by Devin Madson
His visit wasn’t going how I had expected. Proud, sneering Lord Oyamada was a different man without his puppet grandson to impress. Grace Bachita had been the same, and I couldn’t but think poorly of Emperor Kin’s foresight in choosing two such men to guide his son’s footsteps. No doubt he hadn’t planned to die.
The smell of the tea tickled my nose and dampened my tongue, and making a show of reluctant politeness, I knelt, joining Lord Oyamada in the circle of lantern light he had brought with him. Lazy swirls of steam still rose from the surface of the tea, and for a moment I was back in my mother’s rooms as a child, bade to sit still and silent while she dressed. I had watched the steam curl from her teapot, been mesmerised by the glint of sunlight on gold silk threads, and the musical crack of reeds as maids came and went, whispering.
I cupped the tea bowl in both hands and lifted it, thrusting away the thought it might truly be my last. I was to die in the morning and right now only the man kneeling across from me could change that. A man who would give his whole fortune to see me dead.
Steam billowed into my face as I looked down at the sunken dregs in the bottom of the bowl, and almost I swallowed my own tongue. Not just dregs, but small, clear crystals mixed in with the leaves. Helio salt. Someone had slipped it into Mama’s tea once, perhaps the same someone, but with his eyes fixed upon me I could not even take the time to wonder, could not show by look or tremble that I had seen it.
“May I ask you something, Lord Oyamada?” I said, jerking the bowl back from my face like one struck by a sudden thought. Hot liquid slopped over my hand and I did not need to feign my yelp. I set the bowl down and mopped the hot spill inelegantly with the skirt of my robe. I took my time about the task, enough to slow my rapid heartbeat before looking up. Lord Oyamada had frozen with his own bowl inches from his lips.
“You wanted to ask me something,” he said when I returned his quizzical look. “Something of enough consequence to make you spill your tea.” He set down his bowl. “Here, let me pour you some more while you recall your question.”
“Oh yes, please do,” I said. “I only wished to know how you intend to keep Jie under your control when he is of age. Shall you play the dedicated adviser and hope for the best? Or perhaps you have some more ingenious method in mind.”
The man’s bushy eyebrows lifted even higher. “Under my control?” he said, barely glancing up as he refilled my bowl. “What a strange notion. You speak as though I dislike my grandson and wish to take his place. For what it is worth, Highness, you could not be farther from the truth.” Here none of the grandiose railing he had subjected me to back in the tent. This Lord Oyamada was quietly spoken and watchful. “It is you I do not like, and not only for your name but for the danger you represent to an idealistic young emperor. It truly is a blessing that you possess neither beauty nor a conciliatory personality, else getting Jie to agree to your execution might have been impossible. As it was, you made it much easier by so kindly pointing out that you had no interest in being his bride.” He laughed. “Is there anything as fragile as a boy’s pride?”
Lord Oyamada gestured to the renewed tea bowl with a smile. “Your tea, Your Highness.”
My lips had not touched the poison, I knew they had not, and yet the room seemed to spin and shrink in upon me. This was it. If I didn’t drink it, he would have another plan. A weapon, perhaps, hidden in his sash. This man didn’t only want me dead, he wanted me dead without the fanfare, without the watching crowd, and without the final opportunity to appeal to Jie because there was a chance, however small, I might find the right words to reach him. I had feared not making it past the morning, now it seemed unlikely I would even survive the night.
There was no way out.
I took the bowl, all too aware of Lord Oyamada’s gaze upon me. Watching. Waiting. I did not meet it, but I could imagine his tongue tracing his lower lip, dry with anticipation. His moment had come. Drinking the tea would make an easy end of this hell, but beneath that thought anger boiled. So often had assassins come for me because of my name, so often had I been told I was not good enough, that it was a pity I had been born a girl, and that I could not rule, should not. Would not. And I would not let them win.
Steam rose from the bowl, its ceramic warm in my hands. He had poured it with his right hand, so I hunted his left hip for signs of a hidden blade. I had to be smart. There might not be time to make a second guess.
“Something the matter, Highness?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I am just musing on what a fine night it is to die.”
I threw the bowl at his head. Lord Oyamada flung up his hand, but though it stopped the bowl from hitting his face it didn’t stop the hot tea. He yowled with shock or pain or both and I crashed over the tray to pluck at reams of folded silk only to find no blade.
He pulled it from the other side of his sash and swiped blindly, eyes still half closed from the scalding water. I leapt back, kicking shattered bowls and sending the tray sliding into the lantern.
Lantern.
I snatched it up and swung it into Oyamada’s head. The man dropped amid a dying flash of light and a tinkle of broken glass. Cooling oil hissed.
A key scratched at the lock and the door opened a sliver, the body of the guard blocking the light from the passage. “My lord?”
Slinking through shadows, I tugged free one of my remaining hairpins.
“My lord?” The door opened a little wider, enough to spill light over the dazed Oyamada.
“My lord!” The man lifted a blade, eyes darting in search of me. “Your—”
I plunged my hairpin into the side of his throat, the resistance of so much muscle turning my stomach. The man scrabbled at it, gurgling and trying to speak, his eyes wide and imploring.
“I’m sorry.” I darted through the door. “I’m sorry.”
I slammed the storeroom closed and turned the key with a shaking, bloodstained hand. The passage was empty. I was free, but what did it matter? I still had no allies. No army. I was completely and utterly alone, making a mockery of all those who had died to help me come this far. No matter how hard I fought I just kept losing, the empire crumbling beneath my touch.
Something hit the inside of the locked door. Muffled, Lord Oyamada shouted, “Let me out! You foul, traitorous whore!”
He hammered his fists upon the door, making enough noise to wake a household. I hurried toward the stairs. In the distance someone shouted. Another voice followed and I halted to listen. More voices, growing muffled, then nothing.
I crept up the stairs through alternate pools of light and dark, tensing whenever the house creaked. Every moment I expected guards to appear, but the house remained quiet, even when I reached the dim shadows of the main floor. Yet the house did not feel asleep, more like an animal hunkered amid the grass to watch and wait, the only sign of life its slowly swishing tail.
Upon reaching a long gallery I allowed hope to flare. Golden moonlight streamed in through tall, narrow windows, and moonlight meant outside and outside meant freedom. And there, thrown on a table in haste, sat my dagger, its unsheathed blade glinting orange.
Some luck at last.
I picked it up, feeling so much better with it in my hand. Now I just had to get past the guards that would surely be standing outside and then…
My toes dipped into the stream of golden light spilling through the window, and I looked up. Not a lantern as I had supposed. Not even a golden moon.
I hurried to the window, my breath held. Mei’lian was ablaze, smoke and flames reaching to a cloudless night sky. I had rejoiced in our first truly fine day since the beginning of the storm season, but now I willed the clouds to return, to drench the city and save it from becoming nothing but ash and memory. But I was no god and the clouds remained parted, allowing the stars the finest view.
I could not move. My heart ached and tears pricked my eyes. Mei’lian had been my home. I had tried to fight for it and failed, had promised the people I would return only
to fail again. And now I could imagine their screams as fire licked from window to window and danced along tiled roofs. Everywhere the choking stink of burning flesh and smoke and—
“They must have known they couldn’t hold it.”
I all but swallowed my tongue as Jie appeared in the shadows beside the open shutter. Had he been there the whole time? Waiting? The boy did not look around. “So they chose to burn it rather than let us take it back.”
Did he think I was Lord Oyamada returned from downstairs? I stepped away slowly.
“I wish I could just reach out and—” He stretched a hand toward the window and pinched thumb and forefinger together as though squashing the city, a hiss like dying coals spitting between his teeth. “After all, I’m meant to be a god, am I not?”
I took another step back, preparing to sprint for the doors. They were closed, the blazing city staining them gold.
“They’re locked,” the boy said, still not looking around. “I’m hiding from the generals.” He barked a bitter laugh. “Isn’t that a brave thing to do? I guess you were right about me being a stupid little boy.”
“I never said that.”
He looked around, his expression registering no surprise at the sight of me as his gaze travelled from my bloodstained robe to the knife clutched in my hand. “You didn’t have to. Going to kill me? Is that your plan?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“You don’t move and I walk out.”
Jie shook his head, glancing back at the burning city, its flickering flames turning night to day. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can. You’re the emperor. You can do anything you want.”
“Not if I want to stay emperor. I have just lost Mei’lian on the eve of battle. If I lose our traitorous prisoner too, I may as well hack off my own head to save my generals the trouble.”
“But you are Emperor Kin’s heir.”
Jie laughed, but the sound owned no humour. “You’re so caught up on the importance of your name and your family that you can’t see beyond it. Names don’t matter anymore. They haven’t mattered since my father took the throne. He broke the divinity of the Otakos. He set a new precedent. And having seen it done once everyone knows it can be done again. Kisia doesn’t need an Otako or a Ts’ai, it needs a strong and capable leader, and as soon as they stop believing I can be that, as soon as they realise how much easier it is to rule without me, I’ll be as dead as you and a new name will rise to the throne. General Moto perhaps. Or General Rushin. Someone who commands the loyalty of the soldiers like Emperor Kin once did. That is the only sort of leader Kisia needs now.”
His words were wise beyond his age. He had been sheltered from life and raised upon lessons and war diaries, on politics and history and family lineages, and from outside the court had understood Kisia better than I had from within. An icy fear trickled through me. Was I outdated and unnecessary?
“Either way,” he said, still watching the city burn, “I’m probably dead now.”
“Then let me go.”
Jie turned from the window, firelight caressing the side of his youthful face. “No.” Once again his gaze slid to the knife in my hand. “How many assassination attempts did my father survive?”
The answer was sixty-four, but before I could speak, he drew his own dagger—not a common soldier’s knife but an ornate blade made for an emperor.
“He told me once it had become a sort of game in the end,” he said. “A test. People didn’t want him dead so much as they wanted to prove he could die. But he rose from the ashes of the rebellion stronger than ever and renewed his legend every time they failed to finish him.” Jie spun the dagger in his soft, fine-boned hands, the movement far more skilful than I had expected. “Only one of us is going to live to see the dawn, so tonight I start my own legend.”
He shed his imperial outer robe as I backed away across the gallery floor. “No,” I said, cold sweat sticking my feet to the wood at every step. “We can think of something else. I admit I wanted to hurt you when we first met, I wanted you to suffer because I could not make Kin suffer for what he did to my brother. To my mother. To me.” He stepped toward me, a head shorter and yet menacing like a wolf. “I wanted to kill Bachita too, wanted to be rid of him before he could force me into marriage, before he could…” I let the words hang, unspoken. What did I know of a man’s lusts? The memory of Rah in the bathhouse flashed into my mind only to be pushed away along with its uncomfortable desires.
Jie stalked toward me, his step a soft clack. “Uncle Bachi didn’t want to marry you,” he scoffed with the confidence of a child. “He always said the only good Otako was a dead Otako. If you’re going to lie to me at least make it convincing.”
“You want to hear the truth?” I said, retreating another step. “The truth is I am taller than you. I am stronger than you. And I have been training longer than you. You can’t win this fight.”
“I can because I must.”
Tanaka had owned such assurance, and the hole my dead twin had left in my heart widened like a wailing maw. Grief I had not let myself feel lumped in my throat and I took another step back, my grip on the knife shaking.
My back hit the wall, heralding my last chance to change his mind. “Jie, you are the only family I have left,” I said. “Don’t make me do this.” Tears stung my eyes. Too many dead or lost to me. Tanaka. Mother. Ryoji. Edo. Manshin. Kitado.
The boy stopped advancing, but the bright, fevered light didn’t leave his eyes. “I’m not making you do anything.”
He jabbed at my gut only to pull up short and thrust savagely for my heart. Had I stepped left instead of right he might have killed me in a single move; instead his blade plunged into the meat of my upper arm. Pain sheared through my tired body like the bitter winter wind, but there was no pause, no time to think or feel or fear as he withdrew it with a frustrated growl and sliced at my throat. I dropped, and jammed the point of my own knife through his left foot.
Jie howled amid a symphony of tiny toe bones cracking, and lifting his foot to cradle it, he kicked me in the face. I fell back, pain thudding through the bridge of my nose and into my head. “We don’t need to do this,” I said, pressing a hand to my nose. “We can be smarter than our fathers, we can put our past aside and—”
“It’s too late!” He leapt, the tip of his blade rushing toward my eye. My knife dropped as I caught his arm with both of my hands, the force of his charge throwing me back. My head hit the floor and darkness flared, but I locked my elbows to keep the blade at bay. Firelight gilded the side of his hair, but the rest of him was a snarling shadow as he sought to bury the tip of that ornate dagger in my throat.
Though blood poured from my wound, I held him off. Until Jie bit my wrist. Shock buckled my arms then and he fell onto me. I tried to roll clear only to get caught between his knees, but before he could stab me, I slammed my forehead into his. It hurt more than I had imagined, bone hitting bone, but he jolted back with a cry and his blade leapt from his hand, landing out of reach with a heavy thunk.
We paused, both stunned and bladeless and catching our breath, but before I could beg for a truce, his hands lunged for my throat. Firelit, his eyes gleamed with triumph. I tried to speak, to plead, but the words got lost in a string of strangled sounds and I squirmed instead, refusing to believe that after all this I would still not see the dawn.
A loud knock sounded on the door, cutting across the fevered huff of Jie’s breath. “Your Majesty?”
That voice…
I tightened my hold on Jie’s wrists, trying to pry his hands from my throat. He had the advantage of his whole weight, but—
“Emperor Jie? It’s Lord Manshin, your father’s minister of the left.”
The boy dug his fingertips into my neck. With all my strength I tried to loosen his grip, enough that maybe, just maybe, I could breathe. Could move.
From the other side of the door came the clipped, efficient tone I had come to admire. �
��I have just this day come from Mei’lian, Your Majesty, and whatever our past grievances, I must speak with you immediately.”
Rah had done it. Somehow. He had found me the ally I needed. I was no longer alone. And fighting through the pain in throat and arm and head, I prised Jie’s hands just loose enough to gasp a stinging breath and roll. To the left, then to the right as fast as I could, throwing him off balance. His hands ripped from my throat.
“Emperor Jie?” came the concerned voice from outside. “Are you all right?”
“I’m here!” I tried to shout, but a baby bird croak was all that issued from my lips. “I’m—”
Jie leapt at me again. I wanted to beg and plead for him to stop, but could only roll clear and crawl toward the doors as Manshin knocked again. “Majesty? Majesty!”
I reached the matting beneath the table before Jie landed on my back, slamming my chin into the reeds. Knee cushions scattered as I flailed and bucked him off, spinning around with hoarse words spitting from my lips. “Stop this! We can talk. We can—”
He pounced like a wild animal, and in a tangle of arms and legs and scratching claws we rolled, slamming into the legs of the table and scattering the remaining cushions. If Manshin knocked again I didn’t hear him, couldn’t hear anything beyond the thud of my own desperate heartbeat and Jie’s grunts and snarls as he scrabbled for my throat. I tried to shout for help, to scream, to shake Jie and stop this madness, but the boy dug his nails into my neck like burning needles tearing flesh.