Chapter 3 | Alexei

3

ALEXEI

─── ❖ ───

The frost on my knuckles is slick with rain, and the raging winds taste like salt on my lips, throwing a fleeting melody past my ears whenever I turn my head. At this time of dawn—with the city and everything in it below me—Voorin unfolds like a map, its wrinkles and creases sharpened by the rolling shadows of the land.

I glance up to see a stratus cloud ahead of us, so stark-white against the sky that I barely have to squint to see it. The thermal pads strapped to my riding boots are failing and my hands went numb hours ago—I can’t stand more of this cold. 

Digging my knees into Ryn’s sides to steady myself, I tilt to the right, signaling for her to swerve.  I can practically hear her grumbling—for some reason, she likes to pass through clouds—but she obeys, changing course at the last second to avoid flying through the freezing stratus. Her satin-black scales flash briefly as we pass beneath a cloudless patch of sun.

The khalhystra’s wings obscure most of the sights on either side of me, but what little I can see beyond the morning fog is growing larger as we near the imperial district of the city. I exhale, letting the fresh air whistle through my teeth and rush past me in waves. Riding always clears my head, no matter what’s in it beforehand. Andraeya likes to call my long absences from court “thinking days,” since whenever I take to the sky, I usually return with a solution to whatever problem I left behind at the palace. There’s something about the elements of flying that I prefer to the narrow imperial halls and meeting tables; I function better in the air than on ground.

The sight of Ryn abruptly perking up draws me back to reality. Her muscles tauten beneath me, her head lifting a few inches. My gaze flickers, looking for what set her on edge: I don’t have to wait long.

I swivel my head to see a galamé and its rider falling into flight beside us, the former’s body a bolt of gilded red. For a moment one gleaming, golden eye is trained on me, then the galamé shoots off, hot winds scalding the side of my face as it whips away.

Oh no you don’t.

I flick my gaze up and shout, “Sitoalkis!”

Ryn speeds up before I even speak the command: a tempest challenging another tempest is a dangerous thing, and this one never takes a challenge for granted. She roars, the sound coursing through me like a drumbeat, and buffets her massive wings. I lean forward as she dips her head and charges, frost gathering on my face as she gains speed.

 Surprisingly, it doesn’t take her long to catch up with the galamé. Then I realize that it’s deliberately falling back—yet as another taunt, or because of something else? The galamé tempests are the smallest but fastest breed; this one could just as easily leave Ryn and me in the dust, but instead it’s choosing to slow down?

 Irritated but also curious, I lean forward, spurring Ryn on until she and the other tempest are neck-and-neck. The wind rips my hood off my head. The galamé rider lowers his. I glimpse auburn eyes and a thin face framed by dark tangly hair.

“Alexei?” 

“Saki?”

“What are you doing here?”

My shoulders fall; I can feel relief emanating off Ryn at the same time it rushes through me. “I could ask you the same thing,” I say.

“I thought you were an official or something—”

“—And I thought you were a messenger.” I cut off, squinting to see ahead, then snap a two-fingered salute and nod toward the fortress. The gesture is simple: Land first, talk later. Saki looks like he wants to say more, but he settles for a nod of acknowledgement. We both turn our gazes back to the sky at the same time.

The adrenaline of the chase wears off like melting ice. I didn’t enjoy it, but . . . something about it woke me up. We ride in silence the rest of the way, our tempests a wingspan apart. At this air level, snow flurries around us, the white flakes brushing my nose like pieces torn from the sky.

The palace comes into view in sharp cuts of obsidian and stained glass—if you can call it a palace. From afar, it’s a castle wedged between a pair of skyscrapers with a number of sharp spires and winding paths hidden behind them. Supposedly, the builders weren’t sure how to fit extra rooms and landing areas in the original castle without ruining its traditional design, so they simply built around it. The effect is oddly satisfying.

I steer Ryn toward the leftmost skyscraper, its glass windows flashing black and white. As the landing pad atop it clears through the fog, I lean back and yell, “Kyadek!”

My tempest follows the command almost instantly, clearly relieved to do so. With a flourish, her wings snap taut against her body, and she dips down into a dive. She stretches her limbs and skids onto the landing pad in the same stroke of motion, that impenetrable calm radiating off her once more as she lands—and off of me. I will never tire of that one single moment of release, when the sky is falling above and the ground is rising below, and the world consists only of wings and scales and everything in between.

My eyes find two wingkeepers hovering beside the stairwell, their silhouettes stark against the blue backdrop. Out of respect, they snap off the symbol of the Seven—two fingers pressed over a fist—when they see me looking. I nod in acknowledgment and turn my gaze back to the sky, the wind pressing down on my shoulders.

Saki and the galamé land soon after, the ground trembling as they descend. The second we’re on solid ground, Saki digs through his pockets, brings out a heat cell, snaps it open, and sets it on high pressure mode. The hot air blowing from its square-shaped mouth to dry his face drowns his sigh of contentment.

“Ahh, that’s better,” he says comfortably, his voice distorted. “That’s much better.”

I stare at him.

“What? You want one, too?”

In the few weeks he was gone, I’d forgotten how much of a smart mouth he has. “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” He smirks. “If you wanna freeze your backside off for the sake of looking like you just stepped out of an iceberg, I have no objections.”

I pull a steamer remote from off my belt, point it outward, and click it. As a glass dome big enough to house both our tempests closes over us in a triangular arc, I click the remote again, and small fissures in the glass pour hot air into the general area. I wipe moisture from the back of my neck and raise an eyebrow.

“You were saying?”

Saki shuts his heat cell and mutters, “Show-off.”

I smile and click the remote again, causing the dome to recede.

The wingkeeper standing beside the stairwell chooses that moment to approach me. He is short and sturdy, with a weathered face. “Shall we take them back to the caves, sire?”

“Thank you, Elymas,” I say, dismounting.

He nods and calls for his companion. Ryn looks at them both like she’ll gut them if they try anything, but she lets the stout one gear up and mount her.

After the other wingkeeper has settled the galamé, they set off into the sky once more, the clouds swallowing them in seconds. I lean against the railing to watch them, though they’ve already disappeared.

“What were you doing on a galamé, anyway?” I ask Saki without looking away from the sky. “You’re Bonded to a taikaelys.”

He joins me at the railing, his arms crossed over the bars. His expression has morphed from annoying to somber so smoothly that I didn’t notice the change. “Your mother wanted me to leave fast and return fast, so I took the fastest breed. She thought Tzunbi would draw too much attention.”

I eye his stance and the set of his jaw.

“I take it your mission didn’t fare too well.”

“None of the other ambassadors’ did,” he says grimly. “You should’ve seen them at the meeting. Most of them had burns on their faces—from the fires,” he adds at my questioning look. “Kkhepit and Storvyn Port are both ash.”

The words sink into me like stones in water. Two ports, gone in one day. My mother sent six of the ambassadors to Isoeki and Valdrin, and six to the neighboring countries to see if the same things have happened there. Maybe she hoped their news would prove the rumors wrong; maybe she wanted to find truth to them. She’s soon to get her answers either way, whether or not she likes them.

“And you’re the last to return,” I say, but it sounds more like a statement than a question.

“The second. Vixyn got back yesterday but crashed for the night as soon as she got back. She’s probably being chewed out by your mother as we speak.”

Vixyn. The co-ambassador of Mizogha. She was one of the six to be sent overseas; seeing as she left at the start of spring, I didn’t think she’d be back for a few days.

“And we have no idea who started the fires?”

Saki looks straight at me, and I’m surprised to see the barest hint of a smile playing around his mouth. “Funny you should ask.” 

─── ❖ ───

“You can’t be serious.”

I stand before the map-strewn table, the frostflare chandelier above us dying the room a sickly blue. One hand pins down the eastern chunk of land marked Yatahama, while the other traces the western empire titled Geujun—the Six Nations. The paper bleeds red in the places where Kkhepit and Storvyn Port are marked, the line connecting them to Yatahama a harsh slash that covers half of the map.

Across from me, Saki paces the length of the room, tossing a lighter between his hands. He stops pacing on the third catch, lights the cigar dangling from his mouth with a loud sizzle, and then turns to face me with an amused expression.

“That’s what I said, and the other ambassadors looked at me like I was crazy,” he replies. He takes a drag from the cigar and scatters the smoke billowing from its end before continuing, “The people don’t want to point fingers until Ukavya has all the input she can get, but Yatahama’s the only neighboring country we aren’t on good terms with.”

 The pieces come together in my mind. “So do they actually think the Yatahamans did it, or do they just want someone to blame?”

“As of now? I’d say both. It’s unlikely, but . . .” He shrugs and trails off, the unasked question hanging in the air: But who else can we blame?

I don’t want to hate the Yatahamans. I have no reason to hate them other than that I should, but I do. I am bonded to them in hatred, just as I am bonded to the Geujinese in kinship. Long before I tasted my first glimpse of court life, my mother told me who the Sorans are and how to talk like them, and I stored her words in my mind for safekeeping, just in case I needed to put them into place. Just in case I needed to learn how to accuse a people I didn’t even hate.

This is one of those cases. 

Saki takes one last puff from his cigar before crushing it to a stump between his fingers. He quirks his eyebrows and nods to the door. “Bet you ten nvahkâ your mother calls us both in first.”

“I don’t gamble.” 

I receive an innocent blink in return. “Five nvahkâ?”

I sigh and push away from the table, realizing he isn’t going to concede. “Fifteen.”

Saki grins, the idiot. 

As if on cue, the door slides open; our heads snap toward it at the same time. A tall young girl stands in the doorway, her elaborate white locks pinned back with a dagger. She’s dressed in silver and white from waist to heel, her shoulders adorned with a black pelt that unfolds like a cut of the night.

My older sister smiles, but it doesn’t reach her steel-colored eyes. “Mother wants to see you two.”

Saki opens his mouth to say something, only for it to fall closed again. It’s clear he’s been smitten by Andraeya since he laid eyes on her, but the infatuation isn’t returned. Right now my sister is interested a dark-haired boy—a son of the viscount, I think—with a dagger tattooed beneath his eye; that boy is not Saki.

When he finds his voice again, all he asks is, “Why are you wearing that?”

“It’s the first day of Haedith.” Andraeya raises a pale eyebrow and smirks, amused by his attention. “Don’t tell me you forgot, Jaeyoung?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes as Saki flushes at the sound of his real name. “Of course I didn’t forget.”

Well, I certainly did, I think. The Geujinese have so many things to celebrate that the mere thought of keeping track of them all makes me lean against the wall for support. It’s tradition to don pale colors during the first half of Haedith as a farewell to spring, as a sign that all it means—and what it carries with it—will be back sooner or later. Most people do it as an excuse to show off new attire and drink kvass and eat plate after heaping plate of daebakki and do whatever it is that royals do during festivals, even though they’ll probably end up doing it again by the start of Chuseok. Last year is a blur I can’t pick out of the mess of stupid, forgettable stuff I did in the past nigh-decade, and that includes how our family celebrates tradition.

Or desecrates it.

“Haedith. Right.” The sound of my own voice pulls me away from my thoughts. I straighten and start folding the map, not looking up as I ask, “Bari isn’t showing up, then?”

The sound of our cousin’s name makes Andraeya’s rouge-stained mouth twist in a moue of derision. “Of course she is,” she replies bitterly, “she’s leading the procession. Which reminds me—Mother wants us to skip the festivities this year. She has other things for us to do.” 

I flick my eyes up. “‘Other things?’”

Andraeya raises her eyebrows. “Let’s just say that I’d rather listen to a drunk Bari singing ‘Snegurochken, Esthteka’ off-key at the top of her lungs than be in your current position.” She smiles sweetly and adds, “Don’t keep her waiting, haedzun.”

Then she strides out the room, the gossamer tail of her gown trailing her heels as she whips out of sight. We stare after her for a long moment.

“I believe we had a bet,” Saki quips into the silence.

“Shut up, Jaeyoung,” I say.     

  ─── ❖ ───

The palace hallways twist and turn like a serpent trying to fit inside a burrow too small to hold its breadth. The obsidian walls rising above us reflect the ground underfoot; I can see my reflection wherever I look. Bijou-encrusted bowls of fresh fruit from the greenhouse skyscrapers—apples and oranges and other things I can’t label—sit atop polished blackthorn tables, making the scent of citrus and lye play around my nose.

My riding boots clack against the floor, dripping melted snow onto the ebony tiles. I didn’t have time to take them off when I got back. A rider fresh out of the saddle is the maids’ worst nightmare, even with the tech they use to clean the place—most of the time, I’m the culprit. At least this time I’ll be too busy elsewhere to feel guilt over the mess I made upon returning home.

Whatever home is, at least. Anyone else would kill to live in the imperial palace, let alone hold an imperial title, but I’ve always observed royal life like a branch grafted from a different part of the same tree—the way a curious bird would observe a murder of blackwings it doesn’t belong to. I am a prince, but I am not; this castle is my home, but it is not. I try not to think of it too much, otherwise my head spins with a dizziness worthy of a drunk reveler on the last day of Haedith.

Upon reaching the throne room, Saki instinctively stops to see if he can hear the voices coming from within the room, but neither of us can. Only doors that guard royal rooms have built-in privacy barriers.

I step forward and press my hand into the door’s brass scanner, waiting for it to identify me. Once it does, I set my shoulders back and enter the room, and Saki follows soon after.

Even for a throne room, the space is massive. Gilded runes curl around the black marble at my feet and spiral up the walls, leaving the pillars wholly bare. In the center of the area are two silver thrones, a pair of stone tempests curling at their feet; I’ve only ever seen the empress’s throne filled, as no one has never bothered to try filling the emperor’s since my supposed father’s death. The medieval look is thrown to a halt by a network of dusty fluorescent beams built into the ceiling, their blazing light fueled by bolt energy, a force the rich harvest like starving Xi Qeh. Bolt energy drives almost everything in the Six Nations, even the false sunlight in our greenhouses; it’s the reason we don’t freeze to death in our otherwise-chilly corridors and rooms, the reason we can grow fruit at all. 

It does make any room I walk into excruciatingly bright, but it has its uses.

The empress sits on the left-hand throne with Andraeya perched on the platform beside her and Vixyn standing before them both. The fluorescent lights make my mother’s signet ring flash and carve her face in shadows, the crown on her head wrinkling her white brow.

My eyes slide from her to the second figure standing on the other side of my mother’s throne. I stiffen. Jian Nagrikov, the boy Andraeya currently fancies. The dagger tattooed beneath his eye cuts into his cheek like its blade is real. His father is a nobleman who fell out of favor with the royal family decades ago, so it’s beyond me why he would be allowed here, why anyone would want him here.

 The only good thing I can say about him is that his uncle, with whom he shares the same surname, is the reason I’m even standing here with privilege that shouldn’t be mine, the reason my mother wears a crown unburdened by the anger of a people who’ve served her for the last nine years as if she’s the real thing. Still, he’s only here—only allowed near a queen I would be standing beside if I hadn’t left with Ryn—because my sister has shared lips with him. Jian waves when he sees us and grins, like he knows what I’m thinking and doesn’t care.

Seven Thrones, what I wouldn’t give to knock his teeth out.

Though that does sound more like something Andraeya would do.

“Leave the door open, Ambassador Kim,” Mother says as Saki turns to shut it. “Vasilisa was just leaving.”

At the sound of her name, the female ambassador turns to face us. Her hair frames her face artfully, a dark slash falling over her brown eyes. From afar, it’s a wonder Vixyn is still single—she’s striking without trying to be, and clever enough to keep her head—yet once you get to know her, you understand just how sharp her tongue can be. She doesn’t look the type to reduce a man to tears, but I’ve seen her cut down suitors fast enough that they run home with their pride in tatters, like a hound with its tail between its legs.

Her expression as she passes us is all the explanation I need—she took a cold verbal beating from my mother, and Saki and I are probably about to get one, too. “Good luck,” she says in a low voice.  

“We won’t be needing it,” I reply in the same tone.

“We won’t?” Saki mutters.

 I see the hint of a smile flicker across her face—one of her briefest smiles—before the door slides closed behind her.

A loud silence follows in her wake, one that stretches on far too long like someone pretending to yawn. I resist the urge to twist my collar between my fingers just to account for the lack of noise in the room and instead settle for staring straight ahead, my gaze fixed on nothing in particular. Then at last my mother rises from the throne, her cream-colored pelt unfolding behind her in a swirl of fur, and centers her needle-like gaze on us. I expect her to admonish us for not bowing, but she just turns to Saki and lifts a brow. “Well?”  

The word alone makes all the sound rush back into the room like sweet air filling eager lungs. Saki lifts his gaze from his boots, which are still leaking water and bits of ice onto my mother’s fine marble floor, and dives into an explanation of what unfolded at Kkhepit and Storvyn, his words emerging one breath after the other. How easily he can switch from Saki to Ambassador Kim depending on what the situation calls for never fails to impress me. I hear him saying things—‘ruins’ and ‘recklessness’ and ‘compensation’—but my mind drifts elsewhere halfway through his report.

The people don’t want to point fingers until Ukavya has all the input she can get, but Yatahama’s the only neighboring country we aren’t on good terms with.

For the last nine years, Yatahama and Geujun have had peace, or at least something close to it. A stalemate, maybe. The Geujinese have the upper hand politically and martially speaking, but there’s nothing else they could possibly reap from Yatahama’s already ravaged lands, no other advantage they could gain. It’s not like they left anything to be ravaged in the Chudavaega War, which they technically didn’t win but still marked down as one of the Nations’ many victories.

Maybe they don’t have a reason to blame the Yatahamans.

Maybe they’re just looking for one.

“ . . . and I rode for the palace and met the prince on the way,” Saki finishes, finally coming up for air.

Mother says nothing for a moment, instilling that same silence that makes it feel as if all the air has been sucked from the room. When she finally does speak, her voice is even but holds the promise of a rising temper. “I expected better of you, Ambassador Kim. Not only did you leave that meeting empty-handed, you also failed to give the impression that the empress, whose Nation you speak for, is doing everything she can to resolve this matter. Your job is to instill confidence in the people that we are one step ahead, not just as confused as they are.”

“Forgive me, ndizvanka lumodieth,” Saki says placatingly, using her Geujinese royal title. He bows his head, taking the rebuke. “It was not my intention to—”

“I’m not finished,” she interrupts, holding up her hand to silence him. “While I am disappointed at the dismal job you and Ambassador Yershova did of representing Mizogha”—from his corner of the platform, Jian smirks the slightest of fractions—“I do acknowledge that you did what you could. I can only hope that you do better in the next mission I am assigning you, Andraeya, and Alexei.”

At that, I start to pay real attention. Despite all her earlier bravado, Andraeya looks as confused as I feel, probably because she’s being looped into this with me. Saki returns my wide-eyed stare.

“All of us?” the three of us say in unison.

It seems an odd trio to make. Anytime the three of us are seen together, nine times out of ten it’s because Andraeya is looking for an excuse to end up in the arms of some faceless nobleman’s son; Saki is looking for an excuse to smoke on the roof of an abandoned city building, away from prying eyes; or I’m looking for an excuse to ride Ryn—and we need someone to watch our backs while we do so. It’s not usually because the empress of Geujun summons us to be partnered in the same mission.

“All of you,” the empress repeats. She tilts her chin ever so slightly, as if shaking off an irksome fly, and adds, “Leave us, Jian.”

That wipes the smug expression cleanly off Jian’s face, though he hides his displeasure well. He cuts a sycophantic bow in Mother’s and Andraeya’s direction and takes his sweet time descending the platform, brushing invisible lint off the front of his suit as he goes.

Mother waits until his footsteps disappear down the hall before seating herself on her throne once more. “Alexei,” she pauses and I quickly run through a list of what the hades I did in the past week that could’ve possibly displeased her, “do you, in actuality, believe the Yatahamans reduced those ports to ash?” My surprise must show in my expression, because she adds, albeit with a bite in her tone, “I would advise you not to lie to me.”

I stare her straight in the face, trying to gauge her intentions. “No, Mother. I don’t believe they did.”

“Nor do I, but the council does.” What difference does that make? I want to snap, but thank the Seven, my tongue keeps itself in check. My mother tilts her head, as if knowing my thoughts, before continuing, “You said the people wanted compensation, Jaeyoung? Well, compensation they’ll get—and you three will be the ones to give it to them.”

I exchange a surreptitious glance with Saki—who seems alarmed to have been dragged into the discussion once more—and Andraeya. My older sister doesn’t look pleased, but she looks steeled for the worst, so I ask, “What would you have us do?”

My mother smiles, and, for a fleeting moment, I wish I still had it in me to hate the Yatahamans.