“To you, maybe,” says Sakura. Fury fills her. “But when their ashes scatter to the winds, the Qorin will want to know who is being carried away. Do you have any idea how many of them died in the last generation? How many families we ended? Some of those people … Some of those people were the only ones left who remembered the fallen. We aren’t just mourning those who died today. We’re mourning all of them.”
Her voice cracks in righteous indignation, in sorrow and misery. She can no longer look him in the eye.
“Lay them out so I can get their names,” Sakura says. “Please. They have to be remembered.”
She does not wait for his answer. The caravan where she kept her things thankfully survived the battle; she needs her lectern and good paper.
As she leaves the pit, she hears Dorbentei’s howl grow louder and louder.
Every step away from her is an arrow.
O-SHIZUKA
ELEVEN
When Minami Shizuka—Empress Yui, Mother of Hokkaro and all her children, Light of the Empire—awakes, she is in her own room.
The phoenixes carved into the rafters tell her that these are meant to be the Empress’s chambers.
Except that it is not her room.
The Emperor’s chambers and the Empress’s have always been separate, with the consort visiting the sitting ruler. So it has been for the course of Shizuka’s life, so it has been for twenty-two sovereigns. The same is true of Iwa—the Emperor’s chambers are at the other end of the hall. Rarely did she spend any time in her uncle’s quarters, but she knows these well.
Here, for instance. The first thing she sees with her bleary eyes: a screen painted with the story of Minami Shiori, a screen that has been in Shizuka’s room almost longer than she has had one. In the first panel, Shiori is born to a weaver beneath a full moon on the double fifth. In the second, she saves the First Emperor from drowning. In the third, she tricks the sun into giving her a beam of light, and makes from that a sword. The last panel features her confronting the fox woman.
But the painting is wrong.
The second panel. The drowning figure isn’t wearing the Dragon Circlet—it must not be the First Emperor at all. The clothing is all wrong for an Emperor, too; he wears no thread of gold.
The sight of it fills Shizuka with anger. It’s easier to feel angry now that she’s had some time to rest—now that her head has mended the wound it suffered falling into the pit. Her aches remain, but they are distant and dull compared to the memory of what has happened.
The sheets are heavy, and she is tucked in tight. Swaddled, almost. She works her way free of them and sits up. The screen stands right at the side of her bed, so that anyone entering her chambers is spared the sight of the Empress’s rumpled bedding. When her toes skim the ground, she realizes there are slippers already prepared for her—red with gold trim. So, too, does she realize that she is not wearing her warrior’s garb: instead she is wrapped in a soft red under-robe. It is as plush as it is unwelcome—the touch of it against her skin feels like a violation.
Disgusted, she unties the robe and throws it across the room. It lands on the replica of the clock that Baozhai gave her—a clock whose hours are all labeled “contemplation.” Standing to the right of it is a statue of the many-faced god one of the Ikhthian ambassadors gave her, but this one has been replaced with the faces of her ancestors, the Imperial Line. Their eyes bore into her now as she sits bare chested before them.
She wants, more than anything, to cut the statue down. To burn it. Without thinking, she reaches for the fires within herself. The smell of burning wood soon fills the room and her lungs, bringing with it the memory of calm.
Because that fire—that tiny fire, that little blip of orange at the tip of Yoshinaga’s nose—means she is not yet broken, no matter what the Traitor might say.
He can break her army, he can send her wife away, he can put her spirit into a vise—but he cannot break a god.
She refuses.
The fire begins to burn in earnest. Cinders drop from Yoshinaga’s nose onto the mats. Shizuka could quell them, if she chose. It wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do—one thought and one breath to suck the fire back into herself are all that it would take.
But she lets it burn.
She stands as the fire rises. Almost immediately, she falls back onto the bed. As much as her wounds might have healed, she has still lost a lot of blood. Cursing her own weakness, she tries again—more slowly this time—and manages to stand of her own power.
Outside the window, the walled city sprawls out before her. This, too, is like Fujino—she knows all the streets, all the thoroughfares. Eight main avenues surround the palace like spokes on a wheel, with the Imperial Hunting Grounds as a hub. Time has no meaning here, but she thinks it must be their version of Fifth Bell—there are scores of Qorin clad in white making their way down the Mother’s Lane, toward her temple.
“Praise the Eternal King,” they call, “who grants us life and protects us from ignoble death.”
Their voices weave together. She can hear them with perfect clarity even from her tower.
How many of them are there? Moving in perfect unity, a sickening puppet show made from a people who have suffered so much already. That he chose to use them for his mock capital and not the Hokkarans …
To survive is Qorin, she tells herself. When she finds a way to kill the Traitor safely, she will free them. She isn’t certain of how. She isn’t even certain that it’s possible.
But she chooses to be certain that she will do it.
It is the least her wife would ask of her.
Shefali.
Shizuka’s fingers rise to the place where her heart once was; she staggers, knocking over the screen in the process. Shefali. Why is it Shizuka alive in this gilded cage? Why not Shefali?
“Your Highness, Princess Yui—have you woken?”
The voice is one of three the women here all share. What relief, that it is not the Spider! And yet even that is fleeting, for she is trapped without a sword, and it will surely be a Lost Qorin who is made to wait on her.
She does not want to dignify the Traitor’s servant with a response, and so she does not.
What she wants to do is curl up and weep at the prospect of what she has done, to crumple beneath the weight she must now carry—but this is denied to her. She cannot weep anymore, for one thing; she cannot allow herself to break, for another.
And so she gets back to her feet, the Phoenix Empress beyond the Wall, and she steels herself for the consequences of her actions.
“I can dress myself,” she calls. There are four sets of four robes hanging along the far side of the wall. Plain, all of them, lacking the patterns, prints, and paintings she so enjoys. Only one in each set is gold—the rest are in subdued reds or cool blues. Robes for a scholar’s wife and not an Empress.
But then—he has not addressed her as an Empress, has he?
The doors swing open. Out of reflex, she tries to duck behind the screen, having forgotten that she has already knocked it over. Shame claws at her bare back—the guards can see her, which means he can see her. The blankets are her only cover. She wraps them around her shoulders as quickly as she can.
“Your Highness, we understand that you may believe you can dress yourself.”
It is not until she turns toward the speaker that she realizes there are four of them—four Qorin women wearing rictus grins, four women speaking all at once with the very same voice. The way they move reminds her with a sickening lurch of the marionettes at Rihima—they each pick up one of the robes on the first display.
“I can,” Shizuka says. “I am no girl of ten; I can and have dressed myself before. You can tell the Eternal King I refuse to shed my modesty for him.”
The women all turn toward her, all tilt their heads at precisely the same angle. Though their faces are different, there is an awful sameness to their expressions—to the smiles, the dead glint in their eyes. Dolls, all of them.
Shizuka has never been fond of dolls.
“Your modesty?” say the four women. “Don’t be preposterous. You have never been a modest girl; why be a modest woman? Let us dress you.”
Closer they come, the robes held up before them like a washerwoman’s work. Outside, the guards watch with something like interest. The fire—tall enough now to fully consume the statue—does not seem to bother them.
Shizuka gets to her feet once more, the blankets draped around her. The cloth rubs against the open wound on her chest; it hurts, but not enough to distract her. Already gold is filling in the cracks. How long before that is all that’s left of her heart? Mended like a shattered pot and just as empty.
No, not empty. There’s fire, still. Shizuka draws her arm across her face in a sharp gesture. The flames follow, pouring out from the statue to form a wall between her and the handmaidens.
“No,” says Shizuka. “You shall leave, or I will burn you.”
This at last gives them pause. The four women blink all at once. For an instant, their smiles crack; for an instant, she can see the hinges and joints that make their faces contort in such a way. His own anger showing through.
“Insolent, insolent, insolent,” say the four women. “But the Eternal King is merciful. He knows you cannot change your ways with only a day’s worth of lessons. Dress yourself today, if you are so inclined. You will be present for breakfast within the hour, or you shall be made present.”
Breakfast?
After all of this—breakfast?
The raw audacity of it stuns her. He wants to … simply have a meal with her?
After killing so many Qorin, so many Hokkarans?
And yet the bitter truth is that Shizuka does not have much choice in the matter. If she does not attend, he will send Rikuto, and it has her mother’s sword. The fires in her veins may not have abandoned her—but what good are they when the Daybreak Blade is in the hands of another? If that sword is raised against her—can she break her mother’s sword? Her ancestors’ sword?
No, no. She must have it back.
True, she might have left her army behind—but that does not mean the war has ended. This, too, is a battle. The Eternal King thinks he can conquer her.
Shizuka will show him otherwise.
But she must do so when she is ready. Prudence is a virtue Xianyu did much to teach her.
“Are we understood, Yui?”
Breakfast.
Puh.
Shizuka stares back at them over the wall of flame.
“Yes,” she says. “You are understood. Will we be breaking our fast on the terrace?”
“The Pine Terrace,” say the four women. Her lip curls into a sneer at the name. Of course. Everything in this place is meant to taunt her. “You shall dress yourself and wait for your escort. Should you leave the chambers the Eternal King has so graciously provided, there shall be consequences.”
She has already lost her heart, her soul, her tears—how can the Traitor threaten to hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt?
But that is asking the knife how sharp it is.
“Leave me already,” Shizuka says. “I’ve gotten the point.”
She holds their gaze as she speaks to them, in hopes that the Traitor knows she is staring him down. Perhaps he does—the handmaidens bow only so much as necessary before leaving her. The door closes behind them.
She is alone with her fire.
The statue’s consumed already. There’s little left of it. Flames lick at the rafters, at the phoenixes carved with such loving care so many generations ago.
Shizuka draws in a breath. She will need it all if she is to survive this. The flames return to her. There’s no trace of the cold she felt earlier, no trace of the ice—only a dull ache where most of her feelings should be. Her fingers trace the rim of the wound. They did not bother to bandage her.
She sighs.
For the first time in years, she sets about dressing herself. The process does nothing to calm her. This cloth—who would pick cloth like this? It is coarse and awful, and not at all befitting of someone of her station. Even the golden robe is too well waxed; it feels tacky against her skin.
Her movements are careful and precise—nothing at all like those of a woman with a gaping hole in her chest. Under-robe, first belt; the heavy weight of the other three, and finally her second belt. It is difficult to tie it properly on her own, but she manages, tying it on the bed and slipping it over her head before pulling the knot closed. Tight but not too tight—she truly does hate the feeling of the gold.
At the mirror there are pots of various kinds of makeup. Thick white paint and sticks of charcoal for her teeth; a small tin of rouge and a set of small brushes with which to apply it. Perfumes, too, lie in wait for her there, helpfully labeled with their scents.
He wants her to wear them—to cover the thick scar across her face, the notch in her nose.
Minami Shizuka will not.
Baozhai had given her a phoenix ear cuff to wear four years ago. It lies somewhere in her old chambers in the palace now; the Traitor has not replicated it here. To see the work of someone she loved so perverted would have been a blow indeed—and yet she knows that even if the cuff itself were here, she would not choose to wear it.
And so she tucks her hair behind the stub of her ruined ear. She catches sight of herself in the mirror: amber eyes smoldering with anger, with determination, with hatred; her clenched jaw. A woman unbroken.
She thinks to herself that Shefali would not like the look of hatred.
She flinches.
Five hundred heartbeats Minami Shizuka is alone. She counts, for she has little else to do save ruminate on the mistakes that have led her here, little else to do but remember her wife’s last moments. Counting does not stave away the assassins for long—but it helps. She tries to focus on the numbers, on the arcane meanings her tutors assigned to them based on their roots and multiples, but she finds she cannot remember any of them now.
Her mother was right—they really had been wasting their money paying those stuffy old men to ramble at her.
Minami Shizuru would have fought her way through the towers by now, sword or not.
Minami Shizuru would have had the Traitor’s head for her rice wine saucer, as Burqila Alshara would say.
She tells herself that she is not weak for waiting until the right moment. She does not believe it. Shefali thought of her as a decisive hero, and here she is …
The doors open. There is no knocking here, for there is no expectation of privacy. What use is it to knock when everyone shares the same mind? Four guards march into the room, Dragons all, with Rikuto standing at the center. It wears a deep blue robe beneath a white coat emblazoned with the Traitor’s seal. Waves. Revulsion takes her at the sight; she wrinkles her nose in disgust.
The demon crosses its arms. “All the kindness he’s shown you, and still you act like this.”
“Who changed me this morning?” Shizuka asks.
It scoffs. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I don’t want him touching me,” says Shizuka, rising to her feet from her place of contemplation on the mats. “If he has, then he has not done me any kindness at all.”
Contempt flares behind the demon’s eyes. The tip of its long nose reddens a little; it waves a hand dismissively. “One of the servants,” it says. “Women and their modesty. You wear it only when it suits you. Come. The Eternal King hates lateness.”
The guards—all men, she notices—leave the room. Rikuto stands right where it is, staring at her. They are duelists, the two of them, appraising each other’s strengths. She knows that she is quicker—but it is far taller. Any blow she strikes at it would have to come after a parry, when it is off-balance. Its size will work against it then.
Shizuka imagines sliding her sword between its ribs. She imagines the tip piercing its heart. She imagines the feel of its blood spurting out onto her; she imagines the rattle of its dying breath.
But she cannot imagine taking its head.
“The longer you wait, the later you will be,” it says. “And the later you are, the worse the punishment.”
Punishment. That word again.
She begins to walk. As she passes it, she does not look back for it. Long, confident strides—an Empress and not a princess. She does not bow her head; she does not meet the eyes of the Qorin who greet her with their mechanical smiles. Shoulders back, neck straight, head held high. Walk and think of all the tributes you’ve received—so Baozhai once told her.
And so Minami Shizuka walks through the halls of this impossible palace, this place that does not map to its outward appearance at all, this echo of her previous life. Turn right. Marvel at the statue of Empress Yumiko—or in this case, a woman she does not know wearing seven swirling cloaks. Down the hall, taking the back stairs, toward the terrace. The servants are preparing to call the hour—she can see them lined up in sets of four along each of the major paths. The haze of incense stings at her eyes.
As she walks down the stairs, she chances a look over her shoulder. Rikuto is following eight paces behind her, watching, watching. It catches her eye and smiles mirthlessly.
Her chest burns again, and she thinks to herself that she is really going to kill it if she has to endure it much longer.
But how?
The answer presents itself as she reaches the landing. To reach the Pine Terrace, she must pass the Imperial Gardens. To her surprise, the Traitor has replicated it, too—but more important, he has used real flowers. There can be no mistaking them. Outside, the scintillating fields have a false gleam to them—but here there are some that are half-wilted, here there are spots and blemishes among the perfect blooms. His influence poisons everything it touches.
And yet the flowers hold on. The rosebushes, the dogwood tree whose branches were so often her home, even the gentle hill upon which the golden dandelions once grew—all of them are here, all of them are waiting, and all of them turn toward her as she passes.
The Warrior Moon Page 43