by Mimi Yu
The audience was murmuring, the noise a low roar. It was a sizeable crowd; this was Set’s first public address as emperor, after all. Yet, Min could not help but note it was not as big as that on the day of Lu’s betrothal. This morning’s rain had likely cowed some people into staying home.
It’s not raining now, the nagging little voice in Min’s head pointed out. It was true: the gray flagstones of the Heart remained dark and slick, but the wan sky was beginning to perk again with blue.
Well, her cousin—husband—was certainly giving them something to regret missing.
Set continued: “At the end of the Gray War, we forced the armies of Yunis back within its gates and brokered fair terms for surrender. In our great mercy, we allowed them to live, under the condition they stay within their borders and allow our colonies to thrive. That mercy was foolish, we now see. For seventeen years, rather than rebuilding their own kingdom, the rulers of Yunis licked their wounds and plotted revenge.”
He paused, letting that narrative sink in. Min’s head swam with it.
For anyone her age or younger, Yunis was the stuff of legends. An otherworldly paradise, a tragic cautionary tale. The elegant northern city carved into the Ruvai Mountains, all stone and crystal. The hermit city that refused to open its gates to her grandfather’s imperial forces. And in turn, the city that burned until it was nothing but broken rock and ash and smoke. But now, they were learning, some part of it had survived amid the rubble all this time.
“Just last month,” Set went on, “Yunis perpetrated a raid on labor camp eight. I was there in the aftermath. More than fifty hardened criminals—slipskins and other degenerates—were set loose. And six of our own men were killed in the service of the empire.”
Murmurs bubbled up from the crowd. Set held up a steady hand to settle them.
“I don’t need to tell you that this was an act of war,” he said grimly. His head dipped, just slightly, but then he raised his face to the crowd, a mask of stalwart grace and sorrowful burden. “Emperor Daagmun,” he began. Min started at the sound of her father’s name falling so easily from his lips. Then those lips hardened into a sorrowful line. “Before he was so cruelly struck down, Emperor Daagmun was weighing the evidence before him, weighing the decision to go to war. It does not do to speak ill of the dead, but I believe my beloved uncle would agree with me when I say he tarried too long in choosing to act.”
Set stood then, pacing the front of the dais. Min half rose in her chair, as though to follow. Brother gave a quick jerk of his head and she sat back down, flushing red. She glanced at her mother, but the empress’s eyes were transfixed on Set. Her face was eerily blank—Min wasn’t sure whether to take that for a good or an ill sign.
“This is not a world for tarrying.” Set’s voice rose as he strode down the front steps, still slick with rain. His guards bristled uncertainly but stayed where they were. Her cousin continued on his own, along the path toward the First Flame.
“This is not a time for equivocating and hesitation,” he said once he reached it. A stone pavilion sheltered the blaze, and Set paused, resting a hand against one of its pillars. He watched its flames for a long moment, seemingly oblivious to the puzzled silence of the assembled crowd. Then he reached into the pocket of his robes and withdrew something that fit neatly into his closed fist.
“We live in a dangerous moment,” he said. “Our enemies encroach from all sides. Even from within. This empire—each of you—deserves an emperor who recognizes this. Who acts decisively. With strength.”
Set lifted his hand high, then dashed it down toward the First Flame. Min craned forward to see, then jerked back as the blaze erupted into a brilliant yellow column. Like a living, vicious thing it shot toward the ceiling of the pavilion, arcing against the stone and pluming outward.
The crowd was on its feet, and this time their noise was thunderous.
“I swear to you, for every drop of imperial blood—both Hana and Hu—that the Yunians sowed into the ground, they will reap a thousand of their own!” Set shouted above it. “We will not let the Northerners prevail!”
Applause filled the Heart. Min nearly rose from her seat to join in. Some primal response to such concentrated, powerful emotion.
In all likelihood, there was scarcely a person alive in Yulan City—be they the head of a sky manse household or a blacksmith working out of a hovel in the Second Ring—who had thought much about Yunis in the last seventeen years. Longer than Min’s entire life. And yet, with a few well-chosen words, each person present seemed to believe with utter conviction that this war on Yunis was of the greatest urgency. As though it had been their own sons or husbands or brothers slain on the northern front.
She looked again toward Set’s empty throne. Past it, her mother’s face was frozen in a rictus of dismay. The anger and agitation radiating from her now was nearly palpable.
She didn’t know, either, Min realized with shock. She had assumed her mother was as close to Set’s plans as anyone.
Well, Min amended, perhaps not anyone.
Behind the empty throne, Brother smiled placidly into the middle distance.
“I thought you were going to announce the banishment of the Ellandaise,” Min’s mother groused as they made their way down the corridor leading out of the rear of Kangmun Hall, flanked by Brother and Set’s gaggle of eunuchs. “When did you decide—”
“I don’t have time to run all of my plans past you, Aunt Rinyi,” Set snapped.
“A war is a fairly significant omission!”
The empress shouldered past Min as she spoke, pushing her into the wall. Min pressed her palms against it to keep from falling, then lapsed into formation behind her mother.
“It went over well, don’t you think?” Set mused. He turned to Brother. “You were right; people love a fight.”
“They love a fight with a clear purpose,” the monk amended mildly.
“What’s next on my agenda for today?” Set asked the head eunuch.
The eunuch bowed, never missing a step. “The captain of the guard wished for you to, ah, inspect that prisoner he mentioned.”
“Right, right,” Set muttered. “Well, onward to the dungeons, then.”
Min’s mother stopped short. Min walked straight into her back, but the empress did not seem to notice. “The dungeons?” she repeated. “I know you don’t think to bring Minyi.”
Set looked back at her and blinked in surprise, as though he hadn’t realized she were there at all.
“Actually,” Brother said, stepping between them. “I’m heading back to my chamber now. It’s in the same direction as Empress Minyi’s apartments—perhaps I could escort her there?”
“Perfect,” Set said quickly, seemingly satisfied his burden had been relieved. Min’s mother’s full mouth shriveled into a hard line as she looked at Brother. Before she could speak, though, the monk was offering Min his arm. She took it.
But Brother didn’t escort her to her apartments, after all. Once they’d departed from her husband and mother, he’d guided her back to his chamber—a room in a small outbuilding off Set’s new apartments. Min shivered as they’d passed the front door leading to the bedroom in which her father had died.
“Just a moment, Princess.”
The darkness in the room was absolute; the windows had been papered over. Min closed her eyes, then opened them again, but saw no difference.
There was a scrape, a puff of sulfur, a flare. Brother’s face floated out from the void, wan and eerie. He smiled, the lines of his face cavernous and grotesquely exaggerated by the low light. He used the candle to light several more, illuminating the room.
Min blinked and found herself in a cramped study, not unlike that of a shin’s. Stacks of limp, musty books lined the walls. Some were faced toward her the wrong way around, and all she could make out were the yellowed edges of their pages. Others bore their spines at her, but only a few were labeled—in fine, hand-lettered text. Min squinted at the closest, but she did
not recognize the language.
“I apologize for the subterfuge,” Brother said, lighting a fireplace against the far wall, then hanging a kettle over its crackling flame. He spoke lightly, as though she were a visitor dropping by for tea. “I mentioned to Set this morning that I wanted to begin your lessons. He and I both thought it best to shelter your mother.”
Lessons? Min hesitated. “Yes, I suppose that was wise,” she said softly.
“I’m afraid the empress does not fully trust me—or, rather, my abilities—yet,” the monk continued. “Such is often the case with laypeople.” He sighed, turning sorrowful eyes on her. “You will come to see this in time, I am afraid.”
“Oh,” Min said.
There was the sound of a scoff. Min recognized it with an odd twain of dread and excitement.
“He speaks of laypeople as though he’s any different,” the shamaness retorted. “As though he knows anything.”
It was almost a relief to hear from her. The spirit-creature seemed to keep her own time. Min had tried calling for her over the past few days, when she was bored or lonely—often enough—but the girl never emerged, never spoke. Where did she go? How much did she hear and see?
Brother pulled a ceramic tea jar from a high shelf and shook its contents—a mélange of herbs she did not recognize—into a gaiwan. Then, he removed the kettle from the fire and poured boiling water over the herbs.
Min blinked. He really was serving her tea.
But what kind? This time Min wasn’t sure whether the thought came from the shamaness, or from herself.
Brother poured the liquid from the gaiwan into a matching white cup, which he placed before her. Min stared down into its limpid, vaguely pink contents. He had been meticulous in straining the tea; no dregs had escaped into the cup.
“What is … ” she searched for a more courteous way to phrase the question, but found none. “What is it?”
“My own blend of herbs. Some foreign. Nothing harmful, I assure you.”
“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Of course not.”
“Of course not,” mimicked the shamaness.
I should tell him about her, Min thought. Did he know the shamaness was still in her? Was she truly there? How was anyone to know? She was the only one who could hear the voice. Perhaps she was losing her mind.
That thought frightened her more than she could say. Even if she did tell Brother, could he do anything about it? There was no telling what he might do: try to remove the thing or lock her away in a sickroom. In either case, she’d never reach Yunis, never grant Set his deepest wish—
“You don’t need to drink it,” he said. She started; she had forgotten about the tea. “You needn’t do anything that frightens you, Princess.”
She nodded, still staring down at the tea. And realized, too late, Not princess. Empress. But the moment to correct his mistake had already passed. Silence stretched between them.
A strand of hair slipped free into her face. Min made to push it back up, then jumped when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye—only to realize there was a mirror propped in the corner. What she had taken for a threat was just her own reflection.
Stupid. What was there even to fear? You’re safe here.
She looked at the mirror, at the girl on the other side of the glass. A pale creature, vague in aspect, shrunken in stature. Her robes were new and a bit too large, making her look even smaller, younger. She shifted under the scrutiny of her own reflected gaze. There was something repulsed, almost contemptuous in the way it looked back at her. Was that the shamaness she was seeing? Was she there in the hate in Min’s own eyes?
“Princess?” Brother broke the overlong silence.
Empress, Min thought again. Without answering him, she lifted the cup he’d set before her and drank the tea down.
It burned. Her eyes fluttered open in alarm—he’d poisoned her, after all! She coughed wildly …
Then—no. The tea was simply hot. She hadn’t given it long enough to cool.
With as much composure as she could muster, Min rested the cup back on the table.
“What—what is it meant to do?” she asked.
“It will relax your conscious mind, freeing your unconscious to act in its full power.”
Min nodded as though what he was saying made sense to her.
“It will take some time for it to take effect. In the meantime, let us start with what you’ve already accomplished,” Brother said, laying a ledger and ink out on the table before them. He dipped a brush into the ink. “Now, when did you first begin to sense your power, what did you first notice? Please be specific.”
“There was a dream,” Min began. Her throat felt tight. Was she breathing correctly? Her lungs felt sluggish, as though they’d forgotten their purpose.
“A dream?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.
“Yes. A red dream … and white …” Min squinted across the table at him. She ought to meet his eyes, she thought vaguely. It was hard to focus, though, in the dim light. The candle resting on the table between them flickered, and she felt the sensation against her skin like fingers.
There was movement on the ceiling, directly above her. She whipped her head up to track it. Just the mirror, stupid. Remember how you saw your reflection in the mirror—only the mirror was on the wall, of course. The ceiling looked ordinary: dark wood beams, unadorned. Low. The beams undulated in sympathy with the dancing candlelight—
“Princess?” Brother whispered, far away.
Empress, she thought as her eyes, so heavy, like stones, slipped closed.
Some instinct in her called out for familiarity—she wanted safety. She wanted her mother? Was that what she wanted?
Find her, she told herself. Find Set, another voice murmured.
I’ve found them, the shamaness broke in, her voice a singsong. Your mother, your husband …
Min groped for them, like reaching out in the darkness.
They were walking side by side down a dank, narrow hallway, following an armed guard. It was dark; the walls were stone. She could feel cold radiating from them. They were underground, she could feel the pressure of packed earth all around them. Min squinted and saw bars. They were in the dungeons.
A new face swam into view. Pale and furious. For a moment, Min thought it was the shamaness, but her stomach clenched when she realized the truth.
Hyacinth.
The nuna’s hair was in disarray, her yellow robes dingy and streaked with dirt and—
Gods, Min thought. Was that blood?
“Are these Lu’s handmaidens?” Set asked, stopping short. “I’d like to question them myself. They may know Lu’s plans.”
Her mother shook her head. “They don’t know anything—”
“I know Lu is innocent!” Hyacinth broke in, gripping at the bars of her cell. Her knuckles went red, then white.
This seemed to amuse Set. “Innocent, you say? The girl who killed your little brother?”
Fear flickered across Hyacinth’s face, an uncertain quaver. “What?”
“What was his name?” Set continued. “Wonin? A brave young man. He only wanted to help his empire, his true emperor. And she cut him down like he was nothing. I’m sure she thought herself justified. Anything for the crown.”
“Liar!” Hyacinth snarled, triumphant. “My brother wouldn’t help you—”
“Your brother would do anything your father told him. And your father would do anything that improved his station.”
For a stunned moment, Hyacinth drew back as if he’d struck her. Her pretty face twisted in confusion and grief. Then she lunged forward and spat. The emission struck Set’s handsome cheek, streaking down toward his chin.
“You’re a filthy liar, and a traitor. Lu would never hurt Wonin, never!”
The guard gave a shout, slamming a baton against Hyacinth’s exposed knuckles. There was a sick splitting sound. The nuna let out a shriek.
Min closed her eyes against the sight
. When she opened them again, a man was on the ground before her.
He didn’t look like much. Short and stout. No hair, but for a filthy beard groping its way down his chest. Two soldiers in blue Hana tunics flanked him. They, and the iron shackles about his wrists and ankles announced him as a criminal, but nothing on his tired face or stooped posture suggested danger. Mostly, Min thought, he looked old.
“Who is he?”
Min jumped. Set and her mother stood behind her, just inside the heavy metal door of the tiny room—a prison cell. Set gestured toward the prisoner with a disdainful flick of his hand and Min flinched, shuffling out of his way—although, she knew, he could not see her.
Not this again. No, please, whatever it is, I don’t want to see—
“Lies.” Min flinched and there she was, the shamaness in white. She hovered behind, her sharp little chin digging into Min’s shoulder. When Min turned though, the girl had disappeared.
“Why have you brought me to see this creature?” Set asked the guards.
He was an uneasy fit in the tiny room. The gold silk of his robes looked unnatural, fussily bright against the old, stained stone walls.
The soldiers behind the prisoner bowed at the waist. As they straightened, one of them noticed the prisoner was still upright. He kicked the old man in the small of his back, sending him to his knees, hard. The man cried out—pathetic and thin. Min flinched.
“Are you simple?” demanded the soldier. “Don’t you know to bow before your emperor?”
“Oh, is this the emperor?” the old man said. “I did not realize. I heard the emperor was a woman these days—”
“Why, you insolent old dog!” The soldier brought his gloved hand down against the prisoner’s jaw with a sick, wet impact. A blood-slick tooth shot from between his lips and skittered across the stone floor, disappearing into the filthy rushes. Min closed her eyes and forced herself not to cry out.
“Enough!” Set barked. “Do you mean to keep me waiting all day in this disgusting cell? Who is he?”
“Your Majesty,” the soldier said, quickly scrambling back into formation. “This man has information on the whereabouts of the Girl Ki—Princess Lu. We have reason to believe he was harboring her immediately after she murdered her father. He is also suspected of helping her slay one of our own company, a soldier named Wailun.”