Otgar doesn’t see the connection, but she won’t say so. Now’s the time to let her talk. She sips from her cup.
“A few years later, a woman in a ratty cloak stopped by in the middle of the night. She knew who I was—knew my name and my father’s name, and even the color of the silk I’d been wrapped in. The woman who raised me—my real mother—told her that if she didn’t want to be back in my life, she should go away. The woman gave her a letter for me and left. No one ever saw her again.”
“What did the letter say?” Otgar asks.
Sakura bites her lip. “I don’t know.”
Otgar tilts her head. “You don’t know?”
“That’s the whole reason I came!” Sakura says. Her voice cracks. “I can’t read the fucking thing. I’ve tried, and tried, and tried, but the letters just keep moving. I brought it to everyone I could. Our scholar clients couldn’t read it; Ken-lun couldn’t read it; Baozhai couldn’t read it. Twenty years I’ve had this thing, twenty years I’ve kept wondering why she left. It’s got to say something, right? Why did she come all the way back for me, just to leave this letter no one can read?”
The tears are flowing like rivers now; it’s getting hard for her to talk.
Otgar sits next to her. It feels more like the right thing to do than the wrong thing. Sometimes that level of comfort is all a person needs. In a ger everyone would be embracing her, patting away her tears; they’d all work through it together. Hokkarans aren’t like that. If Otgar embraced Sakura, she’d probably skitter off, and that would do her no good in a state like this.
And so she simply sits by her side, fully expecting Sakura not to acknowledge her.
It is surprising, then, when Sakura loops her arm through Otgar’s.
“That letter’s the whole reason I left Nishikomi. I have to know why I wasn’t good enough.”
Otgar’s throat feels tight all of a sudden. “You are good enough.”
“Not for her,” Sakura says. There’s venom there; Otgar finds herself surprised by it. “She could have taken me back, and she didn’t.”
“Then that’s her failure,” Otgar says. “She and my father can go milk stallions together.”
A beat. Sakura sits a little straighter, turning at last toward Otgar. They are close enough that Otgar can smell the wine on her warm breath, the sweat, the dried blood of some unfortunate soldier. “Your father?”
“It’s different for Qorin,” Otgar says. She clears her throat of something painful. “You can sleep with whomever you like, so long as you’ve gotten the permission of everyone involved. Ganzorig, he’s around my mother all the time, but he isn’t her husband, and he isn’t my father.”
“I thought—”
“They get along well,” Otgar continues. She can’t stop. “I’m happy for my mother, I am, and it isn’t as if my father was her husband, either. We don’t care about that. Ganzorig’s here for the kids they’ve had together—that’s what I care about. What any of us care about, with how often we don’t make it to eighteenth birthdays.”
“I didn’t know,” Sakura says. She’s sniffling, her hand on Otgar’s shoulder like a warm weight.
“My father was a Surian merchant who sold us cut-rate scrolls and spices. After he left, we never saw him again. When Needlenose and I were in Sur-Shar, I thought about tracking him down, but I don’t have much to go on. He probably doesn’t even know I exist.” Another swallow. “Shame for him, as far as I can see, but I didn’t need him. I don’t need him.”
There’s a long silence then: the two of them sitting in the relatively bare ger, a half-empty bottle of rice wine before them. If she tries, Otgar can hear the rise and fall of Sakura’s breathing. That armor must be overheating her. She thinks of saying something about it, telling her she can get more comfortable if she wants, but she knows what it’s like to want that layer of safety.
“You’re good enough,” says Sakura.
Otgar smirks. “I threw a demon today, of course I’m good enough,” she says. “And you decided to wade knee-deep into this fucking mess because…”
Otgar falters. Why, exactly, had Sakura come? She hadn’t quite answered.
“Because your cousin was able to read my letter,” Sakura answers. “And she won’t tell me what it says. Because I couldn’t leave Shizuka alone, after all of the things she’s done to herself. I watched her light herself on fire, Otgar.”
Otgar frowns. The letter struck her as a cipher of some kind, a puzzle—in truth, she wants to get a look at it herself. And it’s a fine thing to focus on instead of the feeling in her stomach when Sakura calls her by her childname. But if Shefali is the only one who read it, Otgar has the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t meant for just anyone’s eyes. Shefali attracts trouble like corpses attract flies—just look at whom she married.
“I asked her, and she just … she keeps avoiding it.”
There’s got to be a reason for that. The furrow in Otgar’s brow gets deeper the more she imagines what it might be. If Shefali knew it was the only thing Sakura’s mother left her …
“Do you know why?” Sakura says. She’s leaning her head against Otgar’s shoulder now. If she’s trying to make it harder for Otgar to dodge the question, then it’s working. Otgar doesn’t want to believe that’s the case—not when Sakura’s voice is as ragged as a washerwoman’s cloth.
“She’s never brought it up with me,” says Otgar. “But if I know that big oaf well, she’s probably trying to protect you from something in it. She likes to … If you put two jugs of kumaq in front of Barsalai and tell her one of them is poisoned, she’ll drink them both. It won’t hurt her, so she thinks: ‘I will save people.’”
It is then that Sakura reaches for another cup. Otgar hands it to her. They clink their saucers together and tip them back at the same time.
“Your cousin’s an idiot,” says Sakura. “I’m a grown woman; I deserve to know.”
“It might change things if you do,” says Dorbentei. “You people care so much about your bloodlines.”
“It isn’t even about that,” says Sakura. “I don’t care who she was—I care why she left.”
“She’ll tell you,” says Otgar. “When the time’s right, she’ll tell you.”
It’s a weak assurance, but it’s one that Otgar is confident in all the same. Barsalai is convinced she’s going to die soon. She won’t go to the Sky with so many loose ends; it isn’t like her.
“All she said was that it was nothing good, that my mother wasn’t well.…”
So she’s dead, Otgar thinks. Odd that Sakura hasn’t caught on to that—but a horse with blinders misses much.
“Barsalai will tell you when the time comes,” Otgar says. She shifts a little; Sakura readjusts her position to match. “But that’s the last I’m going to talk about my cousin tonight, and the last we’re going to talk about all this sorrowful shit. We’re two hundred li away from anything like civilization and we might die tomorrow. That’s time to drink, not time to mourn.”
Sakura pours them another round. Otgar’s head is starting to swim. She wonders what she is doing alone in her ger with some puffed-up Hokkaran girl, and she decides she doesn’t care.
“Then, please,” Sakura says, “let’s drink until I forget.”
O-SHIZUKA
SEVEN
Shizuka has been staring at the same morning glory for a Bell.
A sort of feeling deep in her guts: she has been doing this too long. Three hours, at least—an entire Bell spent staring at a flower beneath an unchanging sky.
And yet she cannot look away. That morning glory—violet, with its central white starburst—fascinates her. It is not the flower itself that does it. Morning glories are astoundingly common; she’s never been fond of them, for that reason. There are hundreds of morning glories swaying in these endless fields, thousands maybe. Rarer flowers, too—azalea without rocks to cling to, chrysanthemums the size of her head growing well out of season, striped peonies and asphodel from dis
tant Axiot—and yet it is this tiny morning glory that wins her attention.
When she closes her eyes, this morning glory—this single flower—is the only one that does not change. The rest show their true forms: spines of forgotten animals, strange bones and stranger faces. Ten thousand eyes watching her wife fall asleep on her lap. It’s enough to make her skin crawl, though she has been here so long already that she has forgotten what it is like to be completely at peace.
But this flower …
Shefali talks to her horse. She’s spoken to Shizuka about it before—the tongue of swaying grass. More than once Shizuka’s tried to hold conversation with daffodil and hydrangea, with sagisō and gardenia, and not once have they answered. Whether that is because flowers have no mouths remains to be seen. Still, when she summons them, they appear; when she gives them a task, they grow to accomplish it. She supposes she should not be too upset that they’ve never actually spoken.
And yet …
A li away from the rest of the camp, a li away from any prying eyes, unable to escape the warm burden of her wife’s sleeping body—well, what is she to do but speak to the flower?
It begins simply enough. She feels preposterous trying, but if she stops to second-guess herself, then the whole venture will be lost before it begins. She was the Peacock Princess, she is the Phoenix Empress—it is natural that the flowers should speak to her. This is the thought she holds in mind, this is the idea to which she clings.
“Have you always grown here?” Shizuka asks.
It’s a ridiculous question. Wisteria can grow to be thousands of years old—there is one such tree at the center of Horohama village—but not the humble morning glory. It can be only a few years old, at most.
Yet she leans in as much as she can with Shefali’s bulk in the way and waits for an answer.
The flower is silent.
Shizuka counts to eight hundred before trying again.
“You are the only true flower north of the Wall,” she says. “Since my birth, I’ve enjoyed a … relationship … with your kind. Well. Not your kind specifically—I mean it in the broad sense.”
She sounds like a fool. Her ears are going red. What if Shefali hears her? Oh, what does it matter?
“Everything here is under Yamai’s control. Everything, I think, except you,” Shizuka says. Naming him summons a gust of wind; she worries that it will muss the morning glory. If only she were closer, she could properly shield it. Instead, she can only watch it and—yes! It is still standing.
“Try as he might to influence you,” says Shizuka, “you’ve blossomed bright and colorful. Truly colorful. You’ve not bothered another flower’s petals, and you’ve not decided to bloom in green on a lark. Whatever was here before he was—you were there, weren’t you?”
Another count of eight hundred. She worries, part of her, that the Traitor can hear whatever it is she says. This is akin to worrying over spilled ink—the Traitor’s eyes and ears dot the landscape like blades of grass. He is always with them.
Let him listen, then.
Shizuka narrows her eyes. She stares at the flower, stares at its creases and the tips of its petals, at the curve of its stem. When she was younger, it was a simple thing to change the color of a flower. A single touch was all it took.
There is a chrysanthemum blossoming in mocking gold within arm’s length. She drags a fingertip along its thick petal. Black, she thinks, in the way she used to think when she was a child. Is it her imagination, or are her fingertips glowing gold?
The flower does not turn.
She tries this with every flower she can reach. None listens to her, none bothers to indulge her in the slightest. These are the Traitor’s flowers.
Except for the morning glory.
Shizuka loves her wife more than she has the words to say—but Shefali is heavy. Incredibly heavy. There will be no going anywhere with her on Shizuka’s lap, unless she finds some way to extricate herself. Yet Shefali’s sleep is such a rare thing—would she dare disturb it?
She thinks back to their shared years on the steppes. Qorin all sleep in the same ger, regardless of who else is still awake. It had been an awful time for Shizuka, who by then had not learned how to sleep wherever her feet left her. Shefali, however, had more than once slept through a horsehead fiddling contest.
Moving her probably won’t wake her, and Shizuka isn’t going far. The morning glory is within two shaku, even. She can protect her wife and study it at the same time.
Shizuka slips her arms beneath Shefali’s shoulders and pulls her up. Shefali snores, mumbles something about being hungry, but does not wake. It takes a lot of effort and some decidedly unregal grunting, but at last Shizuka manages to lay her wife down on the false earth. She even peels off her armor and arming coat, balling the latter to form a makeshift pillow.
“Please sleep well,” Shizuka whispers to her. She kisses Shefali on the forehead—how serene she looks!—and goes to the morning glory.
Closer up, it is no different from any of its neighbors. Shizuka reaches out for it with a cautious hand. Perhaps it would be safer to use the Daybreak Blade, but she does not want to frighten the flower.
What sort of warrior is she? Frightening flowers …
The air around the flower is warmer than usual. Shizuka waves her hand around to be sure—the border around it is about the size of a summer melon.
“Hmm. Are you playing tricks on me?” she says to the morning glory.
And when she touches its petals, the morning glory answers. In Xianese.
“… Sister, what’s come over you?”
Shizuka’s brows come together. She does not know that voice, but she does know that accent. The speaker is a woman from Xian-Lai. Well-to-do and properly educated. She sounds nothing at all like the acolytes Shizuka spent her time with at the temple—but she does sound like …
“Nothing has ‘come over me,’ Third Sister. I resent your choice of words.”
Baozhai.
Shizuka’s heart catches. What is going on? She does not know, but she cannot bring herself to tear her fingers away from the flower. Baozhai. Is this…? Of course, there are morning glories all over the gardens at the Bronze Palace. Baozhai loves them. Vines of them decorate every gate in the garden—and there are plenty of gates to walk beneath.
“All this talk of the North!” says the other woman. Baozhai’s third sister. What is her name? Shizuka racks her memory. She remembers the characters. How were they pronounced? It’s fixed, in Xianese, isn’t it? Wangzhi. That’s it. She works at the temple in Xian-Lun—what is she doing back home?
“And is it so strange to speak of our neighbors? Of my husband?” Baozhai excels at concealing her own emotions, even from her sister—but there is no mistaking the tiredness to her voice. “He has been away for too long already.”
Too long? Shizuka finds herself smiling. It’s been less than a month—Kenshiro must only now be settling into Fujino. For such a serene woman, Baozhai is a worrywart when it comes to her husband.
“Didn’t you see him last year?” Wangzhi asks.
What?
Shizuka’s mouth opens. Her fingertips tremble; the sounds of Xian-Lai fade in and out. Desperate now—incredulous—she wraps the vine around her wrist.
The effect is immediate. It is as if she has peeked her head through a curtain separating rooms. All around her she can see the gardens of Xian-Lai, but she cannot feel them. The oppressive humidity and gentle breeze do not touch her.
Yet there is plenty to harm her all the same. Baozhai sits on a bench, wearing one of her more reserved dresses—solid emerald green with no embroidery to speak of. Though her hair is gathered into an elaborate style, there is a streak of white at her temple. Softness has crept into her features.
She looks older.
“For three days,” she says. “Baoyi is not yet old enough to be alone for very long, and he cannot abandon Fujino with those sharks circling. Yangzhai is more concerned with catching frogs
than policy; he’d love a journey like that—but we’ve our treaty with the Lady of Flowers to think of. This is the safest place for him.”
How long has it been? Is this a dream? It must be a dream. Surely it is a dream, a vision of the future.
The woman sitting next to Baozhai more closely resembles Xianyu—they have the same hardness to them. She keeps her hair close cropped. As Shizuka watches, she carves a length of wood into a shape something like a flute.
“And why not recall him?” she says. “A nonsense dream? That is precisely what I mean. Something’s come over you. The northern gods will try to distract you, Sixth Sister, but you mustn’t stray from the path.”
Her hands are steady as she carves, as if she has done this a hundred times before. Perhaps she has. She does not even need to look—Lai Wangzhi keeps her eyes trained on her younger sister.
And so, too, does Shizuka. The way they’re speaking—strange dreams and northern gods. No one spoke of the Hokkaran gods the entire time she served at the temple. No one wanted to worship gods they knew to be dead—and gods that had been forced on them besides. To hear them mentioned in this context perplexes Shizuka.
But it does not perplex Baozhai. “It was a vision, Wangzhi. You of all people should understand that.”
“A blazing phoenix and a great black wolf swallowing the heavens,” says Wangzhi in the sort of tone one might use for poetry one does not like. “Yes. Quite insightful, that. You’ve read too many novels. The real gods are more obscure than this. Phoenixes and wolves are all the North ever speaks of; it is one of their idols that plagues you.”
Baozhai’s brows twitch just slightly. It is as good as a frown on anyone else. “Third Sister,” she begins, “you may choose to disbelieve me if you wish, but do not accuse me of being seduced by foreign influence. My mind has always been my own. Kenshiro must remain in Fujino.”
“So spoke your foreign god,” says Wangzhi.
Does she mean…?
Shizuka swallows.
The Warrior Moon Page 28