Blood thundered in his ears and Jian clenched his fist next to the hilt of his sword. “I cannot blood my blade in his belly,” he remarked. “The blood of a coward would ruin this fine weapon.”
A fist of guards approached, perhaps scenting trouble between the young Daechen. Naruteo’s bloodsworn melted away. Naruteo himself bowed mockingly and turned from the scene, but not without a parting shot.
“We shall see,” he told Jian. “We shall discover whose blood runs yellow and whose blood runs red, tomorrow at our Inseeing.” And he walked away, laughing. The crowd parted before him, and closed behind him, leaving no indication of his passing.
A crown of flowers hung upon the wall of swords, wilting in the hot sun.
Already forgotten.
* * *
The door opened a crack. There was no sound, but the hallway beyond was brightly lit. Jian could not help it. He flinched.
“It is time, Daechen Jian.”
He rolled from the woven mat, and on the third effort made it upright. He stood in a puddle of light, blinking away tears and trying not to let his legs shake too much. If his knees gave out he would fall, and if he fell they would just make him stand again. He was not sure he could find the strength.
For days without count he had been down here, in the dark and the cold and the quiet. At first there had been a pallet of straw and a basin for washing, but those comforts had been taken from him. For a while there had been food and water, and then there had been water. Then there was nothing but his heartbeat, and the dark.
“Drink.” A figure, dark and blurred, moved between him and the burning light. A cup was pressed to his lips. It felt cool and hard, and smelled of mint. “Drink.”
He thought of the winnowing, of the pain that had raged through him, and boys who fell screaming to die in their own shit and vomit. He thought of the wagons, and the greasy dark smoke. He thought of his mother, sitting alone by the fire at night, wondering what had become of him.
He drank. It was tea, nothing more, and it scalded his tongue.
Another shadow fell across his face. “Do not flinch.” It was Xienpei. He flinched. “Do not show pain, Daechen Jian, for if you do I will know it. Your failure is mine. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Yendaeshi.” He did not.
Then he was seized from every side. Strong hands clamped on his arms, his legs, his ankles. His limbs were stretched out like a skin for scraping, and he was bound into a frame. The door opened wider, and Jian bit his lips to keep from crying out as a mass of shadows split apart to become a pair of lashai bearing arms full of blackthorn vines. Blackthorn was used to scourge the worst criminals, rapists, and murderers, and those who stole from the emperor. The barbed thorns would tear flesh from bone, and if a criminal survived the lashing—few did—they would inevitably die as the wounds fell to rot.
“Sssst, little one,” Xienpei hissed into his ear. “Be strong, now.”
He jerked involuntarily at the ropes when the lashai moved behind him, and again when one of them touched his wrist. As the lashai pinched his flesh hard between thumb and forefinger, he took a deep breath, resolved to show no pain, no fear, no matter what they might do. Whatever they had planned for him, it would be gentle compared to the wrath of Xienpei if he were to fail.
Daechen Jian still had lessons to learn.
When the first thorn pierced his flesh, he grunted and ground his teeth together. It hurt, it hurt, but as he sucked the ragged air between his teeth Jian decided that he could bear it.
By the time the fourth thorn was pressed against his skin, the first had begun to burn. They had started at his wrist, and by the time they reached his shoulder, Jian was twitching uncontrollably and had bitten his tongue so that he was drooling blood. A scream curled in his gut and pushed its way up and into his mouth. He knew he could not stop it.
“If you cry out, Daechen Jian, I will kill your dammati. One bloodsworn for every sound.” Xienpei’s breath smelled of cinnamon and honey. “And if you faint, if you fail…”
The scream caught in his ribs.
“…I know where your mother lives, Tsun-ju Jian.”
The scream became a growl, and the growl a snarl. He turned his face to hers and stared hard into those bright eyes. Another thorn tore through the skin on his back, and he bared his fangs at her.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Yessss.”
The blackthorn vine curled around his wrist and draped across his arm, around the side of his neck, around his waist and down the inside of one leg. The vine itself was heavy, and warm, and dragged at the thorns embedded in his flesh as if it were a living thing that wished him harm. By the time they started at his other wrist, the pain was a tongue of flame that licked across the surface of every thought and danced to the tune of his heartbeat. He snarled with each new wound, and with each tug at the vine, and bared his teeth whenever any of the shadows loomed too near. The world shrank to a pinpoint of light, and shadow, and pain.
“Good boy,” Xienpei crooned as the last thorn tore through his skin. “Good boy.”
He drew in long, shuddering breaths, and rolled his shoulders this way and that. The vine dragged at his hide. It itched and burned and stung. They bound him so tightly that he could feel it tear whenever he took a deep breath, so he tried panting through his clenched teeth. It helped, a little.
He had not cried out, and he had not fainted.
He had won.
Xienpei tugged at the vine, and laughed as he threw his head back.
“He is ready.”
Poles were thrust through rings set into the heavy frame, and thick-set lashai of a type Jian had never seen hoisted him into the air like a pig bound for slaughter. He swayed with the movement, and the pain sang to him, and blood flowed down his arms and back as they carried and dragged him from his cell and into the harsh, cold light. They banged the frame into the door, and into the wall, and dropped the back half against some stairs, and every time they did this Jian would growl, and the lashai would laugh. Eventually they tired of this game. He was hauled at last into a wide circular chamber, and the frame thumped onto the floor.
Jian was in a cool, dark room. The air was dry and held a strange smell, like the fungus that grew on rotting logs, or old seaweed, or tea that had begun to go bad. He wondered, between the waves of bright agony, why they had brought him to this empty place. Then the hulking lashai grabbed the frame, and dragged him around, and he saw.
The bodies of three young girls, just shy of womanhood and as much the same as sisters, sat in three high-backed wooden chairs, facing him. Their small feet dangled a hand span from the floor, and their small hands were folded quietly before them.
Their skin was pale; frost pale, sand pale, drowned-in-cold-water pale. A vine of flowering thorn laced in and among and around them. It sat upon the brow of the first sister, coiled around her head like a maiden-chain. Long thorns had pierced her ears, and dried blood fanned down her neck and across her shoulders, shocking against the white nightdress. The vine was bound around the eyes of the second girl like a sleeping mask, so that she wept a sad and sorry trail of tears. It was wrapped around the mouth of the third sister, piercing her tongue and lips and cheeks, holding her mouth open in a long and silent scream.
Jian wondered if this was to be his fate—left to starve and bleed out, his corpse put on display as a warning to others.
Then the dead girls stirred. As one they turned their ravaged faces toward him. The bound-mouth girl hissed through her wicked gag, and Jian found himself twisting, pulling against his bindings regardless of the pain, like a small creature caught in a trap and facing the knife. When they spoke it was with one voice, a sound that pierced and tore at the air just as the thorns pierced and tore at his flesh.
“What is it, Sweetling?” the blind girl asked. “What has they brought us? Is it beautiful?”
“Can you hear its heart beating?” the deaf girl said. She groped for her sister’s hand and, finding it, squeezed. “I
s it squealing? Does it fear us?”
“Aaaaaahhhhhh,” the pierced-tongue girl hissed. Her breath rattled and knacked through the blackthorn like a long-dead wind. “Aaaaaahhhhhhh.”
Jian stared in horror at the three as they twisted and writhed against their cruel bindings, straining to see, to hear, to taste his fear. They were insane, of that he was certain. Their little feet dangled like dead things. The girl with a mouth full of death smiled at him, horribly, and though her mouth cracked and tore, there was no blood.
They are dead, he thought. Soon I will join them.
The notion held surprisingly little fear. His mother was his only family, and she would never know. His dammati would be too busy looking after themselves to mourn overmuch. Xienpei would be furious at his failure, but what more could she do to him? Even pain was not so bad, once he grew used to it. Shaking away the remnants of his fear, he let the pain sink into his skin like sunlight, and drank the stink of his own degradation, letting it nourish him as if it were sweet water.
“He thinks he knows fear,” the first sister said, “but he has not yet heard the drums of war. He will.”
“He thinks he knows pain,” the second sister said, “but he has not yet seen the face of despair. He will. He will.”
“Aaaaaah,” the third sister rattled. “Aaah aaah aaaahhhh.”
“Does he pass?” The voice of Xienpei whispered forth from the shadows, weedy and weak. “Will he do?”
The girls twitched and shook like fish too long in the net, and hissed in unison.
“There is mercy in his voice. There is kindness in his eyes. He tastes of fear, of fear, of human fear. Take it away, away, away. Cleanse it of the human filth.”
“Does he pass?” Her voice was closer now, and Jian shuddered as anticipation ripped through his skin. “Will he do?”
“Strip him, flense him! Flay him, cleanse him! Tear from him the hopes of the past, that he may face the sins of the future with the heart of a child. He will pass. He will do. If he lives. If he lives.” Their voices rose to a mad howl as they chanted in unison.
“Three words thrice shall stay the prince,
“Three names twice shall slay him.
“Three drops once shall bind his heart
“Lest that heart betray him.”
Three dead girls strained and strove against their wicked bindings even as hands laid hold of the vines that were wrapped and twisted and bound round Jian’s body, and ripped them away from his flesh.
Something in Jian’s core tore free.
It used his pain and anger, his fear and fury to shred through the last soft bits of his soul. It reared its head within him, and it roared. It was the roar of the ocean, the song of the sea-thing’s child, the cry of a wounded predator. It jerked and strained at the bonds that held him, and pierced the girls with hot and angry eyes, and urged him to kill. Kill. Tear and rend and savage until the walls ran with blood, till the floor was slick with gore and offal and his ears filled with the screams of his enemies. Until he was the only living thing in this room, this city, this empire.
The second vine was torn from his flesh, and the beast roared with Jian’s mouth. It howled, it sang a song of death and darkness between the stars. The screaming, bloodied muscles of his back bunched, and he strained so that something in his shoulder popped in a flush of wet heat.
The frame shattered.
Chunks and splinters of wood flew in every direction. One corner went end-over-end and struck the blind sister in the temple. It laid her skin open to the bone, and though she did not bleed, she turned her eyeless face toward him and bared her teeth in a mad death’s-mask grin, daring him to make an end of it if he could.
The silver-furred beast that had been Jian staggered forward a few steps, raised himself up on his hind legs, bellowing a challenge. Snarling as his gaze fell on the dead things in front of him, the Issuq shook away the last trace of pain from his transformation and crouched low, preparing to spring upon his enemies and make an end to them.
Pain exploded in his head, the stars between the darkness blinding him.
He fell. He fell forever.
* * *
Jian woke as he landed on a pallet of straw. His teeth clicked together and his arms flopped like a doll’s, waking one shoulder to red agony. He thrashed about like a headless chicken for the space of a dozen heartbeats, until the receding backs of the lashai made sense—and the ceiling over his head, and the bedding beneath him. Never had a straw pallet seemed so soft, or a room so bright and welcoming as these cramped quarters. He was in the Yellow Palace, and the Yellow Palace was in the Forbidden City.
He was weak, and the fear had returned, and he was in more pain than he had ever imagined, back when he was just a boy. He was in one piece, however, stitched and salved and pieced back together like an abused toy, but alive.
Jian, he thought. I am Jian. A boy, not a monster. It was a dream, nothing more, a dream born of pain and fear…
“You made it.”
Jian turned his head, spurring torn muscles to fresh waves of bright pain. Perri lay on his cot, hands folded over his chest, very still.
“How—” He spat dried blood, and tried again. “How many?”
“Just you and me, so far. You and me.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” Perri turned his head slowly. Jian saw that the far side of his face was swaddled in bandages, and that a bright flower of red blossomed where his eye would be. “You?”
“I am alive.” I am Jian. “What happened to you?”
“Same as you, I guess. They put my eye out when I cried. I guess you did not cry.”
“No,” Jian said… “No.”
“I will never cry again. It hurts too much.”
“I am sorry,” Jian offered lamely. Then he blurted out, “Good thing you did not piss yourself, I guess.”
Perri’s mouth dropped open and they stared at each other for a long moment. Jian felt his face flush red and hot.
Then his friend burst into laughter, and Jian could not help but join him. They laughed until their bones turned to water and the air burned their lungs. Until it seemed they would die of it.
TWO
Akari Sun Dragon launched himself into the sky, and the world caught fire.
As the heat of morning kissed the slumbering land a fine mist rose from the sea, to veil the blushing face of Sajani Earth Dragon. It rolled across the outer lands, black and rich, freshly tilled and eagerly waiting the farmer’s seeds. It rose up in the streets like an army of ghosts, undeterred by moat and wall and gate, dancing into silent battle with itself, falling and rising and falling again.
Like a war play put on by a troupe of fools.
Sulema stood high above the city and watched it come to life. The mist could not reach her, any more than the poverty and hunger of the lower ramparts might. Any more than the desert’s thirst.
I am the Heart of the Dragon, she reminded herself, willing her blood and bone to believe it so. I’ve come to this city that I might learn to sing the dragon to sleep, and save the world… She stretched her arms out to either side, allowing the fine spider silk of her gown to billow like wings. I am the world’s only hope for survival, and the dragon’s song courses through my veins. My heart is so light in my breast that it seems as if I might float away with the mist, if not for the crown I wear upon my brow, weighing me down with all the duty of—
The wind blew grit into her eyes.
Sulema ignored it.
Her braids, fashioned by a woman of Atualon and much too tight, pulled at her scalp.
She ignored them.
Her nose itched.
Not even a warrior of the Zeera, trained to discipline since childhood, might ignore an itching nose. Sulema broke free from her pose and scratched. Her shoulders ached, and the small of her back, and the ridiculous golden sandals were torturing her feet.
Daughter of the Dragon, a faint voice sneered. It was her true voice, deep in her war
rior’s heart where neither the magics of her father nor his shadowmancer could touch her. Such horseshit.
“Your Radiance, please,” Cassandre implored for the umpteenth time. “Please hold still.”
“Are you nearly finished?” Sulema sounded petulant, even to herself, as she sighed and resumed her “Most Royal Pose,” though the moment was lost. “My neck hurts.”
“A royal pain in the neck.”
“Excuse me?” She tried to glare at the artist without moving.
Standing at her place by the door, Saskia laughed. An Atualonian guard would not laugh, Sulema thought. She had insisted that if she was to be plagued by an arrogance of guards, they would be known as Divasguard and be styled after Sajani—not golden and cold like the Draiksguard. Then again, a well-disciplined Atualonian guard would have left when I told her to leave, not shadow me night and day like… well, like a shadow. She would not admit, perhaps not even to herself, that the Zeerani warrior’s defiance came as a relief. It was well and good to dream of wielding great power, but not that long ago Sulema had been mucking churra pits. She was not yet ready to rule the world, or even this small corner of it.
Still, she had an image to maintain.
“Pain in the neck?”
“I was suggesting that a massage might be in order later, ne Atu,” the master painter said, her face bland, her charcoals scratching furiously across the sheet of parchment in an attempt to capture an image of the king’s daughter before she moved again. “A good massage works wonders for a… pain in the neck. Please do not scowl, your Radiance.”
Sulema scowled, and at length Cassandre put down her tools. “Well,” she said, “I suppose I have enough to work with, after all. Would you like to see, your Radiance?”
“Do not call me ‘your Radiance’,” Sulema snapped. At the other woman’s crestfallen look, and Saskia’s disapproving glare, she added, “Please. ‘Sulema’ is fine.
“I am sorry,” she continued after a moment. “I just… I do not feel well.” Where was Loremaster Rothfaust’s apprentice with her medicines? Her shoulder had gone numb and cold, and that black tingly sensation was crawling down her arm again. She tried not to think of the fact that the loremaster’s medicines were not working as quickly, or as well, as they had in the beginning.
The Forbidden City Page 3