The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng

by K. S. Villoso

  “Horse!” Teo repeated. He scampered past us, back where they came from.

  “Kisig is only… five, isn’t he?” I asked as the door slammed behind the toddler.

  “He doesn’t act like it, I know,” Sayu said. “He’s had to grow up fast. Agos was never really home much.”

  And then, as if realizing she was hovering on the fringes of a difficult conversation, she excused herself to go out the back door and down another set of stairs. There was an outdoor stove in the yard where the boys were, as well as a pump. From the window, I watched her scold the children before turning to draw water into a bucket. Afterwards, I heard the crackle of fire and smelled the scent of smoke. Mundane, domestic things. I really didn’t need to be there. But even as I told this to myself, I was loathe to move. It amused me to understand how lonely the last few weeks had been—so lonely that I was willing to face the woman whose own marriage I ruined if only so I didn’t have to listen to myself for a while. My narrative had turned sour.

  She returned with a steaming kettle. As she poured tea into clay cups, she said, “I frighten you, don’t I? A queen like you. I’m a nobody.”

  “I don’t think of it that way.”

  “Don’t you?” She handed me the tea. I glanced at it. “Don’t worry,” she added. “I won’t poison you.”

  “Thank you, I suppose.”

  “Small place like this… would be impossible to get rid of a body,” she mumbled.

  I smiled at her feeble attempt at humour—which I was all but ready to pretend it was—and took a quick sip. “I learned a number of things over the last few weeks,” I said over the tea. “And if he hasn’t told you yet, I think you ought to know. Agos was Lord Tasho’s bastard and he has no heirs. No other children that I know of. When you return to Oren-yaro, I will make sure he takes care of you as he should’ve done all these years.”

  Sayu didn’t reply immediately. She drank the tea, her small finger tapping the bottom. Eventually, she said, “If it’s all the same to you, lady queen, I’d rather not.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not sure I want my children in that life. You saw how it claimed their father. And then all the troubles we ran into the past few weeks…” She shook her head. “This here, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s ours. We don’t have to answer to anyone. The children can go about their lives without the burdens Lord Tasho and the Jinsein royals will cast over them.”

  “He knows where you are. Once we’re at peace, I’m sure he’ll want them. The Tasho lands are some of the oldest in Oren-yaro. You will not want to deny your boys their heritage.”

  “I know,” Sayu said in a low voice. “But for as long as I can, I want to keep them… mine. If it’s only for a few more weeks, a few more months.”

  We heard laughter coming from the yard. Her firm face brightened for a moment.

  “We were happy here,” she said. “I just wanted to remember what that felt like.” I pressed my fingers around the cup, feeling the heat seep into my weary joints as I listened to her. Eventually, she shook her head, as if she was almost ashamed for even voicing her deepest desires. “Your son—do you know where he is?”

  “They’ve closed the road to the Sougen and I don’t know how to get any closer. I know he is still with Kaggawa.” I swallowed. “I pray he still is. It is all I can count on.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “It’s not your responsibility.”

  “Well,” Sayu replied with a small smile. “We’re all responsible for each other, aren’t we? I want to blame you for everything. But I knew what I was getting into. Knew he was Captain of the Guard—yours, and all the gossip that came with that. I knew he was running away from something. In time, he told me everything. I shouldn’t have intruded. It’s too late now.”

  “Do you regret it?” I asked.

  “Sometimes, when I wake up to the boys crying from some dream or another and I turn to a cold, empty bed…” She rubbed at the stubborn tears that crept up her eyes. “But I think you know what I mean.”

  I nodded slowly, staring at my tea.

  Sayu cleared her throat. “What else did you learn out there? If you don’t mind telling me.”

  “I learned how despicable my father was.”

  “That’s not news,” she said with a half smile.

  “No,” I agreed. “Which makes it sound… contrived. Like the suffering of others didn’t mean a damn thing until I learned that he ruined my life, too. He molded the perfect player for his inescapable game. And then they went and pretended it was all under my control, that I had the power. Be everything, Talyien. Fulfill the promises made when they demanded you be queen. Unite this land of petulant sycophants and make no mistakes while you follow these rules… these old, broken rules. It was almost too much to ask from a single person.”

  “It is,” she said.

  “They knew from the very beginning. They made me so they could break me, so that the true hero could come and save the day. How do you fight what you are fated to fail? I don’t know if I can overturn decades’ worth of scheming—if I have any power beyond my father’s name and whatever he had given me. But if I walk away, the land burns. I… I don’t know what to do.”

  Sayu reached over to take the cup from me, returning to the table to refill it. The smell of steam filled the air. “Well,” she finally said. “We both know you’re not going to walk away. Knowing my husband, he would’ve already asked you to. A practical man, for all his faults. The fact that you’re here means you refused. That fact that he’s dead means there was a disagreement there somewhere.”

  I made a soft sound of assent, not wanting to dredge up the details. She didn’t need to know them.

  “Were you carrying my husband’s child?” Sayu suddenly asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  She looked almost embarrassed to have been the one to bring it up, but I saw her swiftly try to recover. “Castle gossip,” she said at last. “They said you were very ill the week he was killed. You discreetly called for a healer. A midwife.”

  “Evidently not discreet enough.” I cleared my throat. “It was… a precaution.”

  “A necessary one?”

  I gave a thin smile. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not.” I heard rustling and saw her walking towards me with a letter she had retrieved from somewhere in the cupboards. Still almost hesitating, like one word from me could crumple her, she handed it to me. “He sent that not long before… his death.”

  I stared at the ink seeping through the parchment before unfolding it. It was a small note, penned hastily. There were inky thumbprints on the corners.

  Sayu,

  With luck, by the time you get this, we’ll be long gone.

  I won’t ask you to forgive me. I know what I’m doing is rotten. I wouldn’t know how to explain. Can’t explain it to myself. Knew since I was a boy that what I wanted can’t be. Shouldn’t have done this to you, I know. I told you I couldn’t make any promises. Told you I was fucked. Well, I can’t blame you. You’ve a good heart. I took advantage of your kindness. Don’t think I wasn’t happy. I was. But she needs me.

  Can’t do poetry, so I’ll say this. Tell my mother everything. She’ll help care for the boys. And me? Forget about me. Never speak my name again. Find someone else. You deserve better.

  Agos

  I read it twice before I returned it to her. She folded the accursed letter carefully and returned it to its hiding place. They were painful words, but they were his last words to her. It looked like she was still deciding if she wanted to throw them away. Just like she probably hadn’t decided whether she was going to kill me.

  “I suppose he wouldn’t have had the same suspicions as you,” she managed. “Else he would’ve said so.”

  “His opinion wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said. “The midwife took care of everything.” I tried not to think of the blood on the sheets. There had been so much of it.

&
nbsp; Her lips quirked at the corners. “Are you sure about that?”

  “The people who birthed me into the world have done worse,” I said. “I can’t be like them. The child—had there been a child—would be doomed simply for being mine. My son has it hard enough already. Why have another share the burden? She couldn’t have existed.”

  “She?”

  “I… I dreamed about her once.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry, Sayu. I would have loved her like the sun loves the sky, but it is better this way. I will not bring another like me into the world.”

  “You yearn for love, but cannot bring yourself to take it.”

  I looked at her in confusion.

  Sayu scratched the side of her cup with a fingernail. “Agos…” she started, giving a sad smile. “He told me once that for a time, he was convinced you saw him as a way to get out of your world. If you didn’t love him then, you could learn to love him in time, a far cry from everything else you’ve been forced to love all your life. He didn’t look like it, but he was a romantic. A foolish, romantic man.”

  She drifted back to the kitchen. “Akaterru, but then I was, too. I believed what we created could change the truth, could change the things he felt about you, the pattern of your lives. Love is complicated.” I glanced up, startled at how she mirrored Liosa’s words. “Life is complicated. And yet this is all we get. Brief glimpses of happiness. Joy, once in a while. Agos had that with you. And maybe with me, too. And I have my sons. I keep them alive. They’re strong and healthy. Even if Ozo never comes for them, I’m confident I will find the means to apprentice them to a trade somewhere. I don’t know what they teach you royals, but my mother once told me that to ask for more than what is given to us is presumptuous.”

  I took a deep breath. “Sayu—I am sorry about Agos.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “I didn’t know you existed. I thought he…”

  “Was yours to use as you pleased, knowing you would discard him at the first opportunity?”

  The words stung, but she wasn’t incorrect. I nodded.

  “Well,” she grumbled, as if surprised I didn’t try to argue. “I assume it is a common fallacy for someone in your position. Don’t apologize again. It’s unbecoming from a queen. We are where we are. Don’t think I don’t appreciate what it means for an Oren-yaro to come to my house with her tail between her legs.”

  “You’re allowed to crow about it forever.”

  She gave a small shrug. But eventually, she grew thoughtful again. Her eyes drifted to the window. “Maybe it hurts, but you do what you have to, for all that you know you are damned anyway. You were wrong and now you are going to make it right. It won’t absolve you—I’m not sure I can ever forgive you, if I will be completely honest. But at least you can work towards peace of mind for yourself. At least you can make his death mean something.”

  Outside, the boys began laughing again.

  “I mean, what else is there?” Sayu asked. “You still have to face the hours between now and the day you die. You might as well fill them with something of worth.” She gave an expression that was as close to a smile as I was ever going to get from her—a resigned acceptance of my presence, which I suspected came from years of practice—and left me to gather firewood.

  Later that evening, I watched her prepare our meal in silence. I thought about how there was something blessed in women like her. They were, in my mind, a deliberate attempt by the gods to keep the world afloat even as it falls into pieces. True courage didn’t resemble my mad rushes of faith. True courage looked like this, in the unfazed way this woman made a place for me at her dinner table as if I was an unexpected guest rather than someone who had torn her family apart. In the silent way she looked at her children, the sorrow slipping at the sound of their laughter. In spite of the exhaustion crawling between the lines on her young face, she moved with the ease of someone who knew she could bear the burden another day. After she put the children to bed, I watched her lay out parchment, ink, and quills on the kitchen table and begin to copy from a worn-out manuscript. Only then did I remember that she worked as a scribe.

  “Your handwriting is significantly better than mine,” I said, after observing her for a few moments.

  She pulled her sleeve up, lifting the quill before replying. “I would guess that you’re the sort of person who needs to remember she is holding a pen and not a sword.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Agos was the same way,” she said, her face expressionless. “Your fathers trained you well, I give them that.” She carefully wiped the nib on a sponge before dabbing it in the ink again. “The key is to go slowly.” She made a careful stroke. Her script looked so elegant it could go on banners. Beside hers, my own would be chicken scratch.

  “What are you working on?”

  “An account in history. A small memoir on the merchants’ war in Reshiro Ikessar’s time.”

  “A classic. The Seven Shadows were heroes to every child in those days.”

  “This one seeks to paint the merchants in a bad light. The name Kaggawa, after all, is involved—Dai Kaggawa’s grandfather. Their family is involved with nearly every uprising from the common class in the last century. The author believes it will sell quite a bit in these troubled times.” She gave a soft sigh.

  “Making history must be the family trade.”

  “Same with you?”

  “I’m really not sure what you mean.” I cleared my throat and gestured at the paper in front of her. “Do you ever wonder how much power you hold when you have that pen in your hand? Warlords have been felled by controversies from such books.”

  “I don’t think beyond what I do,” Sayu commented. “I am paid to copy books, nothing more.”

  “The things they say about me…” I started.

  “Have you read any?”

  “I try not to. It’s probably not good for my health.” I shrugged. “But it is inevitable what they will say after this. What I am. What I’ve done. What I should have done. And the worst part is that most of it will be true.”

  “There is the truth,” Sayu said. “And then the truth.” She held the pen towards me. “They’ll write their truths. Go and write yours.”

  “I don’t know what that will do.”

  “It’ll keep you out of my hair, for one thing. You talk too much.”

  I gave her a pained smile and took the pen. A drop of ink fell on my toe.

  “Write it all down—the madness that brought you here, and what you did to break free. So at least if you are bound to fail, the world will know exactly how. Fail freely, then, and leave the judgment for the gods.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SOUGEN DELIBERATION

  And so, in the presence of that one woman who had more reason to hate me than the rest of them put together, I wrote my truth as I remembered it.

  It was as if the act of holding pen to paper was a floodgate. The words poured out in waves, dredging up old memories, things I’ve tried to leave behind, thoughts better left unsaid. I recorded everything I could, knowing that another’s words wouldn’t have the same weight. A skilled writer might be able to portray this story right down to each significant event, painting every detail with the sort of elegance and wit that would make critics clap their hands and cry with glee. A great writer would know exactly how to fill in the blanks, to lead their wayward reader down a path strewn with dazzling sunlight and the insight of the ages. But no one else would know how to peel back the layers—to lay it all out exactly as I have felt in the hopes that you might be silent long enough to understand. Be still for a moment, and listen. These words are my heartbeat. If this is all I have, then I have to make this right.

  The days turned into weeks. I wrote while waiting the rest of the winter out in that cramped, two-room flat, wrote while I tried to find a way past the road barricades. I wrote between reports of Jin-Sayeng’s apathy towards my rule, of yet another Dragonlord who disappears when it’s convenient, of Kagga
wa continuing to bring mercenaries into the region while the warlord of Yu-yan remained sheltered inside his city, refusing to send aid to his own people, choosing instead to watch his opponent build an army without batting an eye. I wrote even when I knew the Zarojo soldiers were in the city looking for me and it was only the grace of Sayu, who had her neighbours convinced I was her cousin and assistant, keeping me safe. I wrote through the fear of what Yuebek would do the longer I eluded him. I wrote while my son’s finger rotted away in my pack, deliberately forgotten, because to face the truth that he could be dead or dying and there was nothing I could do would shatter me.

  The flow of words brought comfort, and an escape.

  But it wasn’t all terrible. The monotonous life with Agos’s family was peace I hadn’t felt since the time I spent with the Lamangs well over a year ago. I woke to the sound of crowing roosters each day, and forced myself through the cold morning to feed the horse and take him for a brisk run before the rest of the city woke up. We wandered the beaches and watched the waves roll in—swathes of dark-grey water lapping over darker-grey sand. On stormy days, they towered higher than houses, crashing against each other before breaking apart on the jagged rocks in an explosion of foam. I would head to town for news from the plains, and then return around noon to assist Sayu in what little ways I could. Although I was useless with most of the household chores, Sayu figured she could leave Teo with me while she ran errands. She seemed happy enough that he wasn’t dirty or drowned by the time she got back.

  The rest of the time we spent in silence, bent over our writing—her hands clean, mine completely covered in ink. For hours, we would listen to nothing but the sound of scratching on paper while Teo and Kisig laughed and argued outside. In the late afternoon, right before sunset, Sayu’s landlord—a chatty old woman with the sort of wrinkles that came from smiling too much—would come by with a basket of food: ground pork and carrots wrapped in egg roll wrappers, rice cakes with cheese, or deep-fried plantains covered in shredded coconut.