...the still night drifted deep

Like snow about me, and I longed for sleep.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Suicide

There were three things Irímé knew about Empress Raivíth. One, she took a very dim view of people who disturbed the peace. Two, she took an equally dim view of ill-advised plots. Everyone remembered the time Abihira had been caught in the forbidden archives. They'd all expected that because she was a princess the archivists wouldn't press charges. Even if they did the judge would let her off with just a slap on the wrist. But then the empress got involved. She looked at the facts, listened to Abi's terrible explanation, then gave her the full fine anyone else would have faced and ordered her to work in the kitchens of the Silver Palace for a week.

Three, and as a direct result of one and two, she would not be pleased with Irímé's story.

At this time of night most of the city was silent. The meteor shower was over. The crowds who had gathered to watch it had now dispersed and gone back to their homes. Only in a few corners of the city were people still awake. Those people, the ones who frequented pubs and parties long after all sane people were asleep, were usually found on the opposite side of the city. Here, amidst the royal palaces, there wasn't a sound to be heard or a light to be seen over any of the fences and walls. Even the street-lamps burned with a pale and wan light, as if they knew how late it was and were sleepy too.

Irímé rubbed his eyes. He didn't feel tired as such, but they were uncomfortably heavy. It was a struggle to keep them open as he made his way towards the Silver Palace. At any other time he would have been terrified by the thought of where he was going and who he would soon face. Right now he hardly felt anything at all. The only thing that bothered him was how cold it was. His highly impractical clothes for the festival had not been made to keep their wearer warm. A stupid oversight, really, when the main part of the festival only started at night.

He distracted himself with mentally composing letters of complaint to the tailors for the rest of the trip. At last he found himself outside the Silver Palace's main gates. The guards were clearly taking their duties more seriously now than they had earlier. Four were stationed at the gates, two on each side, while flickers of light moving around the driveway showed where other guards were patrolling the place with torches.

The guards at the gate eyed him suspiciously. Irímé could just imagine what he must look like. He was mildly surprised they didn't arrest him on the spot for being there at all.

"Who are you and what do you want?" one of them demanded gruffly. She placed her hand on the hilt of her sword in a transparent attempt to intimidate him.

Irímé looked at her apathetically. It would take a lot more than her to frighten him after everything he'd already seen tonight. "I'm Irímé Yedrethussilru of Neleth Ancalen. I have to see the empress."

Abihira's betrothal and the identity of her fiancé were hardly secrets. He expected the guard would put two and two together and figure out who he was.

In hindsight it was a foolish thought. There were so many royals, nobles, hangers-on, and pretenders that no guard could know all of them. She gave him an incredulous look.

"You expect us to let you see the empress at this time of the night? Get out of here!"

Under more normal circumstances he would have obeyed. As it was he had just endured the most stressful night of his life. Haliran would report Abihira in the morning. All hell would break loose unless he got to the empress with his version of the story first.

He didn't move. "I'm her granddaughter's fiancé. You have to let me see her. It's about what happened this evening."

All four of the guards looked at each other. Perhaps they were capable of telepathically communicating. Maybe they were just exchanging looks of the "can you believe this idiot?" variety. At last they turned back to Irímé.

"What do you want to tell her?" asked one of the guards on the opposite side of the gate.

"That I'm responsible for it."

Once again the four of them gazed helplessly at their co-workers. Irímé distinctly heard the one who'd spoken last say in a loud whisper, "Do you think he's mad?" He received a summary thump on the head from the guard beside him for his trouble.

The first guard turned to the one stationed with her on the left side of the gates. "Go and call the captain."

Instead of leaving the other guard said, "Do you think he'll know what to do? Shouldn't I tell the seneschal?"

"She's bound to be asleep," the first guard said. "The captain can wake her if he has to."

The second guard opened the gate just enough to get through. She disappeared into the gloom beyond the small circle of light cast by the streetlamps. Irímé and the other guards waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually she returned with the captain of guard in tow. He listened to Irímé's story with the expression of someone who didn't believe it but didn't know what to do.

"I was ordered to follow every lead," he said, apparently to himself, when Irímé finished. "All right, young man. Come with me and we'll see if some of the council members think your story's worth disturbing her Majesty at this time. Though I doubt if they'll be happy to be woken in the middle of the night."

It had been centuries since Abihira lived in her parents' palace. The last month hadn't given her enough time to get used to it again. Certainly she hadn't yet found all the best ways to get in and out. When she said she would go through the pantry she was relying on vague memories of using it as an entrance many years ago. She expected to find it empty. And indeed it was. The problem was that it had only two doors. One opened onto the kitchen garden and was meant to be a convenient way to take spoilt food to the compost heap. The other opened out into the kitchen itself. The kitchen which was full of servants setting out food for tomorrow's breakfast.

Abi stepped into the pantry, heard loud voices and the clatter of dishes outside the door in front of her, and quickly revised her plan. She turned and walked out of the pantry again. In the dark she didn't dare risk running in case she bumped into something and made a noise. She walked slowly and carefully over to the doors leading down into the coal cellar. Those doors were rarely locked, because who would ever try to get in that way? They'd trip over coal and make a tremendous racket within minutes.

She opened the doors and peered in. The moonlight fell on a tall silver bucket sitting at the top of the slope leading down to the coal. Carefully she picked it up. That bucket was used to carry coal from the cellar to the kitchen. But the children who grew up in the palace had long ago discovered it had another use. It was light enough for them to carry and so tall that they could stand on it to pick fruit from branches out of their reach. An adult who stood on it would have no trouble climbing in a window. The downstairs bathroom window, for example.

Questions might be asked about where the bucket had gone. Still, it was summer. Late summer, but not cold enough yet to need fires in every room. In all likelihood the bucket wouldn't be needed until dinnertime. Abi could replace it before then.

The downstairs bathroom window had a broken latch. Abi stood on the bucket, pulled the window open, and climbed in through it.

Someone should fix that before a burglar discovers it, she thought.

Amazingly her parents had stopped arguing. The house was as silent as a grave. She ran upstairs and tiptoed towards her room. With luck she could get there without disturbing anyone, then in the morning claim she'd gone for a walk in the grounds if someone had noticed her absence.

Luck was against her. She turned the corner toward her room and came face to face with Arafaren dozing in an armchair. He couldn't have been deeply asleep. Her startled gasp woke him at once. For a minute the two of them stared at each other in silence.

"Where were you?" Arafaren whispered.

Might as well try her excuse now. "Out for a walk."

Going by his disbelieving expression, her excuse hadn't worked. "Don't take me for a fool. I know you ran off after that strange old woman came to see you." Abi would never have considered Haliran 'old', and 'strange' was a very mild way to put it. "And you had something to do with what happened at the party. I saw your reaction."

That was the trouble of having an incorrigible prankster for a brother. He noticed signs of guilt that no one else would ever notice.

Abi searched for something that would satisfy him. She fell back on Irímé's excuse. "It's a long story. Irímé made a stupid bet. I'll tell you more in the morning."

Arafaren continued to look unconvinced. "Why was that girl wearing funeral clothes? And if Iríme was responsible, why did you look more frightened than he did? Don't think I've forgotten that strange letter Mirio sent me."

Damn you, Mirio, Abi thought with more viciousness than she'd ever felt towards her foster brother before. "I'll explain tomorrow. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

She strode past him with her best attempt at a careless air. She felt him staring suspiciously at her all the way to her bedroom. Brothers. They were an infernal nuisance, whether they were blood relatives or not.

Late nights were nothing new to Ilaran. Nor was staying up late under less than optimal circumstances. This wasn't even the first time he'd stayed in a graveyard until the early hours of the morning. When you were the ruling prince of an entire province full of very colourful personalities you got used to all sorts of improbable situations. At least this time he hadn't had to dig up and dissect bodies to investigate claims of cannibalism. That was something he would much rather never do again. Especially as the claims had turned out to be true. Therefore of the three who had been in the crypt he was the most alert when he returned home.

The palace set aside for royal guests had many doors that led only to the rooms occupied by a specific group. None of these rooms were connected with each other -- a seemingly myopic architectural decision that made sense when one considered the high possibility of envoys from enemy nations staying there at the same time. Reportedly a princess of Western Liang and a çağan[1] of Osnečip had been given quarters in the palace at the same time, while Osnečip was busy invading Western Liang. The monumental stupidity on the part of the official who made that decision led to a bloodbath when the envoys encountered each other in the palace. After that the palace was rebuilt into its current form.

One of the benefits of this set-up was that people could get into their own rooms without disturbing anyone else or answering any questions on where they'd been. Ilaran unlocked his door, locked it again behind him, and no one was any the wiser he hadn't been there all night.

He took off his coat and hung it up on the hooks behind the door. Then he turned towards his bedroom. A flicker of light in the sitting room caught his eye. Strange. Before he left he took the time to check all the gas lamps were off. Leaving them on was just a waste of fuel. He opened the door just enough to see through, taking care not to let it squeak.

The fire blazed merrily in the hearth even though the chill of autumn hadn't set in yet. A snake lay curled up in front of it.

Ilaran pushed the door open fully. "Shizuki, what are you doing here?"

If it was possible for snakes to blink sleepily at someone, Shizuki did then. He switched back into his immortal form. Yawning, he said, "Father sent me to stay here. Said it wouldn't be safe near Haliran tomorrow."

That was logical enough. It would have been nice if Siarvin had sent him advance warning, though. He could have got an extra bed ready. Now he'd have to give Shizuki the bed and sleep on the settee.

Shizuki yawned again. "Oh, and she's blackmailing the necromancer."

"I know," Ilaran said. "We've already thought of how to deal with that."

"Tha's gooooood." Shizuki shifted back into his snake form as he spoke, which had a very strange effect on his words.

He curled up again and closed his eyes. Ilaran hadn't realised he had eyelids to close when he was a snake.

"Are you going to sleep there tonight?"

Shizuki nodded without opening his eyes. Well, that solved the question of the bed.

"Good night," Ilaran said. In reply he received a faint hiss that sounded vaguely like "Night".

Eventually someone at the palace decided Irímé's story was worth waking the empress. By then he was so tired that he had reached the stage of being willing to do anything just to finally get some sleep. To his own surprise that included looking the Empress of Saoridhlém, his fiancée's grandmother, one of the most powerful women on the planet, in the eye and reciting his excuse without any real fear. Of course he faked mortification and shame. Quite well if he did say so himself. When you grew up with relatives who continued to treat you like a toddler long after you were old enough to think for yourself, and when your mother thought of you as little more than a pretty doll without any personality of your own, you learnt how to play a part convincingly.

Sometimes he wondered if he could pursue a career on the stage. If he ever got the courage to finish and publish one of his stories, perhaps he would even consider trying it.

Mother probably hasn't even noticed I'm missing, he thought bitterly.

He quickly chased that thought and all similar ones out of his mind. This was one time when he urgently needed to focus on what was happening in front of him.

The empress frowned at him with all the displeasure of an adult awoken in the middle of the night because of a teenager's shenanigans. "I hope you know your behaviour this evening was disgraceful. You've caused a panic, disrupted an important event, and caused the police to go on a wild goose chase, all over a childish prank!"

"I know, your Majesty," he said meekly.

"If it ever happens again I will forbid you marrying my granddaughter. Heavens above, I have enough imbeciles in my own family without bringing in more!"

"I'll never do anything so foolish again, your Majesty," Irímé promised.

"Good." She glared at him for several minutes, presumably just to make sure he took her seriously. "Now go home."

He bowed and fled before she changed her mind and continued to lecture him. That hadn't gone nearly as badly as he expected. Maybe she was too tired to be properly angry. All the same, he should try to stay out of her sight tomorrow. She might become suspicious if she saw him in court at the same time as Haliran claimed his supposed prank was actually a walking corpse.