Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix

by Julie C. Dao

  “I need no reminder, for those women live on in here,” the Empress snarled, jabbing a finger at her temple. “They are with me in my dreams. Their faces look back at me in every crowd. They watch me even now, from the shadows of this very room.”

  Bodies . . .

  Nausea clenched Jade’s gut as she glanced at the pool. What sort of evil dream was this? Fueled by anger and suspicion, her imagination must have decided to turn Xifeng into a monster.

  “The Empress card appears every time. I am the Empress, I am all-powerful! Why do the spirits of magic tell me what I already know?” Xifeng turned back to the objects before her. She touched a flat, polished stone hanging from her neck that shone blue and gold and purple in the light. “And it’s still paired with the warrior.”

  “Wei, too, is gone forever.”

  “I know that,” Xifeng snapped. “Yet his fate is still tied to mine somehow. How?”

  The yellow objects were slivers of pale, painted wood. Jade grimaced at the disturbing images upon them, some showing men painfully and unnaturally contorted. Do you believe in destiny? Xifeng had asked. Perhaps this was an odd method of fortune-telling, but if so, it was one Jade had never known existed. What was it doing in her dream?

  “Whatever the cards tell you, the priority is taking better care of yourself, Your Majesty,” Kang pleaded. “You need to eat and sleep. Your health is crucial to keeping your throne and bearing sons safely. It’s what you owe to he who gave you the crown.”

  Xifeng’s features twisted with anger. “How dare you?” she whispered. “You, who know everything I have endured. I earned the crown. I got myself here and into Jun’s path.”

  “No one denies that, least of all me,” Kang soothed her. “But the Serpent God encouraged you and put ideas into your mind. I know him. I lived for years in his dark monastery in the bowels of the desert. My Empress, he is merciless to those who are disloyal.”

  “What will he do? Keep appearing in my mirror to frighten me? Send his black worms to spy on me?” Xifeng placed a finger on her chin in mock thoughtfulness. “I heard a child caught one that was spying in the gardens. His Godliness grows ever careless, and I grow ever weary.”

  “He could turn his eyes to another,” Kang said, and her sneer faded. “Have you considered that the Empress card might refer to another? Perhaps the story does not end with you. The Serpent God saw a woman taking the empire, but not who she was.”

  “He saw me!”

  “Even the fallen god has his weaknesses.” Kang pressed his palms together. “I am saying all this because I worry for you, my friend. I will protect you at all costs and help you keep everything you’ve worked for, but I beg you to be cautious.”

  Xifeng took a deep, shuddering breath. “I did everything he wanted me to do and paid my way in hearts, but how many more dead sons must I bear? What in this cursed life of mine is ever certain? I’ve given up everything, and still my crown is not wholly mine. There are nights I cannot remember my own name, nights in which I see eyes watching me from every wall.” The words poured from her in a desperate stream. “And always he makes endless demands. He wants me to build him an army and expand our empire in his name, but with what money? He wants me to eat more hearts to strengthen my resolve, but it’s never enough. See how many bodies lie in that pool, how many hearts I’ve had to consume already?”

  Jade stumbled backward and sank to the ground. Eat more hearts. Hot bile rose in her throat as the phrase echoed in her head. This was the most evil nightmare she had ever had.

  Wake up, she pleaded, but the dark cavern remained in clear focus around her.

  “I’ve grown careless. People are beginning to suspect.” Xifeng’s thin face looked like that of an old woman and a terrified girl all at once. “I can’t shake the feeling that Shiro has always known. He might connect me to Hana. I lost him. I lost Wei. I’ve lost everyone who ever truly cared about me.”

  “You haven’t lost me,” Kang said firmly.

  “Somehow I must go on. I must secure the throne. This is my destiny, and at least in that, the Serpent God and I agree.” Xifeng gazed into the waterfall, clutching a single card in her hand. From where Jade crouched, she could see on it the image of a person on a cliff with one foot over the edge. “His Dark Majesty, once the creature inside me. Tell me of the Fool, the mortal enemy whose destiny is entwined with mine. I must destroy her, or she will destroy me.”

  A loud splash sounded from the pool. The Empress shrieked, startled, and Jade clutched her own pounding heart. Within seconds, a long black snake jumped out of the stream and into the waterfall. A second snake leapt out after it, landing instead on the hard floor of the cavern.

  “Ah,” Xifeng said bitterly. From the way the woman grew calm at once, Jade realized this was a frequent occurrence. “Another one of my children. Born of the corpses I’ve created, of pain and darkness from the womb of my deeds. The only children I may ever have.”

  Jade scuttled backward as the snake slithered toward the Empress. It began to grow, its slimy scales expanding in the candlelight until it became a broad-shouldered man, dressed in the black armor of the Empress’s soldiers. Jade gagged, her eyes stinging with tears. It’s only in my mind, she thought fiercely as the snake-man glided forward on human feet. It’s my fevered imagination trying to explain why the soldiers are so stiff and unnatural.

  “Serve me well,” Xifeng told him, and the snake-man gave her a rigid bow and shuffled off. She turned to Kang. “To think I’ve been searching for the Fool under my nose, and all this time, she was hidden in a monastery exactly where I put her fifteen years ago.”

  Every muscle, every nerve in Jade’s body froze as a shadow moved across the waterfall.

  “An impertinent rodent who still has a greater claim to the throne. Tell me, Serpent God, Lord of the Shifting Sands,” Xifeng breathed, “when I put Jade to sleep beneath the water with the others, will I break my curse? Will I at last bear the son to carry my bloodline?” From within her robes, she pulled out a glittering dagger that she drew across her palm. Blood splattered the cards, and for a long moment, she bent over the images, drawing some meaning from them.

  She brought me home not to be used as a pawn, Jade thought, struggling for breath, but to die. No . . . it’s just a nightmare . . .

  Something flickered in the waterfall again: a visage like smoke, all wisps and tendrils like some nightmarish plant had decided to take on a human appearance. The eyes were bottomless black, gleaming above sunken cheeks and a mouth like a hole in soil crawling with white worms.

  “Fairest of all,” the face rasped in a voice that seemed to come from everywhere.

  Xifeng bowed her head in dark prayer. “Her heart will be mine.”

  The terrible eyes in the waterfall shifted. They looked past Kang and Xifeng and focused directly on Jade, as though they could see her crouching there.

  “I knew it! There’s someone else here!” the Empress gasped, whirling.

  Kang yanked a deadly, saw-edged sword from his robes and brandished it. He whirled and stabbed it wildly in the air. One of his blows went straight into Jade’s stomach.

  She woke up, dying.

  Wake up!” Wren slapped her, hard.

  The room spun as Jade sat up, her gut churning. She saw two of everything. She ran to the chamber pot and emptied her stomach, then collapsed on the floor. Her head felt like it had been run through with a knife. Amah’s loving, worried face swam across her vision as she felt Wren’s sturdy arms lifting her, depositing her in bed. A cool, wet cloth was placed on her head.

  “I’m here, little mouse.”

  “I’m all right,” Jade croaked. Her mouth tasted awful. “It was a bad dream.”

  “This is more than a bad dream.” Amah hovered over her, frowning. “Why are you still fully dressed? And what’s this dried blood on your neck? There’s a line of it behind your ear.
” Her fingers moved into Jade’s hair, touching the silver comb. The movement sent a stabbing pain that radiated down Jade’s back, and she cried out.

  “Take it out,” Wren said, her voice urgent.

  “But just touching it hurts her so . . .”

  Rough fingers yanked the comb from Jade’s scalp, and stars burst in her vision. Then, all at once, the dizziness subsided, leaving behind a sharp, throbbing ache. Wren dropped the comb with a clatter. The tines glistened red with Jade’s blood, and a light thread of fragrance coating the silver—the Empress’s black incense—wavered in the air.

  “Where did you get this?” Amah demanded.

  The story poured out of Jade: the dinner with Xifeng, the link between the incense and Emperor Jun’s medicine, her terrible headache after leaving the Empress’s quarters, how she had lost consciousness upon returning to her own apartments, and the awful dream that had followed.

  Wren grew paler with every word. “I have a story of my own. This evening, when you were at dinner, I found the secret door Kang used to get in here without us seeing him. It’s tucked behind a painting in the corridor. I don’t believe the servants use it or even know about it.”

  Icy cold prickles, like frozen fingertips, danced up and down Jade’s arms.

  “The door led to two staircases: one going up to the Empress’s rooms and one going down to the underground tunnels,” Wren went on. “I know the passageways well, but this was a section I had never seen. The air was thick and hot and damp, and I saw a waterfall in a circular room of rock. There was a hot spring with steam rising from it and a bubbling black pot over a fire beside a golden vessel shaped like a swan.”

  Sweat trickled down Jade’s back. “No, it can’t be.”

  “I couldn’t explore more because I heard voices, so I ran back up and piled chairs in front of the secret door.” Wren lowered her voice. “The eunuch stood there listening to you and Gao. We must be careful to whisper from now on when we speak of Xifeng.”

  “Then it wasn’t a dream. The cavern and the waterfall were real, the snake soldiers . . .”

  And the pool.

  Born of the corpses I’ve created, Xifeng had said. I paid my way in hearts.

  Jade’s stomach boiled as she stumbled out of bed once more, but when she leaned over the chamber pot, she brought nothing up but sour bile. The tight band of pain around her temples intensified as she bent over, breathing hard in sheer panic and revulsion, tears mingling with her saliva. “The Empress is killing people,” she whispered as Amah stood behind her and rubbed her back. “She’s cutting out their hearts and eating them. Oh gods . . .”

  Wren held up a hand. “Wait. No more talking here.”

  Amah helped Jade out into the sitting room and wrapped blankets around her, then helped Wren stuff cloth into every doorway in the apartments to prevent noise from escaping. Despite these precautions, they sat close together and spoke in an undertone.

  The old nursemaid wrapped her trembling arms around Jade. “The protesters in the square were right. None of those women disappeared. They were taken.”

  “She mentioned Hana. Koichi was right: Xifeng killed his cousin,” Jade whispered, her shoulders convulsing. “And Wren, you weren’t with us in the Emperor’s apartments that day—you had never seen that golden vessel of medicine, and yet you described it exactly. Now we know Xifeng has been poisoning my father, too.” She shivered at the sight of the bloodstained comb Wren was examining, holding it gingerly by one of its flowers. “She must have poisoned that as well, though why it didn’t kill me, I don’t know.”

  Even in the dim light, the comb’s silver teeth gleamed. Jade leaned into Amah, watching the play of moonlight on the metal as Wren turned it this way and that. It was beautiful, she had to admit, and it had once belonged to her mother—Empress Lihua had worn the same ornament in her hair. She felt a sudden, unreasonable urge to hold out her hand and ask Wren for it back.

  “Usurper sorceress!” Amah hissed. “If it’s the same poison, it affects you differently than it does the Emperor.”

  “It’s possible she’s been giving him a lower dose over many years,” Jade said. “And I got a greater dose that went straight into my blood. Cruel, to use an item of my mother’s to do it.”

  The old woman gave her a grim smile. “The fact that it belonged to Lihua might have saved you. Surely Xifeng did not plan to give you a glimpse into her lair.”

  “The poison hurt me and suppressed my will,” Jade said slowly, “but you think the fact that the comb belonged to my mother turned it into a weapon against my enemy?”

  “There is more than one type of magic in this world. Not all of it is sorcery.”

  “Then it protected me.” Jade looked excitedly from Amah to Wren, not understanding their grim expressions. The silver teeth seemed to wink at her from Wren’s fingers. “Don’t you see? This comb may make me ill, but it might be worth the pain if it means finding out more about Xifeng’s crimes. And then I can . . .”

  “You can’t be serious,” Wren said, holding the comb away, and Jade realized that both of her hands were outstretched, yearning to feel the weight of it again.

  Amah gazed at Jade, her face stern. “You say Xifeng gave her blood to read those strange cards,” she said. “And you gave your blood before the comb produced its vision. The sort of dark magic that requires a blood price was punishable by death in your grandfather’s day.”

  “I should destroy it,” Wren said grimly, seeming ready to crush it beneath her feet.

  “Put it in your pocket for now,” Amah told her, and as soon as the comb was out of sight, Jade felt the longing dissipate. She sank against Amah, who clucked and held her tighter. “Xifeng is threatened by you, little mouse. She summoned you here to assess your danger to her and your usefulness as a pawn, but by now, she knows she cannot control you. You might just be the mortal enemy she has feared.”

  “Don’t sound too proud, Amah. Impertinence is a death sentence at the palace . . . but it seems I already have that.” Jade was silent for a moment. “You once told me an old folktale about a prince whose cruel father exiled him, threatened by his strength and intelligence. But instead of dying on the deserted island, the prince discovered a fruit that grew there, which he called apple, and he taught himself how to cultivate it. He survived and found his hidden purpose, and I must do the same.”

  Amah chuckled. “And here I thought you only listened to my tales to humor me.”

  “I’ve been a coward,” Jade said angrily, “content to hide and let someone else do my duty. Abbess Lin was right: I let the monastery become my shield and pretended what was happening in the world had nothing to do with me. But it is my own father who has been ill and alone for fifteen years. It is my people who suffer. And it is my family’s throne Xifeng has seized to torture and take innocent lives.”

  “You say she’s eating people,” Wren murmured, her face pale with uncharacteristic fear. “Is it worth it to her? What is it all for, really?”

  “Freedom, with shackles. Power she could lose at any time.” Jade rose shakily and went to the window, picturing her good, gentle mother giving up her place to Xifeng and her weak, pale father, shivering alone in bed. She thought of the corpses hanging from the city walls and the children crying from hunger. “Xifeng must regret what she has done in some small way. No one could do such terrible deeds and not be affected by them—and yet she deserves no pity. The monks taught me that redemption is within the reach of all. They were wrong.”

  “What do you mean to do?” Wren asked, fierce, intent.

  “Fight. I don’t know how, but it is my duty to end this. There is no one left.”

  Jade watched the snow falling over the palace gardens, knowing every woman who had come before her had walked there. Every woman in her family had run barefoot on the summer grass, or sipped tea on the terrace, or come to the palace as a yo
ung bride full of hope. The walls breathed their deepest wishes and their most ardent dreams, and there was only one person left who could ensure that their legacy had not been in vain.

  “I have to get us out of this somehow,” Jade said. “I will get us out.”

  Amah left the room and returned with a bundle of blue-green brocade in her arms. “It’s time I showed you this. Both of you,” she said, shaking out the shimmering folds on which she had painstakingly embroidered chrysanthemum blossoms. “This cloak is what I was working on so often at the monastery, but you weren’t ready to see it.”

  “It’s exquisite,” Jade uttered, touching the rich material.

  “It’s the inside I want to show you.” Amah flipped the magnificent cloak over and spread it on the floor with the brocade side down.

  “This must have taken you years,” Wren said, kneeling beside Jade.

  “Decades,” her grandmother corrected her.

  All over the gold silk lining of the brocade cloak, Amah had embroidered a secret: a map of Feng Lu, rendered in rich jewel tones and surrounded by a border of pearl-white lanterns. The five kingdoms nestled in a sea of turquoise thread representing the oceans. Symbols and images had been stitched all around the border: moon-colored cranes taking flight, red roses burning in the desert sand, a phoenix rampant in tree branches, a silvery fish, a shining sword of steel.

  “Amah,” Jade said slowly, “these are all from the stories you’ve told me. Folktales and fables and legends.” Her fingers traced a maiden in a painting, a wolf hiding as a hunter passed by, three princes on a dark quest, a proud warrior with his sword uplifted.

  The nursemaid fixed her with a stern eye. “I didn’t tell them to keep you a child always, as you believed. I told them because there is a lesson buried in each, and a woman who can think for herself delves beneath the surface. Pulling out the threads of another’s story and applying them to your own life is the mark of a queen.”