Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix

by Julie C. Dao

  The air grew warm and thick as they dashed through the tunnels, passing several doors before alighting upon one that opened to the outside. Jade shivered in the sudden chill as they stepped out beneath the sky. The darkness was absolute. They would be guided only by the light of the moon, which shone faintly on the frozen river and the Great Forest beyond.

  Pei made a sound like a nightingale, and Amah and Wren emerged from the shadows, leading Wren’s pony with their sacks on its back. The nursemaid threw her arms around Jade. “I will slow you down on the ice, but Pei says there is no other way,” she said anxiously.

  “Hold on to me,” Jade reassured her. “I’ll make sure you get across.”

  “The ice won’t break if we go slowly, two by two.” Wren set her jaw and wrapped a hand in her pony’s mane. “I’ll go first. Jade, I entrust my grandmother to your care.” She stepped onto the ice, slipping a bit, then coaxed the animal along with her. They walked slowly, gingerly.

  The river had appeared small from her window, but Jade saw now how wide it truly was. It took several long, heart-racing moments before Wren and her pony even reached the middle.

  “Shiro will take you to safety,” Pei told Jade and Amah. “He lives not far from here. Stay with him until morning and do not venture out beneath the moon.”

  Jade couldn’t help hugging him. “Please tell my father I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  Pei bowed. “Wren is on the opposite shore. Come, you may both cross . . .” But he broke off his sentence as a sudden flash of movement and a rustling came from behind them.

  Before Jade and Pei had fully registered what was happening, a huge cloaked figure seized Amah and dragged her away with unnatural strength and speed. It disappeared through a door in the stone wall of the terrace, revealing wooden steps going down in faint torchlight.

  “Amah!” Jade cried.

  “Your Highness, you must cross! I will go,” Pei called desperately, but Jade ignored him.

  She was already at the door, running down, down, down into the dim light. She had no time to hesitate or be afraid, not when it came to Amah. Her lungs felt too shallow to take in enough air as the stairs continued to descend and the heat grew heavier, thick with moisture.

  Oh gods, oh gods, let it not be there . . . not in that place . . .

  Jade quickened her pace, ripping the scarves from her damp neck. The figure moved so quickly, she had already lost sight of it, despite running as fast as she could. She had pursued it without thinking, because no thought was needed: Amah was her grandmother in all but blood, the woman who had raised Jade when she’d had no one.

  “Stop!” she screamed, trying not to fall as the passage twisted and the ground sloped downward. She smelled damp earth and heard the sound of rushing water.

  Please let it not be there.

  But then the cavern of rock appeared with its raging waterfall, just as it had been in Jade’s vision. Confronted by the surreality of a place she knew but had never been, she froze halfway down the stone steps, the sights and sounds assaulting her senses: the vicious roar of water, the sulfurous heat beading on her skin, the steam bringing the scent of the Empress’s black incense to her nose from where it bubbled poisonously over a fire.

  And, in the center of the room, Empress Xifeng stood over a body so damaged, it could not be recognized. Thick blood from a gaping chest wound covered the person’s face.

  “There you are,” Xifeng said softly, regarding Jade on the stairs.

  But Jade could not meet her stepmother’s gaze, for her eyes—like the rest of her body—seemed unable to move. She stared at the corpse, at the scarlet rivulets pooling around its edges, but her sobs died in her throat when she realized that the dead person wore a maidservant’s clothing. Somehow, she forced her knees to move, bringing her down the steps and into the room, where she saw Amah collapsed on a boulder, breathing shallowly. Jade flew over to her nursemaid, whose temple was bleeding from where she had been struck on the head.

  Amah’s eyes, dazed with pain, focused slowly on Jade. “Oh, my dear,” she whispered.

  Anger, white-hot, dulled the edges of Jade’s terror. She straightened with her nursemaid in her arms and looked Xifeng in the eye. “You want me dead, and here I am,” she said, gritting out the words between her teeth. “No one else has to suffer but me.”

  “You, suffer? What can you ever know of suffering?” Xifeng whispered incredulously, her face full of naked, inexpressible hatred.

  Shouts rang out on the stairs, where Pei and Kang were locked in a furious stranglehold. Pei could not free his sword, for Kang—the more powerful of the two—had wrenched his arms cruelly behind him. Kang gave Jade a mock bow, his eyes glittering as Pei sagged with pain. He looked different in the dim light—bigger, stronger, with a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth.

  “I’m forever impressed by your knowledge of the secret passages, Kang,” Xifeng said. “You got us down here quickly, and here is your reward: a reprieve from your duty as huntsman tonight, while the Fool offers her heart willingly to me.” The eunuch bowed, a smirk creasing his monstrous features, as Xifeng nudged the corpse with a toe. “To think, this maid died for nothing. She could have gone on cheerfully scrubbing chamber pots if I had known this morning that I would have Princess Jade’s heart. Ah, the cruelty of life and its timing.”

  “Kill me,” Jade told her. “Take my heart. But let Pei and Amah go.”

  The Empress considered her. “I might, if only so Kang can have fun hunting them down again. It was a clever plan, stepdaughter. Lady Tran devising that dance so you could leave with the scarf over your head. It might have worked if I were unintelligent.” She shrugged at Kang in amusement. “Even after all these years, people still choose to underestimate me.”

  “A grave mistake, Your Majesty,” he returned.

  “You would think,” Xifeng said, punctuating each word with a kick to the maid’s body, “my enemies would respect me by now. Pei will be dealt with, my dear. As will your nursemaid, Lady Tran, and everyone still loyal to Lihua.” Slowly, she began to advance on Jade and Amah.

  Jade tightened her grip on the old woman, pressing Amah’s head beneath her chin as Xifeng moved closer. “You will not touch a hair of hers while there is still breath in my body.”

  “You love her so much?” Xifeng asked, the glee fading from her eyes. In its place was something Jade could not quite name, but she thought it might be disbelief . . . and jealousy. “Someone who doesn’t share a drop of your blood?”

  “Blood has nothing to do with love. Not that you would understand. Not that you have ever loved or known what love is.” A flicker of pain crossed Xifeng’s face, but Jade was too far gone, too furious to take much note. Her chest blazed with anger that had lain dormant for so many years. “You’ve killed and tortured and lied to keep your throne. You’ve subdued my father; you’ve taken everything from me! For all I know, you killed my mother, too.”

  The Empress reared back. “I had nothing to do with Lihua’s death.”

  “If you ever, for one second, contemplated being Empress instead of her,” Jade said, her voice rising, “if you ever had your huntsman dirty his hands for you, then you were involved. And my half brothers, my mother’s sons? Did you have nothing to do with their deaths too?”

  Xifeng bared her pointed teeth, and Jade saw that they were stained crimson. Slowly, insolently, the Empress wiped her mouth. “Maybe you should ask your father about them.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Jade demanded.

  “It means that every one of us will do what it takes to survive. Don’t fool yourself that you wouldn’t do the same. When you’ve lived the life I have and seen the things I’ve seen, then you may judge me. You think you’re so pure and good,” the Empress said contemptuously. “But now someone you love is in danger. What would you do to save Amah? Would you kill for her? Would you eat a hea
rt, I wonder?”

  Jade shook her head. “That’s the difference between us. Your choice is pain and violence first, but my choice is to find another way.”

  “You’re eighteen, Jade,” Xifeng snarled. “Grow up.”

  “We always have a choice!” she shouted.

  A loud crack, a stinging warmth on her cheek. Jade was sprawled on the ground before she realized her stepmother had darted forward and slapped her.

  “There is only destiny,” Xifeng said, her teeth gritted, “and those too afraid to seize it.”

  She turned and nodded to Kang. He dropped Pei, who had lost consciousness from the pain in his arms, and kicked him aside in a motionless heap. Walking over to the dead maid, he dragged her by her hair to the pool and unceremoniously dumped her corpse into the water.

  “Now show my prizes to the girl,” Xifeng commanded.

  Kang advanced on Jade and she tried to scurry backward, but he half lifted, half dragged her, ignoring her shouts and kicks. She pressed her hands over her eyes when he deposited her by the edge of the pool.

  “Don’t make me force you to look, Princess,” he told her. “It will be unpleasant.”

  “Perhaps you ought to cut her nursemaid’s eyes out to help her see,” Xifeng suggested.

  Jade stifled a sob and peeked into the water with one eye. At first, she saw only the gentle ripples on the pool’s surface. And then they cleared, and she saw it all: locks of black hair like fragile seaweed waving in the current. Ghostly white fingers bleached by time. Fragments of robes in diluted jewel tones, worn ragged in the stream. A powerful stench of sulfur and rot rose with the steam, and Jade gagged, covering her mouth.

  A dozen corpses lay entombed in the water, all women, all young, most of them beautiful. Some looked more worn than others, as though they had rested there for many years. One caught Jade’s eye, her red lips parted, her skin pale, her hair the brown-black of charred wood.

  This time, Jade could not fool herself that it was a dream. This time, she knew it was real—the woman with the red lips, all of the women, had once lived and loved and breathed in the world above. And Xifeng had taken their hearts from them.

  “The hot spring preserves them and keeps them fresh,” the Empress said softly. “It helps me remember what they’ve given me to ensure that I rule, that my beauty lasts forever.”

  Jade sobbed and ran back to Amah, who held her with one arm. “My little mouse,” she whispered, fingers scrabbling behind her as though seeking purchase, something solid in all this.

  “I summoned you to determine your worth and your danger to me,” Xifeng went on. “But I made the same mistake others have made about me. I underestimated you. And I saw something in you . . . a will to fight, a determination to make the world as you think it ought to be. Are you so very different from me as I once was?”

  “I am,” Jade seethed, “nothing like you. I would never have made the choices you made and pretended to be a victim of destiny.” She met her stepmother’s gaze and thought, for the first time, that she would gladly kill the woman if she had a chance. She imagined dragging that slender body over to the pool of corpses, forcing that beautiful head beneath the water as the woman struggled desperately to breathe . . .

  No. I’m not like her. No.

  “Not such a little mouse, are you?” Xifeng remarked. “And not as stupid as I thought, either, winning over everyone at court. The eunuchs and ladies worship you as they never have me. Some even call you the rightful heir and rally behind you.”

  “The people at court don’t worship me,” Jade said coldly. “I’m not a god. I treat them like human beings. You disgust me. It makes me sick to think of the atrocities you’ve committed in my mother’s rightful place.”

  Xifeng went still. “It’s well, then, that I leave no stone unturned. Tonight you die, Jade. Don’t fear, I will make up a romantic story about finding you frozen by the river and clasping you to my breast with motherly grief. Perhaps you weren’t happy here; perhaps you left your heart behind in the forest with a peasant boy. Ironic,” she added, her smile sharpening, “because your heart will remain here with me. But no one needs to know that part.”

  She pulled a glinting dagger from her robes, its blade jagged like teeth.

  This is how it ends for me, Jade thought. She prayed Wren had found Shiro and made it to safety, far from this cursed palace. But when she turned to tell Amah goodbye, the nursemaid’s expression held no hopelessness or terror. Instead, her mouth was set with anger and defiance.

  “If I die, I die fighting. And you will run,” Amah whispered, grasping Jade’s wrist with surprising strength. “Do you understand me? You run when I tell you to. Do not look back.”

  “Amah,” Jade began, her gut twisting, but the old woman tightened her grip.

  “Use the map. Find Wren, find the tengaru clearing,” the old woman told her fiercely. “Learn what to do, my dear one, my little mouse, daughter of Lihua’s heart. Go into the forest and disappear. Your destiny lies elsewhere.”

  “Please don’t ask this of me,” Jade begged, shaking uncontrollably. Without Amah, there would be no more songs or stories or memories spoken aloud of Lihua, no one left who knew the depths of her heart. She clung to her, tears blurring her vision. “I can’t leave you. I love you.”

  “And the gods know how I love you,” Amah whispered. “But if you truly love me, you will run. Promise me, Jade. We have no time left. Swear it on your mother’s life.”

  Jade felt, rather than heard, Empress Xifeng approach them. The urge to kill the woman for doing this to her—for robbing her of the person she loved most—raged inside her once more. It was so much easier to accept hatred, in that moment, than the knowledge that she would never see Amah again.

  Amah gnashed her teeth in frustration. “Do you love me enough to spare me the pain of seeing you killed?”

  All at once, like a dam giving way, the hatred broke and a sorrow like ice crept through Jade’s body. “I love you,” she whispered, feeling each word like a knife, “and I swear on my mother’s life that I will run when you tell me to.” Amah pressed her lips forcefully to Jade’s temple, and then, with one rapid motion, flung her toward the stairs with all her strength.

  “Run!” the nursemaid screamed, rising. In the hand that had been scrambling on the ground behind her, the old woman clutched a sharp piece of rock aimed right at Xifeng’s face. She charged at the Empress, catching her off-guard, and Xifeng released a scream of abject horror and anguish. Scrambling up the stone steps, Jade felt a thrill of pride at Amah’s courage.

  But her triumph was short-lived.

  Powerful hands grabbed Jade’s legs.

  She fell face-forward painfully, scraping her chin on the rock as she looked back to see Kang’s black eyes narrowed in fury. She kicked him hard in the stomach, but he held on with a viselike grip. Suddenly, he yelled and fell backward down the stairs as Pei, his face still contorted with pain, yanked his bloody sword out of Kang’s back and jumped out of the way.

  “Kang!” Xifeng shrieked, her face a mess of blood as she struggled with Amah.

  The henchman stumbled to his feet, and when Pei’s sword lunged at him again, he stopped the blade by grabbing it with his fingers. Blood rained down from his hand as he tore the weapon from Pei with one fearsome tug, flipped it around, and threw it straight at Amah. It slipped in between her ribs and the old woman fell noiselessly, the sharp rock in her hand bouncing away.

  A wail of devastation reverberated through the cavern, and it took Jade a moment to realize it had come from her own lips. She met Pei’s eyes for a brief second, and then, heart shattering within her, she kept her promise. She ran up the stairs and through the winding tunnel, leaving them all behind as the memory of Amah’s death replayed over and over in her head.

  Outside, Jade skirted along the terrace and nearly ran headfirst into Wren.

>   “Where have you been? Where is my grandmother?” Wren demanded, breathing hard from having backtracked across the river. She took one look at Jade’s pinched, tear-streaked face and closed her eyes. “There’s no time to grieve now—we must cross. Are they coming?”

  “I don’t know. It can’t be long before Xifeng summons the guards.”

  Wren tugged Jade onto the ice and half dragged, half pushed her with the strength of a draft horse as they staggered across the river. A layer of freshly fallen snow covered its surface, making it even more treacherous. Behind them came hoofbeats and the shouts of men, and ahead of them lay the Great Forest, the thousand lanterns blazing in the dark. Jade let the lights guide her, every panicked breath accompanied by a stab of heartache. With each step she saw Amah again, frail yet fierce, weak yet full of rage, lunging at the Empress in her final act of defiance.

  The lion knows not to doubt the mouse, for size does not betray strength.

  So many stories and lessons, and Jade had complained and taken them all for granted. She wiped her face furiously, wishing she could lean against Amah’s knees once more. This time, she would shut her ungrateful mouth; she would let Amah tell her a hundred tales all at once.

  The muscles in Jade’s legs were burning by the time they stumbled onto the opposite riverbank, but there was still a wide expanse of snowy hill before the forest. They climbed up the sharp, slippery rocks, Jade doing her best to stay close behind as the snow stung her skin.

  “Shiro?” she managed to ask.

  “Waiting in the forest. Don’t look behind us—it’ll slow us down.”

  The sounds of pursuit grew louder. The frozen river gave a frightful crack and neither girl could resist peering back, despite Wren’s warning. Xifeng’s men were crossing on horseback, boldly, swiftly, carelessly, holding their bodies with unnatural stiffness.

  “Hurry,” Wren gasped. “Oh, hurry.”

  They made it to the top of the hill, Jade’s lungs screaming for air, and plunged into the Great Forest. The lanterns dangled high above them, great globes of kindly white light. Jade prayed ceaselessly as they ran through the snow, calling upon the good graces of every Dragon Lord in the heavens. Wren was in better physical form, her body conditioned by exercise, but she was patient whenever Jade tripped. She merely righted her and they continued on.