One leap and Shefali has it pinned. Her stomach rumbles.
A Spider makes for a paltry meal—but it fills her belly all the same.
MINAMI SAKURA
EIGHT
They go to the pit.
What else are they to do? With that column of light shining down upon it—what else are they to do? It is a sign. All the Qorin agree on this point, and Sakura is not keen to argue it.
And so while the surgeons and the remaining Qorin set about gathering the bodies, Sakura, the Phoenix Guard, and Burqila Alshara visit the pit.
Sakura does not know what she is expecting. Shizuka, perhaps, but then Shizuka has never been associated with moonlight. Sunlight and fire have always heralded her cousin. This must be something else—but what?
The answer is as coquettish as a singing girl—she can glimpse it only over a well-painted fan.
Weaving their steps so as not to disturb the bodies, they make their way. There are more now than there were before the battle started. Such things are natural. Sakura can recite at length the death tolls from all the major battles in the Empire’s history—thousands and thousands who laid down their lives for the sake of something greater. And yet—what a profound difference it is to be walking among the dead instead of simply seeing the number. What a difference to know how and why they died, to see their bodies, to smell them, to know that so few of them saw this as a romantic venture.
What will history make of Ganzorig’s slumped body? What will it make of the Qorin who died with their horses rather than be parted from them?
The thought nauseates her, even more than the sights have, but there is nothing left in her stomach to throw up.
She wonders how large the pyre will be. She wonders who will even light it, or if they will have time to do so at all. Shizuka. Shizuka will have to do it, but—she’s seen enough of death. Sakura spent enough time with her cousin to know how little she slept—to know how often she woke in a cold sweat, screaming about the blood that stained her Imperial hands.
She’s going to blame herself for this, isn’t she?
Sakura presses her lips together. They can deal with that after they find her—and they will find her in the pit, beneath that column of light.
At the mouth of the pit stand the Qorin: the sour-faced woman with missing fingers and Burqila’s youngest sister are the only ones she can recognize. The rest of Burqila’s family must be in the pile of bodies at the base.
Dorbentei included.
Sakura’s throat tightens.
“Is there any word?”
It is Captain Munenori who speaks, pulling off his war mask as he does. He addresses them in Hokkaran, because that is the only language he speaks. The sour-faced woman turns and sneers at him. She spits something back in Qorin—something about a stallion—and Burqila has to break the tension.
Yes, Burqila, with two arrows sticking out of her still, wounded as she is—it’s she who breaks up the fight. That she is walking at all mystifies Sakura, that she is breathing at all mystifies her.
Burqila makes a sharp cutting gesture. Her fingers fly as she speaks in shapes and forms. The sour-faced woman and her sister, of course, both understand her—but Sakura and Munenori are left bathed in confusion and moonlight.
“I don’t suppose you know what they’re saying,” Munenori says to her.
“I don’t,” she answers.
“Dorbentei would,” says Munenori. There’s a surprising amount of worry in his voice when he says this. “But she’s—”
“She’s down there,” says Sakura sharply, “waiting for us to find her.”
She refuses to believe anything else.
Two steps forward, she takes, while Burqila continues speaking with her family. The conversation—such as it is—is only getting more animated. The sour-faced woman’s joined in on the signing; Dalaansuv is fighting back her own set of tears. Not one of them wants to look into the light of the pit.
But that is the thing about Minami Sakura: she has always been too curious for her own good. It is what has made her such a natural scholar, such a natural historian; it is what has propelled her from a pleasure house in Nishikomi to the battlefield of the new gods.
The light is bright, almost solid. She bites her bottom lip. There are stories about this sort of thing, about mortals coming in contact with the work of gods. If she stuck her hand in, she’d either gain something of them or die.
Well.
That is hardly a choice at all, is it? Someone’s got to do it. Why not her? She’s been enough of a coward for a lifetime.
She reaches with her right hand—her nondominant hand—and touches the column of light.
Cold—that is the first thing she feels. This is not the light frost of a Hokkaran winter, not the cool silk of chilled wine. This is the cold that lives atop mountains; a hoary chill that saps the marrow from bones. Sakura draws her hand back only for the cold to remain—it’s shooting up her arm and down into her stomach.
If this is how she dies, then it will be a slow death—she must hope otherwise. The cold isn’t hurting her, only cooling her. This gives her enough hope to cling to. As she takes a calming breath, a cloud of vapor leaves her, and in its shape she remembers what she has forgotten.
“Barsalai,” she says. “It’s Barsalai!”
Burqila’s hands drop to her sides. Without so much as a parting gesture, she abandons her friend and sister and runs to the column—but by then it has already begun to fade. Desperation colors her as she lunges for it all the same, as she attempts to gather an armful of light and cold. For the barest moment, she’s limned in blue—and then the light is gone.
Burqila stares down at her hands, breathing heavy.
“Did you feel it, too?” Sakura asks. “The cold?”
Burqila nods. She clenches her hands into fists and closes her eyes.
“She lit up as you did,” Munenori says. “You’re saying that was Barsalai-sur?”
“It was,” Sakura says. “Her … I think she’s ascended.”
“Ascended?”
She finds herself wishing he wasn’t here—she doesn’t want to have to explain everything. What’s happening to Barsalai and Shizuka is great and terrifying—how is she meant to condense it for a man who knows nothing of it?
But as her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she realizes she will not have to. The answer is loping in from the cavern: a wolf the size of a siege engine, black as night, its pelt shimmering with silver at the tips. One green eye and one silver shine even in the dark.
Barsalai Shefali.
Burqila’s mouth hangs open. Even the sour-faced woman is forced to acknowledge what she is seeing. Wonder breaks across her face as Dalaansuv curses in Qorin.
“That’s her,” Sakura says. If only she had her lectern! She has to remember this, has to remember the shape of her, has to remember all the details of the moment. When it comes time to write the history of this battle, she cannot shy away from the realities: yes, her cousin’s wife has transformed herself into a giant wolf, and this is to be commended—but they are surrounded by death on all sides.
If she has come to save them, then it cannot be argued that she has come too late for many.
Still—the sight of her is a balm. Sakura pushes two fingers into her mouth and curls her tongue. When she whistles, it is shrill enough to pain the ears of everyone around her. The wolf looks up at her with its mismatched eyes and lets out a low, playful rumble.
Yes—that must be her.
Burqila falls to her knees at the mouth of the pit. Dalaansuv is behind her, holding her back, so that she does not fall.
The four of them wait. Barsalai enters the chamber at the foot of the pit in full—she really is massive. If she stands on her hindpaws, she will reach the lip.
And so, of course, she does.
Two forepaws the size of horses rest on the flower-strewn earth. Barsalai’s head soon follows—her mouth is a little open, and she’s panting. Close as
she is, Sakura can see that the silver tips of her fur are not silver at all, but the flickering lights of the stars. A sort of giddy disbelief overtakes her at the sight. A wolf! A wolf this large, her mouth slick with the enemy’s blood, her eyes as kind and quick and hard as ever.
Burqila runs to her, but Dalaansuv again pulls her back—if she embraces her daughter’s head, she will surely catch the blackblood. Sakura does not need to understand Qorin to realize that’s the remonstration being given. Even so, Burqila struggles against her sister’s grasp. Such emotion on her face! Pride and amazement, relief and fear!
“That creature…,” says Munenori. He’s narrowing his eyes, his grip on his polearm tightening at the sight. “That’s Barsalai?”
“You saw her like this in the forest,” Sakura says, although that isn’t quite true. That wolf had not been half so magnificent as this.
If he has any more arguments to make, he stifles them when Barsalai lifts her paw. She sets it down on her mother’s head. Burqila, overcome with emotion, reaches overhead to cradle her as much as she can.
Sakura looks away, offering them what privacy she can—but in truth, her curiosity is getting the better of her again. Where is Shizuka? For she leaped down after Shefali, and she, too, is a god. The fall could not have killed her. To see Barsalai returning alone and covered in blood …
Sakura’s heart twists in her chest.
Shizuka will be here at any moment.
Sakura stares at the opening to the rest of the cave, stares at it and wills her cousin to return. Any moment now, a flare of bright gold, any moment now an intolerable line. “You cannot kill a phoenix,” or something equally uncreative—her cousin’s never had the mind for that sort of thing, no matter her famed father.
Shizuka will walk up to them, and she will have Dorbentei with her, and together they can all figure out what comes next.
Sakura waits, and waits, and waits—but her cousin does not come.
Please, she thinks, please, Shizu-lun.
“Her Majesty is still missing,” Munenori says.
“She’s coming,” Sakura says. “She has to be.”
Barsalai’s ears twitch at this. She turns her head toward Sakura. Her eyes! They are tall as a man, each of them! If Sakura is not careful, she will lose herself to them—but she is pulled back to reality when she sees the calligraphy upon the steel.
Peony, written in Shizuka’s own venerated hand.
She’d often wondered why Shizuka chose a peony for the eye, but never thought to ask. Mountain flowers are endemic to the steppes—they make a more appropriate choice for a Qorin. Peonies are the province of sovereigns and pampered courtiers.
Who ever decided that the peony should stand for bravery?
And yet it is bravery that Sakura thinks of now, bravery that she tries to summon, for it is clear to her from Barsalai’s expressive green eyes that Shizuka is not here.
She opens her mouth. Her voice fails her as she tries to find the words to ask, to confirm this great fear of hers. What will she do if Shizuka is gone? She can’t be dead. They’d know if she were dead, wouldn’t they? There’d be some sign or portent. Fires would go out, perhaps. Swords rust in the hands of their owners.
They’d know, wouldn’t they?
Once, twice, she shapes the question—but she cannot give it air. She cannot make it live.
In the end, it is Munenori who finds the courage to ask. “Is the Empress with you?”
Green and silver—earth and sky.
Barsalai shakes her head.
Sakura does not feel her knees give away, but they do—she crumples to the ground, covering her mouth to stifle her cry. Munenori catches her—but in the Hokkaran way, he does not look at her while he does so, and he says nothing to soothe her spirit. He only ensures that she remains standing as the two of them stare down the wolf—the newborn god.
“What happened?” she manages to say. “What happened to…”
Sakura does not know why she expects that a wolf will be able to answer her. It makes no sense at all—how would she shape any of the syllables?
A frigid wind carries the words to her; Barsalai’s silver eye flares.
“She made a mistake. We will save her.”
We will save her.
But will they? Can they? When the shadows cut through so much of the army—can they save Shizuka? They’ve lost a third of the guard and at least half the Qorin, if not more. The numbers are stacked against them—to say nothing of the enemy’s treacherous tactics and unnatural abilities.
Barsalai sounds so confident. Why?
Even with their weapons blessed, even fighting as hard as they could … If Rikuto had not disappeared, they would have lost the battle. Burqila would be dead.
We have come here to die, she thinks, and the thought is like a stone in her stomach.
A weight on her head. Barsalai’s paw. “Trust me,” she says.
And Sakura wants to, truly she does, but she has read all the stories. She knows how this all ends: an impossible last stand against an army five times their size. They may well kill the Traitor, but they will all die doing it, their names lost in the fog, their lives twisted into a romance of some young author’s creation.
But there is nothing romantic about this. There is nothing romantic about the mud that coats her, the aching in her ribs, the horror that has left her feeling like a shucked oyster and not a woman. There is nothing romantic about the bodies stacked high in the pit, nothing romantic about the bodies littering the battlefield; there is nothing romantic about the scent of shit and despair that pervades this place.
This is war. This is what she agreed to.
She closes her eyes. One question remains to her, one thing she must know if she is to have any hope of keeping herself together. “Did Dorbentei make it?”
A quiet nod. Barsalai lowers herself into the pit once more. When she comes back up, it is with two Qorin hanging from the backs of their collars. One is … one does not have a head, and Sakura must avert her eyes lest her stomach attempt to betray her again. The other has a leg bent up at a forty-five-degree angle from her body—and that side of her is so swollen she is nearly unrecognizable.
But Sakura would know those dark eyes anywhere.
Dorbentei Otgar.
Barsalai sets her down; Dorbentei catches the body in her arms. For long moments she does not move. Her hands are shaking; her eyes clenched closed. Tears stream down her face and onto the body.
Silence among the Qorin, silence from Otgar, silence from even Munenori. No one has seen Dorbentei in such a state. A few days ago, Sakura would have said it was impossible to imagine. Dorbentei, bold Dorbentei, crying like a child with a body in her hands? Reduced to worldless sorrow, the woman who has a joke for every occasion? Dorbentei could never shut up, and now …
Sakura takes a step toward her, but she is too slow. Dalaansuv and Burqila have already flanked her. Burqila throws her arms around Dorbentei and the body, Dalaansuv whispers to her.
Sakura knows a moment of profound intimacy when she sees it. However acute her own sorrow, however much she wants to help Dorbentei bear her sorrows—it is not her place. Not now.
For she thinks she knows now who that body once was.
Zurgaanqar. Dorbentei’s mother.
The romantic in her wants to say that at least Ganzorig and Zurgaanqar died at the same battle. Their spirits will find each other in the Womb, and they will journey together to the stars the Qorin hold so sacred.
But Zurgaanqar lost her head, and Ganzorig his entrails, and so how can they possibly meet? How can they possibly journey anywhere at all together?
The stories she so treasured growing up are lies.
Sakura knows that now.
The tears come for her again. Her shoulders tremble.
It occurs to her that her sorrow will get her nowhere. This despair is akin to the fear she felt in the melee, the worries that paralyzed her.
Useless. She does not wan
t to be useless anymore.
There is Minami fire in her blood yet. She turns a little away from Dorbentei—Sister, she’s started to howl—and toward Barsalai.
“There are more of them, aren’t there?” she says. “Could you bring them up? They don’t deserve to rot down there. We can set up a pyre for them. There’s been enough fighting for tonight. We need time to mourn.”
Silence, and then another nod. Leave it to Barsalai to be no less taciturn as a god. Down she goes once more—and when she returns, it is with a body gently held by its deel. A woman, no older than Sakura, her head bent backwards.
This is awful. Truly awful. The whole day has seeped into her soul; she will never be free of the stain it’s left upon her.
And yet however much she is suffering just from being here, the Qorin suffer twice as much. To them these are not merely casualties of war—they are cousins and daughters and sons and mothers and lovers.
Family.
Families, even, some of them wiped out in one fell swoop.
Yes—they have a god on their side.
But what good will that do the dead?
“Lay them out properly,” she says to Munenori. That she is commanding a captain does not occur to her—only that there is a thing that needs doing, and he is the man who can do it. The pieces are falling into place in her mind. She does not want to be useless—and there are only so many things she is good at.
“What?” he says.
“You heard me,” Sakura says. “Lay them out, you and the guard. Make sure their faces are visible. Later we’ll try to get their names.”
Munenori’s eyes go hard. He looks on the body at their feet the way some men look at women who speak of their monthly bleed. “You mean for us to handle the bodies?”
“Yes,” says Sakura. “Soldiers cause enough of them, wouldn’t you say? It shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary for you. Lay them out.”
It surprises her how firm she can be about this. She feels … not like her old self. She will never be her old self again.
But she might wear her mask now and again.
“Why not build the pyre now?” says Munenori. “We can find out who is missing later, if we have the time for it. Names of the departed are hardly the most important—”
The Warrior Moon Page 42