The Warrior Moon

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The Warrior Moon Page 9

by K Arsenault Rivera


  Shefali narrows her eyes. She looks to her mother and then back to Otgar. There was no signing as Otgar spoke. Is she making decisions for the clan now?

  But Dorbentei Otgar has been all her life a canny woman—she catches Shefali’s wandering green eye. “No one knows you better than me,” she says. “Burqila asked my opinion and I gave it.”

  Otgar takes a breath.

  “To get back to the point—Burqila has a few questions before she sends all of us marching up to the North.”

  “Ask them,” Shefali says. Unlike Shizuka, she takes no offense at the questions. There are precious few Qorin left; if they are to be deployed en masse, then Burqila must be absolutely sure of why.

  As algae on the surface of a pond—the scent of fear, the scent of the stew.

  What do her aunts and uncles think of her asking them to die?

  Burqila gestures as if unrolling a scroll, then points to the table. Shefali reaches into her saddlebags. A single scroll case is tucked beneath the box that holds her medicine. She plucks the paper from within and spreads it out on the table—a now outdated map of Western Hokkaro, with Xian-Lai still marked as one of the provinces.

  As Shefali reaches for the models, Burqila signs, and Otgar speaks.

  “Burqila thanks you for bringing a map of these confounded lands, for she has in all her travels never encountered a land she hates more than this. Rocks and trees together, hills so high that it dizzies her people. She swears that even the kumaq does not taste the same here. Set up your map however you like—her first question is how many of us you will need.”

  Shefali does not feel dizzy at all, but perhaps that is because of her condition. Her lips have felt awfully dry—but that is hardly a thing to complain about. And kumaq tastes the same to her wherever she goes.

  Still—she arrays the small horses near the Azure Pass, the toy soldiers at Nishikomi, the golden catapults on the sea, just south of the Father’s Teeth.

  Burqila sniffs; Otgar laughs.

  “Don’t tell me Barsatoq is taking the siege engines out on the water,” she says.

  “They’re boats,” Shefali explains. She sets the last of the horses into place, and then reaches into the bag for the last of the markers. Her wife had not included them during the meeting with Baozhai, for she had not thought their presence would sway her much. Shefali knows they will make all the difference here.

  “How many is that, Needlenose?” Otgar asks. She does not care that Shefali has not finished. “Is each horse one tumen?”

  “Yes,” Shefali says. The first wolf tooth goes down north of the Tokuma Mountains.

  Uncle Ganzorig sets down his bowl of stew.

  “That’s fifteen tumen,” says Otgar. “You’re asking for all of us.”

  “Whoever is willing to come,” Shefali says. She sets the second tooth down, and the third, leading up to a massive pile to the far east.

  Wolves have forty-two teeth. Shefali has hunted enough of them to know. Their pelts have value throughout the Empire and outside it; like their cousins, the Qorin, they wander through the continent in search of food. Killing one without making use of its body would be a tremendous disrespect, and so Shefali has found uses for most of their remains.

  Except for their teeth.

  For years she simply kept them with her. Throwing them away is the sort of thing her brother would do, after all. Someday there would be a use for them that would not insult their former owners.

  That day has finally come. The northern reaches of the map are covered in teeth, a jagged yellow forest of them.

  Quiet comes over the ger.

  Burqila breaks it. The Kharsa-Who-Is-Not leans forward in her seat and picks up one of the teeth, rolling it between her fingers. When she sets it back down, the other teeth jump up. Some fall over, and Shefali feels an involuntary wave of shame.

  Burqila’s signs are sharp.

  “Barsalai, these teeth,” says Otgar. “They belonged to wolves, didn’t they?”

  Shefali nods. The scent in the ger goes sour—realization and anger. As Grandmother Sky had formed the Qorin from wolves, so too had Barsalai Shefali used teeth to represent Qorin.

  “How many?” Otgar asks again. Her voice is rough as unhewn iron; Burqila, next to her, is trembling at the shoulders.

  The whole room is waiting to be shattered.

  Shefali swallows. There is little in the world she hates more than having to be a hammer.

  “Thousands,” she says. “More of us than there are Hokkarans.”

  Thousands of Qorin trapped beyond the Wall, where they are subject to the will of an evil god; thousands of Qorin whose bodies will not return to the Sky.

  Shefali has seen despair on her mother’s face only twice before—and never on Otgar’s. It is … She could have gone her remaining weeks without the sight. There is something uniquely heart-wrenching about seeing your parents in misery. Parents are near to gods—and Burqila Alshara nearer than most.

  But even Burqila covers her mouth in shock, in disgust.

  Yet Shefali knows she must keep going. You cannot read the bones of a creature until you’ve laid it out in the sun. “The blackblood is his way of controlling them,” she says. The words leave her coated in rot; she feels his presence tingling at the back of her mind. Only when she takes the flower from her belt and holds it in her hands does it subside. She presses her eyes shut and continues. “When it’s in you, he can … he can speak to you. Control you. You become a vessel for him.”

  “Shefali…,” starts her aunt, but Shefali shakes her head. She must finish this.

  “The Fourth wants an empire. He is willing to build it from us. He is willing to plant us in his foul land and watch us grow roots. He delights in it. Domesticating us.”

  Otgar wipes at her eyes again and again, growing ruddier each time, as if getting angrier will burn away the sorrow.

  Burqila’s signing is erratic and ill contained.

  “Are you going over the Wall?” says Otgar, her voice wavering to match. She points to the largest pile of teeth. “When you repel this attack—will you go over the Wall, to this place?”

  Shefali has known the answer since she first heard the story.

  “Yes,” she says. “I will go to Iwa, I will kill him, and I will free them.”

  Alshara’s viper green eyes are wet now, and Shefali does her best not to stare at her mother as she wells up.

  “Just like you, Needlenose,” Otgar says. “Making promises like that. I was worried you’d gone and lost your head for a little while.”

  How does one answer a joke like that? The dark faces of her family have gone ashen with despair and anger, with horror and shame. What can Shefali possibly say to ease their worries? She has said all she could—she is going to Iwa, and she is going to free her people.

  All that remains to her is hoping they believe her.

  Only when Alshara’s hands lie silent does Otgar speak.

  “When I was a young woman, my mother told me that I was the unluckiest woman in the world. She said to me: ‘When you are my age, you will rule over ash and bone. The Sky has abandoned us in our time of need. I wanted a hero, and she gave me only you.’

  “I told my mother what I thought of that. I told her that the Qorin would never die, so long as there was wind through the grass of the steppes; I told her that so long as wolves drew breath, we would one day return. I told her, too, that so long as I lived, that day would remain as distant as the towers of Axiot.

  “For my insolence, she put out the tongue of my closest friend. Harming me would have been the easier thing to do, but your grandmother was as cruel as winter, and knew what would truly hurt me. Since that day I have been silent, in memory of my friend.

  “But not once in my life, Barsalai, have I changed my mind about our people. You tell me now that there are thousands of us over the Wall. You tell me now that you are going to free them.

  “I tell you that I am going with you. I have gone over the
Wall before; I know what lies in store for me. They can’t frighten me anymore. Killing a god doesn’t either. My mother was right—I am not the hero she wanted. But you are, Shefali, and I’ll lend you my own sword to end that bastard.”

  True to her word, her mother takes the sword from her own belt and hands it to Shefali hilt first. This is the sword she carried with her over the Wall; this is the sword that severed a demon lord’s head. So, too, is it the weapon that carved a path straight to Oshiro.

  Shefali can only stare at it. If she takes it … If she takes it, what will her mother use to cut down rabid wolves?

  Yet Burqila does not falter. Her eyes bore straight into Shefali’s, and her hand now holds steady.

  Shefali takes the sword.

  Tears fall on her deel.

  It hits her then like an arrow to the throat: there will be no time for her to return to the steppes.

  Had she known that the last time she was there, she would have lain in the silver grass for a whole day and a whole night; she would have named the constellations and the planets; she would have hunted, she would have raced, she would have wrestled her younger cousins.

  She thought she’d have the time.

  But she won’t.

  And her mother is following her, knowing full well it might be her last campaign.

  She looks around the ger, a dagger in her throat, only to find her aunts and uncles have quietly all drawn their boot knives.

  “You’ve done too much on your own,” says Otgar. “Your family’s coming along this time, to keep you out of trouble.”

  To keep her out of trouble?

  “You might die,” she says to her cousin, to her mother, to the gathered Qorin around her.

  “Then you’ll make stars of us, won’t you?” says Otgar. “Wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, to be a star.”

  Fourteen knives, hilt first, beneath a ger in Hanjeon.

  Barsalai collects them all—the weapons of the dying.

  O-SHIZUKA

  THREE

  For a day and a half, Minami Shizuka waits for news.

  The first day is the hardest of them, for that is the day they reach Nishikomi. She should be above deck, with Munenori and the others, to confront whatever might await them. That is what a leader would do.

  But if she does that, she’ll have to look out on the water.

  It doesn’t help, of course, that the White-Winged Crane sends news that the bay is empty save for the standard traffic coming into the city. Overlarge Axion ships, with masts so tall they scrape against the clouds; sleek little Ikhthian ships filled to the brim with wares; a few Xianese merchant vessels painted with colors you could see from several li away. The Bay of Splendors is as busy as ever—but there is no sign of the Traitor.

  So they spend the first day docked, waiting for him to show. Shizuka is confident he will, just as she is confident she will then muster the courage to go above deck.

  One hour passes. Another. The third—an entire Bell. The ship’s cook calls that the meals are ready. Everyone aboard the Ambition dines standing, in case the Traitor should have the temerity to attack them while they’re eating.

  But he doesn’t.

  And he doesn’t attack them the Bell after that, or the Bell after that, and soon it is Sixth and people are growing tired. The messengers come to her less frequently then, once every hour as opposed to three times. No need to report often if there was nothing to report.

  By the end of the first day the infantry have also arrived. If she looks out the window in her quarters, she will see them on the shore, standing tall, staring out at the ocean that so vexes her.

  But she does not look.

  She waits instead. She focuses on her breathing, on her heartbeat. Anything but the rocking of the ship, anything but the steady whisper of the waves against the hull.

  The first night she does not sleep—only stares at the lantern in her room and wills it to keep burning. Somewhere aboard the Ambition someone is playing a flute. The tune is familiar to her, though she cannot place it. Long notes held for beats at a time, piercing and clear and very nearly shrill. It reminds her of a bird’s cry—not the sweet songs so often emulated by musicians but the cries themselves. A crane fleeing a hunter might make such a sound.

  Hearing it makes the back of her head tingle.

  The second day, Munenori comes down to see her. Shizuka puts on her war mask to hide the bags beneath her eyes. They exchange pleasantries with Shizuka gripping her own knee as tight as she can. She won’t shake. She can’t.

  “Your Majesty, are we docking?” Munenori asks her.

  “Should we?” Shizuka asks. She knows well enough the value of that question.

  “We’d be out of the way of incoming merchant ships, then,” says Munenori. “While we await the enemy, it is best we remain as unobtrusive as possible. You know how people in this city are about their trade.”

  She knows. “All right, but what of the army? We’ve twenty thousand; they’re already intruding.”

  A shade crosses Munenori’s face then, as he considers how to phrase what comes next.

  “Her Grace Shiratori Ayako has intervened,” he says. “She is providing room and board for the Phoenix Guard within the palace. At present there are three companies near the shore itself. Still an intrusion, yes, but the city can handle them well enough. That’s about as many sailors as they see in a day.”

  “How are the people reacting to our presence?” Shizuka asks.

  “It’s too soon to say,” says Munenori. “The Fragrant Mist docked for an hour last night; I’m getting my news from their signals. Do you want me to send a few sailors out in plainclothes?”

  She considers it. It’d be good to know what people think of her decisions, but in the end it does not matter. She made the best decision she could.

  “Yes,” she says, “but not to gossip. See if anyone has noticed anything amiss of late. There must be something we’re not seeing.”

  Munenori bows. He turns to leave, but stops at the threshold.

  “Your Majesty?” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “When we dock, you can return to shore if you would like,” he says.

  Shizuka flinches; only the war mask saves her courtly dignity. She is beginning to understand why Ikhthians are so fond of wearing them all the time. “No,” she says. “When they come for us, I will go above deck. I swear it.”

  If she steps foot on the pier, she might never get back onto the ship.

  “As you say,” replies Munenori. He bows again and departs.

  Shizuka decides it is best to occupy her time with something other than her own thoughts. There isn’t much room in her quarters—strange given how massive the Ambition is—but she clears a little space for herself and begins practicing sword forms. In them she finds a small measure of peace. It’s easy, after all, to imagine that she is cutting down the Traitor for the final time. The Traitor in her mind is an old man with blackened teeth, a man in clothing outdated even by her grandparents’ standards, a man who calls her Shizuka-shan.

  She cuts him down, over and over.

  By the time Munenori returns to her, she can stand without trembling. A small victory—but kindling on the fire of her heart. She stands straighter now, shoulders back, and sheds her helmet.

  “Is there word already?” she asks. It’s evening now, she knows that much, but the sailors here aren’t particularly stringent about calling Bells out when they pass. With her window covered and the room lit only by lanterns, she can imagine she is somewhere beyond time itself.

  “Only a little,” says Munenori. “Barely a rumor, but I thought I might bring it to your attention.”

  “Go on,” says Shizuka. He has just come to check in on her, then, but he is doing a good job of masking that.

  “There’s been music in the bay,” he says. “We didn’t hear it last night, but from what I’m hearing, it’s been heard often. The sailors have already made up a song for it.”r />
  “An inappropriate one, no doubt,” says Shizuka. She knows plenty from her time with the army.

  “Yes,” says Munenori. “I didn’t bother learning the words.”

  “Did you learn the melody, then, while you were ignoring the words?” she asks.

  Munenori hums. It’s clear he was never subjected to a zither tutor, but she can suss out the tune well enough. It is the same as the one she heard last night.

  Shizuka clenches her jaw.

  “You’ll forgive my musical ability, I hope,” he says. “The original song is played on a flute in the middle of the night, every night, regardless of which ships are docked. Midway through First Bell, usually. All the sailors we’ve spoken to have claimed they heard it with perfect clarity.”

  Sayaka’s tormentor played a flute. It was the one who said they’d meet again in Nishikomi. Did she really hear its music last night? Why didn’t she realize?

  “Munenori-zul,” she says, “what time is it?”

  “A little past Fifth,” he says.

  Deep breaths. Steadying breaths. She forces herself to approach the window, to move aside the sheet she has draped over it. Through the slit she sees the sea and the sky.

  She chooses to look at the sky. It’s her wife’s favorite—and it’s rapidly going rosy.

  Minami Shizuka swallows. She thinks, for a moment, of the sky across the Kirin—of the unnatural violet and the yawning pit that followed. When she sees that the sun still hangs in the sky here, she breathes a sigh of relief.

  Relief as short lived as winter frost, for she knows now when the attack will come. The music—of course it is the enemy. Of course it plays only at night, when she never feels her best; it’s calling out to her. Letting her know that it is here, and it is watching.

  She’s heard it once before, after all—nearly eight years ago during Jubilee.

  It won’t be long before sundown.

  She reaches for the war mask again. A woman stares back at her from the polished bronze: bloodshot eyes, wan skin, cheeks sunken in. When she places the helmet atop her head, she imagines flames consuming the woman she saw.

 

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