“We turned back, and we were pretty sure of the way we were going—Jolorkai was casting some of Barsalai’s blessed kumaq behind him, and that was what we followed. He was the first one to realize something was wrong. There was a bit of milk that landed right on a mountain flower, a violet one. The sort you see on the mountain back home. He called me over when he realized he’d seen that same flower five times.
“I told him he was being an idiot, but I kept my eyes peeled in case he wasn’t. Turned out, he had a good head on his shoulders—the flowers kept repeating and repeating. We were going in circles.
“I knew something was wrong, and I knew our priority was to return to the army. I figured if we all rode out in separate directions, at least one of us would be able to make it back. Maybe one of our two gods could tell us what was going on, maybe that spot was important to the northerners, I don’t know—but I knew the information was important.
“We took off in different directions, each of us, as close to the cardinals as we could figure out. Khadiyya gave us a compass, but that thing doesn’t work out here—you see how it keeps spinning around like a scared marmot. We picked a direction and we went, and I hoped at least one of us had picked the right one.
“Maybe a quarter of an hour later, it started to rain.
“I knew nothing good was going to happen. Rain on the steppes is one thing, but rain out here? Could be the Traitor pissing on our heads, for all I know. I drove harder, looking to get through it as quick as I could. The clouds got thicker and thicker overhead—and then the fog showed up. Unrolled in front of me like felt, Burqila, I swear it did.
“Barsalai gave me a skin of kumaq the last time we rode through the fog together. I took a drink from it as I pushed through the dark, and held it in my mouth the whole time. That way I could hold my sword, I thought.
“It took another two minutes before the fog cleared. When it did, this shit? The river, the flowers, the field? Gone. We were at the base of a mountain. It wasn’t one of the Tokuma; it was covered in pine trees. Not Gurkhan Khalsar, either, though it was about that tall. The pine trees were all around, wherever I looked.
“And so were the horses. All four of them, without their riders.
“I looked up at the mountain, at the horses, and I thought to myself, ‘You don’t want to die here.’ So I turned behind me, expecting to see the fog.
“The fog was gone, too. There was nothing but forest around me, and the horses, and the mountain in front of me.
“Between a mountain and a forest, I’d rather have the mountain. I tied the other horses’ saddles to mine, and tried to find some way up the path. Maybe that’s what took me so long—I must have been gone for days.”
“Only a Bell and a Half,” Shizuka says, her Qorin jarring after the rumbling rhythm of Temurin’s. That she can follow a story told in Qorin surprises Shefali. In spite of the circumstances, her chest warms with pride. “Continue.”
Temurin wipes at her nose with her thumb.
“Up the mountain I went, worried the whole time that some twisted creation was going to jump out of the trees. My hand’s still cramped from holding on to my sword so long. I didn’t stop until my horse needed to, and even then—I didn’t sleep. Kept my back to a tree and waited for something to try my patience.
“But nothing did. Nothing in this place moves, nothing in this place breathes, nothing in this place…”
Temurin’s voice goes rough. She takes a moment to collect herself.
“I kept going. It was too quiet, and it rained the whole time, but I kept going. I don’t know how long it took me to get to the top, but I did, and when I got there, he was waiting.
“Shaped like a man in Hokkaran robes, but he had the head of a bird. It. That thing. It was sitting in front of a firepit roasting meat.
“When it laid eyes on me, I felt as if it were seeing inside me. I reached for my sword, knowing I had to try to kill it. Bird-headed men on mountaintops can’t mean well, not when they’re looking at you like that. I charged, swung at it, and it caught my blade barehanded. Bent it back—look at it!—like it was a twig. Worse than a twig!
“I drew back to punch it, but with its other hand it caught my fist. The demon yanked at me so hard it’s a wonder I didn’t fall off my horse. The stirrups kept me on—that and my own two legs.
“Maybe that amused the demon. It sat back down and clapped its hands together. When it spoke, I expected to hear … squawking. Hokkaran, if not squawking. Qorin was what I got.
“It told me that it wanted to have a meeting with Barsalai and Barsatoq, and asked me if I thought all of this would get their attention.”
Shefali chews the inside of her mouth. All of this—four dead Qorin—just to get her attention? We need the wolf, Temurin had said at the start of all this.
She can feel Dorbentei’s eyes on her, feel the eyes of the forward riders. How many Qorin have died because of the Hokkarans already? How many uncles and aunts and cousins have they given to the Sky? Today, four more join them—just to catch Shizuka and Shefali’s attention.
“What did you say?” asks Shizuka. If she, too, feels the needles of their eyes, she shows no sign of it. Four years at war and four on the throne have likely inured her to such things.
Temurin glares at Shizuka. She presses her lips together, wipes her nose again. Then her temper breaks; she looks away.
“I told him to go milk a stallion,” she says.
A few chuckles from the forward riders. Good that they can laugh at a time like this—Shefali can’t.
“Tough talk, to a demon,” says Dorbentei. “But you’re here in front of us without a scratch on you.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence, a question left unasked. Shefali sniffs. No answer comes to her—everything here smells like rot. If Temurin’s changed, it is Shizuka who will have to spot her.
“He laughed at me,” Temurin says. Her eyes are dark for a Qorin; they go darker now. Shefali gets the feeling that Temurin is staring past her. “He laughed at me, and told me to keep riding down the mountain. I’d find all of you at the bottom. He told me to tell you he wanted to talk.”
“So you’re saying he just let you go?” says Dorbentei. Burqila’s signs were, for once, far shorter than this.
“Looking at him—something happened,” Temurin says. She’s shaking her head, as if trying to shake away the thoughts. “He took off his bird head, and underneath there was a man’s, and he had this flute…”
A serpent awakens from its winter hibernation. Hunger drives it more than thought. It slithers forth, the writhing soothing the ache in its muscles. For two li, it crawls along on its belly; for two li, it tastes the air for any sign of a marmot. When at last it knows it has come to the right place, it coils in amid the silver grass and waits.
For an hour, for a day, for a week, it waits. Still as a statue, it waits, its heartbeat like the occasional clatter of a bamboo noisemaker. So still that the marmot has no hope of seeing it.
The marmot races by.
Mid-stride, it stops.
Two fangs sink into its throat; coils tighten around its body.
Shizuka, the serpent; Temurin, the marmot. A blazing arc of gold sears itself onto Shefali’s vision. The strike itself happens so quickly that Shefali cannot follow it—the light swallows the motion whole. One moment Shizuka is seated atop Matsuda; in the next, she is sheathing her sword and Temurin is bleeding across the cheek.
The cut is as long as Shefali’s thumb, as thin as a strand of hair, but it bleeds well. Red covers the dusky brown of Temurin’s cheek.
A heartbeat of confusion. The others are trying to figure out what has happened. Temurin’s reaching for the cut even as she turns toward Shizuka. Mounted though she may be, Temurin’s tall enough to jab one of her remaining fingers right at Shizuka’s chest.
“What the fuck?” Temurin snaps. She jabs her finger again, harder this time.
Shizuka remains not only upright but unmoving. Coals burn from
the eyes of her mask, casting shadows on what little is visible of her face.
“We needed to be certain,” says the Empress.
“Shizuka—” Shefali starts, but her wife’s burning glare immolates the rest of her thoughts.
“We do not intend to have our army infiltrated by the enemy,” says the Empress. She speaks in Hokkaran as precise as it is long-winded. “This wretch has vexed us before. Are you not a warrior? Are you not accustomed to such injuries? Bear it with pride, for the color of your blood is your savior.”
Most Qorin speak Hokkaran. Temurin is the rare exception, thanks to a conscious decision she made many years ago. To speak the conqueror’s tongue is to allow them into your soul, and Temurin will never allow such a thing.
And so it is that without faltering she stares right back at the Empress who has so demeaned her.
Temurin Baterdene smears her blood across the Phoenix Empress’s war mask.
“That red enough for you?” she says.
There are parts of the steppes so cold and so barren that even the wolves do not risk them. To stand where the grass has given way to tundra is to stand five li away from any other source of life.
Shefali has been to those places, fond as she is of solitude and cold. She has sat among the withered grass and the tundra to look out on the stars, and she has heard there only the wind, only the music of the heavens above.
Those patches of celestial silence—all were noisier than this.
To breathe is to flow from one moment to the next, and in the next, Shizuka may well draw her blade again. Who can stop her, if she does?
How it pains Shefali to imagine her wife might do such a thing! Worse than the poison clotting her veins, worse than the blades between her ribs and the hammers that once crushed her hands. She would face the Queen of Ikhtar and all her punishments a hundred times if it meant she could avoid this ache.
“Shizuka,” Shefali says. Now she, too, must become a hammer. “Temurin is family.”
“Ask my mother how well it went for her, to trust in family beyond the Wall,” says Shizuka. “Ask your mother, or Sakura’s!”
Burqila Alshara urges her horse between her two daughters; Burqila Alshara, her mask a mirror for the face beneath it. She holds her hand high enough that the whole clan can see her signing. Dorbentei waits until she is finished before she dares to begin translating—in Qorin.
“Barsatoq Shizuka Shizuraaq—you’re tearing at wounds that have never healed. The Qorin shall be safe because I will keep them safe my way. Do not forget that I cracked the skulls of Oshiro beneath my boots before your parents laid eyes on each other. If you were anyone but Naisuran’s daughter, I’d have you dragged for what you did. You do not strike my people.”
Shefali watches her wife’s eyes, watches for any sign of regret or shame or guilt.
Instead—only the coals. “Understood, Burqila.”
What torment in Shefali’s breast at the sight! At the sound of those words! Who is this woman atop her wife’s horse, in her wife’s armor, wearing her wife’s mask? For it is not Shefali’s Shizuka; Shizuka would never dream of being so rude to her mother-in-law, to her own mother’s best friend—let alone as one ruler to another.
Who is this, standing here, looking so familiar?
Sanvaartains are on their way to look at Temurin’s cut. The woman herself stands there glowering, looking over her shoulder at a mountain that is not there. Sweat mixes with the blood dribbling down her cheek.
“Temurin,” Shefali says. When Temurin turns, Shefali flicks up her war mask. She drags the sharp nail of her thumb in a line beneath her good eye. Yes—there. Nail breaks skin. Black seeps forth from it like winter sap.
The whole clan is watching. So, too, is Shizuka. Let her. Let her see what a mess she has made of things, that it should come to a gesture like this.
Temurin’s dark eyes go soft. She sniffs, jerks her head in the direction of the mountain. “We’ve got to get going,” she says, “if we’re going to catch them.”
Shefali isn’t sure what’s more endearing—that she is willing to set aside what could have been a major conflict, or that she thinks there is any chance they will find those four scouts alive.
After all, there is no one who knows better than Shefali the succulent taste of flesh.
Their scouts are long gone—but perhaps, if they hurry, they might find something to give to the Sky.
O-SHIZUKA
FIVE
Shizuka is going to kill him. Sure as the sun rising in the east—she is going to kill the Traitor.
Why is that so difficult for Shefali to understand? It puzzles Shizuka. Why is she showing such sympathy toward the creature, toward the demon lord? For that is the way she’s been acting of late: as if it were a bad thing that Shizuka wants to see them wiped from the earth.
Is that not why all of them came out here—to rid the world of the enemy? To drive their swords and arrows into the bodies of the enemy until none rose; to snap the Traitor’s head from his shoulders—is that not why they are here?
And yet Shizuka shows a little precaution, and suddenly all the Qorin hate her.
Madness. It’s madness.
“You understand, don’t you?” Shizuka says to Munenori. He rides at her right as the joint army follows Temurin and the forward riders. After the … incident with Temurin, Burqila and the Qorin elected to ride ahead of the Phoenix Guard.
That should not bother Shizuka. It’s practical, after all; it isn’t as if her infantry and artillery can keep up with the Qorin cavalry. And they don’t ride in formation. Without the Qorin muddying things at the van, the Phoenix Guard can focus on their unbreakable formations.
Yet Shefali went along with them.
They’re going off to confront a demon, and Shefali went with her family instead of staying with her wife.
It should not bother her. Truly, it shouldn’t; this isn’t the first time Shefali’s had to decide between Shizuka and her family. Last time, she chose Shizuka. This is only fair.
But they’d said they’d be together for this, and Shefali acted as if it were the most terrible thing in the world to check if Temurin had gotten infected. As if Shizuka were some sort of monster.
When a sharp sword cuts you, you do not feel it until the air’s gotten into the wound. So it is with this—it does not hurt to be abandoned until she is.
Captain Munenori is as silent as her wife. Most days that is a boon, a thing that warms her heart, but today it rankles her. Today, she needs the affirmation.
“Don’t you?” she repeats.
“The necessary is often unpalatable,” he says. The long beak of his crane mask distorts his voice.
“That’s exactly what I mean!” says Shizuka. “How were we to know she hadn’t turned? How were we to trust her?”
She and Munenori ride toward the back of the army, flanked on either side by two units of infantry. Ahead of them five more companies march, gradually coming together to form an arrow. Arrow, Shizuka reasons, is best when you are expecting trouble.
And it keeps her far from the Qorin.
For twenty minutes they’ve been marching. The Qorin are a massive smudge of gray and brown and black along the horizon. If Temurin is right, soon they very well may end up separated.
Shizuka grips her saddle horn a little tighter.
“General,” says Munenori. “Did you draw your sword to strike down evil, or did you draw it out of fear?”
What sort of question is that? Shizuka nearly snaps at him, but she masters her temper enough to grit her teeth instead.
Before she can answer, the signal fans go up from the van. Shizuka squints—the eyeholes of her war mask leave much to be desired when it comes to visibility. Gold, red, green. A message for Shizuka in specific, danger, and a request to charge ahead. Had the enemy shown himself already?
The Daybreak Blade burns in its sheath. So it has since their second day here, as if burning away the corruption trying to seep into i
t.
“There will be time for self-examination later,” Shizuka says. “We’ve word.”
A small grunt, echoing within the beak of the mask into something greater. “The fog is coming,” he says.
And so it is—she’d been too distracted by the war fans to notice. Fog is coming down from the confounded sky like an aggressive cloud bent on swallowing them up. Just as the landscape here changes when she closes her eyes, so, too, does the cloud of fog. When she blinks, it goes dark and grotesque; when she blinks, it is a mass of black feathers clotted together with blood.
Yet if that creature is inside it …
She draws the Daybreak Blade. Fire courses through her veins and into the sword itself. A brilliant gold, it glows, for a brilliant general.
Or so she likes to think of herself, anyway.
“Forward!” Shizuka shouts, her sword held aloft. “Heaven marches with us!”
Is there any feeling greater than commanding an army? In truth, she’s come to enjoy it: Bellow one word, and thousands will listen. Look—the fields of gold and scarlet charging ahead! Watch them move in perfect unison, their weapons clutched tight, the false sun playing on their war masks!
Watching them thrills her—for everywhere the Phoenix Guard goes, the Phoenix Empress is sure to be among them. She is in every fall of their feet, every sharp breath, every heartbeat.
The clatter of their weapons, the earth shaking with their steps—all of this is to her as standing on the edge of a cliff face.
How sweet will be the fall, how exhilarating the wind whipping through her hair!
And yet, the horrible ground rising up to meet her: some of her soldiers will die today.
An unavoidable truth, a weight to stymie her celebrations.
Where they go, she will go; when they die, so, too, will something die inside her.
Yet it was her decision to bring them all here, and their decision to come. This is the life they’ve all chosen to lead.
The Warrior Moon Page 20