“My father lied to flush that Prince Yuebek out,” Chiha said. “He spoke about saving you from him. And while he claims to care for my son, the people around him do not. His survival seemed to be attached to yours.” She paused, her eyes flicking over to my bruises. “My father—what did you do to my father?”
I had hoped to have more time to tell her properly. “I killed the bastard,” I said, choosing to give her the easier way—that of anger. Unlike Sayu, I could bear the brunt of their judgment.
Her face grew white. “You…”
“Yes. I killed him. What did he expect? He attacked me. He should’ve known better, Lady Chiha.”
“Misery,” she whispered. “You’ve brought nothing but misery to my life.” She lowered herself to the floor as the sobs tore out of her like a wave. I heard Sayu draw a deep breath. I didn’t even risk looking at her. Chiha hated me already—another reason wouldn’t hurt. I left her to her grief and walked out of the door to my husband.
Mistakes are like spilled wine. Like shed tears. You can revisit the circumstances as much as you want, but there is no returning them to the vessel, no erasing the pain. And yet refusing to face circumstances was a luxury I couldn’t afford. What else is there to do? You get up. You wash the wine. You wipe the tears.
“I should have told you,” Rai said as I drew close. “But I didn’t know where to begin.” He remained calm, like a man explaining yesterday’s rains or a late harvest and not the existence of a bastard to a wife he had wronged.
“Of course you didn’t,” I replied. I sat beside him. I couldn’t blame him, really. The way he thought I was, he would have believed without question that the boy’s life was at stake. Of course he would have kept it from me.
We were quiet for a time, the cold wind whistling around us. It felt strange that it took this long, that we needed to be holding up the mess of our lives before I could finally feel a shred of connection to the man I married. We shared the same shell, the same troubles. And somehow, in that brief span of time we were together, I think we loved each other the same way. Ours was a love born from the desire to do the right thing, to fulfill our duties even if it meant throwing away our very selves.
He looked up, his eyes red. “An apology—”
“I don’t really need it.”
Confusion crossed his features. “I am glad, at least, to see you safe.” He swallowed. “We’ve… we were just talking. Inzali and Namra have both gone through our options, and believe we only have one left: We need to gather support for ourselves. Our names still mean something. If we can gather an army to fight for us…”
“What do you know of war, Rai?” I asked softly.
He opened and closed his mouth. “Not much,” he admitted. “I’ve studied past wars…”
“As I have,” I said. “Which means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. We’d be fighting against veterans. Lord General Ozo won almost every battle my father assigned him to. He is older now, wiser, and surrounded by the best generals the Oren-yaro army has to offer—all of whom seem loyal to him and him alone. And Yuebek? I don’t know what his warriors are capable of, but I’m more than willing to guess they don’t skimp training in the empire. Even if we managed to gather the recruits to stand against them, will we have time enough to get them ready?”
“We can’t just sit here and admit defeat.”
“I didn’t say that.” I glanced at the sky.
“We are both nothing but children in our clans’ eyes,” Rai said. “We have only one weapon in our grasp. Yuebek all but handed it to us.”
“You mean Anino.” I pressed my lips together. “Chiha back there accused you of denying him.”
“I never denied him. I found out too late myself. Chiha was… not pleased that he was born after Thanh. You went into labour a month early, if you recall. I believe Chiha may have wanted a contender for crown prince. I could have told her it wouldn’t make a difference. I sent Karia to look after the boy, and to keep an eye on the Baraji clan’s ambitions.”
“You’ve never met him?”
Rai frowned. “I don’t understand these questions.”
I gazed at the sky. “They’re just questions, Rai. I’m not trying to trap you.”
He sighed. “No. I have never met him.”
“I’m not sure if I feel better or worse that I wasn’t the only woman you abandoned with her child.” He had the decency to look embarrassed. I placed my hands on my lap. “As it is, I won’t use a child. Don’t even start, Rai.”
“I’ve no intention of doing that,” he said. “The weapon—no, not the child. I was talking about us. If their plan of attack involves discrediting us somehow, then we can match them. We do the last thing they expect us to. We both admit to our faults and let them remove our claim to the throne themselves. With our downfall comes the opportunity to garner sympathy and support, a new banner under which we will unite the nation at last.”
His voice was as determined as I had ever heard it.
“This must be Inzali’s trick,” I finally said. “Take the fall. Play the wounded deer to draw the enemy. She’s awfully fond of it, isn’t she?”
“It’s a sound idea.”
“I don’t disagree. But how do we begin?”
“I can’t say,” he breathed. “We haven’t thought the details through.”
“If we do this, our marriage will be dissolved.”
He really hadn’t thought it through. I saw him look down, his face a mask of conflict.
“It won’t even go to trial,” I continued. “Our betrothal hinged on our capability as rulers, on the promise my father and your mother made to the nation. Without that—we are as good as nothing. We will be throwing away every single tool we were given so we could succeed in this position in the first place. It means publicly spitting on our parents’ and our clans’ wishes to create our own path. Do you understand what this all means? There is no going back from this, Rai.”
He remained silent. I found myself gazing at his face to recall a time when the sight of it filled me with joy. Could this be the same boy I hated and loved so fiercely with the same breath? It was akin to remembering my father—echoes of childish whimsy, of love not yet soiled by reality. I couldn’t feel a single trace of regret; the five years I wasted in anger were actually spent in mourning, and it had done its part. I didn’t really need him to say anything else because I already had an answer for myself.
I didn’t want to be his wife anymore.
I watched him sit up and walk a few steps away, his hands balled into fists. “What I truly want…” he began, his voice muffled. But then he trailed off and turned, a scowl underneath his thin black beard, and he looked at me like I had gone insane. No—like he was going insane, and the only cure lay in the safety of what we thought we would have our whole lives through. He wanted me to tell him I could still love him, that I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, that I needed us to be together as surely as the sky needed the sun. And once, perhaps, I might have. Or at least I could pretend that I already did, and it was his own fault for not listening. Old, tired games, games we needed to leave behind. We weren’t young anymore. Yeshin’s daughter and Ryia’s son could still fulfill those promises, but on our own terms. If we were to do better than the ones who came before us, we had to start with ourselves.
My silence must’ve spoken volumes. He returned to me and then, after a moment’s hesitation, placed his hands on my shoulders. I thought he was going to try to kiss me. Instead, he placed his forehead on mine. I could feel the warmth of his skin. He took a deep breath, as if trying to preserve the memory of it all.
“We can start anew without trying to build a castle with the ashes of the past,” I whispered.
He nodded and walked back to the others slowly, a man resigned to his fate. But he didn’t stop; he didn’t falter. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that it was easier for him than it was for me. I stayed on the bench a little longer and allowed myself a memory: t
he morning after our wedding night, his hair spilling on the pillows, the sun shining over the white sheets that covered our bodies. My prince, I mused while I lay there, awash in his scent, his soft breathing tickling my chin. I touched his face as gently as I could, not wanting to wake him up, but unable to help dreaming I might finally be where I belonged. My prince. My king. My happily-ever-after. He placed his arm around me in his sleep, and I fooled myself into thinking the past could be erased, ripped out like pages from a book. Now I know there is no way to do it without breaking the spine.
I followed him back inside, past the silent women and towards the table where paper and ink were laid out in a neat row. Rai spoke a word to Inzali, who nodded. I pulled a stool towards me, sat down, and began to write a letter of confession. I showed it to him as the ink dried. We switched places, and he did the same thing. Afterwards, we folded the letters and sealed both of them together. He used the little seal he seemed to carry around everywhere; I used my ring.
And just like that, we held the key to the destruction of it all. Our claim to the throne. Our marriage. But my resolve felt hollow. I was filled with a sense of grasping the air, of losing the ground from underneath my feet. Everything I understood of the world had hinged around my father’s orders. Could I really move beyond it? It felt like the kind of thing you examined after a long night of hard drinking—something you needed to reflect on, maybe write poetry about like an Ikessar with a belly full of tea. But uncertainty was a luxury I couldn’t afford. We didn’t have the time. We had to strike at the enemy somehow, the only way we knew how.
I heard the sound of footsteps outside. Heavy boots, on packed ground, with the clink of chain and armour. Somebody began pounding on the door.
“We know you’re there.” Ozo’s voice boomed like a warhorn at daybreak.
I went to open the door, because no one else looked like they wanted to. It swung open, revealing the general and a handful of men.
“You are bloody resourceful, I’ll give you that,” Ozo grumbled as he considered me, his old, tired eyes boring a hole into my soul.
My hand sought my sword hilt.
He sniffed. “Not going to answer, are you? Did Lushai slit your tongue? No. You would’ve done it for him; that’s why you’re here and he’s not. The fool. I told him not to anger Yeshin’s child.” He glanced at Chiha, whose face was the still mask of grief. “My condolences, Lady Chiha.”
“If not angering me was the goal, you’re not doing a very good job yourself,” I said in a low voice.
He sighed again, like a man who had seen too much and wasn’t sure why he was still alive to make sense of it. “I could’ve told you killing Lushai was a mistake. The son is more stubborn and twice as foolish—dealing with the new warlord will be a pain in the neck. But when did you ever listen?”
“I have no reason to listen to traitors.”
“Me, a traitor,” he repeated. He shook his head, grey strands of hair falling over his forehead. “To have sunk so low. To be called a traitor by my lord’s pup.”
“You seized my army, Ozo. Refused to help me. Proclaimed yourself a warlord. Actions of an opportunist.”
“And yet look at me here, unarmed, speaking sensibly to you. I suppose there’s only so much we could’ve asked from you,” Ozo grumbled. He drew his sword. “Step aside, Queen Talyien. We’ve come to arrest Lord Rayyel.”
“No,” I said. “You won’t do that.”
“You’re defending the Ikessar now? After everything he’s done?”
“So what if I am?”
He glowered. “You impetuous child…”
“Careful, Ozo. Lushai walked down that same road.”
“Feel free to kill me. Save me the trouble of having to deal with you.”
I drew my sword and charged. He struck me, flinging me aside as easily as a bear swiping a gnat away. As I struggled to recover, I saw him lumber towards the doorway, blocking it with his body.
His soldiers stepped towards me. His soldiers, in Oren-yaro garb. “Please, Queen Talyien,” Captain Lakas said, holding his hand out. “Fighting only makes this harder for all of us.”
“You assholes have made it impossible for me to do anything else!”
“Catch your breath,” Ozo suggested. “Why resist? It’s Rayyel Ikessar’s head on the plate this time, not yours. Did you think Lushai was as careful and secretive as he thought he was? We’ve known about the bastard a while, even before Prince Yuebek did.” He glanced at the others, grinning. “We knew Lushai sent his lovely daughter to seduce the Ikessar prince. Not a hard thing to do. You could play the chaste priest all you want, Lord Rayyel, but deep inside, you’re just a man. Just as pliable to seduction as the best of us.”
“Is your hatred for the Ikessars so great that you would have us become slaves to the Zarojo to prove a point?” I asked.
“You make it sound like Prince Yuebek left a sea of blood as he marched towards us. He could have—he didn’t.”
I smirked. “They said you feared only my father back in the war. And yet here you stand, the celebrated Lord General Ozo, bending backwards for a foreign invader! Your ancestors will condemn you. Your descendants will curse your name.”
Ozo’s face tightened. “You know why you make a poor queen? You let your emotions cloud your judgment. You can’t even do a very good job of pretending.” He began to fiddle with his sword belt. “This is what’s going to happen. Lord Rayyel will be dragged back to Toriue to confess to his infidelities. Lushai lied about finding the boy, but we’ve got servants who can prove his existence. Your marriage will be annulled, and then you will marry Prince Yuebek and assume the throne with him as your consort. These were your father’s wishes, Beloved Queen, whether you like it or not.”
“Impossible,” Rai spoke up. “The people will never recognize it. Your Esteemed Prince won’t be happy, either—I assume you promised him the title of Dragonlord in exchange for his army. The Zarojo don’t like having to bow to their women. To expect the same from an emperor’s son…”
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Ozo said. “I expect bloodshed from here on out.”
“You’re talking war.”
“Of course I’m talking war,” Ozo snarled. “A change of power doesn’t happen without war. It’s high time we had another. Maybe this time around I’ll finally get rid of that mother of yours!”
“Your lust for blood, Lord General, will go down in history,” Rai said. He walked towards Ozo, holding his wrists out. “But arrest me if you will. Please.” And then he glanced up, meeting my eyes. “Beloved Queen… I leave it up to you.”
“So you’re working together now,” Ozo laughed. “After everything you put us through—”
“Why the hell should I care what you think?” I snapped. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I wasn’t born yesterday,” Ozo said. He curled his lip. “You’re clearly going to let yourself take the fall with him. You think the nation is going to be impressed? But since you’re going to insist on doing things your way, I suppose there’s no harm in letting you know your options. You could throw your body down the hole with him. You could do that. It’ll go down in time as the ultimate lover’s sacrifice or whatever the hell you think that’s going to do. I’ll tell you now it won’t mean a damn thing. Prince Yuebek’s men have found the Baraji bastard in Onni. Your servant’s being tricky, Queen Talyien, but they’ll get them all soon enough. And then it won’t matter if you confess along with Prince Rayyel… his sins will outweigh yours. We’ll have all their heads strung outside the castle walls by the end of the week.”
“No!” Chiha cried. “My son—!”
“There’s no point protesting, Lady Chiha,” Ozo continued. “Consider it a compliment I’m not dragging you with them. Your father was a piss-poor ally, one with his own damn ambitions, but he was an ally all the same. I’m sorry about your boy, but the gift will appease the Zarojo prince. He’s got quite the temper. I’ll make it
quick.”
“I’m not going to let you do this,” I said.
Ozo sniffed. “I know you won’t. I do know you, more than you realize. Gods be damned, Tali, you are too much like your father and you’ll end up killing us all.”
He nodded towards Lakas, who grabbed my wrist. I turned to strike; the captain twisted my arm, tearing the rusted blade from my grasp. A few feet away, Ozo unstrapped his sword belt, tugging the scabbard loose. He flung the sheathed sword towards me.
It landed near my feet, and I realized my mistake. It wasn’t his at all. I recognized the wooden handle, the one carved to appear like a sea serpent’s mouth, wide open.
It was my father’s sword.
“Take it,” Ozo commanded.
“Why do you have this?” I gasped. “I’ve been looking for it for years!”
“Just take it.”
Lakas released me. I reached for the hilt, my fingers trembling, and lifted the blade. It was larger and heavier than I was used to—nearly a two-hander, but balanced almost like a well-made grass-cutter. The blade was broad and notched at the tip.
“Your second option,” Ozo said, crossing his arms, “is that you make this easier for all of us. You won’t listen if I tell you to stop resisting. You’ll tell me to go to hell if I insist you cut off your husband’s head yourself.”
“Go to hell.”
He glowered. “Before you decide to bury your father with this insolence, I suggest you travel to your ancestral home in Burbatan. Go to your father’s study in the attic. See for your own eyes what you refuse to listen to with your ears.”
“I’ve been in too many traps to fall into another one.”
“Of course you have. You’re forgetting that I’ve no reason to trap you. I already have you here. But if you are who you claim to be—if you truly give a damn about Jin-Sayeng, if you claim about your father’s honour at all…”
My hands tightened around the sword as I considered the best angle to cut him from.
He saw the movement and gave a grim smile. “You could kill me here, if you want. Unlike Lushai, I have no heir. Perhaps the Oren-yaro won’t mind my death and you’ll get your army back. You’ll be able to declare war against the Zarojo now. The Baraji won’t fight for you—and hell would freeze over before you get support from the Ikessars and their allies—but maybe you’ll have a better chance with some of the coastal lords. And maybe you’ll even win. Impossible things have happened before. But then what? Will you be able to stand your ground against what happens after?”
The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng Page 21