by Devin Madson
I am a captain of the Torin. The gods are on my side. I am a captain of the Torin. The gods are—
A laugh burst from my lips, sending a frown flitting across Yitti’s face. “Like the gods give a fuck what we do,” I said, and a surge of anger roared from the depths of my soul. I lunged, no graceful slash but a swing full of rage that caught Yitti off guard. He had just time enough to duck and lift his blade and they clanged together, reverberating in the streets of the dying city. Yitti staggered back off balance, but though I swung again, pressing my advantage, he slid beneath my blade and kicked my knee.
Stones rushed to meet me, battering head and shoulder as I rolled, all sense of where he was stolen by the stampede of refugees shaking the ground. The watching faces spun around me as I leapt to unsteady feet, feeling naked without a second sword to hold protectively before me.
Sunlight flashed into my eyes, the bright shock of it there and gone as I ducked and slashed at the incoming Yitti. He twisted away and brought his blade around, nicking my arm, but it was my thigh that bled. So much for Empress Miko’s careful stitching. Whether Yitti saw the blood or not he pressed me hard on the right side, forcing me to defend with it, to step with it, to lead with it, every one of his methodical strikes only adding to my unseen suffering.
Eska’s jeering anger was absent from Yitti’s calm face, as again and again he struck at me only to be repelled. At any other time I might have laughed at how reluctant he seemed to strike a killing blow, but he kept coming, kept blocking and stepping, and if I did not finish this soon, I would dash myself to death against him like a wave against a rocky cliff.
I darted in, ready to feign a strike, but again light stabbed into my eyes like a blade and I flinched back. A line of fire cut the length of my arm, leaking blood as all around me voices rose in fury. Aftershocks of light stole all detail from the scene, so I held my ground, my sword raised protectively as I listened for the sound of close footsteps amid the shouting.
“Grab him!”
“That’s not allowed!”
“Take that blade!”
“Quiet!” snapped the unmistakable voice of Captain Lashak e’Namalaka. “You will all stand your ground. This challenge is still in progress and until it is concluded we must show the proper respect. Bes, Ishaq, hold him down. In accordance with our code we will deal with foul play once this is settled.”
Foul play. The light. I peered into the evening shadows as my vision cleared, hunting the scuffle. A group of Namalaka forced someone to their knees and kept them there, hands heavy upon their shoulders. And when the Sword looked up with a snarl it was Sett who glared at me, Sett who winced as the Namalaka pinned his legs to the stones with their boots.
Since you don’t listen to me, I will have to hope you will listen to the end of his blade.
“All quiet!” Captain Lashak repeated. “The challenge must continue.”
With an effort I dragged my gaze back to Yitti standing a few paces away, his blade lowered. He lifted his brows, asking a silent question, a question he gave voice to when I did not move. “Blood has been drawn, do you yield?”
“Dishonourable blood,” I said, every fear for Gideon, for the future of my people, having turned to steel inside me. “I do not yield.”
His gaze flicked to the wound on my thigh, but his flash of concern was squeezed aside by a nod and he lifted his sword. Dregs of evening light glinted off the blade. Had that been how Sett blinded me?
Yitti came at me, and as though the lump of anger in my gut weighed me down, I did not move. I thrust out, but he caught my blade in a wide slash that opened both our guards, yet without a second sword I could not strike. Yitti didn’t have a second blade either, but he did have a boot, which he slammed down hard upon my injured thigh, sending such an eruption of pain through me that I fell back, seeing black patches as the world spun. Still more blood leaked from the empress’s stitching.
“Yield!”
I had demanded the same of Eska, had warned him it was his last chance, but anger and pride had forced him on and now I understood. To yield would mean giving up and I could not do that, not again.
“Yield, Rah!” Yitti spat. “You’re injured.”
Deep shuddering breaths kept the darkness from drowning me and I scowled at him across the shadow-soaked road. “Not a wound of your making,” I said, glancing my hatred at Sett, who glared back. “I do not yield.”
Yitti growled in annoyance and once more lifted his blade. He closed the space with a few slow strides and thrust first, forcing me back. But I managed to nick his hand, and with a hiss he slashed low, ripping flesh and blood from my other thigh. I staggered a step as heat seeped out to soak my torn clothing.
“Yield,” Yitti said again, and this time the hint of pity in his voice fanned my fury.
“I will not abandon him to die!”
Once again he had lowered his blade and this time I moved before I had finished speaking, feigning a jab at his face with my absent off-hand weapon and slashing in low. But he did not even flinch, just caught my blade on his and, stepping in to cramp the space, punched hard into my elbow. My sword slid through my hand and there was Yitti before me, the edge of his blade touching my throat like a caress. My sweaty fingers opened and closed upon air.
“This is your last chance, Rah,” he said, the words whispered over the sword between us. “Please, yield. I give you my word I will take the Second Swords home.”
I looked into his eyes and found no lie in them, no anger, only sorrow and the implacable promise of a man whose honour had never been questioned. This the man who had performed his role as healer despite his distaste for the job, a man who had never courted dissent, a man whose head it would have broken my heart to take no matter the reason, and I had to trust him.
“I came here for your help,” I said, my words low and vibrant and for his ears only. “Gideon is in danger. The Kisians are not the friends you think them, just as we were not the allies the Chiltaens thought us.”
Yitti stared back, his expression unshifting. Still the blade touched my throat, and there, an instant from death, all I could do was hope I had not been wrong about him. “If I yield will you help me?” I whispered, my lips sticking as though they hadn’t been used for a long time. “Please?”
“No.”
Anger had hardened his expression, making a mockery of my doubt. “No?”
“How many chances does a man get, Rah? How many mistakes and failures before enough is enough? Gideon is done. You are done. We are going home, which is what you ought to have been challenging me to do.”
It was a deeper cut than he could have achieved with any weapon.
“You cannot doubt either that I mean it or that I will kill you,” he said. “Yield, Rah. Yield. You cannot help him if you’re dead.”
The blade burned cold against my neck and there was no lie in Yitti’s face. I had no choice.
“I yield.”
The words rang into the silence, clanging like the heavy weights they were. To yield was to be exiled, to be banished alone, but no one seemed sure what to do or what to say. Had there ever been an exiled exile before?
Sounds from the dying city eked through the deep silence, but no Levanti spoke or moved. Captain Lashak unfroze first and strode into the circle. “Rah e’Torin, you are hereby exiled from the Torin herd and from the empire of Levanti Kisia. You cannot return to our lands, on pain of death, before the completion of one cycle spent atoning for your dishonour before the gods. But since we are already exiled, I’m not sure—”
“You fucking little shit!” In a flurry of limbs, Sett threw himself at me, sending us both crashing to the ground. My shoulder and hip slammed onto stone, but the stunning pain was nothing to the shock of his fist in my face. Lightning flared before my eyes and through the back of my skull as he hit me again and again, the pains melding into a continuous agony of existence. I could feel nothing of the rest of my body, could barely think or move or even hear, snippets
of his rage all that got through to me.
“This is all your fault! You could have—You selfish shit, you—Just die!”
He must have been pulled off me, but the dizzy sense that I was no longer in my body remained and I could not move, could only lie still while fuzzy shapes shifted around me.
“Rah, here.” Someone gripped my arms and my shoulders or maybe more than one someone because I wasn’t helping much, yet they managed to get me on my feet, my legs trembling sticks beneath me.
“Rah e’Torin,” Lashak said, her voice an anchor amid the slowly focussing blur. “It is your place to decide the fate of Sett e’Torin before you depart. His actions are a stain upon all Levanti honour, the action of flashing light into the eyes of a challenger alone worthy of death.”
The silence broke in a wave of whispers and only then did I realise how many Swords were watching and how many Kisian soldiers had stayed. They were all vague shapes in the haze of the burning city, my returning sight caught to Sett and Sett alone. I limped toward him, a buzz of fury beneath my skin all that moved me.
I parted my lips to speak, but my mouth was full of blood and I spat it at his feet. “You…” I began, swaying. “You attack me for having abandoned Gideon, you rail about how I should have been there for him, about how much he needed me, but where were you, Sett? Where were you? You’re his blood brother, born of the same womb. He has many close supporters, people who have been here far longer than I, yet always it is me you spit and shout at, me you expect the world of, my shoulders upon which you drop the weight of responsibility.”
“Because he loves you!”
“That’s not how love works!”
A seething silence followed. I could not even think for the rage and hurt swirling through my head, every throb of my skull making me more and more convinced it had been split open.
“Well?” Captain Lashak prompted. “What is your pronouncement?”
Sett glared at me. “Go on, Rah, spill your incorruptible honour on me, your perfect virtue. You who shamed yourself and your people. Whisperer.”
“Go to the hells, Sett.”
The First Sword of the Namalaka nodded without emotion, and in the breath of silence before the great outcry she stepped toward the Swords holding Sett captive. They forced him forward onto hands and knees and he did not fight, did not plead, just laughed. A low, rumbling laugh that cut beneath the uproar as, heedless of both, Captain Lashak lifted her drawn sword and brought it down point first upon the back of Sett’s neck. His laugh died with a gurgle and his body fell flat upon the road, splayed like a gutted rabbit.
“The dishonoured one has been dealt with according to our code!” Captain Lashak shouted over the thunderous uproar. “If anyone so much as touches Rah e’Torin in retaliation for his decision they will answer to me. Let him walk!”
I stared at Sett’s fallen body and told myself I had not meant the words so, that my curse had been taken too literally, but the fury still seething in my blood was bitterly satisfied at the outcome and I knew it to be false comfort.
Anger seethed in the circle around me. Sett had been their captain. Blood brother of their emperor. And I had just willed his death.
“Go on,” hissed Yitti, still beside me. “Go.”
I picked up my fallen sword and limped toward the city gates, increasingly sure I could not see out of one of my eyes but unable to quite grasp why. My mind seemed to have room for Sett’s body, Sett’s spitting fury, and nothing else. Every step I expected someone to stand in my way, to strike me, to trip me, to gut me where I stood, but every Sword stepped aside with a mutter or a jeer. I didn’t want to see their faces, but I refused to look at my feet so I met their stares with all the pride I had left.
Once the Levanti had let me pass the Kisians did too, their curious, pitying looks harder to bear than the anger of my own people. I wanted to run but forced myself to walk all the way to the gate. And then I ran.
26. MIKO
A covered cart smuggled me into Jie’s camp, proof that whatever his failings, he was not a fool. It would have been an easy win to carry me through the camp like a trophy, to let the southern soldiers vent their frustrations throwing rotten rations at me, but not all loyalties were split so clearly by geography. To execute me respectfully for treason was one thing, to publicly humiliate me might only fan the flames of dissent. It would have been the vengeful act of a child, and therefore one he would not allow.
I saw no one upon my arrival, not even Jie. A pair of guards quickly hustled me out of sight to a repurposed storeroom with a solid, swinging door and no windows. A small grating in the roof allowed a faint chink of moonlight to spill from a light well, illuminating nothing but a hastily laid sleeping mat.
For a converted storeroom it made a good cell. It took mere minutes to exhaust all hope of escape, leaving me hours of sitting with my thoughts, alternately angry and despondent, determined and hopeless. And in the darkest moments it was not my mother’s words that returned to me, not Emperor Kin’s, not even my brother’s, but Jie’s. You did not even let me try! You just got rid of me like the annoying little boy I am.
Every remembrance of it made me rise from the floor and pace, recalling all the times I had been told the same. That I ought to have been born a boy. That no woman could rule the empire. It was not the same though, not really. A child had not the experience, the knowledge or appearance. What soldier would feel confident riding into battle with a little boy leading the way?
You are not so very far removed from childhood yourself, my inner voice would say when I tried to defend myself to the darkness. And what soldier feels better with an unseasoned woman leading the charge?
“But I have proved myself!” I snapped at the empty room. “It is not the same.”
It wasn’t, but neither was it so very different.
You did not even let me try.
The words turned my determination to guilt and my anger to dross. But if age was no reason to remove him from power, then neither could it excuse poor decisions. An emperor ought to die before they let Kisia be so shamefully diminished. An emperor ought to fight. To fight and fight and never give up, not roll over like a beaten dog before ever riding into battle no matter how fearsome the Levanti were.
The memory of Rah joined me in the darkness. Silent, watchful Rah, always confident and sure and unflinching in his honour. I had wanted to hate him, had tried so hard to hold on to that anger, but in the end, I could only hate him for making it impossible to hate his people.
Footsteps sounded outside and I stilled my pacing, ears pricked to the clack of heavy wooden sandals. Not a guard then. Not a servant. Yet the quick approach slowed, the hesitant steps accompanied by the faint, mournful tinkle of ceramic bowls. The steps stopped some distance from the door, but my guard did not speak. I held my breath. I dared not hope and yet… Perhaps, were it just Jie and me, we might reach an understanding.
“My lord,” rumbled the guard outside my door, his tone wary. “I am under strict orders not to let anyone see the… prisoner.”
“Yes, my orders,” spoke a voice that sank my heart. “Now I am giving you a new order. I will see her.”
I looked around in the hope an escape route had suddenly appeared, but one had not.
A key grated in the lock, and with a squeaky click the storeroom door opened just far enough to admit Lord Oyamada and his tray before closing again. “Ah, I have brought you tea,” the man said, a lantern swinging from his hand. “I hoped you would not yet be asleep.”
He looked about as though expecting to find a table. Finding none, he set the tray down with an overemphasised groan of aching joints.
“Why are you here?” I said, remaining by the wall when he invited me to join him.
“To talk. To drink,” he said, settling himself upon his knees with a wince. “This is our last opportunity, after all, and whatever I think of your family and your intentions, your knowledge is invaluable.”
“You’ll not e
xecute me if I give you information?”
The man laughed, a tinkle of ceramic joining in as he moved the teapot. “Oh no, you’re going to be executed either way, but as you professed your duty to the empire, I knew you would want to share your information in service of it.”
“Only if you could be trusted not to use my information for your own gain. You want to know who the biggest contributors of soldiers to the military districts are, perhaps. You want to know who fought for Katashi Otako in the rebellion so you know which families to fight for and which ones to let die, but oh no, all those records are in Mei’lian and you can’t get to them, can’t even be sure the Levanti have left them untouched.”
An unpleasant smile curved his lips while he served the tea. “You think you’re very clever, don’t you? I am not worried about the Levanti. What do they know about defending a city?”
“Then what do you want to know?”
“What you were planning to do. I understand pushing Jie away and stealing his throne when you had an army at your disposal, but what are you now? Just a single young woman with no soldiers, no family, and no money, and yet rather than running for safety, you came back. Why?”
“Because Kisia is all I know. All I care for.”
“And so?” He slid a bowl across the tray, his shrewd eyes looking up through bushy brows.
What had I been planning? I had been travelling to Mei’lian to find Minister Manshin, sure he would not abandon me, that he would have a plan. I had been clinging to that goal with the obsession of one who had nothing else.
I lifted my chin, still not joining Lord Oyamada upon the floor. “My plans are my own business.”
“So you had one? That does surprise me. You are very like your mother, and if Empress Hana was renowned for anything other than her affairs, it was for darting through the court like a fiery arrow without stopping to consider her direction. I imagine that is how she burned as many allies as she did enemies. Are you sure you will not join me for tea? It is very good. And it’s the last cup you will ever have.” He sipped his own, his top lip becoming pointed like a turtle’s upon the rim. “I’m afraid Jie isn’t coming,” he went on when still I didn’t move. “Were you hoping for him? Yes, I imagine you were. Sweet, impressionable little Jie. Given the chance you might have talked him around. It’s too bad he isn’t old enough to be swayed by his cock, hmm?” He nodded at the tea he’d poured, before lifting his own steaming bowl once more to his lips.