And what does he see? She cannot chance to look on herself, not now, but the air around her has gone hazy with heat. Everything, everything feels golden and bright; everything, everything, feels sure and right and true. Here beyond the wall, she cannot feel the threads that join her to her people, but she knows that if she looks, they will be there. If she looks on herself …
She will see a god.
And that is what her father sees—her father who thought he’d been spending all this time with his wife. Never in her life has her father looked on her in such a way, never in her life has she seen this look on him. Not even when the flowers first started turning toward her, not even when she handed him a sprig of hydrangea she’d changed to gold.
How well she remembers those days in the gardens! All the halcyon days of her youth spent at her father’s side, listening to him read the works of others. Xianese long-form poetry, old Jeon songs to which the melodies had long been lost, Doanese meditations on justice—her father’s tastes ranged the whole world across, so far as Shizuka had been concerned. But to her, it did not matter what it was that he was reading—only that it was the two of them alone in the gardens, only that no one would dare to interrupt them.
There is a dogwood tree in this garden, too. The Traitor’s deception is complete—of course there is a dogwood tree here. Itsuki would have noticed its lack. Perhaps with its help she can convince her father of what he is seeing.
“Come with me,” says the Phoenix. She takes her father’s hand and leads him to the dogwood. He follows, his steps small and staggered. The Poet Prince left speechless.
“When I was young, you would hoist me onto these branches,” she says, her voice like the ringing of temple bells. “You would read to me, at least until I asked you for a story. Then you would move all the heavens and earth to contrive one for me. Always, a young girl at the center; always, she did what was kind and just, no matter how difficult.”
There is a part of her that cracks saying all of this, a part of her that cannot stand the weight of these memories—but her godhood fills in the break like gold on a shattered pot.
Another battery from the siege engines. The branches of the dogwood shake. Petals, now free from their bindings, spiral through the air to land on Itsuki’s head.
“I am doing the kind and just thing now,” Shizuka says.
And she is. Is there anything kinder and more just than this? Saving her father before the Traitor can further corrupt his mind, sending him home where Kenshiro can care for him? War is no place for poets, and it is war that is coming now. No matter how much she wants him to see her burn the Traitor to cinders—she cannot risk it.
Her father must be safe, and that must come first.
The Phoenix takes one of the violets she’s carried with her. Though it has followed her to the depths of Nishikomi Bay and over the peaks of the Tokuma Mountains, it is as thick-petaled as ever.
Serve me, she says to the flower.
And so it does. Gold, it glows; gold, the flower that binds her to her family.
Open, she says to the flower.
And so it does. Like a knot in reality’s fabric loosening—the flower unfolding, the flower becoming larger and larger, until at last the space between its petals is as tall as a Qorin and three times as wide.
This she casts to the earth. The moment the petals touch the soil, the gap between them springs to life.
Five years ago, she had gotten as a gift from the Hierophants of Axiot a mirror. As tall as this it had been, though more narrow. Transporting it across the ocean and southeast from Nishikomi—this alone would have been enough to beggar a smaller nation, but Axiot spared no expense when it came to grand gestures. Five men they had sent along with the mirror, their hair burnished copper, their skin pale except where flecked by red. All five of them it took to raise the mirror back up to its full height.
“A gift,” they’d said. “The finest we can offer.”
And in truth, she had never seen anything like it: the elaborate golden phoenixes framing the mirror itself, the shimmering surface of their feathers; the rubies of their eyes and the ivory of their talons. To say nothing of what they flanked! The surface cannot have been silver, for how could silver reflect her so perfectly? For the first time in her life, she saw every detail of her own form perfectly rendered: every thread of her thick robes, every strand of her dark hair, every striation in the scar the dog Nozawa had given her.
But it is a terrible thing to look on oneself, a terrible thing to confront the physical reality of one’s being after so long trying to run away from it. Shizuka had left her physical self in the Kirin River. Drunk as she was, this fine gift did nothing but upset her—for there she was, eyebrows shaved and teeth blackened, sitting on the dais without her wife at her side.
She’d sent it back.
But the memory of it remains, and if she is to call the flowers, the mirror is the first thing she reaches for. As the violet grows and unfurls she shapes it with a thought: a great mirror of petals, a massive drop of dew for the mirror itself.
The garden shown on that smooth surface is not the one they currently stand in. There is no Itsuki to be seen, no blazing goddess behind him. Here it is spring, but there it is the first blush of autumn. The chrysanthemums Shizuka so prized during her time in the palace have just started to bloom. Two Phoenix Guards spring into action at the sight of the thing, debating what is to be done about the mysterious window that has opened before them. Shizuka can identify neither—but she knows their names, thanks to the gold characters floating before them.
“The enemy?” says Kusunagi Mako, the younger of the two—a girl with choppy hair and the rough accent of Fuyutsuki.
“Don’t be an idiot,” answers Genzo Hikari, a man with a sword hanging at his hip. “They’ve been defeated for years.”
“But what do you call that thing?” says Mako, growing more distressed.
In a distant way, it is amusing to see them panic, when it is only their Empress returning home, only her father at last returning to the place he was born.
But this is not a distant sort of thing. Shizuka takes three steps toward her father. So elated is she with her creation that she no longer feels the ache of her heartlessness—or perhaps it is simply the rush of divinity that numbs her.
There is no way to see his reaction from behind him. His shoulders rise and fall with his breathing. Yes, she thinks, he is remembering.
“This place is a lie. You are in the Traitor’s palace, not your own,” she says. “The real Fujino—the place you’ve always loved—is right through that window.”
He swallows.
Mako runs off to find a superior. Hikari stays planted right where he is.
“Who are you?” he calls. “By what means have you come to the Imperial Palace?”
How brave he is, how unfaltering! He does not draw his sword but stands tall and straight, his voice firm and yet not unfriendly. Shizuka is proud to have such people enlisted in her ranks—but then, these are no longer her ranks.
“Tell them,” she whispers to her father, for she does not know how she appears to Hikari. “Tell them your name.”
As the silence between a duelist and his opponent—so this quiet.
“Your name, Lord-tur!” says Hikari. “I can tell from the light upon you that you have the Phoenix’s own blessing, but you must tell me who you are if I am to let you through.”
The light upon you. She does not want to be seen by him, and so she is not. The comfort of anonymity is dizzying.
But so, too, is the anticipation.
“Father?” she whispers.
Another battery from the cannons. The army’s footfalls are louder than ever—can Hikari hear them? Yes, he must be able to—his brows come nearly together over his head at the sound. It occurs to her that he is not wearing a war mask.
“Father, I do not know how long I can keep this open,” she says. She squeezes his shoulder, plumes of smoke rising where h
er fingers burn against the cloth of his robes. “Please.”
It is then that her father turns to her.
It is then that she sees the tears falling from his amber eyes, the misery writ plain across his face.
“You…,” he says, and something in her breaks in two, something in her is not strong enough to bear the sorrow in that single word. “I see it now—your clever disguise. If my Shizuka were a woman grown, she would look quite like you. But she is only a child, and you are only a demon.”
Has she been made of clay before this moment? All the fire she contains has done nothing but make her brittle. Here—see a god shatter. See her clutch at a heart that has long since left her, see her stagger for breath.
“You are not my daughter.”
God though she may be, powerless she is to stop her father. Into his robes he reaches. His eyes still fixed on hers, he draws forth his inkstone—the one she’d given him as a gift just before the Ninth of Nishen—and casts it to the ground.
It—like her—shatters.
A thick sea scent envelops them; she cannot open her eyes to see what is happening, for she cannot summon the strength to confront the sight of her father in such a state. The hiss of smoke precedes a low, rumbling laugh.
She knows that voice.
No, no, no.
All she wanted was to save her father, all she wanted was for him to be safe—
—She is a child again, thirteen and at her mother’s bedside, telling her that there is nothing she can do and she does not know where her father is—
—but she does know, and he is right there in front of her, looking on her as if she were a monster.
He does not recognize her.
A knife in her breast.
The cannons fire, and even this is not enough to bring her back to the reality of the situation, even this cannot serve as a tether. She cannot breathe, she cannot think—
“I was told the enemy would wear a familiar form, but this…”
That tone. The three of them in the throne room with her uncle. He casts down his fatal proclamation—that Shizuru must attempt to kill forty blackbloods on her own—and her father protests. She will have a guard, won’t she?
That same hopelessness, that same betrayal.
She feels as helpless now as she did then.
“You did the right thing, O-Itsuki-lor.”
The Traitor.
He is here.
Calamity rarely strikes alone.
She forces herself to open her unweeping eyes, to take in the sight before her. Hikari has gone for his sword now, but it will do him little good.
For it is not simply the Traitor who stands before her—his army has come as well. The footfalls she felt earlier weren’t Rikuto’s forces at all, but Yamai’s: the palace guards gathered in columns along the boardwalk. Thousands, at least, packed tight as salmon roe. No human army could stand being so close together—but he controls them, and so they stand where he wills them to. He himself wears the lacquer armor of a general, trimmed with Imperial Gold. Four waves are stamped on his breast; strands of seaweed decorate his hair.
Looking out onto the window, Yamai is genuinely smiling.
“What fine work, Yui,” he says. “Truly exemplary.”
She cannot summon her fire with her soul in such a state, cannot make herself feel anything but sorrow and misery—but even so, there is anger in her voice as she speaks.
“Leave,” she says.
“I see no reason to,” says Yamai. He takes a few steps toward them, kicking at the shards of the broken inkstone with the tip of his boot. “I was summoned to dispatch a demon, after all.”
Itsuki has said nothing—but he shifts as the Traitor kicks his inkstone. “You will … you will, won’t you?” he says. “You promised that you would.”
“Who do you think he is?” creaks Shizuka. “Whom do you think you’ve bargained with? Look on him and his army. Look at his eyes, Father!”
Yamai’s smile shrinks only slightly. “Now, O-Itsuki-lor, you wouldn’t take the word of a demon over mine, would you?”
Cruelty. Cruelty of the highest degree. He can simply rob Itsuki of his consciousness and be done with it if that is what he means to do, but no—the three of them must have this conversation.
She reaches for a sword that is not there.
“I … but why have you brought an army?” Itsuki asks.
Behind him, Mako has returned with ten more guards. Each has a sword in hand. If she is going to do anything about this—anything at all—she is going to need a weapon. Hokkaro is her realm as the Steppes are Shefali’s—surely the Phoenix Empress can take a sword from one of them?
Two steps toward the golden frame. Her father jerks into motion, planting himself squarely in her path. Confusion colors his eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asks the Traitor.
“What I promised I would,” is his answer. “Eradicating demons is best done by many.” A fan hangs from his hip—he takes it now and opens it to the army. One by one, they begin to hop onto the gardens, walking in their mechanical way toward the window.
No, no, no—
Desperately she reaches for the calm, for the fire, for her power, but there is too much happening and she cannot think—
She tries to shove her father out of the way, to shove him into the window, but no matter how much of her strength she throws against him, he does not move.
The Traitor laughs again, and it is then—looking at him—that Shizuka sees it.
The dagger. Her mother’s dagger. In her distress over losing the Daybreak Blade, she had not thought to keep track of the dagger. A fool! A fool she is, for now it is in the hands of the enemy.
She lunges for him, but her father’s arm shoots out. By the throat, he’s caught her. Horror in her father’s face, horror in his eyes—a scream stifled by his grip.
“It is as I told you earlier,” says the Traitor, walking toward them with the dagger in hand. “Your mind is closed. The moment you saw him, you had determined to save him. There was no possibility of failure in your mind, even when I showed you I see through his eyes as readily as anyone else’s.”
But Itsuki had not fallen into a trance when the battle started, he had not stopped, and there is no way the Traitor would hurt anyone of Imperial blood—
But this isn’t hurting him, is it? Only controlling him.
With one hand, her father holds her by the throat. The Traitor presses the tip of the dagger to Itsuki’s sternum, and Itsuki takes hold of it himself. A man choking his daughter with one hand and near to killing himself with the other—this was the Poet Prince.
“There is no use for a child on the throne, Yui,” says the Traitor. She cannot see him waving his hands but she hears his fan snap shut, hears him tap it against his wrist. The possessed soldiers in their columns march down into the garden, their footfalls a constant rumble.
She cannot breathe. They are marching toward the mirror, toward the portal, and she cannot breathe. Run, she thinks to the two guards, but they do not hear her; run and fetch the army.
Perhaps they hear her, or perhaps their good sense prevails when they see the approaching column of empty-eyed, armor-clad Qorin. Mako and the others all unsheathe their weapons.
“Stop where you are!” they shout.
“How quaint,” says the Traitor, “to be ordered by another.”
Another tap of the fan against his wrist.
She does not see it happen, but she hears it: flesh stretching, bones popping, a sickening crunch. A howl of agony followed by ten war cries. How proud their ancestors would be, to hear the spirit of their voices! And yet those ancestors will soon welcome them—for there is no doubt in Shizuka’s mind who wins when even two blackbloods face ten men.
She does not see it happen, but she does not need to.
Minami Shizuka knows well the sound of her own failure.
Squeezing her eyes shut does little to isolate her from it. With her father
still strangling her, there is no hope to escape the knowledge that—once more—she has failed. Once more, she has brought death to the people she swore to protect.
That the world is starting to twist and roil around her is only right and just.
“You are thinking that there is still a way to stop me. That you can save your father, if you try,” says the Traitor.
And yes, this is part of her thinking—but she will not give him the dignity of an answer.
“You can save him,” says the Traitor. “All you must do is nothing. If you take any actions—any at all—before my army has returned to its home, he will die. It is as simple as this.”
The Traitor laughs behind her.
Cannons firing in the distance. Soldiers pouring in like grains of rice from a sack, hundreds of them rushing through the portal, thousands, maybe—a stream of shining armor and white hair. The laughter of the old god, and the pained, rattling breaths of her father.
These are the only sounds.
She raises her eyes, but still she cannot bring herself to look on her father. Instead she looks to the soldiers—there are only three columns left. Three hundred? Of the thousands she’d seen, only three hundred remain, and the first of them is approaching the portal. The soldiers move with such speed—how many are already storming Fujino?
With a sickening lurch, she recalls Kenshiro. How proud he had been of his daughter, of her decision to shrink the armies and the guard! Shizuka took most of the Phoenix Guard with her on this madman’s mission—how many remained? How many has Baoyi recruited in the intervening years? The only threats to her person being human, being mortal—what impetus did she have to see that they were properly equipped for dealing with the enemy?
The guards don’t even wear war masks.
Years, they’d gone without her—and in her absence, peace has finally come to Hokkaro.
Ruined now, by her own making.
Bitter, bitter, bitter.
Is it for this she has struggled? For the destruction of her childhood home, for the massacre of her people? To sit idly by in the clutches of evil? When she swore her oath with Shefali beneath the white birch tree, she did not swear to lose.
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