Free Shadow Magic by Jaida Jones

such a thing against him.
    “Let’s go and find some rice, then!” I said, with the air of someone embarking on a wonderful adventure. Alcibiades seemed like the type of man who needed that sort of nudge in the right direction.
    “What?”
    It was almost as if the man hadn’t been following.
    “Don’t tell me you’ve
never
gone to the kitchens past nightfall,” I said, though I was privately imagining that Alcibiades probably hadn’t.
    He grunted, which I took to mean that I’d imagined correctly.
    “I’m used to eating my fill at dinner, that’s all,” he went on, after the fact.
    His hunger was most promising if it meant that I wouldn’t have to spend the bulk of my time translating Alcibiades’ grunts into proper words. I wasn’t any good as an interpreter. I slipped my hands underneath his arms and tugged him to his feet. I’d have never managed it if he hadn’t been so surprised, but then I’d rather been expecting him to be heavier than he was.
    It was far too early for him to be wasting away to nothing in any case.
    “The sooner we leave, the sooner you eat,” I said.
    The palace halls were darkened when we slid the door to my room open. At one junction, far off in the distance, I could see a lantern-bearer, his lamplight reflecting in the mirrors set at each corner of the corridor and lighting their way like a staircase of stars around the twists and bends of the narrow corridor.
    “Do you think they ever get a terrible scare, seeing their own reflections in the middle of the night?” I asked.
    Alcibiades looked at me, then looked at the lantern-bearer. He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said.
    I nudged him with my elbow, fishing again for an entire sentence. “Wouldn’t it frighten you?”
    “I’m not afraid of
myself,”
he said. “Or the dark. So I guess not, no.”
    I nodded, taking his arm in a swift gesture. “I didn’t think so.”
    It wouldn’t have scared me, either.
    As we passed the palace servants, the lanterns lit the change on their faces from a nearly uniform expression of utter boredom to one of concern and slight confusion. Perhaps if they’d known the words to ask us what we were doing, they would have done so. As it was, they merely watched us, hiding their bafflement as best they could after their initial shock. We must have seemed like ghosts in the night to them, unused as they were to our presence.
    That cemented it. While I was there, I would almost certainly have to learn the Ke-Han language more idiomatically. It was nearly unbearable to think of all the gossip I might miss out on over something so silly as a language barrier.
    I drew close to Alcibiades once we’d passed the lantern-bearers, and the hallways grew dark once more.
    “Don’t you think this will put us under suspicion?” I asked him. “Two men from Volstov, out and about in the night, sneaking through the halls of the palace? If anything untoward should happen, they’ll surely blame us!”
    “Don’t sound so delighted about it,” Alcibiades muttered, trying to shake me off. Then, as if it were an afterthought, one too good to pass up simply through stubborn reticence, “I’m not too used to exile, that’s all.”
    “And I am?” I asked, still too cheerful at the thrill to be annoyed by the insult. I was used to people insulting me. They did it all the time. The best thing of all to do was act as though you hadn’t heard it, or even worse, as though it didn’t bother you. The one thing gossips and rumormongers enjoy the least is feeling ignored. “Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”
    That time, when Alcibiades grunted, I took that as an inquiry as to how it had been, living in exile since I was fourteen. I had sixteen different tales depending on who it was doing the asking, but for Alcibiades, I thought I would be indulgent and go with the honest truth. Some men appreciated the strangest things.
    “How kind of you to ask,” I said, peering down one tight, dark