by Matt Larkin
Hands on hips, Ratna spun to face Chandi. “And why not? I’m older than you—”
Chandi snickered. Ratna was only a few months older.
“—and my father could gain a powerful alliance.”
“With little Mahesa?”
Ratna shrugged without taking her hands from her hips. “Not so little anymore.” She smirked at Chandi’s raised eyebrow. “House Indu has fair influence. And he has a nice smile, too.”
A boyish grin, maybe. How many nights had they sat in these mountains as girls, dreaming of love and their futures? Mahesa had been chasing Ratna since they were children, exploring the mountains and rainforests around Bukit. Or, more accurately, Chandi had been exploring and dragging the other two along with her. It made her smirk.
A solitary figure trudged up the cliff path while the rest of the returning soldiers took the mountain road to Bukit. Anusapati’s sarong trailed behind him as he ascended the slope. His breath came evenly despite the steep hike.
Ratna pinched Chandi’s arm and flashed a wicked grin before wandering down the road back to the city. Chandi patted down her hair and brushed the brambles from her sarong before Anu could crest the rise.
Let him come to you.
Anusapati caught her eyes as he stepped onto the plateau. Chandi threw herself into his arms before she knew what she was doing. Head on his chest, she tried to think of words to say, but nothing came.
“A fine homecoming,” Anusapati said, pushing her away to arm’s length at last. His eyes darted hungrily around her face, then lower. “Could be finer, even.”
Chandi hesitated. “We’ll be wed soon enough, love.”
Anusapati grunted and stepped back. “So why wait? A wedding is a simple thing. We could do it now. Tonight. I’ve returned. All I should have had will be mine.”
“Let the people grieve their losses, then we can arrange a proper wedding feast. Once Rahu says it’s time, then you’ll have it all. I promise,” she said, trying to look sultry.
Anusapati shrugged away from her hand. “Rahu? The War King will tell me when I can have what’s mine? Oh, but that’s not how we do things. No, no. The strongest rule the Lunars.” He chuckled under his breath, spinning around, then thumped his chest. “The strongest. Why should I bow before Rahu?”
Chandi backed away, shaking her head. What was he saying? No one challenged Rahu. The War King had been the unquestioned ruler of the Lunars since before Chandi and Ratna were even born.
“The fool sent us to Puradvipa with little plan.” Anu waved his hands around in the air. “He started the war with the Solars. But I’ll finish it. Unite all the Skyfall Isles under Chandra. Under me. With you at my side, my queen.”
Chandi felt her lip tremble and struggled to bring it under control, shutting her eyes for a moment. This couldn’t be happening. They all heard the stories, but it didn’t really happen, did it? Not to him. “I’ll make preparations for … for the evening, my love. I, uh … Wait for me here a phase or so.”
“Yes, my queen. Prepare everyone for my return. The Voice of Chandra has come to call upon his children.”
Without taking her eyes from him, Chandi backed away from the plateau and down the path to Bukit. Only when he was out of sight did she turn to face the city. It had grown darker, colder. Empty, despite the people out at the night market.
The Lunar capital lay nestled just below the mountains, in southeastern Swarnadvipa, the westernmost of the Skyfall Isles. Stilts supported the houses in the lower city near the marsh—the Loghouses, people called them. The palaces in the hills had no need of stilts. The saddle roofs came into view first, like the horns of a great beast rearing its head in the night. One ready to devour the unwary.
The largest sat highest on the hill, Rahu’s palace. Chandi struggled to remain impassive as the gate guards waved her on. Much as she wanted to bury her face in her pillow and hide in her room, she went instead to the courtyard. Rahu was there, as expected, practicing his Silat by the fishpond. His guard dog looked up at her approach. She was one of the few it never growled at. Rahu had bought the animal days after Chandi’s and Ratna’s mothers died, as if it could take their places. As if anything could.
“Chandi,” Rahu said, without looking at her. “I thought you went to meet the ships?” His venom was probably as much at the failure of his men as at their deaths. Rahu was not given to sentiment, but any loss could send him into isolated melancholy or apoplexy in equal measure. He was not a leader who tolerated anything less than success. In this war, it meant he was never happy.
Chandi nodded, but didn’t speak. Her uncle turned to her, half scowling. “Anusapati,” she began, then clenched her eyes. “He changed.”
Rahu tapped a finger on his lips, but said nothing.
“I think he … he may have used the Moon Blessings too much.”
She didn’t say the word “lunatic.” She didn’t have to.
Rahu watched her, expressionless, before speaking. “Are you strong enough to do what needs to be done? Can you serve your family before your own wants?”
Sweet Chandra, he wanted her to do it? Was this just another test? She could almost read the accusation on his face. She had wanted to bring him into their family, after all. She had chosen him. Rahu could certainly deal with it himself, but by forcing Chandi to face him he must think she’d prove herself.
“Well?” he asked, when she hesitated.
Chandi bowed, hot tears staining her face, then turned before Rahu could see them. “I serve my family.”
She stopped at her room, pausing before the toyaks hanging on the wall. Malin had given her the rattan fighting sticks when she was ten, had trained her to master Silat. As a Moon Scion, ordinary warriors didn’t stand a chance in battle with her. Last year, she’d taken six at the same time. Her father had beamed with pride, and even her uncle had graced her with a rare smile.
Anusapati had defeated ten at once.
Chandi ran her thumb over the rhino statuette he’d given her, before leaving it on the dresser. A chilling numbness had settled over her limbs and she could barely contain the trembling in her chest. Anu.
He had given her the rhino before he left, had asked for her hand. And she had dreamed about his return. About the palace they would build, the children they would raise. It was so real. More real than this.
She tucked the toyaks into the back of her sarong.
As she left Rahu’s palace, she saw Anu walking toward it. Was it too much to ask that he might have waited on the plateau like she told him?
“You’ve been crying,” he said as she drew near.
“Because I love you.” She blew out a hard breath and drew her toyaks. “They always say the Moon Blessings have a price. Hard to believe, sometimes. Until it comes to this.”
It must have been the battle. He’d pushed his Blessings beyond the limits to live through it and they had taken his mind, turned him lunatic. The Solars had forced him to it. Had taken her love away from her, had forced her to destroy that which she most cherished.
Anusapati laughed, but where the laugh held humor one moment, it turned to wrath the next. Chandi recoiled from the fire in his eyes as he assumed a fighting stance. “You dare stand against me, beloved? Then come.”
Chandi opened herself to the energies nestled within, drew her Moon Blessing of Potency. Anu wouldn’t hesitate to use his to the limit. She would need every drop of the strength and speed they’d grant her if she was to do this. And how could she? A pit had opened in her stomach—in her very soul. This was a nightmare. It could not be real. She just had to press forward and she would wake up, she’d find something, anything else. Anything but this. “Forgive me.”
She launched a series of lightning-fast strikes.
Anu dodged each in turn, then caught her wrist. With a twist he sent a jolt of pain through her whole arm and into her shoulder. One stick fell from her grasp. Before she could react, his elbow caught her across the face and sent her spinning through
the air.
Her other stick skidded across the ground. With Blessing drawn, she could fight through the pain. As Anu approached, Chandi pushed off the ground in a reverse handspring. She landed with her legs around his shoulders. In a single motion she swung both hands at his temples.
He jerked his arms up, parrying the attack. She kicked off his chest and flew through the air, then drew her Gliding Blessing to shift her gravity to the nearest palm tree. She landed on its trunk and stood there, parallel to the ground.
Anu ran and leapt toward the tree, so Chandi jumped to another. Each move she made, he matched. She ran up the tree and leapt to the roof of a nearby house. Her foot slipped. Too steep, even with her gravity adjusted.
Her love launched himself even higher, landing farther up the roof. He must have cleared twenty-five feet on that leap. A crowd had gathered beneath them, but no one would interfere with a Moon Scion duel.
She had started this. Now, one of them would have to finish it.
“Betrayal has its price, too,” Anu said, launching a string of blows with his hands and elbows. Chandi blocked again and again, losing ground as he pushed her toward the edge. She dropped to her back and caught his leg between hers, then kicked her legs together. Anu tumbled down atop her. Chandi connected with several body blows before he got a grip on her. She heard ribs snap from the force of her punches, but in his lunacy, he seemed not to feel it.
He rose to his feet with one hand on her shoulder and one on her thigh. Chandi braced herself, but he didn’t hurl her off the roof as she expected. He slammed her into it.
Splinters of wood and straw cascaded around her as she plummeted through the roof and into the house. A shattered support post ripped open her shoulder, sending a wave of fire through her. And then she hit the floor. On impact everything went black for an instant and she lost her Potency Blessing. Without it, the agony hit her full force.
Gasping, trying to get air back in her lungs, she drew her Potency again as Anu leapt down beside her. Her vision swam, but she forced herself to her feet. Forced herself back into a fighting stance.
Once, twice, she blocked his strikes, and then he had her in a grapple. He was too strong. Every twist, countered. Every blow, stopped. Her head was locked. She couldn’t breathe.
Drawing her Potency Blessing as hard as she could, Chandi launched a hook to his kidney. Again. Again. Anu staggered and dropped her, sputtering and spitting blood.
Chandi fell hard. She had only begun to rise when he had a hand on her again. He tossed her through the bamboo wall as though she weighed nothing.
Chandi hit the street and rolled once from the impact. For an instant, her muscles wouldn’t respond. He was coming for her. Rage lined his face. Lunacy had broken through any inhibitions that might have limited his use of his Blessings. Even if she could have beaten him in a fair fight, she was going to die now. The realization hit her with uncommon certainty. And part of her welcomed it. The nightmare would be over.
And still. Still she couldn’t give up.
One of her toyaks rested nearby. She staggered toward it, clutching her sides.
“Chandi!”
Everyone turned at the sound. Already, Malin had torn open his baju and tossed it aside. Well, almost no one would interfere in a Moon Scion duel.
Malin always protected her—her and Ratna—ever since they were children. Protected her from her own folly, like this, challenging a man she couldn’t hope to defeat, to prove Chandra-knew-what to Rahu.
The Macan Gadungan’s muscles rippled as his form shifted from human to tiger. His jaw elongated and fur sprouted all over his body. Only the eyes remained the same. He shifted as he ran, kicking off his sarong.
Chandi barely had time to rise or sort through her thoughts. She’d be shamed if he interfered … and dead if he didn’t.
Anu turned to face his newest attacker. He twisted, dodging the lunge, and smashed his fist into the weretiger’s jaw. Anu might have continued to dance, might have held off Malin. But Chandi’s blows to his kidney had slowed him.
Chandi saw the end coming, but Anu never seemed to. Malin reared on his hind legs and sunk his claws into the lunatic’s shoulders. The tiger’s jaws closed on the man’s throat and his great weight bore Anu down.
Chandi fell to her knees as her beloved at last stopped twitching. She didn’t see Malin shift back. She didn’t see him retrieve his sarong. Only when he hefted her in his arms did she look at him. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth and covered his face, his neck, even his chest.
Malin was taking her to the infirmary, some part of her knew. The Macan Gadungan was always there, had always been there, serving her family. “Astral Shore,” she stammered.
“The battle broke him,” her bodyguard said, without slowing or looking at her.
The Solars had driven him to lunacy.
Chandi wanted to look back at Anu, to reach for him. It wasn’t real. Rangda damn Malin for this. Damn the Solars. Damn her, she should have been the one to fall. And why didn’t the earth just open and swallow everything? It ought to end it all. And she couldn’t look, couldn’t open her eyes, could only bury her face in Malin’s bloody chest and weep.
Somewhere, deep inside, she reached a hand toward Anu. Toward the children she still saw herself bearing for him. If she could only just hold on to that. It could not be gone.
It could not.
CHAPTER TWO
The ravages of this war had cost everyone so very much. Ratna sat by the fishpond in the Hill Palace’s courtyard, cradling poor Chandi in her arms. Her cousin had wept until she was empty and now she simply trembled like a girl who’d had her soul eaten by a leyak or some other foul denizen of Kahyangan, the Spirit Realm. When Ratna had been a child, so long ago now, her mother had held her like this, running her fingers through Ratna’s hair in the way she now did for Chandi. She could only hope it was some comfort, since despite wracking her mind for a phase, she found no words to offer.
Nor, regretfully, could she afford to direct her undivided attention to her bereaved cousin. Ratna’s and Chandi’s fathers had been in meetings with the heads of the other Moon Scion Houses for days. Twenty-seven Houses ruled the Lunar Empire, at least in theory. Now, however, several Houses had been eradicated and others near enough so. And since the beginning of the Fourth War twenty years back, her father had been named War King. Of course, that might well have been the reason he started this war way back then, simply to advance his political position. Their House, House Soma, was small compared to many of the others.
But Rahu was the undisputed master of Silat throughout the Lunar Empire, and, more importantly, he and Ratna’s mother had created the two Jadian bloodlines. The Macan Gadungan and Buaya Jadian—weretigers and werecrocodiles—were meant to change everything, to be able to finally break the Arun Guard who had protected the Solars for the past six centuries. Giving the Jadian to the other Houses as servants, protectors and spies and assassins, had proved a stroke of genius on her father’s part, enough to sway any doubters to his favor. Except it turned out to be not nearly enough to overthrow the mighty Solar Empire that ruled most of the Skyfall Isles.
Still, the Solars had been roused to war, and it was far too late for the other Houses to turn on House Soma and risk losing their precious Jadian. Ratna had no illusions about that—the werebeasts were all that let Rahu maintain his grip on the Lunars.
A slave brought another plate with two steaming cups of tea. Since Chandi hadn’t touched the last two cups, the slave simply carried them away. Ratna ignored the man and continued stroking her cousin’s hair.
Chandi was a Silat master herself, trained by Malin. The Maitian had tried to teach Ratna too, but she’d had little aptitude for fighting and at least enough wisdom to recognize the fact. In theory, the warrior caste was the top of Lunar society and Moon Scions, as the ultimate rulers, were meant to be warriors. In practice, no mere mortal questioned a descendant of Chandra, regardless of how good—or poor—that S
cion might be at Silat.
“There’s hot tea here,” Ratna said, once again pointing out the painfully obvious. Not that she could blame Chandi for her ennui. She couldn’t even imagine how she’d feel if she’d been forced to kill someone she loved. Or at least be involved in doing so.
Chandi grunted as if in pain, saying nothing.
Ratna sighed and shook her head. The poet prince Bandung had once written that time alone could heal some wounds and that any other salve applied might well enflame them. Of course, Bandung had also written that some few wounds ran so deep that only a return to the Wheel of Life could assuage their pain.
At last the sore phase came and the moon rose. With it, the slaves brought fresh ketupat dumplings, fruit, and satays. All the things Ratna had ordered. Chandi just shook her head.
“You have to eat,” Ratna chided. “This cannot continue forever.”
Chandi sighed and pulled away from Ratna but, blessedly, did accept a stick of satay.
The girl had eaten a bite when Malin slipped into the courtyard. The weretiger made so little noise when he moved that Chandi jumped at his sudden appearance. Indeed, if he hadn’t walked right into her line of sight, Ratna might not have seen their bodyguard at all, despite his impressive build. He had to be in his forties, but he could have passed for not much older than Ratna’s own twenty years, especially with his long hair and clean-shaven face.
Malin knelt in front of Chandi and cupped her chin in his thick hand, forcing her to look up at him. “I know it hurts.”
Chandi jerked her chin away from him. “What the fuck do you know about it?”
Malin scowled. “You are not the first person to lose the one you loved.” The Macan Gadungan sighed, looking over at Ratna, who shrugged. As children Malin had told them many stories of his days sailing the South Sea before he came to the Skyfall Isles. He’d always refused to tell tales of romance, but Ratna suspected he had lost someone along the way, as much because of what he would not say as what he did.