“Thousands of those?” she asks.
“Yes,” answers the soldier.
“The chamber,” her father cuts in. “It’s our only hope.”
“Hope of what?” Baoyi says. “Am I to sit inside it and listen to everyone die?”
She can see the plaque now, with its remonstrations about wisdom. She wants to stamp on it, wants to crack it, but she knows that will do her no good.
“You are to live,” says her father.
What he is asking of her is shameful—to live while so many throw away their lives for her—and yet there is a large part of her that wants to do just that. She wants to hide. Before this awful morning, the worst thing to have ever happened to her had been leaving the Bronze Palace.
She does not have a warrior’s heart; she does not have a soldier’s strong arms; she does not even have the eyes of an archer.
All her life, Baoyi has been a diplomat like her parents had hoped she would be.
What good is diplomacy here? Perhaps she has been kind enough to her people that they are willing to go to such lengths for her. But that only leaves her feeling worse.
The eight guards gather around the plaque. Up, the false tile.
“Your Majesty!”
“I told you—”
She cannot finish the sentence—the guard tackles her to the ground. Her head cracks against the tile; stars burst before her eyes. The world spins but her hearing is true: there’s something skittering where she once stood. One of the enemy? But how had they gotten past the army?
Before she can sort out her thoughts, the thing in front of them—small and much like a turtle-imp—belches. From its beakish mouth comes a cloud of heavy fog, black as smoke, which at once sinks to the ground.
Blurry, blurry, but as she stares up at the ceiling, she can see them: dozens, maybe hundreds of scurrying creatures crawling along. Like beetles, she thinks. They are so like beetles, and she has never seen so many of them in one place before.
“Don’t breathe the smoke!” her father shouts. “All of you, stop up your masks!”
She has no mask to stop up, but she holds her breath. One of her tutors told her all about the dangers of breathing in smoke—but this isn’t the sort you’d get from a fire, is it? It tastes … It tastes of ink, and the sea …
Her father raises his wide sword and swings at the small creature. It makes a rude gesture and skitters away, laughing, laughing, and Baoyi thinks to herself that she has never heard a sound so terrible as that. But that isn’t true—she has heard so much screaming today.
“Get me up,” she slurs to the guard. True to her years of service, the guard obliges, grabbing her beneath the shoulders and lifting. The world moves entirely too quickly; it is all she can do not to vomit.
But the guard solves that problem for her by clamping a hand onto her throat. At first, Baoyi mistakes it for some gesture of reassurance—but then the squeezing starts. The choking. A scream dies on her tongue—what is happening? For her grip has gone stiff as iron, and her nails are digging into Baoyi’s windpipe, and there is an awful rattle to her breath—
“Pa—”
Before the second syllable is formed, her father strikes. What horror in his eyes, what fierce determination! Once more he raises the sword, and this time his blow lands true: a vicious chop that takes the guard’s hand right off her arm. Blood spills out onto her. Baoyi screams in earnest then, throwing herself against her father.
She wants him to embrace her. She wants to wake up somewhere that is not here, somewhere else. Sur-Shar, maybe. She’s heard such lovely things about it. There hasn’t been a war in Sur-Shar in years.
But her father does not embrace her—he only squeezes her a little before pushing her toward the chamber. The guards have already gotten it open.
And as Baoyi stumbles backwards to the waiting guardsmen, she sees two things.
First: the one-handed guardswoman’s mask has come off. Her skin has gone clammy and gray, her eyes and lips pitch black. Though the stump of her arm yet bleeds, she draws her sword and lunges for her father.
Second: there is an unnatural shimmer to the smoke. How quickly it spreads! Already it nips at the heels of the column in the hallway.
Baoyi has been a clever girl all her life. Whenever her father told her a story, she’d figure out the ending long before the central players took the stage. It was a talent of hers, a thing he’d tease her about: Politics will not be so easy as these stories.
And so she knows already how this is going to end. All the soldiers who inhale the smoke—the same murderous intent will seize them.
Her throat goes tight.
She knows.
“My father,” she says to the guards that catch her. “Please, we must take my father into the chamber!”
But the guards do not answer her. It is her father who does instead, as he brings his blade down on the one-armed woman. “Have I ever told you my Qorin name?”
“Halaagmod?” she answers. “Father, we don’t have—”
“It means that I grow roots,” her father says. He grabs the woman by the hair and cuts. So much blood, already, so much blood on him when he turns toward her. “Go into the chamber, Baoyi. I’ll plant myself on top.”
And it is this, at last, this that breaks her. Tears land on the backs of her hands as she reaches for him, only for the guards to pull her backwards.
“Come in with us!” she says. “Father, please, you’re not a soldier—”
“I’m not. I’m an oak. That’s what I’ve always been,” he says. He smiles at her, the same smile he has always given her. “I’m happy to have given you shade.”
It is the last thing she sees of him before the masked guardsmen pull her into the chamber, before they seal it shut and lash the blessed ropes about the entrance.
Baoyi does not hear the blow that takes him—she is too busy screaming herself hoarse. She has no way of knowing what is happening just above her, no way of seeing him plant himself there just the way he swore he would.
And she cannot hear the sounds of it over her own screaming.
THE WARRIOR MOON
SIX
The Qorin army, victorious as they have not been in years, rally at the Moon’s back. What a sound, what a thrill: thousands of horseshoes beating against the polished tile of this mock Fujino. There is so much elation in the air that Shefali can hardly breathe; it stops her throat, like sticky-sweet fruit.
“Where are we going?” asks Temurin. There are two claw marks on her horse and three across her chest. The injuries have not stopped her, though they have left her sounding exhausted.
In reply, Shefali simply points at the column of gold.
Sakura eyes it with something like nostalgia, something like anxiety.
Forward, the army. The Hokkarans will follow along. With Rikuto dead, the shadows have vacated the city—only the blackbloods remain, and her mother will soon have broken the spell on them. With every breath, Shefali feels more of them returning to their old selves, each one a raindrop.
For an instant, she throws back her head and allows herself to feel the storm.
But it is over as soon as it has begun. Minami Sakura—her scent unmistakable—is tugging at her arm. Shefali opens her eyes to find that Sakura has removed her war mask. She keeps her eyes focused on Shefali, on the god.
“The flowers,” she says.
Shefali follows her pointing fingertip. Fujino is rife with flowers; this original city is no different. This would be the Fujiwara district they are in: a great wisteria marks its center. The tree’s branches are as gnarled and twisted as an old woman’s yearning hands, but it has spent years in the care of the careless.
Except that the petals are falling from it like the shorn hair of a maiden as they watch.
“Kharsa!” shouts one of her clansmen. “Kharsa, look at the buildings!”
Near her is a teahouse, or what would be a teahouse. This one has a mural of Emperor Yusuke the Brawler wres
tling a lion dog painted on its door. Easier to say, perhaps, that it once did: the paint is fading to nothing.
“Sakura,” she says. “Can you explain this?”
“I…,” she starts. Her eyes wander. She sees the blood streaked on Shefali’s deel. She remembers.
“Close your eyes, if you need.” The Moon has her way of comforting.
Sakura takes her advice. It is still a struggle for her to get the words out. Battle has its scent, after all. “He’s gone. The Traitor, I mean. Either he’s dead or he’s gone, somehow. Without a god around, anything too unnatural reverts to its old form.”
“Gone?” says Dorbentei. Sakura flinches at the sound of her voice, though she has not deigned to get off Dorbentei’s horse. “So we’ve won?”
“Only if he is dead,” Shefali says. She does not feel as if he is. The passing of a god—surely a thing like that would have some sort of feeling to it. One brother knows when his twin has died.
There’s a lurch in her stomach. If Yamai is not dead, then he has left, and if he has left—where has he gone? Axiot lies across the sea from here. He has ships that might carry him. Will it be another eight years’ journey for them? And, speaking of time—has the Traitor’s hold on it relaxed now that he is gone? Shizuka told her of their niece, of how much Baoyi’s aged in the short time they’ve been gone.
That lurch travels up Shefali’s throat.
Where?
The golden column has the answer; she is sure of it.
Fujino fades the farther in she goes. It is as if the passing army wipes a slate clean, for in their wake, all color leaves, all plants wither. Whole buildings crumble as if knocked aside by a child. Foundations rot; a temple collapses.
When she looks over her shoulder, she has left her family behind. Dorbentei’s fat dun is hard to make out, although it is easy to spot Sakura in her Imperial armor. No sign of her mother. That is a hound at her heels; she will slay it later.
Forward, forward, along tile pathways that shatter long before her horse reaches them. Blood pounds like war drums in her ears. If she had dawdled too long, if she had wasted too much time with theatrics …
But still the column burns.
Through the gates, between the false maple and the true. The column is coming from the pavilion, or near to it—a place Shefali has never had cause to go. Up, up, onto the boardwalk. The first plank rots at her horse’s touch.
She drives on.
Like two pine needles, they’d sworn. Together, they’d sworn.
Dread seizes her as she rounds the corner, as she approaches the column. What if…?
The vision is clear: a woman in tattered robes, maggots eating at her eyes, her tongue a gray lump between her shriveled lips. “Come to me,” she beckons, “and see what you have wrought.”
The demons have long left her—but the scars remain.
Her heart is a stone. She opens the eyes she hadn’t consciously closed.
There.
Sitting among the golden flowers, cloaked in the dawn itself: her wife, safe and well. Yet the relief that leaps to Shefali’s breast withers like the conjured flowers, for there is a body lying in Shizuka’s lap, its robes trimmed in Imperial Gold.
She half throws herself from her horse just to get to her wife faster. Like a smith’s hammer against the anvil: her feet against the ground.
“Shizuka!” she calls, for even now, her wife has not looked up at her. Shizuka’s precious hands run through the hair of the man in her lap. Now that Shefali’s drawing closer, she sees the dagger jutting up through his back: a dagger tipped with gold.
Her feet hit the earth of the garden.
Shizuka finally looks up at her. Will Shefali ever tire of this sensation? The coldness in her melting, giving way to indescribable warmth; the whole of her soul filled with gold? God or mortal, wanderer or Kharsa, there is no greater thing in all of Heaven than this: Shizuka’s eyes on hers.
And yet it is not a moment for joy, not a moment for exultation. Shizuka’s smile is so muted, Shefali may well be imagining it—to say nothing of the pit where her heart once was. Seeing it sets Shefali’s own aching. She kneels there, next to her wife and the dead man, among the flowers.
“Shizuka,” she says. She reaches for Shizuka’s face only to remember the blood on her hands—she wipes it on her own deel before touching her wife’s holy cheek. How soft, how warm, this phoenix! Every breath she draws in Shizuka’s presence is a gift; every moment they spend together is hard won and paid for in blood and suffering.
Together, they swore, and at last they are together again.
She laces their fingers together. Two silvered crescents meet in the palms of their hand. Just as it had been so many years ago, a thrill stirs her blood and settles—the rush of war and the elation of the journey home all at once.
What will she say? So many words spring to her mind all at once: I thought you were dead. I’ve killed the other two. We’re gods now, aren’t we? The latter nearly leaves her lips, for it is as clear to her that Shizuka has ascended as the steppes are from the mountains.
But the sorrow in her wife’s eyes is just as clear to her. Shefali swallows the words she might have said in favor of cradling Shizuka’s head. Slowly, slowly, she rocks them back and forth. The wind through the flowers cannot drown out the sound of the oncoming army—of their horses and their armor, of their cheering—but perhaps Shefali’s whispered promises can.
“We’re together now,” she whispers to her.
Still her wife is silent.
“It’s going to be all right,” she whispers to her.
Still her wife is silent.
“Whatever … whoever this is…”
And it is then that Shizuka speaks, then that two words leave her like a death rattle.
“My father.”
Like a boulder rolled before a cave—the words stopping Shefali’s mouth. Itsuki? Shizuka would never lie to her; if she says it is her father lying dead in her lap, then it must be. But how?
It does not matter. Only that he is here, and he is dead, and it is Shizuka’s dagger piercing through his chest.
The tragedy written here is a familiar one. She need not read it to know it.
Closer, the army. They will be here soon, and then there will be no time for delicacy, no time for the discussion they need to have. Together—alone—they may be women; when the army comes, they must once more don their crowns and divine mantles.
But how heavy the weight seems at present.
The words that stopped Shefali’s throat broke down Shizuka’s resistances: she sobs now, tearless and childlike, against Shefali’s shoulder. How she clutches at Shefali’s deel! How delicate, the voice that leaves her—broken already, raw and looking for flesh to cut!
What is Shefali to say to all of this?
She holds her wife. She holds her wife, and she sways, and in the quiet recesses of her mind, Shefali says her good-byes to the only Hokkaran man who was ever kind to her. O-Itsuki-lor never once mocked her calligraphy. When it came time for her to learn proper court Hokkaran, she did it through him—through her brother reading his poetry to her near the campfire. All through her life, his works have been her favorite; she’d been too shy to ever say as much, and by the time she found her courage, he had long since departed.
And now he is dead.
It feels wrong to let him lie here.
She kisses her wife’s forehead. There is a thought in the back of her mind. Is this how Shizuka felt standing before the Kirin? For the prospect is dizzying and terrifying and—she realizes now—unavoidable.
Something must be done; Itsuki cannot be left here. If Alshara sees him, it will tear open the wound of Shizuru’s death anew—to say nothing of what it might do to the Hokkaran army.
“May I?” she says, her hands hovering over Itsuki’s shoulders. Shizuka nods.
So it is that Shefali turns him over. Swift and certain, she plucks the dagger from his chest and closes his eyes. The loo
k on his face—what happened here? Where has the Traitor gone, and whither his army?
After, she thinks.
After.
“I had to,” Shizuka whimpers.
“I know.”
The approaching army sends the flowers swaying. This must be quick. Words said, probably, although words have never been her favorite things.
Barsalai Shefali breathes in the cold. She holds it there, in her lungs, as she lays her hand across O-Itsuki’s nose and mouth. It builds behind her eyes until it is ready. Only when she sees fractal frost blossoming across her vision does she breathe out.
There, in her hand: a frozen star, its points reaching out from between her fingers. Clear as the pool near Gurkhan Khalsar her mother visited before making her journey to Oshiro. Its facets catch both Shefali’s light and Shizuka’s; their own faces stare back up at them. Shizuka’s mouth hangs a little open.
“What is…?”
“His name,” Shefali says. She does not let go of Itsuki’s nose and mouth—the cold is flowing into him, and already he has taken on a cool blue glow. “His name needs to be written on it, I think, and I can’t…”
Something softens in Shizuka then. It is not quite a smile that takes over her face, but it is the potential for one. “Bring it here.”
Shefali is happy to hold it closer to her. Shizuka traces the characters with a single fingertip. Though she cannot read them, Shefali watches all the same—there is a holiness to the way Shizuka writes. It is not unlike watching the wild horses that roam the steppes, their coats gleaming like burnished copper.
The moment she lifts her finger, it is done: the star pulses with light. As gently as she can, Shefali parts Itsuki’s lips. Into his mouth, she drops the star.
What happens next happens quickly. The body of the Imperial Poet—Shizuka’s father, Shefali’s father-in-law—flashes a bright white. Even Shizuka flinches at the sight of it; even she must look away. When they turn their attention to him once more, only the star remains, pulsing brighter than ever.
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