by Devin Madson
Wen jolted awake with a whimper. I whimpered too. The rain was doing nothing to cool the burning of my skin. No, not my skin. I tried to untangle his pain from my flesh as I crawled toward him in the darkness.
A bowstring creaked.
‘You can’t hide from me, Endymion,’ Katashi said. ‘Pikes live in the dark.’
I rolled. Rain fell into my face and the outline of Katashi towered over me, black robe on a dark night. But something else tugged at my Sight. Another soul. I tried to concentrate on it, but panic tore at every logical thought. I had judged Wen worthy. I could not let him die.
‘Fire or steel?’ Katashi said. ‘What is the more fitting end for a spider’s bastard?’
Hoof beats.
Katashi looked up. Once again Wen woke and pain sheered through me, our cries sounding in unison.
‘Endymion?’
I knew that voice.
Katashi started to laugh. ‘Why good evening, dear sister,’ he called, slackening his grip on the bow. ‘What a lovely place for a family reunion.’
‘Katashi?’
A lantern swung into my vision, hanging from Kimiko’s outstretched hand. In her other were two sets of reins. There was a snort and Kaze nudged my cheek, water dripping from his mane.
Wen sank once again and the pain drained from my body as Katashi turned his bow on Kimiko. She didn’t flinch. ‘You shouldn’t have Hatsukoi out in the rain, brother,’ she said. ‘You used to look after her better.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘To kill Endymion myself.’
He laughed, the sound like the hiss of rain evaporating off his skin. ‘You think I’m stupid,’ he said. ‘If you wanted that he would be dead already, Miko.’’ The tip of an arrow remained pointed at her face. ‘Go away. This has nothing to do with you.’
She didn’t move, still didn’t flinch though she had dropped Kaze’s reins. ‘Do you think Mama would be proud of you?’
Katashi froze like a man turned to stone. The name was a spike of hurt in his heart. Mama. Her voice deep. Her touch soft. The smell of incense caught to her hair.
Mama.
‘Do you think she would take your hand and say: “Well done, brave Tashi.”?’
‘Kimiko.’ Katashi growled like a wounded beast.
‘Do you think she would applaud you for selling me to Malice?’ she went on. I pulled myself along the sodden ground toward Wen.
‘Or for trying to kill Hana?’
By the light of Kimiko’s lantern, Wen’s face looked to be smeared with mud, but the truth was much worse. He groaned and I gritted my teeth at the stab of pain.
‘Or for burning your enemies alive?’
A snort. A step beside my ear, and a wet, leathery nose nudged my cheek. The stink of burning flesh smelt ten times worse through Kaze’s nose.
‘I have done what I had to do,’ Katashi said, his arm trembling with the effort of holding the bowstring taut. ‘Everything I have done has been for our family. For our name and our honour. To avenge the death of our father.’
‘Do you think he would be proud of you?’
Anguish poured from his pierced heart, washing over me as completely as Wen’s pain had done. Tianto Otako, tall and strong and smelling of leather and vanilla and Mama’s incense. He ought to have been emperor. He ought to have lived. He ought to have seen me grow to be a man.
‘Do you think he would call your choices honourable?’ Kimiko said, unrelenting. ‘Do you think he would call you son?’
Katashi screamed. A spurt of fire erupted, leaving tears to hiss and sizzle as they ran down his cheeks. ‘Damn you!’ he shouted at his twin. Her horse backed, eyes darting, but she managed to keep him from bolting with a hand on his neck.
‘Well?’ she repeated. ‘Do you think they would be proud?’
‘Shut up!’ Katashi sank to his knees. His grief poured upon the world like sticky tar, black and cloying. ‘None of this should have happened. I should have been a prince. An emperor. Kisia should have been ours. But this world is rotten and wrong and I fight it and I fight it and it only gets worse.’
His hopelessness was suffocating. It infused me and I looked at Wen with new eyes. He still lived, but his flesh was scorched and blistering and beginning to swell. I had judged him worthy but it was hopeless.
Hopeless.
I’m sorry. I should have stayed. I’m sorry. I should have helped. I’m sorry. I know it means nothing, but I’m sorry.
The owner of the whispers was close. Hidden. A soul I could not quite grasp.
Katashi wailed. It was a strange, haunting sound and one I had never thought to hear. The cry rose, warbling, almost birdlike in its raw emotion. He had thrown Hatsukoi aside to huddle in the mud, this strong, confident man, this leader, this emperor, reduced to a plaintive cry in the night.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ Kimiko said, sliding down from her horse to stand before her prostrate brother. ‘What are you doing to him?’
‘No.’ I pushed the hopelessness away. Not yours. Not yours. Not yours. ‘It isn’t me.’
Kimiko shifted her lantern, scanning the darkness. ‘Is this what you did on the road to Rina?’
‘Yes. No. It was Hope.’
I can’t hold him much longer, Endymion. Get out of here.
I pulled myself up, the sticky swamp loath to let me go. ‘We have to go. I have to get Wen to Kogahaera.’
‘Who did you tell?’
‘What?’
‘About the child. I’ve had Vices after me all day. Tell me.’
‘Help me get Wen out of here.’
Kimiko looked at the burned Pike, while in a crumpled, steaming heap, Katashi continued to cry and moan like a child taken from its mother. ‘He won’t make it,’ she said. ‘He’ll die before you get there.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He can’t.’ Kimiko made no move to help, just kept her distance, eyes flitting from me to her brother and back. ‘Help me,’ I said. ‘We need to warn Hana. Katashi is going to–’
‘Who did you tell?’
Go!
Katashi’s wracking sobs were slowing.
Go!
‘Help me,’ I said.
‘Did you tell Darius?’
‘No.’
‘Malice then.’ Kimiko gnawed the inside of her cheek. Steam rose around her distraught brother in thickening clouds. ‘Damn you, Endymion.’ She gripped Wen under his arms and dragged him up with a grunt. ‘I’ll help, but we might as well be delivering a corpse.’
Day Three
Chapter 11
I woke trapped in a tangle of sheets, my misery its own blanket. Lying still listening, there was no sign of Tili, just the gentle pitter-patter of rain upon the tent. The night had brought no solace, only painful recollection. Katashi had run his hands over my hips and breasts and down my thighs. I had touched him too, traitorous memory recalled, my trembling fingers tracing the smooth curve of his back as he lay upon me.
Kin had thrown me out.
Beneath the twisted sheets my white sash was still there, its knot as tight as the night it had been made. White for a virgin bride. It was a lie. A lie I had to wear proudly.
At the tent opening rain was running off the oilcloth awning. Outside soldiers were going about their business unaware that anything was amiss. Weapons, horses, plates of food, broken armour, tools, wood, sacks of rice and millet and sorghum, messages, gossip – the camp was a busy place and it all functioned smoothly because of Kin. Without me it would not change, but without him—
‘My lady.’
Tili was carrying a large pitcher and froze just shy of the tent as though unsure of her welcome.
‘I need to see Kin,’ I said. ‘Take a message for me.’
‘I’m sorry, my lady,’ she said, bowing once. Twice. Her grip on the pitcher tig
htened. ‘His Majesty rode out this morning.’
‘Rode out? Where to?’
‘I could not tell you that, my lady, I only hear gossip, not plans.’
It was only then I realised she was standing in the rain and I stepped aside. Tili bowed a third time and walked past me into the tent. ‘I have brought water, my lady,’ she said, setting the pitcher down. ‘I thought you might like to wash.’
‘I’m sure I need to.’ I sniffed my under arm. ‘Definitely.’
Tili went to work loosening my sash and my robe, but not once did she meet my gaze. She had cried with me last night as she had the night Katashi came to my room. There had been nothing to say then and there was nothing to say now, but the silence felt heavy.
While I washed Tili hunted for a clean robe. ‘The rain looks as though it means to stay,’ she said. ‘Blue would, I feel, be inauspicious, my lady, but perhaps pink—’
‘No, my armour.’
Tili turned. ‘My lady?’
‘My armour,’ I repeated.
Reluctantly she unfolded the armour I had worn to Kuroshima. ‘Are you sure about this, my lady, it is not the done thing for a woman in her sevenday to dress as a man.’
‘I am not dressing as a man, merely as a woman in armour,’ I said. ‘Will the sash loosen enough to go over the top?’
‘I think so, my lady.’
‘Then that is what I am wearing.’
Tili helped me into the plain under tunic first, then the linen and leather, tightening buckles and knotting ties, loops and buttons. Over the top of it all hung a crimson silk surcoat. It was a beautiful thing, the fabric so smooth and so soft, every stitch of the delicate dragon pattern so tiny it would have taken a skilled seamstress weeks to complete.
Tili held my white sash while I stepped into it. It needed to be loosened more to accommodate my layers, but when she began to tighten it again I stopped her. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tie it at the back. It won’t be in the way there.’
‘At the back?’ Tili’s soft features creased into a picture of horror. ‘You cannot mean it, my lady. Only old ladies tie their sashes at the back.’
‘And one day I plan to be very old. Do it.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
With a sharp jerk she turned the sash so only smooth white silk crossed my stomach. There it was yanked tight, and Tili stepped back to cringe at her handiwork.
‘Lady Hana!’
My eyes did not leave Tili’s face. ‘That’s General Ryoji,’ I said. ‘But if he is here then who went with Kin?’
Tili did not answer.
‘Lady Hana!’
I went to the tent entrance. General Ryoji stood in the spitting rain. His hair was stuck to his forehead and his breath was coming fast.
‘General,’ I said. ‘If you did not ride out with Emperor Kin then who is protecting him?’
‘He chose his own escort, my lady,’ General Ryoji said. ‘You are needed.’
‘What’s wrong? Is it Kin? Where has he gone?’
‘No, not His Majesty. Endymion.’
‘Endymion?’
There was an extra beat of silence before he said: ‘Have I pronounced it wrong? My Chiltaen is not so good. The young man who sat with Lady Kimiko when she was unwell.’
‘Yes, yes, I know who he is,’ I said, stepping out into the rain, my heart beat speeding to a flurry. ‘But what about him?’
‘He arrived a few minutes ago with Lady Kimiko and an injured Pike. They’re asking for you.’
I was moving before he finished. ‘They’re with Master Kenji, my lady,’ he said, jogging to catch up. ‘I must warn you that it is not a pleasant sight.’
I ran, rain falling like needles as I sped along rows of tents. Soldiers leapt out of my way. Some of them were preparing their mats, others rising from them, the change in watch making this hour after dawn busier than normal.
Outside Master Kenji’s tent a boy was tending two horses.
‘My lady, please wait,’ General Ryoji called. ‘It is not—’
I pushed through the leather curtain and retched. The dimly lit space stank of blood and burnt leather, of piss and faeces and sickly-sweet honey. Master Kenji and one of his assistants stood at the worktable, while on the straw-strewn floor Endymion sat hugging his knees to his chest. Every inch of him was filthy.
Kimiko sat beside him, wet and blood-splattered, the remains of her hair a knotted mess. The smell of it burning as I dragged her across the floor of Katashi’s tent was something I would never forget.
‘Hello again, Hana,’ she said. ‘I see I ought to congratulate you. That is a fine sash.’
Kimiko’s hands were tied and two Imperial Guards stood watching her with their hands clasping their sword hilts.
‘Why is Lady Kimiko bound?’ I demanded, turning on General Ryoji who had entered behind me and was shaking the rain from his hair.
‘Because I’m a threat,’ she said, before he could answer. I looked back. Her face was pale with dark rings beneath her eyes, yet there was ferocity in her words. Even the straight-backed way she sat was like a challenge.
‘That I don’t doubt.’ I looked at Endymion. The scar of his Traitor’s Brand was just visible beneath dry blood. ‘What are you doing here?’
A muffled moan came from the worktable as though in answer, and one of Kenji’s boys dashed past with a bowl of black water. At the table Master Kenji was bent low over a man. ‘My lady, this is not a sight for any delicately-nurtured female,’ he said as I joined him.
‘Then it is just as well that I was not delicately nurtured,’ I replied. The physician was working quickly, cutting away cloth and charred leather to reveal black and blistered flesh. The burned man dug his teeth into a leather strap and stared up at me with wild eyes.
‘Wen?’
‘You know him?’ I hadn’t heard General Ryoji join me at the table but he was there now, his voice an anchor in a world fast spiralling out of my control.
‘Yes. I know him.’ I brushed a clump of singed hair back from Wen’s brow as gently as I could, looking down into eyes that seemed to swim in and out of focus.
‘Wen, can you hear me? It’s Hana.’
Skin tore away with the next strip of cloth, eliciting a muffled scream.
I turned back to Endymion and Kimiko. Neither had moved. ‘What happened?’ I demanded. ‘Did Katashi do this?’
‘Yes,’ Endymion said. ‘I couldn’t stop him.’
‘Why? Why burn his own man?’
‘Not his.’
‘What do you mean?’
Endymion shook his head slowly, teeth clenched on the answer. He was shaking.
‘There’s no point talking to him,’ Kimiko said. ‘He can feel pain, remember? We almost didn’t make it.’
She held her bound hands neatly in her lap, something all too confident in her demeanour. But then what did a pair of irons mean to woman who could walk through walls?
‘Will he live?’ General Ryoji asked, drawing my attention back to Wen.
‘I have dosed him with a tincture of opium, General, and I am doing all I can,’ the physician said. ‘But I cannot lie and say I do not fear the outcome.’
Wen’s bloodshot eyes followed my hand as I gently took the leather strap from between his teeth. The rebel licked his lips. ‘Lady Hana,’ he managed in a terrible rasp. ‘I should have listened to you. I should have killed him when I had the chance.’
His eyes rolled back as Master Kenji pressed ointment onto his blistered arm. The ointment smelt of honey but was the colour of fresh grass, thick and sticky. One of Master Kenji’s boys held the bowl and stirred continuously, not letting any part of the mixture set.
‘The gods will judge,’ I said, recalling Wen’s words from that night in The Valley.
Wen let out a cry that turned into a dry,
breathy laugh. ‘Yes, they will,’ he agreed. ‘They will judge me harshly for my stupidity. You have to stop him, he’s going to burn Shimai.’
‘What?’ Ryoji stepped forward.
‘They’re going to attack the city. Perhaps as early as tomorrow night.’
‘But Shimai is the most heavily defended city in Kisia!’
Wen shook his head slowly. ‘That doesn’t matter. First Shimai, then Mei’lian. He cannot be stopped. Everyone who does not bow to him will burn.’
As though to emphasise his words, Wen hissed and reached instinctively to grab his wounds. This only caused more pain and he howled.
‘You’re sure about Shimai?’ General Ryoji asked, crouching now at Wen’s head.
‘I’m sure,’ Wen said. He swallowed hard, again and again, breath coming in sharp gasps. ‘They know about the battalions you pulled from the city and the planned attack on Risian,’ he went on between hissing breaths. ‘That’s all I know. They have—’ The scissors snipped and Wen screamed. My stomach knotted and I gritted my teeth.
‘They have thousands of Pikes,’ he managed to continue, every word an effort. ‘And the traitors.’
General Ryoji stood. ‘If they know they have been discovered they might change their plans,’ he said to me. ‘Do you trust this man?’
‘I have trusted him with my life and would again, General,’ I said. ‘We need to send someone after His Majesty. Now.’
‘We don’t know where he is,’ he whispered. ‘He went on the mission to scout out positions east of Risian. It could take a man hours to find them.’
‘If you have a better idea, General, I’m listening. Otherwise I think you ought to send a rider as quickly as you can.’
General Ryoji stepped back and bowed. ‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Your fastest rider!’ I added, but the general was already gone, disappearing through the leather curtain.
From the table, Wen watched me with bloodshot eyes. ‘I’m sorry, my lady.’
‘I think you have earned the right to dispense with such formality,’ I said, forcing a smile and taking his blood-crusted hand.
Another short laugh turned into a cough. ‘Regent then,’ he said. ‘My captain. A man must have a captain. Especially where I’m going.’