Jan-Torres escorted her to the bedroom, which was smaller and more intimate than the one in her imperial apartment. Because of the disruption in the palace, she had no servants or slaves looking after her and was glad she’d taken the trouble to pick up after herself and make the bed, not that she’d done a spectacular job. In a corner of the room, a few chairs nestled in a quiet reading nook. She claimed one of them, sitting up straight and rubbing her palms nervously on the fabric. Jan-Torres took the seat next to her.
“I have a few things to tell you,” said Jan-Torres. “The first is that we will be negotiating the peace settlement this afternoon. You and Lucien will represent Kjall. My brother and I will represent the Mosari contingent of the invading forces, and we’ll be joined also by Admiral Llinos and Admiral Durgan.”
“Who are they?”
“The Sardossian and Riorcan commanders, respectively.”
Sardossians. She kept forgetting about them and thinking the army belonged entirely to Jan-Torres. “What’s this about a Riorcan commander?”
“A small contingent of Riorcans assisted us in the invasion, and Llinos and I have offered them a seat at the negotiating table. We need a tiebreaking vote if Mosar and Sardos disagree.”
Soldier’s hell, that was a terrible idea. “Riorcans are hostile to Kjallan interests. They’re not going to negotiate in good faith for peace with Mosar and Sardos.”
“I’m aware of the hostility,” said Jan-Torres. “Because of it, Llinos and I will have extra motivation to present a united front. Don’t worry about the negotiating part. It’s Lucien’s job, and he’s well equipped for it. I just think you should be there.”
Rhianne nodded. Anything to get her out of this gilded prison and see Lucien again. She didn’t like the idea of a Riorcan negotiator, but if the Riorcans had been part of the invasion, perhaps there was no avoiding it.
“I also came to . . . well, to clear the air between us.” He shifted in his chair. “I’m sorry for any pain I caused when I concealed the fact that I was the Crown Prince of Mosar. Out of necessity, I dodged questions and withheld information about my family and upbringing. But there’s no longer any need for secrecy. If you’d like, I can answer those questions now.” He smiled hopefully.
Rhianne sighed. He wanted to reconcile with her, for what purpose she wasn’t certain. To assuage a guilty conscience? Because he wanted something else from her, maybe at the negotiations? Or did he want to resume their love affair? “I’m not interested.”
His smile faded. “The name Janto is real,” he said, apparently determined to talk about himself anyway. “It’s a common Mosari name, the one my mother gave me, and the one my friends and family use. At the age of fourteen, when I achieved soulcasting, I was granted the zo name Jan-Torres. It’s formal—more a title than a name.”
That was actually surprising, and something of a relief, since she’d thought the name Janto was a fake. But she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to encourage him.
He soldiered on gamely. “Most of the things I told you in the garden were true. Obviously I’ve never been a scribe. But I was a language scholar, and I do speak five languages. It was part of my education as a prince, but I showed a natural aptitude, and beyond that, I was just really interested in languages. My brother, Kal-Torres, was the rough-and-tumble type, always wanting to wrestle or run a race or practice swordplay, and I always had my nose stuck in a book. I came here not because I was a trained spy—I wasn’t—but because I was a shroud mage and my nation was desperate. I was in charge of Mosari Intelligence, but I’d had the post for only a short while and I had no field experience, so to avoid getting in trouble I stuck as much to the truth as I could. Most of what you know about me is genuine.”
He paused. Rhianne eyed the ferret sitting in his lap. “Why are you a shroud mage rather than a war mage?”
Janto’s eyes lit. “You’re right to wonder. I was meant to be a war mage. It’s traditional. The Mosari king’s first son is always a war mage, and his second son a sea mage. If there’s a third son, he’s another war mage, and so on. In the zo crèche, they had an albino brindlecat waiting for me. Albinos are rare, and they save them for the royal family. I was visiting the crèche regularly, feeding my intended brindlecat and getting to know her, and then something happened. Are you familiar with the problems we have regarding ferrets and soulcasting?”
Rhianne shook her head.
He stroked Sashi absently. “Ferrets are . . . difficult animals. They refuse the soulcasting bond nineteen times out of twenty. That success rate is just too low, after putting a candidate through all the training and bonding work, and then you end up having to start over with a different animal, and the candidate is set back a year or two. That’s why we have so few shroud mages. Nowadays we don’t even attempt to bond someone with a ferret unless the ferret shows a natural affinity for the candidate. We keep ferrets in the zo crèche and essentially wait for them to choose someone. Which a lot of them never do.”
“Are you saying Sashi chose you?”
“He did,” said Janto. “I walked past his cage several times a day, every day, to visit my brindlecat. And Sashi literally flung himself at the bars of his cage, trying to get at me. It created a dilemma, because the albino brindlecat had been set aside for me, and for me to become a shroud mage instead of a war mage violated tradition. But we have this concept in Mosar of quanrok. There’s no Kjallan translation. It means, more or less, gods decide. We feel that sometimes the gods make decisions for us through familiars. My father and mother and some of the zo handlers and I came to an agreement that the gods had made a decision on my behalf. They wanted me to take Sashi as my familiar, not the brindlecat, and so I did. And I became a shroud mage.”
His story raised half a dozen questions, about quanrok and this concept of an animal refusing the bond, but Rhianne kept them to herself.
“Any other questions?” asked Janto.
She shook her head.
Janto rose from his chair and took her hands, encouraging her to rise.
She stood, with some reluctance, since clearly he was up to something. He was being kind and, she had to admit, a little bit charming. But gods curse him, he was still her enemy. Her jailer.
“There’s one last thing I want to talk to you about before the negotiations begin this afternoon,” said Janto. “Before I head home to Mosar.”
“What?” There went the butterflies in her stomach again.
“I know this is the worst possible time I could be doing this. But please understand, there is no other time. In a couple of days, I’ll be gone, and once I go—”
“Doing what?” she demanded.
He swallowed. “Rhianne, since the moment I laid eyes on you in the Imperial Garden, I’ve been enraptured by your beauty. At the time, I was blinded by my prejudice toward Kjallans. But as I grew to know you better—”
“Janto, no!” Oh gods, he was proposing.
Twin lines of worry appeared in his forehead. “Let me finish before you make your decision. As I grew to know you better, I witnessed your bravery and your compassion for people from all walks of life. When I saw firsthand the steadfastness of your heart, my feelings grew from admiration to love. I would be honored if you would consent to marry me and rule by my side as the queen of Mosar.”
She pulled her hands away. “I can’t marry you!”
Janto, looking more sad than surprised, moved his hands awkwardly to his sides. “What is your objection?”