Unravel the Dusk

by Elizabeth Lim

  “Coward!” I shouted after her, even though I knew she couldn’t hear.

  I clenched my fists, hating myself for believing in Lady Sarnai and for hoping she might do what I could not—I thought she would bring peace to A’landi.

  I was wrong.

  * * *

  • • •

  The only guards I encountered on my way out of the dungeon were dead ones, a trail of bodies that Lord Xina and Lady Sarnai had left behind in their escape.

  Once outside, I fished through my pouch, searching its endless folds for my carpet. I pulled it out and began to unroll it, when—

  “Halt!”

  I spun, whipping my rug open just as the whack of a spear hit the back of my skull.

  My knees buckled.

  Another hit. This time harder.

  My rug slipped from my fingers. I crumpled, and a dark tide washed over the edges of my world.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Three days after the disastrous wedding banquet, the shansen returned—with an army of a thousand men. Their footsteps made the hills quake, and smoke from their cannons grayed the skies. Sensing the earth would bleed once more with war, the heavens wept.

  Rain poured from the skies, falling first like needles, then in sheets. Thunder beat the sky, so loudly it swallowed the sounds of the emperor’s soldiers.

  I pressed my ear against a boarded window.

  Nothing.

  I’d waited all day for the guards to come for me. Every morning since I’d been caught, two of His Majesty’s strongest guards dragged me to the Hall of Dutiful Mending. They forced me to take my breakfast while thirty seamstresses watched, their stomachs growling, their dry throats denied tea or water. They were allowed no food or drink until their work was done.

  Then came the worst part. After my breakfast, the seamstresses were beaten.

  The girls cowered behind their stations. A few whimpered, “Please, Master Tamarin. Help me.”

  Their pleas tore at me, but I schooled my features to remain as still as stone. On the first day, I had tried to stop the guards, but in response they took one of the seamstresses’ hands and broke her fingers. Now I knew a kind word from me would only make things worse. There was nothing I could do to help them.

  Khanujin was punishing them to hurt me. Every girl reminded me of myself: a talented seamstress who was here to provide for someone she loved—her parents, her children, her village. Had I successfully remained the imperial tailor, these women would have been under my supervision. I would have gotten to know each of them like a sister, a mother, a grandmother.

  But that would never happen now.

  Every five lashes, one of the guards barked at me, “Where have Lady Sarnai and Lord Xina gone?”

  All I could do was repeat the truth: “I do not know.”

  So the lashes continued. Ten a day for each seamstress. I forced myself to face the stinging resentment in their eyes, the injustice that they were being punished for my disobedience.

  If not for Bandur’s curse, my heart would have broken. It frightened me how cold I had become.

  Never was a finger lifted against me. Not until Khanujin himself came.

  If not for his imperial robes and golden crown, I would not have recognized him as my emperor. He’d shrunk so much his clothes devoured him. His outer coat bunched up in folds, hiding the dragons embroidered on them, and the train of his jacket trailed him in a puddle. His sleeves skimmed the ground, with so much excess fabric he kept his arms raised so no one would notice.

  But I noticed.

  His frame had thinned to that of a child, his face aged to a man’s twice his years. His hair, once thick and glossy, was now thin as paper, and his lips became downturned, twisted with cruelty.

  “I should have you killed for what you have done.” The words were quiet, but they dripped with acid.

  I hadn’t bowed to him. At that moment, I decided I wouldn’t. So what if I had freed Lady Sarnai and her lover? Without me, the emperor would be dead.

  I met his icy stare. “Then kill me. Be done with it.”

  He flushed with anger, turning purplish red, and he slapped me.

  My head jerked back, more from shock than from the strength of his blow. I recovered quickly and returned my gaze to the emperor.

  That angered him, and I could tell he was about to strike me again.

  “You are afraid,” I challenged him. “Your ministers have noticed the change in you, and your enemies in court, the ones that used to fear you, now plot against you. You know your throne is in danger. Even if the shansen weren’t a threat, someone from within would overthrow you. Betray you.”

  “Speak another word and I will have your tongue cut out.”

  “You won’t,” I taunted. “You need me. You cannot lead A’landi looking like—”

  “Like this?” Khanujin barked, pointing at his face and making a grotesque expression. “The shansen brings his army to my gates. We are at war, and I will lead no matter how I appear.”

  Desperation leaked from his voice. Despite his bravado, he knew A’landi wouldn’t follow him like this. Not when he looked more like a ruthless child than the benevolent ruler everyone had been deceived into revering. I nearly felt for him. Maybe some part of him did care for our country.

  “You won’t win against him. Not without my help. I can restore Edan’s enchantment. I can make you what you once were.” As soon as I’d uttered the words, I stopped. Where were they coming from? I didn’t know how to restore the emperor’s enchantment. But I couldn’t stop. I spoke as if possessed.

  You can, Sentur’na. We will help you.

  I clenched my jaw, willing the voices to go away. The effort cost me my calm. My eyes blazed, their scarlet sheen coloring my vision. Khanujin drew a shallow breath; I could tell my appearance unnerved him.

  “What are you?”

  “The dresses give me power. Only me.”

  I refused to say any more.

  “You are no enchanter,” he said, staring at me. “You’re a…a…”

  Demon? I lifted my pendant, pinching open the walnut slightly so it shone with the power of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  Was it a demon’s amulet? I still couldn’t bring myself to believe it was. Its power seemed to weigh heavier on me every day, not fighting against the darkness inside me but not embracing it either. Yet.

  “I harness the power of Amana,” I said, though the words clung to my throat, feeling only half true. “Her magic is even greater than Edan’s. How else do you think I defeated the shansen?”

  “You are the reason the wedding fell apart,” Khanujin growled, but he made no more threats. I could see from how my pendant drew his eyes that I’d tempted him.

  He believed me.

  “Give up your search for the Lord Enchanter,” I said, seizing the silence. “His oath to you is broken, and he is powerless. In return, I will help you.”

  He gave me a glare so withering it would have sent any of his ministers onto his knees, quivering with fear.

  At last he said, “If you are successful, I will consider clemency for your family. But not for the Lord Enchanter.”

  “I’ll need the pouch your men took from me,” I said, pushing forward. “Everything inside will aid me with the enchantment. And I’ll need fabric enough to make a new set of robes.”

  “A cloak,” he decided. “You will enchant a cloak for me. Have it ready by dawn. If it is not, I will have a seamstress killed for every hour longer it takes.”

  The doors slammed shut behind him. Minutes later, a guard barged into my room and threw my pouch at my feet.

  When I looked inside, all I glimpsed was my scissors and my sketchbook. Panic rose in me, until I turned the pouch’s soft leather inside out. The meteorite dagger tumbled out, along with my carpet, the
mirror, and Edan’s flute.

  I hugged the pouch to my chest, sighing with relief.

  I’d barely returned everything into the pouch when one of the older seamstresses arrived. Her back was hunched as if it’d been recently whipped, and she wouldn’t look at me.

  In her arms was a bundle of material and threads with which I was to make His Majesty’s garment.

  “I’m sorry,” I wanted to say before she left, but the words wouldn’t part from my lips.

  I worked through the afternoon, fashioning a cloak with a gold-inlaid hood, then embroidering a dragon onto the back of the garment.

  But how to restore the emperor’s former glory to him? I did not have any more magic from my journey—no more tears of the moon or laughter of the sun—to weave into the garment.

  Even my scissors would conjure no magic on his behalf.

  “Amana, help me,” I whispered, praying over and over.

  She did not heed my plea. My plight, to sew an enchanted cloak for the emperor, was not one worthy of the mother goddess’s attentions. The pendant around my neck remained still, the dresses silent.

  Even my scissors did not hum. What was I to do?

  You know precisely what magic will bring the power you need to restore Khanujin.

  My head snapped up. I reached for my meteorite dagger, raising it at the shadows slinking across the floor. I half expected to see Bandur there, his laugh echoing against the walls.

  But there was no one. No one but the demon inside me.

  My fingers tightened around the dagger’s hilt.

  “Jinn,” I whispered. The veins of meteorite on the blade gleamed to life. As before, touching the stone edge stung. But this time, the blade was warm instead of cool. This time, my fingertips flinched at the pain—as if tiny thorns had bitten them.

  I studied the double-edged weapon, stroking the iron half, then touching the meteorite side and laying my fingers flat against the stone.

  “Don’t use the amulet,” Edan had warned me. “The more you rely on its magic, the harder it will become for you to resist the change.”

  But if I didn’t, the shansen would win. A’landi would be lost.

  Had Lady Sarnai stayed, things would be different. But it was left to me. I had to fight the shansen alone.

  “I have to protect A’landi,” I murmured to myself.

  My pendant thrummed against my chest, its light writhing and boiling as if Amana’s children within—the sun, the moon, and the stars—sensed that I was trying to summon a demon.

  I removed the pendant from my neck and set it on the ground. My body gave a sudden heave, my pulse quickening as Amana’s strength left me.

  I wrapped my hand around the sharp edge of the blade and whispered, “Edan, forgive me.”

  A hot flash of pain cut off my breath. I opened my hand slowly, taking in the thin line of blood arcing across my palm. The color was bright against my skin, but as it seeped out of the wound into the loose lines of my palm and settled there, it darkened like black ink.

  Demon’s blood.

  In shock, I accidentally closed my hand over the dagger again. The pain was worse this time, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

  Angrily, I flung the dagger to the side, my hand now oozing with dark, shadowy blood.

  That’s it, my demon urged. Don’t fight it. Use it.

  I raised my fist above the emperor’s cloak and squeezed. A few drops were enough for the silk to become awash with the darkest black, the color of a velvet night. My demon’s blood shimmered into the veins of the garment, infusing its fibers with a forbidden enchantment that I hoped would be strong enough to save A’landi.

  I pulled back my hand, wrapping my cut with a scrap of cloth.

  I prayed I hadn’t gone too far, muttering aloud: “I’m still me. I’m still Maia.”

  You’re not finished, my demon prodded. Seal the darkness inside the cloak.

  My fingers shaking, I touched my pendant to Emperor Khanujin’s cloak. The light from the walnut, still writhing, ricocheted off the stone walls around me as I began to focus it on a spot of blood, already sinking deeper into the cloth, a stain that would not stop spreading.

  Dark shadows enfolded the pendant’s two walnut shells and the glass crack in the center, painting the entire piece black. The darkness lingered for a long second before it vanished, and my pendant was restored to how it’d been before.

  Inside me, the voices of Lapzur whispered triumphantly, Sentur’na, Sentur’na—our guardian.

  You are coming home.

  At last.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By nightfall, the earth trembled no more. The heavens ceased their weeping, and the sky god painted his canvas the purple-blue of an iris in bloom. But beneath his strokes of twilight, the acrid smell of cannon fire thickened the air, and swords clanged against the wind.

  After sundown, the shansen’s army breached the city walls and began their march up the hill to the Autumn Palace. By morning, the war would be at the palace gates.

  It was during this eerie interlude, just before dawn, that the emperor summoned me to his war council. He wanted his cloak.

  Something told me I might never return to my room, so I brought my pouch, slung over my shoulder. I made it ten paces into the imperial audience chamber before a minister snatched the cloak from my arms and handed it to the emperor.

  Khanujin held it up. The hem draped down the wide carpeted steps leading to his throne. The cloak’s creamy marigold silk shimmered in the young sunlight, the bold threads of the dragon I’d embroidered a sharp complement to the black brocade embedded into the fabric—dyed by my demon magic.

  “It is done?” he asked me. A hint of precaution colored the question.

  “Yes.”

  With a grunt of satisfaction, Khanujin stood and tossed the cloak over his shoulders. Almost at once, the wilt in his shoulders squared, his hollow cheeks and sunken figure broadening until he stood tall and full, and his sable hair, swept under the hood, luminous.

  A miraculous transformation. All the ministers drew sharp breaths and fell to their knees. A small smile curled across Khanujin’s lips. The same smile that had once enthralled me—had made me worship him as the most magnificent ruler of all kingdoms—now made me loathe him.

  “Now we are ready for battle,” he said, raising his sword. “Let us claim victory over the shansen.”

  The ministers fawned over him, praising Amana. Even the minister of war, who had looked weary and anxious only moments before, declared the battle all but won.

  “Master Tamarin, you shall come with us.”

  I jerked up, ears ringing in shock. Outside, lightning flashed, and the rain had started again, rattling against the roof tiles.

  “Our army is in position. We ride now.”

  I didn’t struggle when his soldiers threw an armored vest meant for someone twice my size over my tunic and jostled me onto a horse.

  Khanujin, too, was in armor, the cloak I’d sewn draped over his shoulders. Soldiers and servants cheered him as he passed, even as the gates rumbled with the shansen’s men trying to get in.

  “Son of Heaven, bring us victory!” they shouted. Rain beat their temples and streamed down their cheeks. “Khagan of Kings, destroy the traitor!”

  Red banners flailed against the wind, embroidered dragons flying among the troops. My horse moved so fast to keep up with the others I hardly noticed we were heading toward the gate, and into battle.

  When I heard the first explosions of cannon fire, I mistook it for thunder. But thunder did not hurl stones and tiles into the air like fireworks or make trees erupt in brilliant plumes of black and amber smoke. Every subsequent burst rattled my heart.

  My demon sight flickered, making my eyes burn as it soared beyond the Autumn Palace to the valley bel
ow. A slab of wood, a sign for what had once been an apothecary, clattered from a broken roof. The entire town had been destroyed. Ash rained from the sky, and corpses—mostly civilians, whose brows were still wrinkled with fear—littered the roads.

  My head hurt. So this was war—this was why Keton woke up in the middle of the night, screaming and sobbing, after he’d returned home. The ache in my heart, which had dulled since Bandur had claimed me, flared for just an instant. And with it, the old Maia.

  A spark of hatred ignited in me.

  Outside the palace walls, the shansen’s banner flew, the tiger’s snow-white fur glistening against jade-green silk. With a shudder, I thought of how the warlord had changed on the night of the banquet. How his demon’s amulet had smoldered, smoke billowing in the form of a tiger before it devoured him.

  Not it. She.

  Gyiu’rak.

  Arrows spat up from the palace ramparts, arcing above me in a neat line, so high they looked like dots, and a flock of birds bolted at the approach of the shansen’s army.

  The warlord and his men raised their shields and charged through the hail of arrows. Men fell on both sides, and more arrows flew. Then the gates roared open, and the emperor and his legions spilled outside.

  The emperor’s soldiers barreled forward at the enemy, horses’ teeth gnashing as they galloped past me. Forgotten, I kept to the shadows of the gates, watching the shansen and his sons cut down every man who dared get in their way, watching Khanujin glow with the enchantment from my cloak as he exhorted his men to fight and die for him.

  But it wasn’t the emperor or the shansen who captured my attention: it was a woman among the warlord’s ranks—one whom I had never seen before, mounted on an ivory steed.

  A smile graced her lips as she rode serenely into battle. Even on horseback, she appeared taller than was natural, her sinewy limbs bare, a cloak sailing behind her shoulders. Long white hair striped with black at the temples flashed behind her, rippling like the pearlescent armor she wore over her wrists and torso. Like Emperor Khanujin, she was beautiful and strange, so mesmerizing some of the soldiers stopped to stare at her. The bile rose to my throat when I saw the gleaming claws handling her horse’s reins, the sharp teeth behind her smile—more feral than serene as she drew close—and her eyes.