Minami Sakura counts to eighty-eight and then clears her throat. It’s the politest thing to do. When she reaches again to sixty-five, Barsalai turns toward her.
“All right,” she says. “Before I leave, we’ll talk.”
“Good,” says Sakura. This smile is genuine. “Do you want to get started now? We’ve got a Bell and a half before dinner, and, ah…” Her eyes fall once more to the table. “Well, it seems like you’re finished here.”
Barsalai looks to her wife. Sakura braces herself for another ten minutes of them gazing longingly at each other. There’s no need; they keep this one brief.
“Yes,” she says. “Now will do.”
Sakura bows. “Thank you,” she says. “I promise I’ll return her in good condition, Cousin.”
Shizuka scoffs. “You couldn’t break her if you tried,” she says. But she pulls her wife in for a kiss, all the same.
Sakura takes the opportunity to step back into her sandals—let them have a bit of privacy.
And it gives her time to think. This hasn’t gone quite according to plan. She doesn’t have her calligraphy set with her, and they are going to have to meet either in the library or her room. The library holds too many awful memories at the moment, and her room is, well …
She’s found ways to work out her frustrations. Ways that have left the room a wreck, and ways that would plague Barsalai’s sensitive nose.
Still. She is going to have to find some way to make this work.
People have tricks, after all. You learn them well enough, and you know how to approach them. Back home it was Sakura’s whole livelihood. A man comes in wanting an ingenue, you can’t give him the naughty governess. It was her job to figure out which girls to recommend to their clients, and she often had only a couple of moments to do the figuring.
Barsalai’s trick is simple: she can smell lies. She likes honesty. Anything you say to her must be said with sincerity.
Which means that Sakura has just talked herself into being her historian.
Well. There are worse fates. Whatever Barsalai has been up to during her wanderings is sure to make a great story, and, truth be told, Sakura does like the woman well enough to want to tell it.
And somewhere along the line, she’s going to get her answer.
O-SHIZUKA
ONE
“General Dog-Ear.”
One salutation is all it takes to put Shizuka’s mind back in her soldier’s boots. For a moment she forgets that she is in the dining room of the Bronze Palace. The storied scrolls on the wall give way to maps hung inside a tent; the faint smell of incense to the pungent odors of men at war; her family gathered around her for her brothers and sisters in arms.
That name—one she used to loathe—was granted to her by her comrades. They were the only ones who called her that, or the only ones that could. Shizuka’s cropped ear has made her feel self-conscious for eight years; it was only during the war that it became a secondary worry, at best.
But only because they were trying so hard not to die, and because she was too drunk between battles to duel anyone who thought to weaponize the name.
If she heard it on the mouths of a common courtier, she’d be liable to split their own ear and see how they liked it. But as the person doing the calling is Lai Xianyu—sister to Queen Lai Baozhai and Shizuka’s most trusted adviser during the war—she will allow it. In truth, there is some comfort to the title. Shizuka’s accumulated so many now that they cling to her like moths: Daughter of Heaven, Four-Petal, Peacock Princess, Phoenix Empress.
At least she came by General Dog-Ear honestly.
“General Lai,” Shizuka says. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your attendance tonight?”
In spite of their formal addresses, Xianyu’s turned up to dinner in casual clothing. Perhaps that is why Shizuka had such trouble recognizing her when she came in—she can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen Xianyu in anything but armor, uniform, or armor over her uniform. The lustrous jacket she wears over her white dress is robin’s egg blue; her cloudy attire is at odds with her grave features.
“Your impending death,” says Xianyu.
Shizuka cannot tell if that’s an attempt at levity or an honest statement. Xianyu’s flat delivery makes it difficult indeed to decide between the two.
Thankfully, Baozhai has known her eldest sister all her life, and is a quick judge. As she heaps her daughter’s plate full of vegetables, she spares a moment to illuminate matters. “You will, I hope, forgive First Sister for joking about such a thing.”
To Shizuka’s surprise, it is then that Shefali decides to chuckle. She and Sakura—seated to Kenshiro’s right, across from them—arrived last. Shizuka has not had a chance to ask her how their little history-recording session went—but that is a question for another time.
Everyone knows better than to trespass at dinner.
No matter how their … other personalities might clash. Shizuka spent all her childhood in the Jade Palace, bumbling from one court to another with her father. She knows well the lines drawn between sovereigns and people. Her father found a frequent political ally in Doan Jiro, despite how Jiro-tun despised him. Jiro was the sort who called any clean-shaven man a woman, and thus found much to mock in the pampered Poet Prince.
Yet Jiro was also the sort of man who despised war in all but the most necessary cases, and there were fewer allies more powerful than O-Itsuki in that regard.
As a child, Shizuka always knew she’d one day find herself in a similar position. Well. As a child she assumed she’d solve all her problems with duels. Once Shefali showed her the idiocy of that line of thought—then she’d had her realization. And, sure enough, she hated Shiratori Ryusei almost as much as she needed his support.
But to have a dear friend disappoint you in such a way when you are both wearing your regent’s masks …
That is a new pain.
“Of course,” Shizuka says. “The Qorin often tell such jokes. Don’t they, Shefali?”
She squeezes her wife’s hand, and Shefali squeezes hers in turn. “Yes,” she says. “It’s because we spend so much of our lives dying.”
Kenshiro winces, but Sakura lets out a black laugh. “People who don’t run from the truth,” she says. Shefali nods with pride.
Baozhai sighs. She’s finished at last with Baoyi’s plate—stacked almost as high as the girl herself is tall—and begins on her own. Pine-tree eggs, duck, tender steak, a bowl of porridge and a larger bowl of rice—has Shizuka ever seen her eat so much?
“You aren’t really going to die, are you, Aunt Zuzu?”
The table goes silent. As it should, given a question like that. Baoyi sits wide eyed on her own chair, with that big plate before her, reaching for a dumpling. She pops it into her mouth and starts chewing before she even gets an answer. Her cheeks swell with food.
Shizuka’s heart is a storm, and yet she does not hesitate giving the answer. She can’t. “No,” she says. “I’m not. There isn’t anything in creation that could hope to kill me, Baoyi. Haven’t I told you already?”
She smiles, at the end, to make it truer. Baoyi smiles back, and when she breaks into a giggle, a bit of dumpling falls onto her fine dress. Shizuka—seated between Baoyi and Shefali—cleans her niece off with her own storied sleeve.
“As long as the sun rises every morning, you’ll know I’m still with you,” she says. “And as long as you see the moon, you’ll know your aunt Shefa is with me.”
“But what about all that time Auntie Shefa was away?” asks Baoyi. How quick she is.
“I carried part of her soul in mine,” Shizuka answers. Shefali squeezes her hand again.
The mess now cleaned, Shizuka touches her niece’s nose before sinking back into her seat. Baoyi laughs again—though thankfully, this time she’s already swallowed her food.
Yet the rest of the table is sitting on broken glass, judging from the looks they’re giving her.
Do they think Shizuka is
lying? She cannot afford to lie; not about this. She is going to live. She must live. She must crush the Traitor’s neck beneath her boot; she must make him answer for this foul bloodline he has unleashed upon the world.
The Eternal Empire.
What nonsense.
She helps herself to a little duck, though Kenshiro is staring at her and Sakura cannot meet her eyes.
If they think she has lied to a child, then they do not know her very well at all.
“Your aunts are going on a long journey north,” Baozhai says, by way of breaking the silence. “They’re going to fight to keep their empire safe.”
Their empire. It isn’t wrong, it isn’t—but Shizuka hates to think of Hokkaro as hers anymore. Knowing the seed it came from has poisoned the fruit.
“Oh,” says Baoyi. “Can I come?”
“Maybe when you’re older,” Sakura says. “The stuff they’re doing is for grown-ups.”
Kenshiro nods. “When you get to be as old as your aunt Zuzu, you can do whatever you like.”
Only Xianyu remains silent. Shizuka watches her as she cuts into her steak. When Xianyu catches Shizuka staring, she gives her a look. Suddenly, Shizuka’s transported back to a tent just outside a bamboo forest.
Never lie to your troops, but never break their spirits.
I’m not lying, Shizuka wants to say to her, but the words die too soon.
“Your aunts are as brave as Chen Luoyi. Braver, maybe,” says Baozhai. “Tell us what you learned about General Chen today.”
It’s a simple change of subject, but an elegant one, and Baoyi is happy to play along. She’s soon rattling off a story about the Three-Family War, the sort of puffed-up thing that neglects any of the actual bloodshed. Shizuka learned about the battle in question during her own war—and for that reason she chooses to ignore the story.
Shizuka lays her head on Shefali’s shoulder. “How did it go?” she asks.
Her wife knows, of course, that Shizuka is trying to avoid her memories. “Well,” she says. She keeps her voice low enough that they do not interrupt Baoyi’s spirited tale. “Sakura-lun listens.”
“Lun?” says Shizuka. A smile tugs at her lips. “Are you so close now?”
Shefali nods, tracing the crescent scar on Shizuka’s palm. “She is good at listening.”
“You must have been comfortable if you did so much talking,” Shizuka says. “I was worried she’d have to pry it all out of you question by question.”
“Once I started, it was hard to stop,” says Shefali. She looks toward Baoyi, though she, too, is not quite paying attention to the story. “She was right. It’s important that someone remembers.”
Slogging through the mud and the blood with Xianyu. Walking through the gardens with Baozhai. Listening to Kenshiro drone on and on about a book he had to import all the way from Axiot, which came to him in three crates filled with polished bronze sheets. Setting herself on fire in front of Sakura.
Shizuka looks around the table. “They’ll remember us,” she says. “Even after we’re gone.”
“So long as our names are on the wind,” Shefali says. She kisses Shizuka on the forehead.
Baoyi’s finished her story. Xianyu’s cutting in now, having grabbed a spare plate. A rough re-creation of the battle is painted upon its surface in soy sauce. She’s asking Baoyi to name all of Chen Luoyi’s captains—and sure enough, the girl is already a third of the way through the list. Shizuka supposes she shouldn’t have expected anything less from her.
“Shefali-lun,” says Kenshiro. Shizuka looks up, though she wasn’t called. Kenshiro’s shaved off his beard. Seeing him clean shaved now makes him seem even younger than before. “Baozhai tells me you’re leaving in the morning?”
Shefali nods.
Kenshiro holds her gaze for a while before looking down to his meal. “I sent out the Royal Messengers to find our mother this morning. With any luck, they’ll precede your arrival by a day. Aaj will have warning that you are coming.”
Warning? Is that the word he wants to use? The man is a White-Leaf Scholar; he knows plenty of ways to make his meaning plain. Why, then, has he chosen “warning”? As if Shefali and her mother are still at odds! She is already worried enough without her brother saying such things.
Shizuka long ago learned to love Kenshiro in spite of his flaws and gentle lies. She takes a sip of her tea and reminds herself, as she does occasionally, that he means well. Perhaps he meant only that it is good Shefali will not be surprising Alshara.
“You want me to tell her something,” Shefali says. It isn’t a question.
Now it is Kenshiro who nods. “I’ll have a letter ready for you, if that’s all right. It’s been … well, you know how Aaj is. Running a clan occupies so much of her time that she seldom finds occasion to return my writings.”
Shizuka has written a letter to Burqila Alshara once a week since she returned from the war. After that first month, she has received a response every week without fail.
“I’ll take it,” says Shefali.
Kenshiro’s relief is as clear as the waters of Peizhi Lake. He lets out a breath. “Thank you,” he says. “Truly. And I’m sorry we don’t have any good stew for your last dinner here.”
“Couldn’t taste it anyway,” says Shefali. She picks up a cup of dried tea leaves Baozhai prepared for her and shakes it. “This is enough.”
“Baozhai picked those leaves herself, you know,” Kenshiro says. He’s getting started; Shizuka can tell. Kenshiro clings to small talk the way children cling to their parents’ legs. “It’s a special variety of tea native to the region. Well. All tea’s native to Xian-Lai, but this tea in particular is grown near the Grand Temple. It takes five years to grow, and so it’s a bit opulent to purchase it in bulk, but all the money goes toward maintaining the temple.”
Shizuka glances at the cup. She has never been particularly fond of tea—it’s more a necessity to her than a thing she enjoys.
“Did you pick any?” Shefali asks, tipping the cup toward her.
“No,” says Shizuka. “But I do remember when harvest rolled around. Half the temple was out in the fields picking tea, and the other half was inside drying it out.”
“And you were?” says Sakura.
“Arguing with ghosts,” Shizuka says. Her throat feels a little dry, and she wishes she had a bit of rice wine to soothe it, but she knows how that will turn out. It is better if she doesn’t. She’s made the decision not to be that woman anymore.
“That sounds like you,” says Sakura. “Actually, that sounds like the both of you. All my life I’d never met a single person who fought a ghost, and now here the two of you are, making up for the rest of the fucking Empire.”
She laughs, but Baozhai shoots her a glare. This only emboldens Sakura. “I’ll say what I want, all right?” she says. “My cousin’s leaving tomorrow, and I might not—”
It is Kenshiro who stops her this time, with a squeeze of her shoulder.
Shizuka’s eyes fall to Sakura’s cup. She’s drinking.
“My love,” she whispers to Shefali, for the clear surface of the rice wine is something Shizuka does not wish to go near. “Could you…?”
Shefali needs no explanation. Shizuka falls in love with her all over again at the moment, as she quietly takes Sakura’s cup and empties it out over her shoulder. While Kenshiro distracts her, Shefali fills the cup with water and sets it back down.
Kenshiro offers Sakura the swapped cup. Sakura realizes the second it touches her lips what they’ve done—her eyes go a little wide—but she makes no motion to complain. When she has drained the cup anew, she leaves it on the table.
“Since when do you worry about me so much?” says Shizuka. A little gentle ribbing might set dinner back on a pleasant track.
Sakura’s brows come together. She picks up the cup just to gesture with it. “I’ve always worried about you. Y’know, I’m the closest thing to a big sister you have.”
The closest Shizuka ever had to
a big sister was Daishi Akiko. She does not correct Sakura. Like her teacher, she means well. “If you were my elder sister, you’d be the Empress,” she says.
“Pah,” says Sakura. “I would’ve abdicated. Won’t catch me on a throne. Too much going on, too much to take care of. I wasn’t built for that sort of thing.”
Yet the more Shizuka considers it, the more she likes the idea. Sakura’s protests don’t mean very much to her—no one who wanted a throne deserved one, except Baozhai. And, like Baozhai, Sakura excelled at dealing with people. Even courtiers disgusted with her origins found themselves soon disarmed by her charm, her directness. It was difficult not to like her.
“It’s much like raising children,” says Baozhai.
Sakura’s jovial expression darkens. “Yeah, and I know so much about that.”
“I wasn’t implying that you did,” is Baozhai’s reply, delivered with perfect detachment.
Well, everyone liked Sakura except for Baozhai. The air between those two is like a cart full of Dragon’s Fire. One day one of them is going to set the whole thing off.
But there must be something in the air today, or else the prospect of this being their final dinner as a family urges Baozhai to take a more sensitive approach to their battle of words. Shizuka can see it happening—the consideration in her eyes, the way the lines of her face smooth as she relaxes.
“You should not be so modest, Sakura-lun,” she says. Shizuka’s surprised at her choice of honorific. “You’ve watched Baoyi plenty of times, and she has nothing but wonderful things to say about you.”
Baoyi perks up at the mention of her name. Her little head whips toward her mother. Baozhai straightens one of the ornaments in her daughter’s hair. “Isn’t that right? You love Sakura-lao, don’t you?”
Baoyi’s nod sends her ornaments into disarray. Baozhai clucks, renewing her dedication to the task at hand.
Sakura looks as if someone has placed a block of jumbled scrolls in Jeon before her and asked her for a translation. “Where’s this coming from?” she says, wasting no time with niceties.
The Warrior Moon Page 3