“I need you to hold the siege for me,” I said at last. “I need a reason for Yuebek to come here.”
She kept her jaw firm. I think she wanted to denounce me all over again. Instead, she gave a resigned nod and left me with the rest of my thoughts, ringing as loud as funeral bells in the night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHAT CANNOT BE KILLED
Khine and I returned to the boat and rowed our way upriver, beating against the lazy currents. In the quiet aftermath of a battle, you wouldn’t think we were at war. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, flowers quivered in the sunlight. The wind whispered the way it would’ve on a quiet morning in a land untouched by war. I wanted to stop rowing, to let the boat float by itself and take us wherever the river willed. I was so tired of fighting. I had done it all my life.
“Khine,” I said. “I’m going south by myself.”
A deep breath. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“You can’t come with me. You don’t want Dai to think you’ve turned against him. And my son—”
“Karia’s with him,” he said. “She’d die for him, you know.”
“Still…”
Silence followed, interspersed by the slap of water against the oars.
“Khine,” I said. “I think you know what I have to do.”
He remained silent.
We drifted through the water, sunlight trailing behind us. I pulled the letters from my robe, the ones Rayyel and I wrote. After a brief hesitation, I tore them. The pieces drifted into the water. Khine looked on, the grief plain on his face.
“Rai has to take the fall,” I whispered. “I have to marry Yuebek. It’s the only way to save this land.”
He didn’t answer. The words sounded like death.
I turned to the sky, forcing the tears not to leak through my eyes. The irony… that I would embrace this only after I had finally found him. A breath of air, before the hangman’s noose. All there ever could be.
We drifted from the river down to a small tributary, where the boat hit the sandy shore of the bank. I waded in, water up to my knees. Khine grabbed my arm. Pulled me towards him. Kissed me with the anguish of a man who has seen enough and understood.
He understood, which somehow made it all the more damned.
What would the history books say of Khine Lamang? I could imagine that if word of this affair ever got out—as these things tend to—they would drag his name through the mud. Or worse, reduce him to nothing more than the queen’s lover, one of many. A con artist, a thief who might’ve been a physician—the same way Rayyel will always be the king that never was, or I the queen that couldn’t be. As if we are defined only by our failures.
No wonder, then, the desperate scrambling to make our mark in time. Behind us, an army was poised to strike at Yu-yan because one man was convinced he was the fated hero. The same fallacy that drove my father to commit the massacres that would define him… that drove Yuebek, mage, forgotten son, to do whatever it took to catch his Esteemed Father’s attention, if it meant bringing war to a land that wasn’t his…
Such grandeur, such delusion, when life could be dragged down to these moments. Hands touching, fingers entwined, rough lips over smooth skin, the rush of the river around us as loud as the blood coursing through our veins. I didn’t know if he was telling me not to go through with it, or if he was trying to make me forget, or if he was trying to make himself forget.
“Khine,” I whispered, light-headed, loath to make it stop. But despite the heat stirred by the act, I was starting to shiver.
He shook his head, that silence again. But we tied up the boat and made our way back to the hut, where the air overflowed with the scent of dried herbs. Stripped of our wet clothes, we picked up where we left off. Now his lips were on me again, and I was arching against his fingers and his mouth, begging him to stop, knowing I didn’t want him to, knowing he knew that, too, that I was forever a liar in his presence. Desire and desperation, pleasure and pain. Nothing is ever simple.
“Tali,” Khine whispered when we were done, his heartbeat on my bare chest. “I can’t let you. I would rather die.” He was on the verge of tears.
“It’s not your decision,” I whispered.
“Even a man like your father would have his oversights. And if there’s one person who can find them—”
I caressed his cheek with the back of my fingers. “You’ve already done more than you could ever know.”
His face hardened. “How could you give up so easily?”
“I have nothing else, Khine,” I whispered. “Especially not time. I think my father knew that. That’s why it had to get this far. Remember when you asked why he would do this, when he knew I would be too stubborn to accept my fate? He must’ve known, too, that in the end I wouldn’t have a choice. Or perhaps he would’ve been happy if I did find an alternative. But I didn’t.”
“He doesn’t have to win.”
“This is beyond that, now,” I said. “It’s not about winning or losing, or bowing down to Yeshin, in the end. It’s about saving Jin-Sayeng. It’s about doing the right thing even when the right thing hurts.” But my own words filled me with sadness, echoing with anger that had sapped me of all my energy. Perhaps I was just being the coward I had always been. Perhaps I was just giving in to what was easiest. Could I say these words with Yuebek in front of me? Would I shove a knife into Khine’s heart before running into those rotten arms? I would rather die, too.
It was better, then, that it looked like Khine didn’t hear me at all. “I can’t…” he repeated, his words an echo of what loss had done to him. What impending loss was doing to him now. I wondered what it meant that I did not share the grief. Nothing in all my life had prepared me for this, for him. My breath of air, to be lost too soon…
Yet what would I have changed, knowing it would lead me to this? If the end of the road meant I would find myself right here, I would do it all over again. I would live through every painful detail, every mistake, every hurt. He was worth it. I think that was why, against his disquiet, I was oddly at peace. Khine had known joy in its purest, the kind that came before the brush of sorrow. A mother and father who loved him, a brother and sisters who shared his plight, a lover whose only crime against him was youth—who seemed to have loved him just as fiercely as he had her. Of course he would want to hold on.
My own approach to love had been dull, duty-bound. Where Khine was grasping, wanting to keep it all, I had already resigned myself to looking back at him from memory. To becoming a memory for him, in return. What semblance of courage I held lay in my ability to put the people I love behind an impenetrable wall. I did it all those years with my father and Rayyel. A gift, if you think about it—how the same skill I used to survive made the unbearable feel like a passing thing. I should thank them.
He soon fell into a troubled sleep, his face darkened by lines I couldn’t smooth away if I tried. I knew his mind was sifting through the details, convinced he could outrace my father and his plans. I wouldn’t put it past him. But he couldn’t know what I didn’t tell him. My father understood what Yuebek was and told me because he also understood what I was. I, stubborn, unyielding queen of Jin-Sayeng, had once obeyed out of duty and could do it again. Khine didn’t need that burden. I am many things, but I am not heartless.
I didn’t sleep myself. A part of me wandered down the aisle of wishful thinking. It was difficult not to engage in indulgence when the maddening hours persisted on drifting by. If somehow we could be together, how long would it last? Would he grow bored of me? Would I tire of him? I dreamed of such things with Rayyel before, and maybe even Agos, in passing, but my knowledge of such partnerships was limited. To love someone for so long you can no longer remember life when you didn’t love them, to know passion that continued even after the fires had burned low… how could such a perfect thing exist in an imperfect world? I knew better now than to believe another fairy tale.
Somehow, even my musing passed, leaving beh
ind a longing for something I just had, and maybe more. I tried to wake him—softly at first, and then in more urgent ways he couldn’t ignore. We made love blearily, him half awake, gazing at me as if out of a dream, as if he couldn’t believe I was real. I felt the same, though it would be cruel to say such words now. Let him think it ended here, let him think I couldn’t love him. He tasted like wine, a potency that stung. I fell asleep in his arms and time slipped through my fingers like water poured from a jug.
Dawn came, and then the knock on the door, the death knell. I left Khine naked on the pallet, wrapped myself in the blanket, and got up to answer it.
Huan’s eyes widened, and then he quickly turned, his cheeks red. Huan, not Eikaro; he was armoured, with his helmet on. Eikaro would’ve made every effort not to tromp around in heavy plate if he could help it.
“Warlord Huan,” I said.
He coughed. “We’ve come to take you to the outpost.”
“The second switch was successful?”
“It was,” he replied, clearing his throat. “Even without the mages to help him. I wonder what a formal education in the agan would’ve done for him. Maybe we’ll never know.”
“I hope there was sufficient time for him to recover from being in the dragon’s body too long.”
“An hour or two would’ve worked, he said,” Huan replied, scratching his cheek with a finger. “As it was, we only switched a few hours ago. I wanted to give him at least until last night so he could spend some time with his wife.”
That made me pause. “That was… generous of you.”
Huan gave a soft smile. “Generous of my wife, you mean. Another woman would’ve found it obscene. She simply told me not to bother telling her anything, especially if it turns out that I recall… details.”
“We need less sorrow in the world, Lord Huan. I’m glad to hear your wives are understanding.”
He nodded towards the hut. “And him? Is he as understanding?”
I gave a wry smile. “We never really get the answers we want, do we?” I glanced at the horses he had brought with him. “I’ll meet you outside in a moment.”
Huan bowed and drew away.
I closed the door behind me and returned to Khine. I draped the blanket over his body, not wanting to wake him. I got dressed, gave him one last kiss, and then I strode out into the grey light to meet my fate.
ACT THREE
THE ROPE AND THE BREAKDOWN
CHAPTER ONE
THE MAD PRINCE’S COURT, REPRISED
Huan rode with me to the first outpost, where he entrusted me to soldiers that would take me the rest of the way. As if I needed another reminder of the urgency of my task, a messenger arrived, informing us that Kaggawa had renewed his assault.
“With any luck, he’s diverted his soldiers from the villages to pad up his charge,” Huan said. “Maybe I can send patrols to gather food while he’s occupied.”
“If you do that, the villagers won’t have food,” I said.
He grimaced. “Then you need to be quick. Every second counts. Return to us before we all die.” He cracked a smile. “But I think you already know that.”
We reached Fuyyu and the main road, the one that ran all the way east, to the riverlands along the banks of the River Agos. In Osahindo, we boarded a riverboat, which sailed north with the wind against the currents. Not long afterwards, I saw Oren-yaro on the horizon, embracing the sun under the mountain’s ever-protective shadow. Oren-yaro, with its ruins and misshapen dragon-towers, slowly crumbling into the river every year. My father’s city, my home, my brothers’ tomb, cradle of every sorrow that shaped my life. I began the process of hardening my heart.
Easier said than done. I would spend hours going over the logic of it with my father’s precision, reminding myself why I needed to do this, what we would lose if I didn’t. And by the end, I would almost understand, except I would wake up the next morning and begin the process all over again. After everything that had happened, the thought of offering my hand up to Yuebek was vile. Imagining the words I would tell him—how I understood now how I had wronged him, insulted him, that he had been so generous, so compassionate, in his own actions after what my husband Rayyel had done—made me want to vomit. And then afterwards? To entertain his cold touch and perfumed corpse-stench, to have to lie in bed and let him sate himself on me so that he would later be pliable to what we would ask from him. To love him, so I could ask him to die for my nation, and he wouldn’t bat an eye…
I told myself I couldn’t falter now. My son was still trapped in the Sougen, the price I paid for my father’s schemes. Did he know his damn plans would harm his own blood? No, he couldn’t have; he was dead, dead, dead, not even a damn corpse anymore, nothing but ashes and dust I could be rid of once I returned to Oren-yaro and flushed him down the river. How could he have so much power? How could a person so vile and corrupt be kept alive in the memories of others? How could his ideals remain?
I couldn’t even bear thinking about failure. My throne, my life—they were meaningless in the face of those thousands of lives that would perish if I failed. Thousands more, on top of the thousands my father had already taken from the land. But every breath I took was a struggle not to turn back. All I had to do was think of Khine and I would reach the precipice of what little courage I had. There is only so much you can steel yourself for. The contrast of what I left behind to what awaited would drive anyone mad.
I hated my father now more than ever. I thought he raised me not to be just some lump of flesh placed on a seat to appease the nation, nor a mere vessel for childbirth, but as someone who could carry all the things I’ve been told gave a woman substance. Duties and expectations, woven into the fabric of everything I thought I was to be: wife, mother, daughter. Queen. Except the truth was a bowl of sand in the dark, given in place of rice. Chew and swallow, Talyien—don’t you dare spit a grain out! My father had hardened me for nothing but slaughter. Everything I had been taught, everything I’ve felt in his presence and beyond, my very being was the true cage. My every step had been determined, anticipated, manipulated, all so we could use that putrid exhalation from hell for our own purposes. My true prince. My nightmare.
I met Lord General Ozo in a tavern in Oren-yaro, after I’d sent word ahead. He arrived with Namra.
“The fact that you’re here now, and not running around like a squealing pig…” Ozo began.
“Yes,” I snapped at him. “I get it.”
“I’m glad to see you well, Beloved Queen,” Namra said, bowing. “I’ve worried for you since Burbatan.”
“I’m still alive, at least,” I said. “Is… Liosa…?”
“Your lady mother is well,” she replied. “I oversaw her return to the temple myself. She was happy to be back home.”
“I’m not a monster,” Ozo grumbled.
“I would’ve guessed otherwise,” I said.
He pressed his lips together as he gestured at the table. I took a seat and grudgingly accepted a cup of sugarcane wine, though I had no appetite for the dishes of jellied chicken feet or fried tofu in sweet chili sauce. The sight of Zarojo food only reminded me of what awaited in the castle.
I took a long drink. “First things first,” I said after swallowing. “How sure are we of Yuebek’s lineage?”
Ozo snapped his fingers. A servant approached with several scrolls, which he offered to me with a bow. I swallowed more wine before I took them. Unrolling the paper proved harder than I thought—they were thin and flimsy, weathered from improper storage.
They were various documents detailing Lady Maharay’s departure from Jin-Sayeng. They were insidious; her clan had tried to hide it in an attempt to deflect political scrutiny. Any sort of power grab from one of the major clans would be sure to raise hackles, and they wanted to curry Zarojo goodwill in secret. Some reports mentioned she was simply visiting a summer home in the southern empire, where they said the beaches were as white as marble. But the story was there, if you read between the line
s.
The last few reports detailed the arrival of the Fourth Consort and her subsequent acceptance into the Esteemed Emperor Yunan Tsaito’s harem. By then, her name and titles had been erased. It was as if Lady Maharay of Jin-Sayeng had ceased to exist. I didn’t know if the Jeinza clan expected that; clearly, their move had not done much more than establish additional trade routes for the city of Sutan, which carried its Zarojo influence with pride.
I stared at the documents after I was done reading, before draining my cup. “Namra,” I finally said. “We tried to send the last two mages in Yu-yan to the rift. It didn’t work. They died before they could touch it. Huan said their shields broke. How do we make sure the same doesn’t happen to Yuebek?”
“He is powerful,” Namra replied. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes. His work in Phurywa—the blood magic… surely you remember.”
“I do, and every day I wish I could forget.”
“Perhaps to the untrained eye, all skill in the agan looks the same,” Namra said. “It isn’t. I could have told you those mages wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t. That sky is extremely unstable, and only the strongest mages could withstand its effects. I’ve been going through your father’s research. The rift could obliterate everything within the vicinity. And yet attempts to close it haven’t worked, because you have to be right next to it. Dageian mages tried to do it from the ground, and you’ve seen what happened there. If anything, they made it worse.”
“So what you’re saying is that it’s simply because Yuebek is powerful enough to shield himself when he gets up there. He’s the only one you know who should even attempt such a thing.”
She bowed again. “I can’t even fathom the depths of the man’s power, but I feel it every time he’s near. I can’t imagine how he’s accomplished half the things he’s done. The man defied death, Queen Talyien. You killed him already, and yet he’s still here.”
The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng Page 49