by Devin Madson
Before the seer.
Again my gaze slid to the coals. The woman had screamed, but not for as long as I had expected. By the time her skin had peeled her cries for mercy had ceased – the voice of prophecy silenced.
“Finished, Your Majesty. I shall paint your face now.”
I knew not how long it was before I escaped from Zuzue, unsatisfied with the face that looked back from the mirror. There was always a new line, or another stray hair to pluck, age seeming to have a cruel sense of humour.
The gallery was empty but for Cheng, yet I strode in as though with every intention of looking upon the portraits of the emperor’s ancestors. Many wore the same great crimson robe he donned every day, and all looked down from their places with varying degrees of haughty disdain. Their expressions chilled my bones as surely as did the cold air and I hugged my fur stole about my shoulders.
“Your Majesty,” Cheng said, the snap of my sandals drawing his attention. There seemed to be more lines upon a face already criss-crossed by life. “You’re alone?”
“As you see. Only Zuzue knows I have risen from my mat. She says he is repressing talk, so what is the trouble?”
Cheng looked toward the window, beyond which the snow-dusted gardens blocked much of the outer palace from view. “The trouble is that the alliance was signed this morning.”
“But I killed their emissary.” The words were little more than breath stolen from my lungs, but his grimace showed he caught them all the same.
“There must have been another or you killed the wrong man, I don’t know, but I saw it signed with my own eyes.”
“Koto?”
A bow for show, though he still did not meet my gaze when he rose. “He says you must see Lord Epontus tonight. Koto will organise everything. Only men he can trust.”
“Tonight?” My heart beat like a tolling bell. “Then tell him I will take Prince Takehiko with me.”
“Again? Are you sure, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, very sure. I cannot do this without him.”
Cheng frowned, but though he had lent himself to this little mutiny, in truth he had been too long a soldier to argue with me. He had none of Koto’s fire. None of Koto’s ambition.
“I will tell him.”
“Is there anything else?” I said. “I ought to join the court before my absence is remarked. If His Majesty has completed this alliance he will be in one of his... jovial moods.”
The old soldier shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Nothing else, Your Majesty, but I wouldn’t go to the throne room today. A warning from an old friend.”
I glanced around at the empty gallery because I could not meet his gaze. “She’s there, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. General Kin, too, who is out of favour with the emperor after last night’s events. He is hunting the assassin and we do not want his eyes to turn to you.”
“No. We don’t.” My fingers curled into fists. “That would just give His Majesty a fine excuse for getting rid of me.”
And the man who gave him that excuse would be richly rewarded. General Kin was the son of a soldier. Or perhaps a blacksmith. I ought to know. Of such small pieces of knowledge was power built.
I gazed unseeing upon the portraits for a time before making my way up the stairs to the fourth round of the inner palace. There the gathering court bustled. Heads turned, and as I strode into the antechamber bows spread through the crowd like grass bending before the wind, spreading murmurs of “Your Majesty” like a susurrus. It followed me to the great black doors of the throne room, both open so crimson light could spill out like blood. Coloured by the glass in the high windows, it blanketed all in a red-hued haze, making mockery of all the finely-painted faces.
Upon the grand lacquered throne the emperor sat at his ease, and though he did not often laugh he was laughing now, his eyes crinkling as he looked at the woman sitting on the divan beside him. My divan. She was a glorious young thing – that I could not deny – her skin a creamy hue and her hair so black it shone beneath the crown of a single jewelled comb. Jingyi had served me before she bled, when youth had protected her from most of the court’s wandering eyes. But time had given her a fine figure and a pair of laughing eyes, along with the emperor’s undivided attention.
As I approached she made a show of rising from the divan so I might take it, but under every watching eye the emperor bade her remain. Conversations trailed off. Eyes turned from them to me. Grateful for the paint upon my cheeks, I stiffened my back and strode to the Humble Stone. There, in a clearing of silk trunks, I knelt to bow before Emperor Lan. Never had I wanted to do so less, never had I hated the laughter in his eyes so much I wanted to scoop them out. Such dreams calmed my fury as I knelt waiting, the time before he asked me to rise cruelly long.
“Long life, Your Majesty,” I said as I rose, but he was not looking at me. This man who had called me his glorious sun, who had lain with me and fathered my children, at whose side I had sat through all the years of our marriage and he could not even spare me a glance. His attention was all upon Jingyi. Her bright red lips smiled a sensual promise.
Thus dismissed, I turned and found my eldest son watching from a distance. The heir to the crimson throne excused himself from his usual circle of hovering sycophants and came across the floor. “Mama,” he said, something all too like a smirk twitching curved lips. “It looks like I was right after all.”
“Poor form to rub it in my face at such a time, Yarri,” I said, and though I drew myself up, at only thirteen he was already taller than me.
“Poor form for you to be so blind you don’t see it coming. I used to think you knew everything. Did you know that Rikk is to come out of the nursery? It will be amusing to have another little brother to play tricks on. Tanaka has gotten too smart to fool.”
While he spoke the prick of dozens of eyes touched my skin. Perhaps Cheng had been right and I ought not to have come, but any excuse would have declared defeat and those false smiles of pity would have become smiles of triumph. In all these years few members of the court had truly accepted me, and even my own son had come to realise that being seen with me did him little good.
“Will you call her mother when I am gone?”
The question surprised a frown from him. “Lady Jingyi? I don’t know. Should I?”
“Not unless you want me to rip her throat out.”
He laughed. “You wouldn’t.”
It seemed a woman’s purpose in life was to be underestimated. But I could hardly blame him. Yarri was his father’s heir more than he was my son. Lan had seen to that, removing him from the nursery and from my influence early. He had learned to walk and talk the emperor he would one day become.
“Perhaps not,” I said, taking a deep breath to cover the pain of realising I could not trust my own blood. “You ought not be seen speaking to me now it seems His Majesty’s mind is made up.”
“I thought of that, but it would also look very bad of me not to honour my mother with a few words.” He bowed, tipping forward hair kept so short no one would see how much like mine it was. “Long life, Your Majesty.”
“And to you, Your Highness.”
I stayed in the throne room as long as I could bear it, avoiding the pull of my gaze toward the throne. But I could not keep myself from turning when the emperor laughed. A mischievous smile came with Jingyi’s reply, the girl smiling as much for the court as for him with so many gazes upon her. That had been me once, and it was with bitter satisfaction that I told myself her star would not stay long aloft. In a few years another pretty girl would come along and Jingyi, too, would be thrown aside.
As I turned my gaze from the emperor’s laugh-slitted eyes, it was General Kin who caught my attention. He stood beside the throne as he always did, but it wasn’t the emperor he watched. Despite Cheng’s warning the man had no reason to suspect me, yet for all the aloof unconcern I attempted my heart hammered all the same. Even now Koto would be organising a group of guards
that could be trusted with silence, guards loyal to him and to me, not to General Kin.
That thought wriggled uneasily in my mind. Of such thoughts are rebellions built.
Darkness fell upon the palace. Soft treads passed my door, and in the distance gongs tolled the hour, their rich voices calling out to every secretary and servant – the army of brightly-coloured ants that kept Kisia alive while the emperor was busy smiling at Jingyi.
One of the treads stopped, but it was not Koto. A man entered, the crimson slash upon his shoulder proclaiming him one of the emperor’s personal servants. He bowed, eyes averted, and said: “His Imperial Majesty will see you now.”
Not a request – an order, no more amenable than the instructions he gave his lowest servants. I tried to still the rising panic with a long, slow breath, but dread spun on in my mind. How much did he suspect?
“Of course.” I knew how to sound confident and proud, and I nodded to Zuzue as she cleared away the remnants of my dinner. No words were needed. She would warn Koto if I did not soon return.
It was too short a journey to require a procession, but I let the man lead the way, every watercolour scroll and screen like an old friend. From outside the emperor’s apartments General Kin watched us approach. Perhaps one day someone would make him smile, but until then he was stiff and unyielding, always appearing older than his years ought to have allowed. But age hadn’t been the only objection to his appointment. However impressive his reputation, Kin was no nobleman.
“Your Majesty,” he said when I stopped before the doors. And though it was not required from an Imperial Guard on duty, he bowed. Deeply and with more grace than expected, leaving my haughty sniff sounding rude.
“His Imperial Majesty sent for me,” I said.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
He slid one of the great doors and stepped in. “Empress Li is here, Your Majesty.”
“Good. Good,” spoke the emperor from inside, his voice owning no warmth. “Send her in.”
General Kin stepped back, his crimson surcoat whispering as it touched my robe. He looked away. “You may enter, Your Majesty.”
Though it was an overlarge room, the emperor’s main apartment was unseasonably warm, braziers seeming to occupy every spare space. The hiss and click of their coals provided winter’s music, overlaid with the soft crackle of the reed matting beneath my feet. Emperor Lan watched me enter. He lounged in a Chiltaen-style chair with his feet crossed in front of him, and not a word did he speak as I knelt to bow. Once again he left me there much longer than was necessary.
“You may rise, my wife,” he said at last. “If you can with such creaky bones.”
I got to my feet with every ounce of grace and ease I could muster. “I am not yet so old as that, Your Majesty,” I said, biting off the observation that he was older than I by sixteen years.
He grunted like a frustrated hog. There had been a time when I had found him handsome, when his smile had lightened the harsh lines of his features, when an earnest desire to rule well had given him dignity, but those days had passed. He had changed. Kisia, too. Perhaps the war had changed more than I had seen, safe in my fine palace.
“I was pleased to receive your summons, Your Majesty,” I said, the measure of truth in the words bitter on my tongue. It had been a long time.
“Of course you were. And I am loath to disappoint you but this will be a short meeting.” He shifted in his chair and leaned forward, his bright eyes upon me. “Things are about to change, Li. I am going to return Kisia to its glory. I am going to conquer the northern heathens and when I do, it cannot be with an aging Chiltaen empress at my side, her figure soft and her hair paling. No, when Chiltae are once again our vassals I must have another empress, one who represents everything that makes Kisia great. No more treaties. No more negotiations. No more merchant commoners nibbling away at our border and eroding our history and our culture. We are the oldest. The greatest. The wisest. And we will prevail as the gods have always intended.”
“But our treaty—”
“To the hells with treaties, did you not hear a word I said?”
I had, every rousing word washing over me with greater horror. “Yes, I did, Your Majesty,” I said, and looking him in the eye I began to lie. “But I don’t think I understand. Has something changed? Were we not losing the war before the treaty was signed?”
Go on, I urged. Crow about your clever plans. Tell me how you’ve just signed a secret contract with the Curashi. Tell me about the hundreds of fully-manned ships you’re getting from Lord Eastern, the Pirate of Lin’ya, in return for nothing but your niece’s maidenhead. Tell me about your plans to raid the Ribbon, to destroy the Chiltaen fleet, to set fire to their dockyards and crush any who try to resist. Tell me so I can tell you how all that will end.
“Kisia does not lose wars.”
It was hard not to laugh. Chiltaen history told a different story. “Of course not,” I said. “When one has gods on one’s side one does not tend to lose wars.”
“Finally come to your senses then, have you?” he said. “Given up on your foolish Chiltaen god?”
“I have lived in Kisia longer than I lived in Chiltae, Your Majesty.”
Another of his grunts. “Then you will accept their decree and go quietly.”
“The gods themselves wish me gone?” I should have known he would take the easy road, that he would steal away all chance to fight. Who could argue with the gods?
His sage nod stirred the bile in my gut. “They have spoken to me, yes,” he said. “And success hangs upon your departure.”
“Did the seer tell you so?”
I saw the same leer in my dreams, when over and over again the woman burned. “You want to know what she told me? She told me that Kisia would be one land, from the Ribbon to the south sea, and that it would be ruled by the descendants of my blood, its glory everlasting.”
And she had told me I would die. That my children would die. That the empire would burn. Doubt gnawed at my mind. Perhaps it was not the war I had to fear. Perhaps it was only this man, this arrogant, hateful man who would put another in my place because my figure had grown soft with the bearing of children, because my hair was the wrong colour and my heritage no longer useful. Descendants of his blood did not have to be descendants of mine. Jingyi could already be carrying a new heir.
You will die before your thirtieth year.
I balled my hands to keep them from trembling. “Then of course I will go,” I said, thoughts tangling as I tried to clutch at something, anything, that could make him change his mind. As soon as I was out of sight how easy it would be to be rid of me and my tainted children.
A thought struck me like summer lightning, as frightening as it was stunning. It began to unfold before me, each thread leading to another, only to be interrupted by the emperor’s voice. “Something you want to say, Li?”
His eyebrows were raised in a weary sort of interest. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I had kept to myself year after year because to speak ill of the emperor was treason. To disagree with the emperor was treason. To even look askance at the emperor was treason. When I didn’t immediately answer he lifted his brows higher still. “Well?”
“I was only thinking...” I let the words hang, hating myself for them but knowing nothing else would so surely put him off the scent of growing treason in my mind.
“Thinking what?” he prompted.
“That we might lie together one last time before I leave.”
He laughed, that same mocking laugh that haunted my dreams, but he beckoned me closer and I went, the treason in my heart giving me a fierce joy such as I had never known.
“Well?” Koto said, pouncing on me the moment I returned to my room.
“He knows nothing. At least if he knows something he isn’t saying so, but he did admit he plans to invade Chiltae.”
A snort, not even the pretence of respect. “Unless we can strip away his new allies. Did he say anything else?”<
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I shook my head, hair loosing from what was left of Zuzue’s fine styling. To speak of my own dismissal would make it real, losing me not only my empire, my husband and my children, but Koto too. What ambitious captain would clutch at the skirt of a falling star?
“He was merely in the mood to boast,” I said. “Call for Zuzue. She must fix my hair and fetch Takehiko before we go.”
“Are you sure about the boy?”
“Yes.”
“He just fell asleep last time.”
“I’m sure, Koto. Do it.”
He bowed then, recalling, too late to my mind, that I was still his empress.
It was cold in the palanquin. My breath formed a cloud and my fingers had turned to curls of ice. At the peak of a bad winter the streets of Mei’lian were choked with snow, but still I hurried the carriers on. They would be fortunate if their fingers did not grow so numb they dropped their poles.
The nest of furs upon my lap shifted and snuffled, growing one fair cheek. The light of lanterns passing overhead lit the rest of the face in flashes – a mess of sandy hair, a small turned-up nose and lips made pink by the cold ‒ all smushed against a clenched hand. He was asleep and I dared not move lest he wake. He was going to need all his energy tonight.
We soon left the lit streets behind and Prince Takehiko vanished into the night, only his weight upon my legs and his snuffling proving his existence. The palanquin turned. Slowed. Outside shouts and laughter proved that even the bitter cold could not completely halt a city about its business. Bright lights illuminated one curtain of the palanquin and the plaintive sound of a shamisen sang to the bare moon, but even that was soon gone and we plunged back into darkness. And in that darkness my new plan blossomed, the enormity of it both thrilling and frightening. I could not trust it to Koto. Not even to Cheng. Some roads had to be walked alone.
Boots crunched snow as the carriers stopped, bringing my attention back with a jolt. Whatever choice I made, I had to get through this meeting first.
“Takehiko.” I shook the boy. “We are here.”