The Warrior Moon

by K Arsenault Rivera

  It is, after all, the sight of her own failure. The latest in a long line.

  No, no, she cannot allow herself to think this way.

  A spear of bone scrapes against her back; its owner is a skinless man joined to a skinless horse. Shefali tilts her head back—holding more kumaq in her mouth, most likely, as they are coming up on the gates from the gardens to the palace. There the Phoenix Guard made their first stand. Shizuka can see what remains of them now: twisted hunks of armor and chips of bone between the teeth of monsters. Shefali’s attention is focused on what is ahead of her, and not on this spear-flinger. Already it is cracking one of its ribs off to use for another projectile.

  Shefali will not see it coming.

  She cannot let her wife do everything herself. Together, they swore, and together they must be—even if Shizuka cannot imagine a way to resolve this without killing the thing.

  The person, she reminds herself. The person.

  Shizuka is going to kill a Qorin; the pit in her hollow chest aches at this realization.

  Her hands close once more around her mother’s sword. Shefali relied on the cold within her to break the Traitor’s hold—the answer must lie in mimicking her. Shizuka has no great control over cold, or over Qorin at all—but she has her fires.

  She pricks her finger on the Daybreak Blade. Alsha leaps over a fallen body then, and so the cut is a little longer and more jagged than she’d intended. More blood for her to use. Gold, not red. Something in her mourns as she coats the flat of the blade in it. One breath, two: she calls the fires within herself and tells them to ignite.

  And so they do.

  Bright as the sun in a polished bronze mirror, hot as the depths of a smith’s forge: the Daybreak Blade.

  The creature hurls the spear with unnatural strength; Shizuka splits it down the middle as easily as cutting bamboo. The shards of it burn to useless ash—but still the creature remains.

  And it is not alone.

  Ten gather now, their shapes grotesque and twisted, but all of them intent on the sword. On her, and on her wife. Smiles spread across mouthless faces. She knows that look.

  She cannot bear it. For a moment, only a moment, she glances at what lies before them. Ten blackbloods gather there, too, their arms interlinked and their mouths at the ready. Even if Shefali freezes them, how are they going to clear the wall they’ve formed?

  The cut has to be perfect.

  It is the least Shizuka can give them.

  But how crushing—to fall from such a height! For as their heads tumble from their bodies she cannot help but imagine the people they had once been. Once more her throat stops, once more she crumbles.

  A thousand years of Empire are alive and well, spurting from the heads of the fallen.

  She cannot bring herself to look at her wife.

  THE WARRIOR MOON

  SEVEN

  The world beneath the Moon twists and turns; the gray’s hooves leave the ground. Shefali breathes a cloud of frost onto the blackbloods before them. Frozen as they are, they pose no threat save clearing the jump.

  Qorin mares are not known for being high jumpers. The best high jumpers are from Ikhtar, where they treat their horses much as they treat their nobles. There must be some Ikhthian in Alsha’s history—she has to be at least six hands in the air. When she lands inside the palace itself, it is with a pained whinny.

  Shefali curses under her breath. She swings out of the saddle, taking her gray’s head in her hands. Shizuka follows. With the ice wall on one side and a long hallway on the other, they’ll have a clear view of anyone coming.

  “Where are you hurt?” she asks her horse, speaking in their own hushed language. The great brown eyes that fix her make Shefali feel human once more.

  Everywhere, says the mare. But we need to keep going.

  “Not if you’re hurt,” Shefali answers her. The words come out strained. When she runs her hand over Alsha’s foreleg a sword drops into her stomach. The torn strands of muscle are unmistakable.

  Her gray mare—now her white—cannot hope to run like this. Her leg will give out from under her if she tries; it is perhaps because of Shefali’s intervention that she is standing at all.

  If they were on the steppes, the proper thing to do would be to ride her out to the mountain and see to her end there. The next day she would bring what remained of her to the ger and the whole clan would make use of her. Shefali has seen it happen more times than she can count; it is a solemn occasion, but a necessary one.

  Everything dies. Flowers, kings, gods, and horses.

  But not her horse, never her horse. Alsha and Shefali had been born together. What sort of god would she be if she could not find some way to heal her oldest friend? What use was any of this power if it could not do something so simple as that?

  “Your horse?” Shizuka calls. She’s peering around the corner, down another long hallway. This one branches off into the kitchens, from the smell of things.

  But blackbloods savor the taste of human flesh—and there are few places more populous than the kitchens. It takes a small army to feed all the servants, let alone the Empress.

  Baoyi.

  The words stick in Eternal Sky, save her from this choice: saving her horse or her niece! Freeing the Qorin is one thing—she is not certain how long it will take to save Alsha. Speaking to animals has always been within her power, but healing them …

  Tell her I’m fine, says Alsha. How insistent! She butts her head against Shefali’s chest even as she sways. We’re wasting time standing around like this.

  But Barsalai Shefali cannot lie to her wife. The agony on her face comes through in her now-quiet voice. “She’s hurt.”

  “She’s hurt?”

  “Her front knee,” Shefali says. Shizuka looks at them, but at the sight of the injury she covers her mouth in sadness.

  “Is there … There must be something we can do,” Shizuka says. “We’re gods, and your horse is earthborn, isn’t she?”

  Shefali pinches her nose. She paces back and forth, back and forth. A spear arcs above the frozen wall, landing where Shefali had just been. She sucks in another breath—this time thrusting her palms into her eyes. Another spear.

  They do not matter. Nothing matters at the moment save Alsha and Baoyi. Let all the masked assassins of Ikhtar come against her: she would rather suffer the thousand swords of their hatred than lose her niece or her horse.

  Sorrow twists at her heart; she cannot bear to look around, cannot bear to breathe the air and taste her horse’s agony.

  Her wife’s gentle voice comes as a surprise.

  “Freeze her,” Shizuka says. “You can do it without killing her. When this is over with, we’ll let the sanvaartains get a look at her.”

  “She’s my horse,” rasps Shefali. She lays one hand on the gray’s flank.

  Shizuka rushes to her wife and takes her hand.

  “Shefali,” she says, “listen to me. She’ll still be your horse when this is done—but every moment we spend standing around, Yamai gets closer to our niece and more of your people die.”

  The Qorin warhorns are sounding now—the battle will be truly joined. With this gate sealed off, they will have to go along the pavilion. A bloody path, to be sure, and a loud one besides. The Traitor can put his armies on either side and slaughter them.

  But only if they do not stop him.

  One finger beneath Shefali’s chin. Their eyes meet. She wants to kiss her, less from amorous intent and more out of fear that she may never have the chance to do so again.

  “Please,” says Shizuka.

  Shefali closes her eyes—but she nods. Shizuka kisses her on the cheek. How cool, her skin, how like polished stone.

  A whispered word, a tender caress. Shefali breaks with her wife to press her forehead against her horse’s.

  You’re really going to freeze me? says her mare.

  It is so difficult to speak. “Yes.”

  A whicker, a proud puff. Her mane flop
s in front of her eyes, and Shefali clears it away.

  You had better do it quick, then, says the horse. Burqila’s daughter never hesitates.

  Already Shefali is sucking the cold into her lungs, already she is willing this to work.

  I will see you again, she thinks, and she hopes Alsha can hear it.

  One breath is all it takes: a cloud enveloping the proud gray mare, who rears up on her back legs as the ice coats her. There she remains, like a statue, as Shefali whimpers.

  Tears on Barsalai’s cheeks. An aching jag of a breath leaves her as she tries to get herself under better control—but why bother when her oldest friend is encased in ice?

  Shizuka squeezes her hand. When she calls her wife’s name, Shefali does not immediately turn—but instead stares longingly at the frozen horse.

  “Shefali,” Shizuka says again. “We will fix her.”

  Shefali swallows. “I wanted her to be with us.”

  “She is,” says Shizuka. “She did well. But we need to go—we need to get to the throne room.”

  How small she feels standing near this statue of Alsha.

  Her wife is right—they do not have the time for this. But Shefali cannot tear her eyes away from it. There is the scar from the arrow in the Golden Sands.…

  A crack in the ice. They turn—there is a brute twice Shefali’s size throwing its shoulder against the wall.

  “Shefali, please.” She tugs her wife’s hand toward the second hallway.

  Shefali stares at the brute.

  At a time like this? “Shefali!”

  But there is no stopping her.

  Nothing changes in the first step. Nothing changes in the second, either, save the air around Shefali going ice cold. On the third step the ice shatters; on the fourth, the blackblood crashes through.

  What has Shefali cost them with her single-mindedness? And yet Shizuka cannot look away: Shefali lets out a bloodcurdling howl as the creature rights itself. When it swipes at her with its brutal fists, she does not move out of the way—it is her bones that move for her. The sickening crack, the wet pops—Shizuka’s stomach still churns at the sight. Shefali’s spine stretches; her shoulders hunch; when the swing comes, she is already doubled over, mid-transformation.

  Shefali forces herself up in time to grab the blackblood’s elbow. Claws tip her human hands. As a wolf on a carcass, so does Barsalai Shefali bite into the arm of this blackblood, so does she gnash and tear at its flesh. Black dribbles from her muzzle—for it is a muzzle now, her nose and mouth. Gore and evil ink spurt and fall on the polished tiles of Shizuka’s childhood home.

  “Shefali!” Shizuka calls again. The wolf rears her head back in time to see two of the enemy push forward through the broken barricade: one swollen as a puffer, the other a twisted little goblin rolling it.

  They are headed straight for her wife. Shefali has no hope of being able to reach her in time. Fortunate, then, that Shizuka knows well the ultimate gift of a ruler to their people. After all else has failed, a quick and merciful death is all that remains.

  Two cuts. The arcs fly out, searing right through the two approaching blackbloods. The puffer bursts like a paper bag; the goblin is cleaved in half at the shoulders. Still the arcs fly, still they cut—two more pushing through the barricade lose their arms.

  Her eyes settle once more on her wife—but this is an easy thing. All she must do is look on the great shadow that falls upon the room, all she must do is look up at what casts it.

  A wolf only a little shorter than the vaulted ceilings of the Jade Palace—tall as ten Qorin stacked atop another, and wide as a team of aurochs. Fur dark as the new moon, one eye bright as the full; wicked, lustrous teeth—this is her wife.

  The Phoenix Empress’s mouth hangs open—though at the corners, she wears something of a smile. How like Shefali to casually do the impossible.

  Their eyes meet. What unquestioned admiration Shefali finds in her wife’s face! There, in the curve of her lips; there in the roses of her cheeks! And yet roses are soon to die away amidst fields of war; these are no exception.

  “Beloved, they are coming.”

  How quickly the wolf turns! Her wife must duck out of the way of those tree-trunk legs. The padding of her feet alone would be enough to set most off their balance; at last, her mother-in-law’s lessons on balance in swordsmanship are proving useful. Then the Moon breathes another cloud of ice from her muzzle—this one sealing the gate from floor to ceiling above. So thick is this ice that Shefali can barely see through it: it is white, through and through.

  Shefali turns back. This time it is much more slowly, much more mindful of the Empress between her paws. Soon they are face-to-face again.

  “You were incre—” Shizuka starts, but the rest is lost in a shocked yelp. As a cat picking up her kitten, so does Shefali pick up Shizuka. With the scruff of her armor pinched in her wife’s muzzle, there is little Shizuka can do. Less still, when Shefali jerks her head upward and lets go.

  Shizuka slaps against her wife’s back with a groan. “There was no need for that!”

  “Wrong.” It is difficult to enunciate with this snout, but she’s worn the wolf’s shape before. There are ways.

  As if to punctuate Shefali’s point, two more blackbloods throw themselves against the barrier. It will hold—but not for long.

  Shizuka grabs a handful of her wife’s fur. It occurs to Shefali that a saddle would help, but they’ve no hope of making one now. Some god of the Qorin, to change herself into a giant wolf and forget to add a saddle.

  They will need to move quickly if they are to reach Baoyi—and they must reach her. Shefali can smell her niece’s fear from here, along with …

  … paper, armor, blood …

  Is that Kenshiro?

  “Don’t let go,” says Shefali.

  And who is Shizuka to disobey her wife’s orders? Tight as an eel to a shark’s fin, she clings to that clump of fur. The first bounding step toward the hallway lifts her right up out of her makeshift seat; the next sees her slamming down against Shefali’s spine. Shizuka grunts.

  “A bit more gentle, if you could!” she says between gritted teeth.

  “Fast, gentle, steady,” comes Shefali’s voice. Qorin say you can have only two. One, perhaps, with so much at stake.

  “Fast and steady it is, then,” Shizuka mumbles. Shefali’s ears twitch on either side of her.

  As a child, she had looked on the ceilings here, on the height of the halls, and marveled. When she was eight, Shefali asked the Poet Prince why it was built in such a way, and he had told her that giants planned the place. Given how she had to crane her neck to see the ceiling at all, this sounded perfectly reasonable. Giants are the sort of people who paint false skies, especially in Hokkaran palaces.

  Still—Shefali’s divine form barely fits; there are only two hands of clearance between the top of Shizuka’s head and the ceiling. She presses herself low against her wife’s back just to avoid hitting her head.

  And as they approach the kitchen, it occurs to her that the ceilings there are much lower.

  “The next right,” Shizuka says, “and make yourself smaller!”

  Shefali whips herself around to make the turn—and in so doing, she shrinks by about a third. There’s no more clearance here than there was in the grand hall. As a soldier nearly pierced by an arrow laughs, so then does Shizuka. There is a certain thrill to the sound, but it does not last long.

  Five of the enemy await them in the kitchens. From the scent that hits her, there must be at least four times that many bodies. Disgusting—the whole palace smells disgusting.

  Shizuka shimmies down the side of Shefali’s back just to get a better look: yes, there—the bodies lie between the rows of tables.

  Shefali watches her wife stagger as recognition hits her again and again. She knows the dead. Was this the face Shizuka wore at war? Shefali could live her life without ever seeing it again.

  Anger wells within her. And yet as Shizuka grips
her mother’s sword the enemy come closer and closer. Two are perched atop one of the bodies.

  The air is thick with blood about to be shed. She can smell some that is too familiar—her own brother’s.

  They do not have time to wring their hands.

  “Do it,” Shefali growls.

  And so Shizuka does. As a scythe through the grass, her sword through the blackbloods. The shock runs up her arm; her shoulders howl with effort. The Qorin were right when they said straight swords were no good for mounted combat.

  “Northeast corner,” Shizuka says. “Behind the statue of the Sister. It’s small; you’re going to need to shrink again.”

  The third blackblood spits a foul stream of venom at them; Shizuka only just manages to jerk out of the way. Nonetheless, some lands on her robes. To her horror, they start blackening, as if burned by some unseen fire—she cuts the fabric off and lets it fall.

  She is about to tell Shefali to watch out for that one, but there is no need. So many bold blackbloods today. She should be saving them, she knows, but she is out of kumaq—and no one can threaten her wife in such a way. She tells herself that she would still be killing them for it had they met on the steppes, or at least fighting them; she tells herself that they might not be Qorin at all.

  But she knows that they are.

  Quick, merciful deaths.

  Mid-stride, Shefali snaps it up between her jaws. She does not bite, but whips her head twice in each direction. When at last she lets the body go, it is at the height of a swing—it flies out and lands on a table.

  It is only then that she shrinks again. Shizuka feels as if she were riding a wolf made of ice in the summer, and that is not far from the truth. Shefali is hardly bigger than a horse.

  Two more to contend with. One is a wolf much like Shefali; the other is human shaped, and that is worse. There’s a spark in the eyes of the latter, a recognition—and a smile from ear to ear. For all the days of her life, Shizuka will remember that thing’s toothy grin, the bright, beautiful green eyes in its sockets. The wolf lunges at them and Shizuka soon splits it, but it is the human that troubles her.