“That settles the matter,” I said.
“It settles nothing,” Ryia replied. “This is a hollow victory. How long do you think the nation will support a loose, amoral leader?”
“Perhaps long enough to see me dance on your grave.” From the corner of my eyes, I could see Oren-yaro soldiers entering the hall to displace the Ikessar guards.
There was a short period of silence. And then Ryia smiled—a cold smile, one that seemed to affix itself permanently to her face. “Talk to him then,” she said. “He is your husband, after all. The love of your life. Isn’t that right? You’ve no others skulking about the castle grounds?”
I returned the smile, though I could feel myself grow numb at her words. “Search away, Princess Ryia. I don’t know what you think you’ll find, but do let me know when you do. It’ll be nice to be with a man again. Your son was gone for years. Isn’t neglect of duty grounds for absolving a marriage? I’m sure we can find priests who will agree.”
I felt the satisfaction of seeing her look like she wanted to rip my throat with her teeth. Without waiting to see what she had to say, I gestured at Rai, who bowed to his mother before he followed me.
“You shouldn’t antagonize her,” Rai said as soon as we reached the safety of my father’s study.
I slumped down into my father’s chair. “I know she’s your mother…” I started.
Rai sighed. “Believe me, Talyien, that is not what I’m concerned about.” He turned towards the window. The sun was sinking on the horizon. He stroked the curtains, a thoughtful expression drifting over his face. “Thanh is… my son, after all.”
I gave a weak smile. “Didn’t you hear Ozo? The boy cut himself on his sword the first day of training.”
“That’s…”
“He sure as hell didn’t get it from me. I’m not sure how, either. The damn thing was dulled. I was afraid he would drop it on his toe. Your son.” I took a deep breath. “Through and through.”
Rai didn’t reply. There was sorrow on his face, like a man from whom a burden had been lifted only to find out there was more to be piled on. The crack on his own facade. He must have thought a stiff front was all he needed to solve this problem. That once one matter was settled, everything else would fall into place.
I turned my attention to other things. “How do we get rid of your mother? She can’t stay here a moment longer. I’m surprised she hasn’t found this study yet.”
“Namra placed spells on the door, I believe. Her people would’ve missed it if they didn’t know what they were looking for.”
“She’s a complication, and the last thing we need is a complication.”
“Are you suggesting I have my own mother assassinated?”
“If I asked, would you do it?”
He looked confused.
“I’m jesting,” I said, because the thought was tempting. “Tell her to go home.”
“If it were only that easy. She won’t listen to me. Why would she?” He tightened his jaw. “She hates… everything that had to do with your father. She didn’t think he’d ever attempt to negotiate a treaty, much less consider a betrothal in the first place.”
“She said Kaggawa had convinced her.”
“Sume Kaggawa,” Rai said. “A close friend of hers, at least for a time.”
“Where is she now?”
He clasped his hands behind his back and paced along the wall. “Who knows? She has family outside of Jin-Sayeng. She could be anywhere.”
“If your mother listened to her counsel, maybe she’s not entirely hopeless. Maybe we can convince Princess Ryia I’m not the enemy here.”
“She agreed to Kaggawa’s resolution, but they didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.” Rai took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’ve tried that already. I begged my mother for years to see you as you are and not as Yeshin’s child. But it was like talking to a wall.”
“Ah. A family trait, I see.”
He ignored the jibe, taking one hesitant step forward. “My lady,” he began. He swallowed. “I promised you back in the empire that once we put this matter to rest we could… start anew. We can guide this land as our right, no matter what our parents may have truly wanted.”
Rai looked at the ground as he spoke. I realized they weren’t easy words for him to say. It is frightening how perspective can change once all the emotion has been taken out—drain the pus out of a wound and it hurts less, can start healing. Or so one would think. I was standing exactly where I wanted to be all those years ago, after he first left. He was here, we were together. He now knew the kind of gaping hole he left behind when he walked away. I felt that if I wanted to ask him to do anything now—apologize, grovel, admit to every single wrong he had done to me and my son over the years—he would, without question. I could even ask for his death like an aggrieved Zarojo. Except I would rather be anywhere but there. I didn’t want to hear him say these words.
I didn’t want to heal.
Why are the heroes in stories always kings and queens, princesses and princes, lords and ladies? Once in a while, a peasant makes their way to the books, but it is always someone who climbs to the top, who turns the tide because of the power of their wits or strength or charm. Why do we not care for the troubles of a lowly housewife or butcher or a farmer unless they leave their home to save their land from dragons? If I do not write of Mei Lamang and her sacrifice, who would remember her once her children had passed?
It is the desire for illusion that sustains us. We want to believe there is a happily-ever-after and it involves those who cannot possibly be as we are. And so if we cannot be heroes… if we feel we cannot make a difference or make our words carry weight… we create them—idols we praise to the highest heavens, sparkling figures who can do no wrong. We hold them as examples of what we could never be and use them to explain away our own deficiencies, tell the world we won’t bother because of what we are not. We create heroes so we never have to try ourselves.
Or at least that was how Khine explained it to me after I asked him why a woman in my position had difficulties garnering sympathy. He said it is simply because people do not want to believe someone like me can have the same problems they have. I was queen: blessed, chosen, anointed. That I could get lonely, or make mistakes, or want something as simple as the kind of love they speak of in the stories—one fierce and true and unending—was unimaginable for people who live with suffering every day. “Hunger,” he told me with gravity, “can be all it takes to erase compassion. It isn’t your fault, but you cannot expect others to offer sympathy when their own lives are fraught with the pain you’ve never felt in yours. Hunger, helplessness, the soul-crushing realization that you are but a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. You are supposed to be infallible. It is supposed to offer comfort in a world where most have nothing.”
I know the complications of my life do not belong in history books. There will be a chapter outlining my failures, and then another where they will talk of a crisis averted and how the Ikessar blood remained the center of the kingdom, this wretched nation of Jin-Sayeng where no one ever learns. And they will discuss, at length, the tumultuous relationship between the Ikessar and the Orenar, because nothing ever changes, does it? We want those patterns. We want heroes and villains, we want explanations, we want conclusions, we want to make sense of the turmoil even when the only way to do that is to lie through your teeth. Delineations do not exist in the real world. I wonder what part they would say I played. I know most would call me the villain—many already do. Heroes are allowed to make mistakes and grow; villains can only survive what they’ve already done.
But I was finished with illusions. I had lived with the pain for so long that I was afraid of what I would be without it. If Rai had never left, I would still be as I was, blindly following the path my father had set for me. Without the pain, I wouldn’t have learned that more could lie beyond. I thought of Khine staring back at me from the window he had to
rn apart. Lovers are easy to find for someone in my position, but this had nothing to do with that.
“I loved you against my father’s will, did you know?” I whispered, drifting to the corner, where the oppressing shadows of the study all but cloaked me.
Rai stared back in silence.
“I didn’t, either,” I continued. “Not back then. He always spoke in layers. You will marry that boy and you will try to love him. You may not want to. Those were his words. Try. I used to wonder why he would say it that way. Why the uncertainty? He knew I would obey him. In those days, all he ever needed to do was ask, and I would… without question…”
The edges of his mouth twitched.
I swallowed. This newfound honesty with my subjects, with him, did not come easily. But I forced myself to continue. “Then I remembered recently that one of your mother’s representatives was there that day. Was he sending me a message? Trying to tell me something because he was losing time? Back when he was stronger, he would always tell me never to bow to my prince—I was an Orenar first and could never be an Ikessar. The fate of the nation, the burden of its rule, rested on me alone. I didn’t… understand. But I managed to love you. I didn’t have to try very hard. What girl wouldn’t fall in love with her prince when it was someone like you?
“Seeing you with Chiha had made me realize how little I knew of the world, that love wasn’t what I thought it was or what I wanted it to be. I married you with every intention of treating love as duty. Duty I knew, even if I couldn’t make you see me the way you saw Chiha. I told myself I could love you even if… even if I couldn’t make you love me.”
I fell silent. The Rayyel of my youth, the husband from my memories, would have dismissed what I’d just said. He would have told me to control my emotions before pointing out that the fate of the nation mattered more than what I felt about our arrangement. But if I had changed over the years, so had he. His expression was marred with rare self-reflection.
“We are still married,” I said, when I realized he was at a loss for words. “There is nothing I can do about that. But whatever I was drawing from in the years we were together and the years we were apart… it’s all empty now. I know what you thought you did for us. I know you felt I would just accept your explanations because they made sense to you. But I am not an Ikessar. I can’t sit in some cave for three years and pretend I’m made of stone.”
“I never—” he began.
“You did,” I said. “You thought I could harden my heart just as easily as you harden yours. That I could listen to you throw words like bastard and threaten my son—our son, Rai, our son, like I’ve told you a thousand times!—and I would forgive you as soon as you dropped it. You thought you alone had the right to make decisions for this family. Did you think you could decide to tarnish our names and once it’s all over I would come running to you with open arms? I know this is the life we lead, these lies, this trickery, using each other all while pretending it’s for the best. But I would have preferred you showed your hand, even if it damned our lives. Politics should have never come between us. If you loved me, you should have screamed it from one corner of the nation to the next. You should have left me with no doubts. You should have fought for us, damn you.
“And maybe I’m to blame—maybe I built this image of myself so well you thought the things you did couldn’t possibly break Yeshin’s daughter. You’re right about one thing: You didn’t break me. But the woman who waited for you for five years is already dead. I don’t know when she died. I just know that I can’t do this anymore. I am still here for Jin-Sayeng. I am still here because I am her queen and I swore an oath when I was crowned, but…” I took a deep breath.
His face was chalk white. “But you don’t love me anymore.” He spoke as if he was trying to avoid walking into a pit. As if he had never considered the possibility before and now that he was looking right at it, he didn’t know how to cope.
“How can love survive in our world? These are not fertile grounds we could sow seeds on. That Thanh came out of it at all still feels like a gift from the gods.”
He placed his hand on my arm. I stared at his smooth fingers, at the shade of his skin, a touch paler than mine. “Can you learn once more?” he asked. “Given time? If… if I try hard enough? My wife…”
No, I wanted to say, hating the familiar twinge that came from hearing those last two words. Your wife, Rai? Yours? But when was I ever yours? You take care of what is yours. You cherish it until the day you die. I felt a lump in my throat, not knowing what to do with my anger. I didn’t know what I expected after my outburst. Anger, in return. Indifference. Not sincerity. Gods. I thought I knew him. Then again, I thought I knew myself, too. Shards of glass remained where our life used to be, and I didn’t know what to do with them.
“Because I can try to make it up,” Rai continued. He curled his hand into a fist and placed it over his chest. “To you and Thanh. I know I have missed much. My son was still so little when I left. I thought I had all the time in the world, and now—now he’s grown. It’s not too late, is it?”
I pressed my lips together and avoided looking into his eyes. I had my answer already, but I didn’t want to be cruel. “We have to find him first.”
I went to bed alone. Rayyel didn’t press the issue about our marriage arrangements, and I felt guilt over how relieved that made me feel. I woke up the next morning before dawn and got ready before my handmaids came for me. It felt good to be able to walk out of my own quarters without being accosted by Ikessars, to see Oren-yaro guards in the halls once more. They even saluted as I passed. If I didn’t know any better, I could pretend everything that had happened was a nightmare. But was it right to want to go back to sleep? To prefer the nightmare over what else awaited?
My feet took me to the kitchens. If anyone saw me, I could claim I needed a drink of water. Just as I expected, Khine was already awake. Even after months on the road, I still recalled his daily routine from the time I stayed with him in Anzhao. He told me he liked getting up early to spend time with his own thoughts before it became too noisy to hear them. It was a habit he had picked up living in such close quarters with three siblings.
He was behind the curtains when I came in. I settled into the bench and listened to the sound of him getting the fire started—the rhythm his feet made on the stone, how he hummed to himself as he stacked the logs. Once the wood began to crackle, he noticed he wasn’t alone and came around to see who it was. A sad smile flitted on his face.
“Can I tell you something?” I blurted out, before he could say anything. “I wanted him to be Agos’s.”
Khine strode past the curtains to sit beside me. I was facing the table—he was facing out. It helped that we didn’t have to look straight at each other. “Why?” he asked, after a length of time.
“It… it would have been a way out.”
“Ah.”
“Wishful thinking. Ryia would’ve had me executed on the spot. Ozo would’ve jumped at the chance to ruin me, too. But for a moment there, I was ready to throw it all into the fire. To say yes, I failed, I fucked up. Do I get to walk away now? Am I no longer responsible for anything that happens after this?”
He didn’t reply.
I glanced down. “What do I do, Khine?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me.”
“I never really imagined I would get this far—that I would have, if nothing else, my husband’s full support at last. He spoke to me last night in earnest. He says he wants to fix things, to assist me in every way, and not once did he mention his pride or any of the retorts I imagined he was capable of after everything that had happened. All of it is… unexpected.”
Khine cleared his throat. “Only a truly skilled actor could pretend in these situations, and from what I’ve seen of your husband, he is far from one. Misguided though he may have been, he is a good man. Direct, but honourable. Whatever he’s done over the years is merely a reflection of the expectations put on you by your
elders. You of all people should understand how that feels.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I glanced at his hand. After a moment’s reflection, I placed mine on my lap. “He wants things to return to the way they were before he left,” I whispered. “Once we get our son back, and we’ve stabilized everything…”
“It’s all you ever wanted.”
I swallowed.
“I mean, what’s there to consider?” Khine continued. “He’s the only ally you’ve got left. With him on your side, the Ikessars can’t get rid of you so easily. Whatever their feelings about you, they’re obligated to help Thanh, now.”
“Thanh isn’t safe with those people.” I found the courage to meet his eyes at last. “There is no going back to the way things were. I look around me and see the same world I left behind. The same arguments, the same games, except I no longer see myself as part of it. This must be what a ghost feels like.”
“You have also told me, time and time again, that your feelings hold no sway over these matters.”
“To dissolve our marriage would require… one of us to admit to our wrongdoings. One of us will be sent to prison, possibly executed.”
“And for all the troubles he’s caused you, you’re not the kind of woman who will wish him ill. You could never harm him.” He said it matter-of-factly again, as easily as whenever he discussed my relationship with Agos. Only a skilled actor… of course he knew what skilled acting looked like. He had acted all his life just to get by. By necessity, he knew exactly how to phrase his words or smile even though he was clearly hurting.
“We’ve already shook the boat enough,” I replied, trying to avoid what I think I wanted to say to him. “More will be reason for them to tip us over.”
“You’re probably right.” Khine got up. “The water is boiling.” Despite his light tone, his feet dragged, and he returned to the stove with a sigh. He removed the pot from the stove before turning around to begin slicing a tomato. There was nothing precise about the way Khine made meals. The onions he had dropped in hot oil were chopped into different sizes, and the ginger that followed was half crushed instead of diced. As far as I was aware, he followed no recipes—he cooked with whatever was available and simply tasted what he was making as he went. If Hessa was around, she would’ve screamed at him to get out of her kitchen.
The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng Page 10
