by Devin Madson
‘I never meant to hurt you, Hana.’ Kin took a deep breath, the air shuddering through him. He swallowed, once, twice, the sound dry. ‘I never meant to fall in love. I have many regrets, but that is not one of them. You have given me more cause for joy than grief.’
‘I wish I could say the same for you, Your Majesty.’
The breath of a mocking laugh passed his lips. ‘You have a way with words that cuts deeper than any sword.’
It was my cue to apologise, but I could not. Would not.
‘You killed my family.’
‘Yes.’
The lump in my throat threatened to send tears spilling down my cheeks again. I pressed a hand to my quivering lips. ‘Is it so easy to say?’
Kin groaned, clenching his teeth tight. ‘Yes,’ he managed between them. ‘I feel weightless for the first time in sixteen years.’ His words ended in another hiss.
‘That only makes me hate you more. I don’t want you to be happy.’
‘Not a day has gone by since I met you that I didn’t wish I could undo what I did, however much Kisia might suffer for it. I love you more than duty, Hana.’
There were no words with which to answer him. I swallowed hard, forcing down a glut in my throat. ‘I have to go.’
‘Yes, you do. Hold the south bank, Hana, because if he takes the bridge nothing will stop him burning Mei’lian. Take my sash.’
‘Your Majesty—’
‘Take it!’
The remnants of his clothing had been thrown in a bucket, every thread peeled from his flesh while he screamed. Only his sash remained, relatively untouched, coiled on the floor like the tail of a sleeping dragon. I picked it up and ran the silk through my fingers. It was not just the crimson sash of a soldier loyal to the Ts’ai, it was the sash of an emperor, blessed by the gods.
‘Kisia is yours,’ he said. ‘Look after her well.’ Kin closed his eyes then, and taking the sash I left him to rest.
Back in the main room I stared dumbly at the piles of poorly folded prayers and wondered whether the gods listened to shabby ones. There was no time left to fold more. General Ryoji was waiting, a crumpled lotus prayer cupped in one hand. He had found himself a fresh uniform, surcoat and all, but although he had dispensed with the sling he still held his left arm crooked against his body.
‘General,’ I said. ‘What news?’
‘The truce holds, my lady, but for how long I don’t know. We need you. His Majesty’s orders were that if anything happened to him we were to burn the bridge, but General Rini is refusing to take drastic action while the peace holds.’
‘By the gods, must General Rini always be a thorn in my side? Does no one outrank that man?’
‘Only the Minister of the Left.’
‘But no one has held the position since Darius was dismissed.’
Ryoji grimaced. ‘No, he was never formally dismissed.’
Despite everything, Kin’s trust in Darius had been implicit. And in that last moment Darius had not let him down. I ran the Imperial Sash around my waist, tying its knot over my hateful bridal sash. ‘Then General Rini is going to have to listen to me. What reason does he give for not burning it?’
‘There are still wounded soldiers crossing now and then,’ he said. ‘And of course it should not be destroyed if it need not be. As General Rini has reminded me numerous times, it is more than three hundred years old and was built by one hundred and twenty one craftsmen, five of which are interred within its walls.’
I took the lotus prayer he was holding and placed it upon the pile. ‘Unfortunately we are all servants of necessity, General,’ I said. ‘We burn it.’
*****
Hundreds of soldiers watched us approach. Lanterns lit their intent stares, but even the largest flame was dwarfed by Shimai’s crown of fire. It crackled over the north bank, hundreds of house fires as yet unaffected by the rain.
‘They are waiting for Kin,’ Ryoji whispered as we walked through the silent ranks. ‘Soldiers need a leader.’
‘They still have one,’ I replied. ‘Their emperor lives.’
He shot me a meaningful look. Many of these men had seen us bring Kin back unconscious and burned beyond recognition.
General Rini was waiting at the bridge. The Span was the first and widest of all bridges to cross the Tzitzi. It was an ancient covered construction that had seen the passage of millions of feet, from the daily passage of Shimai’s citizens to the trumpeted procession of emperors. Now its tiled roof sang with the storm and its flooded gutters spewed water into the swollen river below.
‘General Rini,’ I said, stopping before him.
‘Lady Hana. How is His Majesty?’
‘His Majesty lives and has given me the right to rule in his stead until he recovers. By the grace of the gods.’
General Rini looked at the sash tied around my waist. ‘I see,’ he said. Behind him the other commanders watched and waited. Endymion was there, too, not welcomed but tolerated amid the ranks despite his Traitor’s Brand. He nodded as our eyes met. He had killed half a dozen men with his bare hands and hardly seemed to realise he was doing it.
‘Tell me, General, why has the bridge not been burned?’ I asked. ‘Did not His Majesty give orders to do so if anything happened to him?’
‘Yes, my lady, but there has been no movement from the enemy, and so no reason to burn it. The first rule of combat is never to back yourself into a corner.’
I found myself focussing upon a discoloured patch on the side of his nose, around which drops of rain ran down his face. ‘Does not being burned alive count as “something happening”, General?’
‘I am sure it does, my lady, but—’
‘Then you have backed yourself into your own corner. You have already seen what Katashi is capable of. Burn it.’
‘My lady—’
‘I command you to burn the bridge, General, or I will find someone else to fulfil your duties for you.’
General Rini’s mouth snapped shut and he bowed. ‘Yes, my lady, as you command. Though how you expect anything to burn in this rain is quite beyond me.’
‘I think I can help there,’ Ryoji said, his eyes alight. ‘Oil. We passed a lamp maker’s establishment two streets back. We can break open some barrels and roll them along the boards.’
‘Do it.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Each barrel took four men to manoeuvre down the slick black stones of the road. They rumbled like thunder as they rolled onto the Span’s wooden boards.
While I watched the rain eased to a drizzle and I found Endymion standing beside me.
‘Your sword, my lady,’ he said, bowing as he held out the weapon Kin had commissioned for me. Rain shimmered on the long narrow blade, on a fish and a dragon swimming through steel. The Ts’ai dragon chasing the Otako fish? Or the fish chasing the dragon? Kin had done all he could to wipe out my family completely.
I took the hilt. ‘Thank you, Endymion,’ I said.
He turned away, but I held out my hand. ‘Wait.’
‘Yes, my lady?’
Kimiko had said Endymion had ways of knowing things he ought not to know. I put my hand on my stomach, a hand covered in the singed remnants of hundreds of tiny hairs. I had been lucky to get away with only minor burns.
‘No, nothing,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
His gaze darted to my hand, but he just nodded and moved away through the crowd. General Ryoji replaced him. ‘We are ready, my lady,’ he said. ‘Would you like the honour?’
He smiled as I took the unlit torch from his hand. ‘Thank you, General,’ I said.
‘You still have time to reconsider,’ General Rini said.
‘I will not reconsider the fate of my empire, General.’
He bowed and said no more.
Together General Ryoji and I stepped beneath the roof of
the bridge. ‘All yours, Hana,’ he said quietly and the sound of my name on his lips made my heart race.
‘Thank you.’ The hatch of metal lantern squeaked opened, and I guided the pitch-soaked torch into the flames. It lit with a puff of dark smoke while overhead rain danced upon the tiles.
‘My lady,’ General Ryoji said, gesturing to the road of glistening boards before me.
‘General,’ I returned, and dropped the torch. The oil caught fire with a rush and flames rose. Ryoji pulled me back, but I cared nothing for the heat, nothing for the smoke, for as the bridge burned my heart soared. Katashi was not the only one who could play with fire. No amount of burned corpses would allow him to cross a river without a bridge.
At my fingertips the flames danced merrily, licking the thick beams above and catching on the decorative fretwork.
‘Set scouts along the length of the river, General,’ I said. ‘We take no chances. The moment there is movement on the north bank I want to know. Any movement at all. Let the others rest.’
He nodded.
‘And archers. I want every able archer fully equipped and ready. And send a man to the nearest apothecary.’
‘Apothecary? Are you ill?’
‘No, but I want as much jinzen root and yao grass as can be found.’
Warily he said: ‘I fear you must enlighten me. Are not jinzen root and yao grass used to… evoke desire?’
My cheeks reddened. ‘A myth, General,’ I said. ‘All they do is keep you awake. It has been a long night and I fear it will turn into a long day. The men could use a boost.’
‘You are certainly the most unique commander Kisia has ever had.’
‘That, General, is because I am the only woman.’
Day Five
Chapter 18
The whispers were too thick for sleep, smothering me in the darkness. Too much fear. Too much restlessness. Across the river dark figures had kept their posts, watching us as we watched them. And in my head memories clamoured.
Now the sun was rising and from my rooftop I could see all of Shimai, see the dying fires and the smoke, the hazy, shimmering city surreal in the pre-dawn light. The bridge was still burning. More oil barrels had kept the fire stoked to a roar, but the old timbers held iron strong.
Whispers ran along the riverbank. The message started as a hiss and grew to a roar.
They’re moving.
They’re coming.
Vengeance.
On the next roof one of Kin’s archers brushed an arrow fletching across his lips. He was squinting down at the figures on the far bank. All night the enemy soldiers had lounged at their ease, but now they were shifting their weight and fidgeting.
Something’s happening.
I slid down the slick roof until my sandals caught on the eave, arresting my progress with a jolt. From there I rolled, gripped the iron fretwork, and lowered myself onto the broken stones of the road.
It was like dropping into soup. Here the bulk of Kin’s men waited, their fear a smell one needed no Empathy to sense. I had climbed onto the roof to get away, but to reach Hana I would have to go through them. She was with the remnants of Kin’s council, a group of shadows against a backdrop of flames.
A parapet ran along the edge of the steep riverbank. The swollen Tzitzi roiled below, but I climbed onto it and jogged along rather than push through the press of soldiers. It was General Ryoji who saw me first and Hana broke off her conversation to watch my approach.
That boy is mad.
It’s a long way to fall.
‘My lady,’ I said as I came within earshot. ‘They’re moving.’
General Ryoji, ever at her side, scowled across the river. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘General! Lady Hana!’ An out of breath soldier insinuated his way through the crowd. ‘There’s movement on the north bank.’
‘So ends the waiting,’ Ryoji said grimly.
‘It was only a matter of time, General,’ Hana said, straining to maintain an outward calm though I could feel the pounding of her heart. ‘General Rini, rouse the men. Form up the lines.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
General Rini straightened his crimson sash and strode into the mass of soldiers, in his element while orders barked from his throat. Hana went back to watching the north bank and I hovered, unsure what else to do.
‘Form up the lines! Form up the lines!’
All around us the shout went up and like a drunken wave the men rose from attitudes of rest.
‘Hana?’
She did not look around, did not seem to hear me so intently did she stare at the opposite bank. The enemy was moving. Dark figures shifted through the haze, striding through bolts of morning light.
Hana climbed onto the parapet. The wind stirred her crimson surcoat and in the firelight her sword gleamed orange. Everything from her straight back and folded arms to the jewelled comb holding back her hair screamed assurance, but I knew her fear like it was my own.
‘Hana?’ I said again.
General Ryoji looked around. ‘Lady Hana has rather a lot to concentrate on,’ he said.
She turned at the sound of his voice as she had not at mine. ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t explain,’ I said. ‘But I think you need to leave.’
‘Leave? Why?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t…’ Two. Six hundred and forty-three. One hundred and twenty-four thousand and eighty. Whispers. Memories. Words. Sounds. Everything came to me and I was drowning, unable to separate anything from the morass except the ill-ease that roiled in my gut.
‘Endymion,’ she said, giving me her full attention now in a way I could not reciprocate. ‘Regardless of where else I am needed, this is where I have to be. I would give my life for this empire and that means not leaving this city to be overrun.’
‘Hana—’
She lifted her hand to silence me. ‘I will not leave.’
I stepped back up onto the parapet beside her. ‘Hana,’ I said. ‘Leave General Rini in charge. If the south bank can be held, he can hold it.’
‘What are you so afraid of?’ she said. ‘Can you see the future now? Am I going to die?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Wrong answer. General? Are the men ready?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
She licked her lips. ‘Good.’
Behind us the men stood silent, statues of fear in the dawn haze. All were watching, craning to see as across the river the tall figure of a man emerged from the last of the shadows. He was dressed all in black, unmistakable with the tip of an enormous bow rising above his head.
Hana sucked in a breath. At her side General Rini said: ‘If we can hold until General Yi gets here then we can crush the bastards between us.’
There was a gleeful note to his voice, his thoughts converging on victory of the most selfish kind. Katashi’s head at Kin’s feet would forgive every failure of this night and save his career. Details leapt from his imagination: scores of arrows flying across the river to cut down fleeing rebels; the spit that dripped from Katashi’s lip as he begged for mercy; the smell of blood; Kin’s approval in a smile and a word, and in the enormous largess that would be his as the protector of Shimai.
I stepped back and my foot slipped off the stone parapet. My heart leapt as though for safety, and a strong hand gripped my arm above the elbow. ‘Watch your step, boy,’ General Rini said, waiting until I had recovered my footing before he let go. ‘You don’t want to be the Tzitzi’s next victim.’
Beneath me the foaming water of the torrid Tzitzi roared through the city, just as the chaos of thousands of thoughts and whispers roared through my head.
On the north bank, Katashi strode forward, his army following like a dark cloud. He stopped at the opposing parapet that protected Shimai’s citizens from the sharp drop into
the river, and mimicking Hana, he climbed up. His aura had once been golden, drawing all toward him as honey draws ants, but now that same aura distorted the city and the men behind him – a heat haze that made the air tremble.
‘All hail Hana,’ he shouted over the roar of the river. ‘We are curiously tenacious, you and I. The Otakos that Kin cannot kill, now matter how hard he tries.’
‘You can stick your pleasantries, Katashi,’ she returned. ‘I’ve made my choice.’
She had, but her enemy was her own blood, and like words on the tip of her tongue, her thoughts were all of him. Katashi had sat by the throne with an expression all too like compassion on his handsome face. There some remnant of kindness. Remorse pricked my heart. It hurt to imagine the might-have-been.
‘Where is the great Kin Ts’ai, cousin?’ Katashi called back.
‘Injured, but he will live. He will soon sit upon the throne again, unlike you.’
Lies.
In the eyes of the gods it was wrong to lie. Honesty was one of the five weights by which a soul was judged. That was what the Sixth Law said. It said the gods were always watching. That they can hear the whisper of our souls.
‘He might be alive now,’ Katashi shouted. ‘But I am far from finished. I see you’ve taken command.’ He patted his own sash to indicate hers. ‘Did none of Kin’s generals make it over the bridge alive?’
Both General Ryoji and General Rini stepped up onto the parapet beside Hana, Ryoji with more ease. ‘We are here, rebel,’ Rini shouted.
‘Who are you?’
‘General Esta Rini, First General of the Rising Army.’
‘You fought for my uncle.’
‘And now I fight for his daughter!’
‘Well, General Esta Rini, First General of the Rising Army, let me propose a deal. If you give me said daughter, I will not burn you or any of your men. I will leave you alone and leave Shimai the way I came in.’
Hana’s hands curled into fists.
Behind me hundreds of men made their choices in an instant, the weight of their emotions so great that I pressed my hands to my head, sure my skull would crack.