It did not take a scholar to make the connection between the mythical Bali and the present Ba-Hali, but I was careful, making my way through the rest of the scrolls that looked a similar age to see if there were any more mentions of the river spirits of nakedness. Once I was certain of my discovery, I tucked the necessary scrolls into my sash and made my way down the long tower stairs to get back to our quarters and inform Edouard of my discovery. It was not until I was closing the door behind me and greeted by a dark room that I realized it was the middle of the night. I had been running for hours on large amounts of grainy coffee and the thrill of literary discovery. I groped around in the dark for a candle when one lit only a few feet in front of me all on its own. Or so it appeared.

“Carbo doesn’t like you very much, you know.”

Elisha’s face came into a flickering view sitting on the edge of my bed. I held my chest and took deep breaths.

“You couldn’t have lit that before I got here?”

“I could have,” she said, unconcerned. “I’m here to report.”

“That Carbo doesn’t like me. Yeah I got that, believe it or not.”

“He’s watching you. He thinks you and the Prince are up to something. He sent someone on an errand this morning. Took a gelding and flew off South. He won’t question the Prince publicly. Too smart for that, but he suspects.”

I did not register her final comments about the intelligence of Carbo. I was stuck on the errand that required a man on horseback going South. He was checking our cover story. Bad. Very bad. My thrill of discovery was punctured and I could no longer wait until morning to brief Edouard on what we were dealing with.

“Come on,” I said, motioning to the door which connected Edouard’s rooms with my own.

The Prince was not a heavy sleeper and it did not take long for him to be upright, pacing the room while Elisha reported back to him what she had already told me. I stoked up his low fire more for the use of my hands than any need for warmth or light. I could feel Edouard’s footfalls back and forth behind me. It was obvious that our cover story was not going to hold up under scrutiny. He stopped pacing and laid a hand on my shoulder.

“What are these?” he said, indicating the scrolls I’d almost forgotten about, still tucked in my sash.

“I found something,” I said. “In the library.”

He could not help but smile at my words, in spite of everything. He had brought a library man with him and I was holding up that end of the bargain at least.

“I was unaware my esteemed forebear cared much for books.”

“It’s not much of one, more of a broom closet and less organized at that. But these will be of interest to you.”

I suggested that he take a few moments to read the myths himself. While he brought a candle to the table and sat down to it, I dismissed Elisha with our sincere thanks. She made no effort to hide her displeasure at my dismissal, but did not fight it, bowing to the hunched form of Edouard as she went. I sat on the edge of his bed and waited. He slapped the table with the palm of his hand when he finished and turned to look at me. The import of the myth was not lost on him either.

“This is our way,” he said, poking at the scroll with his index finger. “This is how I prove the foolishness of his war footing.”

I rubbed at my temples; he was experiencing the excitement I had an hour earlier before it had been dampened by Elisha’s report. His eyes were shining and color bloomed in his cheeks which had been slack with sleep minutes earlier.

“I’ll use myself,” he said. “I’ll volunteer. He’ll hardly be able to say no to that. He’s a foolish man but he has a weak spot for dashing bravery. That’s how I’ll frame it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“I’m going to volunteer to be an envoy to the Ba-Hali. I will show my Uncle the scrolls, and in a bid to prove the Ba-Hali and the Bali are one and the same, I will walk to the borderlands alone and on foot, naked as the day I came into the world, an envoy of the Empire. When they see me return unharmed, they will have to take me seriously.”

I felt the enthusiasm for the reckless plan radiating from him in waves. An hour previous, I would have told him to slow down, to use the myths to plant seeds, to send out perhaps a few unclothed envoys with riders not far behind, to take baby steps towards convincing Everard there were means for change. But as it stood in the moment, our time was ticking. There was no telling how long we had before Carbo felt he had enough evidence to make a public stink. I did not know if we could die on the twenty eighth floor but I was not looking to find out. I could certainly feel pain.

“Okay,” I said. “But I’m coming with you.”

“No,” Edouard said. “You’re not. Because someone has to watch the signets and I’m not leaving them here while both of us walk into the borderlands.”

And we could not bring them with us or all would be for nothing. I would have to stay behind. Without hesitation, and with a trust that touched me, Edouard took the leather cord from around his neck and walked to me. The three signets clinked against each other as he reached down and took my hand. He placed them in my palm and closed my fingers over them. He patted my closed hand.

“Your responsibility until further notice. The heritage of the Cortes line.”

My mind flashed to the rebel in the library. Is this what he had expected? Was he biding his time until Edouard gave up the goods and we split up? The thought soured my mood, though I smiled at Edouard as we grasped arms like comrades. I put the leather cord around my neck and tucked it underneath my clothes. The plan was in action.

We did not have much time, or rather, we did not have any idea how much time we had, so Edouard moved the very next morning, presenting the scrolls as if he had found them himself, which we agreed was the best way forward, the trust of his valet being at issue as it was by the King's guardsmen. He explained the simple theory to the King and expressed his wish to prove the bona fides of his theory by putting his own life on the line, presenting himself as an envoy to the Ba-Hali. Edouard reported all of this to me, as the meeting took place in the King's private chambers. He had hammered home the confidence he had in his theory by risking the appearance of rudeness by his insistence on speaking with the King at that very moment, not waiting for a throne room conference.

The King was not as convinced as Edouard and I, and expressed his doubts at the accuracy of unsigned scrolls that described, after all, water spirits. Everard saw himself as an enlightened man, and was his nephew really going to take the words of a scroll about spirits and magic as his basis for diplomacy with a group of savages?

“It is not,” Edouard said. “A myth. It was to those who wrote it, who did not understand. But the knowledge we have gained allows us to see through the myth to the truth. Come, uncle, do not tell me you can’t see, can’t read between the ink stains on the parchment? You know as well as I that this is a document of fact that was interpreted as myth due to lack of understanding. Knowledge is our power as an empire.”

“Roads first,” the King mumbled.

“Yes, uncle. But in this case, it is not the knowledge of road building, nor the knowledge of warfare which will help us. It is the knowledge of words.”

I imagined that Edouard was playing up his own dramatics a little bit when recounting the conversation to me, but the result was as we had hoped. The King had allowed Edouard to set out in the manner of his choosing for the borderlands. If he did not return in three days' time, an (armed and clothed) party led by the King himself would once again head to the borderlands, but this time not on a scouting expedition.

Edouard paced his quarters that afternoon. He had told the King he planned to leave in the morning, and would spend the rest of the day preparing for his journey. But how did one prepare for a journey on which he intended to take nothing with him but his own body? As he paced, I recited everything I could remember from my reading on the Ba-Hali. Back on our journey, I had given him everything he needed to know at the time, but it was possible some smaller detail would be the difference between his success and his failure. We lingered on the split in the Ba-Hali’s thinking, and on those who could have been persuaded to make peace with the Empire, if an effort had been made. I told Edouard of how they had even at one time considered a mirror of his own journey. According to the text from the library, a group of Ba-Hali had furnished a handful of moss and vine loincloths with the idea of sending an envoy to Singhal to halt the bloodshed and help the two peoples come to some understanding of each other. As is so often the case, the hard liners among the Ba-Hali shamed and silenced the younger of their number who had committed such an atrocity against the Creator. Were their bodies not good enough that they needed to destroy living moss and vines in order to make them more comfortable? They were hastening the decay and were no better than those to whom they wanted to parlay with. The attempt had come to nothing, and the account I read was not specific on the dates when this had happened, but the possibility of his attempts being met with more than just anger and refusal could not be overlooked.

I stressed to Edouard that he needed to find his people. It was likely that most of the Ba-Hali, though unwilling to harm him in his nakedness, would ignore him. Look for a sideways glance, an interest, any clue that a tribe member may be willing to tolerate his presence.

“It’s a courtship,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“My father refers to diplomacy as courtship.”

“Your father is a good King,” I said.

“Uncle Cortland said that King's don’t court. They are provided brides.”

I ignored the allusion to the problems awaiting Edouard back home. He needed to focus on the task at hand.

When the moment came, Elisha appeared once more.