Shefali.
Her Shefali, unable to move, unable to get away—and here Shizuka stood, too dizzy to cut properly. Useless, useless.
“What is the offer?” she says.
“Shizuka!” says Shefali. It is the first word she’s spoken all this time, and it leaves her like an arrow.
Because, in truth, she knows what the offer will be.
The Spider’s grin goes feline. It chuckles. “The Eternal King has decreed that you are not to be killed. We are to subdue you and take you to the palace instead, where he might show you the proper way of things.… I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”
Shizuka blinks once, twice—her vision is starting to blur. All she can see of Shefali is a smudge of gray and black and white.
“And I would never disobey the Eternal King, you understand, I’d never dream of such a thing. But, well, you’re here now, and I’m ever so hungry. All my meals lately taste the same. You must know what that’s like? Four years straight of nothing but rice? How terrible that would be, how terrible—”
“Shizuka, please,” says Shefali. “Don’t listen to her. Get away from here!”
But she is listening.
“And here before me is an honest-to-goodness princess,” continues the Spider. It drives the leg into Shefali’s torso a little deeper. “What variety! What exotic flavors! Surely no one in creation loves anyone so much as you love this dog. And I got to wondering if any of that love had seeped into your flesh. What you would taste like.”
It speaks so casually, so calmly, as if the two of them were discussing the merits of one poet or another. The words don’t feel real.
And yet …
“Speak plainly,” says Shizuka. “My patience is wearing thin.”
But it is not her patience that is thinning—she is not certain how much longer she can remain standing. Her right knee’s wobbling and she cannot seem to keep it in place; her head aches so badly that she cannot think. Though she has burnt the Spider’s venom from herself, the effort has turned her fires to cinders. It was like this after Nishikomi, too, but she has no divine shroud here, no crown of fire.
“Give me your heart,” says the Spider. “And I will let your wife go. I won’t hurt her or her mongrels for half a year by our reckoning—a generous offer, I assure you. It takes only a few weeks to get back to your former Empire, after all, and that’s where they’re bound to go without you to guide them. Give me your heart, and all of this will be over.”
A heart. How large is her heart? What a strange thought to have—no larger than her hand, in all likelihood. A small lump of dark red flesh. She could feel it pounding throughout her whole body. She’d given the Kirin her tears. Could she give up her heart, as well? What would be left of her then? A body that did the Empire’s bidding. A shell, and not a woman.
And yet—she’d still have her lungs. Shefali did say a person’s soul filled their lungs. You fed it every time you breathed.
One heart, her heart. A bit of pain, and all of this could be over. She thinks of the woman in the fox mask and wants to laugh. Will you give them your heart?
She closes her eyes. It won’t kill her, giving up her heart. Somehow she knows this—what happened at Nishikomi kindled something within her; the gold where her scars were once speaks to this metamorphosis.
“And the Qorin?” Shizuka asks.
“What of them?” says the Spider. It moves its hands as if closing a fan—of course, it does not actually have one. “I already said I won’t attack any of them.”
“I meant these Qorin,” she says. She gestures with her left hand to the cocoons all around them. “The ones you’ve been feeding on.”
“Oh, you can’t want them,” says the Spider. “My leftovers! It would be so unseemly, Four-Petal, to scrounge for scraps.”
“They aren’t scraps,” Shizuka says. “Let Shefali and her family take the Qorin from this cave. And call off the battle. That’s what’s going on above us, isn’t it? A battle?”
The Spider purses its lips. Shizuka shuts her eyes again, sucking in a breath. Her chest already hurts in anticipation of what is to come—but she must be sure. She must be certain.
“Shizuka—you can’t be…,” Shefali says. How her voice cracks! To speak at all must be such agony given her position, and yet she’s ventured it all the same.
But everything will be fine.
This is the best way, isn’t it? No one else has to die this way. She can stop the killing. Minami Shizuka can take responsibility for once in her life—she can put an end to all of this herself.
Shizuka can’t let Shefali die today. She can’t.
“My colleague’s gotten the toy soldiers out, yes,” says the Spider. “I can’t make any oaths for Rikuto. How impolite, to do something like that! No, no, you’d have to negotiate directly. Rikuto will be the one taking you to the Eternal King’s residence, at any rate. If you agree, I will do the summoning, and perhaps that can buy your dogs the time they need.” It claps its hands. “How generous I am! A woman of endless virtue.”
There is nothing polite about this, nothing generous, nothing courtly. It is negotiating the terms of war, yes—but the ultimate prize is a woman’s heart.
Shizuka looks over her shoulder. Dorbentei rocks back and forth with her mother’s corpse. The Qorin lashed to the walls—the ones who live—have the same haunted expressions.
And there is Shefali.
Shizuka cannot see her well, because she cannot see anything well, but her mind can paint the picture of her expression. Shizuka knows Shefali’s face better than her own. No matter how far apart, no matter how long the separation—she would always remember Shefali’s face.
She is a child again. Her mother is kneeling in front of her in a place much like this—a place of death and cold and wrongness.
This is a warrior’s end, she says. This is all that awaits you.
She is a woman grown. The woman in the fox mask is kneeling in front of her in a place much like this—a cavern that calls for death.
“You will suffer,” she says.
It won’t kill Shizuka, she thinks—but it might be worse. The Eternal King said he wanted to speak with her, but what if he tries to control her? What if he feeds her that mixture of ink and seawater? What if she becomes like him?
No.
He’d never think of accepting an offer like this. He’d never think of sacrificing himself for the greater good, and neither would any of his progeny—her cursed bloodline, her awful ancestry.
This is right, she thinks. I can kill them all later. It’s only my heart.
“I accept.”
BARSALAI SHEFALI
NINE
When Rikuto appears before them, Shefali knows that all of this is real.
She doesn’t want to believe that it is. No more than anyone who knows the day of their death is coming, no more than anyone in her position. She is lashed in place on a spider demon’s back, too weak to move, as her wife offers herself to the enemy.
Why?
She cannot understand it. Why go with them? Why agree? Today has always been the day Shefali was meant to die—why would Shizuka throw away her life on the hope that it might not be? They are dealing with demons.
But as Rikuto dusts itself off, as it cranes its head to observe the Spider’s work, it occurs to her that she already knows the answers to these questions.
Shizuka is doing what she thinks is best for the Empire—and she is convinced that she can change destiny simply by believing that she can.
“Let’s make this quick,” says Rikuto. “I have a duel to get back to.”
Let’s make this quick. As if all of this is simply a chore to it, a thing it was coerced into doing. A dagger juts from its chest, weeping black blood onto its fine robes. Whoever it was fighting was giving him more trouble than it had bargained for.
Shefali hopes it’s her mother. She hopes her mother is safe and not part of the pile of bodies—but that is useless. Even
if Burqila avoided falling into the pit, she wouldn’t be staying anywhere safe. She’d be on the front lines of the battle that was surely raging above their heads, the battle that rattled the ceiling.
As if to punctuate the point, dust falls on Rikuto’s head.
“Oh, far be it from me to intrude on you, General, far be it from me to remind you of your duties,” says the Spider. Its words reverberate through its body; Shefali feels them against her back. When the Spider lowers itself in a mock bow, Shefali slides a little up her back. She lets out a hiss. The wound in her stomach’s getting wider.
Of all the things to fell her. Web and venom and a gut wound. What a hero she is, what a god! Her self-resentment is second only to her determination to leave, but even that cannot help her here. Attempting to move herself is … It is staring at a wall and telling it that you would like if it walked somewhere else. Thanks to the Spider’s venom, she cannot even feel her limbs anymore.
Ah, but she feels the wound. Every few seconds, the Spider will toy with the edges of it, like spreading its noodles to the edges of a plate. Whatever’s coating its legs nullifies the venom—it must delight in seeing its victims squirm.
And Shefali would be squirming, if only she had the strength.
Instead all she can do is watch. Shizuka—her Shizuka, her wife!—cannot bear to look her in the eyes. She stands a little ways away, swaying this way and that. Like a drunkard, Shefali thinks. This would be easier to deal with if it were something so simple as a drunken lark.
But it isn’t. Shizuka might be dazed, but the look in her eyes is one of determination, of resignation. This is the path she’s chosen.
“What are the terms?” Rikuto grunts. “Her life for Steel-Eye’s?”
“Precisely that,” says the Spider. It chuckles. Hatred rises like bile at the back of Shefali’s throat.
“But not just that,” says Shizuka. How she slurs! Shefali’s heart aches—no, no, she cannot think those words anymore. If she thinks them, they will come true. “You’re attacking the army up above, aren’t you? Withdraw at once. That is my second condition.”
She sounds so determined—but what a terrible tableau this is. There is Shizuka, unable to stand at her full height, wrung out like a washerwoman’s rags; there is Rikuto, towering above her, looking a little annoyed. A cat making demands of a tiger.
Rikuto raises a brow. “Is that all?” it says. Then, before she can answer the rhetorical: “Yes. I agree. I give you my word that I will withdraw my army the moment you formally surrender to me.”
Shizuka’s eyes flick over to the Spider. Anyone who saw her might mistake her for a confident woman, for an empress, for a general—but Shefali sees her brow quivering and knows the truth.
She’s afraid.
If it were simply a matter of willpower, then Shefali would’ve burst out of this cocoon by now. If it were simply a matter of willpower, she would have become the wolf, would have torn out the spider’s throat, would have chased the meal down with Rikuto’s clotted blood. All of her—all of her—is focused on this.
If she does not burst free, then Shizuka is going to sacrifice herself.
Heed me, Shefali says to her limbs. They do not listen. Still, she lies, still as the grave, still as the trees her cousins so often said she fell from.
Heed me, she says to the cold. Snot clogs her nose; tears streak down her face. Please. But to chase after that sensation is to loose an arrow at the clouds and expect a downpour. Shefali cannot close her hands around something that is not real; cannot draw it into her lungs when she’s in such agony.
If she had …
If she’d had some …
No, no, no.
She will find some way out of this that does not involve defiling the dead Qorin. There must be.
“Lovely, lovely, how nice to have it all settled,” says the Spider. Shefali hears it clapping its human hands together. “If you would bare your chest, Four-Petal? Silk always gets stuck in my teeth.”
Shizuka’s shaking.
Shefali shuts her eyes. The cold, the stars, even Grandmother Sky—whatever will hear her now, she calls out to them in the confines of her mind. If she is a god, then something will answer. If she is a god, then …
Armor falling to the ground. The memory returns unbidden: Baozhai explaining in detail all the features she’d commissioned. Beaming with pride as she pointed out the reinforced kidneys, the subtle brace for Shizuka’s bad knee. A suit the smiths of Xian-Lai poured their very souls into—now piled at Shizuka’s feet.
“Scars chased with gold!” exclaims the Spider. “How decadent!”
“What are you doing?” asks Rikuto. Shefali thinks she hears footsteps, but Shizuka’s always had a light step. It’s impossible to tell without opening her eyes.
And she does not want to open her eyes.
“Oh, don’t concern yourself,” says the Spider. “She’ll live. I’ll be sure she does.”
“You can’t—” Rikuto begins in exasperation.
“Nothing in the rules says that I can’t,” answers the Spider.
“Will you both stop bickering?” says Shizuka. Now, at least, she sounds forceful. A pity that it is coming so late—but what if this is all some sort of ploy? The thought lends Shefali a little hope. It would be canny of her. Get close enough for the Spider to eat her heart and then drive in the Daybreak Blade …
“He’s going to have your head,” says Rikuto to the Spider. Then: “Sheath your sword and hand it over.”
She won’t. Shizuka would never give up her mother’s sword. In all the world, nothing means more to her than that.
So why is it that Shefali hears metal against wood? Why is it that the light across her eyelids dims?
“You will return it to me when we reach his palace,” she says.
“If the Eternal King commands it,” says Rikuto. “He won’t let us hurt you, but that might change if you take advantage of him.”
Take advantage of him?
Shefali cannot fathom how this creature sees the world. This demon. How is it that it thinks they could possibly take advantage of the Traitor? If the four of them were together looking on a statue of a ram, the demons would name it a bull.
She has to burst free. She has to.
But as soon as she has that thought, the Spider once more moves. What it does now is worse than simply playing with the wound. Shefali watches, helpless, as it raises the leg up into the air again. Shefali’s own blood drips onto her forehead just before the leg pierces through her chest. She gurgles. Breathing air is like breathing underwater—though she sucks in as much as she can, it never seems to reach her lungs. There’s something caught, something stuck in her chest …
When she coughs and sees the flecks of black blood that leave her mouth—then she knows the truth.
The Spider has pierced her lung.
Even if she had managed to draw in the cold, where would she keep it now? She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe—
“Stop hurting her!” says Shizuka.
“I said I wouldn’t kill her, didn’t I?” says the Spider. “My, oh my, what little trust. I’m only making sure she doesn’t interfere.”
“Hurt her again and I’m leaving,” says Shizuka.
Shefali wants to tell Shizuka not to worry about her. She wants to tell her that it’s more important that the Empress lives; Shefali’s death has been a foregone conclusion since that day in the Womb. If Shizuka dies, who will lead the army? Who will guide them?
But Rikuto says it for her: “Oh? And will you sprout wings to leave this pit? Will you fight us? You can hardly speak, and I’ve your only weapon. No. I think you will stand where you are and trust in us. We’ve already given you our word.”
Move, move, move; Shefali says it so much to herself that the word begins to lose all meaning. It is only a sound—only a useless plea. Worse, with her lung pierced as it is, she cannot bring herself to focus on anything else about her body. She cannot see them for all t
he webbing, cannot feel them for all the venom, cannot think of them for all the pain.
She is an insect. Less than an insect.
She cannot open her eyes. The silence that fills the air is awful. She’d rather be aboveground. At least on the battlefield, she knows she can be of use. Surrounded by the fallen Qorin, by her own trapped family, and no strength even to save her wife.
Why had they ever thought they were gods?
Silence, silence, and yet she knows well enough what’s happening. The Spider’s weight is shifting. It must be picking Shizuka up. It must be holding her, must be dragging those awful hands—
Shefali doesn’t want to think of this.
And yet even that is not her decision to make. The leg piercing her withdraws, only for her to feel the distinct weightlessness of being lifted up. It’s over in a moment as the Spider tosses her to the ground. Gravel and bone dig into Shefali’s gaping wounds; if she could writhe in pain, she would, but that, too, is denied to her.
The world is still spinning when someone—it must be Rikuto—grabs her by the hair. Its fingers dig into her braids, pulling them out of shape, leaving her proud hair a mess. It lifts her up. A pair of fingers spread apart the lids of her good eye.
“You’re going to watch,” it says.
Lovers’ eyes will pursue each other as naturally as the sun pursues the moon. So it is that Shefali meets her wife’s gaze, though it is the very last thing she wants to do. Green and amber, united once more. Two pine needles. How afraid her wife looks! Shizuka’s eyes are more yellow than ever, impossibly yellow—
“Shefali,” she says. “Look away.”
And what a cruel joke it is that her strength does return to her then—but only enough to turn her head away, and only for an instant. Rikuto’s grip forces her back into place. Yes, the Spider’s holding her wife, drool dripping from its mandibles and mouth. Coming closer, closer …
“Shizuka,” Shefali says. It is all she can say; there isn’t any air left in her for more.
“I love you,” says Shizuka. “Please, always remember that—”
The Warrior Moon Page 38