A cool sunset embraced the city of Chrysopolis, its reddish light casting eerie shadows wherever it fell. A perfect evening for stealth. Shirrin, for the first time in several days, was entirely calm as she made her way through the grand entrance hall, carefully making it seem as though she were trying to avoid attention. Her face was concealed behind a heavy cloak, and she kept her eyes focused downward, only gncing sidelong at the guards as they noted her presence. It was a careful dance, pretending to hide from sight while at the same time making absolutely certain that she was seen.

  Not that anyone who did see her would know who they were looking at, of course. Shirrin had taken on the form of General Eteocles once again, and though that form came with its associated discomfort, it did not sink into mind and soul as it had previously. Shirrin knew that she was only taking this shape temporarily.

  She continued up the tightly-wound staircase, then through the dark passages where the only light came from the occasional candle held by those servants whose work continued into the test hours. Many of them saw her as well, though she wondered if they could recognize Eteocles in the same way that the guards surely could. No matter; in the end, the rumor would spread, and the dots would eventually be connected. Shirrin slipped from hallway to hallway, counting doors and windows on her left fnk exactly as she had been instructed to do. Turning down an even darker passageway, she finally came across a set of ornate wooden double-doors, and paused.

  Anticipation was building in her chest as Shirrin worked the spell that would return her to her proper form, well out of sight of any passer-by. On the other side of that door was something she had not even known she had wanted for twelve long years, something that she wanted so dearly that she had no choice but to suppress that want. For the sake of the mission. Shirrin took a calming breath, and knocked in a specific pattern. Knock. Pause. Knock knock. Pause. Knock knock knock.

  “Come in.”

  Shirrin pushed through the doors. The chamber beyond was shockingly small for the bedroom of an Empress; the bed was sized such that two could fit comfortably but nothing more, and its decorations were pin dyed linen. On the wall was a small symbol of the Golden Lord, and in between the entrance and the bed itself was a folding table and two stools.

  “What is this pce?” Shirrin said softly. “Surely you do not sleep here regurly.”

  “Correct,” said Athan. “This is… a private pce. My main bedchamber is always busy, and Aissa sleeps there regardless. It used to be that Peleus and I would spend time together here, but… that era has passed.”

  Athan had always come to Shirrin’s chamber, when they were betrothed. She briefly wondered why, but terminated the thought as she sat down across from the Empress.

  “I think I like it. It strips away the bonds of context, makes us appear for a while to be merely two women as opposed to Empress and sve.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Athan said with a dismissive gesture. “You were a queen once, were you not?”

  “Once, yes. But that does not change the fact that I am now your husband’s sve.”

  “How has he been treating you?” Athan licked at her teeth awkwardly.

  “Your husband? Athan, I am his sve, by right of conquest.”

  “But there are ways to treat a sve well, and ways to treat a sve poorly,” Athan retorted. “I hope he’s been treating you well. If he isn’t, I might be forced to talk to him about it.”

  Shirrin chuckled at the Empress’s naivety. “I suppose he has been treating me well. He must understand that he cannot get away with beating me, the way he could a common sve. And he allows me my own rooms, and mostly free reign so long as I do not leave the neighborhood around the pace.”

  “Good,” Athan said with a nod. “Sve or not, you are still a queen, and you should be treated as such.”

  There was a long length of silence. Shirrin was fully content merely to study the fwless contours of Athan’s face, but the Empress was not as happy with nothingness.

  “Are you able to be truthful with me? Given that I am not your master, nothing you say can bring you harm.”

  “Nothing?” Shirrin choked on a ugh. “I am—of course. I can be truthful with you.”

  “What do you make of our fair city? When I first moved here I was absolutely awestruck by it all, the beauty of it, the sheer scale. But time has worn that away, and now I think it commonpce. Did you feel the same?”

  Shirrin sighed. Separating her own feelings about the pce that had borne her, sifting out the hate and resentment she held for what Chrysopolis represented, was no easy task. But if Athan asked for it, then she was powerless to deny her. She folded her hands in her p and pondered the question for what felt like weeks, turning over every impression and vision until she felt entirely foreign to herself.

  “It is a vast creature which the men of Macaria have called forth,” Shirrin finally said. “In Trabakond, everything that exists is comprehensible; each hut you pass by, you can see in phantom memory the process by which human hands brought it into being. Do you follow?”

  Athan’s pretty brow furrowed up. “Perhaps? Please, continue, and I shall do my best to keep up.”

  Shirrin nodded. “Even the halls of the jarls and kings, great though they are, are comprehensible. It brings awe to imagine the dozens of borers who must have spent months raising every pnk and log, quarrying out the stes and heaving them aloft with crane and treadle. But the things that your people have built here in Chrysopolis…”

  “They’re on an entirely different level,” Athan said. “Of a kind that only the greatest men in the greatest empire the world had ever known could create them.”

  “More than that. I am shocked that you Macarians, who worship the gods so fiercely, nevertheless ascribe all of Chrysopolis to yourselves and not to them. The only way the mind can comprehend such buildings being erected is by the numinous power of a divine being, commanding the stones and pilrs to emerge fully-formed from the earth.”

  Shirrin expected Athan to be ashamed, or to react in defense of the accusation of hubris which had just been leveled. She did not. Instead, she smiled, and a glimmer appeared in her eye.

  “I could show you how it’s done.”

  “What?” Shirrin said, her heart skipping a beat.

  “There is ongoing construction still in the city. A new temple, I think? Or perhaps it was a vil, or a new insu for borers? I pay little attention to such things. They’re not on a scale with the Pace or the greatest temples, but I am sure it will be educational to witness.”

  Shirrin could not help but smile again. Damn it all, why did Athan have to be like this? She was supposed to be calcuting, two-faced, an emblem of the Empire in which she was the third most powerful individual! And yet, some aspect of her womanly heart had not been damaged by exposure to reality, as Shirrin’s had. Twelve years had pced hardly a mark on her, and the same beauty which had been merely satisfying to a younger Shirrin had become something utterly precious.

  “Perhaps I will take you up on that offer,” Shirrin eventually said. “I have had so little time away from the pace. How is it all organized, though? In Trabakond, such things are only built because of bonds of loyalty between lords and their liegemen, but there are no such things here.”

  If Shirrin prodded long enough, eventually she would find the reminder she needed of who Athan was.

  “We have a city council, they’re the ones in charge,” Athan said. “They decide what needs to be built, they vote on it, and then they spend the tax budget on doing it. Wait, do you know what taxes are?”

  “Yes, my Empress, I am familiar with the concept of taxes. A very clever Macarian invention, I have no idea how you got everyone to agree to it.”

  “Forgive me, O Mighty Witch-Queen of Trabakond, for assuming that you might have need of context for the minutiae of a kingdom which you have never entered until st month.”

  “I do not need to have entered a pce to know about it,” said Shirrin. “I am, as it happens, literate, even if one discounts that to which my powers grant me access.”

  “I see, I see,” Athan replied. “But then… May I ask a rather embarrassing question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Peleus says that the army which you brought to the field was vast, greater even than his own. And you had magic on your side… yet you could not find victory. Why not?”

  Because she had not wished for victory. Shirrin had arrayed her forces in the worst possible manner, pitting her strongest warriors directly against the beating heart of the Macarian army, and sending her riders on a wide arc that was sure to get them bogged down in the woodnd on the edge of the battlefield before they even pyed a part. Again, she needed to concoct a lie.

  “Has your husband ever told you much about his childhood?”

  “A little bit,” Athan said casually. “We hardly spoke to each other until the months before our marriage.”

  “Did he ever tell you what he did when he was young, how he was brought up?”

  Athan shook her head. “He’s talked to me about what we would do if I ever bore him a son. Mostly idle fantasy about how he would raise him just as he himself was raised, trained in both martial prowess and the works of the old philosophers.”

  Shirrin nodded, very carefully setting aside the spite that naturally arose at the topic of Peleus and Athan having children. “Precisely. He was raised to fight from the day of his birth. I, meanwhile, spent the first half of my life learning how to take whippings without compint and how to do hard bor without colpsing. For all my cunning, there was little I could do when faced with a man possessed of such an innate instinct for bloodshed.”

  Athan’s nose wrinkled for just an instant. “Do not say such a thing. You act as though my beloved Peleus is some blood-soaked berserker. You have not seen him as I have, in the quiet moments.”

  “And you have not seen him as I have,” Shirin retorted, “In the loud moments, when all other thoughts have faded away but those of victory and conquest. Truly, man is a many-faceted thing.”

  “Was he at least merciful?” Athan said, her eyes not quite making contact with Shirrin’s.

  “One could say that, I suppose. He could very well have killed me, after all, and refused the deal which I offered him.”

  “What deal?”

  That got Shirrin to raise an eyebrow. “He did not tell you of the deal?”

  “No, no he did not,” Athan said. “He said nothing of a deal, not to me and not to anybody else.”

  Silently, Shirrin wondered if that was true. Eteocles, at least, she would have expected would know the truth about the conditions that existed between herself and Peleus. “His original intention was to kill me and parade my corpse through the streets of Chrysopolis. It was only through promising to grant him the use of my magic that I was able to secure a better deal, both for myself and for my people. He gained the magic, I gained my life and a promise of security for my people.”

  “But why would he not tell anyone of this?” Athan asked, her words quiet as though she did not expect an answer.

  “Perhaps because he did not wish to be seen as easily swayed?” Shirrin suggested. “Some men find the idea that they are not the sole source of their own actions to be unmanning.”

  “You don’t know him the way that I do,” Athan repeated.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “If he were the type of man you describe, I would know. You’re saying that he’s a liar, a man who cares only about how he is perceived, rather than any kind of virtue. My husband is no liar.”

  Shirrin shook her head. “And yet, events took pce exactly as I—Oh, my Empress, let us not argue about this.”

  “Please.”

  Shirrin rose from her seat and began to pace around the small chamber. There was another thing which she had meant to accomplish with this midnight meeting, and now was a good time to do it. She wandered from pce to pce, her fingers drifting over the various bits of furniture as she walked past each one.

  “Did you decorate this room yourself, or is this how you found the pce when you and Peleus were married?”

  “Neither, and both,” Athan said. Immediately, she sounded more rexed: all of the stress that had entered her voice while she was talking about Peleus had gone. “The bed has sat here for half a century, at least, and the sheets were what was avaible. I took this table in here just today, and that cabinet was something Peleus purchased for this exact purpose.”

  The cabinet in question stood waist-height, and was painted with a faded violet dye. Three brass knobs on its front side connected to three drawers. Shirrin opened the topmost one, as though it were just something to keep her hands busy, and found it full of a careful selection of gold and silver jewelry. She ran her fingers over each piece, carefully looking for the ones which were most distinctive, and settled upon a pair of golden earrings, each one with a brilliantly green stone embedded in it.

  Shirrin picked up the earrings and showed them to Athan. “I’ve never seen a stone like this. Where did these come from?”

  “Peleus, once again. They were a gift from the Emperor of Sarrania, during the attempted peace talks a few years back. He thought they were so beautiful that only the Empress deserved to have them. Apparently the stone comes from somewhere across the sea.”

  Shirrin examined them for a few seconds longer. “As, then. I shall never own anything of their like.”

  The next moment had to be done very carefully. She turned to face Athan, saying something about how well Peleus treated her with material gifts. But her thoughts were entirely focused on her hand as she lowered it back down to the drawer. While Athan was misdirected with her gaze and words, Shirrin’s fingers worked, separating one earring from its twin. With a movement so smooth that it would be difficult to see even if Athan were paying attention, Shirrin tucked one earring into a pocket of her doublet, while pcing the other back in the drawer.

  They talked for a little while longer, mostly about trifles and pleasantries. Shirrin still enjoyed Athan’s company, in spite of it all, though the tiny earring stowed away in her back pocket weighed her down. Eventually, long after sunset had faded into proper night, Shirrin begged her leave. Athan, thinking graciously, loaned her a candle in order to light her way. Shirrin would not need it, but she took the gift anyway.

  As soon as she was out of the little bedroom, Shirrin set back to work. She found an open window facing out onto the city, slipped out of it, and leapt. Few people indeed were out after dark, even in a city as rge as Chrysopolis, and fewer still of those people would have been looking directly up. This was a good thing, for anybody who did look up at that precise hour, on that precise night, might have noticed a rge raven soaring through the sky with a candle held in its cws and a precious earring in its beak.

  Shirrin reappeared not far from the pace, in the wealthiest of Chrysopolis’s many wealthy districts, near an open window in the upper floor of General Eteocles’s vil. Having arrived, she moved with swiftness and purpose. Her nighttime visits to the vil when she had been intent on impersonating its owner had given her a familiarity with its yout, particurly the location of Eteocles’s own chamber.

  Shirrin slipped past the locked door with ease, and into the room beyond, and as she had done before she sprinkled a pinch of sleeping powder carefully into the sleeping master’s face. Once he was well and drugged, Shirrin could set to her task. With quiet efficiency, she searched every drawer and cupboard, every nook and corner of Eteocles’s room, until she found the pce where he kept his most private gifts, inside a gilded lockbox. This she opened, and within it pced the stolen earring.

  Also inside the lockbox was a letter, as yet unsent. By the light of Athan’s candle Shirrin read it, and to her great delight discovered that it was a love letter, its intended recipient some already-engaged noble girl with whom she was totally unfamiliar. Shirrin spoke a few words aloud, twirling her fingers in an arcane pattern. All at once, much of the ink upon the papyrus evaporated away, falling into dust upon the floor. In particur, the name of the intended recipient at the bottom of the page, and the st few lines. Now appearing as an unfinished love letter with no clear destination, Shirrin took the page with her as she closed the lockbox and slipped out of the room.

  After a brief bout of indecision, she decided to leave it in the sitting room, by the great fire. That way it was sure to be found. Sves and servants were not meant to read the master’s correspondence, of course, but rumors always spread quickly in Chrysopolis. Especially when said rumors had a witch encouraging them along.

  SaffronDragon