II

 

​

“THE BELLS! THE BELLS ARE RINGING! It’s now! Move!” Domitris shouted amid the panic. Screams multiplied in the distance, rushing over every corner of the theater. The metallic smell of blood grew thick in his nostrils. His hands, clutching the hilt of a dagger, were wet and sticky. His heart pounded, ringing in his ears. He tried to drop the dagger, but it stuck to his hand. Screams and yells and gurgles blurred together all around him. Was it his own blood on his palms? No. The Supreme Emperor sat lifeless before him. The bells kept on ringing, the sound growing louder.

 

Domitris woke disoriented from a heavy sleep with a drumming in his chest. The bells were, in fact, ringing, which made his heart beat even faster. He was back at the palace. Also, he had overslept. Usually, Lyra woke him up at five, an hour before the first morning bell, so he could sit on his balcony with some work, alone, before commanding the council around for the rest of the day. Where was she? The pile of clothing he had discarded on the floor was gone and the curtains were already drawn. He dragged himself out of bed, the clammy fabric of his thin tunic clinging to his torso.

    “Lyra?” he called, but there was no immediate answer. His throat was raw, and his back ached after the ride. A few hours of sleep weren’t enough to make up for it. An entire week of sleep would hardly do it. Scanning the room, he found a fresh set of clothes laid out over the back of a chair. He glanced at the servant’s door just as it swung open, and Lyra trotted in with a tray in her hands. The sight of her got to him more than he had expected. Unlike Ignotus, she looked just as she always did, with her brown curls pinned to the back of her head and her eyebrows high on her round, vigilant face. A high-pitched, incoherent sound escaped her, and she went for him, forgetting to put down the tray.

    “Your Highness, welcome back!”

    He smiled and bent down to embrace her over the tray and she returned the affection with her cheek. When he let go, she turned around and put the tray down. “Oh, how I’ve missed those big brown eyes of yours!” she said, reaching up and closing her hands around his face.

    “And I have missed you,” he said. They hadn't been apart for this long since he was a kid. She had joined his family’s estate when Domitris was born and had practically raised him since. She was the one who had gotten him through the years after he was told his parents weren’t coming back. And when he was elected emperor, he wasn’t sure he’d have maintained his sanity if not for her. “Do you know that other company is very boring compared to you?”

    She let go and wrinkled her nose over a smile at him. “Do you mean to tell me that scholars and guards and senators are dull company? I hardly believe it!”

    He shook his head. “Are you well? You look well.” For fifteen years her junior, he was sure he appeared more ragged and weary than she did, looking as beautiful and put-together as ever.

    “I always am. We can talk more later. Now, eat your breakfast and go wash up. You stink like you’ve been living in the stables. I prepared the bath for you. You have a tight schedule today,” she said, and was out the door again.

    A warm comfort settled in him as he took the first bite of rosemary bread. His mouth watered and his stomach growled. The provinces had their merits, but no food was better than the capital’s. Though they had eaten well at the nobles’ residences, food on the road was mostly tough, dark bread that filled the stomach and kept for a long time, and he never wanted to see it again. Still chewing on a mouthful of bread, he went to the adjacent chamber, where a large basin of water sent curls of steam into the air, spreading the scent of lavender with it.

    It was just warm enough to be unpleasant, but he sunk into it. Leisurely, he scrubbed away every trace of the journey and washed his hair thoroughly. It had gotten longer while he had been away, long enough to fall into his eyes, but he didn’t mind it. He always thought the close-cropped military style was too severe on him anyway. He ran it backwards and wrung out the water.

    When he was clean, he returned for more of the bread, only to find Lyra at his table, her gray eyes wide and her smile wider.

    “Well?” she said. “Tell me everything!”

    He joined her and leaned back in his chair, resting his ankle on his knee. “Four months is a lot to cover in a morning. Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

    She shot a look at him and pushed a filled cup closer. “You were sleeping like a sweet little piglet for once. You need all the sleep you can get. Marmaras is still reeling from the rebellion and now you have to convince the people that this treaty is a good idea. Have you practiced the speeches? I got word that you received them.”

    “I did.”

    The messenger had found the entourage a few weeks back. Domitris had read them every night before going to bed. “I’m ready.”

    She patted his hand. “Good.”

    There was silence while Domitris took a sip of honeyed water.

    “The festival begins today,” Lyra then said, stating the obvious. She looked like she was going to burst from all the things she wanted to say; she just needed the right prompt.

    “Have you met them? The Dassosdans?” he asked. It gave him a deep sense of satisfaction to humor her when she was in this mood. She squirmed in her seat and an obnoxiously pleased look came over her face.

    “I have!” She leaned her plump arms on the table. “This will be very interesting. Also, have you seen that the city is crowded with them? Dassosdans, I mean. They have been arriving for weeks, ever since the borders opened.”

    “That’s the whole point,” he said, putting the rest of the bread into his mouth.

    “I know. But it’s strange to see them here, after everything.”

    Domitris understood how she felt. It was how many felt about the allegiance. He tried not to feel it himself.

    “It’s a good thing,” he said.

    Lyra nodded and changed the subject. “There will be a large audience tonight.”

    “It will go well,” Domitris said before she started to fret. “Now tell me my schedule for today.”

    “Council meeting at the next bell and then your private audience with the Dassosdan Minister after lunch.” She looked up at him. “You want to be ready for that one. She’s something.”

    “Have you met her?”

    “Only briefly at their arrival. She might claim that Dassosda has no nobles, but her clothing and posture and nose in the air says otherwise. But have you heard the way they speak? It’s like listening to my old matre back home!”

    A smile tugged at the corner of Domitris’ mouth. “No more of that now. What about the rest of the day?”

    “Afterwards I’ll prepare you for the show where you open the festival alongside the Minister. After that, the banquet at the palace will continue into the night.”

    Domitris pressed his fingers into his eyes, trying to get rid of the exhaustion. “I better get ready.”

    Lyra helped him dress. After being in riding gear for weeks and in traveling clothes for months, he wasn’t dissatisfied being back in the palace standards. Over the obligatory floor-length white tunic, Lyra coiled a long piece of dark blue fabric with gold edges around his torso twice, then folded and fastened it at one shoulder. Purple had been the color of the Supreme Emperor for three hundred years, but it was chosen that the color of the Elected Emperor would be dark blue; the color of the people.

    His gaze wandered out over the morning that settled in the palace gardens where the oncoming sun burned the dew off the grass in a calm haze. The serenity of it was such a contrast to the horrors committed inside the palace walls over the centuries.

    “I can’t believe it’s already been two years,” he said.

    Lyra’s hands worked on a difficult fold on the back of his shoulder but slowed down.

    “You’ve done well in those two years,” she said.

    “I want to do better. I want this to go well. I want to bring an end to this war, for good.”

    “You’re a good man.” She finished the fold, then patted him on the shoulder. “And it will. In just five days, you will sign that treaty.”

    “If it all goes well.”

    “You said it yourself: it will.” She took the circlet from the bedside table and placed it on his brow. They looked at each other and she squeezed his hand.

    “I will leave you to it. Remember, you have to be in the council hall at eight when the second bell rings,” Lyra said. “And, Your Highness?”

    He looked up.

    “You’re as handsome as always.”

    He smiled at her, and then she was gone. An unidentifiable feeling of unease gnawed at him, but he didn’t have time to nurture it. Instead, he turned his attention to the stack of protocols Ignotus had left for him in a tall, neat pile on his desk. He wanted to get a sense of what had happened in Concordia while he had been away. His head swam as he thumbed through the stack of papers. The rows upon rows of times, numbers, schedules, and lists blurred together and he couldn’t focus. Skimming through records of travelers into the city from the day before, he gave up, put the stack down, and sat back in the chair with a sigh.

    His mind was tired and cloudy, and he felt the impact of sleeping too little for too long. The thought of the audience with the Dassosdan Minister ran in circles in his head. He had yet to meet her himself—Dia, the head of the ambassadorial delegation Dassosda had sent for the festival. Marmarasi emissaries dispatched to Dassosda over the past two years to negotiate the terms had told upon every return of her astonishing wit, beauty, and intelligence, but also that she was fiercely determined and had little patience for the Marmarasi class system. Dassosda had denounced the monarchy and class system when they broke out of Marmaras to become a nation of their own almost a century ago. Dia was one of fourteen elected ministers leading the country, the one responsible for foreign affairs. He didn’t look forward to tiptoeing around the innate Dassosdan resentment towards their common past. Or present, for that matter. He knew he had to try.

    He got up and took a few aimless steps around the room, catching his reflection in the gilded mirror plate. He looked like an emperor. His fingers reached up to touch the circlet, and his dream of the Overthrow rushed into his memory. He hadn’t had those dreams since leaving the palace. A hollowness coiled in his chest. He had let himself think that maybe they had finally disappeared for good. He rolled his neck from side to side, trying to relieve the tension.

    It was a strange feeling that just hours ago he had sat around a fire next to soldiers and scholars, chatting about the constellations and eating soup. At first, everyone had been apprehensive about talking to him directly and the conversations often dimmed when he joined them at the fireside, but he had kept joining every night anyway. At the end of the tour, he knew the name of every single person in the entourage and even some of the names of their families, too. He knew who despised mutton and who could down a sack of wine in a single counting, as well as who always needed to be woken more than once and who was the best at playing dice without cheating. There hadn’t been much camaraderie around him since his coronation. Not since his time in the army during the classical training, in fact. Back then, they had been sorted into units based on their age, not their house name or family status. Those had been some of the best years of his life, knowing the people around him and sneaking off with Ignotus to explore the city every time they had the chance. Sometimes he wondered if he should have stayed in the army, becoming a general like his sister. But then he thought of war and battles and the misery of soldiers and knew that the palace was the best place for him to be to have any sort of impact.

    The distant sound of activity from the city pulled him out of the memories. He still had a little time before the next bell, and he knew what he wanted to do. If he hurried, he could make it down to the marketplace and see the preparations for the festival with his own eyes.

He shot a look around for Lyra, but luckily, she was nowhere to be seen. He pulled off the circlet and the overlay of blue fabric and placed them carefully on a chair. Then he stuck his feet into a pair of sandals and tied the strings around his ankles. Grabbing a sunscarf, he draped it haphazardly over his head and snuck out of his room.

    On the way to the main entrance his dream was still with him, pressing images into his mind of how different the halls had looked on that night. He remembered where guards lay dead in the corridors, where servants were hiding to get out of the way, and how every piece of furniture was knocked over or set ablaze. He shook his head, as though he could make the images physically fly out of his mind.

    Shielding his face from a group of courtiers, he hastened through the entrance hall before anyone could approach him. The sun had the marble steps burning beneath the thin leather soles of his sandals as he walked down the palace stairs. In the darkness of his return, the tent peaks of the marketplace in the distance hadn’t been visible, but there they were, like treetops of a canvas forest. He wanted to see it for himself, even if just a glance. No one needed to know. He wanted to see the significance of it—Dassosdans here, in the heart of Marmaras, and not a single one in uniform. If he hurried, he could cut through the market and be back at the palace before the next bell. If not now, he wouldn’t make it before the festival ended.

    The smooth marble turned to cobblestone as he went south. There was a steady influx of people coming from the west gates, all headed the same way to set up camp and all on foot since commoners were not allowed to bring horses inside the city walls.

    Their clothing told him many were Dassosdan. Where the Marmarasi still favored the elegant simplicity of tunics made from a single length of fabric, the Dassosdan garments consisted of multiple different layers and bold colors, many with patterns or embellishments using weaving techniques Domitris had never seen before. It did create a more disharmonious effect when looking out over a crowd, and Domitris was sure many nobles found it garish. The long sleeves and many layers didn’t look comfortable in the Concordian heat, but he had to admit the eye-catching nature of it intrigued him.

    Parents with children on shoulders or hips traveled with old men and women bent over walking sticks, tired from their journey. Young couples held on to each other or their carts, or both. Many stopped in the middle of the road, craning their necks to look up at the palace in wonder. Domitris turned his eyes the other way. The sound of tent pegs hammering into the ground clanged through the streets, and Domitris picked up his pace. The city looked so different in daylight than it had just hours earlier. The earthy smell of dirt and sweat from passersby tickled his nostrils. His heart beat faster as he made his way through the city, the exhilaration in the air getting to him, and his steps sped up. He hadn’t been out on his own in what felt like forever.

    He turned down a winding street, then followed the less crowded roads. When he was only a few turns from the marketplace, he passed an opening to a small plaza. He almost walked past it, but something caught his eye, and he went back.

    A tall, robust woman with a sword at her hip was calling out to the people on the street. “Good sir! Good ma’am! Come closer to see the show! Hear the exciting tale of the poet and the muse and come sing along! There’s always room for one more, you won’t regret it!” She bowed comically low to a man passing by wearing a dirty wool garment and a toothless grin.

    Then Domitris noticed the motley band of performers behind her. An energetic boy who looked barely eighteen played the flute while a woman with long, blonde braids told a lively story in a clear and cheerful voice. In front of her, a young man in what could only be described as an outrageous outfit was dancing and acting to the story. His violet tunic was open on both sides down to his hips, where a gilded belt held it in place. The rest of the fabric flowed freely to his ankles, though any illusion of modesty was ruined by the slits up the sides, displaying more than was appropriate of his legs. The neckline plummeted down below his waist, leaving most of his chest bare as well as revealing a golden ornament dangling from his navel. And, as if the evocative ensemble weren’t eye-catching enough, he waved around a silky shawl, golden bracelets jangling to the rhythm of his step.

    Before them, a meager crowd of rowdy-looking people had gathered, breaking out in loud cheers and laughter every so often. Domitris was drawn towards the performance. There was something mesmerizing about them, the way they looked somewhat out of place in the streets of Concordia.

    As he walked past, the tall woman bowed low to him as well. The performers looked foreign, but the play was in Marmarasi, so Domitris had no guess where they were from. It was definitely a kind of play they were putting on, and an offensive one at that. It was a parody of multiple different things. The flute music was from a common Marmarasi children’s song, but the story being told was about how the muse ‘inspired’ the poet in tasteless, yet creative ways. Domitris failed to suppress a smile at a particularly lewd allegory. The dancer, with heavy golden paint on his lips and eyelids, was playing the muse. He danced around, swirling the shawl while enacting the scenes of the story and making flirty eyes and crude gestures with perfect timing, to the immense pleasure of the crowd.

    As Domitris joined the gathering, a slim woman in pants turned over her feathered hat and started collecting money from the onlookers. Some threw in what little they had, though Domitris was sure that included pebbles and bottle stoppers. The music reached the chorus where the crowd could join in on the singing of the usual words of the song, all while the man continued in an excessively sensual dance. Domitris watched how his hips moved, making the slender chain at his waist sway. The precision and skill of his movements made it look effortless, though sweat glistened on his chest and arms.

    At the edge of the audience, a man with a large gut and a scruffy beard reached his hand out as the dancer came closer and tried touching him, but the young man only made an elegant turn and smacked the hand away, wagging his finger in the air followed by the universal sign for money, which raised laughter all around. His light brown skin was accompanied by jet black hair and a slim face so captivating it could have belonged to a statue from the palace galleries.

When he looked up, he winked at Domitris, who realized he had been staring and had come to stand in the front row of the crowd. The woman with the hat suddenly appeared in front of him. She was pale with sharp brows, her dark eyes intense.

    “Gonna make a contribution to the fine arts,” she asked in a rough foreign accent, looking him up and down, then adding, “my good sir?”

    Domitris fumbled with the folds of his clothes and found a coin from his coin purse to put in the hat, and she moved on. Their act was probably not meant as entertainment for nobles and, despite his, admittedly lazy, disguise, he stood out. The material of his clothes was too fine, his sandals too clean, his hair too newly washed. Reluctantly, he made himself turn around. He pushed his way back out through the growing audience and got back on course. He had already stayed too long.

    The marketplace was so near that he could smell the smoke and taste the spices in the air, but as he closed in, the mellow chime of the palace bells resounded through the city.

    He was late for his meeting with the council.