by Devin Madson
The sound changed as we descended too, our steps and the squeak of the lantern ceasing to echo as the palace above crushed all sound. All light. All life.
When my feet found the bottom, Shishi wriggled for freedom, digging her claws into my neck.
“Hey, stop it,” I said.
“Let me close the door.” Himi swung back with her lantern and a thud sounded behind me. “She might find some pretty disgusting things down here, but she can’t get out now. There’s no other entrance.”
I set her on her paws and she ran for the door. She sniffed at the tiny gap beneath it and around the side, jumped up, and finally seeming to accept it would not open, sat before it with an air of protest.
“We must be quick,” Himi said, grabbing the key from a hook on the wall and dashing, lantern swinging, toward the first cell.
I followed, glancing back at Shishi’s whimper. “We’ll get out of here soon,” I assured her. “We—” I choked on my words. Minister Manshin stood at the bars, his pale, gaunt face a shadow of its former strength. Yet he still stared with bright, angry eyes.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he snapped a few words and I needed no translation to know this would be harder than I had hoped. Incandescent rage was keeping this man alive and it would burn the first person it touched and everyone thereafter.
“Give me the key, Himi,” I said. She had backed off a step, clearly seeing what I had, but she passed me the key. I held it up to the bars, trying not for threat but for promise. He glared. Pointing to myself, I said, “Rah e’Torin.”
Minister Manshin’s eyes narrowed and he spat on the stones at my feet, replying with a word I recognised from Empress Miko’s vocabulary.
“I don’t think it was wise to tell him you were a Torin like Sett and Gideon,” Himi said, still keeping her distance.
“I don’t think so either. He just called me a dog.” I cleared my throat to try again, pointing to the cell where I had spent time after Gideon’s coup. “Rah,” I said, and gestured with the key, pretending to lock a different cell. “Rah, prisoner.”
He turned his head as though trying to hear me better.
“Rah… um…” I started to sing the Torin mourning song I had sung to the darkness of my cell. His eyes widened in something like recognition and I stopped, repeating my name and pointing at the cell again. “Rah. Rah free”—I gestured to the lock and key—“Minister Manshin. Empress Miko needs Minister Manshin.”
“Empress Miko?” the man repeated, gripping the bars and pulling himself so close I could smell his stale breath.
“Empress Miko south,” I said, gesturing in the general direction that felt like south. “Umm… with Kisian army. Soldiers?” I mimed marching soldiers and felt like an idiot. It was just as well Himi had come, not Istet, for all the words I had learned from Miko were little use in communicating such information. “Taken… caught…” This time I pretended to catch Himi. She let out a squeak of surprise but let me feign binding her hands and marching her away.
The minister asked a question, attempting to pull himself through the bars.
“Jie,” I said, guessing at his meaning and answering with the only name I knew. “Jie.”
The minister hissed, and I knew he understood. Yet he narrowed his eyes and suspicion poured in Kisian from his lips, e’Torin the only word I understood. It had been a mistake to tell him my name and never had I thought to be ashamed of it. But though he might not trust me, he would trust her.
Kneeling on the damp stones, I patted my thigh and whistled to Shishi, still sitting before the door. Her tail wagged but she owned her mistress’s stubbornness. I went to pick her up and as I approached her tail wagged so fast it made her whole back half rock to and fro, but when she realised I wasn’t coming to open the door she abased herself on the floor. I wrestled her into my arms nonetheless, a putrid hint now added to the whiff of damp and mud clinging to her coat.
I carried her back to Minister Manshin’s cell, and the moment he saw her, his angry suspicion dropped away. “Shishi?” he said, joy choking his voice.
I gestured, offering him the dog, and set her down so I could unlock the cell.
“Minister Manshin,” I said as I did so. “Take Shishi. Go help Empress Miko.”
There was so much more I wanted to say, so much more he needed to know. About Syan and the empress’s guard, about the army and the impending destruction of Mei’lian, but all I could do was turn the key and let him out.
The lock clicked. The minister wrenched open the door and strode out, his eyes alight with purpose. Himi flinched, but rather than go for our throats the man knelt to ruffle Shishi’s fur. She gave his filthy face a lick.
My shoulders slumped as I let go a long breath. It had not been my duty to free him, not my duty to help the empress, but the guilt I had been carrying at all we had done to her empire lessened a little. I had tried not to worry about her, tried not to recall how she had looked at me, tried to think only of my people, but it had been impossible. In the end she had sacrificed herself to keep me safe and I hoped this would be thanks enough.
“Come on,” Himi said, striding back toward the closed door. “We have lingered too long. The sooner you get out of here the better.”
She reached for the pitted metal handle, and the door swung into her, slamming her back against the wall with a cry. Glass smashed and the lantern’s oil-soaked wick fell onto the stones to eke out a poor light.
“You couldn’t just heed my warning and leave,” Sett snarled, striding into the dim, cell-lined room. “You couldn’t listen for once, couldn’t think of something other than your honour and your code and your gods-be-damned stubborn need to be the centre of everyone’s world. I ought to have killed you rather than let you strut around the empire turning loyal Swords against Gideon and—”
“He didn’t need my help to achieve that,” I said, and as footsteps hurried away up the stairs I gripped a handful of Sett’s surcoat. He tried to pull free, but I grabbed his arm, digging my fingers into his flesh. “He did it on his own by ordering the burning of cities and innocent men.”
“And here I thought you couldn’t betray him any more than you already had,” Sett spat.
The injustice of his words stung me and I flung my arm in the direction Minister Manshin had escaped. “That man is the only one who can help Empress Miko, and helping Empress Miko stops Grace Bahain marrying her and getting rid of Gideon, because that’s what he means to do, Sett. I came back because Gideon needs to know Grace Bahain is not his friend, that he intends to turn on him, that—”
“You think he doesn’t know that? You think he hasn’t always been aware of how dangerous this would be, holding his own in a political world he knows so little about? Every decision he has made has been with an eye to the power of the Kisian lords he had to court, and now—”
He snapped his jaw closed upon the rest of his words, gritting his teeth and staring into the corner of the room as though haunted by something he saw there.
“And now?” I prompted, fear speeding the thump of my heart. “And now what, Sett? Is Gideon… is Gideon all right? He is not… dead?”
Sett shook his head. “Oh no, not dead.”
“Then what?”
He jabbed a finger hard into my chest. “I told you he would need you. I told you he would need your help, need you to be there for him, and you know what? Not for a moment did I doubt you would do it, not for a moment did I fear for him, knowing you would be there, but you chose honour over him. You chose to care more for the weight of your soul than for him. You chose to doubt him. To question. To make him afraid of every decision he made, fearing it was the wrong one even when there were no other choices. If not here then where? If not now then when?”
The barrage of his condemnation was not just like punches to the face or the gut, but like he had prised open my chest and squeezed my heart until I could not breathe for the pain of it. Because whatever my reasons had been, however I had tried to
hold to our tenets, I had sacrificed Gideon to do so, unwilling to see his purpose beyond the wrongs he had committed in its name.
Gideon had cared nothing for honour and tenets and even the future of our people when I had needed him most. He ought to have told Herd Master Sassanji I had run away from my apprenticeship, but he hadn’t. He ought to have encouraged me to go back, but he hadn’t. Not then and not later, though our standing upon the plains had dropped in the aftermath of that day.
“I’m going to him,” I said.
“Oh yes? And how far do you think you’ll get?”
“I won’t go alone. I will take my Swords with me.”
His laughter was a humourless little snort. “They are hardly your Swords anymore.”
No one had challenged me for the position of Captain, but neither had any of them fought to keep me as their leader. Perhaps they would rather go on being commanded by Sett, but if they really believed in Gideon and what he was building they would want to stop his Kisian allies ruining it all.
Steeling myself with clenched fists, I said, “Then I challenge you for the captaincy of the Second Swords of Torin.”
Sett began to laugh. “I am not the captain of the Second Swords of Torin,” he said. “But what can Yitti do but accept your challenge? Since you don’t listen to me, I will have to hope you will listen to the end of his blade.”
“I will not let Gideon down this time,” I said, the words softly spoken though they cut at my very soul, at the crust of pride I wore over my shame. “You have my word.”
I pressed my fists in salute, but Sett merely grunted, an ugly look flickering across his face before he turned toward the stairs.
24. CASSANDRA
I had hoped to have left the nightmare of Koi behind forever, yet as the sun set our carriage bowled toward the impenetrable city without slowing. Empress Hana had demanded speed over safety, but still her time was running out. The stink of decaying flesh had started as a faint trace only to grow as afternoon fled, concentrated by the lack of fresh air in our tight little box. At least the hieromonk’s dead body still moved well, and the paint kept some colour on his pallid cheeks.
We had stopped talking. She because she had lines to rehearse and a corpse to tend; me because I was just too tired. And the weight of fatigue was all the worse for knowing what was coming. In the body of Empress Hana Ts’ai I was being carried into Chiltaen-held Koi as a prisoner, by none other than Empress Hana Ts’ai herself, in the body of the hieromonk of Chiltae. It was the sort of nonsense no one would believe.
I wheezed a laugh, while outside, the gates of Koi drew ever nearer.
The hieromonk stared out the window as we took the first of many turns winding down into the city. At the bottom of the hill it basked in the last of the daylight. Rain had just passed, leaving it sparkling like a bag of spilt gold, a shimmer that continued out beyond the walls. I shifted closer to the window.
“Fuck.”
“What is it?” In a moment the empress was beside me in her hieromonk-skin, the pair of us staring at an expanse of military fortifications. Tents and pens and makeshift buildings, all caught within a palisade wall.
“That’s a lot of Chiltaen soldiers.”
“It is,” she agreed. “More than I thought they had left. Reports of the army they had at Mei’lian must have been exaggerated.”
“Or someone knew what was going to happen and made sure they weren’t all there.”
The hieromonk’s curiously lifted brows were no less disdainful for knowing the empress was inside him. “Something you aren’t telling me, Miss Marius?”
I had been thinking of Leo and the strange way he had of knowing my thoughts, but I shook my head.
The carriage began to slow.
“Still time to change your mind,” I said. “Going in there will get us both killed.” I gestured in the direction of the unexpected army. “If you needed further proof.”
Outside, a guard shouted, and over the rattle of wheels came the sound of gates creaking open. The carriage’s rumble quietened with the change to smoother stone, then evening-bathed Koi ambled by, a shadow of its former self. The walls and gates survived untouched, but inside the city, burn scars blackened whole streets, and smashed terracotta tiles clogged the gutters. Windows had been boarded and doorways left agape, and those few braving the streets kept their heads down and their hoods up despite the blessed break in the rain. A few ran at the sight of our carriage and guilt tugged at the heart I had been sure I did not possess.
I moved away from the window. The Kisians had killed many Chiltaens throughout history, had sacked our cities and burned our fields. Now was a poor time to feel sorry for them.
The road steepened as we raced through the darkening city, and despite the empress’s continued urging for speed, the horses dropped from a trot to a walk, leaving her to tug fretfully at the linen mask hiding her slit throat.
When the carriage finally stopped, the empress had the hieromonk out of his seat and through the door before anyone could open it. I followed, bound hands making the task difficult to achieve with grace.
“Your Holiness,” one of the castle guards said as she descended into the road. “We feared you lost when we heard what happened in the capital.”
“I was fortunate to have been travelling behind the army at the time,” she answered with the hieromonk’s voice. “I must speak with the commander. Fetch a palanquin.”
The word came out with the empress’s accented Kisian, but although the guard’s brows lifted in surprise it was a big step from “the hieromonk said a word strangely” to “the hieromonk is a dead man being worn by a Kisian empress.” The guard’s gaze flicked to me and his surprise was drowned beneath a wave of astonishment. “Empress Hana.”
I froze, unsure what a deposed empress would do at such a time. She came to my rescue. “The palanquin, man, where is it?”
The guard saluted. “Sorry, Your Holiness, Commander Aulus hasn’t been using it as he prefers to walk rather than be lazy.”
Commander Aulus. I committed the name to memory and hoped the empress would do the same.
“Understandable,” the hieromonk said, and I was impressed the empress inside him didn’t bristle at the man’s disdain. “Unfortunately, the empress is unwell and cannot walk the distance. So bring it. At once.”
“Yes, Your Holiness. At once, Your Holiness.”
By the time it arrived the pair of Chiltaen guards on duty had taken to staring fixedly at one another’s helmets, while the remaining members of Captain Aeneas’s men milled uncertainly behind the hieromonk’s carriage. No one seemed to know what to do and I cringed inwardly. This was not a good start. All we needed now was for the hieromonk’s body to start stiffening and there would be trouble.
Eventually four Kisian servants came hurrying down the slope with a palanquin rocking between them. I tried to catch the empress’s eye, but she pointedly avoided my gaze as she invited me to enter. I all but tumbled in. She achieved a far more graceful entry despite wearing a corpse. Once we were both inside one of the carriers tried to stretch the curtains to hide the castle’s defences from view, but a gate guard jabbed him with the butt of his spear and told them to hurry.
And hurry they did for the first part of the winding journey, but like the horses they soon slowed, puffing, as they made their way up the interminable slope to the castle proper.
“Do you know the way through this maze?” I said, keeping my voice low though I doubted the carriers could hear anything over their thudding steps and ragged breathing.
“Of course.” The hieromonk’s face owned wounded pride. “I am an Otako.”
“No, you’re Creos Villius, hieromonk of Chiltae, chosen of the One True God, and you’d better damn well remember it if you want to get through this alive.”
She raised his mousy-coloured brows. “Oh, you care what I do now? I thought you wanted no part of this.”
“I don’t want any part of this, but now I’m here
I’d like to get out again in one piece. The hieromonk didn’t need the mask to look like he was wearing one. If you want to pass for him you need to stop using your face so much. Keep it blank. Keep your voice even. Act like—”
“An empress?”
“Something like that, yes.”
She fixed the hieromonk’s eyes upon me, the intent look enough to make me shudder at the memory of him. “You should remember the same thing, Miss Marius. People expect that body to act a certain way. I know it’s hard when you have long since lost yourself to fury and hurt, but you must summon as much pride as you can, let it strengthen your every movement and stiffen your spine so it cannot, and will not, bend.”
“Lost myself to fury?”
The hieromonk’s brows went up. “You—”
“Eyebrows.”
She let out a snort of air and relaxed the dead man’s face. “You cannot be surprised,” she went on, mimicking his monotone. “You and I are not so dissimilar. We were raised in the knowledge that our only value lay in what men could do with us, and we both found a way to turn it against them. I too have been an angry woman all my life, slowly drowning in what always felt like the sucking swamp of social expectation. But I am proud of my name. Of my family. Of my heritage and of my people. And that I have worn like a cloak, keeping me sane while I smile and simper and pretend to be the only version of me that’s allowed to exist.”
In the hieromonk’s smooth tone her words tore through me, all the more painful for being unexpected. This woman, this Dragon Empress with her failing body and her disintegrating power, had lived a life torn by the same frustrations as I had. Had found ways to cope as I had, hiding the sharp edges of her soul behind a proud mask as I had hidden mine behind cold crassness.