by Devin Madson
As I descended the stairs, my gaze slid to Rah, mounted upon Jinso. At this distance there was no sign of the night’s fatigue on his face as he laughed at something said to him, sending my heart fluttering. I berated myself for looking at all. I had an army to lead. A minister to placate. People to rule. The handsome smile of a foreign warrior and Tor’s words ought not to be taking up so much space in my mind. But they were. Filling my heart and making me weak and foolish.
I began to tell myself Emperor Kin would never have suffered such thoughts, only to halt abruptly upon the second last step. But of course he had. Why else spend a lifetime trying to destroy my mother for the crime of loving another man? She had thrown it all right back, but no matter what he did he was always righteous and pragmatic, while she was the empire’s mad bitch. The injustice of it stole my breath, and for a moment I stood alone though I was surrounded by people, my hands clenching to fists for a rage that didn’t belong only to me, but to many.
Even I had treated her like she was mad for crossing a line she’d been goaded to all her life.
Around me final preparations spun on, I the still centre of a whirlwind. Near the gate, Minister Manshin was giving orders. Beside him, General Moto was in conversation with a commander whose name I did not know, but the pair looked at ease in their positions at the head of my army. These were all men who knew their places because their places had been carved for them by dozens, hundreds of men before them. My ancestors had carved a place for Tanaka, but not for me.
I had to unstick my feet from the step and force myself forward, holding on to the bundle of new thoughts to examine later. And for the first time I felt the full weight of my womanhood as I carried every one of the women my family had ignored out into the courtyard with me.
A horse had been saddled for me, and General Ryoji waited beside it, his own roan mare tossing her head in impatience to get moving. “Your Majesty,” he said, totally unaware that as I mounted, I saw him with fresh eyes. This man who had been loyal to my mother, had helped her cultivate personal support, whatever it had cost him. The court might have said she was using him, controlling a weak man with a love he couldn’t let go, but I had seen too much to believe it.
“General,” I said, settling into my saddle, the horse lively beneath me. “You told me back at Achoi you never meant to love my mother as much as you did, but if it was not love that started it all, what was it?”
He looked around and back at me, brows raised. “This hardly seems the best time or place to have this conversation, Your Majesty.”
“I’m not sure if there will ever be a good time to have it.”
Again he looked around, but no one was close enough to overhear. “I… we shared the same ideals. And the same anger. I think… the anger was the most important part. A sharing of hurts with someone when you can’t let anyone else see them is a precious thing. First anger, then hurts, then honesty, and you would do anything for this person.”
“Anything?”
“Anything except the one thing you know they will regret asking you to do when they calm down.”
She had stood on the steps and ordered her guards to cut through me if it meant getting to Emperor Kin. Just as she had looked through me again and again, focussing her energy and her plans and her love on Tanaka. But little by little, I was beginning to understand why.
“Thank you, General,” I said. “For that choice as well as your answer.”
“I… am glad to be of service, Your Majesty.”
“Now what’s this?” General Moto said to no one in particular. “Looks like trouble.”
The inner gates sat open, and a guard was running toward us across the band of grass separating Kiyoshio’s double walls.
“It does look like trouble,” Ryoji said as we pushed our horses through the mass of gathered soldiers. Many stopped talking to watch, and by the time I reached Minister Manshin by the gates, all eyes were upon the guard’s approach. Manshin barely had time to say “Your Majesty” before the man stood doubled over before us, heaving breaths. For a few moments he couldn’t speak, and I wanted to shake the words out of him.
“Majesty,” he said, having regained the power to gasp if not talk. “There are—townspeople—at the—city gates. Some here too. Shouting. They want you—to answer a charge of—treason, Your Majesty.”
“Are the Koali brothers with them, by any chance?” Manshin said.
“I—believe so, Minister.”
Minister Manshin looked my way, his expression as close to an I told you so as he would allow himself.
“Of what treason am I accused?”
The still-puffing man bowed. “Of killing the rightful—duke of Syan, Majesty. As chosen by—Emperor Kin.”
I could have railed that I was their empress and it was me they ought to listen to, that I was the last Otako, that the empire was mine by right, but the divine right of Otakos had died with Emperor Kin, and Kisia would be better for it, for having a ruler with something more than their name to give. The thought that imperial bloodlines were outdated and unnecessary had been brewing in my mind since Jie had said anyone could be an emperor now, but we were at war. Pulling the empire back together required more than a single, glorious win on the battlefield such as any general could achieve. It needed a thousand tiny stitches, like the mending of a torn robe. Each stitch a relationship, a conversation, a moment of compassion and attention, a determination to improve the lives of my people to build a more cohesive, united whole. Mother had long ago taught me how to show people the face they wanted to see, how to talk to people the way they wished to be spoken to, and it was that ability that would be needed here, not the brute strength of a general.
“We will ride out and meet them.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, Majesty?” Manshin said.
“Talking seems wiser than hiding. You have a better idea?”
“Not to hand.”
We shared a wry grimace, and it was reassuring to find myself once again in accord with him, however temporary it might prove. “If we march out at full strength, hopefully no one will be mad enough to try to stop us, whatever Governor Koali says.”
Manshin nodded. “Very good, Your Majesty. Shall we?”
I tucked the letter Tor had written safely into my sash while Manshin moved away shouting orders. We were marching out. Tor must have been nearby because shouts soon rose in Levanti too, and the space filled with the jostle and bustle of hooves and footsteps anxious to be moving.
Rather than look back and risk catching sight of Rah again, I walked my horse toward the open gate. The stretch of grass between walls was empty, but beyond the gates I could imagine people filling the street. Shouting, the guard had said. I knew that sort of shouting.
“We’re as ready to go as we’ll ever be,” Manshin said, returning to my side.
“Then let’s go.”
General Ryoji fell in on one side, Minister Manshin on the other as we made our way toward the outer gates. Down the muddy grass slope, snatches of distant sounds cutting through the morning. A short, high shout that could have been part of a chant. A low, rhythmic thumping. I forced myself to keep my head up and my gaze forward, to not grip the reins too tight though I feared what awaited us more than I had feared facing the Chiltaen army at Risian.
A sliver of daylight appeared between the gates as we drew close, and with a frightening inevitability they began to yawn open like jaws preparing to swallow us.
Noise rushed through. People clogged the street, shouting, a mass of blue and green and brown robes and tunics, some wearing storm cloaks, others with their heads bare. A persimmon flew toward us, followed by another. Some yellowing cabbages came next. General Ryoji caught one, leaving another to smash upon the wall above us and rain wilted leaves.
General Ryoji ordered a pair of his guards to lead the way and the people parted to let them through, though barely. They went on crowding close, shouting and jeering and spitting their hate at us. I kept my hea
d up and breathed. Just breathed. There was nothing else I could do, nothing I could think beyond breathing and letting the horse carry me on toward the city gates.
The crowd followed us all the way. Fruit and clots of mud flew around us, splattering my armour, but I was a daughter of the Dragon Empress. I had been born to wear the proud mask she had always donned. I retreated behind it, thinking of how often she had worn pride because the only other option had been to break, and I missed her then as I hadn’t before. What a moment to feel close to her for the first time in my life.
“The crowd is thickening,” General Ryoji said. “Keep close.”
We were getting near the city gates, but our pace had slowed to a crawl. There were city guards amongst the crowd now, not shouting and throwing their fists into the air like the people but standing still like the threat they were.
“Careful, Majesty.”
The gates were open as they had been when we’d returned in the predawn light, but with the wall of people crushed into the road between us and freedom, they may as well have been locked. And sitting upon horses in front of them were the Koali brothers. They sat in the centre of their own army and looked so damned pleased with themselves. Smug enough that their faces ought to have peeled away in sheer disgust at being involved.
“Stand aside for your empress,” Minister Manshin shouted over the furore as the guards ahead of us were jostled, their horses backing.
“We will not stand aside until your empress answers for her crimes.”
The crowd quietened to hungry little whispers that gnawed at my skin and picked at my attention.
“The empress is the law.”
“Your empress wears no authority. She has not been crowned. Has taken no oath. And in the absence of an emperor upon the throne, our only allegiance is to our lord, Grace Bahain, and his noble family. The very lord your false empress slayed in the night, a crime against the authority of our last true emperor, Kin Ts’ai.”
“A lord who has allied himself to the very barbarians who tore through our lands?”
“And your empress has not?” He pointed past us. “Who rides with you? Whose blades struck our lord down?”
The crowd shouted their agreement, pressing in against my guards. Something flew past my eyes to smash upon Ryoji’s upraised arm.
“Empress Miko Ts’ai is the chosen heir of Emperor Kin Ts’ai,” Minister Manshin shouted. “It is treason to refute that. Stand aside.”
“We stand aside when your false empress stands down.”
My horse backed as a shout rose from the crowd. “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” None of the people were armed, but they pushed and shoved at my guards, edging us back. “Traitor! Traitor!” Like a pack of hungry wolves, they kept closing in. Nipping. Growling. More fruit bounced off my shoulder. Something hit the back of my head, sending pain tearing up into my skull.
I tightened my grip on my reins, knowing I shouldn’t but unable to stop. How could I make them understand that I was trying to fight for them? That they would have a Levanti emperor if they did not let me go?
“My people!” I cried, lifting a hand in hope of being seen and heard above the noise. “My people! I beseech you to listen. I go to fight for you. For Kisia. Against a false, foreign emperor who would take our lands from us.”
Whether they even heard me I couldn’t tell, for still they pressed in, shouting, their faces contorted with anger and a hunger that frightened me.
“Usurper Miko Otako,” Governor Koali shouted over the growing noise. “You are under arrest for the highest treason.”
“Usurper?” The word had bite. So often had northerners used it against Emperor Kin that to hear it again now from the mouths of my people was like the cracking of the earth, yawning our divisions ever wider. How could I unite Kisia when there was such deep, irrational hatred? What stitches could ever be enough to heal a tear that others were determined to keep ripping asunder? These men who took such joy in the destruction of Kisia’s dreams to further only themselves. Grace Bachita had been the same.
As though I stood once more in that throne room, Hacho was in my hand before I thought to draw her, an arrow to her string. I had soared on rage back in Mei’lian, but it was determined righteousness that carried me now. Serving Kisia meant many different things.
“No!” Manshin cried, but the arrow flew. Another was nocked and drawn before the first hit, diving into Governor Koali’s throat. The force threw him back, and he fell from sight beneath the undulating crowd. His brother followed, an arrow in the side of his neck as he turned.
Triumph swelled. Shouts rose. General Ryoji’s mount was jostled toward me as the crowd pressed in, no rhythmic chanting now but an eruption of noise with no single voice. Something hit my back. Another persimmon burst on my horse’s neck, spilling rotten fruit through her mane.
And the moment of soaring joy at having purged Kisia of another danger crashed into the stones. Of course these people could not see what I saw, only the murder of their lords, and they pushed in, shouting and screaming and baying for our blood. The city guards no longer stood still, but drew their weapons, and with the road blocked, there was no way out and no way back.
One of my guards was hauled out of his saddle amid the shouting. The other drew his sword. And in the moment his blade arced down into the crowd, I knew it had been my hands that tore this wound in my empire, a wound I might never be able to fix.
“No!” I cried as the first citizen was cut down, but as with my earlier words it had no effect. No effect but to draw Minister Manshin’s attention amid the chaos.
“Majesty,” he snapped from beside me. “We must push through or stand here to be torn apart. There is no other way now.”
He was right, but I hated him for forcing me to agree. For making me bear the burden of all the blood to come even if I deserved it.
“Cut a path for the empress!” he shouted, and though I could not have heard the drawing of my soldiers’ swords over the noise, I felt it in my soul. The smooth withdrawal of blades from their sheaths like the drawing of a breath, the last moment of calm before the storm.
Before the screaming.
And the blood.
And the death.
19. CASSANDRA
I was sick of being tied up and dragged places, sick of sitting across from men I hated in carriages I couldn’t escape. The bumpy, jolting carriage ride seemed to have become my life now, and I could only be glad Leo, whichever Leo this was, showed no interest in conversing. I might not have been able to sleep had I been in my own body, but in Empress Hana’s it was staying awake that was hard.
I wasn’t sure how many days we were on the road. It was a blur, a nightmare of bumpy roads and bright light flashing through trees and the ever-present memory of Captain Aeneas’s dead, staring eyes.
We had been going to see Miko again.
Despite Leo’s disinterest in conversation, he sent for a doctor every night, weaving different stories about who I was as they looked me over and gave him advice. One bled me. Another gave us a tonic of cloves that burned our tongue. Another suggested sustaining food and wine and rest, and he seemed the wisest of all, but still Leo pressed on rather than stop a proper night at an inn. And bit by bit I sank into exhaustion. I stopped even wanting to have the strength to kill him, and began just wanting to die.
I had begun to wonder if the journey would ever end, or if I had already died and this was my punishment, an eternal afterlife spent jolting along uneven roads with Leo. But one day we did stop. Not just to change horses or eat, but the sort of stop where there’s a grand house and you get half guided, half carried inside, servants bustling. It looked familiar in a way I could not place and did not care to worry about, thinking only that maybe now I could lie down. Could sleep. Could cease waking.
I was led to a small room, the sort kept for a lesser guest or their servants. Enough space for a sleeping mat and a small table and little else, the only window high and narrow up beneath the eave
. But there was a mat against the wall and a bowl of washing water, and I couldn’t find it in myself to care for anything else.
I lay down. I slept. I dreamed, a bright, hot dream, all searing colours and sounds and smells like Kaysa was shouting. But she wasn’t, she was sitting, not drinking though she cupped a tea bowl, listening to a conversation happening behind her.
“She’s here. In the room next to the other assassin.”
I had joined Kaysa for snatches here and there as I dozed the journey away, but not since the night in the army camp had she acknowledged my presence. I wondered where that army was now, whether I was about to find myself in another siege.
“She seems to be extremely unwell. Would you like me to send for a physician?”
“Yes.” Leo, impossible to know which. “I want her alive and well. Fetch someone to her. And make sure she gets served good food.”
“As you say, Your Holiness.”
Kaysa tapped the rim of the tea bowl, watching ripples shift across its surface. None of the doors appeared to be locked, and no one seemed to be watching her. Was she remaining by choice now? Unlike us she had the ability to fight. The ability to run. And had chosen not to.
Why would I? she said, acknowledging my presence. When I finally have the chance to help someone. To make a difference.
To help Leo? He’s a monster, I said.
That’s rich, coming from you, Cassandra. You don’t understand him, but I do.
You’re a convert? Leo isn’t being brought back by God, Kaysa. He hasn’t been given a purpose. He’s dying every time. He is just one of seven brothers.
I know.
What could I say to that? I had been ready to fight over it, to convince her, owning an energy here I lacked in my body. Sleep seemed to diminish its demands.
It’s not because you’re asleep, she said. You haven’t figured it out yet? Haven’t you noticed that Empress Hana never joins you here? It’s always just you and me. She has the strongest connection to her body; when it sleeps, she sleeps, but you aren’t connected to it so your consciousness comes to me.