“Right here, Beloved Queen,” he said, before another flash. He stumbled; I caught him right as a creature appeared between us. It reared, claws swiping empty air. I struck it on the rib cage, one slice downward. It pounced, saliva spraying in the air. I stumbled back and found myself fending its teeth from my throat with the short blade. Huan picked it up from behind, his massive fangs crushing its body. Guts leaked through the punctured flesh, and its organs burst like grapes. Jowls dripping with blood, Huan sent it flying through the air.
“That body is causing this,” I said. “Is there any way you can contain the agan, or whatever this is? Seal it.”
Eikaro looked worried. But all he said was, “Get me there.”
“You heard him, Lord Huan,” I called.
Huan charged ahead, a massive battering ram of scale and horn and teeth. In the same breath, I met an incoming beast with a strike across the chest. The edge of the blade sank into bone almost immediately; I pulled out and watched as the body spun to the ground, jaws snapping. I could see Zuha’s writhing corpse not far ahead. Even half desiccated, it wasn’t hard to miss—the entire thing glowed blue between bursts of black clouds.
The air crackled as Eikaro approached it.
“I don’t know what to do,” he gasped.
“You call us agan -blind,” I said as I fended off another incoming creature. “So you must see something we don’t.”
“I see the tendrils connecting something in the body to the main agan stream,” Eikaro said. “They look like glowing threads.”
“And they say agan flows freely behind the fabric,” I said, sinking my sword through yet another belly. My arm was starting to tire from hacking, and my sword to dull from the assaults. “A fabric separating us from the spirit world. Do you see it?”
“No,” he replied.
Huan roared behind us as he grabbed two creatures, ripping both apart in the air at once.
“So, this fabric isn’t visible to anyone, but damages to it could be. We can see the tear from the sky. There must be something like that inside the body.”
He grew quiet. I turned my attention to fighting, hoping I was correct. Maybe we could only see the one in the sky because it was so big. How do you fight an enemy you don’t see? And if you do see it, how do you know how to defeat it? There was no certainty in our actions; we were grappling blindly in the wind, making a mess out of things we had long forgotten, magic we had turned our backs on. Three mages, two mages, one. Do you give up, Talyien? Or would you sacrifice your land because you are too stubborn to bend? Why did you think it took me years to plan this? What made you think you could find an easier answer in months?
“I see it!” Eikaro suddenly called. “I see the hole!”
“Shut it,” I said.
“How?”
I wanted to yell at him. I wasn’t a mage—I knew less than he did. But then I glanced at the battlements and caught sight of Khine scanning the streets for me. “Like a surgeon,” I suddenly said. “You can control the flow of agan, Eikaro. Sew it shut!”
I wasn’t sure if he understood, but I saw him hold the body down with his foot as he bent over it. Huan blew a quick breath beside me, his wings half curled.
The flashes stopped and I could suddenly see our surroundings again. Eikaro toppled backwards, landing on the cobblestone. He was shivering. I pulled him up. The monsters were still coming, slinking from the alleys and the streets. The ones who had already turned weren’t turning back.
We found Nor yelling at the top of her lungs from the bottom of a guardhouse. There was a flash of relief on her face as she saw me before she ushered us through. As soon as we ran past her, she slammed the door shut. Bodies smashed against the wood behind us, followed by the scratching of sharp claws.
“Gods, I thought I’d lost you,” Khine breathed, reaching out to pull me in his arms. There was blood on his shirt, as if his wound from yesterday had reopened. I stiffened, oddly conscious of the people around us even though everyone was too busy reinforcing the door to pay any notice.
Give up. The voice was becoming impossible to silence. You have no mages left to use and your only dragon is bleeding with every step. This man, and all the others—they will die soon if you do nothing.
“Are you all right, Tali?” he whispered in my ear.
I didn’t answer as I pulled away. Ignoring the screaming and the snarling from the streets, I climbed up the ladder to the battlements. I looked over the wall, where I noticed siege towers rising in front of my eyes.
“The gods have abandoned us,” Grana whispered below. “Attacks on the outside, and from within… how are we supposed to win this war?”
“And we haven’t closed the rift, either,” Eikaro said. “If we did, we could parley.”
“Could you do it?” I asked.
He looked at me in panic.
“If you switch back with Huan—”
“You saw me back there,” he said. “Queen Talyien, if the rift is twice the size of that hole, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it. That trick we pulled probably won’t work. And it’s bigger—much bigger. Warlord Yeshin always suspected I didn’t have the power to pull it off, and he’s right. I’m useless. I can’t do it, I’m—”
“If we catch them by surprise, we might have the upper hand,” Nor said. “Isn’t it clear? We have to defeat Kaggawa first.”
“No,” I said.
They stared at me like I’d gone mad.
“We can’t win this war,” I said. “Not as we are. Look outside—that didn’t happen overnight. That happened because Warlord Ojika let it—because he gave Kaggawa time to build an army while his own people starved. You won’t get rid of it overnight, either. To attack now would be to court certain death. Don’t.”
Nor grabbed me by the arm. She pulled me back down to the guardhouse, and for a moment, I thought she would hit me. “This isn’t the time for this. You’re breaking morale.”
“This isn’t about morale. It’s the truth.”
“The truth!” she spat. “Some queen you are. There is a time for truths and now isn’t it. If you acted more like a queen, I would’ve never left your service. But you never did. You were always a little girl, sulking that she didn’t get her way, and now we all have to pay the price!”
I pretended that her words didn’t sting. “I could’ve had you beheaded for what you did,” I replied, standing as tall as I could so I could look her in the eye. “I didn’t.”
“Do you expect accolades for your thoughtfulness? Of course you could’ve had me beheaded. A better queen wouldn’t have thought twice. I’m alive. A walking, breathing proof of your inability to lead.”
“Nor—”
“But Agos,” she continued. “The one loyal to you. Him, you get killed. You are trying to act like a queen, like your word is law, but it’s over, Talyien. Look outside those walls. Look beyond. This isn’t Warlord Ojika’s fault, nor is it Dai Kaggawa’s. No law exists in these lands anymore—you’ve doomed us to a fate worse than death. We have to fight! What else can we do? Hide while we starve to death?”
The snarling outside the door continued.
“Queen Talyien,” Eikaro broke in. “We could also surrender and seek Kaggawa’s assistance in ridding the city of these… things. Our wives’ mother is on Meiokara. If we can make our way to the islands, maybe we can ask them for help, too.”
“We can’t surrender,” Nor snapped. “Kaggawa has no reason to spare or listen to us. He certainly won’t spare your family—your father has goaded him for far too long. Open those doors and his mercenaries will slaughter us before we could blink. Queen Talyien, make a decision, one that won’t kill us all.”
I listened to my own heartbeat, reflecting the war drums around us.
Listen carefully, Talyien…
I stepped back to the guardhouse. The soldiers were trying to hold the door closed.
“Back down,” I ordered. I grasped my sword with one hand, readying myself.
&nb
sp; They looked at me in confusion.
“There is no sense arguing while we’re in the middle of a fight,” I said. “And we can only fight from here on. Let them in.”
The soldiers stepped aside. The door fell in almost immediately. Monsters streamed through the narrow opening, two at a time. It was easy enough to hack them to pieces.
Defining moments do not exist. Arro told me that once. If you wait for answers to reveal themselves, you’ll be standing with empty hands for the rest of time. Deities do not descend from the heavens to part the clouds and shoot sunbeams over what must be done. They do not sing songs to guide you, nor send prophets to gather the lost. Those who think otherwise are usually mad.
We fought for our lives that night without hoping for an escape, killing the corrupted—those who dared reveal themselves—as they came. By midnight, their bodies were piled high along the streets, desiccated grey forms that looked like they had been left for weeks under the sun. We barely had time to breathe when the first wave of flaming logs and boulders smashed against the ramparts, taking down the top of at least one tower. The Yu-yan soldiers met the attack with a flurry of arrows, and we waited in silence until the trebuchets stopped.
There were more bodies by dawn, arrow-riddled on the field before us. We surveyed the carnage from the battlements over lunch—two pieces of unleavened bread, the standard ration for the entire day. I felt my stomach tighten as I watched Kaggawa’s men attempt to fetch their dead in the distance. Some of the Yu-yan soldiers tried to shoot at them for sport. Nor watched all of this from the battlements, her silence speaking volumes.
“We may have to hold, anyway,” she finally said, drawing a deep sigh.
I was sitting with my back against the wall, resting my sword hand on my knee. I laughed. “Warlord Yeshin,” I said, when I could catch my breath. “I want to rip apart everything about me that reeks of him and burn it to pieces. But how much would that leave behind?”
“Nothing, if I know how procreation works,” she said flatly.
I sniffed. “Ever the humourless bitch.”
She scowled. But after a moment, she slumped down beside me with the back of her head against the wall. “What do you want to do now?” she asked.
“Defeat Kaggawa, free my son, close that rift, and get rid of Yuebek somehow.” I closed my eyes briefly, and then opened them again. My mind was still filled with the images of the dead and dying.
“Let me reiterate. What do you want that’s possible?” She pointed at the field. “Escape now, with Kaggawa at our door, will be difficult. If I send guards with you, they’ll see you and shoot you down before you do anything useful.”
“I can sneak out alone.”
“And then you’re going to travel back to Oren-yaro alone, too, I suppose? Like you’ve always done? No. I’m not your captain anymore, but someone has to do the job.” She tapped her fingers on her knee. “If you can escape along the river, I can have Lord Huan send word to his scouts. They’ll accompany you all the way back.” I noticed her avoiding saying the word home. Maybe the thought was as painful for her as it was for me.
“They can meet us at Khine’s hut,” I said. “I believe Lord Huan knows where it is.”
“Lord Eikaro’s idea of imploring Meiokara for help sounds tempting.”
“Meiokara is all the way in the islands,” I replied. “And if I recall correctly, they don’t easily get involved with the fighting on the mainland.”
“They might if their daughters are involved.”
“They won’t fight for me,” I said. “I haven’t earned it.”
Nor grunted.
“You could say I’m wrong, you know.”
“But you’re not.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I came all the way here because I thought I could find people who would dedicate themselves to my cause. That people would see me for myself, not my father, and that would be enough. And yet look what happened. I can’t even ask you to do anything without questioning me, and I don’t blame you. I’d have done more if I was in your place. Stuck a sword through my gut and twisted it. Good intentions are worthless on their own. Who was it who said that? Iga did. Ryia, too.”
She flexed her fingers. “So you’ve finally met her.”
“She’s even more humourless than you are, if you can believe that.”
“I can.”
“I think they’re right,” I said. “Everything I own, all the power I thought I had, everything was given to me by the most treacherous soul in this nation. You don’t erase that overnight. I can close my eyes and pretend I don’t sit on a throne of skulls, but I cannot change the truth of what I am and what brought me to this world. I want to. I want to save Jin-Sayeng. I want to see sunlight in these lands again, I want to see the fields covered with ripe, golden grains instead of bodies and blood, to hear birdsong instead of warhorns. I want to see our people laughing in celebration, not cowering behind walls. I want to be queen, to rule with mercy and kindness, to bring peace and prosperity because it’s about time we had those things, isn’t it? It’s about time our people don’t sit in fear of losing everything they owned. Jin-Sayeng deserves it. It deserves every bit of happiness the gods can bestow.”
“It’s never about what we want,” Nor said.
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “I am Yeshin’s daughter, whether I deny it or not, and my father has hurt Jin-Sayeng too much. Nothing will ever change that.” Realizing my fate was sealed with those words, I got up, sheathing my sword, and made my way down the guard tower.
Nor followed silently.
We went back to the castle, to the libraries.
“Do you know why I joined Yu-yan?” she asked as I searched through the shelves. “It’s because I saw everything happening out here and the fear became too much to bear. I have a daughter to think about, too. But all I can do about it is fight. I can fight until someone comes down here to tell me they’ve found a better way.”
“There is no better way,” I said. “Only a way, and I don’t even know if I want to acknowledge it.” I found the crate of scrolls I was looking for and yanked it out of the shelf. You could find bloodline papers in just about any royal’s library—nobles were obsessed with them. I placed it on the ground and pulled the scrolls out, laying them on the floor. I eventually found Maharay aren dar Jeinza’s name. There were inky thumbprints on the edges, as if someone else had opened the book right on that same page. Her line ended there, marked with an X, which signalled a departure from the royal bloodline. It meant she married a commoner, or decided to leave Jin-Sayeng. She could have gone to the empire. She could have given birth to Yuebek. Mage, monster, with the blood of dragonriders running through his veins.
I stared at the name so long my eyesight blurred.
Did I have other options? Every moment of indecision brought my land closer to ruin. Every day I spent in search of answers, people died. I didn’t have an army to defeat Kaggawa with. I had one dragon too weak to close the rift and two mages who couldn’t turn into dragons. That left my father’s solution. His horrifying, unthinkable solution. A skilled mage who could also ride dragons. Yuebek, only Yuebek. I could almost hear his voice now, as slimy as his hand around my neck. My skin crawled.
You got this far. Aren’t you tired of running, Talyien? Your life, in exchange for everyone else’s? It’s not too great a sacrifice. Perhaps it is time you learn to submit. Sooner or later, the road was meant to end.
My thoughts drifted to the rest of my father’s letter. Khine had burned it in the fire, but those words would die with me.
Listen carefully, Talyien…
Maybe you already know this by now, but Yuebek is a cruel man and we are playing with fire. His mother himself warned me. Let me paint you a picture: Yuebek killed his brother when he was but a child. Choked him, gouged his own eyes out with his thumbs, and then watched as he burned to death. Time has not mellowed him. He has instigated all manner of strange deaths for his rivals, and is said to have b
een found in bed with the corpse of one of the nobles’ daughters. When asked of this incident, he merely laughed it off, saying he had killed her for pleasure. They never could prove the murder, or if she was already dead when he defiled her.
His father, the emperor, indulges him. It is not obvious to the naked eye these days, but Yuebek has been his favourite son since childhood. That is the only reason he is still alive, that his crimes have been swept under the rug. He would be crown prince if the entire imperial court wasn’t against it. But the rest of the empire is repulsed by him. They actively hamper Yuebek’s political attempts, and threaten to bring him to court if the emperor does not do anything about him. His exile into the west was his father’s faint attempt to protect him. It has not tempered his ambition one bit.
The Fourth Consort is adamant that I understand what I am getting into. She is frightened of her own son. She loves him, but he is unstable. His powers make him doubly dangerous. I wasn’t even sure I believed the stories until I met him myself. Everything amuses him. Worse still… I’m convinced he’s afraid of nothing, the sort of man who’ll cut himself, if only to see your reaction…
I know I am asking for too much. But believe me, if there had been another way, I would have taken it. If I had not been too old, if I had all this knowledge when my joints could still hold my bones, I would have done it myself. But this is all that’s left. It is your decision, in the end. You can have him killed to save what’s left of your pride and doom Jin-Sayeng in the process. Or you can accept the truth and be the daughter I always knew you would be. My heart, my dearest love, you are our only hope.
Sometimes the answer is clear. It’s simply that we don’t want to listen. We don’t want to know our stories are not written by a loving hand, or that they may never get the ending we believe we deserve. We don’t want anyone to tell us our efforts may go unrewarded, our sacrifices unrecognized, and whatever we’re given—whatever little we’re given—may be all there ever could be. The light at the end of the tunnel does not exist for everyone.
The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng Page 48
