by eden Hudson
“This says a tribe from the Shangyang Mountains is coming to sign the Book of the Empire,” Koida said. “I was not aware you and Father had ridden as far as the mountains.”
“That’s to the southeast,” Shingti said. “We haven’t even ridden in that direction yet.”
Jun stabbed his Spear Hand at Shingti’s ribs. She turned aside easily at the last moment, letting the Ro blade sing past, then slapped Jun on the back of the head with the flat of her left sword.
“Dead,” she declared, dispelling her Sword Hands. As Jun breathlessly declared his defeat, a portion of his Ro flowed into Shingti’s heartcenter, and they bowed to one another. “Thank you for the exercise, skilled soldier. The Spear Hand is a weak technique on its own. Might I suggest developing your High Shield to be used simultaneously as a complement?”
“Thank you, Master Shingti,” Jun gasped. “I will act on your counsel.”
The first princess joined Koida. “The Ji Yu tribe. They’re sending an envoy to negotiate a peaceful alliance with the empire. Father’s going to refuse.”
“Why?” Koida asked.
“Because they robe themselves in dishonor by refusing to meet on the field of honorable battle,” Shingti said, “and by allowing it, the empire would take that stain of dishonor upon itself.”
“Perhaps they heard tales of your conquests and decided it was better to join the empire willingly than to be subjugated by force. Wouldn’t it be wiser to accept their allegiance without the loss of life a war would entail?”
“And water down our empire with cowards who won’t even fight?” Shingti sneered. She leaned over Koida’s shoulder and read the scroll. “Father thinks they’re coming to beg for mercy.”
Koida canted her head a fraction. “But you don’t?”
“I think when a coward’s words fail, watch for their blades.”
“Surely they wouldn’t dare attack within the palace walls,” Koida said.
“Anyone would do anything that might benefit them, little sister,” Shingti said. “That’s why you keep a careful watch on enemies coming within striking distance in the name of peace.”
HOURS LATER, BATHED and dressed for court, Koida stood in the hall outside the Citrine Throne Room while the Exalted Emperor and his Dragonfly general were seated. Unlike the White Jade Feasting Hall, there was no waiting room for the royal family outside the throne room, so noble men and women crowded the area, smiling and bowing when they spotted Koida. Several bared their necks—mostly those whom she had offended repeatedly with her cold disregard in her father’s absence—a subtle stab at her harmlessness, though they would likely claim it was out of deference to her place as the second princess and say that, like the emperor, Second Princess had the divine right to kill whomever she wished.
“Cousin Koida.” Yoichi pushed his way through the crowd to stand beside her. He bowed to her, and she mirrored the motion.
“Cousin Yoichi, I’m so glad you’re here.”
He glanced around the hall. “Trapped in the shallows with the minnows who’ve come to eat the moss off the snapping turtle’s shell. Think the old monster will snap any of them up today?”
Koida covered her smile with one sleeve. “One always hopes.”
“Today, two do,” Yoichi said, waggling his pale brows and sending her into a fit of undignified giggles. When she regained control, he nodded into the throne room. “The gossip says that this new tribe is soiling their robes with fear of our Exalted Emperor and his armies, so they’ve come to bargain their way out of fighting. Think our—apologies, your—father will agree?”
The last trace of merriment disappeared at his correction. Koida hated the flash of discomfort she’d seen in Yoichi’s eyes, but propriety wouldn’t allow her to dismiss his slip of equating himself to the emperor’s legitimate children in eavesdropping distance of all these noble ears.
“It would be foolish for my father not to agree, wouldn’t it?” she said, still using the cousinly speech to cushion the possessive declaration. “Negotiating in an afternoon what could be won in month’s attrition would save time and valuable lives.”
Yoichi nodded. “I only wonder what sort of precedent it will set for dealing with enemy tribes in the future. Will it look like cowardice to bow to a weaker tribe’s wishes just to avoid the battlefield? A softness and fear of death setting into the Exalted Emperor’s bones as he ages?” Seeing the surprise on her face, he hurried to add, “May he live ten thousand years and rule a hundred thousand tribes.”
“Shingti believes they are trying to get within striking distance,” Koida said.
“Cousin Shingti is wise to be wary,” Yoichi said, cupping his chin thoughtfully. The pronouncement was a rare occurrence coming from him. Much of the time, Yoichi and Shingti gracefully avoided speaking to or about one another, a silent rivalry Koida tried to pretend she did not notice. “In truth, we should guard against their words as much as their attacks. Empires are lost just as often to one as the other.”
“You think they come with honeyed lies?”
He frowned at the door as if he could see the tribe in question beyond it. “I think we would be foolish to believe anything they say without first seeing proof of its truth.”
The throne room doors opened.
At the head of the room, beneath the blood-orange banners of the Shyong San Empire, her father sat on the glittering Citrine Throne. Shingti stood at his right hand in full ceremonial battle dress, her Dragonfly helmet tucked under her arm. At Emperor Hao’s left hand sat the smaller and more delicate Amethyst Throne, Koida’s official court placement.
“The second princess, Shyong San Koida, Lilac of the Valley,” the court speaker intoned.
Yoichi turned to her and offered his arm.
“Might I have the pleasure of escorting little cousin to her seat?” His smile revealed none of the concerns he had just given voice.
Koida took his arm, steeling herself for lies, manipulations, and assassins.
Chapter Ten
PRESENT
When the lowest ranked of the nobles were finally seated, the eastern door of the throne room opened. The court speaker stepped forward for the last time.
“Chieftain of the Ji Yu tribe, Ji Yu Raijin.”
Koida leaned forward in her seat, watching as a trio of strangers entered from the eastern door. A small, graceful woman with dark almond eyes and white cotton wrappings covering her face from the nose down. A wiry foreigner with close-shaved yellow hair like dry summer straw and a scarred, flat face like a demon-baiting hound. And just behind them, a lean man with a curling mop of unruly black hair cut short instead of knotted back in the style of the empire. His jade eyes were as cold as the throne Koida sat upon, and his skin a dark olive, as if he spent most days toiling outside like a servant. His face was a mask of stone.
The three could not have looked more different from one another. Koida wondered what sort of tribe these clearly unrelated people could have formed up in the mountains.
They came to the long aisle at the center of the throne room and stopped, awaiting the emperor’s signal.
With ease, Emperor Hao manifested a glowing Ro scepter and extended it.
The woman with the cloth-covered face and the demon-dog faced man stepped to the side, allowing their leader to pass.
The man with the jade eyes approached the throne. Koida noted that his clothing was well made, but simple and sturdy. A loose traveling jacket and pants more akin to a warrior artist’s training attire than a noble’s court robes.
At a respectable distance, the man stopped and did something no other chieftain had ever done before. He knelt before the emperor and touched his forehead to the stone floor.
A soft murmur ran through the court. The emperor frowned with disgust. In the front row of the nobles’ seats, Yoichi had cocked his head, his sharp eyes narrowing. Though Koida couldn’t see her sister’s face from her seat on the Amethyst Throne, Koida imagined Shingti’s had much the same look on
it, weighing and assessing. Deciding whether this was a show of craven groveling or flattery hiding treachery.
When the Ji Yu’s leader looked up, however, Koida could find no trace of groveling or trickery in his cold gaze. Nor did she find the fear of a leader driven to beg for mercy. The man seemed relaxed, even at his ease before the mighty warrior emperor who had united a thousand tribes and ended a hundred thousand lives. Even stranger, this close she could see that the leader was young for such a powerful position, of an age with Shingti and Yoichi.
“Emperor Hao,” the young leader began, his voice a rough baritone that hardly seemed a match for his lean body, as if his vocal cords had been scoured raw with sand. “On behalf of the Ji Yu, I extend to you an offer of peace.”
“You offer us peace?” Hao boomed in disbelief. “As if we feared meeting an unknown mountain tribe on the field of battle!”
“I have no doubt that you harbor no fear of us, having already turned down my requests to negotiate this alliance in private,” Ji Yu Raijin replied. “It’s a mistake of pride and arrogance. We wish only to protect the lives of your armies rather than allow you to throw them away going to war with us.”
The emperor’s face grew steadily redder as the young chieftain spoke, and his shoulders rose and fell visibly. A branching vein throbbed in his temple. Koida braced herself for the eruption.
Hao lurched to his feet. As one, the nobles in the closest seats flinched, but the young chieftain remained still and relaxed.
“I agree to allow this negotiation rather than storming your village and wiping you out, and you dare to insult me in my own palace before my court, before my children? Me, Master of the Living Blade, Exalted Emperor, and Originator of the Shyong San Dynasty!” Hao bellowed. His Ro scepter disappeared. “Kill this puffed-up adder.”
Immediately, the Emperor’s Guard swarmed in from all corners of the throne room, their blood-orange armor clanking and Ro weapons manifesting.
Koida’s eyes widened, her heart fluttering like a panicked sparrow caught in a net. She had thought she’d prepared herself for the worst when she walked into court, but this young chieftain was going to be executed before her very eyes. Nothing in her life had prepared her to watch another human die. The very thought made her stomach sink into a black abyss, but she was paralyzed to the spot, unable to turn away or even close her eyes.
The Emperor’s Guard attacked. The Ji Yu leader eased to his feet, dodging glowing ruby blades with the slightest turns of his shoulders and head. He sidestepped one here and knocked its owner’s arm aside there with a simple palm thrust. Just as another was about to cut him in half, suddenly he was somewhere else. He hardly seemed to move, and yet, like a whirling leaf on a breeze, he never stopped. The best soldiers in the empire could not even graze him.
“Assassin!” Shingti shouted, planting herself between the assassin and the emperor and manifesting a pair of Dual Sword Hands. “Dragonfly Guard, attack!”
At the word assassin, nobles who had been looking on in bloodthirsty excitement a moment before broke out in a panic, some climbing over the benches in their rush to put distance between themselves and the danger.
Soldiers in the iridescent green armor of Shingti’s Dragonfly Guard ran into the roiling crowd, their Ro blades, spears, and shields glowing ruby as they rushed the assassin, while Batsai and the rest of Koida’s personal guard swarmed around her, manifesting their Serpentine Spears and High Shields
The assassin wove through the Dragonfly and Emperor’s Guards like water through rocks, using the soldiers’ direction and speed against them, evading and circling, finger-striking the weak places in their armor—the side of the neck, below the left arm, in the lower ribs, then the top of the spine in quick succession. One by one, the Ro blades dissolved until the guards were slashing at him with empty fists and bashing with shield-less forearms, still missing the elusive young man. They growled and lunged and missed, and in retaliation, he planted palm strikes in the center of their backs.
The air crackled with sudden cold and frost spread across the guards’ armor, covering it in a thin layer of ice. No matter how hard they struggled, they couldn’t budge the frozen joints.
Koida used the arms of her throne to push herself up high enough to see over Batsai’s High Shield. The assassin’s techniques were like nothing she had ever seen. Even Yoichi, whom she assumed was more well-traveled than anyone, looked on with pale brows furrowed and mouth hanging open, as astounded as she was by this strange and powerful fighting style.
With the guards incapacitated, the assassin turned to face the Citrine Throne.
Shingti launched herself at him, her ruby blades thrusting and slashing in the Thousand Darts of the Dragonfly. The assassin ducked under her dancing blades and dropped to the floor, whirling his leg in a sweeping crescent. A flood of brilliant jade Ro gushed across the colorful stone tiles, knocking the frozen soldiers to the floor in a clatter of armor.
It never touched Shingti. The first princess threw herself into the air, flipping over the watery Ro and the assassin. Her Dual Swords flashed as she passed over his head, one at his throat, the other at his heartcenter.
The assassin threw himself backward, landing on his shoulders, then kicking back up to his feet. He spun around to follow Shingti’s arc, but didn’t attack. Instead he shifted his weight to his back leg, one fist over his head and the other angled downward in front of him.
Shingti landed with the assassin out of reach of her swords. In a blink her Ro became a Long Spear stabbing at his heartcenter.
The assassin moved with a speed Koida had never imagined a human moving, twisting his upper body out of the way of the whipping Long Spear, first one way and then the other. Shingti backed him across the throne room, but before they reached the wall, the assassin swung to the side of a long thrust, wrapping one arm around the glowing ruby haft of Shingti’s spear and pulling.
The Long Spear disappeared, and Shingti wheeled herself into the air, swinging a Hook Kick at the assassin’s throat. The assassin arched backward, the deadly hooked blade passing overhead, then stepped behind her as the momentum spun her around. He jabbed his fingers into the armor joint at her neck, then below her left arm. Shingti manifested her Dual Swords, striking at him over her shoulders in a reverse Strikes of the Scorpion, but he dodged them, hands flying. The final finger strikes landed in Shingti’s lower ribs and the top of her spine.
Shingti’s ruby blades disappeared. Koida watched in horror as Shingti threw her arm up to manifest a simple High Shield, but nothing happened.
The first princess was defenseless. If he attacked, the Ji Yu assassin could kill her as easily as plucking a flower.
The assassin moved.
“Don’t hurt her!” Koida shrieked, leaping to her feet.
The assassin’s head snapped around to meet Koida’s gaze. Taking advantage of the distraction, Shingti slammed an elbow into his cheekbone and spun, raising her leg and then slicing it downward at his neck in a bladeless, yet brutal Axe Kick.
The assassin turned at the last moment, the heel of Shingti’s boot caressing his sleeve as it passed. Without touching down, Shingti changed the direction of her kick, swinging it back with enough power to shatter his skull. But the assassin ducked the kick, stepping behind Shingti, and struck out with that armor-freezing palm thrust.
Frost crackled, and a layer of ice locked Shingti in place. She screamed, infuriated, and struggled inside her armored prison.
Slowly, the assassin returned to the foot of the Citrine Throne.
Now it would happen, Koida thought with cold, sick inevitability. Now he would kill her father.
Rather than attack, however, the assassin knelt again and bowed three times to the emperor.
“May we speak in peace now, Exalted Emperor?” Ji Yu Raijin asked in that raspy baritone, raising his voice to be heard over Shingti’s cursing. “I am not an assassin. If I were, your guards would be dead where they stand. By the principles of your own
Path, a portion of their Ro belongs to me for besting them, but I left them with all they have. I tried to allow you to save face by conducting this negotiation in private, but you rejected my offers. Will you accept them now and allow us to discuss a peaceful alliance away from prying eyes and wagging tongues?”
Koida dropped back onto her throne, numb. She looked to her father. Beneath his beard, Emperor Hao’s face had gone a shade of crimson that was nearly purple. Slowly, the nobles who hadn’t run—or who hadn’t run very far—stilled, their eyes searching the emperor’s face, waiting for his decision. Even the guards trapped in their frozen armor quieted.
“Every man, woman, and child in my tribe is taught this art,” Ji Yu Raijin said. “We can be a powerful ally or a devastating adversary. The choice belongs to the Exalted Emperor.”
The vein in Hao’s forehead pulsed, and his fists quivered. With what looked to be all the strength in his body, the ruler forced his scowling lips to move.
“Undo whatever you’ve done to my first daughter and my guards. Then we will discuss this matter of alliance in private.”
Jumbled protests bubbled up in Koida’s mind, echoes of Yoichi’s warnings about honeyed lies and Shingti’s suspicions of treachery, but her mouth refused to open.
“Gratitude, Emperor Hao.” With a final bow, the young leader stood and nodded to his small entourage.
Together, the Ji Yu man and woman rose from their knees—Koida only then realizing that the two of them hadn’t moved once in all of the chaos—and joined their leader. The three went through the motionless guards, executing a slightly different series of palm and finger strikes.
One by one, the ice-locked armor melted, and the guards began to move again, scowling and wary. Each manifested weapons and shields briefly, as if to test that their Ro was theirs again to command, but none attacked. Last of all, the Ji Yu leader released Shingti.