The Boy From the Play

"Did they send you?"

Aoi closed her eyes.

"We nearly had a normal conversation."

"Did they?"

"Yes."

I sat up straighter.

She opened one eye.

"Corvane asked me to talk to you. I was coming anyway."

"What did he ask you to learn?"

"Whether you could be reasoned with."

"A broad assignment."

"Whether you were really a king."

"A narrower one."

"And whether you might cooperate once you'd calmed down."

"I am perfectly calm."

"You tried to murder your own collar."

I chose not to contest the evidence.

"What will you tell him?"

"That you're upset. That you want to go home. That you don't like being told what to do."

"All true."

"I assumed we were trying something new."

Light, but with an edge under it.

I put the cloth down beside me.

"You could expose me."

"Yes."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because I didn't particularly want to watch them drag you off that chair."

"Compassion?"

"Don't make it sound like a disease."

I studied her. She'd come alone. Told me privately. Fixed the robe before asking for anything.

None of that made her harmless. It did suggest I'd been treating the wrong question as urgent.

"What do you want?"

That one took longer. For the first time since she'd walked in, she looked away from me.

"I wanted to hear somebody talk like they were from home."

I almost said that she'd been criticizing my voice since she arrived.

Luckily I have some restraint.

"How long?"

"About four months. The calendar's different. I stopped counting days properly."

"And nobody told you about the return working."

"They said people were studying it."

"They are."

Her eyes came up.

"Don't."

I stopped.

"I know how that sentence works," she said. "I've been living in it."

That one stayed with me.

She pulled her knees up.

"I thought if I trained enough, if I did everything they asked, then when they worked it out they'd send me first. Or at least they wouldn't forget me."

There were several things I could have said about the incentives of a government fighting a losing war.

"They do not know how," I said.

"I heard."

"That does not prove there is no way."

"You sounded certain enough downstairs."

"I wanted a straight answer."

"And I was standing there."

"Yes."

She waited.

I looked at the crown on the floor between us.

"I was wrong to make certainty out of it."

Short admission. It felt a lot longer.

Aoi watched me like she was waiting for the second half--the qualifier that would make the first half cheaper. I didn't have one worth offering.

After a while she nodded. Then she asked my name.

"My actual one, I assume."

"You've invented another?"

"Not recently."

"Then yes."

It was right there. The one on my class roster. The one my mother used when she was annoyed enough to pronounce every syllable. A name that had never sounded fragile until I imagined hearing it in this room.

I touched the crown. One of the gems had started lifting at the edge.

"I would rather you used Solvane."

"Why?"

"Because it has been useful."

"So has my jacket. I haven't changed my name to Zipper."

"You would struggle to carry it with dignity."

"Solvane."

The way she said it made the dodge a lot more obvious than I'd have liked.

I turned the crown in my hands.

"The boy from the play is not well equipped for any of this."

"He got you through the afternoon."

"The king did."

"You did. In a hat."

I looked at her. There was no admiration waiting behind that. No invitation to explain how impressive I'd been. Just stubbornness.

I found it weirdly hard to push against.

"The boy with that name did not survive the throne room," I said. "Solvane did."

Aoi stared.

Then she pointed at the cloth.

"He is sitting right there. Bleeding on a towel."

I looked down.

"Yes," I said after a moment. "A persistent fellow."

"That is the most alarming thing anybody has said to me since I got here."

"You met Corvane before meeting me."

"He spreads his out."

I nearly smiled.

She leaned back against the hearth.

"You don't have to give me your name. Just don't pretend refusing is a funeral."

For a while I didn't say anything.

Then: "Solvane. For now."

"All right. For now."

A smaller agreement than the one I'd tried to make.

"If we are going to travel together," I said, "I will not knowingly lie to you."

"Are we traveling together?"

"I am examining the possibility."

"By announcing it?"

"A preliminary method."

She folded her arms.

I amended.

"If we choose to."

"Better."

"When I do not wish to answer, I will say so."

"And when you're guessing, tell me you're guessing."

That one felt uncomfortably tailored.

"Agreed."

"No using whatever skill you got to poke around in my head."

"I do not know what skill I got."

Aoi went still.

"What?"

"I have had other concerns."

"You haven't opened your status?"

"My what?"

She stared at me.

Then she lowered her face into her hands.

"Oh, you absolute idiot."

"I would appreciate a more specialized criticism."

"You walked into that argument without even checking whether you could survive being punched."

"I was not planning to be punched."

"People don't usually put it on their schedule."

She stood.

"We're doing that first thing tomorrow. Before you talk to anyone."

"You are issuing a great many instructions for someone not yet committed to the journey."

"Yes. Decide whether you can bear it."

She got to the door.

Her hand stopped on the latch.

"One more thing."

The lightness had gone out of her voice.

I sat up straighter.

"You think being allowed to leave means they've given up."

"I think it is preferable to being forbidden."

"That part's true."

She glanced at the shadows under the door.

"There was someone here before me. Kaito."

I waited.

"He refused a deployment. Said he wasn't going to kill people just because somebody had decided that was what his ability was for."

"What happened?"

"They gave him different work. An escort assignment. Corvane called it an honor."

"And he died."

"I don't know."

That answer mattered.

She made sure I heard it.

"They said he was missing. Then somebody said the party had been destroyed. Then they told me his records had been transferred and I should stop asking the wrong people."

"Have you asked the right ones?"

"I'm trying."

Her fingers tightened on the latch.

"A soldier called Berden went with him. Came back. Got reassigned before I could speak to him."

"Corvane signed the order."

"Both orders."

I looked at the crown again.

Permission to leave. No need for a cell. No public argument about whether the visiting sovereign was allowed to refuse an oath.

A road could solve problems too.

"Does the king know?"

"I don't know."

"Does Corvane know you are looking?"

"I've tried to be careful."

Not an answer.

She knew it.

I didn't push.

"I intend to leave tomorrow," I said.

"Good."

"I would prefer not to do it alone."

"That," she said, "is the first sensible plan you've told me."

"Will you come?"

"Show me where you're going first."

Then she opened the door.

Her shoulders dropped. Her face went pleasant, tired, unremarkable.

"His lordship needs sleep," she told the guards. "He's still very distressed."

One of them murmured something sympathetic.

Aoi glanced back at me. The smallest smile. Then she shut the door.

I sat looking at it for several seconds.

So. I wasn't the only actor in the castle.