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It was raining the first time it happened. Maia was outside in the garden of Edonomee, and he ended up standing under a tree to wait it out, the fat drops splashing around him, filling up all the little holes in the ground where the gardener had been too lazy to do their work.
Suddenly Maia saw there was a face in a puddle, blinking up at him from the reflection. Maybe a little older than he was, and strangely shaped, looking bewildered and frightened. It was hard to see the person clearly, but Maia thought he looked a bit like the people out of his mother’s old stories, the ones who lived beyond the edge of goblin territory—golden skin and round ears and all.
“Hello?” Maia said hesitantly. Perhaps he was seeing things.
The man—well, boy, really—blinked. “Hello,” he said, and Maia could hear him, like a resonance traveling through the ground and up his legs, vibrating into his ears until they twitched.
“Who are you?” Maia asked.
“I have no name,” the boy said. “Who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Maia—uh.” He left off his last name, because, well. It was rather tell-tale.
“Hello, Maia nobody,” the boy said. “It’s a pleasure. Can you tell me where you are, then? Or perhaps when?”
“Ethuveraz,” Maia said. Surely there was no harm in that. He didn’t understand the question about time.
“Ah, capital,” the boy said. “A place I absolutely do not recognise.” He frowned. “I don’t understand how I reached you, though. I was only trying to find someone to talk to, anyone.”
“Why can’t you talk to anyone?”
“I’m by way of being a bit locked up,” the boy said. He was very tired, Maia could see now, and when he said he was locked up, there was something in his eyes that tugged at Maia’s heart. He knew the feeling.
“Boy!” That was Setheris. Maia grimaced.
“I have to go,” he said. “Can we talk again?” Somehow he hated leaving the boy alone.
“I will try,” the boy said.
“Come here right now,” Setheris yelled, and Maia ran. When Setheris sounded like that, he was either drunk or angry or both, and Maia had better go to him.
—
The next time the boy turned up was in Maia’s mirror. It was nighttime, and Maia had just laid down his book when the mirror rippled and there he was.
“Hello,” the boy said. He looked a little happier this time, a little more alive. There was something unsettling about him, as if he contained more something than the average person. Maia could see he was definitely neither elf nor goblin, now that he was in the mirror instead of the muddy water. The face was entirely different than what he was used to.
“Hello,” Maia said. No matter how unsettling this all was, it was lovely to see someone who was happy to see him.
“Ah, it’s a lot clearer this time,” the boy said. “I love your ears, I’m very sorry if that is an impolite thing to say. I’ve never met anyone who looks like you. Not that I’ve met a lot of people.”
“I’m part goblin,” Maia explained.
“That doesn’t help me much,” the boy said cheerfully. “What did you do, by the way? Last time I saw you, I thought you seemed as lonely as I am. I wasn’t wrong, was I?”
“I had the wrong mother,” Maia said, unable to stop himself. He could hear the bitterness in his voice, ashes and funeral candles swimming in his vision.
The boy looked much more serious then. “I know all about that sort of thing,” he said. “Listen, is there any way for you to get out? You looked like you were outside, when I found you in the water.”
“Outside, sure,” Maia said. “If you mean escape…” He trailed off. Truthfully, he’d never fully considered it. Now he supposed it was actually possible. “Not easily,” he said, after thinking through what it would take to do it, to hire a carriage with money he didn’t have, or try to escape on foot through a land riddled with outlaws, where the farmers still remembered the goblin wars.
“I see,” the boy said, and he sounded like he did, like he understood more than Maia said out loud.
“You do?”
“Well, I’m stuck in a tower, to prevent the empire from failing.” He didn’t quite sound like he believed it, but like he said it because he had always known.
“Surely not our empire,” Maia said automatically. He thought Setheris would absolutely have told him about something like this, since he knew very well there were other nobles relegated like they were. And also, how would that even work? “Why does you being in a tower prevent the empire from failing?”
“It is very complicated,” the boy said. “Our system of magic is extremely involved. And no, I don’t think it’s the same empire. I didn’t recognise the country you mentioned last time, and I’ve found no trace of it since in any of my books on the Nine Worlds.”
The Nine Worlds. That sounded so grand. Maia felt very small and unimportant then, compared to this boy who was surely not much older than he was, but who knew so much more.
“You never said how you managed to contact me,” he said.
“Oh!” the boy said. His eyes shone. “It’s this book by a wizard named Harbut Zalarin. It has a lot of ideas and interesting things, and I enchanted a mirror to find me someone to talk to, but the only person it brings me is you, so I might’ve done something wrong somewhere.”
Maia could well imagine that only being able to talk to him would be a disappointment. “Sorry.”
“No, no,” the boy said. “You’re fascinating. I think it’s because I said something about someone who understands me in the spell—are you perhaps related to the emperor, or something? In your country, I mean?”
“He’s my father,” Maia whispered. It was well known; still, it felt like committing an act of great rebellion to claim the relationship to a stranger like this.
“Aha,” the boy said. “Not the favoured son, I take it?”
“I’m the fourth son,” Maia said. “He loved not my mother. Or me.”
“I’m very sorry,” the boy said, evidently picking up on the implications about Maia’s mother.
Maia didn’t know what to say. “Me too,” he finally said, because he thought he always would be. Missing Chenelo was the greatest constant of his life.
“Yes,” the boy said. “But you honour her by living.”
Maia flinched. That sounded like the boy had picked up on the bleakest of his thoughts.
“Do you truly have to stay in the tower?” He couldn’t imagine not even being able to go outside. “Is anyone there with you?”
“No,” the boy said, and a bleak look passed fleetingly over his face before fading into the same determination Maia had seen before. “I spend my days reading books and learning. But I have begun to think about going outside, since I started reading this book. Harbut Zalarin talks about a different kind of magic, you see. A wilder one. And I find it comes very easily for me.”
“Really?” Maia didn’t know much about how maza worked; he only knew he had no talents for it (“That route is closed to you as well, hobgoblin,” Setheris hissed in his ear, a reminder of the tests he’d failed). If he had, he could’ve gone into training. A different kind of seclusion, for a maza with Imperial ties—he wouldn’t have become a nohecharai, as he had once dreamed—but it would’ve been different from this.
“Yes,” the boy said. “Not without some ill effects.” He gestured at what Maia now realised was the remnant of an injury on his face. “But rather exhilarating.” He paused. Then, with the air of someone imparting a great confidence, he said, “I’m beginning to think about leaving. I ought not to, but I don’t believe in the ceremonies like I used to, they’re beginning to fail, and what if me being here doesn’t matter, for Astandalas?”
“If you can be free,” Maia said, “I think you should be.” He longed for it too, then. “I wish I could come with you,” he blurted, and the boy grinned.
“Perhaps I’ll come find you. Ethuveraz, you said?”
“Edonomee,” Maia said, finding bravery at last. “I’m in Edonomee, with a cousin. Relegated, as we call it.”
“Imprisoned,” the boy said. He licked his lips and said then, in a burst, “My name is Fitzroy. It’s the first time I’ve told anyone.”
“Thank you, Fitzroy,” Maia said. “My—my father’s last name is Drazhar.”
“You don’t need to keep that name if you don’t want it,” Fitzroy said. “You are what you name yourself.”
—
A little more than three years later, the Emperor Maia Drazhar, Edrehasivar VII, sitting down to breakfast, was interrupted by his secretary, who looked more than a little scandalised.
“Serenity,” he said. “There is a band of odd-looking adventurers at the gate, and they claim to know you. They know strange magics, but they also claim to come in peace.”
Maia blinked at him, not quite awake yet. “Strange adventurers?” he said, trying to work out who they could be. He didn’t know any adventurers.
“Fascinating,” Csethiro said, who was much more of a morning person than he was. She sounded delighted.
“One of them calls himself Fitzroy,” Csevet said.
Maia nearly dropped his cup of tea. “Fitzroy?”
“Yes, Fitzroy Angursell,” Csevet said. “I take it you do know them, Serenity?” He looked very puzzled.
Maia didn’t know how to begin. “Yes,” he said. “We will receive them. Please tell our endocharei that we wish to dress for an informal audience.”
“Serenity,” Bechelar said, sounding appalled. “Who are these adventurers? Are they dangerous?”
“Not to us,” Maia said. Fitzroy!
An interminable while later, he was dressed and in the Tortoise room, Csethiro next to him. Bechelar’s silence was so loudly disapproving he could feel it, but it mattered not.
A group of very odd-looking people was shown in, with enough guards surrounding them that Maia had to tell half of them to go outside. They went, but not without enough protesting looks that Maia sighed. Having people caring about you was still an odd experience, and the way that extended to people disapproving of your not protecting yourself was odder still.
None of it mattered, because there he was.
“Fitzroy Angursell,” Maia said. “We greet you. Welcome to the Untheileneise Court.”
Fitzroy swept him an extravagant bow. “Serenity,” he said, evidently having picked up on the correct title between the door and here. “It is good to see you here.”
“We are in a different situation than when we last met,” Maia agreed. “As are you.”
“Very much so,” Fitzroy said. “May I introduce my friends?” His manners were exquisite. Clearly he had been part of a court at some point.
“You may,” Maia said. “We are happy to meet them.”
He found himself smiling through the introductions, smiling as Fitzroy came close to make his bow (a little too close, judging by Bechelar’s protective harrumph). He just couldn’t stop. Fitzroy was here!
“Are you safe?” Fitzroy murmured as he rose from his genuflection, quietly enough that Maia was the only one who could hear. And perhaps Csethiro.
Maia nodded, and saw something in Fitzroy relax, as if he had been prepared to stage a rescue in the middle of the Untheileneise Court. A true friend, indeed.
“You must tell us of your adventures,” he said. “Please join us for a luncheon.”
Fitzroy swept him another bow. “We accept with gratitude and honour, Serenity,” he said, so properly Maia saw even Bechelar relax a little.
It was the wildest, most raucous luncheon that had ever happened in the Imperial apartments, and Maia hadn’t been quite so happy in a long time.
The Red Company left a week later, having thoroughly scandalised half the court and enthralled the rest. Maia had asked Csevet whether he should ask them to leave earlier, but Csevet said, “Oddly enough, Serenity, I think this is bolstering your reputation. They are clearly both dangerous and interesting, and an emperor with interesting and dangerous friends that have established the presence at court that thou hast, in the last year, is one less likely to be conspired against.”
Having an heir on the way was possibly also helping, Maia thought.
So they had stayed, and before they went, Fitzroy pressed a small glittering stone into Maia’s hand. “If you should ever need help,” he said, low. “Break it on the ground and I will come.”
“We would offer you the same,” Maia said, equally low, “but we couldst not, we fear.”
“I help myself quite well these days,” Fitzroy said.
Maia watched them ride out. Part of him ached to go with them, but then Csethiro wound her arm through his and leaned close. “Such excellent friends, Serenity,” she murmured, laughter in her voice.
“You are my best friend, though,” he whispered back, and the Court gasped to see the Empress kiss her husband’s cheek.