Perhaps the joking is the lifeline keeping her from absolute panic. Strange, to discuss a thing like this as they make their way to a ravenous spider woman’s chamber. If Shizuka were younger, she’d have told Otgar to milk a stallion, as the saying goes; they have work to do.
But seeing her this afraid … No, she cannot.
“I never thought you liked me,” Shizuka says as warmly as she can. She holds out her hand. “And neither of us is going to die.”
Smoothly, with no trace of doubt—the same way she has spent all her life speaking. Shefali’s always thought of Shizuka as confident. Dorbentei might still, too.
There is a moment of hesitation: Dorbentei’s eyes flick over to her, and then down. Twice, three times this happens.
And then she takes Shizuka’s hand.
With careful steps they continue, step by perilous step. Rocks fall onto their heads. The farther they go, the worse the sounds of battle become; Shizuka swears that she can hear Qorin warhorns. Good. They haven’t given up yet.
Neither will she.
Her wife is at the end of this tunnel.
It is the first of Qurukai—she cannot allow Shefali to die. Not without her.
As the jaws of a hunting dog open to drop its quarry at its owner’s feet—so, too, does the passage open. They are through the narrowest part, but not through the horror. A long chamber awaits them. There are more Qorin strapped to the walls here than there have been in all the previous sections combined—so many that Shizuka must stop to empty her stomach once more. Like ticks on the hunting dog’s ear: the white bumps, fat with flesh.
And not all of them are along the walls. Some, too, hang from cocoons over their heads. Dozens of them, at least, swaying with every distant round of cannonfire.
Worse—some here are awake. Some are newly captured. The web is fresh around them, glistening, and they look on the two women with the horrified disbelief of war prisoners.
Dorbentei’s whimpering. She’s trying to hide it, but Shizuka can hear her: her ragged breathing, her nose stopping up with snot and tears. As terrible as the sight may be for Shizuka, she does not know these people personally.
Otgar does.
Staggering steps she takes toward one of the cocoons on the walls, her arms outstretched before her. She says no words as she walks—yet that does not mean she does so in silence. Pained sounds leave her; the agonies of a tortured daughter.
For Shizuka knows where Dorbentei is going. She can see the object of her mission strung up. It’s easy to recognize her from the colorful patterns adorning her deel, from the deer embroidered at the collar.
But it is not easy to recognize her by her looks, for her face is …
Bite into a plum, but do not bite all of it. Half, perhaps. Draw your head back as if you are some sort of wild animal. Spit out the sweet flesh of the fruit; feel the juice dribble down your chin.
Zurgaanqar’s head is the plum. There is little left of it. Parts of her bottom jaw; the blood streaking down over the webs, painting the white a grisly red. She is not the only Qorin so mangled—the Spider must have been hungry—but she is the most familiar. Shizuka’s heart aches at the sight of her.
And aches, too, as Dorbentei wanders closer and closer to her mother’s headless body.
This is a pain Shizuka knows all too well. A soiled bed, bones poking out of familiar flesh, the agonized wails of the dying. “Dorbentei,” she calls. “Dorbentei, you don’t want to see her like this.”
But Dorbentei cannot hear her, or else will not. Forward she goes, the tears on her face an echo of the blood on her mother’s. She opens her mouth, but no words come out—only agony.
“Dorbentei,” Shizuka repeats. Her voice cracks on the name. “You don’t want to—”
Dorbentei grabs hold of her mother’s body. The webs stick to her arms, to the backs of her hands. She does not seem to care. As Shizuka watches—powerless, made weak by the sorrow of another—Dorbentei braces herself against the wall. With her broken leg, she will need all the leverage she can get. Practical, even now.
She pulls, and pulls, but the body does not move—the webbing holds fast to the stone just behind it.
“Aaj,” Dorbentei whimpers. “Aaj…”
Minami Shizuru’s sword burns in Shizuka’s hand. A dirtied pillow, a single cut.
Her throat aches. It’s going to have to be her, isn’t it? It’s going to have to be her.
Shizuka walks to Dorbentei’s side without a word. They’ve gone past the point of needing them. She lays a hand on Dorbentei’s shoulder, as if to tell her that she can rest, that she can stop pulling—but Dorbentei continues all the same. There’s an increasing desperation in how hard she’s pulling, her whole body jerking with each movement.
One cut. It would be best to keep this painless.
Shizuka gets as close to the wall as she can. She breathes in, stoking the fires within herself, and—
There.
A flash of gold in the pits of despair.
Zurgaanqar’s body slumps over onto her daughter. Dorbentei, leg broken, cannot quite manage to catch her—the weight sends her tumbling backwards. Before Shizuka can help her, Dorbentei falls flat on her back in the spider’s cavern.
And for a while she says nothing, only weeps, only throws her arms around her mother’s body and holds her tight, only covers herself in her mother’s blood like some awful remembrance of her own birth.
Itsuki? Where’s Itsuki?
Shizuka cannot bear to watch the scene play out anew. She turns her back, her own breath a jagged tear at best. Everywhere her eyes fall, there is more of this. More bodies half-eaten, more mothers and fathers half-digested. Here and there, their bones dot the floor. Scalps, too. The Spider isn’t fond of eating hair.
Shefali.
Any of them could be Shefali.
And yet, is that not a selfish thought? The sight of this is horrifying enough without having to tie it into her own suffering. Dorbentei’s shrill cries should not make Shizuka worried for Shefali—she should be pained enough knowing Zurgaanqar is among the fallen. With so many dead Qorin in one place …
How many of them will make it out of this campaign?
How many of them has she killed?
Zurgaanqar survived war with Hokkaro. She survived the brutal deaths of her eldest sisters, and Burqila’s revenge on the brothers who had caused them. As the blackblood spread through the Qorin camps, twisting relatives and friends into cruel monsters—she had endured. And she’d raised a family, even! Her eldest daughter was Burqila’s personal interpreter; her youngest son a master mapmaker at such a young age. What pride she must have felt in her family!
And now she is dead.
And now her lifeless body crushes her daughter beneath its weight.
Shizuka tries to swallow down the dagger in her throat. It isn’t much use. She cannot leave Dorbentei here—who is to say whether or not the Spider has any underlings? If a demon finds them here, she will die. Though Dorbentei might want to at the moment, Shizuka has no plans of letting her.
It is not Shizuka, however, who turns back to facing Dorbentei, nor Barsatoq. It is not the Empress who kneels down next to her; it is not the Peacock Princess or the Burning Dawn who slings Zurgaanqar’s arm around her shoulder and lifts.
It is General Dog-Ear, who has seen too much of this already.
Zurqaanqar is—was—a large woman; it is difficult to carry her alone. Thankfully, she does not have to for very long. Dorbentei gets to her feet and takes her mother’s other arm. A woman with a broken leg and a corpse between them—what an awful sight they must make, the three of them, and yet they continue.
What else is there to do but continue?
What else is there to do but see this through to the end?
Dorbentei says nothing. Shizuka does not expect her to. Suffering’s clamped a hand around both their mouths. It is one thing to speak like a brave hero when everything is going well—it is quite another to do so when
your friend has just lost her mother.
Forward.
One step, another. Dorbentei leans on her mother’s corpse for support, and the corpse leans on Shizuka.
Forward.
Up ahead, the chamber opens once more. She thinks it might, at any rate: it is difficult to see anything at all beyond the massive wall of demonic silk. An intricate pattern rises before them, as wide as the palace gates and at least as high. To see the top, Shizuka must crane her head backwards—but she is not particularly interested in the pattern. She’s caught enough of it near the base. Crashing waves. Who ever heard of a spider weaving a crashing-wave web?
She feels sick, sicker even than she’s been since the day after Daishi died. Beyond the webbing, she can hear the Spider’s voice.
“What’s the use in struggling? This was always going to happen to you. Why not be a dear about it?”
Shefali.
Another round of cannonfire, another starburst of pain behind Shizuka’s eyes. She guides Dorbentei and her mother to the wall. There, she cuts away enough of the web that they might sit together—as together as they can be at present. Slowly, silently, she helps Dorbentei to sit.
“It isn’t as if she’s going to listen to you, you know,” says the Spider. “That woman is awfully insistent.”
Dorbentei’s one good eye fixes on Shizuka. General Dog-Ear kneels in front of her wife’s best friend, her wife’s cousin, trying to think of what she might say. The words do not come to her.
But they do come to Dorbentei. “Kill it.” Like a rock shattering.
“I will,” says Shizuka. It pains her to speak even that much.
“I mean it, Barsatoq,” says Dorbentei. “Kill it. Take its fucking hea—”
Sorrow swallows the rest of it. Dorbentei hiccups as the tears take her again.
Shizuka’s never been good at comforting others. Too much of herself gets in the way. Even now, as Otgar weeps into the shoulder of her mother’s corpse, Shizuka can think only of her own mother. Of Minami Shizuru. How long had she held on to that body? How long had she cradled it in her arms?… In truth, she cannot remember. The funeral, such as it was, is a painful blur.
“This is a wound that will never heal,” Shizuka says. “But over time, it might … it might hurt a bit less. You’ll get used to it being there. And some days, you will think of her, and you’ll feel the warmth of her memory before you feel the coldness of her absence.”
It feels right.
She gets to her feet. The wall of webs towers before her, but Dorbentei’s still eyeing her with fear and anger and hope.
“I’m going to get your cousin back,” she says to Dorbentei.
Shizuka ignites her mother’s sword.
She makes the cut.
Flames consume the crashing waves of Hirose, the delicate image destroyed before Shizuka can bring herself to appreciate it.
There, the Spider, as horrifying as Shizuka remembers from her brief moments of awareness after her fall. It sits on a web as large as the palace courtyard, lashed to three stalactites which give it shape. All around it hundreds of Qorin bodies hang like wisteria blossoms. The walls, too, are lined with them. Everything in this room smells of fear and death and wrongness.
But it is not that which troubles her.
The demon, at the peak of its power—it has wrapped Shefali in its web. Shizuka can see her from here. Her wife desperately tries to wriggle out of the silk bonds holding her in place, but it is no use; she throws herself into swaying from the ceiling in an attempt to work herself free.
But that, too, is no use.
Shizuka thinks of the morning—of Shefali’s being too proud to admit she needed help getting into her saddle, even with the medicine.
And still she tries, still she tries.
As Shizuka crosses the threshold—the webs still burning around her—the Spider turns toward her. A grin spreads across its woman’s face.
“My, my,” it says. “Four-Petal’s with us.”
In a cruel mockery of court behavior, it bows—both the normal way with its human body and by lowering its spider’s body. The fires in Shizuka’s stomach flare with anger. Higher, still, when the Spider grabs Shefali’s cocoon and bends it in half, forcing a woman whose body has gone stiff to bow. “Don’t be rude, Steel-Eye. Bow to Her Majesty.”
The howl of pain that leaves Shefali stops Shizuka in her tracks. No enameled armor, no war mask, no sword can protect her from her wife’s suffering. Before … Before Shefali left, Shizuka swore she wouldn’t … She swore that this would stop.
How many people has she failed already?
“There, there,” says the Spider. “Was that so terrible? You’re such a complainer, Steel-Eye. I’ve been waiting to meet your little toy for years. You’ve only had to wait a few minutes.”
“Let go of her,” Shizuka manages. She holds aloft her brazen sword—flames dance along the blade. “Let go of her, or come down and face me.”
The Spider covers its mouth, the very image of a shy court maiden from the shoulders up. It’s laughing at this—at the suffering it’s caused. Only when it speaks does it drop its hand back to its side. “And why should I do that? It seems to me that I’m the one in power here, Four-Petal. Steel-Eye’s too far gone to fight back, and you do know what day it is—”
“Let her go!” Shizuka repeats.
One step forward, two, fall into stance—she slashes the air and the Daybreak Blade obliges her. An arc of flaming gold sears through air toward the Spider.
But the demon skitters out of the way, and the arc succeeds only in lighting the web on fire. A useful thing in most other cases—except that before long, those flames will be licking at Shefali, and Shefali is not fireproof.
The Spider laughs again.
“So eager!” it says. “You two were made for each other. The Eternal King told me how impatient you were, but I wanted to see it for myself, you understand.”
The Spider shoots a strand of web up at the ceiling. From this it suspends itself, eight legs skittering and chittering above its head. Shizuka slashes and slashes as the Spider creeps toward her wife, but none of the arcs hit their mark—she is too dizzy to aim properly.
For the first time in what feels an eternity, cold seizes her.
And yet Shizuka cannot stop fighting.
Forward, ever forward, until she is standing right beneath Shefali and the Spider. She raises her sword to cut—
And the Spider’s dribble falls right onto her. Three fat drops—the size of small children—land atop her head. Viscous liquid rolls down her shoulders and covers her armor, seeping in at the wrists. Her hand starts to go numb.
The sword. She must keep hold of the sword.
And yet she is frozen in place, frozen in this pose, her sword raised like a statue of some forgotten hero.
The Spider cannot stop laughing. “What fun you are,” it says. Shizuka can only watch as the Spider flings Shefali’s cocoon onto its back. The thought occurs to Shizuka that, wrapped in white as she is, Shefali’s become little more than a roll of felt slung across a horse’s back.
She hates herself for thinking it. Look—Shefali cannot even hold her head up straight, but still, she stares pleadingly at Shizuka.
Live, her wife mouths. Get away from here.
But how is she to do that?
How is she, when—?
Will. It takes concentrated will to break out of situations like this. The fires within her haven’t died away yet. She stokes them one more time, burning the venom from her veins. It aches, but she can move again. Five steps back, she takes, sword in hand, as the Spider descends toward her.
To her surprise the Spider makes no move to attack her, no move to restrain her. It wears that self-satisfied expression without alteration. This is all so very amusing to it—watching Shizuka struggle to breathe, struggle to think, struggle to keep her footing.
And it is difficult to keep her footing. The dizziness she felt earlier has return
ed now with an army at its back. It is all she can do to keep from scrambling backwards, all she can do to keep herself focused on the Spider. Another slash would throw her off-balance—perhaps catching her breath will allow a more perfect cut later. And the Spider will be closer then, too.
When it is only four horselengths above Shizuka, the Spider speaks again. Its crimson eyes glimmer with self-satisfaction. It looks, Shizuka thinks, far more feline than arachnid.
“He really does want the best for you, you know,” it says. “The Eternal King is nothing if not noble. He wants the best for all of us.”
“I’m not dealing with him,” Shizuka says. The words come out slurred and sloppy; she sounds the slattern more than the Empress. “Let my wife go.”
“Or you’ll what?” says the Spider, tilting its head. “Attack me? You’re in no state to do that. Oh, your sword is fast, and you must think you can cut me down before I kill her. Is that so?”
Shizuka does not grant it the dignity of admitting it is right. Another wave from the cannon—a rock dings against Shizuka’s armor. Shefali squirms, her green eye burning, as if sensing what is coming.
Shizuka does not actually see it happen—she blinks. In the time it takes her to do so, the Spider drives one of its legs into Shefali’s torso. A scorpion could not hope for so fine a stinger as this—the whole leg is as wide as Shizuka’s hand. It stays there, buried just below Shefali’s ribs, as the Spider laughs again. Sweat streaks Shefali’s pallid face; her mouth is open and she is sucking in every breath she can, her eyes now closed as she tries to deal with the pain.
“I’m pretty quick myself,” it says. “Would you care to reconsider? I’ve a very attractive offer for you.”
The sight of Shefali struggling—how that wound must pain her! Shizuka feels its phantom twin on her own stomach. No—what if it were her stomach? She thinks to Arakawa, to the forest, to the soldiers she put down as they desperately tried to keep their entrails inside their bodies.
The Warrior Moon Page 37