by Devin Madson
The whisper came like a hiss in my ear. My hands hung at my sides, clenched fists touching nothing but my own skin.
They’re all freaks. Even Kimiko. Damn she was good, that skin, that fire—
I sucked my Empathy in and the whisper died. Tan glowered at nothing, bottom lip caught between his teeth. Skin hadn’t been necessary. Curiosity had carried me too far and now a myriad of murmurs danced at the edge of my hearing.
The sorrow came before the scream. It sheared through me, agony rending the air. A woman. No words, but a mess of broken curses caught between sobs.
Tan pushed me on. ‘Keep moving,’ he said. ‘That will be Lady Talamir. She asked to see her husband.’
We turned into the main passage. There stood the tall throne room doors, the wood brushed with a thousand lines of Old Kisian script. A woman knelt before them, her fine robe dishevelled and her silken hair slipping from its bun. A guard was trying to pull her to her feet but she wrenched from his grip. A row of severed heads watched her crumple to the floor, burying her face in her hands.
‘Get her out of here,’ Tan snapped at the guard. ‘Minas, help him.’
‘Yes, General.’
One of the guards pushed past and went to the man’s aid. He gripped Lady Talamir under her arms and tried to lift her, but she twisted out of his grip.
‘Don’t you dare touch me you filthy traitors!’ she snarled, spitting in his face. ‘Kin will gut you for what you’ve done. He will hang you by your hair until your scalp rips from your skull!’
The man slapped her, knocking her back. ‘Watch what you say, woman, or you’ll be the next to guard this hallway. Right up there beside your husband.’
‘Not even Katashi Otako would dare,’ she said as Minas grabbed hold of her.
Tan waved his hand. ‘I said get her out of here. And you’re right, my lady. Emperor Katashi wouldn’t be foolish enough to throw away such a good bargaining tool.’
She spat at him, but her fury was spent and the guards led her away, sobs fading along the passage.
One of Tan’s men stepped toward the grand doors, hands splayed over old prayers. The hinges groaned, the sound cutting through the babble of voices beyond as crimson light spilled through the widening aperture. A sea of silk met my eyes, every smiling face steeped in suspicion. The lords stood together in strategic groups, many with daughters to parade before Kisia’s newest emperor. They were dressed like exquisite birds in silks of every colour, with dozens of ivory pins holding elaborate hairstyles, and painted faces owning painted smiles.
At the far end of the room, Katashi sat upon the Crimson Throne, the broad skirt of his robe reaching to the floor. His new chancellor hovered, awaiting orders, but Katashi waved him away and got to his feet, Hatsukoi only adding to his height.
‘Endymion,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my court.’
He smiled and held his arms wide, his aura filling the room as completely as the stained light. These men and women breathed tainted air.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Sit by me.’
The weight of eyes sat upon my skin, curiosity amassing around me. There was lust and hunger and fear, too, all so tangled I couldn’t begin to unravel their threads.
Katashi’s smile did not waver.
You would not smile if you knew my name, I thought. You would not ask me to sit at your side if you knew the truth.
With my hesitation his smile slipped and he scowled upon the assembled court. ‘Out,’ he ordered, clapping his hands. ‘Endymion and I need to talk.’
Dismissed, the court moved as one murmuring mass. The rustle of stiff silks and the click of sandals on wood rose like a storm, only to fade as the court moved beyond the doors. Hana lingered as though hoping to be called back, but though Katashi’s eyes never left her, he did not speak. She was a strange creature, pretty in a dusty pink robe, but beneath the tumble of short golden curls her expression was sombre.
Katashi beckoned as the doors closed behind the court, only guards left to follow my progress up the room. He patted the divan at his side and I sat, perched upon its edge. One day it would belong to his empress.
‘Is the seat hot?’ He lifted his brows. ‘Or perhaps you think I am going to bite you? I haven't forgotten what help you were the night I took Koi.’
I said nothing. In the vast space the sucking silence was oppressive. Crimson light cut across the stone floor, each blade speckled with dust.
Katashi scowled at his hands. ‘I have another favour to ask you,’ he said.
‘And what might that be, Your Majesty?’
He looked up, still frowning. ‘It’s Hana. Lady Hana. I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been her usual… difficult self since we took Koi. I know some of my Pikes have given her grief, but I’ve put a stop to that. She’s an Otako and they will treat her with the respect her name deserves, whatever she might have been.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know Lady Hana very well, Your Majesty.’
‘No, but you don’t need to, do you? You can tell me how she feels and what she’s thinking and she wouldn’t even know you had done it.’
A request that he should listen to himself died on my tongue. My head would depart my body with the same ease as any other. ‘It is not quite as simple as you make it sound,’ I said. ‘I can sense her emotions, yes, but with thoughts I need touch, and I need to know what I’m looking for. And she would know. Most people are self-aware enough to be able to feel my intrusion.’
‘It’s Kin. You were at the meeting. He said she would marry him and it seemed ridiculous at the time, but to see her now... I cannot be easy in my mind.’
‘You want to know if she considered accepting him?’
‘I need to know, because if Hana marries Kin, everything I have fought for, everything I have sacrificed will be for nothing! If he is in her mind, I would take steps to prevent it.’
‘Don’t you plan to kill him anyway?’
Katashi scowled at me. ‘The Usurper will suffer for what he did to my father, yes, but I would not have him deceive Hana into betraying her family.’
‘And if she did?’
‘If you imply that I would harm my own blood–’
‘You sold your sister to Malice.’
His fingers clenched tightly on his crimson-clad knees. ‘I did what I had to do.’
‘Does believing that help you sleep at night, Your Majesty?’
‘Be careful what you say, Empath,’ he snapped. ‘If you are not my ally you are my enemy.’
I rose from my place. ‘I will not spy on Lady Hana. If that makes me your enemy then I am your enemy.’
Tension snapped in the air. The guards watched, hands edging toward swords, but I would not sell my Empathy again. Brother Jian had taught me the difference between right and wrong, and that knowledge was all I had left to cling to.
‘Out,’ Katashi said. ‘Go and tell your master that he must take the Oath. And Endymion? If you betray me, I will make sure you are burned for the freak you are, do you understand?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ I said. ‘And I do not doubt you mean it.’
He did not answer, but I did not need his words. His anger and his obsession choked everything it touched, while the mantra of his inner thoughts echoed through his soul.
I will have my vengeance.
Chapter 2
Malice stood in the doorway like a ghost from the past. I could almost smell the burning grass stuck to his robe – the same blue robe he had dressed Endymion in because he liked his little jokes.
‘He wakes,’ Malice said, walking in on light feet. It had been dark at the Gilded Cherry, but now I could see how much five years had changed him. His silken hair had the same glossy sheen, yet the bone ribbon was a new touch, a new nod to the name he had taken on and co
uldn’t shed. His face, too, was so much the man I remembered, and yet there were the tracings of lines beginning to show if one knew where to look. He was five years older, yet not five years different. Even the sound of his wooden sandals upon the floor held the slow, menacing click of a predator drawing near.
‘Nothing to say? No glorious reminiscence or pleasure at being reunited?’ He sat on the edge of the divan and it sank beneath him, drawing me closer to the silk of that robe. ‘I missed you, yes?’
Malice ran his long fingers through my hair.
‘My little Darius,’ he went on, breathing deep of some scent only he could recognise. ‘I missed you more than words can say. Do tell me you felt the same, yes?’
I had. So often in those early years I had found myself talking to him though he was not there, imagining what I would tell him about the stupidity of a councillor or the sexual intrigues of the court that Kin alone took no interest in. It was always Malice’s company I longed for, Malice I spoke to in the darkness of my mind. He had been brother, friend, ally and protector for many years, a staple of every day. The feel of his hand was so deeply etched upon my palm that to hold any other felt wrong.
‘Darius,’ he said, fingers halting their progress through my tangled hair. ‘You can’t tell me you’ve lost your voice.’
‘No, you’re right. If I had, I couldn’t tell you that.’
Malice grinned. ‘And you haven’t lost your pedantic wit either, I see.’ His smile faded and he sighed. ‘You look so different, yes? I thought so that night at The Gilded Cherry, but now I can see you better, you look so much older.’
‘I was a man when I left you.’
‘When you left me,’ he echoed.
‘What are you going to do with Endymion?’
‘Again you leap, Darius. Such important matters should come after the pleasantries, yes? I say you have changed and you should comment on whether I have. We could perhaps reminisce upon the night we met in the back field. I think of it often.’
‘Is that why you wore that robe?’
Again the smile returned, giving him the appearance of volatility. I had learned to manage Kin’s mercurial temperament, but in Malice a smile was as likely to fade because he grew tired of holding it there. He had never been very expressive with his face. ‘You remember,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would.’
‘That night is hard to forget.’
‘I wish I could take that to mean that meeting me was hard to forget, Darius, but I will not presume upon the territory of our beloved father. Now would be a good time to mention Endymion, yes? I think perhaps the old man had a sense of humour. A Laroth-Otako bastard?’ He laughed. ‘What better way to get back at the family he detested?’
‘He cared about Hana.’
‘Perhaps out of guilt. You know as well as I that he hated all Otakos save one.’
It was so tempting to fall into conversation as though we were brothers united once again, but that would be to pretend there was no hurt, no anger.
Malice slipped his hand into mine. It filled the mould of my palm, the feeling of relief palpable. The curse wanted to be used. For five years my Empathy had scratched at the doors I shut upon it, nails bleeding, voice hoarse from its screams. It wanted to feel, to own, to control; every moment a fight to suppress it, to swallow it like a lump in my throat.
I couldn’t pull my hand away.
‘Five years is too long, my brother,’ Malice said. ‘Think of everything we might have achieved. In five years the empire would have bowed to us. But no matter, no matter, we have time, yes? And this way it is so very neat, so very clever, and I know how much you love clever. Can you see it, Darius? Can you see how easy it is when they are all so blind?’
‘I can see it,’ I said. ‘Let Katashi and Kin rip the empire apart between them and then rise like a saviour from the ashes.’
‘So poetic. How very much I missed you, Darius. No one else sees, no one else understands.’
‘No, nor would they see that you don’t really mean to do that at all.’
Malice’s hand tensed in mine. ‘You see something more?’
‘I see Endymion with your mark upon him. Why? If we didn’t need him before, then we don’t need him now.’
‘We?’
‘A slip of the tongue,’ I said.
Malice looked down at our hands, still joined. I pulled mine out of his grip and he laughed. ‘Oh, Darius, you can’t lie to me, yes? I know you far too well.’
‘And I know you,’ I said. ‘You’re going to use Endymion. You’ll throw him between Kin and Katashi and see how fast they tear him apart.’
His expression did not change. I couldn’t read him, couldn’t see if I was right without the Empathy I longed to use.
‘He’s getting stronger,’ Malice said. ‘You haven’t been with him enough to see it, but he is getting stronger. He can tell you how many souls are in this castle and where they are. He can hear thoughts. I have seen him read from another man’s mind and then kill him without a blink. Do you really think Kin or Katashi could destroy him? Even he doesn’t know how powerful he is.’
‘But you do.’
‘And so do you, yes? He will soon grow beyond my power alone. He’s a true Whisperer.’
I heard the words he did not speak. It would take both of us to control Endymion if he lost himself.
Malice was smiling again. ‘I think you understand me, yes? If we do this together, Kisia will have an Otako god. Can you doubt he will go that path, even without my influence?’
‘I should have left him to burn,’ I said. ‘Father Kokoro was right.’
‘Burn your own brother?’
‘I ordered General Ryoji to shoot you.’
‘Only because you knew I would not die, yes?’ he said. ‘Like when I slid that knife into your chest. But I will kill you, Darius. I want my brother back, and if I cannot have him then no one else will.’ He ran a finger along my cheek, the chill of his skin strange in the stuffy room. ‘We belong to each other, yes?’
‘Yes.’
Malice put his hand on my forehead and I stiffened, expecting the burn of his Empathy. It did not come. ‘You’re still fighting?’ he said.
I lay still on the divan, my whole body weighed down with fatigue. ‘Yes.’
Cushions fell as he moved. Throwing his leg over me, he straddled my hips, the world containing nothing beyond his weight, his warmth, and the smell of opium lingering on his breath. He pressed my shoulders down, the tips of his hair ghosting across my cheek. ‘Don’t fight it!’ he said. ‘You are a god, Darius, yes? You are better than any stinking Normal. Don’t live at their level – deaf, dumb and blind, little better than a maggot upon a rotting corpse. Come back to me.’ He lowered his head and his voice, his words a silky croon by my ear. ‘Come back to me, Darius, before it’s too late.’ I turned my head. ‘I belong to Kin now.’
‘Kin.’
Malice pressed his hand over my mouth and his Empathy ripped into me. Kin. Only Kin could rule Kisia. Only Kin had earned my respect. Kin with his strange Errant plays and his temper. Kin pleading across the throne room while the headsman raised his axe.
Malice sat back, his legs clamped to my hips. ‘In love with Hana, is he?’ he said. ‘Pathetic. I wondered why it took him so long to put her in danger.’
‘It was his honour that did that,’ I said. ‘Having taken an oath to protect her family, he wouldn’t hurt her, whatever danger she posed.’
‘Until she spurned his love.’ Mockery dripped from every word. ‘And you think a man, a Normal, can rule Kisia? With a heart that bleeds red with such staggering emotions? No. He will fall. She will see to that, yes? I have felt Katashi. No one can compete with what he exudes.’
Yet Hana had shrunk from Kin’s anger. Malice only knew what
he felt, but years without my Empathy had taught me to read people a different way.
‘Almost we need do nothing but wait,’ he went on. ‘They will destroy each other with minimal help from us, yes?’
When I did not speak Malice placed his hand upon my chest. There his fingers rose and fell in time with my living body. ‘Why don’t you let me in, Darius,’ he said. ‘For old time’s sake, yes?’
I shivered at the tickle of his breath. ‘Get off me,’ I said.
‘That’s all you have to say? I will fight for you, Darius. I don’t want to have to kill you.’
‘You won’t.’
‘Won’t I? I won’t let you leave me again. You have my word on that, yes?’
‘Get off me.’
He leant down and his lips brushed my cheek. ‘Make me,’ he said.
My stomach was eating itself with hunger and every limb felt weak. To shove him away would achieve nothing beyond his amusement, but he wore the Eye of Vice dangling from his ear. I gripped it, pulling hard enough to stretch the flesh of his lobe. ‘Get off,’ I repeated. ‘I will rip it out. You have my word on that, too, yes?’
He chuckled. ‘I like it when you play rough.’
I tried to buck him up, to slide my arm beneath his leg and lever him off, but Malice caught my wrist. Pinning it to my side he pressed his lips to mine, his kiss fierce. Powerless to push him off, I dug my free elbow into his thigh. A gasp sucked against my mouth, and rolling, I threw him from me. He hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and silk.
A knock sounded on the door and I pulled myself upright, every muscle aching. Licking my dry lips, I could still taste him, taste the Empathy tingling on my skin.
‘Come in,’ I said, leaving Malice in an ungraceful scramble to appear poised.
The door slid a few inches, just enough for someone to peer in. It was Hana, dressed like a lady, her short curls burnished in the sunlight. Our eyes met and she slid the door the rest of the way.