“My father,” Baoyi says again. “Stop—I need to know where he is!”
“I tried,” creaks the god. “We came straight here, but my horse was hurt, and I couldn’t…”
Yes, it is pathetic to hear a god speak this way.
A horse. She can understand, on some level, what a Qorin feels for their horse, but …
The Moon had stopped in her tracks, and now Baoyi’s father is dead, and her palace is full of soldiers who gave their lives to ensure that their young empress could be here, comforting a god.
“Tell me. Tell me where he is. Show him to me.”
The god shakes her head. She has not let go of Baoyi, not once. “I have to keep you safe.”
Baoyi shoves her. Despair is an open wound and every moment she spends pressed against that woman tears it anew. The hurt in the god’s eyes, the hurt in her open mouth, the awful whimper she makes when she finds herself sitting alone: these things would have affected Baoyi mightily before today. Before today, she never would have imagined she could be this cold.
But she has to be cold now. Nothing is going to get done if everyone sits here weeping. These people—her people—didn’t die so that Baoyi could sit here mourning.
She stands. Somewhere along the line she must have lost her shoes, for the water rushes over her feet and something in her is repulsed by the contact. She steels herself as she surveys the damage in truth, as she scans the dead for a mop of white hair.
It does not take long to find him. He is only a little distance away—just past the woman in gold.
Five steps, it takes her.
After the first, Baoyi can see what it is that killed him: there is a spear jammed right through her father’s breast, piercing him through the legs beneath. He is doubled backwards like a doll.
After the second, the smell starts to fade, or perhaps she just becomes used to it.
After the third, she draws abreast to the woman in gold. A glance alone tells her who this is; a new wave of anger swells within her breast.
I will come for you if you have need of me, her aunt had said. Now she lies dying on the floor of the palace, her eyes clouded gold, her divine shroud soaked in water and blood.
Baoyi keeps walking.
Her father’s body awaits her. She stands in front of him and it occurs to her that this is something like looking at a statue. This man, twisted backwards in his horrible pose, is not a man at all—he is a sculpture by some talented Axion. An offering sent to her; a testament to the bravery of the fallen.
If she thinks of him as a statue and not her father then perhaps she will not cry.
And she cannot cry now, not when there is so much to be done. When was the last time there had been such a funeral in the Jade Palace? The pyre they’d need for the fallen—you might even be able to see it in Arakawa. So many, so many.
And that is to say nothing of the political implications, the things she will have to weather in the days to come.
This is why you needed an army, they will say to her.
And she realizes with a crushing certainty that they will be wrong. An army of fifty thousand could not have avoided this fate—not when the enemy was so inhuman. But who will believe her if she says this?
There is a man in front of her, a man nailed to the ground. She must move him.
Baoyi wraps her hands around the spear and pulls. The lurch of it, the friction of his bones against the metal, disgust her, and she drops it after only a moment.
She hates herself for this weakness. After all her soldiers have done for her? After all he did for her? She cannot even …
Again she tries, and again her courage fails. She yanks and yanks and yanks but it will not move, it will not move, and somewhere in this, removing the spear becomes the only thing she can control, and—
And in the end, it is the god who must do it.
In the end it is the god who strides over and pulls out the spear, doing it as easily as one might remove a maiden’s hairpin.
It is the god who scoops up the body of Baoyi’s father into her arms, the god who carries him, the god who looks down on her and then says only: “I failed you.”
Anger stops Baoyi’s throat, for what is she to say to a thing like that? The god is right: she did fail. She failed everyone here. What is she to say? She cannot, will not assuage the god’s guilt and shame. She refuses.
Lai Baoyi swallows. “Give him to me,” she says. “You have your wife to carry.”
* * *
IT TAKES HER an entire day to notice that the sun hasn’t risen.
There’s too much else to worry about. Soon the letters from the other lords will start pouring in, but until then the Empress has the people to deal with. Their horror, their revulsion, their confusion. On the evening of the first day she addresses them from the Pine Terrace. She is still in the armor her father strapped her into, his blood smeared all over her torso, when she tells the people of Fujino that they are safe.
That there is a god among them.
It pains her to say this, it pains her to make this announcement, but her own pain is hardly the thing that needs attention.
The people need hope.
And if hope comes in the unreliable form of her aunt Shefa, then that is what Baoyi will give them.
“The Warrior Moon arrived in our time of need,” she tells them, “and it is the Warrior Moon who will see to it that we are safe.”
Her aunt does not shift under the weight of this proclamation. Good. Perhaps this time she will not buckle.
She does not allow them to ask her any questions. There are only so many things Baoyi can say before the anger stops up her throat again, before she thinks to herself: I liked it better when the gods were distant.
And yet she cannot simply return to her room—the room her father wrenched her from just this morning, the room her handmaids have yet to return to. How is she to sleep after a day like this? How is she to lay in the silence, where she might hear their cries forever?
No, no. She cannot return to the room.
Her aunt asks her if there is any place for the Sun to rest, and Baoyi tells her that she does not care—she may use any room in the palace. She says this without looking at either of them; she says this on her way back down to the throne room.
It is dark. Overhead the moon shines through the broken ceiling of the Jade Palace, and it is in this silver light that she sees the bodies. The palace servants—those who survived—are at work already. Like puppets in a shadow play they move quickly, methodically: pick up a body, move it outside, throw it onto the pile. Tomorrow they will start the pyres. They do not see her standing there, in the threshold, watching. They do not know that it is her.
All the better.
Lai Baoyi takes a sword from the fallen. With it, she cuts her sleeves short and fashions herself a mask. This she ties around her Imperial face—and then it is time to work.
In Hokkaran thinking there is little more filthy than touching a body. Death clings to those it touches—or so she was told. In truth, the bodies do not cling to her at all. Many are stiff and unwelcoming; many do not want her to carry them, but she does. It is the blood that stains her, the blood that clings, but she is already covered in so much of it that she pays it no mind.
And so, engrossed in the necessary as she is, she does not realize the sun has yet to rise until the criers announce that it is Fourth Bell.
Fourth Bell, and the palace is still bathed in the dark.
* * *
THE SUN NO longer rises.
They know it for certain on the fifth day. At the hour appointed by her astrologers she watches the sky. Instead of the dark going light she sees only a purpling of the sky; instead of the sun, there is only a faint rim of gold around the moon.
This is the longest eclipse anyone can recall.
Lai Baoyi knows this because Minami Sakura has told her, and she knows who Minami Sakura is because the woman will not leave her study.
“I’m
sorry for your loss,” she says, by way of introduction. “Your father did so much for me. I don’t know how I ever would have repaid him. He was a good man.”
But Baoyi cannot imagine her father working with a woman like this. She’s heard him talk about an old assistant of his here and there—a student who would bring back a life-changing tome—but Baoyi cannot reconcile those stories with Minami Sakura. How can she, when this woman showed up a day after everyone else in armor that doesn’t even fit? When she arrives without a trace of blood anywhere on her?
“Thank you,” is all she says to this, for an Empress cannot fall victim to her own emotions.
So her mother taught her. Her mother, who has yet to arrive; her mother, who has not yet received word of what happened here.
Minami Sakura sits in Baoyi’s room wearing one of Momiji’s robes. She alleges that all of hers got ruined in the fighting, and so she must wear those of her fallen handmaiden. Dorbentei Otgar—apparently one of Baoyi’s Qorin cousins—sits not far from them, with her right leg stretched out in front. Between the three of these distant relations there is a tea set. Baoyi does not have the wherewithal to mind it; Sakura is the one serving them today.
“Have the others written in yet?” Sakura asks. “The lords, I mean. They aren’t going to take this omen well.”
Baoyi has received three letters: one from Fuyutsuki, one from Oshiro, and one from Xian-Lai. The first was precisely what she’d expected: a polite upbraiding, a bit of bragging that the Stone Men could have stopped the Fourth Army, an oath to send whatever aid they could, and a promised visit from young Lord Kazuki. This she left atop the lectern concealed beneath the other.
At first she thinks she must have misread the letter from her grandfather: she has never known him to dote. On the pale yellow of that paper he proves that he has something of it in him. Your father proved his valor, but the valor of the dead is little comfort to the living. Should you wish to spend the coming months among the peaceable lands I keep, you are more than welcome. Mourning is a lonely thing.
But she feels no need to tell this woman—this stranger—any of that. “Yes. You’re right, they aren’t.”
“You’re going to need to explain to them,” Sakura continues. She pours until the kettle overflows, which tells Baoyi all she needs to know. What excess. “What happened here wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault—”
She cannot stop herself. At least the words come out coolly. “It’s theirs.”
Dorbentei and the Minami woman exchange a look. Baoyi can read it well: She doesn’t know what she’s saying, this girl. But Baoyi knows perfectly well what she is saying.
“My cousin gave her life to keep you safe,” Sakura says, gesturing to the other room—Momiji and Akishika’s room. Even from here they can see the faint glow of the Heartless Sun’s repose.
“She isn’t dead,” Baoyi answers. It is a triumph that she says this and not what she is thinking: I wish that she was truly dead, and that my father was instead alive, and that neither of my aunts had ever come back from their journey.
“Well, she isn’t getting up any time soon, either,” says Dorbentei. “Listen to me, Baoyi. I lost my mother in this war; I lost the man who raised me; I lost cousins and friends; I lost thousands of my people. But those two, they did everything they could. You can’t blame them for this. They didn’t march the army to your gates. That was the Traitor, himself, and it began long before your birth. They love you, both of them—”
Something wells up inside of her, something awful and bitter. She cannot stop herself this time. “Why does it matter how much they love me when they’ve hurt me so badly? Leaving me behind in a place like this and returning only to ruin it.”
Neither of the women has anything to say. Silence settles upon them, broken only by the bubbling of the tea. Minami Sakura pours it into their cups without a word. Unable to shed her years of training no matter her turmoil, Baoyi raises the cup to her lip and smells it.
“Fine leaves.”
“Thank you,” says Sakura. “They’re yours.”
Of course they are. She counts to eighty before drinking, as is polite. The tea is smooth; the taste coats her tongue. She tries not to think of how often she shared this variety with her father.
“Where is the Moon?” she asks. She tires of these niceties.
“Checking in on a friend,” answers Sakura. “But she asked Dorbentei and I to keep an eye on you and my cousin.”
Checking in on a friend at a time like this? Selfish, selfish. If it was Baoyi laid out in that room, her father never would have left her side.
“When’s the funeral?” asks Dorbentei, and Baoyi is almost grateful for the change in subject.
“Tomorrow,” Baoyi answers. “The pyres will burn on the Pine Terrace, where everyone may see them. It is the least that I can do.”
“Tomorrow?” says Sakura. “But what about your mother?”
It is an abominable talent of hers to say the thing that will hurt the most. “My mother is in Xian-Lai. It will be at least another week before she’s able to be here. The dead deserve their rest sooner than that.”
Sakura takes a sip from her own cup.
They have their tea together, these women, mostly in silence. Here and there Sakura will attempt to start a conversation—but it never gets far before Baoyi finds the inevitable fault with it. She wonders why people pay for the companionship of singing girls at all if this is what they offer. Aren’t they supposed to be better at conversation?
Dorbentei is better, but only a little—she knows that there isn’t much to say in a situation like this on a personal level. It’s she that steers the conversation toward the eclipse and what it might mean: to the fields soon to wither without light, to the cold summers and long winters if something is not done.
They are problems without solutions and questions without answers.
Lai Baoyi is tired.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT the Moon comes to her.
“I have something to show you,” she says, appearing as she does beside the sleeping Empress.
(She cannot sleep in her own bed anymore. She sleeps in Odori’s, instead, as it has been empty since the day of Mourning.)
Baoyi looks up at her. The silver disc hangs in the window just behind the god. The crown it lends her is unearned. “Why should I come?”
The Moon kneels down next to her and extends her hand.
“Please.”
Against her better judgment, Baoyi accepts.
* * *
THEY ARE ON the Pine Terrace. Already the pyres themselves have been constructed; the bodies must be moved beneath them, and that will happen tomorrow morning. At the stroke of Fifth Bell Baoyi will light these delicate wooden constructs. The flames will consume the bodies of those who died, offering their souls as smoke to the Eternal Sky.
That is how her father would have put it. But her father is dead, now, and she will lay him first upon the pyres in the morning.
Fujino is no place for a sky burial.
The Moon next to her is silent. In the dark of the night—the true night, and not the eclipse—she looks more like her human self. A twinge of guilt runs through Baoyi. This is her aunt, after all, whom she has treated so harshly.
Her aunt—whose weaknesses got everyone killed.
But it would be unbecoming of her to be impolite. She breaks the silence of the moment, as awkward and wrong as it may feel to do so. “How did your visit go?”
“My visit?” says the Moon. She sounds surprised.
“In the city,” says Baoyi. “Minami-lao said you were visiting a friend.”
A pause. The Moon’s face goes a little softer. “She is well.”
Another silence. They stand there amidst the pyres, the jagged edges of their broken souls threatening to chip each other.
“Baoyi.”
The Moon cannot say her name properly. Xianese tones are difficult; she tells herself that she should not be
angry about it—but it is another of her failings. A simple one to remedy. Can a godly tongue not shape a syllable properly?
“Aunt.”
“I failed you,” says the Moon. “But I won’t fail my brother.”
Baoyi’s stomach goes cold. “What do you mean?” she says. She cannot allow her hope to grow, cannot allow herself to be reckless.
The Moon raises a finger to the stars. Baoyi follows it, squinting at the constellation. Junko and the Tree, if she’s not mistaken—but there is one star that does not fall in line with the rest. At the very top of the tree one shines brighter than all of the others, one she is certain she has not seen before.
“That is where he is,” says the Moon. “And that is where he will always be.”
Hope is a strange thing. Birthed quickly, it is doomed for either a life of fragility or one of incandescent greatness. Its death leaves behind a taste more bitter than any wine. Baoyi has nurtured hope for most of her life—but there are always new hopes to be born, new hopes to die in her breast.
But none feel quite so bitter as this death.
“I want him back,” she says.
“I know,” says the Moon. “I can’t do that.”
“You’re a god!” Baoyi argues. She’s surprised at how loud her voice is, at how it echoes around the terrace. To her utter shame there are tears in her eyes; to her utter shame, she cannot keep that same voice from cracking. “How can you say you can’t? How can you … You just hang a star up and act as if that’s meant to help?”
The Moon says nothing. As Baoyi rounds on her, as Baoyi thrusts a finger into her chest, the Moon says nothing—only listens.
“I cannot talk to that star, Aunt. It cannot talk to me. When I am alone at court with no defenders, I can’t expect it to cheer me up. You have taken my father and given me a star, and you have the nerve to stand here and act as if I should be grateful?”
The Moon says nothing. As Baoyi beats her fists against the Moon’s chest, as the tears stream down her face, she says nothing.
The Warrior Moon Page 59