THe Grave at Storm's End

by Devin Madson

  ‘No, there isn’t, and that’s the beautiful thing about it. The theory was that every man, woman and child upon this world is a soul inhabiting a body. When the body dies, that soul is then reborn into another body.’

  ‘Reincarnation, yes, the Chiltaens believe in it, but I remember no body but this one.’

  He smiled a little fatherly smile. ‘It would be strange if we did remember. But not knowing something does not mean it is not true. The Chiltaen’s believe it is an endless cycle, but this notebook said otherwise. Seven times. Seven incarnations of each soul before it is returned to the maker. The first outing a simple soul, the seventh a wise one. But you, you have been reborn nine times.’

  A soul too long for this world. By the ache in my bones it was an apt description. ‘It is a nice tale.’

  ‘If tale you believe it to be,’ he said. ‘I believe you are a beautiful aberration of a natural process, and Endymion is an aberration of an aberration. I don’t think his Maturation ran its proper course. It did not end. A stopper left out of the cask, to use another poor metaphor. But like the cask there is only so much it can be filled.’

  ‘If you were hoping for further enlightenment, I’m afraid I must disappoint,’ I said. ‘There is little else for a sickly boy to do but read. I’ve been over every book in our rotting library and never found any mention of reincarnation. As to the mechanics of Endymion’s particular malfunction, your guess is as good, if not better, than mine.’

  Brother Jian bowed, the movement more graceful now he was kneeling. ‘It would be a lie to say I am not disappointed, but in this situation Endymion’s fate is rather more pressing than his origin. For too many years have I loved him like a son.’

  ‘And been a better father than the one who gave him this curse. But you have to let him go now, or he will break you.’

  It was a wry smile that spread his lips. ‘I thank you for your warning, but sane or mad, he is worth the risk to save.’

  ‘Then I wish you good fortune,’ I said, bowing to indicate dismissal. He had been nothing but kind and good and worthy, yet I wanted him out of my sight, his tales with him. ‘I don’t know how you got in here, but if you want to see Endymion you will need the permission of our lovely Lady Hana. General Ryoji has her ear, amongst other things.’

  He took his dismissal with a good grace. ‘Thank you, my lord. May the gods smile on you.’

  ‘They need not.’

  The door slid, the sound a soft shush. Father Kokoro entered, glorious in his white and gold. Something in the way he moved made him more spider than I – his soft dainty steps and a predatory smile as his gaze looked right through Brother Jian.

  ‘Lord Laroth.’

  ‘Father Kokoro,’ I returned. ‘I knew it was too much to hope I might die without seeing your face again.’

  ‘Your father was more charming.’

  ‘More ways in which we are not alike.’

  ‘You’re much more alike than you think.’

  Brother Jian hobbled a step toward his brother. ‘As are we, if only you would care to remember it.’

  ‘You should not be here, Jian,’ Kokoro said, not looking at the scarred man before him.

  Curiosity crept my Empathy from its shell and it found a lacy web of fear cloaking Brother Jian’s broken form. I sucked it back in. For five years I had held such curiosity at bay and denied what I had been born, but that strength was fading fast.

  ‘I should be anywhere someone needs solace.’ They were quiet words, but they owned all the strength I lacked.

  Father Kokoro smiled, a cold predatory smile. I felt Brother Jian’s inward shudder and once again sucked my wandering Empathy close. ‘It is time you left,’ Kokoro said. ‘One cannot provide solace from a cell.’ He turned to the guard still hovering in the doorway. ‘Take this man out and I may not mention that you let him in. Send for refreshment.’

  ‘Yes, Father. Thank you, Father.’

  The guard stood aside and waited for Brother Jian. The scarred priest hesitated only a moment before bowing another of his graceless bows. ‘I am honoured to have met you, Lord Laroth.’

  ‘And I you, Brother.’

  He walked out with his hobbling gait, and the man I had wished gone I wanted back. Rather him and his stories than Father Kokoro and his hate.

  The captain closed the door. Kokoro did not move.

  ‘It is customary to enquire whether someone wishes your company before forcing it upon them,’ I said.

  ‘In this case I come bearing a gift,’ he said, stepping toward the table. ‘It was thoughtful of Lady Hana to imprison you in your former room, but how disappointing to recall you had taken many of your belongings to Koi.’

  He held out an Errant board, not mine but well-sized in dark wood, its little armies in a separate box. I did not take it.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Yes, just talk. It’s a fair trade.’

  I nodded. Father Kokoro smiled and put the board down upon the table. ‘Then this is yours. May I?’ He pointed to the cushion Jian had not long vacated.

  Again I nodded. ‘Am I to be graced with your intelligent self or the well-meaning court fool?’

  ‘A stupid man can go everywhere without being watched. You ought to try it sometime.’

  ‘I’m running out of sometimes, Father.’

  The box of pieces clicked as I prised open the tight lid. Kokoro knelt, filling the air with the smell of incense and the rustle of silk.

  ‘Do you wish to know how your brothers are?’ he asked.

  I did not look up from the pieces, just went on removing them one by one from their wooden prison. ‘My brothers?’

  ‘There’s no need to dissemble, Your Excellency. Lady Hana took me into her confidence. You have two brothers, one of them Lord Takehiko Otako, the other the son of a whore.’

  ‘And you have one, who harboured the true heir to the Crimson Throne under Emperor Kin’s nose. We’ve already had this conversation.’ I took out the last piece and looked up. ‘Although having now met your brother I am forced to admit that the world is not entirely rotten.’

  No smile now. ‘You know I have no brother,’ he said. ‘When we take our oath to the gods we give up all bonds of blood.’

  ‘Yes, that is why you wanted Endymion to take it. You wanted him to give up being an Otako. And a Laroth.’

  ‘For which I rather think he might have thanked me.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  A tap at the door. It was my room, my cell, but it was Kokoro who called permission to enter. The serving girl that crept in kept her head bowed. So had Kimiko, but this one had no curls, just straight dark hair and plump arms. She slid a tray onto the table beside my new Errant board. Roasted tea, by the smell, and a bowl of sugared beans. The girl reached for the teapot, but Kokoro waved her away.

  ‘Your father was a wretched, haunted man by the end,’ he said, taking a bean as the girl withdrew. ‘But he accepted the gods, and I pray he died at peace.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘I do know he died in considerable pain, for which I always found myself grateful.’

  A frown. ‘And now?’

  ‘That is my own concern.’

  He crunched the bean between his teeth and offered me the bowl. ‘What is it you want?’ I said, declining with a shake of my head. ‘If it is to give me the succour of the gods your brother beat you to it.’

  ‘I have no brother,’ he said, the petulant repetition disappointing. I had expected better. ‘Although you need all the help you can get. You’re a tortured man. Like your father.’

  ‘Your brother is the one who was tortured.’

  No repetition this time. ‘You can put on a brave face, but I have eyes that see. Your father told me many things. He told me that the cur
se travels through the male line. He told me it killed your mother when she gave birth to a daughter. He feared the same would happen to Empress Li, you know. That was when he came to me. He wanted to know if he should tell her the truth, or leave her ignorant of her own mortality.’

  I had chosen silence. I wondered if he had too, but would not ask.

  Another bean. ‘It would have been better if it had been a girl and she had died,’ he said.

  ‘Better for who?’

  ‘For everyone.’

  ‘Even Takehiko?’

  ‘A soul that has never lived cannot grieve, Excellency, but we can lament what became of his life.’

  ‘For your brother’s sake?’

  ‘For Kisia’s. Jian is a sentimental fool. Even after being imprisoned for months it appears that his heart has not changed.’

  ‘A priest who has faith? What a strange notion.’ I tapped the teacup in front of me with the tip of a dirty fingernail.

  Father Kokoro twitched back the sleeve of his robe and reached for the steaming pot, displaying skin puckered with age. ‘People who believe the gods can give comfort to the living are wrong,’ he said, pouring the dark brew into my cup. ‘You can live by their tenets and find solace in their teachings and your own belief, but prayer? You might as well be talking to yourself.’

  ‘I’ve seen you pray.’

  ‘You’ve seen me pray because I’m a court priest. It is my job to be seen in prayer.’

  ‘You might not be a court priest much longer.’

  He placed the teapot back on its tray with a clink. ‘You mean that I might soon be a charred corpse. So might you if our defence fails. But if not, you and your brothers walk free, carrying your curse.’ Another bean was crushed between his teeth. ‘That is just as much a tragedy. You’re never going to get a better chance to set things right.’

  I took up my teacup, trying for grace with my unpractised hand. ‘Set things right,’ I said. ‘You mean kill my own brothers.’

  The Errant board sat between us, its armies prepared to do battle over the field of black and white squares. Errant was a mirror of life, a window to the soul, but I needed no game to know the man kneeling opposite.

  ‘When I was thirteen my father tried to kill me,’ I said.

  No surprise.

  ‘Not long after, he tracked down my half-brother and tried to put a blade through his neck.’

  Still no surprise.

  ‘That’s what you mean when you say he accepted the gods. He accepted that he was unnatural and ought to be put down, that it was his duty to rid the world of the curse he had loosed upon it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kokoro said. ‘He finally realised he was not a god, but flesh and blood. He came to me often, troubled, fearing that his soul was poisoned. Abnormal. Invasive. Unnatural. He wanted to take his own life after Empress Li died. He blamed himself. I consoled him, told him the only power he had left was over his own legacy.’

  Consoled him.

  Long ago I had sworn not to become my father, and yet here I sat, the same tortured man. Life turned in cruel circles leaving us all following the poisoned steps of our forebears. Katashi. Hana. Even General Ryoji, stepping into a role where every word had already been written. My father had failed to end it, passing the responsibility to me.

  I had told Malice that we all deserved to die, but coming from Kokoro the suggestion was vile.

  ‘Think on it, Laroth,’ he said, running his finger along the inside of the now empty bean bowl. ‘You may have no control over your instincts and your urges, but you can seek to change the world for the better as your father once did.’

  ‘He failed.’

  Again that smile. ‘Yes, but I don’t think Darius Laroth ever fails at something he puts his mind to.’

  ‘We all have our weaknesses.’

  Father Kokoro licked the sugar from his finger, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. ‘You could end it here, once and for all. One brother a criminal, the other locked up as a madman. But you could finish your father’s work. He would be proud.’

  ‘Proud,’ I repeated, with a little snort of air as Father Kokoro sipped his tea. ‘It would be the first time.’

  *****

  Rain lashed my face, soaking my overlong hair. The grip around my wrist tightened.

  ‘Hurry up.’

  My father’s face appeared in a flash of lightning, emaciated, scowling. His lantern flickered feebly. I tried to dig my heels into the dirt, but weeks of rain had turned it all to mud and I slid along, arm aching. Mud splashed onto my robe.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To bury this damned curse once and for all.’ He hauled me through beds of milkweed that caught at our clothes. ‘The gods must have been angry at man the day they made us.’

  He had come to my room, had stood in the doorway and looked around as I had always hoped he would. But he was never home, was always fighting, or doing his duty, or whatever else it was the Count of Esvar’s job to see done. Iwa always had a glib answer for where father was, and the deadpan way he lied made it easier to believe.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Father had asked, though he need not have. His eyes ran over the Errant board. ‘Where’s Iwa?’

  ‘Out in the stables, Father,’ I had said. ‘Horses don’t like storms.’

  He hadn’t answered, had stepped inside, his sandals making a sound louder than thunder on the old wood. Pinned to the high collar of his robe was the elegant silver eye he always wore. I had asked Iwa what it meant, if it was a symbol of the Laroth house, but he had just shaken his head. Iwa wasn’t good with words.

  My father had knelt before me then, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger. He did not look at the game, did not see the Zambuck Manoeuvre I had carefully constructed, did not see the intricate line of defence or the skill it took to play two sides of the same game without cheating. Instead he looked at me, looked, not saw, and fiddled with the leather binding on his dagger’s hilt.

  ‘How old are you, Darius?’ he asked.

  ‘Thirteen, Father. It was my birthday last month.’

  ‘Thirteen.’ The word must have tasted foul, for he screwed up his face. ‘So many years.’ His fingers tightened around the dagger. ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What makes you happy?’

  I stared at the Errant board. ‘Being smarter than Iwa. He hasn’t won a game for months. No one else will play.’

  ‘Girls?’

  A flush had stolen into my cheeks, and I shook my head.

  ‘Well that is something.’

  The leather hilt creaked in his tightening grip. I could not recall ever seeing him smile, and now his lips were pressed so thin they might have been just a line painted on his face. He was pale, and a sheen of sweat covered his brow. He hadn’t looked well since arriving from gods knew where he had been for the last two seasons. I found myself hoping he was sick, that mould would settle in his lungs as the doctors said it had settled in mine. Who could be surprised, they said, when the house was rotting.

  I stared at the dagger and he followed my gaze. There was some uneasiness in the air, some anguish I could not grasp. Thirteen and I had not yet Maturated. Perhaps it was disappointment I could feel. Once again his weak and pitiful son had let him down.

  Then with a suddenness that made me jump, he tore his hand from the hilt of his dagger and smiled a sickly, awful smile. ‘Come, let’s go,’ he said, gripping my wrist and yanking me up from my place. A flailing leg kicked the Errant board and sent the pieces rolling across the floor. ‘While Iwa is busy.’

  ‘But it’s pouring! Iwa said—’

  ‘Damn it, boy, Iwa is not your father. I am.’

  Day Six

  Chapter 25

  The nightmare was repeating.

  From atop the great
walls of Mei’lian we watched the army approach. Not hidden in darkness this time, but marching across the plain in the predawn light, slow, swaggering and relentless, Katashi at their head. He was a tall slash of black and crimson upon the grassland with Hatsukoi rising from his back like a banner.

  General Ryoji and I stood in company with the generals and councillors. Hade had a thumb hooked into his sash and a troubled cleft between his brows. It had not been there the night before when his hands had run all over my body, when I had sat astride him and bit my lip to keep from moaning. I could still feel him there, filling me in a way only Katashi had done before.

  I spread my fingers upon the glistening stone parapet and tried not to think about the man beside me. Katashi was marching to our gates and there was still no sign of Kimiko.

  ‘This isn’t going to end well,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ General Ryoji agreed. ‘But the city is as ready as it can be.’

  ‘As ready as Shimai was?’

  He didn’t answer.

  All around us archers clogged the parapet. They and the ranks of heavily-armoured soldiers in the street below were all that remained of Mei’lian’s standing battalion. The rest of the defence was made of citizens, of labourers and smiths and bakers and scribes and children, so many children lined up in a tangled web of bucket chains running from every well this side of the Silk District.

  I had prayed all night that time might halt, but the sun rose steadily in spite of me, its sharp rays gilding the armour of Katashi’s traitor soldiers. The pikes wore black as they had always done and moved like shadows through the sun shower.

  A little laugh sounded beside me. ‘Easy to tell the traitors from the Pikes by daylight,’ General Ryoji said. And he was right. Behind Katashi came a disorganised mass of soldiers marching to their own beat, but behind them were three organised columns, their lines neat, their marching in time.

  ‘We never trained them to be disciplined,’ I said.

  General Ryoji looked sidelong at me. ‘We?’

  ‘Not a slip of the tongue, General. I was a proud Pike captain, as you well know. Katashi might have baulked at letting Hana Otako fight, but for a time Regent was allowed quite the scope. Darius taught me to wield a sword when I should have been playing with dolls.’