, Nalis did not let himself react to the clumsiness of that conversational opening. Truly, thou art gracious beyond measure, his mind mocked him; he did not let himself react to that, either. “Whom do you serve?”

It was customary for imperial couriers to be employed by specific officials, as they could then be considered more trustworthy, or at least be considered to have an interest in keeping their employers’ secrets. “We are in the service of the Witness for the Treasury,” Nalis said. “Our routes take us primarily throughout Thu-Athamar, though we have traveled most places in the Ethuveraz at one time or another.”

“So you are familiar with ways to Zhaö?” Prince Idra asked, and Csevet sucked in a breath. Prince Idra set his ears back. “Our mother’s family, the Rohethada,” he continued stubbornly, “have a secondary estate there. Our grandparents live too close to Cetho, and our older uncle’s estate is too far to travel by foot, Mer Aisava tells us, in the winter, but surely Zhaö is within reach.”

“It is, Serenity,” Csevet said, glancing to Nalis for confirmation; he had not run messages in Thu-Athamar for nearly ten years, having been subtly reassigned after the mess with Eshevis Tethimar, and roads had a tendency to change. “Though it would still be nearly two weeks on foot, and we would not be able to hire a cart while we were with you. Once it becomes obvious that we will not be easy to catch, Dach’osmer Tethimar will surely have it put about that we are an anarchist and a murderer.”

“We would still prefer that you remain with us,” Prince Idra said, looking horribly small, and Csevet bowed his head. “Mer Nalis? Will you– would you be willing to guide us?”

Nalis had not felt the weight of his own omissions so keenly since he had heard secondhand, weeks after his recovery, that the Archduke Maia’s entire household had been lost to plague, and that he was presumed as dead as they were– that he was missing, and that perhaps there would be a reward if he were found, and that there were men venturing into the Edonara to trawl for his corpse.

The fact that Prince Idra had made the order a request– that he’d clearly realized he had no real recourse against Nalis if he refused– 

Csevet was visibly horrified, stifling himself from correcting the emperor’s phrasing. Nalis caught his eye, trying to seem loyal and reassuring, and said to Prince Idra, “Serenity, we are entirely at your service.”

*

Nalis had come to the outpost on a horse named Cloud-Fancy, lent to him in courier’s fashion by an ostler in Cairado. She was an older dappled mare, steady and swift despite her age, and as gentle as her name implied: Prince Idra rode her as Nalis and Csevet went on foot that night, a blanket over her back under the saddle and two others over Idra’s shoulders, bundling him nearly unrecognizable.

Winter had come sooner than expected, the frosts arriving weeks early to cut short the autumn harvests. After the first airship crash, which had killed Varenechibel IV and his sons, the citizens Nalis spoke with had called it the land going into mourning; after the second, nearly a week past, they had called it an omen, death rushing in to gnaw at the Ethuveraz while it was unguided. The continuation of the Parliament, the Ath’mazare, the principalities and levels of local government meant little to them, though they were more relevant to daily life: the Emperor and his bloodline had meant continuity, had represented the ascendancy and stability of the Ethuveraz as a whole, and they had been sliced away like the head of a snake. 

And so there were riots, and appeals to the Princes to ensure that the empire remained intact. And so Eshevis Tethimar, able to produce a claim to the throne through his recent engagement to the Archduchess Vedero, had seized power in court, sending soldiers to quell resistance in the name of rooting out insurgents.

Csevet hadn’t needed to convince Nalis that Eshevis Tethimar had been behind the loss of all the Drazhadeise dynasty’s heirs. Countless nobles and commoners across the Ethuveraz would have the same suspicions, regardless of the confessions that the Curneisei saboteurs had penned, but whether they would act on those suspicions would be another thing entirely. With the Tethimada gaining legitimacy from the common people, sweeping in as they were to offer stability and justice for the lost imperial family– with civil war the most likely alternative, and Eshevis Tethimar’s legal claim to the throne– 

Rebelling would not be worth the cost. The reemergence of a legitimate heir was the best antidote to Tethimar’s poison, and even that antidote was a frail one. Prince Idra was fourteen years old, shivering on horseback on a back road in Thu-Athamar, guarded only by two couriers and a dubious anonymity.

The cold ate through Nalis’s gloves. Their boots crunched on the icy road, Cloud-Fancy clopping along behind them with her reins in Csevet’s hand, Prince Idra almost asleep on her back. They had been traveling most of the night, and it was now early morning, faint petals of yellow igniting the sky. The back roads had tapered off, covered by snow or too risky to try without a good lantern and better shoes than either Csevet or Prince Idra had, and so they had come onto a bigger road, one of the main routes connecting along the Zhomaikora river, leading to its meeting-place with the Cethora. 

It was busier than Nalis had expected. They were not the only people fleeing the city, of course, and far from the only adults who pulled a younger person along in a cart or on the back of a horse, but the way that the traffic tangled, halting them in a bustle of nervous people and their discontented mules and children, was concerning. 

“I don’t understand why we are stopping,” a goblin woman said to her companion, a cart’s length ahead of them. The other woman looked to have elven blood, her skin a similar gray to Nalis’s; she skipped the worried muttering and simply climbed to the top of their cart, balancing on a barrel with her skirts fisted tight. 

“Tis a checkpoint,” she reported, breath misting in the cold air. Csevet stiffened just slightly by Nalis’s side, where he had been speaking with a merchant about the roads to Puzhvarno. The woman glanced back at them both, inviting them into the conversation, and added, “His Highness’s livery, it looks to us. D’you suppose they want a toll?”

“More likely that they’d seek saboteurs,” Csevet said, with the precise amount of worry of a courier who thought he might be late. “Which is strange, because we had thought every airship worker in Amalo would be under arrest already. Prince Orchenis can’t expect too many of them to have taken to the roads.”

“Why not?” the merchant said scornfully. “The traitors seem to have reached everywhere else in the Elflands. Merrem, did you happen to see if they are inspecting carts? Or what price they ask for a toll?”

“There were inspections, but if you desire us to climb up there again to count coins as they pass hands, you may as well ask us to locate the corpse of Archduke Maia,” the woman said. Nalis did not wince at the unfortunately common saying, though Csevet’s ear twitched at it. He had always considered the phrase crass. “You two had better wake your brother, though. It seems they are looking over faces.”

“Joy,” Csevet sighed, and nudged Prince Idra’s foot as he would have nudged another courier. “Leilis, come down from there. We have reached some sort of checkpoint.”

Prince Idra blinked awake, staring down at them both with tired confusion. He tugged his scarf from his face as he woke, seeming to come aware of the cold and his position on horseback in almost the same moment, and slid down Cloud-Fancy’s side, staggering when he hit the ground. Nalis caught him in a hurry– Csevet had flinched forward, but he still had hold of Cloud-Fancy’s reins– and said, low, “It is alright. They are Tethimada, but this is a popular road, and they are merely looking people over.” 

Prince Idra nodded, shivering, and rubbed his eyes with a gloved hand. His other wrist, the wrapped one, remained tucked close to his body. Csevet had told Nalis that it was broken, and that he had not been able to do more for it than bind it. 

“What will we do if we are stopped?” Idra asked quietly,

“We will do the same as everybody else,” Nalis said, pushing back the weight on his own eyelids. Csevet had continued speaking with the merchant, putting the bulk of their horse’s body between the two of them and the people closest by. “We have done nothing wrong. We should not act as though we had.”

“If we are stopped, it will surely be because we are recognized,” Prince Idra said, and Nalis realized that his shivering was not due to the cold, but to fear: the sort of fear that overtook the entire body, until you could think of nothing but the animal instinct to get to safety. He regretted too late that he had not asked Csevet how they had come to escape, or what had led to Idra’s broken wrist. “We do not– it would not be of any use to leave the road here, would it? It would cause suspicion. Our very appearance will cause suspicion.”

“You are of a common complexion, and there are many here of your age,” Nalis reassured him, and as Idra opened his mouth to protest, he added, “We have a trick, of sorts, for calming ourselves in situations such as these. We used it often in the days after we became a courier; it was taught to us by our mother, who hailed from Barizhan, and is not uncommon in Amalo. We could teach it to you, if you believe that it would help.”

“We would appreciate instruction,” Prince Idra said.

“It is called meditation,” Nalis said, and the recollection hit him with the force of a blizzard: his mother beside him in Edonomee saying the same words, with her candles flickering around her; her thin chest rising and falling, and his childish attempts to copy her breathing, stymied by his smaller lungs. “It is a method of centering oneself, or offering prayer…”

What would his father have thought, seeing his favored grandson taught by the damned whelp he had relegated along with his mother? Chenelo Drazharan’s unfashionable piety, her prayers to Cstheio for what little the goddess could give her. Nalis’s mother lived on in these teachings, as she lived on in the pearl earrings Nalis wore, and in the texture of his hair– as she lived in his heart, where he still pictured her face as clearly as he could his own or Csevet’s, though he had barely been permitted to see her body. Though all of her belongings had been burned. 

In an opera, thou wouldst seek revenge. Thou wouldst take now to reclaim the throne, or end the bloodline here, Nalis thought, the words tinged with his guardian’s mocking bitterness, but they were idle, and unworthy of attention. Prince Idra was his nephew, barely four at the time of Nalis’s supposed death, and Nalis had never met his brother Nemolis. 

Prince Idra had calmed by the time they reached the checkpoint, breathing along with Nalis until his shivering slowed to something manageable. Csevet told the soldiers the story that they had agreed upon– that the two of them were taking Idra to see their grandparents for Winternight, and that they lived on the outskirts of Amalo, hardly near the airships at all– and the second soldier at the checkpoint paused, looking them over.

He had paused on Idra’s silver irises. Nalis sensed the boy’s panic, saw Csevet stiffen minutely; the Drazhada were not the only family in the Elflands to have gray eyes, most elves falling somewhere between gray, green, and blue, but the color was distinctive, the precise shade of clouds in winter. 

“You say that all three of you are relatives, but you do not look so similar to us,” the soldier told Csevet. 

“Sera is a friend of our family,” Nalis said, and the soldier turned to him, seeming almost surprised that he had spoken up. “As for Leilis and I, we are half-brothers. We share a mother, but my father is dead, and so she remarried.”

“She married a goblin,” the soldier said, lip curling, and Nalis blinked at him, shocked despite himself at the prejudice. He must have hailed from Cetho, or close to it; Amalo was a mixture of elf and goblin running back over a hundred years. “You are sure you are related?”

Csevet said blandly, “It is rare that we hear of a question of maternity . Is it often the case where you hail from, that a family may witness a birth and yet be uncertain of the mother’s identity?”

The soldier flushed. “It is a suspicious tale.”

“We are often told that our eyes have the look of our mother’s,” Nalis offered, annoyance actually outweighing his nerves; while they were relying on falsehoods, the lies they had chosen were hardly outlandish. “We do not mean to be rude, mer, but surely that resemblance could serve as evidence.”

The soldier glanced between them, frowning in new doubt. His compatriot made an impatient motion from where he held up the next in line, a train of carts carrying produce. 

“Do not imagine that you will be able to reenter Amalo as easily,” the soldier said finally, a sop to his own sense of authority. He insisted on a toll that Csevet paid, though they could ill afford to lose the money, and waved them on their way.

Idra waited until they had gotten several feet away to say, tentative, “That was not as difficult as we had expected.”

“These things are often more tedious than perilous,” Csevet agreed. Cloud-Fancy lagged the slightest bit, almost certainly wondering when they would find the next outpost so she could be fed and groomed; Nalis slowed himself so he could pet her side, relieved to find her thick coat protecting her from the cold, and she flicked an ear at him. “The real trouble will occur if we keep running into blockades, or if somebody chooses to report our appearance in case it does signify something important; we have known operations such as this, employed to capture criminals, to succeed because information was passed on until it reached somebody who could use it. It would be best to avoid popular roads from now on.”

“Will that slow us?”

“Yes, but it cannot be helped,” Csevet said, apologetic, and Prince Idra nodded acquiescence. 

Nalis waited for the topic of his and Prince Idra’s shared eye color to come up, attempting to plan how he would respond, but it never did. Prince Idra was too exhausted, and soon asked to ride Cloud-Fancy again, with an ashamed air like he thought he should be able to keep pace with two adults who traveled for a living, and Csevet was more concerned with him than with Nalis’s improvisations. 

It was a relief. It should have been a relief. But Nalis found himself painfully aware of the similarity for the rest of the day, noting against his will how Prince Idra resembled the sparse glimpses Nalis had received of Prince Nemolis and Varenechibel IV before him, and it did not abate when they bedded down for the night, five to a room in an inn choked with Amaleise travelers. It only grew worse.

*

The third town they passed had wanted posters up with Csevet’s name and description, taking especial care to name him as a conspirator of the terrorists who had killed Prince Idra and to offer a reward for tips leading to his capture. Nalis left him and Idra in a ditch by the road as he bought supplies, his horse and garb marking him as an unremarkable courier preparing for a long trip, and returned to them grimly with the news, delivering breakfast as he did so. 

Most of what he had bought were dried meat and fruits, able to preserve themselves for travel, and venevetoi, a hard ginger biscuit that could last years in proper storage, but he had stopped at a market for something warm as well. He had the premonition that they would not have access to warm food for a while, after this: they were traveling so light that they could not bring pots or cooking utensils, and if Csevet was wanted by the law, they would no longer be able to risk coming close to towns. 

“It is stuffed with eel, Serenity, as we are very close now to the Cethora,” Csevet informed Prince Idra, who had taken the bun with some bewilderment. It was not often in the Untheileneise Court that one was expected to eat with their hands. “The second is a dessert bun.”

“We have had something like it,” Prince Idra offered, sitting on the saddle blanket with his feet out gingerly before him. Csevet had a sticky bun as well, and had eaten it quickly as he pored over their map, pointing out places they could not stop without being caught. The list was dishearteningly long. “Have you breakfasted, Nalis?”

“Yes, Serenity,” Nalis assured him. “We ate as we came back.” 

In the week since they had been traveling, Prince Idra had settled a little, his first shocky terror fading. Csevet and Nalis had fallen into their usual familiarity– for two years they had run the same routes, and Csevet had been the one to train Nalis to his task– and it had thankfully included Prince Idra with some ease. They traveled at night, relying on moonlight and its reflection on the snow to light their ways, and they camped far off the road during the day, except when Nalis went for food or updates on the political situation. 

It was not an auspicious one. The date of the Archduchess Vedero’s wedding had been announced, and there were rumors from other couriers– Nalis had run across a boy he’d last seen in Cairado, who had been to court sooner than he had– that Csethiro Ceredin had been confined to quarters for challenging a lackey of Eshevis Tethimar to a duel. The House of Bloods had fallen almost entirely behind Tethimar, but the House of Commons still resisted Tethimar’s claim to the throne, arguing that he could not be coronated until the Witnesses for the Dead could confirm whether Prince Idra had been among them. There was no word on Lord Berenar, which was hopefully good news– Nalis did not know the man well, only that he was consistently honorable– and less on Prince Idra’s younger sisters, who remained at court in the care of his mother’s household.

“One wishes Dach’osmin Ceredin had simply gone for Tethimar’s throat directly,” Csevet said when Nalis shared the news, scowling. Nalis privately agreed, though he could not help but be thankful that Dach’osmin Ceredin had held her temper; he had seen her practice her swordwork more than once, on his reports to Lord Berenar, and her skill had put him in awe. It would have been terrible to see her killed. “As for the Witnesses, that is more troubling news. He will have them bribed or intimidated before long.”

“A wedding would be needed before any coronation, surely,” Prince Idra said uneasily. It was a warmer day, perhaps the last gasp of autumn before winter set back in with a vengeance, so he did not seem overcome by the cold, but he still seemed tired, his wrist mottled with bruising and his feet blistered. He had not complained about either of those injuries. “Does that not give us a little time?”

“You are correct, Serenity, but he will certainly rush the celebration, and push for a coronation to happen as quickly afterward as possible. To do otherwise would risk his support among the populace.”

“He has told them he is the source of stability they require,” Prince Idra said, and Csevet nodded. 

“Mer Zhoredar informed me that the court is under heavy guard, and that Eshevis Tethimar has taken to demanding that the principalities prove their allegiance,” Nalis said, and added reluctantly, “It seems that Mer Reshema has also been arrested on suspicion of Curneisei leanings.”

“That cannot be upheld by any evidence,” Csevet said, ears twitching down. “He has never operated outside of Thu-Tetar, barring appearances in court.”

“Who is Mer Reshema?” Prince Idra asked.

“He is a friend of ours, and another courier,” Nalis told him. “He is… very close to Duke Pazhis Nethenel. We suspect that the Nethenada’s recent differences with the Tethimada caused him to be targeted.”

Evidence would not matter, in the court atmosphere that Tethimar was rapidly creating. An entire three weeks since the death of the Emperor, and the heir presumptive dying on the airship taking him to his own coronation– paranoia would be rampant. Every servant would be eyed with suspicion. 

“He is not our priority,” Csevet said quellingly. “The most important information for us is that if a wedding has not occurred, a coronation will not, either– and that as of now, we are a fugitive.”

“We still do not wish for you to separate from us,” Prince Idra blurted. “While it may be a risk, we believe the worst risk is to have no support, especially if we have a week yet to travel.”

“Nalis is more familiar with this principality,” Csevet pointed out.

“But what if some disaster were to occur, and only ourself and Nalis were present? We had heard that while traveling in wilderness, it is best to have three, so that one may stay with a wounded person while the other goes for help,” Prince Idra said anxiously. “Even nohecharei work in pairs, in shifts.”

“We would make a poor nohecharis,” Nalis said, “but we believe you are correct, Serenity. Csevet has knowledge that we do not; it would be a terrible risk, to leave him and then find ourselves without the necessary guidance.”

The following days grew colder, snow falling continuously for hours and making a hazard of any tree too heavily laden. Cloud-Fancy, bred to tolerate winter, had a thick coat that allowed her to tolerate it; Prince Idra, who had spent his life in the Untheileneise Court and had never been taken so far over such rough terrain, began to stumble despite the layers they pressed on him. 

Csevet went out one morning and returned with new boots, a coin purse and a coat nearly Idra’s size. His face went pink at Nalis’s startled look, but of course practicality overrode his embarrassment; he chivvied Nalis into trying the larger pair of boots, letting Idra sleep while he could, and finally blurted, after a few quiet moments, “It is irregular, but I do not regret it.”

“Didst thou steal them, then?” Nalis said, relieved, and Csevet drew up, blinking at him. He had a veneer of exhaustion over his eyes, had been sleeping perhaps three hours each night and spending the rest in either feverish planning or attempting to keep watch with Nalis.

“Yes,” he said, rueful and more than a little bitter. “Though thou wilt have to grant me that if I had used other means to acquire them, it could hardly have worsened my reputation.”

“An thou restores the emperor to his throne, that would surely make up for the loss,” Nalis said, aching for him, and Csevet sent him a half-hearted smile. He must have been sore just as Nalis was, having slept on the same cold ground and traversed the same roads, but it hardly affected his grace: he glanced at Nalis to ensure that he was keeping watch and tucked himself against Idra to sleep a little longer, sharing body warmth, without showing any sign of strain at all. 

Nalis had known him since he had left Edonomee– since he had staggered out of the far side of the Edonara, fevered and delirious and barely able to recall his own name. It must have been a courier’s nightmare, being ordered to take a message throughout a region beset by plague, and finding himself set upon by a bearer of that plague. Csevet had always valued his appearance and his health, all those things that could set him apart from his competition and bear him higher in rank. He had jockeyed for his position with Lord Chavar, turning aside from implications that he had seduced his way to his new role; he had worked tirelessly to memorize every name in the court, every servant and passageway, every interest in every bill that reached the Parliament. 

But he had not ridden past Nalis, when he had come shivering and barefoot onto the road. He had given him a blanket. He had let him onto the back of his horse, and had taken him to a local healer already beset with cases, and when Nalis had recovered enough to ask who his savior had been, he had been given Csevet’s name. 

It was not why he had decided to be a courier. That decision had been for his position as a foundling, which had limited his connections, and for his wretched curiosity about the Untheileneise Court where he might see the Emperor. But it had been why he remained a courier, when he had been offered other positions since, and he could not bring himself to regret it. 

When Csevet awoke two hours later, Nalis took his opportunity to sleep and dreamed of the stars above the Edonara making a trail he could follow, and of his mother singing a song whose lyrics he could not recall; and later, he dreamed of that first glimpse of his friend on the road by the marsh: his wind-chapped cheeks and weatherworn clothes, the black horse that had nuzzled into Nalis’s palms, and the reluctant twist of Csevet’s mouth. How that reluctant twist had not stopped him from lending a helping hand, when nobody in the Elflands would have cared if he left a nameless hobgoblin for dead. 

*

Uvezho’s gates were swarmed with soldiers, many in the livery of the local nobility, and Nalis was treated roughly when he attempted to enter, searched for messages and informed that all couriers were required to check in at designated outposts in case they carried information for insurgents. Csevet was referred to by name, apparently as proof that the imperial couriers contained rebellious elements. Nalis spoke fervently on the subject, decrying disloyalty and avowing his hatred of the emperor’s murderers, and was released that night, cast onto the street without his coin purse or his gloves. 

The development meant they had to take a more obscure route around the city, far enough that they would not encounter patrols. It took them into the denser forests of Thu-Athamar, which their previous route along the river had not required, but Csevet thought he recalled an outpost ten years abandoned, and they no longer had Cloud-Fancy to worry for: without access to courier outposts, and with the advent of winter, they could no longer feed her, and so Nalis had left her at the last manned outpost they had passed.

The weather worsened as the night crept on. The wind picked up, howling over the treetops and throwing clumps of snow, and Idra was nearly insensible by the time they reached the outpost, which was less maintained than the adjacent barn. It had a hole in its ceiling, moss growing on the walls, signs of animals in the bunkroom; Csevet inspected it and declared the kitchen suitable enough, and if nothing else it was useful as a windbreak. 

Prince Idra’s lashes were caked with snow. He still shivered, which was a good sign, and when Csevet hunted up coal to burn in the furnace he sat by the fire and regained some color in his cheeks, the tips of his fingers red and frostbitten. 

Nalis heated water at Csevet’s urging– he had been collecting ice to melt anyway, but Csevet had a habit of herding others when he was stressed, and it did no harm to do exactly as he said– and wet a cloth from their bags to press against Prince Idra’s bitten extremities, using another to warm his own hands. 

“We have firewood, and the blizzard is covering our tracks admirably,” Csevet reported, teeth chattering as he came back into the room. “We cannot speak to the integrity of the rooms upstairs, especially with the weight of the snow, but here should be safe enough for tonight, and warm, if we can keep the air in.”

He yanked the kitchen door shut, fighting the rusted hinges, and cast about for a table and chairs, brushing one chair off with his sleeves and nudging Idra into it, close to the furnace. Idra blinked at him muzzily, moving stiffly; Csevet came back with a second chair, paused when he realized there was not a third, and looked blank. 

“We will make tea, if you will help His Serenity with his fingers,” Nalis offered, and Csevet came over at once, kneeling beside Idra and speaking to him in a low voice. Nalis took the chance to dig the tea leaves he had received when he’d bought the buns out of his bag, bringing out his usual cup he brought on his journeys, and managed to find two other dusty teacups in the cabinets, which had been turned upside down and were thus relievingly free of filth. 

The scent of herbs filled the room, making Csevet’s ears perk and stirring Idra from his cold huddle. He croaked, “That is chamomile, is it not?”

“It is,” Nalis confirmed, a little embarrassed. Setheris had never appreciated it, and it was not popular in the Ethuveraz, but it had been his mother’s favorite. He had not been able to afford the packet, and had not planned to buy it, but the man selling the buns had seen him linger over them: he had tucked them into Nalis’s order, telling him it was best to at least flavor hot water, if you were using it to keep warm in the winter, and had brushed off Nalis’s thanks. “We thought it would be more palatable than water.”

“Chamomile is soothing, Serenity,” Csevet agreed. “And tea will warm you from the inside. Do you have any other parts that are numb, or prickling strangely?”

“Only the tips of our ears, but it has faded,” Idra said. “Is this the outpost? It is smaller than we had expected.”

“Much of it is too dilapidated to be suitable,” Csevet said. “We apologize for the discomfort, but we will all have to sleep here, in the kitchen. We will arrange blankets close to the furnace, so that we do not lose heat to the floor.”

Nalis served the tea, giving Idra the cup from his bag and rinsing the other two thoroughly before offering one to Csevet. It steamed, almost painfully hot to the touch; Csevet smiled at him in thanks, and Nalis smiled back, heart lightened. 

“You are very practiced at traveling in such weather,” Prince Idra ventured. 

“We are not usually sent out in a blizzard, Serenity, but it has happened that we are caught by them unawares,” Csevet said, and added, apologetic, “and we are still deployed in the wintertime, as information must travel regardless of the time of year, though we have more often ridden along on airships when the freeze had truly set in.”

“The horses used for the courier service are bred for cold weather,” Nalis offered, to change the topic from airships. “I have–” Csevet’s head jerked up, and Nalis amended, embarrassed at the lapse, “ we have known horses with thicker coats than Cloud-Fancy, who would hardly be bothered by a hailstorm.”

“We had never paid much attention to couriers before this,” Idra said sheepishly. “Do you enjoy the work? You must see so much of the Elflands.”

“Becoming an imperial courier gives a chance of advancement to those who would otherwise be barred from it,” Csevet said, and Nalis understood him to be choosing his words carefully. He had alluded, once, to what other careers his beauty could have allowed him, in combination with his station in life, and it was not a fit topic to bring before a young emperor. Csevet cast Nalis a glance, and at his nod continued, “In Nalis’s case, he had been orphaned by a plague in Thu-Evresar, near Calestho, and without the courier service he would not have had many opportunities.”

“Oh, we had thought you were a foundling,” Idra said, and blanched at his own impoliteness. Csevet frowned at him, likely on instinct– usually if he were around a boy of Idra’s age, it was another courier whom he was instructing– and Idra said, “We are sorry, that was intolerably rude.”

“There is no need to apologize, Serenity,” Csevet said, apparently unable to resist that, and Nalis smothered a smile. Csevet flicked an ear at him. 

“We are not offended,” Nalis told Idra, entirely truthfully; it was not the first time that the question had arisen. “Our mother died when we were young, and our father never chose to acknowledge us. We no longer have a right to our surname.” We have abandoned it and our responsibilities entirely.

“We are sorry for your loss,” Idra said, and then his ears took a sharp downturn as his own bereavement hit, so recent and only numbed by exhaustion and cold. It occurred to Nalis that saying so made Prince Idra the only member of the Untheileneise Court to have ever said so to him, a wretchedly bitter thought that he chased away with a sip of his tea, though it was so hot it burned his tongue. “Does it ever become– we mean to say, can it ever–”

He trailed off, looking desolate and small, a child wrapped in blankets in a far-flung corner of his empire. Nalis lowered his cup. “The grief does not disappear,” he said, soft. “You will carry it with you as long as you live, and at first it will rear its head at every other moment. You will see a candle, or hear rain pelting the ground, and it will hurt terribly, because you will be reminded so strongly. But it does fade, as time passes.” 

He paused, weighing propriety against comfort, and forged on, steadfastly ignoring Csevet’s expression. “When I recall my mother now, it is with gratitude that I had ever known her, or grief at her treatment by my father’s family, but it is bearable, and I would not call it a burden. Rather, I would call it a gift, to be able to hold her with me, and to live as she taught me I should.”

“She taught you to meditate,” Idra said, flexing his fingers around his cup. The light from the furnace reflected in his eyes, casting flickering shadows around their feet. Outside, the blizzard howled, oddly muffled by the piling snow. “My father taught me to pray, and how to befriend the hounds at my grandparents’ estate in Cetho. And– and my mother would quiz me, when we were at court, so that I would remember names and families more easily. She was very proud when I could recite them back to her.”

Tears dripped down his face. He sniffled, wiping at them with the butt of his palm, and said, “Eshevis Tethimar will not kill my sisters, will he?”

“It would be greatly unwise of him to do so,” Csevet said, low. He had been watching their conversation, something speculative in his face; Nalis pretended not to see it, regretting that he had mentioned his mother at all. Csevet, who made an art of surreptitiously opening letters and followed court gossip obsessively, did not need encouragement to think about a new mystery. “The princesses are a powerful symbol for the populace, as the last children of the Drazhada. If he murdered them now, he would appear weak, and he would not have the bargaining chip of their future marriages. They are much more valuable as pawns.”

“He was always nice to me at court, but I did not like how he acted,” Idra said. “There was something… covetous, about him.”

“He is very used to getting his own way,” Csevet said, and for a moment Nalis thought he would tell the story, as he told it to new couriers who might fall victim to the same vicious disrespect: how Eshevis Tethimar had propositioned him, and how he had set his friends after Csevet when he resisted. How the man likely had a scar in the shape of Csevet’s teeth. “But he is not entirely lost to reason.”

Idra was silent for a long while. “He will kill me,” he said finally, bleak. “And both of you as well, if he catches us. He would not be able to explain my survival, and I would speak out against him as soon as I was given the opportunity. Even if he set himself up as regent, I would speak out against him– and even if I reclaim the throne, I will have a regent, and I no longer know who it would be. Or whether I could trust him. I am not certain I can trust anyone.”

“Serenity,” Csevet tried.

“I do not want to be emperor!” Prince Idra snapped at him, and Csevet pinned his ears back. “I thought I had time, I thought I would have my mother, and my father– I thought I would have nohecharei, and advisors, and people that I knew, but it is just us and you are not even sworn to me and I have doomed you anyway! As soon as I had asked for your help, I had doomed you, I had set an impossible task and you, you– you’re going to die. We are all going to die. I do not know any version of this tale, in the histories I have learned, where a prince was deposed and had no support and yet survived.”

“It is not an impossible task,” Csevet said, and Nalis was grateful, because he could not have spoken just then if he had wanted to. He was too appalled, overflowing with horror and a sick, sympathetic grief; he was a loyal courier and a treacherous uncle and a terrified loved one all in one, and he had not known which was more true. All possibilities seemed like terrible ones. All confessions wanted to crawl further back in his throat, where they could not be reached by the light. “You are the undisputed heir, and Eshevis Tethimar has his share of enemies. Should you reappear, you will have immediate allies in the Ceredada, the Berenada– certainly the Ormenada and the Rohethada– and with the common people, for reappearing and offering them hope. The margin of error lies in the time before you are somewhere defensible, where you can announce your survival and level your accusation without being silenced, and that is where we are taking you. If Idra Rohethar’s estate is not suitable, we will take you to the Ormenada. But you have not forced us. We have not been coerced. We are imperial couriers, and you are the Emperor. Our blood is yours to spill.”

“You are not nohecharei,” Idra repeated, weaker. 

“I used to wish to be,” Nalis said, and the recollection was sharper for how little he had allowed it before, very nearly piercing. “I had a cloud-fancy of showing an inclination towards maz, and serving the Emperor, but I never had the skill.” He let his tone lighten. “If my child-self could see me now, Serenity, he would be most pleased.”

“We have survived worse winters than this,” Csevet said, pressing the point. “Two years ago, in that terrible Winternight, Nalis and I had to take shelter in an outpost much like this, and we were trapped for several days.” He faltered. “Oh, goddesses. Actually, if you will excuse me, I need to go see if we have been snowed in.”

“That would be one way to keep the Tethimada at bay,” Nalis said, and Idra laughed, a little watery. Csevet hurried out of the room, leaving Nalis wondering if he had noticed what pronouns he had used, or if he had gotten so distracted with defending their loyalties that it had slipped his mind. 

“Thank you,” Idra said hoarsely. 

Nalis aborted a flinch, thinking of this thin bereaved figure on the throne of the Elflands, draped in an Emperor’s finery, trapped in it as an insect would be in a spider’s web– bound up by a thousand strands, set higher than everybody and controlled by a regent who could be nobody he trusted, because everybody he would have trusted was dead– 

An adult emperor would not have to contend with a regent. An Emperor who was Maia Drazhar would have to contend with many other things that Idra would not, including questions as to whether he was faking his identity, aspersions on the virtue of a former courier, the strong and semi-accurate perception that he had stolen the throne from his father’s known heir, and a serious lack of support from noble houses, but he would not have a regent. If his identity were proven, he would be the undisputed ruler, Varenechibel IV’s youngest son returned home at last. 

He would be a liar, and something very near to a usurper, whatever Idra’s current opinions on the mantle of Emperor. He would likely be murdered before his coronation, or at most a few years afterward, when Idra reached eighteen, and his mere announcement as an option could risk throwing the Elflands into a three-pronged civil war, if Idra objected to him. It could shift alliances out of Idra’s favor. 

It could keep Idra alive and well, protected until he could ascend as an adult, with wisdom and security behind him– with an older member of his family shielding himself and his sisters, the last person in the world who could truly say that they were his responsibility. 

“It is our duty,” Nalis answered, belated, and was no longer sure exactly what he meant.

*

It was ten miles from Zhaö that their luck ran out, and even then it was not as bad as it could have been: it was Nalis who was waylaid, at the half-maintained othasmeire they had bedded down in that morning, and it was done in view of it, so Csevet and Idra were able to hide. 

They were six soldiers in the Prince of Thu-Athamar’s livery, likely from a patrol ranging outside of Zhaö, and they were eyeing Nalis with palpable suspicion, an air of triumph to them that put him on edge. All armed, and so Nalis was very careful when he said, “Good morning, merrai. How may we assist you?”

“This is a strange place to bed down for the night,” the soldier in front said. “Art a courier?”

Nalis had heard that tone before, from guards at noble estates who saw couriers as free game, with nobody accountable for their safety. They were often lost on treacherous roads, in treacherous weather; they were secondary to the messages they delivered, with a wanton reputation and incredibly common blood , and they had no real recourse against those who harmed them.  In the atmosphere created by the Emperor’s death, that recourse would surely have dwindled even further.

Thou wished to be nohecharis, he told himself waspishly, and said to the soldier, “We are. We are in the employ of Lord Eiru Berenar, the Witness for the Treasury.”

“We had not heard that the Witness for the Treasury had reason to send to Zhaö,” the soldier said, and his compatriots ranged out along the road, handily cutting off Nalis’s escape routes. “Hast thou been traveling long, then?”

“We have been on the road for a week now,” Nalis said. “We set out from Uvezho–” He would not mention Amalo in this company– “and our destination is the benefice in Cairado.”

His fear bled into his voice, despite his best efforts. He cursed himself, wishing he could at least have learned to lie in the years since he had left Edonomee– he most he had ever been able to do was redirect, or notice when another person wished to exert power over him, which even a small child could have noticed now – and the commander’s eyes sharpened, coming to attention like a hunting hawk. 

Eshevis Tethimar must have been desperate to find Csevet and Prince Idra, now that it had been nearly two weeks since he had lost track of them both. A single courier could have his reputation blackened, could be killed out of hand or executed with barely a pretense of a trial, but the rightful Emperor was more difficult to sweep under the rug. He must have been imagining that Prince Idra would announce himself any moment, accusing Tethimar of usurpation and stirring up popular support– which they would have done, if the risk of assassination had not been so great, and if they had not been traveling in the seat of Duke Tethimel’s power– and so he must have been bringing a great deal of pressure to bear on his soldiers.

The imperial troops he dubiously commanded would be focused on rooting out potential insurgents, spurred by loyalty to a dynasty that had lasted two thousand years and seemingly been toppled in a month; Prince Orchenis’s troops, more directly tied to him through marriage, were more likely to have orders to remove the last of the evidence. 

Not directly, perhaps. Loose tongues would cause trouble there, if some soldier happened to share that they were seeking a boy with silver eyes, but it would be enough to say that Csevet Aisava was wanted dead or alive, and that anybody with him should be captured and kept in some obscure location. Barring unexpected fealty, the sheer reality of the power shift would decide the rest.

The populace assumed Prince Idra was dead. Eshevis Tethimar’s power relied on Prince Idra being dead, and the soldiers under his brother-in-law’s authority would surely wonder how they would be retaliated against, if Prince Idra returned to power and decided to make an example of everybody against him. They would surely wonder how they might be rewarded for removing him before he could. 

“Thou hast chosen a strange place to stop for the day,” the first soldier said, and Nalis’s ears dipped without permission. “Dost mind if we take a look?”

Csevet would have hidden himself and Idra by now. “We have no objection.”

The soldiers flanked him as their commander went up to the othasmeire, the first soldier gripping his upper arm with bruising strength, as though he were liable to bolt and give them an excuse to cut him down. 

The othasmeire was grimy and ill-kept, devoted to Cstheio and based around a natural well at the back of a winding, narrow cave. It was primarily constructed of stone, the cave’s numerous smaller passages blocked up with wood planks, and lit by lamps hung on hooks nailed into the walls. The soldiers ranged out to explore it, a few breaking off to inspect the countryside around it, but did not bother to pry up the planks; they were festooned with dust, and they covered narrow openings, hardly large enough to wriggle through. The most the first soldier did was shine a lantern into them, and that could not be enough to ferret Csevet and Idra out: there were many passages, as they had discovered the night before, and some of them went very far back. 

Nalis had swept the floors before any of them had come into the othasmeire, partially out of annoyance that any place of worship for Cstheio could be so neglected and partially because that way it would be impossible for them to leave footprints. He saw the commander note this and scowl, deprived of an easy clue, and volunteered, “We arrived last night, mer.”

“From Uvezho,” the soldier agreed. “Thou hast said. Hast ever met a courier by the name of Csevet Aisava?”

“Not to our knowledge.”

“He is a saboteur, accused of causing the explosion of the Splendor of Ashedro,” the commander said, the only other who had come into the othasmeire. He was taller, with a more serious countenance than his subordinate. “If you have seen him and choose to keep silent, it is tantamount to treason against the throne.”

“We have not met anybody by that name,” Nalis said, and the first soldier scoffed. “We apologize that we cannot be more helpful–”

“Thou hast not been helpful at all,” the first soldier said, still gripping Nalis’s arm. He tightened his hand, painfully strong, and said, lower, “Wilt not be served by lying, courier. Thou came from Uvezho, and Aisava was last seen in Amalo. Dost expect us to believe that thou hast never crossed paths?”

“There are many roads to Zhaö, and many couriers who ride them,” Nalis bit out, but he had faltered, half at the mention of Amalo and half at the pain in his arm, and the soldier had noticed. 

“If thou wilt not speak, we will make thee,” he said, and Nalis’s beseeching glance to his commander went ignored; the other man was watching them almost boredly, only a keenness in his eyes giving away that he cared at all about what he was seeing. “Come now. There is a reward in it for thee, an thou informs.”

“We cannot inform on people we have not met,” Nalis snapped, and was already braced for the blow, when it came. He let his head snap with it, a stinging heat radiating from his cheek to his ear, and did not resist when the first soldier slammed him against the planks blocking up one of the passages. Resistance would be a terrible idea, cornered as he was. Worse, it would be uncharacteristic, because a courier would not fight back when endurance was the more survivable option. Even Csevet would never have bitten Eshevis Tethimar, ten years previous, if he had known who it was he had been fighting. 

“Lieutenant?”

“Gain a lead, if he has one,” the commander said, and Nalis's stomach flipped. Thou hast survived worse, he told himself. He had been beaten by his cousin. He had been beaten in the course of his work, and forced to sleep out of doors, and threatened with worse fates he had sometimes barely escaped. “He is the only courier we have found; we may as well be able to say that we were thorough.”

“Art sure thou hast not seen him?” the first soldier inquired, clearly wanting a positive answer for the sake of having something. Nalis briefly considered saying he had seen Csevet, telling some lie about where he was going and who had been with him, but– that would surely draw more attention than the alternative. The soldiers might take Nalis with them, to interrogators more thorough than this one would likely be. They might concoct an excuse to kill him as a traitor. 

The first soldier had taken a knife from his belt. Nalis amended, dread shivering through him: they might concoct an excuse to kill him anyway. 

“Please,” Nalis choked out, because he was frightened and because it was what a frightened, innocent courier would say. “We have already told you that we know nothing. We cannot tell you any more– we can take you to the outpost at Zhaö–”

“We have been to the outpost at Zhaö, and the whores there told us nothing,” the first soldier said, and drove his fist into Nalis’s stomach. He doubled over gasping, so the second blow to his ribs took him unawares, and then there was a point pressing against his neck, levering him back against the wall; then there was a cool line tracing from his neck to his collarbone, and a searing pain that shot through it seconds later, a flood of fire like eisonsar igniting. He choked on a cry, tears coming unbidden to his eyes.

“We will ask again,” the first soldier said, and Nalis understood that he might really kill him– that he might kill him offhandedly, or by accident, and it would not weigh on him in the least. There, so that was the problem of the throne solved, and of Archduke Maia’s whereabouts– he would simply die four years late, and leave an unremarkable corpse. The witness who found him might not even report who the corpse had been, if it were politically sensitive to do so– or perhaps it would be a murder investigation, and the culprit would be hanged as a sop to justice. “Dost thou know the location of Csevet Aisava?”

“We have never heard of him,” Nalis forced out, shrill, and the next cut was along his upper arm, biting into the inside of his elbow, much deeper than the first. He may have screamed; he certainly thrashed, before the knife lifted and an odd limpness settled over him, like the stupor of a rabbit mauled by a dog. 

He felt cold and shaky, almost blank with terror. The blood ran hot down his torso, dripping blackly onto the stone floor: more blood than he could remember losing, before, and lost so quickly, and he still could not run. A courier would have run, at this point, and sought shelter where an aggressor would not follow– a temple or an outpost, or somewhere public enough that harming another’s servant would reflect badly on the attacker– but there was nowhere to run to, and no help to call upon but Cstheio herself. He could not risk drawing attention to wherever Csevet and Idra were hiding, if they had remained in the othasmeire.

 The soldier drew back, glancing at his commander, and said, “Third chance, courier.”

“We have as much knowledge of Csevet Aisava as we do of the location of the Archduke Maia,” Nalis managed to spit out, and the commander gusted out a sigh, said something he could not hear over the ringing in his ears. The first soldier let Nalis drop and kicked him almost half-heartedly, an impact he could not brace for without sending a splitting pain through his arm and chest, and the two of them left him there. 

Nalis laid there for longer than was permissible, breathing through the stinging discomfort and his body’s intense urge to lie still and hope he was overlooked, and finally wrenched himself upright, staggering towards the well in the back of the cave, where it was coolest. He left a red trail, blood seeping from between his fingers where he tried to hold the worst wound closed. 

The shrine by the well was worn and simple, barely a shelf carved from the rock. The well plunged so deep that the water was hardly visible, almost eight feet below the rim and as smooth as a mirror, and the chamber had no lamps, just divots where candles may once have rested. It was blessedly cool, blessedly dark– so dark that Nalis’s eyes had to adjust. So dark that he could collapse by the well, its rim low enough that he could rest his head against it, and listen to water drip into it from the stalactites in the ceiling, and take slow, deep breaths.

Cstheio Caireizhasan, hear me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me. Cstheio Caireizhasan, know me. She was not a goddess like Salezheio, the traditional steward of couriers, swift and capricious as the wind in the wintertime. She was his augury of favor, the Lady of Falling Stars, who his mother had worshiped; she was a goddess of wisdom, of the lost and the broken, and all she could grant him was clear sight. 

The ringing in his ears diminished as he narrowed his focus to his lungs. His breath condensed, gooseflesh rising on his skin. The soldier’s knife had cut through his coat and shirt, one sleeve hanging in tatters. His wounds felt hot to the touch. 

It was dark and quiet, and it was morning, but when Nalis shut his eyes, he felt as though he stood outside in the middle of the night, when all the rest of the world lay asleep. He could imagine the constellations scattered across the black, distant and unchanging, glittering down at him; he could hear the waters of the marsh, not frozen just yet, and the shush of the leafless branches in the wind, and his own ragged breathing. 

He had not called out that the soldiers had gone, because he could not be sure that they had. It was only when Idra and Csevet appeared before him, stricken and covered in dust, that he registered that the soldiers must have left.

“I regret to inform thee that the Tethimada have not improved with time,” he managed to say, struggling upright, and Csevet hissed, “Yes, I can see that,” rushing up to kneel by his side. Prince Idra lingered behind, horrified and teary, and Nalis– could not quite smile for him, yet. He tried to keep his ears neutral. 

“Have they gone, then?” he asked, redundantly. Csevet would never have let Idra come out if he had not been certain. 

“They have gone,” Csevet confirmed. “And I am nearly glad that they were Eshevis Tethimar’s men, or they might have been intelligent enough to check the planks that did not have spiderwebs. Serenity, we apologize for asking this of you, but we will need Nalis’s bag. Will you retrieve it, please?”

“Yes,” Idra choked out, “yes, I can do that,” and wavered, hands shaking. Nalis managed a smile for him, finally, and his tears overflowed; he fled back down the passageway, leaving Nalis and Csevet alone. 

“I am sorry,” Nalis said to him. “I had hoped that thou wouldst not have heard that.”

“Please, for all that is holy, do not apologize to me for being tortured,” Csevet said, and tugged the edges of Nalis’s shirt away to expose the wounds. There was a tension to him that Nalis had not expected, a cold uncertainty that made his hands waver, almost shaking as Idra’s had; Nalis stared at him, alarmed, and he said, even, “Thou art not an accomplished liar.”

“No,” Nalis said, anxiety rising. He did not have immediately fatal wounds, he was fairly sure, though infection would be a different matter. That was not the source of Csevet’s sudden terror, and so– “I have never been, that I recall. But I did not think I had given anything away, with regards to His Serenity– I had thought, since they had already mentioned Zhaö–”

“That is not what I am referring to,” Csevet said. He pressed cloth to the cuts, applying pressure. Nalis winced. “When thou mentioned the Archduke Maia, thou spoke very genuinely.”

Nalis had kept still for Csevet’s inspection, but now he was stiller yet. “Csevet–”

“Thine eyes are the precise shade,” Csevet continued, quiet, almost shrill. “And the way thou hast sometimes spoken– of course Calestho is not far from Edonomee, the healer had only assumed that thou had wandered along the road, not through the marsh– of course in the service we do not often ask, but– tell me it is only a likeness, if I am agitated, and spinning up a cloud-fancy. Tell me now, please, so I may dismiss it from my mind.”

“I have never wished to deceive thee,” Nalis said, and Csevet’s exhale was shaky, terrible to hear. Nalis had mastered the art of never thinking of it, of partitioning himself sharply between before the fever and after– before Csevet and after– and being asked so directly made him feel like a snail scooped out of a shell, formless and raw. “I was never called to court, never remotely important to anybody. Everybody who had known me was dead, and I did not wish to be relegated alone. It was easier. I had not thought it mattered.”

“Thou art the Archduke Maia,” Csevet said, almost blank, and flinched. “ You are– Serenity–”

“Please do not,” Nalis said, heartsick, and Csevet’s ears pinned so far back that he had to reach up and catch his fingers. The motion tugged at his wounds. “Csevet, thou art my dearest friend, and thou hast done nothing wrong. I would not have– I do not even know if it matters now, who I am, ” he blurted, “when it could splinter Idra’s support, and I have no real connections in the court–”

He had meant it more as a plea for help than a conversational gamble, but it captured Csevet’s attention like a fishhook, lodging under his skin: Nalis could see him waver, caught between a hysterical list of every time he had been informal with an Archduke in any capacity and the more urgent question of how instating an presumed-dead Archduke as Emperor could possibly succeed. 

“That is not entirely true,” Csevet said at last, faltering. “The Ath'mazare has methods for determining paternity, and as a son of Varenechibel IV, you are the rightful heir. A reemergence would be difficult, but the chance to have an emperor who would not require a regent, and who was at least familiar with the court– it could be done. We would have to be sure that– that Prince Idra supported you, and that the stability afforded by an adult ruler was emphasized, but it would not be impossible to win the people’s support, an the Tethimada were revealed as traitors.”

“Whatever else is decided upon, that is a necessity,” Nalis agreed, uncertain whether his lightheadedness was from blood loss or relief. The cuts stung more with each breath. “And I would not wish to throw Idra to such a vipers’ pit, when he has been so bereaved. It would be terrible, to become Emperor and accept the nohecharei’s oaths only to be deposed a few years in, but it would be much worse to throw the Elflands into civil war. I too would be a sort of usurper, but surely any continuity, no matter how strained–”

“Serenity, you are the rightful heir,” Csevet said, and Nalis stuttered to a halt. “To assume failure is to fail from the starting line. The priority is to bear you and Prince Idra to safety, to introduce the possibility when you are somewhere defensible, with an allied house– when both of you are, and I do not know how one person is meant to bear two emperors when I could hardly manage with one–”

“Wert always ambitious,” Nalis offered weakly, and Csevet actually glared at him. He wiped the expression from his face a second later, looking stricken, and Nalis continued, trying to smooth it over, “I am sorry, Csevet. I meant to tell thee, to ask thee for advice, but I was frightened. I did not wish to–” To set myself up as a sacrifice. To usurp my own nephew, potentially beginning a civil war. To face a responsibility that I was never expected to bear, because I had a family and they did not care to acknowledge me. He could not say any of those things, but Csevet almost certainly read them in his face. “That is to say, I think it is not a duty I can escape. Truthfully, I do not believe that I should escape it.”

Light tapping footsteps echoed down the passageway, coming closer. Prince Idra was returning from whatever long passageway he had been stashed in before, with Nalis’s bag, and so their window of conversation was nearly over. Csevet would not speak of Nalis’s identity in front of Idra, if Nalis did not bring it up. 

Csevet regarded him, looking miserable and scared and determined, bearing the burden of service as doggedly as his endless poise. “No, Serenity. We do not think you should. But we promise that we will assist as much as we are able, even an– even an it kills us. We are entirely at your service.”

Nalis absorbed the change in formality like a blow, because it had been inevitable. Csevet had taught him how to ride, how to open a letter and seal it again, how a servant should behave with a superior. He had contrived excuses to dispose of an ugly gift Nalis had been given, because to wear it would have been too unfashionable; he had asked Nalis’s help, once, to splint a broken finger, and now that he knew his friend’s true identity, he would never refer to him as thou again. He would never even refer to him as Maia.

“We thank you,” Nalis said, low, and made himself think of all the people being Maia Drazhar could help: Idra's sisters, Mer Reshema and Dach’osmin Ceredin, his sister Vedero and every citizen of Amalo. All of those and the whole of the Ethuveraz, tenuous and fragile as a jewel in the emperor’s hand-- all of those and his nephew and his closest, most ambitious friend, here with him in the othasmeire and besieged on all sides.

He might not survive to reach the throne. It was very likely that none of them would survive to escape Thu-Athamar. And yet, he thought with a tenderness verging on pain, he could not call it an impossible task, because Csevet was already considering their strategy.

Maia breathed, slowly and deeply. He looked upon the problem clearly, huddled at Cstheio’s shrine with Csevet at his side, and when Prince Idra rushed back into the chamber with the bag in his arms, he tried his best to smile at him, because he had to. It would not have been reassuring if Idra knew that he was afraid.