by Devin Madson
Too much. Too much. I tried to push it away, but the pain would not be ignored. It flared down my leg as I struggled to sit, finding my hand stuck in something warm. A stomach, sheared open, its guts spilled onto the stones.
Shouts. Cries. Running steps. A whisper came close.
There he is. There he is.
I rolled.
A spear pierced the entrails of the very dead soldier. I lunged for skin, but as my fingers closed around a bare wrist it vanished like smoke.
Conceit.
Pain sheared through my leg again as I pulled myself up, hunting Conceit with my eyes, not my Sight. Smoke lingered over a scene strewn with bodies, each crimson sash like a rivulet of blood shimmering in the torchlight. Enemy soldiers poured in through what had once been the gatehouse and was now a gaping hole, but there was no sign of the Vice.
I limped into the shadow of a shop awning and let my Empathy range. No Conceit. No Hana. Only pain came back to me. Pain. Fear. Anger. And the stomach-turning frenzy of excitement that came with battle. Numbers leapt to my tongue now, useless numbers constantly changing in the chaos.
Two. Five. Twenty. Six. One.
Blood dripped down my leg. I dared not look at the wound, but I could not bring myself to move either. Pikes ran through the haze, calling to one another as they spread out to hunt.
Two horses trotted past my hiding place, their hooves making no sound upon the carpet of flesh. Sickles flashed, the Vices there and gone in a blaze of determination that briefly, oh so briefly, blocked out my pain.
Vices. Mission.
Hana.
I tried to run, but the pain in my leg made every step a struggle with both mind and body. But I had to find Hana. I forced myself to run, shedding the pain as much as I could though more came from everywhere, pressing in with the weight of screams and thoughts and numbers. Always the numbers.
Forty-two. Six. Eleven. One million, three hundred and fifteen thousand, eight hundred and four.
As I ran deeper into Shimai the smoke thinned and the screams faded, but each street seemed to belong to one emperor or another as soldiers held their ground. Hana flickered at the edge of my attention. Vague. Moving. I slowed. Hunted.
No, no please don’t hurt me! Child.
I’ve got to get out of here. Soldier.
Closer now, and brighter, Hana’s soul led me into a side street. Steps creaked beneath my feet. A pair of black paper lanterns hung overhead, either side of a black silk awning.
Inside the yiji house a man in voluminous silks lay dead, a bunch of keys in his hand. The keeper.
He dragged her across the floor by her hair, Malice had said. And when she shouted for her owner, he did not come.
The keys were just tradition now, but once they had locked the women in.
Hana’s voice came through the fog and I followed it into a dark room filled with the smell of incense. And there she was, a long, curved sword in one hand and a knife in the other, slicing the throat of an enemy soldier. The slit skin parted with blood and she let the man fall clutching his neck in the throes of death.
‘Come to save me?’ she said catching sight of me. Her chest was heaving.
‘It doesn’t look like you need my help.’
‘I don’t.’
A laugh came from deeper inside the building and Hana was off. I followed, shedding the pain in my leg every second like a snake sheds its skin. I would pay for it later.
I didn’t see the man until he lunged at me, but Hana was there. Her sword slid effortlessly into his flesh, entering through his stomach to slit open his gut. My thanks went unheard. She was already moving again.
‘Do you want to die like your ugly friend?’
A black-sashed soldier held court in the next room, his knife held to the throat of a naked woman. Blood covered her hands and splattered her belly, and all around her men jeered.
I hardly thought, hardly seemed to have a mind at all. Hana stepped forward, sword ready, but it was justice they needed.
Hands. Faces. With the touch of skin, hearts came before my Empathy and I read them all.
Hot blood had sprayed as I slit her throat. The whimpers of fear had been so delicious. Back home a wife and son, no don’t think about them, don’t think about them.
Unworthy.
The man had cried out as the river dragged him away. His body had been bloated when I found it, battered, scratched, pale, cheeks sagging as though melted by the torrent.
Unworthy.
The visceral resistance as I thrust my sword through the back of one of Kin’s men, blood on crimson.
Unworthy.
Unworthy.
Unworthy.
‘Endymion!’
Only the woman was left, curled upon the floor sobbing. I spun around. Hana’s face was cut and blackened with ash, but her eyes stood as wide as her dropped jaw. Around me the soldiers lay scattered as though thrown, their bodies free of wounds though they breathed no more.
‘What did you do?’ Hana took a step back.
‘I judged them,’ I said. ‘They got what they deserved.’
I could have pulled him out of the river. I could have.
I tried to shake the memory, but the pain I had been shedding hit hard and my leg buckled.
Hana ran forward, dropping her blade. ‘You’re injured! What happened?’
‘When the gate exploded,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ She peeled back the open seam of my breeches to display a bloody mess upon my calf. Stones and grit had lodged in my flesh where skin had been ripped away.
‘You shouldn’t even be walking. We need to get you somewhere safe.’
Hana hesitated. Fear. Uncertainty. She didn’t want to touch me.
I pulled myself up with the help of a broken screen. It was getting harder to shed, harder to concentrate.
‘It’s all right, I can walk,’ I said, but Hana stepped forward. I whipped my hand behind my back. ‘No, don’t touch me.’ I had met him outside a brothel, but could not remember why I had been there. Why had I let Katashi cut the golden hair I did not own?
‘The Vices are here,’ I said. ‘They’re hunting for you.’
‘For me?’ A dart of fear – like a drop of water in the ocean. ‘Let them hunt,’ she said. ‘If they want me they’ll have to kill me first. Is that why you’re here? To save me?’
‘I’ve failed Darius in every other way.’
‘Where’s Kin?’
I shook my head. ‘The whole gatehouse is gone.’
She didn’t seem to hear me. ‘He will have pulled back. We must find them.’
Hana went to the door and stepped into a nightmare. Shimai was burning. Flames danced from roof to roof, licking toward the clouded sky. A man came at me through the amber smoke and I hit him with my pain. He stumbled and I gripped his wrist as he fell, laying his soul bare. Afraid. Grieving lost friends. Full of uncertainty, of doubt.
I let go. The man fell to his knees pleading. His words came so quickly there was no understanding them, but the penitence was real.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Kill no more. Go home to your family.’ And that family were in my head now. Daughter, two sons, both big bouncing boys with the curls of a little girl. Marsci thought they were so beautiful and dressed them in the sweetest clothes, but all I wanted was for them to grow up strong.
Bowing, the man kissed my sandal and scrabbled away on his hands and knees along the old parapet.
At the bottom of the stairs the smoke was thick with people calling to one another. A woman ran past with a child in each arm, one bawling and the other silent.
Chaos. Screaming. Shouting. Roaring flames. Yet the barrage of noise was nothing to the pounding of my head, so much pain, so many voices, so many numbers caught on my tongue.
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��Two. Fifty-five. Eighteen. Three thousand, one hundred and eight. One hundred thousand—’
Hana slapped me. General Ryoji’s smile flashed into my mind and stuck there.
‘We don’t have time for you to lose your mind!’ she shouted over the noise. ‘We need to move.’
She was already striding off through drifts of smoke. Head spinning, I followed, like a man in a dream. Downhill. That was all I could tell, every shred of lasting concentration pouring into keeping myself upright and walking. Even the numbers were failing now. There was only pain.
A soldier fell in front of Hana with a crunch. She leapt back, hitting a man who grabbed hold and lifted her, leaving her feet running on air.
‘Put me down!’
Conceit clicked his tongue as she tried to crack his jaw with her elbow. He winked at me, as his sickle winked in the light.
‘Ah, Lady Hana.’ The voice came from behind where a second Conceit watched from a high balcony. He gripped the edge of the railing and leapt over, landing with bent knees in the road. I reached for skin, but he twisted out of the way. ‘Nice try,’ he said, and held up gloved hands. ‘No skin for you.’
Both Conceits laughed. Hana tried to bite the one that held her, but he just squeezed tighter until she scrabbled at his arms, gasping for breath.
‘Careful,’ the other Conceit said. ‘They want her alive, remember?’
‘Let her go,’ I said.
‘Or you’ll do what, Justice? Glare us to death? Oh no, looks like you’re injured.’
Again they both laughed in unison, an eerie sound that chimed through my pounding skull.
The sword in Hana’s hand twitched. She had stopped fighting, stopped screaming, at least with her lips. It was her whispers that screamed now.
You better be able to damn well hear me, Endymion, she said. I’m going to drop my sword in five, four, three, two—
I lunged. It was an awkward catch with slippery fingers, but Conceit didn’t see it coming. I brought the blade around in an arc but it went right through him.
The other laughed, Hana still in his arms. I rushed at him and slammed into a wall that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The cobblestones rushed to meet me and I hit them, dazed and winded.
‘Give our love to Kin, won’t you?’ Conceit said. ‘His invitation is already on its way.’
Hana kicked and scratched and swore, but the Vice did not put her down, just hushed her like a troubled child as he strode away into the haze.
Endymion! Do something!
I started to my feet, but the wall was in my way. ‘So here we are again,’ it said. ‘I’m looking forward to the day I no longer have to see your face.’
A foot slammed into my chest, knocking out the air.
‘Were you playing big brother protector?’ the familiar voice said. The hand I could see was mottled like stone. ‘Too bad you failed. If you get to live this life over, leave Master Darius out of it.’
Avarice drew a bow from his back and plucked an arrow from a quiver at his hip.
‘You’re going to shoot me?’ I managed, the words emerging strangled.
‘I know how to protect him even if he doesn’t know how to protect himself.’
A foot firmly planted upon my chest prevented escape. ‘Don’t even think about moving.’ Ire this time, the Vice who wanted more than anything to die.
Hana’s sword was useless, one Vice too close, the other just too far. Avarice drew back the bowstring. I stared at it, watched it grow taut as its limbs stretched from archer’s knot to archer’s knot. Without its knotted string a bow was nothing but a piece of wood.
Avarice might be just too far, but his bow was not.
He was drawing hard, anger in his hands. No time. I swung and the tip of Hana’s longsword caught the string. There was no resistance. The tension released. The string whipped upwards, tangling the arrow as it fell from Avarice’s fingers. He swore, wrenched off balance as the bow straightened into his face.
I rolled free of Ire’s foot and scrabbled for purchase on the slick stones. They shouted after me but I forced myself to throw one leg in front of the other through the pain. Every breath was full of smoke. Every heartbeat echoed hundreds of screams pressing in on all sides. I had no idea where I was going, just ran, dragging Hana’s sword with me.
Men in crimson whirled from the smoke, shouting. The ground sloped. And then there was the Tzitzi River with Shimai’s famous bridge arching across its dark roaring water. The Span was wide enough for two carts and was lit like a building, with hundreds of lanterns hanging from its slanted roof. Across the river the south bank of Shimai looked dark and calm.
Hooves clattered on the stones as a war stallion cut across my path. I fell back, heart hammering.
‘Endymion! Where’s Lady Hana?’
‘Hana,’ I repeated, dazed. ‘I wanted to rip Councillor Ahmet’s head off when I saw what he had done to her in the Pit. I wanted to comfort her. Oh gods the way she walked behind me, a martyr, proud despite the filth covering every limb—’
General Ryoji leaned out of the saddle and gripped the front of my tunic. His fingers were covered in blood. ‘Where is she?’ he repeated, eyes burning into mine.
‘They took her,’ I said. ‘The Vices.’
My knees hit the stones as I slipped from his grip.
I will not let those bastards break her. I will not let them burn her.
‘Where did they take her?’
I heard the question but could not answer. My Sight was so clogged I could not see her anymore.
‘Carry this man to the bridge!’
Soon I was looking up at ornately painted ceiling panels between thick cedar beams. Arguments rolled around me. ‘We have to evacuate the north bank, Your Majesty,’ someone said. ‘We’ve lost it. Pull the men back to the Span.’
‘Are you suggesting that we leave Lady Hana at the mercy of our enemies?’
‘I regret the need as much as you do, Ryoji,’ the first speaker replied. ‘But it is madness to sacrifice half a city and half an army for one person, empress or not. She may not even be alive.’
‘Your Majesty! Your Majesty!’
‘What is it?’ Kin for the first time. The delicately painted birds on the ceiling were spinning gently overhead.
‘A messenger. He says he is Lord Arata Toi, eldest son of the Duke of Syan.’
‘The Duke of Syan is dead.’
There were whispers. Didn’t his eldest son die? There was some scandal, years ago…
‘Let him come.’
I struggled onto an elbow, though at my side someone cautioned me to remain still. Kin stood in the middle of the bridge, his armour liberally splattered with blood and the end of his sash charred. I could not see his face, or that of the two generals standing behind him, but it was not them I wanted to see. Hope stepped onto the bridge on soft feet. Our eyes met but he did not smile, did not outwardly acknowledge me though inside I could hear him screaming.
‘I bring a message,’ he said, his voice dead of all emotion. The young Vice swayed on his feet.
‘You will bow before His Majesty,’ a guard said, stepping forward.
Kin held up his hand. ‘No, we have no time for protocol, let him speak unharmed. What is your message?’
‘Lord Darius Laroth, Sixth Count of Esvar and Minister of the Left in the court of Emperor Kin Ts’ai, First of this name, respectfully requests that the aforementioned emperor takes some time out of his busy schedule to engage him in a game of Errant.’
There was some laughter among the guards, but not from Kin. ‘A game of Errant,’ he repeated.
‘Yes, Your Majesty. If you win you may take Lady Hana unharmed. If you lose she goes to Katashi Otako. A truce will be declared while you play, allowing you time to consolidate your position and deal with your wounded and your dead.’
In the pause that followed, Hope’s gaze slid toward me again. I tried to focus on him, on his whispers, but there was nothing but screaming and my own seemingly endless pain.
‘And if I do not meet him?’
‘Then there is no truce, and your empress goes to Katashi Otako within the hour.’
‘Where?’
‘The Palace of Shimai. Lord Laroth has just taken up residence in your house.’
Kin grunted.
‘You may bring with you one guard and neither of you will be harmed coming or going, whatever the outcome, as long as you do not bring Endymion with you. If at any time he is found within the vicinity, the game will be forfeited in favour of Katashi Otako.’
The emperor didn’t look at me, but said: ‘Make sure he doesn’t move. Shoot him if he steps off this bridge.’
‘You can’t seriously be considering such madness,’ one of the generals cried. ‘They will fill you with arrows the moment you get within range. You cannot trust traitors.’
‘General Rini, you counselled against risking half an army for one person, whoever they might be, and that is the advice of a good general,’ Kin said. ‘But this way I am risking only one man. I accept the challenge.’
General Rini bowed. ‘As you wish, Your Majesty. We will hold here.’
It was then that Kin looked down at me, seeming to chew on his own thoughts. His fists were clenched, his brows drawn low as fear washed off him, fear of what he might find, of what might happen, of Darius, of Katashi, of Hana discovering the truth he had been unable to tell her.
At last he turned his gaze to General Ryoji. ‘You’re with me, General,’ he said.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
General Rini was next. ‘I leave you in command,’ Kin said. ‘If anything happens to me, burn the bridge.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
Emperor Kin and General Ryoji stepped into the night. General Rini watched them go, every muscle strained, his jaw clenched hard.
Hope lingered.
‘Are you really Lord Arata Toi? The Duke’s eldest son?’ someone asked, drawing General Rini’s attention.
‘Yes,’ Hope said, but it was at me he looked.
General Rini snorted. ‘Well isn’t it your lucky day, boy,’ he said. ‘Your father is dead.’ He bowed with a flourish. ‘Your Grace.’