He runs a hand over his beard. “Do you want the news of the Empire first, or news of your family?”
“The Empire,” says Shizuka. She hates herself a little already for saying it, but it is the more imperative of the two. What use will saving the Empire be if there is nothing to return to?
“Dao Doan’s independent now,” he says. “When we attempted to establish trade with them, they posted armies along their borders. The formal response was that we had taken too much already for any sort of trade to be meaningful.”
Expected. It stings, though in truth, that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction from them, considering how Hokkaro seized their nation. “What is their relationship with Xian-Lai?”
“Good, so far as I can tell,” Kenshiro says.
Shizuka narrows her eyes. “So far as you can tell?” she says.
He frowns. “Baozhai has … things are different when we meet as sovereigns. She must guide her people.”
Shizuka thinks of the garden. “She misses you terribly.”
“Did—have you seen her?” he says. His expression is a flickering lantern—bright at first, and then darker than before. “Of course you have. The two of you were always close.”
“I … She couldn’t hear me when I visited her. Interaction was not possible,” Shizuka explains. “It … it hurt, to see her so close and be unable to touch her.”
She picks up one of the scrolls as a demonstration. To her surprise, the paper goes gold beneath her hands—but thankfully, the characters are still readable beneath.
Kenshiro’s eyes widen a little. He swallows. “You’re really here, though,” he says.
“So it seems,” answers Shizuka. “Perhaps because you called the flowers for this. When I visited Baozhai, it was through a morning glory I found beyond the Wall.”
“Interesting…,” says Kenshiro. He tugs at his beard. “This isn’t your physical body.”
“Isn’t it?” Shizuka says. She bites her foreknuckle—it does hurt. “I can feel perfectly well, interact with my environment—”
“I can see straight through you,” Kenshiro says. “This is only a manifestation. There aren’t any texts about this, you understand, but we have some records of what it was like when the Heavenly Family visited their temples. In all cases, the gods were described as ‘gauzy.’ As you are at present.”
He’s gotten started. She wants to know more about the world without her, and he wants to know more of what being a god is like. The two of them are like two duelists running through different drills.
“There were exceptions. I have it on good esteem that the Daughter manifested in the flesh more often than not; her priests claimed it was because she wanted to feel the world in the true way. Perhaps the same is possible for you, under the right conditions. The right flowers … should I be planting daffodils?”
“Kenshiro,” Shizuka says sternly. “This visitation won’t last forever.” Though she cannot bring herself to tell him the reason.
He looks up, having lost himself in thought.
“Right. Well. The trouble is that there’s so much to tell you and so little time to do it all in. Shiratori hasn’t been doing well, and Ryouji-tul’s been talking my ear off about invading Dao Doan. I had to put a stop to that. We just granted them their freedom; we can’t go repeating our past mistakes.”
Shizuka tilts her head. “What do you mean ‘put a stop to that’?” she says. “I’ve never known you to be firm.”
He laughs a little. It is the laugh of a much younger man. “You haven’t known me recently,” he says. “I may not be a duelist, but I remember a bit of wrestling.” There is a proud glimmer in his eyes as he continues. “He called me weak in front of the entire court. Red in the face, frothing at the mouth—the man was an animal. He said that if the Phoenix herself had not granted my daughter and me the throne, he would mutiny.”
“Is that the story?” Shizuka asks.
“Yes,” says Kenshiro. “You’re quite a mythic figure; no one seems to know where you came from, and most allege you brought the Empire a thousand years of peace before Yamai took the throne—”
Now it is Shizuka who flinches. The scroll in her hands burns to ash. “Don’t say his name,” she says.
“That … that scroll was…”
A pang of guilt. She hadn’t meant to destroy the thing; it was only that her anger welled up like a flame, consuming, consuming …
“Sakura-lun will bring you better records from her travels,” Shizuka says by way of apology. “Please. Continue your story.”
It is a little while before Kenshiro heeds her. Even then, he does not quite recapture his earlier enthusiasm. “I told him that if he wanted to mutiny, he was welcome to try and kill me.”
“You what?” says Shizuka. “Kenshiro! If I had said that in court, your wife would have flayed me alive!”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about my wife at the time,” he says. “It’s my thinking that if I am your regent, for your heir, then I should be as much like you as possible. So I did what I thought you would have done.”
He’s smiling a little as he speaks. Shizuka isn’t sure what to do with him.
“He stabbed you,” she says flatly. “In the leg.”
“So you noticed. Yes, he charged the throne and stabbed me in the leg, so I picked him up and drove him face-first into the floor.”
Who is this man that sits before her? For he is not the scholar she left behind. So much has happened.
How many years has it been? She’s loath to ask, lest he realize how little control she has over her own situation. Baoyi was a young teenager the last time they met. Kenshiro and his wife were of the same age, which was uncommon enough in the courts to be well noted. Of course, Shizuka knew Baozhai’s age well, it being a common teasing point between the two of them: she was seven years Shizuka’s elder. Being that Baozhai gave birth (auspiciously, just as she’d planned) on her own twenty-eighth birthday … Kenshiro would have been just nearing forty during her last visit to the palace.
He was past that, now. Forty-five, perhaps.
Which meant they’d been away for eleven years already.
Shizuka finds herself leaning on the table for support, unable to summon the words for the isolation in her heart.
He draws himself back up, regaining a bit of his confident posture.
“He hasn’t troubled me since,” says Kenshiro. “But I have, ah, earned a bit of a reputation for violence as a result. It’s a good thing Baoyi does most of the ruling, these days. Seven years ago when Hanjeon left the Empire, she kept everyone in line without lifting a single finger. There’s nothing better she loves than peace. Watching her negotiate tax rates and write new laws, watching her visit other lords, watching her flourish…”
Shizuka can hardly think of ruling as flourishing.
“You would like her,” says Kenshiro. “You would be proud of the work she’s doing. She’s reduced our army by a third. All Baoyi wants is peace on the continent—peace between all the parts of herself.”
As Kenshiro continues, his voice grows more and more tender. His eyes glaze over a little bit and he looks over Shizuka’s shoulder rather than straight at her.
An Empire of Peace. Shizuka had never bothered to dream of such a thing. That her niece has made it her foremost concern …
How sweet, how bitter, this wine.
“Kenshiro,” she says. The lump in her throat surprises her. “Is there anything else I need to know? About the Empire?”
It’s a specification she doesn’t want to have to make. She wants to hear more of Baoyi and Yangzhai, of Baozhai, of their friends and family. Her heart is in knots, wondering what might have happened to them.
But you cannot rule with your heart.
And yet Kenshiro has himself sat on the throne, or behind it, for thirteen years. He, too, knows something of duty. “Your Wall has held,” he says.
“Even in the mountains?” Shizuka says in a hushed voice.
> “We’ve patrols there,” he says. “Since you left, we’ve seen far less of the enemy coming through. I used to think it was because you’d killed him—but you haven’t, have you?”
Have you?
What a weight those words have! How harshly they land on her ears! Anger flares around her; the flames licking at her hair and skin go blue.
“I’m going to kill him,” she says. “You have my word on that. I will crush him, I will keep Baoyi safe, and I will preserve our country.”
Kenshiro gets to his feet and walks over to Shizuka’s desk, laying a hand on one of the books. “Do you mean to take the throne again when all of this is through?”
The question knocks her breathless. Does she mean to take the throne again? Obviously, she does. She is the rightful ruler of Hokkaro and its provinces. She and Shefali have been able to rule together for only a scant few months—and that just barely. There’s so much left for them to do—so many functions to attend, so many proclamations she still wants to make. A festival in honor of her mother. Reworking the Challenge of the Sixteen Swords to truly allow anyone who wants to join, instead of charging a registration fee. Forging a stronger relationship with the Qorin—one that they can both benefit from, one that is safe for the riders of the Silver Steppes.
So many things left to do.
And—with a sigh—she realizes how many of them she hates. Arguing for a new festival would mean arguing with all the priests at once. That is difficult enough as an impartial sovereign; she cannot imagine what it will be like as a god. Her mother’s birthday had been the twenty-eighth of Nishen; that’s already the Festival of Lanterns. The arguments … Why does this woman deserve greater attention than the fires of Heaven?
Because Heaven would not be burning without her. That is what she wants to say to the conjured courtiers, to those who cannot hear her and will not listen.
Reworking the tournament would mean speaking to the governor of Fujino, and that woman never gave a single hairsbreadth in concession. The Qorin like her well enough now, but will that change when their numbers swell with the saved? Will that change if—and she hesitates even to think it—if Burqila Alshara does not return from beyond the Wall?
Thinking on it all gives her a headache.
This is her duty, she thinks. This is the weight placed upon her at her birth, when two pine needles fell on her forehead and declared her a god.
And yet—is it?
For the needles are their own burden, separate from the issue of her black-flecked blood. She was a princess before she was a god, but she will be a god long after she takes the throne.
Long after everyone she knows has forgotten her.
And they will forget. Kenshiro is staring at her now as if he cannot bear to imagine that she will leave, as if he is trying to memorize the jagged edges of her scar and the way her mangled ear curls in on itself.
Already she rules a people who do not love her.
Can she rule over them if they forget her? If they see only the Phoenix, eternal and brilliant, as dazzling to behold as a thousand suns turning in their heavenly revolutions?
If they forget Shefali, if they forget Shizuka—can she truly abandon herself to that degree?
Kenshiro watches her. He’s been kind, allowing her this much time to think over her answer.
Life on an eternal throne—or shackling her niece’s lineage to that same fate forever.
Which is cruel, which is kind?
Shizuka swallows. “I named Baoyi my heir,” she says. “It has been years since I last saw the Empire, and it will be many yet before we return. This land is…”
No longer my own.
But it never was, was it? She has only been its custodian.
Kenshiro, as if sensing her difficulty, softens himself. “They say that the Phoenix will return to Hokkaro when our need is greatest.”
Something like a smile tugs at the corner of Shizuka’s lips. It isn’t a particularly happy one. “How romantic,” she says.
“I’m glad you think so,” says Kenshiro. He winks. “I was the one who started the rumor.”
Minami Shizuka has known Oshiro Kenshiro all her life. In truth, she cannot remember the first time she met him—he was simply there, lurking in the background of Shefali’s existence, with a friendly smile and an ill-timed joke. This has always been his way—but the two of them have never truly been friends.
How could they be?
Kenshiro, the eldest son of one of her vassal lords, charming and well learned but utterly friendless.
Minami Shizuka, his sworn sovereign, charming and daring, but utterly friendless.
What have they ever had in common, aside from Barsalai Shefali?
But in that room, in that moment, something transpires between them. The air shifts. His eyes go a little softer and perhaps hers do, as well.
Shizuka looks out onto the archives, and she wonders: Will she ever behold this place again? Perhaps she should try to memorize the maps here, perhaps she should take the time to read the papers laid out onto the table, perhaps she should …
She has so many questions, but already her focus is starting to waver. She does not belong here, in this place, at this time.
Whatever home the palace once was to her—let it be Baoyi’s now.
She swallows. Out of reflex, she reaches for her mother’s sword, only to find she did not consciously manifest it. Her hand meets only empty air. She starts, drawing back, afraid of looking the fool in front of her own brother-in-law.
“Then let’s hope you won’t be needing me anytime soon,” she says. “I have work to do.”
Kenshiro nods. He glances down at the papers on the table, at Shizuka’s hands, her palms made rough by the life she’s chosen to lead. At last his eyes land on her face.
Their eyes meet.
“I’ll keep the Empire as safe as I can for you,” he says. He shifts his stance once, twice, and she knows that whatever he is about to say pains him. “Will you tell my sister I said hello? And that I’m thinking of her? Tell her that I spread kumaq in all four directions. Tell her that I remember.”
Shefali is gone and Shizuka is not strong enough to tell him; his sister is gone and she cannot bring herself to say the words …
But Kenshiro is still a liar.
But he is lying.
She knows he is lying: it is as clear as the pale aura of silver around him, the light of lies that has plagued her since her youth. He does not spread kumaq for her. He does not remember. The sketches, the names, these are all that remain to him. All it will take is …
There is a bowl of ink and water on the table. Her eyes fall on it and, for a moment, she is lost to her own fearful memories, but a destructive thought overpowers them: all it will take for Kenshiro to forget his own family is the spilling of this ink.
Once those drawings are gone …
“Please, keep remembering.” Shizuka closes her eyes.
“Shizu-lun,” Kenshiro says. “Wait, there’s something else I want to tell you—”
There is always something else he wants to tell her, there is always another complication. How foolish of her to think she could get away from them for very long.
“Don’t go yet, it’s about—”
It is time to go.
Within her soul Shizuka makes a cut.
When she opens her eyes, it is her prison that awaits her. She is alone in the false palace, alone eleven years and thirteen thousand li from the only home she has ever known.
Minami Shizuka hugs her knees tight to her chest and sobs, knowing full well the tears will never come.
THE WARRIOR MOON
THREE
Shefali does not sleep.
This does not surprise her. There is much to do, much to be done, much to see about doing. The scouts have tucked in for the night; there will be no more Lost Qorin tonight. She sits in the ger with Burqila Alshara, her aunt Dalaansuv, and Minami Sakura. Dorbentei, her cousin, snores on the floor. Captai
n Munenori is three gers away with the Hokkaran commanders, sharing the plans they’ve made, the information they’ve gained.
The very same thing that Burqila, Dalaansuv, and Sakura are doing now.
Burqila’s gestures are heavy and a little languid; Dalaansuv’s translations come slow; Sakura’s sketches of Iwa lack her usual attention to detail. They are, all of the mortals, tired, and Shefali thinks to herself that it is strange that she isn’t.
“Here’s the deal,” says Dalaansuv, gesturing lazily at the sketch. “Scouts say this wall’s a little higher than the Wall of Stone. Not so tough, though. Brittle stuff; chips if you punch it barehanded. Circles the base of all the towers. Lookouts every four li.”
The sketch reflects all of this: a wall more stately than functional, gates engraved with two unknown men holding up the arches. The doors—wood?—are shut. The lookouts themselves are squarish platforms. Sakura’s done a separate sketch of them—they are scarcely wide enough for a single Qorin to lie in. Four of the possessed nonetheless take their positions on it. One on each side, two facing the front.
“How’d we get this?” Shefali says, pointing to the sketch of the lookout.
A small smirk tugs at Burqila’s hard face. She tosses something onto the table: the tip of a Hokkaran-style bow.
“Our scouts are stupid,” says Dalaansuv, “but brave.”
The guards pictured must have been among the returned. Shizuka would be able to tell who they’d been from the strokes of the brush—but Shizuka isn’t here.
“We can’t kill them,” Shefali says.
“That goes without saying,” says Dalaansuv, who is saying it anyway. “Makes things harder, but there’s no other way to do it.”
“Can we capture all the guards?” asks Sakura.
“We’re working on it,” says Dalaansuv. “Scouts say they got half of them down, but no telling if there will be more in the morning.”
Shefali rubs at her chin. Yamai held thousands of them beyond those walls; he would not hesitate to fling as many at the problem as were necessary. If they had a long time, they might be able to steal more of the lookouts, however it was the scouts were managing to do so—but Yamai wouldn’t tolerate that for long.
The Warrior Moon Page 47