THe Grave at Storm's End

by Devin Madson

  He was worthy.

  I let him go and he reeled back into a door. It’s paper ripped and its frame cracked beneath his weight and he fell into the room beyond. There was a sharp cry from inside, but I was already moving.

  Memory guided my steps to a grand archway edged in blocks of white stone. The story was they had been a gift. Who from and why had long since been forgotten, but each ruling family had been given one to carve with their crest so it might be used in this symbolic construction. I had run my hands over them as a child. Or had that been another boy? Someone else whose memories now squatted in my mind.

  ‘That is the Toi family’s stone,’ my mother had said as I ran my hand over the carved lily. ‘And this one is the Ratif family. And the Bahain family.’

  A spider had stretched its long, smooth legs beneath my fingers. ‘And this?’

  ‘The Laroths.’

  ‘Where is ours?’

  Had she paused? Had there been a moment of indecision? I could only imagine so now. ‘Up the top,’ she had said, pointing to the keystone. ‘The Otako family holds Kisia together. We are Kisia.’

  From the archway a long colonnade led across the gardens to the inner palace. Rain poured from its roof, singing as it bounced down rain chains and along gutters. A week of storms had drowned the gardens, turning ornamental ponds into lakes and fountains into waterfalls, the weight of so much water causing thin branches to droop.

  At the end of the colonnade the inner palace rose magnificent. There were guards here, too, but no one stopped me. Not at the doors where Imperial Guards were checking little used defences, not on the stairs where I swam against the current of soldiers and servants and courtiers, and not outside Darius’s room where there were no longer any guards at all. I didn’t need to press my hand to the wooden frame to know the room was empty.

  There was another door not so far along the passage and as I approached the smell of opium grew stronger, preceding raised voices.

  ‘Just get out of the way,’ Avarice growled, his voice the first to penetrate the fog that surrounded my head. ‘You can suck his cock when I’ve cut it off.’

  Hatred washed over me and I slammed the door back on its runners. In the centre of the room Avarice and Hope stood shouting at each other, while Malice, barely moved from the position he had occupied before I left, was getting his fix with the leftover opium. The smell of it was so cloying I blew air up my nose in an attempt to disperse it.

  ‘You’ve had your fun,’ Hope said. ‘Now I need him to be able to walk so I can get out of here.’

  How is torturing him with the drug any better than what he’s been putting us through all these years?

  ‘You can stay here and burn for all I care, sycophant,’ came the replying growl from Avarice.

  ‘Damn you and your arrogance,’ Hope spat. ‘You think I want to do this? You think this is what I want for my life? I must obey, but you, Avarice, you are here by your own choice.’

  ‘Shut it, and get out of the way.’

  ‘No.’

  Avarice prodded the air in Malice’s direction, sending smoke swirling. ‘You’re going to protect that rotten—’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Hope interrupted. ‘Not because he deserves anything from me, but because right now I would do anything to stand between you and what you want. You’ve made my life hell since I was marked, but how does having free will make you so much better than us? If I could leave, I would. If I could fight for what mattered, I would. But you? You’re so damn hung up on Master Darius this and Master Darius that, you haven’t noticed your little boy no longer exists. You still think you can save him? Well guess what, Papa Avarice, you failed.’

  Hope leapt back as Avarice lashed out. Not entirely absent, Malice chuckled, the sound dry and pained. ‘Want to kill me, Avarice?’ he said, smoke eking between his lips. ‘Your Master Darius wouldn’t thank you for that.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Avarice’s fists were clenched, shaking at his sides, his anger so thick it blanketed the room. ‘Is that what you really think, you shivat? You’re a pathetic leech, squeezing and squeezing until there is no air left in his lungs let alone love in his heart. I knew a boy who used to dream of walking barefoot to Chiltae with nothing but a bushel of pears and the clothes on his back. He used to pray, every night, that he would not wake upon the morrow, that sickness would take him.’ Tears ran down Avarice’s ravaged face, flecks of spit flying at every impassioned word. ‘And every night I sat and listened to him want to die. At least the dead are free, he used to say. So don’t you dare lie there and act as though you know him. You see what you want to see. You created a monster, but I remember a boy who wanted to be free.’

  With his big hands splayed he shunted a stunned Hope out of the way, and the boy stumbled back, slamming his head against the wall. Avarice gripped the front of Malice’s wretched robe and dragged him up amid the curls of smoke. He was conscious, but Malice lacked his old strength and looked like a broken doll in Avarice’s hands. Yet he was laughing, the same slow, humourless chuckle – the laugh of a man at the end of his sanity.

  I had been so sure, had been filled with such purpose, but now their whispers drowned out my own.

  I only ever wanted to help Master Darius. No one else loved him, not like me.

  Oh gods let me die.

  ‘Avarice,’ I said, finally stepping into the room. ‘Leave him.’

  His head turned, a sneer so like Darius’s twisting his features. ‘You too?’ he said. ‘Why does everyone leap to protect this pathetic rat?’

  ‘Because he already has his justice,’ I said, putting a hand out but finding nothing to steady myself on. ‘There is nothing you can do to him that is worse than what he has done to himself. It’s over. Just let him go and break himself in whatever way he sees fit.’

  ‘No. I will repay my years of service.’

  ‘But it wasn’t him you were serving, was it?’

  Avarice didn’t answer. Tears stood in his eyes. Behind him Hope stared, open mouthed, as the realisation hit him. Avarice had stayed so Darius could be free.

  More footsteps. The click clack of sandals in the passage.

  They must be put down. Like rabid dogs.

  Hatred shook my limbs, its bile burning my tongue. More steps. Louder. I tried for numbers but found nothing, not even clear intentions – there was too much revulsion.

  Father Kokoro stepped into the doorway, blocking the light from the passage. Two guards stood behind him, and Brother Jian hovered.

  ‘That’s him,’ one of the guards said. ‘He called himself Takehiko Otako. He killed the Master of the Court and two of our men.’

  ‘But you were worthy,’ I said.

  ‘What right have you to judge?’ the man demanded.

  He was shaking. I shook too, fury dammed inside me. ‘The blood of gods runs through my veins and I will judge. The empire will bow to justice.’

  ‘Endymion.’ Brother Jian. I could barely see his expression through the opium haze that sparked with anger, but I could feel his horror. It added to the chaos filling me head to foot, beginning to burst from the seams like stuffing from a doll.

  ‘I am Justice!’ I shouted. ‘You must all be judged.’

  ‘Endymion!’

  Father Kokoro laughed. ‘I told you he was a monster, brother, you ought to have listened. We should have done away with them all years ago. But it is not too late.’

  ‘Avarice I have judged,’ I said. I could only see his aura, not his body. Sacrifice, love, and deep sadness. He had done everything he could.

  ‘Hope—’

  ‘No!’ The boy flinched.

  ‘Is worthy.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ Kokoro snapped. ‘Kill him.’

  The two guards pushed into the room. One aura red, the other yellow tinged blue. One already judged, the other I rea
d in a heartbeat. The worthy was pushed aside with a thought. The unworthy’s heart I squeezed until it burst inside his chest. Both hit the ground.

  He didn’t even touch them. Oh gods. We are all dead.

  I told you you’d need to be chained before the end.

  ‘The world is rotten, Endymion,’ Malice croaked. ‘You can’t save it. Even those you deem worthy will sin before long. That is the nature of man, yes? Just destroy it. Destroy it all.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Hope kicked him.

  ‘See?’ Malice said on a pained cough. ‘Even Hope, the perfect paragon of virtue, will turn to violence. Kill him.’

  He was right. It was there, deep in Hope’s soul. Anger. Hurt. Revenge. He wanted to see the world burn just like Katashi.

  ‘Men hate, yes?’ Malice said. ‘It’s what we are all made to do.’

  Jian came toward me. ‘No, Endymion, you don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I must. I am Justice.’

  ‘No, Endymion, please.’

  ‘You said yourself that the gods say a man is made the way he is for a purpose and to seek to alter that—’

  ‘And you said let the gods live a day in my skin before they judge me!’ he cried. ‘Yet you judge without living. You judge without understanding. You have no true justice.’

  ‘I will judge. I am a god. I—’

  Jian pressed his hands to my cheeks – skin on skin – and though I tried to pull away, I was up against the wall with nowhere to run. The connection flared, his thoughts, his memories, his feelings drowning out an entire world, drowning out everything I thought I was until there was nothing, nothing but this man and his pain. Aches, injuries, angers, but more than anything a heart that cried for the boy he had taken in and cared for as his own, for the father he had failed to be, and for the world slowly crumbling around him.

  If only they would understand him. If only they would let me find him, let me take him back. I worked so hard. You warned me he would Maturate, that it would increase his ability, give him urges and turn his thoughts from serving the gods, and by the grace of the heavens I did everything I could to stop it from happening. I made sure he did not suffer, that I was always there, but I failed.

  Tears ran down my cheeks as they ran down his. Memories leaked through his fingers like water. Racing to the beach with my brother. He always won and would turn back laughing as I caught up. My dead father, his neck broken as he was thrown from a horse. The weight of the oath upon my tongue. The voice of the gods on the wind.

  ‘Stop,’ I begged, the words coming out on a sob. ‘Let go!’

  ‘Not until you judge me,’ he returned, teeth gritted tight. ‘Do it, Endymion, judge me. Am I worthy?’

  Sacrifice. Devotion. Striving. Love.

  ‘Yes!’ I screamed, trying again to pull out of his tightening grip. ‘Yes. Let me go!’

  ‘No. Judge yourself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Judge yourself, Endymion. I’m not letting go until you do.’

  The memories kept pouring out, filling my head as they emptied his. Now I was trying to protect a young, hollow-eyed boy with tousled brown hair from hearing the story of the battle of Riyan Bridge. The damn priest wouldn’t stop talking about it, all that bloodlust in him, all that hate.

  Jian’s hands shook. ‘Do it. Trust me, Endymion. Judge yourself.’

  I had never counted myself.

  Closing my eyes, I turned the Sight in.

  One.

  Anger. Justice. Revenge. Pain. It all whirled at me like leaves in a storm. Two hundred and forty-five souls in the name of Justice. One hundred and four on the road to Rina with Hope’s skill running through my veins. The men who had tortured me in Shimai. Darius. Kimiko. Hana. Kin. Every one of them a victim because of me.

  ‘The memories that haunt us are the ones that linger,’ Jian said. ‘They are the first you see. You are judging insecurity, not truth – self-doubt and fear, not guilt. These are not the memories that make us who we are.’

  Nyraek Laroth had held me before him on his horse. It had been dark, but I could smell the blood on his hands and on his cloak, but not upon his sword because he had been too late to save the woman he loved.

  ‘We are all of us our own worst enemies,’ Jian said, though it was more a whisper than real words, a whisper like a thought inside my head. ‘We judge more harshly, we expect more and are disappointed the most at our own failure. And that is what you feel, Endymion, that is what you hear, what you smell and what you taste, it is what you have become. You have drunk poison until there is nothing left of you, until all you can do is listen to Kisia screaming.’

  One million, three hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred and twelve.

  ‘You are the only one you have the right to judge.’

  Chapter 31

  ‘Barricade the palace gates! The city has been breached!’

  Imperial Guards swarmed the main courtyard.

  ‘Prepare for siege! The city has been breached!’

  I walked through the preparations blindly. What could I have done differently? What choice would have seen Tili return safely at my side?

  No, don’t think about that, not now. There will be a time for grief, but it is not now.

  Captain Terran seemed to think the same, a measure of concern in his gaze as General Ryoji approached. Ryoji was outwardly calm, but he eyed the blood on my sleeve. At another time the space between us might have been there and gone in an instant, his thumb smoothing the skin of my cheek, his breath warm, his lips soft. But there was no place here for forbidden love. Perhaps ought never to have been at all.

  ‘General,’ I said, inclining my head in proud greeting. ‘Are we ready?’

  ‘As ready as it is possible to be, my lady. Unfortunately the First Battalion were on the walls. The Second were deployed in the city under General Vareen. They might thin Katashi’s numbers—’

  ‘Or die trying. What men do we have here to protect the palace?’

  ‘We have half of the Imperial Guard and the soldiers of the Third Battalion that survived Shimai.’

  ‘That is not enough.’

  There was a beat of silence. Then: ‘No, my lady. But my men know this palace very well. They train in its defence. We could hold off a siege undertaken by ordinary soldiers, but not Katashi Otako. Without knowing something of his weaknesses and limitations it is only a matter of time.’

  Preparations continued around us, all noise and bravado. The Imperial Guard had never failed to hold the palace against any and all enemies.

  ‘There’s a way to kill him,’ I said. ‘But you’re not going to like it.’

  No answer, but he raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We have to let him win. We have to give him the Crimson Throne.’

  More silence. General Ryoji was not as skilled as many others at maintaining a blank expression and he failed now as incredulity crept across his features. ‘Your pardon, my lady,’ he said. ‘Give him the throne?’

  ‘Yes, General, give him the throne. He is living vengeance, and the only thing that douses the flame of revenge is success.’

  ‘I cannot counsel strongly enough against such a gamble, my lady. I understand the theory, but what guarantee do we have?’

  ‘Only the word of Lord Darius Laroth.’

  A grimace.

  ‘I told you that you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘And nor do I,’ he said. ‘Even if I trusted the Minister, allowing Katashi to sit upon the throne would still leave us with hundreds of Pikes and traitor soldiers inside the palace.’

  ‘Not the traitors. General Manshin will fight for me.’

  Another scowl. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he cares about his name,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘Do you think he wants to be labelled a traitor all his life? To have his f
amily suffer that stigma? Under Emperor Katashi he might have been a hero, but Katashi is dying and Kin will not forgive traitors.’

  ‘General Manshin is… unpredictable,’ Ryoji said. ‘I trust him as little as I trust Lord Laroth.’

  There was distance between us now, distance between his hand and mine, between our lips, our bodies, and our hearts. I had a purpose – a duty – my plans too fragile to risk on trust.

  ‘Then you had better make sure Katashi doesn’t get in,’ I said. ‘He will be here soon. He doesn’t care about Mei’lian. The Crimson Throne is his only goal now.’

  ‘We are ready, my lady.’

  ‘Good. Now, I need six of your strongest men.’

  He had been about to bow, about to return to his preparations, but he froze now with that same crease dug between his brows. ‘I can ill spare even a single soldier,’ he said. ‘What are you planning?’

  ‘To protect the emperor.’

  ‘The best way to protect the emperor is to keep the bastards out. Even six of my best men could do little to protect His Majesty against Katashi Otako once he’s inside the walls.’

  ‘I am not after guards, General, just six men for an important task. You will get them back.’

  He bowed, perhaps knowing me well enough by now that argument was pointless. ‘As you wish, my lady.’

  ‘Good. That will be all, General.’

  He bowed again, his brows set low over dark eyes. Those eyes had run over my naked skin. Those lips had parted in a gasp as he slid slowly inside me. I wanted nothing more than to take his face in my hands, to kiss him, to own him completely, but like so much else I had touched I could already see it spoiling.

  I did not stay to watch him go, there was too much still to be done and I was running out of time. The Crimson Throne was not the only thing Katashi wanted.

  As I entered Kin’s rooms I took a deep breath of poisoned air, not only smelling but also tasting of Master Kenji’s hateful salves. A sheen of sweat covered Kin’s exposed skin, his body wasted such that every muscle showed like a rocky landscape.