Traitor, Chapter One

It rained the day the Meshani came. Ana’s feet—which were not really her own—splashed through back alleys where shop awnings dripped onto steaming cobbled streets. She was late, later than she’d like to be. 

“Relax,” her twin brother drawled, dragging on her hand. “You’re giving me a cramp.”

Ana tried in vain to haul the much-taller Meir around an old man pushing a cart of roasting chickpeas. The warm scent of the wares contrasted with the city’s damp wool and refuse smell, as if the capital of the empire couldn’t be bothered to put on a good show for its Meshani visitors. For once, it wasn’t her hair-brained brother’s fault they were late getting down from the palace. She was glad no one could see her harried expression or her palace servant’s uniform.

In fact, no one could see her at all.

“We’re going to miss our chance,” she hissed. The picture of the emperor’s pleased smile began to fade, replaced by a look of steely disapproval. Her stomach did a flip. 

“And whose fault is that?” Meir needled.

“Not mine. Talina was completely out of her tree.” The princess, only a few months older than Ana’s seventeen years, had rejected at least a dozen gowns that morning and had thrown every ladies’ maid but Ana out of her chambers.

Meir snickered. “Who can blame her? It’s not every day the Meshani pay us a visit.”

That was a fact that Ana’s frayed nerves wouldn’t let her forget. The last time the empire’s long-standing rival had sent a delegation to the capital was three centuries ago, and that delegation hadn’t included the Meshani king. 

Beneath his mop of brown curls, Meir studied her as she skirted around a woman clutching a child. “And why do you keep going around them? It’s so inefficient.”  To demonstrate, he flung his free hand toward a group of chatting men and took a dramatic step straight through their bodies.

Ana pushed out a breath. “It’s too risky in a crowd this thick. Especially when someone might forget himself and start chattering away when we’re passing through.”

They’d had this argument about a thousand times. Honestly, she couldn’t understand what convoluted logic the magi had used when granting her gregarious twin the ability to disappear from the physical world. As the emperor’s most trusted spies, hidden in plain view among the palace staff, it’s a wonder Meir hadn’t blown their cover at least once in their seventeen years. He may have been able to move through the world unseen and formless, sharing his gift with her through their joined hands, but his power didn’t mask the endless stream of words emitting from his mouth.

Meir flashed a mischievous grin which was visible only to her. “I think you’re jealous, little sister.”

“Jealous?” Ana scoffed. “Not hardly.” Meir professed to be the elder twin by ten minutes, a claim neither of them could prove or disprove. Regardless, it was one he adored lording over her at the most aggravating times.

She edged around a young woman in a gray headscarf, passing her elbow through the girl’s just to show Meir she could. She’d never admit it, but she hadn’t really gotten used to the sensation of her own body sliding through the space someone else’s occupied. It was like falling into a pit of maggots: unnatural and hair-raising. “I’d just prefer not to be stoned to death,” she said.

If their identities were discovered, it would mean the end of their life in the palace, in the capital, maybe in the empire itself. No one but gods and kings were meant to wield magic. Certainly not commoners like her and Meir. With her free hand, Ana rubbed the five-pointed green gem embedded in the skin over her breastbone. It was an old habit, one that reassured her that the magic that gave her purpose, that made her so useful to the man she called Father, hadn’t left her.

Meir heaved a sigh. “You’re awfully glum, you know that?”

Ana ignored him. They were nearly to the plaza now, the narrow lane spilling into a shifting mass of bodies in the wide-open heart of Trivis. The beat of drums somewhere to the south sent Ana’s pulse racing. She plunged through the crowd, heedless of the discomfort now, until she and Meir burst into a wide lane cut through the center of the mob by the spears of the city guard.

It was madness. More people had come to watch the Meshani arrive than Ana had ever seen in one place. Citizens from all five of the empire’s kingdoms packed shoulder to shoulder, most from the city in their modest thigh-length tunics and loose trousers, speaking the Common Tongue regardless of their land of origin. Others, judging by their sun-darkened faces and colorful ethnic dress, had come from surrounding villages for the occasion. Rows of wealthy merchants, artisans, tavern keepers and laborers lined the plaza’s five sides, climbing on fountains and statues and crowding the execution platform which, thankfully, had been cleared of rotting bodies for the occasion.

Ana tugged her twin across the patterned tiles toward the south end, where the Meshani caravan would enter. 

“I’m guessing King Parvir will be rakish,” Meir whispered. “Sun-bronzed with a warrior’s build, just a little gray at the temples. What do you think?” 

“I think you’re delusional.” The current king of Meshan was reputed to be vain and reckless, a weak replacement for his predecessor who’d spent decades frustrating the emperor’s attempts at conquest. She’d only seen a Meshani once, years ago in the palace dungeons, but she’d studied all their depictions in the library’s textbooks and in the battle scenes painted on the palace’s walls. If all went as planned, she’d find out before long exactly what King Parvir was like. She’d show the emperor she could handle this enemy, too.

Meir’s grip tightened on her hand, green eyes hardening on the road that led out from the south end of the plaza. Ana froze, following his gaze. The enchantment that corrected her brother’s vision—the same one that supplanted her legs—gave him a slight advantage over normal people when it came to sight. What does he see that I can’t? Then she heard the low beat of drums, the clip of staccato hoofbeats, and every head in the plaza turned as one.

The Meshani had arrived.

“Come on!” Meir let out a sound of delight and tugged Ana closer to the south road. For a moment, she saw nothing but yellow shop fronts and gray shadows, people hanging out of windows and leaning in doorways. Then, they appeared: mounted warriors in ceremonial red, crescent blades at their hips, helmets and chest plates gleaming. They rode two abreast on glossy, fine-boned horses draped in yellow and purple silks, filling the street to overflowing.

“Demon’s tits,” Meir breathed. “They’re really here.”

Ana felt rooted to the spot. For centuries, the kingdom of Meshan had been built up in the empire’s collective imagination: a coastal territory of fabled horsemen, undefeated warriors who never yielded to the empire’s expansion. Ana had nearly come to expect gods. But that illusion shattered as the procession drew closer. Scuffed boots swung beneath frayed hems, rainwater mingled with sweat on amber skin and black beards. These were not gods but human beings: flesh that could bleed, bones that could break…wills that could be shattered. 

Ana pulled Meir off the street as the procession passed by.

“Don’t you want to watch?” he protested.

“Watch Father’s enemies put on a spectacle financed by loans from our own treasury?” Ana snorted. The Meshani were here under the guise of goodwill, to forge an alliance with the Empire of the Five Kingdoms after centuries of enmity. But Ana knew the truth. Meshan’s coffers were dry. King Parvir had managed to decimate his kingdom’s treasury during his decade-long tenure, borrowing from the empire and conceding border territory when he couldn’t pay. The slow, bloodless decline of a nation: one of the emperor’s favorite ways to do business.

Meir made a helpless sound. “But they brought an elephant!”

“Father has an elephant.”

This was no time for messing about. The emperor had assigned them a task, and Ana would not return to him with anything less than success to report. Her position in court depended on it. Her very identity depended on it. She’d prove to him, once again, just how indispensable she was. She’d show him he’d made the right choice taking her and Meir into his care.

Behind the jewel-festooned war elephant, an ornate wagon rolled into the plaza, heralded by drummers and shepherded by guards, its occupant concealed by draped silk curtains. Ana’s senses heightened. She took a step toward the wagon, magic priming beneath her skin. 

Then Meir jiggled her hand. “Look at that! He’s brought us play things.” 

Ana had nearly missed them: two richly dressed young men riding ahead of the royal wagon on the most beautiful stallions she’d ever seen. She frowned. “He brought the princes?”

It shouldn’t have surprised her. The heads of noble houses loved to parade their sons around at court as if siring them was some sort of accomplishment. But the unannounced presence of King Parvir’s sons was a suspicious twist. Negotiations between rival kingdoms never occurred without knives hidden up one’s sleeves. The emperor of the Five Kingdoms had Ana and Meir. These princes might be King Parvir’s.

Meir grinned. “Now that’s what I was hoping for.”

Ana narrowed her eyes at her twin, then at the young royals. The two princes were well-appointed and arrogant-looking, as she’d expected, and objectively handsome, a fact that hadn’t escaped her brother’s notice. If Crown Prince Bashir’s reputation in battle was anything to go by, he was the broad scowling one, the one whose shoulders were engaged in a war with his coat that could only end in destruction. Prince Daryus, then, was the younger-looking one, the one with the streak of silver coursing through his raven hair, an oddity that had sparked many a rumor. In contrast to his elder brother, Prince Daryus sat a horse like he’d been born there, as comfortable in his sumptuous attire as a leopard wearing spots. He took in the imperial capital with a sharp, hawk-like gaze, smirking as though the city of Trivis was the best entertainment he could have asked for.

If these boys were King Parvir’s weapons, Ana wasn’t impressed. 

The procession stalled in the plaza, yellow and purple banners spraying leftover droplets of rain in the breeze. Ana tugged her brother toward the royal wagon, and finally Meir kept pace. For all his seeming indifference, she could always count on her twin when the moment to act arrived. In any case, he couldn’t sustain their invisibility forever.

Ana and Meir made no reflection in the street’s puddles, no sound on the wagon’s steps as they climbed up and melted through the hanging drapes. Inside the wagon, a wiry man reclined on a mountain of silk pillows, twisting the heavy jeweled rings that circled his fingers. He was middle-aged, stoop-shouldered, and sallow-skinned for a Meshani. His long embroidered coat was a rich red and deep purple, an ostentatious amount of gold braided into his long beard. 

At a crouch, she crept toward the Meshani sovereign, towing Meir beside her. Their footfalls made no sound on the patterned rugs, but they couldn’t mask the rustle of their uniforms or the sound of their breathing. King Parvir stiffened as Ana leaned close to his ear. 

“Don’t move.”

The king sucked in a breath, hooded eyes darting around for the source of the voice—a source he’d never find. Ana’s magic rose bright and warm in her veins. She focused her gaze on the emblem pinned to his sash: the symbol of Meshan, two crossed swords over a field of poppies. Then she softened her focus, allowing a current of magic to prickle along her palms to her fingertips. King Parvir’s golden insignia twitched, then bulged, then morphed. A golden scorpion the size of a man’s palm skittered across his chest.

“Don’t scream,” she murmured.

The king shot up from his pillows, eyes bulging as the creature sank its metallic legs into his skin, needle-point tail arcing over its back. Meir reached across her and plucked the scorpion free. As he touched it, the creature disappeared in his hand and King Parvir hissed out a terrified breath. 

Ana wouldn’t hurt him. She never harmed any of her targets–only delivered warnings. 

She lowered her voice to a whisper, lips nearly brushing the man’s ear.  “The emperor of the Five Kingdoms sends his welcome.”