She smiles, but it isn’t a friendly smile, and it fools neither of the women across from her.
Dorbentei sucks her teeth. “Suit yourself,” she says. “But you want another drink, you come find me.”
Sakura learned at a young age how to keep her cheeks from going red—she employs that skill now. Dorbentei’s cut to the quick of it. Sakura loves her cousin dearly, but there is too much at stake for her to ask for Shizuka to listen to her worries. Barsalai is an excellent listener—but in four days, she will die, and Sakura’s already asking enough of her. Munenori’s out of the question, as much as he’d perhaps like to be in it.
Which leaves Dorbentei.
She doesn’t like the well of emotion she feels at the thought. Sakura doesn’t like attachment in general, and that is what this is: an attachment.
Sakura opens her fan as she stands. “You’re going to need another chair,” she answers.
She does not stop to listen for the answer.
Barsalai has a story to tell her.
* * *
SHIZUKA ISN’T IN the best mood when Sakura arrives. Sakura doesn’t expect her to be. Whatever Shizuka saw in Nishikomi Bay has changed her. The stories of a headstrong princess no longer match up to the woman she’s become—still confident, but only so long as it can counter her own terror.
And she is afraid this morning. Sakura isn’t sure of what. She knows better than to ask. The only thing Shizuka hates more than going to court is talking about her own emotions. To ask her now would only agitate her—the answer will come out soon in one way or another. She’ll tell Barsalai, perhaps, and Barsalai will, out of concern for her wife, tell Sakura.
That is the way of things.
But even Barsalai looks as if sleep’s gotten the better of her. She sits facing Iwa, with one arm wrapped around her wife. There are circles beneath Shefali’s eyes still, and the points of her ears now poke out past her hair. Has it gotten whiter, or has she gotten darker? For she looks more monochrome than ever. Are those dapple marks on the backs of her hands? Like stars, Sakura thinks, like a starry saddle blanket across her skin.
It really won’t be long now, if Rikuto was right. If this is the form Shefali was always meant to take.
Sakura’s curious. Of course she is. But she knows better than to pry, knows better than to ask why her cousin is lying with her head against Barsalai’s shoulder, the two of them reaching toward the lost city.
Instead, she simply calls out to them.
“Good morning,” she says. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
Both of them turn toward her at once. A strand of snot drips from Shizuka’s nose; she is quick to clear it. When the Phoenix Empress speaks, her voice is little more than a rasp.
“Good morning, Sakura-lun,” she says. “Have you had your rice?”
“I have,” says Sakura. She holds up the wrapped stack of bowls. “Brought some for you, too. Would you believe Burqila’s had fish this whole time?”
The corner of Barsalai’s lips turns up in a smirk. “Aaj hates fish,” she says.
“More for me,” Sakura answers. She sets the bowl down in front of Shizuka, wishing that she’d thought to bring a bowl of tea leaves for Barsalai. “Don’t worry. It’s all two-day-old stew for you, Cousin.”
“Delightful,” Shizuka says. It might be sarcastic, but Sakura has the feeling it isn’t. Shizuka does genuinely enjoy Qorin stew. The trouble’s just … whatever’s wearing on her. She uncovers the bowl and unhooks the spoon from its handle, but does not yet start. “How did it go?”
“Well enough,” says Sakura. “I handled all the Hokkarans. Dorbentei insisted on talking to the Qorin. Everything’s in carts now, just waiting for the signal.”
She pauses, waiting for Shizuka to eat. If left to her own devices she’ll neglect her meals more often than not.
Shizuka takes a single begrudging spoonful of stew. She swallows it, licks her lips, and then taps her spoon against the rim of the bowl.
“How were things here? No attacks?”
“None,” says Barsalai.
“Well, don’t you tell me that,” Sakura says. “You were asleep the whole time.”
“Only part of it,” Barsalai answers. Sakura doubts her, but does not call her out on it in front of her wife.
“No attacks,” Shizuka echoes. She points with the back of her spoon toward … something. A flower, perhaps. That’s all there is in that direction. Which one she means is beyond Sakura’s ability to grasp at a moment’s notice. “I spoke to our niece.”
“Did you?” says Sakura. She tilts her head. “What’d she say?”
Not how, or why, or anything like that. If she starts questioning Shizuka’s motives, they won’t get anywhere at all.
“That she doesn’t remember me.”
Sakura stops fanning herself mid-motion. This is … Well, it isn’t entirely unexpected. All the research does lend itself to this conclusion: Barsalai and Shefali will be forgotten in time. She just … never expected it to happen so soon.
“I’m sorry,” Sakura says. She starts to speak more, but Shizuka cuts her off.
“It’s been six years—in Hokkaro, I mean. Six years have already passed since we left.”
Six years? But it hasn’t even been six days! Sakura swallows. The timing beyond the Wall of Flowers—she’d suspected as much back in Dorbentei’s ger, but to hear it confirmed out loud …
How much of her life has she given away for this mission?
How many years will pass between her departure and her return—if she returns at all? When Sakura returns to Nishikomi, how many of her friends will greet her, and how many will have long since given up on ever seeing her again?
Sakura, her knees suddenly a little weak, sits next to her cousin.
Shizuka sucks in a breath, as if she is caught in the middle of crying. “I’m sorry, Sakura-lun,” she says. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have asked—I would have let you stay behind. I’ve—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sakura says, though her throat is shattered glass. What a day for discoveries. Her birth mother was a coward, and the woman who raised her may well be dead by the time she returns to the Empire—along with most anyone she ever knew. If Sakura even does return. “Nothing we can do about it now.”
“We can win,” offers Barsalai. She points to the distant towers with her lips. “We can kill the Traitor, reclaim history for ourselves.”
“Baoyi…,” says Shizuka.
“She’ll understand,” Barsalai says. “One day.”
It is just like that woman to stay so practical at a time like this. Six years already, and six more likely to pass before they return—by then Baoyi will be a woman grown. The Empress in truth, if that is what she still wishes to call herself, styled after an aunt who has ceased to exist long ago.
And Kenshiro sitting in his library the whole time, going grayer and grayer, keeping record after record of his sister’s disappearance. How long will it be before he forgets what he is recording? How long will it be before the other lords label him a madman?
When all that is left of Shizuka is the legend of the Phoenix Empress—what makes Baoyi’s claim to the Hokkaran throne legitimate?
Again, Sakura’s curiosity overpowers her despair. She knows of no other situation quite like this. In the Imperial Records, how is Shizuka’s reign recorded? Has she become a mythic figure, like Yusuke the Brawler, or has her name merely disappeared, leaving Baoyi as the successor to the Toad’s awful reign?
“I don’t want Baoyi to have to understand,” Shizuka says. “I meant for her life to be better than mine, Shefali. All I’ve done is ruin it.”
“You’ve given her a nation at peace,” says Barsalai. “Or you will, once this is done.”
“And Shiratori? Fuyutsuki? Even your father—what if they turn on her? She does not think of me as a hero, Shefali, nor does she seem likely to ask us for help. And we will be here beyond the Wall, unaware any of it is happening—”<
br />
Barsalai kisses her wife’s forehead. She says nothing more, for there is nothing more to say on the subject. This price they are all paying grows steeper by the day. Surely that is the Traitor’s intent—to separate them from the people they love, from the place they’re fighting so hard to defend. A wolf in isolation fights twice as hard but bleeds twice as fast, as the Qorin saying goes.
When Sakura returns to Hokkaro, it is likely no one will remember her. Who was she to those people but the Empress’s cousin, the forgotten Minami? That is all that had lent her authority in Hokkaro. In Xian-Lai, at least, she might be able to prevail upon her reputation as a scholar.…
The lectern balanced in the crook of her arm is heavy as a mountain. She promised Barsalai an accurate record of her life. If Shizuka is right and they have already faded from memory, that record is more important than ever now.
Six years. Fuck, what if her favorite fried octopus stand is gone when she gets back?
Sakura pushes the thought aside. There is so little time here for her, for her own thoughts and wants and needs. A small taste of what Shizuka is dealing with—but a bitter one, all the same. Perhaps she can talk about it with Dorbentei later.
“When she is older, and when you’ve returned to Hokkaro with that bastard’s head in hand, she will understand,” says Sakura. “You aren’t acting for yourself, you’re acting for your country.”
“But…,” says Shizuka. She sniffles again.
“You can’t all be Tumenbayar,” Sakura says. “Running off to have adventures. That shit fills novels, but it doesn’t improve anyone’s life. Just remember—that’s why we’re out here.”
She doesn’t quite believe it herself. What’s her presence going to do? Whose life is she bettering? But then—and this was the worse thought—whose life is she hurting? No one back below the Wall knows her well enough to miss her. Baozhai’s probably throwing parties dedicated to Sakura’s absence.
Maybe Kenshiro remembers—when he isn’t busy being Regent.
Sakura had better not go back to him empty-handed.
“I suppose you’re right,” says Shizuka. “But it feels … it feels awful.”
“They never tell you about that part,” says Sakura. “How much it hurts, being a god.”
Barsalai shifts in her seat. She lets out a small sound halfway between a grunt and a sigh—and that is how Sakura knows she has an opening.
“Or has someone told you otherwise, Barsalai?”
Barsalai fixes her with her steel eye. The thin film of black that covers it makes it strange to behold—although, is it shining brighter than it used to? For the sheen on that metal more closely resembles silver than steel.
“You haven’t told me what happened in the Womb,” Sakura says. Barsalai’s always appreciated directness—and from the way Shizuka perks up, this isn’t a story she’s heard either.
“You met her, didn’t you?” says Sakura. “The Mother. The two of you spoke. I asked Dorbentei about it, but she said I should hear the whole thing from you.”
Barsalai does not answer—only stares at the towers in the distance.
“Did she say anything?” says Shizuka. “About him?”
Barsalai presses her lips together. After a moment’s consideration, she lets out a true sigh.
“Yes,” she says.
And it is as if a fire’s ignited in Shizuka: gone, her maudlin expression, consumed by her burning need to know. She sets her hands on Barsalai’s shoulder and leans in close. “What did she say?” she asks, and even Sakura is surprised at the desperation in her voice. “Did she tell you how to kill him?”
Barsalai’s shoulders stiffen. It does not take a former singing girl to know she is uncomfortable with her wife’s … enthusiasm over this particular subject.
And yet there may be answers lurking there, in those memories of her. Answers. If they are trapped here in this time-that-is-not, far from home in every way that matters—why not learn all they can about their enemy? Why not use every tool available to them?
Barsalai undoes the first clasp of her deel. Silvering scars overlap at her neck—a thick one that runs straight across and a large starburst on the right side. Given the darkness of her skin, they look like galaxies, like heavenly bodies trapped within her flesh. And yet—what was it that gave her those injuries? For any normal person would have died of these wounds.
But Barsalai Shefali is no normal woman.
“It is a long story,” says Barsalai.
“We’ll signal the carts,” says Sakura. “All my cousin has to do is light up her sword or something—they’re watching for something like that.”
“You told them I’d use my powers as a signal flare?” says Shizuka.
Sakura shrugs. “What, are you saying you won’t? You make light, Shizuka-lun. It’s the easiest way.”
Shizuka does not suck her teeth, but only because that is the sort of thing she would never dream of doing. What she does instead is raise her chin, so that she is staring imperiously down on her own cousin.
“I can’t believe you,” she says.
“You don’t have to,” says Sakura. “Everyone else will.”
And that is the great joke of this—however ludicrous Barsalai’s story, it is Sakura who must make it palatable to the general public. But what does that mean? What does that mean in a Hokkaran context? Is she to strip the elements of the story that might offend her own people at the expense of Barsalai’s? In the face of all of this—what is her mission when it comes to these histories?
That is a question for her future self. For now, Sakura prepares her writing set.
“Go on,” she says to Barsalai. “Whenever you’re ready. You can bless while you tell the story, right?”
Barsalai narrows her silver eye. “Yes,” she says. “But you’ll have to write quickly.”
O-SHIZUKA
EIGHT
Shefali isn’t doing well.
It isn’t something she has to say for Shizuka to take notice. So rarely does Shefali have to say anything at all. A lifetime trapped between two nations all too happy to mock her accent in both languages—this has taught her the better part of silence. Shizuka has always been a little astonished at how efficient Shefali can be when it comes to communication. Most of their conversations aren’t vocal.
Now, for instance.
It is, by Shizuka’s reckoning and Sakura’s, the first of Qurukai.
The appointed day of Shefali’s death.
Earlier, before they broke camp, Shizuka caught her wife sitting on her own three li away from the others. What horror had seized her when she woke without Shefali at her side! For she knew the day, she knew the day, and to imagine that already Shefali might have left—that she might have scattered like funeral ashes to the wind …
Is there a single thought more crushing than this?
If there is, she has no will to think it.
And so in search of her wife Shizuka had gone, and her wife she soon found. Three li she had gone, and after three li she found her.
“Shefali?” she’d called to her.
Shefali did not move. She stared with a sort of steadfast resignation at the towers of Iwa. They were close now. Two more days, and they’d be at the walls—that was what the scouts were saying.
But they did not have two more days.
Shizuka could not help but feel like a failure as she beheld them.
Together, she’d promised, like two pine needles. But no matter how hard they’d driven the horses …
“We can get there today,” she said, but the words felt wrong even then. Lying had never suited her. “If you and I help them breaking up the camp, and if we drive the horses into the night—”
“They’ll die,” said Shefali. “I won’t kill any horses.” She let out a quiet sound, a sort of pained grunt, and leaned back in her seat. When she clucked, her gray mare trod on over as if bearing the weight of the world upon her back. Shefali stood only so that she could start rub
bing the gray down. How near white that horse was! The moon itself was trapped beneath her hide, constantly shifting from phase to phase.
Shizuka could only stand and watch her. She knew how to help, she did—Burqila Alshara was insistent that Shizuka look after her own gelding when she traveled with the Qorin.
But wandering with the Qorin had also taught her the intimacy of this moment.
Today was the day that Shefali was ordained to die.
Neither of them needed to announce it. It was clear in the way she had to lean against her horse for support, in the stiffness of her arms and elbows as she worked the tension from the gray. It was in the barely concealed agony on her face; it was in the quick, hissed breaths as she overexerted herself. So stiff, so stiff—a warrior forged wholesale from silver.
And yet there was no fear to her.
As Shefali worked, she glanced every now and again to the towers looming ahead of them—but never with anything less than determination.
“I won’t kill any horses” turned out to be the only thing Shefali said that entire impossible morning.
They were the only five words Shizuka heard from her wife for hours.
* * *
TRAVEL TREATS THEM no better.
It is a difficult thing indeed to see a Qorin struggling to stay upright in the saddle. Shefali has been riding horses since two weeks after her birth, when her mother tied her to her middle as she rode across the steppes. Such is the way for Qorin children—the motions of riding are more familiar to them than breathing.
And yet now Barsalai Shefali cannot seem to manage them. Stiff, she sits, as if an errant breeze may unseat her. She isn’t even breathing—or at least she isn’t when Shizuka glances over to her. As if doing so might burst her lungs from within like overripe fruit …
Sky, what is she to say?
She’s tried things. Many things.
“Today is the day of our triumph,” was first among them, spoken at an ill-fated rally before they truly departed for the day. The troops took to it well enough—a fair amount of cheers—but you can hear the same sentiment expressed only so many times before it becomes a chore. Even the most grandiose statements will seem trite if they are all you hear, day in, day out.
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