by Devin Madson
“You should come in and eat soon,” she said when she strode back toward the door. I wondered if Darius had told her to say so and whether she knew how much he needed her, how much he thought of her, how much he could love her. It would be so easy to tell her; it might help, might make a difference. That was what Jian had always wanted me to do with my Sight, use it to help people and—
Her footsteps faded away across the courtyard. I counted ten long seconds, then let go my held breath. There had to be a better way than this.
Why won’t he talk to me? Does he not like me? I gave him my favourite doll.
Gods save us if the rains are late again. Better they come now. Better a half harvest and an end to the fighting.
Oh, it hurts so much. Why does it hurt?
Kaze snorted. Before my eyes, dust motes danced lazily on.
Eventually, I gave in to the promptings of my stomach and wandered back to the house. It had been another warm summer day, but with evening came a sharp breeze that sent petals dancing across the courtyard. There were hundreds of them, twirling and skipping like children over the uneven stones.
One million three hundred and twenty-one thousand one hundred and four.
I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the petals and nothing more, tried not to even search for Darius or Kimiko in the great pile of a house.
Neither were in the back room and no rice had yet been cooked, so taking coals from the box, I knelt to heat the cooking stone. It had once been my job every evening to heat the stone and wash the rice while Jian prepared what little else we had to eat. Our dinners had always reflected our location, consisting of fish in port cities and goat curd in the mountains. Once, we had bought a catch of fish and dried them ourselves, rubbing in salt and stringing them from the side of the wagon.
Now I could barely remember the taste of food. Had I eaten the night before? Kimiko had offered me rice, but I could not recall consuming it. Jian had never let me go without, even sacrificing his own meals to see me fed. A growing boy needs more food than a drying-out old man, he had always said.
Sadness opened its maw in my stomach as I thought of him. He really had done his best to make me feel loved and cared for, to guide my steps despite knowing so little about what I was and what I needed, and all I had been able to think about was my family. All I’d wanted was to belong.
The stone was getting hot. I looked toward the open door, darkness thick beyond its rotting frame. “Darius?”
I had thought I felt him there and went to the door, peering into the dim passage. “Darius? Kimiko?”
My voice barely reached a few feet in front of me, its echo deadened by old air. Stepping back into the room, I took down one of the lanterns.
“Darius?”
Still nothing, so with the lantern held before me like a talisman, I crept through the lifeless house, committing each turn to memory. Right. Left. Right again. Moth-eaten fabrics and broken screens adorned the way, everything stinking of dust and moss like the waterlogged forests around Lin’ya.
Right. Left. Left again. I followed Darius like a vague scent on the air and he led me into an enormous room I had never seen before, its roof the broad canopy of a great tree. Against the moonlit sky its leaves fluttered like a thousand bats, covering the floor in dancing shadows. Thick roots had cracked tiles in search of water, and discarded leaves made the old mosaic slippery, but I picked my way across the floor toward the base of a broad stairway edged in broken fretwork.
The first step creaked beneath my feet, its glittering obsidian inlay winking like stars. The bannister was rotten and my fingers sank into its soft, crumbling wood, but I carefully made my way up to the second floor beneath the tree’s watchful gaze.
A pair of passages waited at the top, one dark, the other lit by a spill of golden light halfway along. It drew me on, mesmerised. Voices murmured through the open door, and perhaps I ought to have turned back, but the air was stained with such pain and sadness and heartbreak that I crept closer.
Two lanterns lit the room, sitting side by side on a low table. Their puckered paper covers had been painted pink and coloured the room with life, glinting off glass vases and pretty trinkets, all dusty and tarnished.
Darius had discarded his robe and sat on the edge of a divan, his bare skin glistening with the sweat of a summer night. Kimiko sat facing him, her arm concealing the line of her breast as she held him close, her cheek resting on his dark hair.
It was a fragile moment, like the thin shell of a painted egg, beautiful in its transience. Like all others, it would end, no world existing in which time stood still.
As if at that thought, the image came to life. Darius’s shoulders shook with grief and Kimiko ran her hands through his hair, tugging gently at the strands while she sang. It was a sad song, full of roaring emotion, and catching a gasp, I stepped back into the darkness and leant against the wall.
Don’t let them feel you. Don’t let them feel you. Don’t let them feel you.
I trembled at the effort and scolded myself for having come, but though I tried, I could not stop the wash of emotion that sloshed about my feet like an insistent tide.
Don’t care. Don’t care. Choose not to care.
I had poured hatred into Malice’s mark, maybe I could pour indifference into myself. Not just indifference, but all my hopelessness and loneliness and fear, magnifying every smothering emotion in an attempt to numb my Empathy.
Pressing my hands to my cheeks, I forced it all back in on itself, and my knees crumpled. Agony sheared through me. But in its wake came a glorious moment of silence, perfect and clear, before the pain roared back and I fell onto my hands and knees and threw up on the floor.
Chapter 16
Hana
Tili and I made our way through the town in the last of the evening light. I had almost insisted on going by myself for her safety, but it would have drawn more curious gazes to see a well-dressed noblewoman on her own than one accompanied by her maid.
It had taken days to set up this meeting, days during which Katashi had been marching his army hard and there had barely been time to set up camp and rest before we were moving again. Carts were left packed, some abandoned, and while the meals became more basic, such deprivations were nothing to Katashi’s cold aloofness. He would not listen to me. He would not talk to me. He had made up his mind and there was nothing I could do.
Except this.
With the war so near, Orotana was gloomy, owning little of the cheer it ought to have now the sticky summer heat had given way to a cool night. Few people were out and about, yet mindful of the dangers of being recognised, I still kept my hood up all the way to the teahouse Wen had chosen—a decent house, clean and pleasant but not large, not the sort of place that would ever expect a visit from an emperor. If he came.
“My lady.” The landlord bustled up as I entered, and possessing no hint of recognition he bowed to a randomly selected depth somewhere between an artisanal master and a scholar. “Welcome. Welcome. If you are after a private room—”
“Yes.” I shoved my fear down into my sandals and drew myself up. “I am expecting… a companion.”
“Oh… Oh! Yes, of course, my lady, yes.” The man winked, and I hoped the light was too dim for him to see my cheeks heat. “You booked the room. I have of course set aside my very best. With your permission, I will show you to it?” He glanced at Tili as he spoke, asking a silent question.
“Yes, please do,” I said, hating how dirty he made me feel. “My maid will await me here, somewhere she may go… unseen, if we may.”
He winked again, and I wanted to rip his eyelid off. Instead I forced a smile and nodded farewell to Tili, before following the man along a lantern-lit passage lined with screen doors. He led me to one on its own at the very end—all the better for the romantic tryst he seemed to think he was aiding.
“I hope this is acceptable, my lady,” he said. “Shall I have refreshments sent in now or would you like to wait for your guest?”
In fact, my appetite had long since abandoned me, but I would appear at my ease if it killed me.
Once the landlord departed, I chose a place directly across from the door and knelt to wait. Food soon came, and while a serving girl set out the dishes, I listened for new arrivals. Every footstep made my heart leap into my throat, and every prolonged silence made me fear he wasn’t coming at all.
The time for the assignation came and went with a flurry of gongs tolling the hour. Still there was no sign of him. How long ought I wait before giving up? And what would I do next if I had to?
The street door creaked open and footsteps cut through the murmured talk in the main room. It could have been just more patrons, yet something in the weight of the steps made me freeze in place. Two people—no, three. Boots, not sandals, not milling around either, rather the firm, economical steps of men with weapons who did not doubt their welcome—steps that were coming along the passage. All of a sudden, I wished there was another way out of the room and hunted every corner before I pulled myself together.
I picked up a cold tea bowl with shaking hands, determined to look natural and in command as the door slid.
General Ryoji walked in, his hand on his sword hilt. His gaze took in the room at a glance before coming to rest on me. “Lady Hana.”
“I think you’ll find this is Her Grace of Koi now, General,” Kin said, a rustle of movement producing him from the passage behind his guard. He slid shoulder first into the room and stood with his arms folded, scowling down at me. “Is that not right, Your Grace?”
“Indeed it is, Your Majesty, though might I suggest we close the door before exchanging further pleasantries.”
I had forgotten how fierce Kin’s scowl could be, but he nodded to General Ryoji. “Wait outside, general,” he said. “Ensure our conversation goes undisturbed.”
“But, Your Majesty—”
“Yes, there is every chance Her Grace is planning to finish the task of assassinating me, but—”
“Assassinating you? I—” I stopped. I had tried to do exactly that the night Katashi had taken Koi, acting on the all-consuming rage Malice had gifted with his blood.
Both men were staring at me, and through the open door, distant figures moved around in the main room at the end of the hall.
I drew myself up. “I can assure you I have not come here to do any such thing.”
Silently, Kin nodded again to General Ryoji, and with a bow first to me and then to his emperor, the man stepped out and finally closed the door. Despite how confident he had seemed of his safety, Kin stepped no closer. His look of disgust dropped my heart into my feet.
“You owe me an explanation for that night, I feel,” he said. “Before I take the risk of sitting down.”
I ought to have expected the question, but understanding Malice as I did and knowing he was to blame, I had been able to move on. Kin had not. “It was not… deliberately done.”
“Not deliberately done? I am quite sure you deliberately came at me with a blade.”
“No, I did not. It is complicated to explain, however, so by all the gods, do sit down instead of glaring at me from such an awful height?”
For a moment, it looked as if he would refuse, but he soon shrugged off his cloak, the sudden burst of crimson silk seeming to brighten the room. In almost every way, it was the same robe I had so often seen Katashi wear and for the first time I wondered whether Katashi had been wearing the imperial robes Kin had left behind. He’d have hated that, but not so much that he wouldn’t have worn them and made them his own. He’d enjoyed watching me slowly peel them off him, wearing that sleepy half smile he saved for when we were alone.
Don’t think about Katashi. Don’t think about Katashi.
Spreading his robe as I had done, Kin knelt opposite, and but for the robe, it couldn’t have been a more different emperor I faced. I had forgotten in the joy of Katashi’s ease and charm how stiff and formal Kin could be.
“Well, is that better?” Kin said, meeting my gaze across the table. “Will you now consent to tell me in what way I am mistaken about the happenings at Koi?”
“Do you remember what I had on my hands?”
The notch on his brow cut so deep I ought to have seen bone. “Blood.”
“Yes, but not my blood.” I spread my hands as though their current clean state was evidence of this. “Malice has a way of sending messages that involves small containers of blood.” That notch cut even deeper and I sighed. “You have no reason to believe any of this. I understand it must sound like nonsense to anyone who hasn’t seen the things the Vices can do.”
“At no point did I say I did not believe you.”
“That great gouge between your brows is saying it quite loudly on your behalf.”
With a self-conscious start, he touched his forehead, only to drop his hand with an even darker glare. “I was not aware that my eyebrows knew how to talk. Do continue or we may never get to the reason why you are here.”
“There isn’t much more to the story, really. He sent a message with one of his Vices, and I touched it, only…” I sighed again. “It was stupid really. He’d never sent me… emotions in blood before, only words, so it didn’t occur to me that there could be any danger.”
The dreaded brow notch was back. “Surely if Malice wanted me dead, he had any number of Vices with any number of opportunities. Why pin his hopes on you when he could be sure you would not make it past my guards?”
“Oh, he didn’t want you dead at all, he just wanted Darius to have to do something drastic to save you. Which he did, if you weren’t aware. And then he stood before Katashi and refused to take the oath, pronouncing you the true emperor in front of the whole northern court.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’?”
“Is he dead?”
There was such coldness in the words that I stared at him a long time without answering, so long that he lifted his chin in challenge. His jaw was set hard and there was a ferocity in his eyes, but…
“Well? Is he?”
“You care.”
“Damn it, Hana, of course I care! He is—was—just tell me!”
I shook my head. “He escaped before he could be executed, but it was kept quiet, as you can imagine. Although where he is now, I don’t know and rather thought you might.”
He laughed a short and unamused little laugh. “Maybe it really is him then.”
“Maybe what is?”
“There is a man making a great noise down in Esvar claiming to be my minister of the left. I… didn’t dare hope in case it was merely a Vice trick.”
“Malice does like his tricks, but I’m not sure what he would gain by impersonating Darius. Either way, you can be sure neither is allied with Katashi anymore.”
Aware of how informally I spoke of them all, I forced myself to meet his questioning gaze and say no more. After a few moments, Kin looked down at the food. “You seem to have ordered yourself quite the spread, Your Grace. Might I enquire if I am expected to pay for this grand entertainment or will you be doing so yourself?”
“I can’t say I have given it much thought. Are you trying to be provoking in payback for what happened in Koi?”
“No, my lady, I was hoping to have some conversation before we got to the point of this meeting, since I’m quite sure once we broach the topic, it will be all argument from there.”
I couldn’t but smile despite the seriousness of my mission. “Somehow I feel this is based less on a premonition and more on past experience, Your Majesty.”
“Why yes, how strange that you have noticed that too, Your Grace. Our conversations always seem to start out so well and devolve rapidly. No doubt you will say that is my fault for being… what were your words? Imperial and overbearing?”
“You are certainly quite capable of that, but I would rather
have said our arguments stemmed from too much honesty.”
“Or too little ability to compromise.”
Unable to face the intensity of his stare, I looked into my tea bowl. “Yes, we’re both stubborn, but perhaps I listened more than you thought I did. The longer this war goes on the more I consider what you said about duty. About my father. That he believed being an emperor was about rights, not responsibilities. What did he do that made you say that?”
“The answer would be a dull catalogue of decisions designed to benefit the Otako family and its closest supporters rather than the empire and its people. I understand he was well taught in such practice by his own father—your ancestors stopped caring about anything but what they could wring from the empire a long time ago.”
My cheeks reddened at the contempt in his voice. There was still time to get up and leave, still time to change my mind, but I could not forget the wild hatred in Katashi’s eyes. Vengeance was all that mattered to him.
“I have some information for you,” I said. “No details, no specifics, just a piece of advice you would be wise to heed.”
“I make my own decisions, but I will hear you out.”
“Do you have ships?”
His scowl was eclipsed by a genuine look of surprise, and he leant back from the table. “I am certain you cannot harm me with knowledge you surely already possess. And yet I am still hesitant to answer.”
“Perhaps if I answer first. I have no ships.”
“Assuming you have inherited the full rights and property of the last duke of Koi, you do in fact own a fair number of merchant ships. You do not own warships, but that is understandable given how far Koi is from the sea. I would not be very well equipped, however, if I did not.”
“Then use them and blockade the mouth of the Tzitzi before it is too late.”
Kin stared at me across the table. “Why.”
“I said I would give you no details, whatever my sense of duty.”
“As I am well aware you have been marching with your cousin’s army, you cannot expect me not to make obvious connections. If Katashi is planning to raid—”