by Devin Madson
Give her to him, she’s an Otako anyway.
Save Shimai.
No.
Let me go home to my wife.
We can’t do that. There is no honour down that path.
‘We are the emperor’s men,’ General Ryoji replied, not having so much as looked at Hana or General Rini. ‘We do not treat with rebels.’
‘Pity.’ Katashi pinched the bottom hem of his surcoat and dropped a mocking curtsey in Chiltaen style. ‘Then may the best Otako win, my lady.’
He leapt off the wall and walked toward the burning bridge.
‘He cannot cross it,’ Hana said, her voice near a whisper. ‘Tell me he cannot cross it.’
‘It’s been burning for nearly three hours,’ General Ryoji replied, but it was no answer. Three hours was not long enough to burn through the centuries-old wooden beams. For over three hundred years the Span had united Shimai, the endless traffic serving only to wear grooves in its warped boards.
All eyes fixed on Katashi. Disquiet rose behind me, roiling like the Tzitzi.
‘He cannot cross it,’ Hana repeated. ‘He cannot.’
Katashi handed Hatsukoi to one of his Pikes and stepped onto the bridge. The fire swallowed him. His soldiers did not move.
‘What is he doing?’ Hana said.
‘I can see no more than you, my lady,’ General Ryoji replied. ‘But it would appear he is standing on the bridge.’
‘Let the bastard burn,’ Rini grumbled. ‘It is no more than he deserves.’
The sheer force of hundreds of men holding their breath stung my lungs and I sucked air fast, growing light-headed as I swam in whispers.
No man can cross that.
The gods can walk through flame.
What’s happening? I can’t see. Maybe that’s a good thing. Oh gods I want to go home.
The fire. Shivatsa! Look at the fire!
The flames were shrinking. I stared, sure it was a mere trick of the morning light. Yet at the far end of the bridge the fire was dying, as though Katashi was drawing the flames into himself. And he was moving.
‘Hana, you have to get out of here!’ I said, pushing General Ryoji off the parapet to grip Hana’s arm. ‘Come with me, we have to go.’ Sixteen years ago blood had dripped from Shin’s knife as he halted in the doorway.
Hana ripped her sleeve from my hold. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Endymion. If Katashi is going to burn me alive then let him come.’
‘And if you and me and Kin all die, what then? There is no heir.’
Hana met my gaze, comprehension dawning in her eyes. ‘Kisia,’ she breathed. General Ryoji was scowling up at me from the stones. ‘Get His Majesty out of here, General. Take him through the passage. Tili too.’
‘My place is with you.’
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘You are the leader of the Imperial Guard, your place is with your emperor.’
Stepping close he said: ‘Hana—’
‘It was an order, General,’ she said. ‘What use do you think you are to me with an injured arm? Get Kin out of here. Now.’
General Ryoji bowed. ‘Yes, my lady.’
He walked away, and Hana, grim-faced, turned her attention back to the bridge. The fire was shrinking. Where Katashi walked flames died and embers ceased to glow. Hisses of fear ran through Kin’s men.
‘Archers, ready!’
All along the riverbank arrows were drawn from their quivers.
‘Fire!’
Arrows leapt the river like salmon, some making it far enough to fall amongst the rebels on the far bank. Men fell, some tumbling over the low wall and into the river. It swallowed them without chewing, sucking them deep into the current.
‘Aim into the fire!
A tight group of archers loosed arrow after arrow down the mouth of the burning bridge. When one called for more arrows Hana lifted her hand. ‘Hold!’
‘He’s still there,’ I said. ‘I can feel him.’
‘What do we do, General?’ Hana asked, her voice hollow. Small. ‘What if nothing can stop him coming?’
‘Then we fight, my lady,’ General Rini said. ‘And we don’t let anyone smell our fear. May the gods be with you.’
‘And you, General.’
With the vigour of a younger man, General Rini jumped off the parapet and strode through the lines of his men calling orders. ‘Hold the lines!’ he shouted. ‘We fear no death. We fear no demons. We will hold this city for Kisia. Fire at will!’
More arrows flew straight into the flames, desperation in every draw. And still the fire shrank. One of Kin’s soldiers broke the last oil barrel and kicked it out onto the bridge. The trail it stoked what remained of the blaze to an epic heat, the curtain of wavering flames obscuring everything in sight.
General Rini raised his hand and the group of archers at the bridge held, waiting, watching. The hope was suffocating – hope that they might have got him, hope that the fire was too hot, the arrows too sharp, that their luck might finally be turning. I could not move, could not step from Hana’s side, so much did I feel like a witness to history.
The oil burned out. The raging flames began to subside, its orange fingers sliding back into the timbers from whence they had come. And there a black figure – Katashi, untouched, the god of vengeance who could not be stopped.
A flaming barrel shot out of the bridge’s mouth. Two of the archers ducked in time, but it hit the rest, bursting into hundreds of burning shards. Then the lid, peppered with arrows. It hit a soldier in the jaw, the resulting crack sending him falling back, dead before he hit the ground.
‘Endymion?’
Hana didn’t look around. Her eyes were fixed on Katashi as she wallowed in a cloud of putrid emotion. ‘Yes, Hana?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Yes, it is.’
Katashi had halted a few paces out from the bank, and through the open arches of the bridge our eyes met. He nodded to me, an almost friendly acknowledgement, before turning to Hana. He lifted his hands then, his skin bright crimson as he made a series of quick signs.
Hana drew a sharp breath. ‘Move fast. Swim,’ she translated.
He winked at me, and as heat surged through my veins I understood what she could not. ‘He’s going to vent,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘He’s going to vent. Move. Now!’
I hit Hana as flames surged toward us. Embers bit. Screams filled the morning. Overhead the fire bloomed like an orange chrysanthemum but we were falling. Air rushed past my ears. Floodwater roared. And the water rose to meet us, hitting so hard it beat the breath from my body.
Chapter 19
The bridge exploded and I was falling through fire. Fire and smoke and steam and spray. Then water, roaring in my ears. Kin’s sash tangled about my leg like a slimy hand dragging me down, but whatever its weight I would not abandon it. Not now. Instead I fought with my gloves and sandals, and kicked with aching legs. Up.
I broke the surface and sucked a great lungful of air – furnace hot. Steam billowed around me. Overhead a firestorm was dissipating, swirling tongues of orange flame fading to smoke.
‘Endymion!’
The current was too strong to fight. All I could to was spin, hunting the haze for any sign of life. Only a rebel, clinging to a rock on the opposite bank.
‘Endymion!’
Unwilling to so easily relinquish my life, the swirling Tzitzi sucked me back under. Blood thumped in my ears. Again I thought of discarding the sash and again I could not. Kisia belonged to the Otakos, not the Tzitzi. Its dark water pummelled me like a rag doll, but I pushed for the surface again, lungs bursting.
Emerging into the light, I gulped air and water in equal measure.
‘Endymion!’
Foam and debris washed around m
e. Endymion could be anywhere. He could be dead. Perhaps it would be for the best, I hardly knew. He had wanted me to leave the city. There was no faster way out of a city in lockdown than this.
Siege gates.
The thought arrived mere moments before the gate itself, the black iron grating rushing toward me out of the swirling water. White pain ripped through my skull as I hit it and was pinned to the metal rungs.
‘Hana!’
Endymion clung to the grating, wet clumps of hair covering the Traitor’s Mark that could never truly be hidden. There was another man too, a rebel – perhaps the one I had seen earlier, perhaps another. A third man butted up against the bars but he was more corpse than soldier, washed against the gate like so much debris.
‘You could have killed us,’ I snapped the moment I had caught my breath.
‘That could have killed us.’ He pulled an arm free of the water and pointed back toward the distant bridge. The remanent heat hung above the city like a dense red cloud. Up there men were fighting my battle. If they still lived.
I blinked away tears, refusing to add to the swell of the river. ‘I need to get back.’
‘Hey!’
The rebel was edging closer, pulling himself hand over hand along the grating.
‘Keep your distance, traitor,’ I warned.
He lifted a hand in surrender. ‘I mean no harm,’ he said. ‘Are you Lady Hana Otako?’
I eyed him. ‘Yes.’
‘My name is Captain Terran, my lady,’ he said, making a pitiful attempt to bow amid the storm water. ‘I fight for General Manshin.’
‘A traitor then, like I said.’
‘I follow my general wherever he takes me.’
‘Then you can go to the hells, Captain.’ I turned to find Endymion watching, his gaze intent. ‘Move,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of this river.’
He needed no more prompting and made his way, hand over hand, toward the edge of the siege gate. I looked up, thinking to climb it, but the iron bars rose into a rounded arch and from there into a stone gatehouse as sheer as the walls. The only way out was to climb the footholds cut into the stone bank.
‘My lady!’ The traitor’s words ended in a pained cry, but I kept moving.
Endymion stopped to look back, blocking my progress. ‘You’re injured,’ he said.
‘Grazed by an arrow,’ the rebel said. ‘Your men are good with their bows.’
‘You should know,’ I said. ‘They were your comrades once.’
‘I go where my general takes me. It’s the law.’
‘And your general will take you to the hells with Katashi.’
‘My general is sick of the stink of burning flesh,’ he said.
‘Then he should stick a knife in Katashi’s back! You cannot tell me the traitor generals are not well practiced at dishonouring their oaths.’
I nudged Endymion with my elbow and he kept moving, more quickly now as we approached the edge of the gate. I glanced back to find Captain Terran following.
When Endymion could go no further, he swam for the bank, dragging himself through the water like a determined dog. I hesitated. The Tzitzi River had claimed so many lives, the roar of its waters like the voices of a thousand dead souls. But it was swim or stay, and with the rebel captain close behind, I pushed off the gate and made for the footholds. The current was not as strong here and I soon hit the wall, grazing my hands on the stone. But the handholds were deep and easy to grip, and I pulled myself out of the river, relief overwhelming fear for one beautiful, weightless moment.
Endymion was already climbing, shedding water like rain. It poured off me too, falling on the captain now dragging himself from the water beneath me. It was a long climb, but the stone was warm and the handholds close together. Pulling myself over the parapet at the top was the hardest part.
Endymion was already there, wringing out his clothes, but he offered no helping hand.
Endymion has ways of knowing things he ought not. Kimiko’s words haunted me. Was a touch all he needed?
He looked up at me, his head cocked quizzically.
I wrung out my surcoat rather than hold his gaze. When the river keepers cleared out the debris in summer they might find my sword, but my gloves and sandals would make it all the way to the sea. Both sashes had survived and I managed a grin at the perverseness. The chastity knot just would not let go.
The captain rolled over the parapet and onto the road with a damp thud. He was breathing heavily, his eyes closed. Blood stained the hand clamped to his side.
‘Leave him,’ I said as Endymion went to help. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘I trust him.’
‘Then he’s all yours. I have to get back to my men.’
‘They’re all dead, Hana.’
I would not listen, could not, just strode away along the riverbank, toward Shimai’s famous south-bank mansions. These were the summer homes of country lords, each one brightly painted with window boxes crammed with lavender and white moonflowers. Silence ruled, but screams and shouts and the patter of running feet played in the distance.
‘Hana!’
Endymion was close behind me. I sped up, rough stones cutting into my bare feet.
‘There’s no use! Katashi will find you.’
I broke into a run.
‘Hana!’
Past the summer houses, past barricades and trampled gardens, past packed shrines and empty market squares. Knots of frightened citizens spilled from the steps of a guard house, huddled together with the meagre belongings because they had nowhere else to go. Shimai had never been my home and its streets were a confusing mess, but following the roar of the Tzitzi I needed no map.
Approaching the bridge was like running into the bottom plain of the seven hells. Flames roared from roofs and the stones were awash with debris and bodies. The smell was terrible. Burned flesh, burned wood, burned blood, hair, leather, silk. Smoke choked the city, so dense it all but obscured people running past. I caught frightened faces and scurrying steps, but no sign of soldiers, no flickers of crimson.
Then a black-clad figure sauntered past. Another stood in a doorway, throwing sacks into the street. I darted into an alley, but in the close space between buildings the heat was immense. There were more Pikes in the next street, laughing as they looted an apothecary. Bunches of herbs flew through an open window.
Never had I been so thankful for smoke.
The bridge couldn’t be far. I tucked the tail of Kin’s sash into my breeches and ran.
The stones were slick and every breath was full of ash and smoke and heat. Always heat. Always the stink of death and the sound of fire and chaos. Again I heard the roar of the river and turned, unable to see more than a few paces ahead. The river grew louder and I was alone in the street but for smoke and bodies. Ours or theirs? All I could see was blood. Blood and guts and crimson sashes.
Ours.
And there was the bridge, charred black and smoking. The road was gone, buried beneath a weave of crisped flesh, of sashes and surcoats, of limbs and staring eyes and clumps of scorched hair.
I stumbled back into a doorway, shaking. There was no one. Not one single survivor, just a knot of Pikes picking over the dead like black crows. One of them turned and I crouched amid the bodies, hoping he wouldn’t see me in the smoke. Beside me a blistered arm. Blackened lips. Staring lashless eyes. There was no end to the death.
The Pike was still peering at me through the smoke. Bile stung my tongue and my heart juddered sickeningly. Look away. Walk away. Go. Now.
My mute orders went unheard. The man dropped a charred scabbard. Then he was walking, walking toward me across the sea of dead soldiers without looking where he placed his feet. Arms. Faces. Hair. And still he kept coming.
My hand leapt to my belt but there was nothing. No sword. No bow. No dagger. It
had been stupid to come. And stupid was about to get me killed.
‘Hey, are you–?’
I slammed into him, knocking him back onto the carpet of flesh. My feet scrabbled to maintain purchase on the slippery bodies as he lunged for my leg, shouting. More Pikes turned. I didn’t wait to see if they followed but sped on toward the bridge, no plan, just panic.
Smoke choked the street. Noise. Fire. More shouts. I ran, stones cutting my feet and ash stinging my eyes. The bridge was a dead end, alleys a gamble. I took the next street. It was empty but for the dead. Behind me a Pike shouted, his steps slowing. But there were others, silent like hunters, only the occasional footfall audible over the sound of my own ragged breathing.
I turned again into a narrower street, darting beneath a fallen string of lanterns. Another street, this one clogged with smoke. Flames lashed from upper windows and the heat was immense, but turning away was not an option. I ran on, holding my breath, smoke stinging my eyes as I fought to see the shape of the road ahead. No sound of footsteps now, just crackling flames.
A wall appeared out of the smoke. No door, just the back of a building that faced onto another street. Two high windows. A rain barrel. An iron lantern hook. I set my foot on the barrel and started to climb, throwing my hand from hook to sill. Don’t climb with your hands, stupid, climb with your feet. A nameless boy in an orchard a long time ago. A world away.
I looked down. Two Pikes, mere shadows in smoke, were a body length below. Panic jolted my heart, but I pushed on, my head spinning like the first time I had breathed Malice’s opium.
My fingers found the eave. I pushed off the shutter, heard it crack as I scrabbled on to the roof and rolled. In to blood. One of my men, the left side of his body burned black. His bow lay on the shingles. An arrow had been nocked and I nocked it again now and waited, crouched, until the Pike’s head appeared above the edge of the roof.
The arrow hit him in the cheek, throwing him back. Not where I had been aiming, but I never had been as good as Katashi.
I pulled another two arrows from the dead soldier’s quiver and stepped to the eave. In time to see the second Pike drop back into the smoke, an arrow in the top of his skull.