I woke bright and early in my nest below the fake emperor’s palace. It was time to put the plan in motion to make contact with Emperor Horace. Depending on what I found I might be going through with the transport to the summer palace alone or managing to bring him with me. Either way I wanted to sneak around stealing papers and letters if at all possible.

  I knew from his schedule, which was written on his schoolroom wall a week ahead, he should have an hour of lessons with Tutor Trina just after breakfast. He usually had classes in the afternoon, but the household was in an uproar over party preparations.

  I dressed as a little promised concubine and went looking for him.

  He was not in the schoolroom, but Tutor Trina was. She was yelling at a couple of junior footmen who were apparently supposed to be shadowing him.

  For the first time since I began creeping in the mansion there was a hornet nest of activity in the back halls. Everyone was looking for him. Almost immediately he was found in one of the gardens. Footmen were duly posted, but the little five year old prince wanted to be alone. He sent them out.

  The household settled back to near normal. I was told to report to the kitchen, but I circled around and eventually crept back into position to watch the prince.

  Tutor Trina came to the courtyard garden and was sent away before she could even get all the way in. One of the four adult guards was standing guard and enforced the order in a way the child footmen could not have done.

  Young Horace was practicing his martial forms. A bit after Trina was rebuffed the Empress Mother Regent came to the garden. She looked pissed.

  “Horace, darling, this is not a good day for temper tantrums, my sweet. We need to make a good impression on the Duke to garner support for your position as emperor.”

  The small boy screamed in frustration.

  “I don’t want to be emperor anymore! Everything good that ever happened to me happened when I was a prince. Everything rotten came since we left home!”

  The self styled Empress Mother Regent slapped her son. Hard.

  “I did not debase myself to consort with that weak blooded pretend emperor to quit now because my son is a spoiled baby.” She hissed. “I did not risk my life and yours by moving as quickly as possible to listen to the sniveling of a brat. Shut up and do as you’re told. Your grandfather, my father, will come through with troops and support as soon as he has resolved the issue of your remaining opponents.”

  She inhaled fervently. “Our family will reclaim our rightful place in the world and revoke those ridiculous accords forever.”

  A zealot to her cause. I diagnosed. But what was her cause? I tried to call up the imperial family tree, but the accords went back longer than I had studied it. I needed a library or something.

  “Now. I better not get another report of you disrespecting our hosts. Oh. And stop hiding from your tutor. Tutor Trina is the best pre academy tutor in the empire and therefore the world.”

  She swept out of the room, her overly formal skirt sweeping the floor.

  Horace collapsed on the bench and sobbed. I waited until he was standing again, swinging his sheathed sword in the formal movements of a learned style. What I might have called a kata on Earth.

  I waited even longer until he took a break. I made four ice cubes, having to draw the talisman for each. Vortex was right. This was so inefficient. I put one cube in a plain glass cup with my least elaborate silver handled cup holder and poured sweet citrus juice over it from Aunt Glory’s stash. I have always found this particular flavor cloying, so I hadn’t used any of it. Several kids in the crèche preferred it over other drinks.

  I prepared an ice pack with a clean towel I had never used before. I put both on the smallest plain tray I had and checked my appearance. I looked just like any other serving girl in the household, not even shorter than most, since the Empress Mother Regent was actively training her son’s court from the youth up. The child servants were from six to ten years old.

  I exited the serving corridor using the normal access door and approached Horace.

  “Evglaz juice, your Majesty? You have been exercising most of the morning.”

  “Evglaz?” He stood and rushed to my side. “Where did it come from? I haven’t had any in months.”

  “I believe a pirate ship chanced upon a crate of the fruits and happened to sell them here. At least that’s the story I was told… no, that I overheard from the kitchen maid who brought them back from the market.” A story I had proffered myself when I brought the fruits into the kitchen. The juice I had was pre-made.

  “A pirate? When I’m grown I’m going to make it impossible for pirates to threaten anybody.” Horace said staunchly and with righteous indignation.

  “Good goal. What do you plan to do to accomplish that.” I asked, already starting to lose my fake local accent.

  He frowned, deflating a little. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s ok.” I shrugged. “You just need more information. I think your cheeks are red from the sun. I brought some ice for you too.” I put the ice on his mother’s handprint and he took it from me.

  “Are you one of the girls my mother has picked out to serve me all my life?”

  “No. I’m a spy and assassin. What do you think?”

  He laughed and put the ice on his cheek. “Who would dare? My rivals are bound by an accord not to assassinate me or each other. They are playing a game they call a war.” He sounded like the confident young master his mother expected him to be.

  “Hmm… convenient if someone is willing to operate outside the rules. Your guard would be down.”

  “You’re not like the other girls.” He looked pensive again.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I nodded. “I’m unimpressed by your titles. Would you like to check the Earl’s library for information about pirates and how you might stop pirates from wanting to be pirates?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mira.” This was feeling dangerous. I could not be face to face with Tutor Trina. She was too likely to recognize me.

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Of course, Lacer. Mira Lacer.”

  “Do you know how to make lace or is it just a name?”

  “Of course I can make lace, silly. It’s easy. Want me to show you?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked around the courtyard. There was a small garden with a rose bush. I went and picked two dozen thorns for pins off a mostly dead branch at the back. I found a stick I could break into pieces for bobbins and I unraveled the hem of my skirt to get three long threads.

  The young emperor watched in awe as I teased the threads and respun them into a thinner thread. I wound a bobbin onto each thread end and drew a line pattern on the soft dirt of the garden.

  I used the super simple pattern mother had taught me so long ago.

  I worked my bobbins until one pair ran out of thread. Then I knotted the ends and pulled out the last thorn pins. I frowned at the dirt on the back and shrugged. I handed it to him anyway.

  “That was amazing.”

  “Your majesty!” A very familiar, very unwelcome voice called in a singsong tone. “It’s time for your lessons, your majesty!”

  I was already rushing for the service door, the moment I knew who she was. I did not expect Horace to be hot on my heels. I led the way through twists and turns towards the little secret room I had chosen for my own. I didn’t have a bed in the maid’s dorm with the other little maids. I hadn’t gone through the selection process.

  “Where even are we?” Horace whispered.

  “Want to look out the window?” I teased.

  “I’d love to. I never get to see any views and we’re on top of a mountain.”

  I led the way to the sky cell I had found, that ridiculous practice of having a prison cell high above the clouds and open to the elements. I had thought some author had thought it up, but someone had the same idea here. Or perhaps they had once been front porches for the flying citizens of the original city, repurposed by a devious mind.

  “You really are dodging your tutor, aren’t you?” I prodded.

  “She’s horrible.” He grumbled. “She makes me call her Auntie Trina and says I’m just like her son would have been if she hadn’t lost him. Then she complains mother is technically lower in the succession rankings of the real imperial family. She touches me too much too.”

  “Touches?”

  “My head mostly, but she hugs me sometimes. I’ve started using the back halls to get places, not too often, you understand, but mostly to dodge lessons.”

  “She does sound horrible. Can you read, write, do sums and all?”

  “Of course. I’m not a baby.”

  “You’re younger than me by at least two years.”

  He made a face.

  “Here we are.” I opened the outer door. It was strangely more like a one bedroom apartment than a prison. There were two more identical setups adjacent on the hall.

  The walls were plastered, but I could tell this was the old part of the house. I opened the center door because it was the one where the retrofitted prison door was unlocked.

  “Whoa.” Horace grabbed the bars and swayed a little, as if he might have a little vertigo.

  “Do you want to go to the edge?” I teased. The view was good enough here but much better at the edge. You could see the whole lower city from the edge.

  “Yeah. Are you going to tease me if I chicken out?”

  “Oh definitely.” I laughed. “Here. We can tie rope around our waists.”

  I pulled the rope out of nowhere and pretended to pull it out of a box left from who knows when. I tied us together and to the door bars.

  “Ready?” He sounded nervous.

  “Hey, I’m really good at tying knots.”

  He squared his shoulders and nodded. Then he stepped towards the edge. I walked with him.

  He stood right at the edge for long enough that I was looking at him instead of the view.

  He started crying again. He moved to sit with his back to the bars and I joined him.

  “I really am a baby.” He said, sniffling. “And mama is just going to make me marry her cousin and then kill me when she has a proper three quarters strong heir.”

  “Uh…” I eyed him. “Your mother made that plan?” I handed him a handkerchief without even bothering to hide it came from nowhere.

  He sniffed and blew. “Of course not. The Duke, my grandfather, and his family have been plotting for generations. They think they’re the true bloodline.”

  I finally made the connection and shivered. This was deep, miles deep.

  “You aren’t really one of my maids.” He said, working the edge of the handkerchief between his hands. “Mama and Auntie Trina introduce me to each of them and make me have a play date. They don’t keep good track of them though.”

  I nodded. “What are we going to do about it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care. I want to fly right off this ledge and run away.”

  “Do you really?” Huh, how… fortuitous.

  He nodded. “If you didn’t tie me I might have jumped. I don’t want to be the emperor of a plot cooked up by people who have already killed emperors.”

  “More than one?”

  “If you believe Auntie Trina when she’s in her cups, at least three she knows about, including the father I never met.”

  “Hmm… what do you want to do?” I prompted carefully. I didn’t really want to put the idea in his head. Kidnapping seemed easier if it was all the kidnappee’s idea.

  “Who are you first?” He demanded, suddenly belligerent.

  “Will you believe anything but a spy and an assassin?”

  “I don’t think you’re an assassin. You had the perfect chance to push me over the cliff. Spy sounds right though. Your costume is perfect though, you even have the consort promise ring.”

  I nodded slowly. “If I am a spy, who am I working for? Paint the picture.”

  He grinned. “One of my brothers? I thought for the smallest moment you were my sister, the sixth princess.”

  “She’s a year older than me, a year and two months.”

  He mulled that over.

  “If you could surrender bloodlessly to any of the current contenders, which would you pick?” I asked lightly, as if it was just a lark.

  “The First Prince. The moment I disappear mother will tell her father the Duke and then grandfather might kill the other contenders, even the surrendered ones. I’d like to foil the plot.”

  “Oh. That is beyond evil villain with a self righteous cause. That is just evil.”

  “I would want to warn my eldest brother of the vipers in his nest.”

  “Let’s cool it on the snake references. The only snake I know is a really neat guy.”

  Horace looked at me questioningly for a moment, but I didn’t give in to his unspoken question.

  “So who are you really spying for?”

  “Nobody.” I shrugged. “Except for avoiding needless slaughter of siblings and children, I don’t have an agenda and nobody to answer to.”

  “Your palace accent is perfect, though.”

  “Oh. That. Yeah. I was raised in a palace crèche.”

  “Your parents dead in the war?”

  “My father died, but I think it was an accident. My mother will be fine if there is no slaughter.”

  “Is she in the First Prince’s tower?”

  I shrugged. “If she is then she’s technically safe.”

  “Right.” He grimaced. “Unless there’s a slaughter.”

  We were quiet, watching the birds circle an updraft.

  “I’m going to guess your name, swear you will tell the truth?” He held up his pinky. How was a pinky promise even a thing here? I sure didn’t introduce it.

  “Yes.” I clasped his pinky in mine. “Pinky swear. If you guess my correct full name I will say yes. If it is incomplete or incorrect I will say no. Agreed?”

  He nodded. “Lady Miranda d’Isle.”

  “No.” I’m sure my little smirk gave it away.

  “No incomplete or no, incorrect?”

  “I have completed the pinky promise and I don’t have to say.”

  He growled. “I command it as your emperor.”

  “You’re not my emperor. The war is ongoing until all rivals are subdued under one winner. It could be decades.”

  “It’s a stupid way to choose a ruler.”

  “I didn’t make the rules.” I shrugged. “Do you think I ought to lead you back now? We’ve been missing for a while.”

  “Can you find a way to get me to the First Prince?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  He looked worried and then determined. “Yes.”

  “I’ll do my best to find a swift solution. I don’t want to rush.”

  “Fair. Will you come and play with me again?”

  I nodded. “I just have to avoid Tutor Trina.” I said the name with some ire.

  “You are Miranda d’Isle.”

  I shrugged. “d’Isle y d’Yarbin.”

  “She was your tutor right before my father died.”

  “Do you plan to give me away?”

  “No. Not at all. Will you really help me?”

  “I will do my absolute best to not only help you but to do it safely without a mad dash across the empire. Ok?”

  He nodded.