“He was your brother,” Baoyi says. The strength is going out of her and she hates that it is, she hates that she cannot keep raging, she hates that she is raging at all—that her aunt can see her in such a state.
The Moon tries to embrace her, but Baoyi bats her arms away. “Don’t touch me,” she says. “Don’t you dare touch me. You killed him.”
Her legs give out. The Empress collapses on the Pine Terrace, clutching uselessly at her aunt’s star-spattered deel. Those three words keep leaving her: they are the only thing she can think, the only thing she can say, the only thing she is. All of her being, all of her soul, is encased in that accusation. She speaks it over and over, until her voice at last gives out in the cold air of winter. Sobs at last win out over words; she can only choke at the memory of the man who has left her behind.
The Moon says nothing—only sits next to her and bears it all: the accusations, the attack, the unimaginable misery.
Because in the end, she knows well enough that Baoyi is right: her brother is no longer here, and it is her own fault.
The two of them sit in the dark until morning, and when at last the Empress cries herself to sleep, the Moon carries her back to her room.
MINAMI SAKURA
NINE
When all of this is over—when the dead have been buried, when Empress Yuuka has given her speech honoring them, when the Qorin leave for the Silver Steppes—Minami Sakura decides she will return home.
She tells Otgar this on the night before her departure. They are together in the rooms Baoyi has provided them—gifts given with a polite smile and an unspoken desire for them to leave. Otgar is reading over the lines Sakura wrote that day at the lectern, her deel half unbuttoned. Her skin looks like polished wood when the light shines upon it, and Sakura finds herself thinking—not for the first time—that it would be lovely to paint her.
“I’m going back home,” Sakura says to her.
Otgar smirks. She doesn’t look up from the lines. “Which home?”
“Nishikomi.” Sakura throws the contents of her ink bowl out the window. “It’s been too long.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Otgar says. Now she turns, her injured leg always bearing the least of her weight. “Places stay the same, but people don’t. You go back there, and you’re going to be a crone among children.”
“I’m not that old,” Sakura answers her, but there’s little mirth in it. She is thirty-something when, by all rights, she should be most of the way to fifty. At least, that’s what she thinks. Sometime during their journey, even the calendars changed: the years are counted since the departure of the Phoenix.
It has been eleven years since that day in Nanatsu.
“Old woman,” Otgar repeats. Then, more quietly: “We’re both old women.”
Otgar makes no more arguments on the subject. It’d be pointless to when she herself is leaving in the morning for her own home. Perhaps that is why she gave such advice in the first place.
If it is, Sakura does not want to think about it, and neither of them want to speak of it.
So little of the world makes sense now.
That night they fall asleep in each other’s arms. Otgar’s never shown interest in anything beyond this, beyond the simple intimacy of sleep with someone safe, and Sakura has never pressed her. It is simple, and it makes sense, and it occurs to her that she feels safe here in a way she rarely does anymore.
In the morning, she sees Otgar off.
In the afternoon, she thanks Baoyi and leaves.
* * *
SHE TRAVELS WITH a caravan along the Threefold-Promise Road. North from Fujino, over the Sound of Stone to Arakawa. One week there while the caravan trades their textiles for lumber and craft goods, and then it’s on to Horohama, where the remaining textiles fetch fine art and furniture. Weighed down as they are, it takes nearly a month to reach Nishikomi from Horohama.
There is plenty of time to think and to listen and to speak. Growing up the way she did has taught her the value of these things—people will tell you anything if you convince them you’re a good listener. She ingratiates herself to them within the first week with gifts and compliments; in the second week, she becomes their closest friend. So long as they never ask her anything about herself—and they so rarely do—she is happy to listen.
Here is the truth of the matter: she cannot think of anything to talk to them about. All her favorite poets have long since fallen out of fashion; so, too, her favorite painters. She finds this out after quoting one and referencing the other only to receive blank stares for her trouble. They tease her for the patterns on her robes—doesn’t she know no one’s worn deer-dapple in ten years?
Sakura tells them she is a little old-fashioned.
By the time they reach Arakawa, they have all given her their secrets one way or another.
But she does not care about secrets. Not now.
She cares about the mundane. Kazuma-zul might be straining to impress Seijuro-zul, but it is not that which interests Sakura. It is that Kazuma-zul is from Shiseiki Province and is the most well off of the caravan guards. New armor, a new sword at his hip polished and bright, fine clothes beneath, leather boots and a mask of solid silver—what is a boy like that doing in a merchant caravan? And why is it that everyone expects this of him, given that he is from Shiseiki?
The answer does not come to her until she reaches Horohama. Then everything falls into place: Horohama and Kimoya are the only two cities left untouched by the Great Wave. Anything north of them was carried up and swallowed away—meaning that most of Shiseiki’s population lived there, and now a generation had grown up there in the face of that tragedy.
Horohama had grown from a town of artisans and engineers to a sprawling metropolis that approached—but could not match—Nishikomi. Easily thrice as many people lived there as she’d expected. Those selfsame artisans and engineers had, in the wake of the Wave, realized the value of their craft—it was they who ran the city now. As they reached the city walls—walls around Horohama!—the guards wore the livery of the Craftsman’s Guild, and not the province itself.
She had tried, of course, to look as if she expected all of this: the streets lined with food stalls and performers, the buildings rising twelve stories up, the clockwork and exquisite statues.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Kazuma-zul said to her as they rode through the streets. “There isn’t anywhere like it in the whole Empire. Above the Waves—that’s Shiseiki for you.”
The answer had come out of reflex. “It’s nice,” she said, “but it’s no Nishikomi.”
Through all her time in Horohama, she told herself that this was true. The fried food here was good, but there wasn’t any fried octopus—you had to go to Nishikomi for that. So what if she could fetch a good price for her paintings here? She’d get a better one back home. And what did it matter if she couldn’t even recognize the patterns girls were wearing on their robes these days? Nishikomi was the Queen of Cities; she was as timeless as the stars above.
After two months of travel, she awoke one morning to hear that they were near Nishikomi. With an unspeakable thrill in her heart, she thrust her head out of the carriage.
And there it was, the Queen of Cities: just as bright and beautiful as ever. From here, she could already see the massive ruby glinting atop the governor’s manse, taken from Dao Doan; from here she could see the sprawling streets she knew so well, the old buildings with their old stone guardians; from here, she could see the docks, the Father’s Teeth, the theater houses, and the campus of the White Leaf Academy.
The darkness brought on by her cousin’s long rest only served to make the city seem more alive, somehow: there are lanterns hanging on lines down every street.
From here, by any account, she could see the shadow of her home.
And yet—from here she could see the bay, where Shizuka first ascended, and where Sakura nearly drowned; from here, she could see the Tokuma Mountains, where the Qorin h
ad carved a path north through the Azure Pass; from here, she could see the thousands of sailors and merchants and street toughs, the assassins and the singing girls, so many of whom were children when she left the city.
They pass the gates.
She thanks the caravan guards for her passage. They smile. “We’re leaving again in a week,” they say. “In case you have any business in the capital.”
“I won’t be coming back,” she tells them. If she tries, Baoyi will cast her out. What use does the Empress have for her? Historian for a woman no one remembers, record-keeper to no one of record. That Sakura changed Baoyi’s bedclothes doesn’t seem to matter—her memories of her childhood are muddled at best.
And so she leaves the caravan behind. It is early in the morning in Nishikomi, though she only knows that it is thanks to the criers. The air carries the salt and sound of the sea.
Her feet carry her forward. She does not consciously think of where she is going, deciding with a sort of duelist’s serenity which way she will go at any given corner. Down the streets and up the alleys wanders the lost historian, surrounded on all sides by those who do not know what she has seen.
The first fried-octopus stall she sees is only a few streets in. She stops there and asks for three balls of it on a stick, her favorite way to eat them. The merchant looks her up and down with vague amusement—she has changed her deer-dapple for a geometric knot pattern—and smirks. “Ten bu.”
“Ten bu?” Sakura protests. Maybe it’s the sea air that brings her accent out in full. “For fried-octopus balls? Quit jerkin’ me around, I’m a local. I’ll pay ya five, at most.”
But the man’s smirk shrinks a little, fading like paint in the sun. “I said ten bu. It’s ten bu wherever the fuck ya go. Don’t like my prices, go argue with somebody else, lady.”
Haggling can get you only so far when someone’s staring at you like this. She knows she’s lost. Resigned to her fate, she reaches for her coin purse—only to realize with a lurch that she does not have any properly stamped money. All through her travels, she’s gotten by on an Imperial Writ Baoyi was kind enough to give her—but that only covers transportation and its associated costs. The caravan itself covered all her expenses.
All she has now are a handful of coins, stamped with her cousin’s Imperial Name, coated in rusty brown flakes of blood.
Her stomach lurches. “Look,” she says. “I’ll make ya a deal. I’m a painter—”
“Don’t wanna hear about a deal,” says the merchant. He taps the stall with a forefinger. “Ten bu.”
She puts the coins down.
He takes one look at them and sneers. “The fuck are these? Stop wastin’ my time.”
There are four people in line behind her. Two of them start to snicker; one sighs. Already she can feel the weight of their derision.
She takes her coins—her cousin’s coins—and she tucks them back into her purse and she leaves without any of her favorite food.
It is another hour of wandering before she stops again. In that time, a hatred stews within her. On the mouths of sailors and thugs alike, she hears the words “Day of Mourning.” Women gathered outside teahouses talk of little else except the Empress’s proclamation, which has only recently reached Nishikomi.
“Idiot move to call on the Heartless Sun,” she hears. “The price ain’t worth it. How many did we lose?”
“Pretty much everybody that was there, way I hear it,” answers her companion. “If it wasn’t for the Moon, we wouldn’t have a capital.”
These words, exchanged behind the polite screen of fans, are poison to Sakura. She cannot stop herself from boiling over. “They saved the Empress together, Sun and Moon both. Watch yer mouth when yer talkin’ about them.”
The two women turn to face her, their brows rising halfway up their foreheads.
“What?” says Sakura. “If you want to fight about it, let’s fight about it, but I ain’t gonna stand here and listen to you talk about the Sun that way.”
“You a sun-lover or somethin’?” says one of the women. “If you ain’t noticed, it’s been months since she showed up. She’s probably fuckin’ dead.”
“This one’s sick in the head,” says the other. “Just look at how she’s dressed.”
I painted these robes, Sakura wants to say. I made this popular.
“I was fucking there,” she says instead. The words come out like shards of crushed glass. Her throat’s raw; she tastes copper. Blood rushes to her temples, and she wonders who the fuck they think they are to say something like that, to speak so casually when so many people have died. All at once, the memories return: the blood up to her ankles, the scent making her eyes water, the screams and rattles of the dying. Hands reaching out for her. The smoke that coated everything for days afterwards. All the bodies burned on a massive pyre.
And these women treat it like everyday gossip?
As a grape in a vise: her head, her emotions. She shuts her eyes and drives her palms into them—a vain attempt to calm herself.
“… Sorry about that, then,” says one of the women.
“Yeah, we didn’t know.”
Sakura doesn’t want to be around them anymore.
There is an aching anger that threatens to split her apart from within. The violence of it shocks her—and it is violence. Never in her life has she been so overwhelmed by her own fury. Shaking her head, she leaves the two women and continues down the street, turning at the first alley she sees.
Minami Sakura, Imperial Historian, slams her back against the wall in an alley. She slides down onto her bottom. Leftover rainwater soaks into her fine robes. A little farther down, there are three thin vagrants sharing a single pipe of Blessing; she can smell it from here. Even this scent is enough to cut through to the quick of her. She is shaking, she is rocking back and forth, and she does not know why.
Only when she opens her eyes does she find some relief.
There, upon the wall, is the mouth Juzo told her to look for all those years ago. Man-eater Matsutake’s sigil has faded since the last time she saw it—vibrant red to dusty brown, bright white to a faint gray—but it is unmistakable all the same.
I’m safe, she thinks to herself, and for a moment, she even believes it. Breathing comes easier; she stops shaking quite so much. With a bit of effort, she can even get to her feet.
But it occurs to her as she wanders closer, as she runs her hand over the painted symbol, that it must have been years since someone stood where she did now and created it. Eleven years north of the Wall, eight years in Xian-Lai …
She has been away from home for half her life, hasn’t she?
A cold desperation seizes her. Swallowing, her stomach rumbling, and her head still pounding, she returns to the street. She pays little attention to the crowds this time, humming as she goes to try to drown out their chatter. One turn, another. Fate must work in mysterious ways—she is not far now.
One turn, another.
Past the fried-octopus vendor she gave most of her childhood earnings to, past the dye merchant who gave her her first paints, past the teahouse where her famous aunt wooed all her one-night companions.
I am safe, she thinks, I am home.
But when she rounds the last corner, she must lean against a cart to keep from falling over.
For the first twenty years of her life, Minami Sakura lived in a pleasure house—and the most famous pleasure house in the quarter, at that. The Shrine of Jade Secrets attracted even the young Lord Shiratori in his youth—along with all the gem lords and all of Man-eater Matsutake’s people. Sakura’s aunts fetched the highest prices outside of the capital.
But it was more than a pleasure house—it was a place that accepted women, a place that celebrated them, whatever shape they wore. Sakura grew up surrounded by them: the delicate flowers so often favored by the nobility, the guards with their hair styled short, the women who came because no one else would recognize them as women. Only a Qorin girl could say she grew up with
more aunts than Minami Sakura.
If anyone could understand her, if anyone was willing to listen to what she’d gone through—it’d be them.
Where have they gone now?
For the Shrine of Jade Secrets no long stands around the corner from that old teahouse.
Nothing stands there. An empty lot, filled with weeds where the flowers once stood.
Once more she feels herself start to crack, once more she thinks: I can’t take any more of this.
There’s a vagrant sitting right outside the lot; she walks to her as if in a trance. “Excuse me—what happened to the place that used to be here?”
The woman’s eyes are quick and alert. There are any number of reasons she might have ended up on the streets; Sakura doesn’t want to consider any of them. “The brothel?”
“The pleasure house,” Sakura corrects. “What happened to it?”
The woman’s mouth perks up at the corners. “Where have ya been? It’s been years that place ain’t been here.”
“Just … just tell me!” Sakura says. She can hardly breathe—her eyes keep going to the lot, to the emptiness of it. How awful to know where her room used to be—and to see only empty space instead.
“Fine, fine,” says the woman. “There was a girl worked there by the name of Fujiko. Real popular. Got herself tied up with Matsutake’s kid. The two of ’em really got along; it was more than just a work thing for them. Matsutake’s kid starts talking marriage. Turns out, one of her other clients was Howlin’ Hidamori, and he didn’t take too kindly to it. Burned the whole place down in the middle of the night.”
Burned the whole place down.
How is it that people speak so easily of tragedies?
“But the girls—”
“Most of ’em made it out okay,” she says. “But it was years ago, like I said. Most of ’em skipped town to Horohama or Fujino after that. Ain’t worth the hassle, they figured.”
Horohama.
She was right there, and she hadn’t known …
Places don’t change, but people do.
The Warrior Moon Page 60