THe Grave at Storm's End

by Devin Madson

  ‘Since you told me.’

  ‘Wait, do you mean you knew and still let your generals treat me like a stupid little girl?’

  He lifted his soup bowl to his lips and sipped the steaming liquid. ‘I had no choice, Hana. It seemed not to have occurred to you that the last thing I need is you telling everyone Katashi can create fire from nothing.’

  I tilted my chin defiantly. ‘But it’s true.’

  ‘I know it is true,’ Kin said. ‘But think for a moment. Telling soldiers the truth only leads to fear. What use is that? An emperor cannot deal in truth, because the truth is that thousands of these men are going to die. The only thing that keeps them fighting is the possibility that they might get through today, and that every tomorrow they could be going home.’

  ‘And if you lie they walk into battle blind! Did your scouts know when you sent them into the Fen like bait that they could be burned alive?’

  ‘Hana—’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You think I do? But I know who I’m fighting and it’s not Katashi. He’s just a very dangerous weapon in a very dangerous hand.’

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence, Darius now sitting between us as Katashi so often did, their names unspoken, their presence unacknowledged.

  ‘So what do we do?’ I asked, pushing away my bowl.

  ‘The only thing we can do,’ he said. ‘Keep fighting. Our marriage will make a difference.’

  ‘Then why did Darius send Conceit to make a show but not to stop us taking our vows? This is Darius. If he let it happen it’s because he knows something we don’t.’

  Like that I wasn’t the innocent bride Kin thought me. And so the lie that lived between us grew fatter, like a bloated tongue impeding speech. I had once sworn I was no whore and it had been true then. Now the scent of wood smoke, or the sight of an archer tending his bow was enough to remind me of Katashi. I needed to drive him from my flesh. I needed Kin to touch me.

  ‘Darius knows too much,’ Kin said, setting down his bowl. ‘We need to do something he doesn’t expect. Something I would never do.’

  ‘I can think of something.’ Silk rustled as I moved around the table, closing the space between us completely.

  ‘Hana—’

  His lips were soft and warm and tasted of broth. Under my fingers his cheek was smooth. Katashi had been freshly shaven that night, too, though I had long been used to Monarch’s bristles.

  Don’t think about Katashi.

  When I pressed the kiss more fiercely he reciprocated, his hands in my hair and on my back. He was strong and unyielding, hot, breathless, but still Katashi remained. I needed skin, but everywhere I hunted I found layer upon layer of stiff crimson silk.

  The intricate knot in his sash loosened with a tug. Kin pulled away. ‘Hana,’ he said, licking damp lips. ‘You need to leave. We can’t do this.’

  ‘We can,’ I said. ‘I want to be with you.’

  I tried to kiss him again, but his outstretched arm jolted me back. ‘Hana, it matters,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘I will not stain my honour or yours.’

  Gently he removed my hand from his sash. Tears pricked my eyes. ‘I want you. Don’t you want me?’

  ‘Too much.’ He shook his head. ‘But I should never have even… Hana, I…’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘What difference does six days make?’

  ‘All the difference. Hana, I would give you my name before I touch you. I will not have you birth a bastard to rule this empire after me.’ He treated me to one of his rare smiles. ‘It will be the more special for waiting.’

  Always so honourable. But it was his body I needed, not his honour. I loosened my own sash like Tili had shown me and it slid easily over my hips. Both of my robes dropped with it as I got to my feet, the change from fully clothed to naked barely discernible in the humid air. Kin stared, desire unmasked upon his features. His eyes ran over me like every line and limb was a worthy feast for the eye, and for a moment I was drunk on the power of the female body.

  ‘I need you, Your Majesty.’

  He looked away. ‘Get dressed.’

  ‘Why? What is wrong with me?’

  ‘Nothing is wrong with you, but I meant what I said. I will have you the day I untie that sash and not before. I will not dishonour my name, or yours.’

  ‘I don’t care about my honour,’ I cried.

  ‘Obviously.’

  Kin rose from his place, his expression implacably hard. The tent spun. Some sane part of my mind was screaming that I was mad, but I needed his touch.

  Without a word he picked up my under robe and draped it over my shoulders. He did not look at me, only at his hands as he tied it closed.

  Tears blurred my vision and I pushed him away. ‘Why don’t you want me?’

  ‘Hana!’

  ‘What? Are you a eunuch?’ I advanced on him and thrust my hand into the silk encased hollow between his legs. He was rigid beneath his clothes, the feeling so strange I almost yanked my hand back. Kin grabbed my wrist.

  ‘Hana!’

  ‘So you have a cock,’ I said, surely drunk now. ‘Don’t you know what to do with it?’

  A slap stung my cheek and I gasped. I felt then how naked I was, how vulgar my words had been. I wanted to run, but like a weight chained to my leg Katashi would not let me leave. He was there, touching me, kissing me, pressing his body into mine.

  ‘Please touch me,’ I said with a sob, unable to stop the tears pouring down my face.

  ‘Hana, what is wrong with you?’ He sounded angry, which only made the tears flow faster.

  ‘Please,’ I said again, reaching out blindly. ‘Please. I don’t want to feel him anymore.’

  His grip on my wrist tightened. ‘Feel who?’

  ‘Katashi,’ I wailed.

  Even through my tears I saw his features contort into an ugly expression. ‘Katashi? But you gave me your word.’

  ‘And I meant it, then.’

  ‘So after that…’ He took a deep breath, smoothing back his hair. ‘You let Katashi touch you?’

  I could only nod; the admission too great for words.

  ‘He…?’

  I nodded before ever he finished the question. Katashi hadn’t just touched me. He hadn’t just kissed me. He had taken me entirely and marked me as his own.

  ‘Go.’ It was an order.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I begged. ‘He came to me, I—’

  ‘Get out.’ Kin snatched up my robe from the floor and threw it at me. ‘Put that on and get out.’

  ‘Kin, please!’

  ‘Out! Now!’

  I stood clutching the robe to my face, tears soaking the silk. I couldn’t move. But what else could I say? I hadn’t asked Katashi to leave. I had let it happen, let myself be tainted beyond recall.

  I felt rather than saw Kin take the robe from my hands. With a gentle tug he finished the knot in my under robe, then the silk was on my shoulders and I slipped my arms in like a child being dressed by its mother, hiccupping as I fought to control my misery. He even picked up the sash, wretchedly white, the knot of our marriage still tied, still full of such hope. Mute, I stepped into its circle and he slid it up over my hips.

  I waited for him to look at me then, hoping to find his anger eased, but his jaw was set hard and his lips pressed tight, those thick brows frowning such that I could barely see his eyes. He did not look at me. He just stepped back and turned away.

  There were no words.

  Kin knelt at the table and turned his attention back to his pile of maps. ‘Good night, Lady Otako.’

  Chapter 10

  I must have dozed, for when I next looked about me the sky was dark and rain was falling. There was no light. No moonlight, no lanterns, just the sound of the rain and the ragged breathing of Wen behind me. Even the whispers
seemed quieter, as though the whole of Nivi Fen was holding its breath.

  One million, three hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-nine.

  No, don’t think about the numbers.

  I tried to hold my Empathy close, close to the pain in my wrists, the stink of the Fen and the warmth from a bladder full of piss, but my Sight soon darted away unchecked.

  One million, three hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-eight.

  Darius’s eyes had glittered. Your Empathy isn’t alive, Endymion, he had said back at Esvar. It doesn’t have a life of its own. It does what it’s told. If you want to connect to someone it connects, if you want to hurt someone it hurts them, if you want to kill them they die. It is as much a tool as your arm or your leg, but just because you own a hand doesn’t mean you should slap someone.

  He had learned it was himself he hated, not the Empathy, and now, finally, I understood what he had meant.

  ‘All I wanted was to protect you.’

  You have to let it go, Endymion. You have to fight what makes you angry. You have to stop caring. Don’t pretend you haven’t a heart, don’t have one at all. Your compassion will kill you.

  A light flickered among the trees, but still the rain beat down.

  ‘Wen?’

  There was no answer.

  The light shone again, hovering like a bloated firefly. A light that survived despite the rain meant a lantern.

  ‘Wen?’ Still no reply.

  I tried to keep my Empathy reined in, but the fear that came with the light was so raw it stung my eyes. Horror. Anger. Shame. Deep and gut wrenching.

  I knew that mind.

  ‘Endymion?’

  And I knew that voice.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said through a constricted throat. ‘Just follow the smell.’

  ‘It’s hard to miss.’

  Beset by rain, the lantern bobbed closer.

  Wen woke with a start. ‘What’s going on? Who is that?’

  ‘A friend.’

  The figure drew closer until the golden light etched a face from the night. ‘Why is it always me who has to save you?’ Hope said, halting at the edge of our pool. Its surface was scattered with raindrops.

  ‘Because Malice doesn’t own you,’ I said.

  The press of emotions muffled his whispers, but he laughed softly. ‘I’m not so sure.’ He set the lantern down on a rock and crouched beside it, his dark clothes melding into the night. Rain dripped from the ends of his hair.

  ‘I often wonder if I did the right thing, letting you go in Rina,’ he said, keeping his distance. ‘Not a night goes by that I don’t think about those men dragging knives across their own throats, smiles on their faces like there was nothing in the world better than death.’

  The young Vice was pale. He had been bathed in moonlight when we first met atop the crashed prison cart.

  ‘Stinking prison carts,’ I said. ‘We’re good at this kindness to all men thing, huh? What in shiva is this boy doing? Is he going to climb down or stand there staring at me all day?’

  I was sure I smiled, but Hope did not smile back. ‘You scare me, Endymion,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid of what you can do. I’m afraid of every damn word that comes out of your mouth.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Because I have no choice. Katashi is going to burn Shimai.’

  ‘What?’ Wen’s head snapped around, the lantern light searing up the side of his face. ‘Burn Shimai?’

  ‘Yes. Kin’s marriage to Lady Hana has solidified an alliance with Lord Pirin and his loyalists. They are mounting a campaign to reclaim Risian and the Willow Road and have pulled half the garrison from Shimai. Lord Laroth and Katashi plan to take advantage of this.’

  ‘When?’

  Hope shook his head, sending water flying. ‘I don’t know. But they’ll travel light and Katashi will press them hard. Days.’

  ‘They have to be warned,’ Wen said. He yanked at his chains. ‘I can get there in time. I don’t know who you are, but if you let me go I will get there in time, even if I have to run the whole way without rest.’

  ‘My name is Hope.’

  Wen laughed a brittle laugh. ‘Omen or cruel joke?’

  ‘I wish I knew. But even if I let you go they’ve already removed the garrison from Shimai. There won’t be enough men to defend the city.’

  ‘Then I’ll go to Emperor Kin at Kogahaera.’

  ‘Emperor Kin won’t listen to a Pike.’

  ‘No,’ Wen agreed. ‘But Lady Hana might.’

  Hope nodded, and leaving the lantern where it was he took a step forward into the filthy pool. He scrunched up his nose. ‘Good will to all men, huh?’ he said, looking at me. ‘Is that what I said?’

  ‘It was what you were thinking,’ I said. ‘Out loud you said: “I’ll help you down. Give me your hand”.’

  He knelt between us, his damp cleanliness the nicest smell that had ever entered this swamp. His shoulder brushed mine, his hair level with my nose as he worked.

  Metal scraped, then the chains fell loose. Hope stood. ‘That’s all I can do for you,’ he said, turning away. ‘Don’t ask me for more. You’re on your own now.’

  Wen sighed, got up, and stretched, clenching and unclenching his fists as he reached to the sky. ‘Gods it feels good to be free,’ he said, checking his leather satchel was still with him. There was love in he way he touched it, despite the covering of mud and excrement. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Hope.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ Hope said, leaving the lantern and backing to the edge of the pool. ‘My good deeds are cursed. The Master calls it balance.’

  He turned away, but when I made to follow him, Wen gripped my elbow. ‘We have to get to Lady Hana,’ he said, shaking despite the heat.

  ‘No, I came for Darius.’

  ‘You would choose one man over thousands? Even a god cannot save a monster, Takehiko.’

  A monster. If Darius was a monster, what did that make me?

  Wen caught my hand inches from his face. ‘What was that? Did you just try to hit me?’ he said, holding my fist in his filthy hand. His memory leapt to me, spark like, and I saw my own blank expression. My own fist. My own anger lashing out.

  Wen dropped my hand. ‘Where did you just go?’

  My fingers tightened upon the lantern. When had I picked it up?

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Wen said, giving up on my answer. ‘You can stay if you like.’

  ‘They will all suffer,’ I said. ‘They will all die.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He will burn for what he did to my family. My name.’

  The words came from my lips but I had not thought them. They were not mine. They—

  Knuckles caught me across the jaw, throwing me to the ground. The lantern fell into the mire on a drunken angle, illuminating the underside of Katashi’s chin. ‘You sick little boy,’ he jeered down at me. ‘From the moment we met you haven’t been able to keep your freakish Sight off me. No, don’t even think about getting up, Endymion, or I’ll burn your little friend’s face off.’

  Wen no longer touched the ground. Katashi held him up by the tunic. ‘Well well, I thought little Hope was up to something. I ought to have killed you weeks ago, but you made such a good diversion for the men. Something for them to hate more than the Fen.’

  Wen spat at him.

  ‘Well aren’t you brave.’ Katashi wiped his jaw with the back of his free hand. ‘Still hoping to impress my beautiful cousin?’

  ‘Better than impressing you.’

  Katashi laughed. ‘More fool you,’ he said. ‘She might be a whore but she’s a whore with imperial taste. She won’t bend over for you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take her even if she did. Lady Hana was my captain once.’

  ‘And I was not?’
>
  Wen’s jaw jutted as Katashi tightened his grip. ‘There was a time I would have followed Monarch to any end,’ Wen said. ‘But not this end. Not this end. I will not fight to see my homeland burn. May the gods judge us all.’

  ‘There are no gods,’ Katashi said. ‘There is no justice.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but by the laws of Kisia, Lord Takehiko Otako should be on the throne, not you.’

  Fury whipped through the trees like the slap of an invisible hand, bending rain out of its path. Katashi gripped Wen’s hair and yanked his head back. ‘Takehiko is no more an Otako than you are,’ he said, his words like a hiss of escaping steam. ‘He is full of spider blood.’ Katashi glared at me with those fiery blue eyes. ‘Go on, Endymion, stop me. Give me a reason to kill you, too, out here where your brothers can’t save you.’

  Smoke curled from Wen’s hair sending terror thumping through my head.

  Burn him. Burn him.

  ‘No!’ Wen shouted, half defiant, half pleading. He kicked, thrashed and tried to grab his former captain, but Katashi punched him in the gut. Air burst from my lungs. Pain. The smell of burning linen. Burning hair. And still fury stained every thought.

  Wen screamed as his hair burst into flames. ‘Stop,’ I cried, grasping at nothing but mud and swamp water as knives slit my scalp. ‘Stop!’

  My hand closed on the lantern. There was no thought, only pain. No plan, only instinct. I swung. The glass smashed against Katashi’s head and he staggered. Wen fell. The flames died, but the agony did not.

  ‘Wen?’ I gasped. ‘Wen!’

  The after-burn of fire flickered across my vision. The Pike was not dead, but his soul was split, pouring pain upon the world.

  Katashi groaned. ‘I am going to kill you, Endymion,’ he promised the darkness. His anger flared as bright as his fire had, but he wasn’t the only one who could use it as a weapon. Recalling Malice’s jibe, I focussed on Katashi and Katashi alone as I threw it back at him. Like a flint to tinder, he flared. Flames burst from him and for a few long seconds he burned like a torch, before the fire once again extinguished.

  Laughter replaced the crackling. ‘That tickled,’ he said. ‘And now I’m all dry.’