by Devin Madson
It might gall me that my greatest power lay in marriage, but I could not deny Kin had been right. Following Katashi’s army was not enough to sway those hesitant to pick sides. As the only daughter and last surviving child of Emperor Lan Otako, I had to vote with my name, my body, my future.
With my hands still bound, I knelt at his feet and set my forehead to the floor. “Your Imperial Majesty, it would be a great honour if you would accept my hand in marriage.”
Katashi’s fingers closed around my arms, hard enough that I winced. “Hana…” He pulled me up to face him, his gaze scouring my face. “Do you mean that?”
“I don’t think this is a good time to be joking, do you?”
And yet he scowled, not seeming to believe me.
“How can I expect you to do all this,” I said, “and yet withhold from your cause the power I have to sway Kisia’s people?”
“How very romantic you make that sound.”
He still looked grim and I could tell he hadn’t forgiven me, might never do so as long as he lived, but that didn’t mean all was lost. There was no space between us left to close, so I rested my bound hands on his chest, unable to tell if the rapid pulse I felt was his or my own as I looked up into his face. No smile, no peeping dimple, nothing but the harsh lines of his anger. “I love you, Katashi,” I said, pressing my palms flat against him. “I love you and I want to fight this war with you, at your side as your empress. I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I did, but I would tie my fate to yours and win or lose this together.”
My dispassionate sense of duty might argue that marriage to Kin was best for the empire, and it would be right, but in Katashi’s presence, it was impossible to be dispassionate, impossible to forget the hurts of our family, or how alive he made me feel. As though together there was nothing we could not achieve.
After a long silence, he took hold of my forearms, pressing them hard against him. “I ought to refuse you. I ought to strip you of your title and throw you in a cell. I ought to never again listen to a word you say. But though the gods may strike me down for such madness, I don’t want to do any of those things. I am very far from forgiving you, but all I want to do is hold you close and never let you go. I want you to be my wife, Hana; I want to fight this fight together. Tell me I will not regret it. Tell me that one day our son will sit on the throne when I am gone.”
“You will not regret it,” I said, the words threatening to stick in my throat. “We can do this together, all of it, even making sure there is an empire for our children to inherit.”
Slowly, he bent his head to mine, and I stretched up into his kiss, soft at first, then owning all the ferocity of our first embrace. Yet there were no teasing kisses on my neck or my brow, no gentle trace of his hands down my spine. Gripping my face, he pushed me back as he devoured me, until we were once more upon the floor like in that meeting room at Koi.
When he pulled away to work my sash loose, I held out my bound hands. A few seconds were all it would have taken to untie me, but instead he gripped the silk knot and lifted my arms over my head, pinning them to the floor. A thrill shivered through me and I spread my legs, every part of me yearning for his touch as he tore at the knot in his own sash. It fell free, and before I could do more than twist to see what he was doing, he wrapped it around my already bound hands and tied me to the tent pole. I tugged instinctively but the knots would not give, and I was shocked to find how much I liked it.
Katashi had kept his robes on, but the sliver of his naked body I could see through the open silk panels only deepened my need for him. I wanted to touch him, to caress him and for an instant wished my hands free, though the moment he spread my robe and gripped my hips, all thought vanished.
With the desperate need of lovers long parted, there was no teasing, no playful words or loving assurances, everything a ferocious blur from the moment he first thrust into me to my final cry of pleasure—a pleasure made all the more thrilling by how hard I could pull at the sash and not get free.
No words at all from the moment I had given him my promise to the moment he collapsed on top of me, and yet so much had changed. The air had felt so charged with tension, the moment so fraught with hurt and anger, but in the aftermath of our passion, there was nothing but the tumultuous rhythm of our hearts beating against one another.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he murmured once he had caught his breath.
“Oh no. No, not at all. That was quite something.”
He lifted his head enough to grin at me. “I thought you were enjoying it. We’ll have to try it again another time.”
“Or perhaps I can tie you up next time.”
A half shrug and that lopsided smile was back, warming my heart. “Why not?”
“I’ll maybe tie the sash a little looser though.”
With a little groan, he slid out of me to untie the knot Shin had kept tightening every time I wriggled it loose. What a long time ago that seemed, though it had only been that morning.
Rubbing my aching wrists, I said, “You haven’t actually answered me, you know.”
“You’re right,” he said, and with his robes hanging open around him, he bowed his forehead to the floor. “I would be honoured indeed to be your husband, Your Grace,” he said, and looking up, he met my gaze with laughter in his eyes. “I am very conscious of the distinction you are bestowing on me.”
“You might well be, given how many times I have refused. Mama Orde would be truly horrified.”
“One day I hope to meet this good woman,” he said, rising to his feet and looking down at me. “I will tell her how stubborn and impulsive and determined her daughter is, and how much I love her.”
I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I think she would like that. And agree with you on all points.”
Outside, the guard cleared his throat. “Your Majesty?”
Katashi gathered his robe around himself. “What is it?”
“One of the soldiers has brought a message from Esvar, Your Majesty. They picked up both Lord Laroth and the head Vice. They should be here within the hour.”
“Good. You had better go let Lady Kimiko know.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Katashi sighed, and bending down, he kissed my hand front and back. And in response to my silent question, said, “For Kimiko. I’ll explain later, it’s all… quite the story. But if they’re on their way, we need to dress.”
Rather than retie his robes, he shed both into a heap on the floor and picked up his armour from beside Hacho. I had forgotten to ask why all his soldiers were prepared for battle at so late an hour, but watching him pull on his under-tunic, a sense of ill ease crept over me. “Armour? I noticed all the men were dressed for battle, but why?”
“Because Kin is camped a bare few miles south of here and won’t be expecting us in the middle of the night.” He took up his leather tunic and shook it out. “He won’t know what hit him. Don’t look so worried; Manshin will be leading the attack, not me.” A small flicker of relief flared, but not enough to dispel the sudden but inexplicable fear that had engulfed me. “I won’t join them until after I see this done.”
“See what done?”
He paused in the middle of tying his breeches, a scowl darkening his face. “Your guardians. If Darius is as reformed as Kimiko says, then he can go free, but it’s time we did away with Malice for good.”
Chapter 21
Darius
Katashi’s army ought to have been days away, making its way down through the serpentine passes of the northern Valley. And it ought to have been smaller. As we approached and more and more lights emerged from the hollow in which he’d camped, I let out a curse on a long, drawn-out exhale.
Malice had his eyes closed, but his lips twitched in appreciation.
“I seem to have calculated the distance very poorly,” I said.
“Or calculated Katashi Otako very poorly,” he replied, still not opening his eyes. “You are used to the ways and spee
d with which Kin moves about his empire, yes?”
“If I was any good at my job, it ought not make a difference.”
He chuckled and opened bleary, bloodshot eyes to look upon me with familiar affection, until the jolting of the cart made the arrow in his leg bounce. He hissed and closed his eyes again.
The driver slowed as the track steepened, the curve of the hill seeming to suck us down into the hollow below like an errant ship into a whirlpool. It would have been hard enough to navigate in daylight, but with nothing but the running lanterns to light the track ahead, it would have had even Avarice swearing.
“How’s Avarice?” I said, as much to keep Malice’s mind off the pain as because I wanted to know. I had told myself for five years that it didn’t matter, that he was part of an old life I had left behind, but he was the only person who had never let me down.
“Ah, beginning to feel sentimental, my dear?” Malice said, tightening his arms over his chest and tensing at every bump of the cart. “He is himself, as ever. Misses you and does not say so. Takes every new Vice in dislike. None of them know how to tend their horses properly, yes?”
The memory of his scolds made my heart ache for the past. “Does he still threaten them with beheading?”
“Every time. They don’t find it comforting when I say he’ll make sure they’re dead first.”
From the other side of the cart, one of Katashi’s soldiers glared at me as I snorted. He looked as if he wanted to say something but just received my smile with an even darker scowl and turned away. When I looked back down at Malice, it was to find him steadily regarding me. “I’ve missed you, yes?” he said.
“I’ve tried not to.”
He smiled, but there was more pain in it than amusement as the driver took a sharp turn down the side of the slope. The cart tipped so steeply I slid and, with my hands bound, could not stop myself hitting the soldier beside me. He growled and pushed me away.
As we drew into the camp, voices began to rise above the rumbling cart wheels. It was late and few soldiers were visible in the dim rows between tents, but some of Katashi’s labourers stopped to stare as we drove past the outer sentries, and by the time the cart slowed, we had quite an audience.
The guards who had sat in the cart with us leapt out before it had even stopped.
“I don’t think they like us very much,” I said, making no effort to move.
Malice had kept his eyes closed and looked pale in the torchlight. “You killed one of them with your hand. I might find that extremely arousing, but I am special, yes?”
“Well,” came a voice as a figure approached through the shadows. “Look who’s back.”
“Ah, Shin,” I said. “Did you miss me so very much?”
The man stopped at the end of the cart, his arms folded and a hateful glare twisting his scarred features. “Hardly.”
Malice chuckled, but Shin made no acknowledgement of his presence. Instead, he turned and looked around at the gathered audience. “What are you all staring at?” he called. “Piss off and do something more useful than stare at our freaks.”
With muttered grumbles, the labourers slowly dispersed until only Shin was left. “The Emperor wants to see you,” he said.
“He’s not my emperor.”
Shin’s scowl deepened. “I don’t trust you even as far as I can throw you, Laroth. What are you planning?”
“If I was planning something, it would be very foolish to tell you so, don’t you think?”
He leant close. “I have been with Master Katashi since his father died,” he hissed in my face. “I have seen him weather more pain than any boy should have to suffer, especially one whose future ought to have been laid out clear before him. Now that he has a chance to reclaim that future, I cannot and will not let you ruin him. Nor help your Usurper to do so.”
So easily could I see Avarice in the fierce protective spirit facing me that all thought of a sneer died on my lips. “Kin was merciful to him once. He could be again.”
Shin laughed, not an amused sound rather one that chilled my blood with its cruel edge. “And I thought you were so clever, Laroth. But it seems even you aren’t immune from clinging to beliefs that make life easier.”
“And what beliefs are those?”
He leant close again. “That Kin spared him. Did he tell you it was to retain the loyalty of the northerners, perhaps, or that he wanted to end the civil war rather than draw it out longer?” He leant closer still until all I could see was that lidless eye filled with fury. “It was me who got Katashi out of that prison, and if I hadn’t, he would have gone to the executioner, same as his father. It didn’t matter to Kin that the boy was innocent, that his life had been torn apart, but then it wouldn’t to a man so dishonourable he could go back on every oath he ever made.”
My pulse thrummed in my ears and I could not look away, as mesmerised by his gaze as by the horror of his words. And relentless, Shin sneered and kept going.
“You think your Kin is so honourable,” he said. “Why don’t you ask him who paid me to murder the Otakos. Why don’t you ask him which hell he’ll go to for betraying the very people he swore to protect. It was Kin who hired me to kill the emperor. To kill his heir. His children. And even the empress Kin himself claimed to love. I may have held the knife, but their blood is on his hands.”
I could not breathe. My lungs seemed not to work, my voice broken. Cold horror flooded through me as everything Kin had ever said took on new meaning, and I could not disbelieve what was so easy to accept. That hard, implacable hatred and determination. The stillness in his Errant play like a lioness watching from the grass, waiting, waiting, owning no mercy.
Beside me, Malice started to laugh, at first a chuckle but soon rising to a manic sound. “Oh my poor Darius,” he laughed. “My poor, poor Darius. You chose the wrong god.”
I heard him, but it was Shin I stared at. “You serve them in penance.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You stayed with Hana to make sure no harm would come to her because she was the child you couldn’t kill.”
His jaw hardened. “Yes. While you were trying to feed her to the very man who’d destroyed her family.”
The bitter words pierced my flesh, and I closed my eyes in a moment of grief I could not hide. “Do they know?”
“That I did it?” His lip curled and he pointed at his scars. “Grace Tianto knew. Go ahead and threaten that you’ll tell them all, I don’t care. It ends tonight. This is goodbye, Laroth. By morning, your precious emperor will be dead.”
He twitched a humourless smile and strode away. Hot and cold warred for possession of my skin as I stared at where he had stood and fought the urge to call him back, to ask all the questions pooling in my mouth. To ask more would be to end all doubt, and I held on to that doubt like it was a raft in a choppy sea. Shin was a thug. A killer and an honourless man. He had every reason to lie. Except that he didn’t.
Kin, the commander of the imperial guard, had killed them. Not with his own hand, but only a naive man could say that made any difference. He would have hired another assassin if Shin had refused, and that made it Kin’s crime. Hana and Endymion were only alive today because of Shin. Had he killed the others first? Had he made his way from emperor to empress, then down the corridor from room to room, his conscience twinging as the children grew younger, until he was looking into the faces of a trusting three-year-old boy and his baby sister, squalling in her crib?
Kin had blamed it on Grace Tianto so he could take the throne. He had dug fake graves for Takehiko and Hana so no one would know they lived. He had mourned the very woman he had ordered killed—the woman whose death had driven my father mad.
Malice had not ceased laughing, but as though he was following the trend of my thoughts, his laughter rose to a breathless wheeze, tears running down his cheeks. “Poor, poor Darius,” he repeated again. “Even when you’re trying to do good, you’re a monster.”
I had to believe the empir
e needed no gods.
I tried to focus on the thought, but to the tune of Malice’s mirth, my world was collapsing around me. This man I had served. Had respected. Had called friend. All that talk of rebuilding the empire after the civil war, when the whole thing had been caused by the ambition of a common soldier.
Clenching my bound hands to tight fists, I roared at the night. But the guttural cry seemed only to solidify my fury, and I sucked deep breaths and let them go while my mind darted from memory to memory, moment to moment, scouring five years of loyalty to an honourless man who had demanded honesty only to feed me lies. I had told him everything. Had trusted him. Believed in him. Had seen my reclamation in his service, my rebirth in his friendship. But it had all been a lie.
I barely heard the soldier who came to fetch us, though he must have spoken; barely felt my feet move, though I must have walked; barely heard Malice hiss, though his pain continued unbroken. There was just the darkness of the camp, then a brightly lit tent, and I was blinking to bring the figures present into focus. Katashi. Hana. Kimiko. Guards. It was like being dragged before a court of judgement, even Kimiko’s gaze appalled as I was thrown at her feet. This woman who had forced borabark down my throat and left me to fail.
My anger flared hot. “Why, good evening,” I said, eyes only for her as I struggled upright with hands still bound. “How displeased you look to see me, my dear. What is it that’s not up to your standards? Is it all the blood? Do you not like the cuts on my face? Or were you hoping I’d be dead?”
Her cheeks reddened, and part of my mind tried to shout that she had only acted to protect her brother, had needed to only because of Kin’s crimes, but I was so full of anger and hurt and betrayal that it felt good to throw it in her face, to see her quail beneath my rage.
“What happened to them?” Hana asked. She and Katashi sat side by side, he in his armour while she wore a fine robe, a proper robe, unlike the ones she had donned in Kin’s court.