We Lie with Death

by Devin Madson

  Captain Aeneas looked away again, but his lips twisted in wry amusement. Perhaps he had just realised I was his only surviving ally. An assassin in the body of an enemy empress. No doubt he had hoped for better.

  Time dragged on, marked only by the thousands of raindrops that hit the ground while he debated our fate. Not liking his scowl, I wriggled my feet again, trying to slide them out of the sandals and pull myself free.

  Captain Aeneas thrust the scabbard out to me, a literal peace offering. “There’s something you need to see,” he said, not seeming to notice the sparkle of relieved tears upon my already rain-drenched face.

  Not trusting my voice, I just gripped the end of the scabbard and wrenched first one foot then the other out of the mud. They came free with sucking squelches and brought so much mud with them they’d doubled in weight, but I was free and Captain Aeneas made no move to draw his sword. Instead he jerked his head in the direction of the death song and trudged away up the spur.

  The effort of climbing yet another slope sapped all my remaining strength.

  I need my body back, I said, even my thoughts sounding breathless as we neared the summit of the low spur. We can’t keep doing this.

  Empress Hana didn’t answer.

  Captain Aeneas waited at the top of the short hill, frowning as I joined him. The muddy gully ran around the spur like a river, leaving a small, flat piece of land like the webbing between a frog’s toes. Someone had built a hut on it, nothing more than three ramshackle walls and a roof to protect whatever feed or tools were stored inside.

  Captain Aeneas ran down the slope to the building and, without waiting, disappeared inside. I followed at an awkward, limping run, reaching the bottom to find him waiting beneath the overhanging roof. Whatever the original contents of the hut, it had been stripped back to a few loose mounds of straw. One had been covered with a blanket, while an untidy bundle of rations spilled from an open bag and the beginnings of a carving sat discarded in the middle of the floor.

  The box sat at the back, covered in a smattering of straw—enough to confuse someone glancing in, but not someone who knew what they were looking for. I shivered, disliking the cold, clammy feel of the wet robes against my skin.

  Captain Aeneas beckoned me toward the box Leo had been prepared to kill for. “Do you want to know how Leo Villius comes back from the dead?”

  “Yes.”

  My breathless answer drew the captain’s attention, but I shrugged off his concern. “The people whose heads I cut off don’t usually come back for them.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did. He took the sack from my hand.”

  The captain brushed the straw from the box and levered up the lid. Nothing leapt out, but my heart hammered as though it had and I didn’t move until he jerked his head to invite me closer.

  I saw the hand first, sitting upon undyed fabric like a body laid to rest. A body. In a coffin. My eyes darted to its face and I froze. It was Leo. It was Leo, from the fine-fingered hands to the pointed nose, from the soft, smiling lips to the pale eyes that seemed to look through one to something far beyond. They stared now at the dark roof with the same intensity, not seeming to know we were there.

  “Is he…?”

  “Dead?” Captain Aeneas said. “No. You can check his pulse if you want to be sure.”

  I had killed so many people, yet here at last was a body I couldn’t bring myself to touch. But I didn’t need to. Its chest rose and fell with the slow rhythm of someone in a deep sleep. “If he’s not dead then why is he just lying there staring? Is that… a new body for when his current one dies?”

  “No,” the captain said. “This is Leo Villius. So is the one you just met in Koi. So is the one you killed there a few weeks ago. And the one who died at the hands of the Levanti. You are a Deathwalker. You have two souls in one body. Leo is… the opposite.”

  Kocho had mentioned such things when he sat sipping tea in my room that night. A single soul born into two bodies. The opposite of me. But this…

  “How many bodies?”

  “Odetta Villius gave birth to seven babies. All identical. I was a new recruit at the time, but I was there when it happened. One could not leave their service after that. They paid well for silence.”

  “Why?”

  Captain Aeneas looked down at the still form of Leo Villius. “Why? Seven identical children, one of them…” He gestured to the body in the box. “It was unholy. The position of the church at the time was too precarious. It would have been used against them. Better to send six of them away to be raised elsewhere and keep one as their son. I was at the birth and so I made the journey out of the city with the six.”

  He passed a hand across his eyes as though made suddenly old by the resurgent memory. He was like a man unburdening his soul at judgement. “Of the six we had with us, five were normal, squalling babies, sucking their wet nurses dry and lulled to sleep by the movement of the carriage. The other…” He didn’t look again at the unmoving figure in the box. Its eyes went on staring at the roof upon which rain drummed. “He’s always been like this, ever since he was a baby. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t move. If food is put to his lips he eats. If you pull him by the hand he walks. The body is alive, yet it has no… no…”

  “Soul.”

  It was Empress Hana who spoke through her own lips and when I tried to back away her feet were planted upon the dirt floor.

  We shouldn’t have come, I said. We should have gone after my body. Whatever this is, it isn’t our problem.

  The empress stepped forward, and keeping our hands tucked beneath our arms, she leaned over the immobile young man. “Perhaps six is the limit to how many pieces a soul can break into,” she said. “Torvash would know.”

  “The Witchdoctor?” It was Captain Aeneas’s turn to look wary. “No doubt that…man knows as much as is possible to know about this particular Leo Villius. This is what the master traded you for. Both of you. The Witchdoctor came to study the seven boys when strange things started happening around them, but he would take no payment in gold or jewels or land. He only wanted a specimen. Septum has been with him ever since. I did not think to find him so well cared for.”

  “Septum?”

  “They named themselves. Duos stayed to be brought up as Dom Leo Villius. Unus, Tres, Quator, Quin, Sextus, and Septum were sent away.”

  “The one I killed was Dom Villius then? I mean Duos, the real one.”

  Captain Aeneas looked grim and shook his head. “I doubt it. They are all the same, all with the same memories and the same thoughts and they know everything the others know at the exact moment they know it. It really is as though one person lives in seven bodies—seven bodies, one mind. One whole. It could have been any of them and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Except for Unus. There is something… extra, something different, something wrong about Unus. It’s hard to explain but you’d understand if you saw him. And you’d know if you had.”

  The captain shifted from foot to foot, his eyes averted from the Leo he called Septum.

  “You’re afraid of him.”

  He went on staring at the floor some distance from my feet.

  “The hieromonk was afraid of him too.”

  But I had travelled with Leo, had laughed with Leo, and had resisted the need to kill him as long as I could. He had been a sheltered, naive nobleman’s son, a little odd, more than a little frustrating, but not evil. Not frightening. At least not then.

  “So…” I trailed off, still trying to shape meaning into words. “The one I killed, whichever it was, he didn’t come back to life at all.”

  “No.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the one the Levanti turned on in Mei’lian?”

  “Is dead.”

  “And what happens when they die?”

  Once again Captain Aeneas didn’t speak. The slight shrug he gave was answer enough. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t know. I
t wasn’t like you could pick up a book to find answers. No wonder Torvash had wanted this one.

  I looked back at Septum, lying in his coffin. And he stared back. Not at the slanting wooden roof but at me. Right at me, with the clear, penetrating gaze his brothers had used like a weapon. “Shit!”

  Captain Aeneas stepped back, breathing a string of colourful Genavan swear words. “Oh, fuck!” he ended, and retreating another step he dropped the lid with a reverberating bang. “Fuck!” He turned his wide eyes on me. “He’s never done that before.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  Captain Aeneas and I stared at one another for a few seconds that I willed into an eternity. I shouldn’t have come, should have insisted on going north, on chasing down Kaysa in my God-be-damned body. I should have run fast and far and never looked back.

  Now it was too late.

  We have to get out of here.

  “We have to get out of here,” I agreed aloud. “They all know we’re here now, don’t they? And that we’re together.”

  “Yes. Yes, they do.” Captain Aeneas paced the few steps from wall to wall and spun in the dry dirt to pace back. “Fuck!” he barked again, fingers running rows through his sodden hair. “We have to go. You have to help me get him out of here.”

  “Why not just kill him and run?”

  The captain stared at me for a long moment, his jaw slack as though he had never even considered that as an option, but he glanced at the box and shook his head. “No. Septum could be the only way to stop Leo.”

  “What do you mean, stop him?”

  “He’s… You were right when you said he wouldn’t stop at Koi, but it’s not Chiltae he is conquering for. His Holiness went back for Septum because he knew Leo had been looking for the box and he couldn’t let Dom Villius near the Witchdoctor in case… in case it only made him stronger somehow. He hoped…” He was babbling, pacing as he spoke. “He was sure the other Leos’ sudden interest in finding Septum meant the… spare body must somehow be dangerous to them. A weakness.” Captain Aeneas stopped and turned on me. “If you don’t want to wake up one day and find Leo Villius the god-ruler of all that was once yours, Your Majesty, then I beg you to help me.”

  “I’ll help you,” she said, and I had to force my consciousness back to the surface to add, “But what about my body?”

  We have to, Cassandra, the empress said. This is our only way to save my daughter. To save Kisia.

  What do I care about Kisia?

  You don’t care about anything, but you are in my body and I am dying. Let me have this. Let me try to fix some of the mess I made before I am gone.

  Her words cut fear into me that I tried to force away, tried not to dwell on, but it brought back the question that kept plaguing me. What would happen to me if this body died?

  From the doorway, the captain glared, daring me to refuse, his very stare a reminder that he could have left me stuck in the mud. I didn’t care about debts, but the empress was right. Leo had wanted Septum, which meant we couldn’t let Leo have him. Not the Leo with wild eyes who had just tried to kill us.

  I folded my arms and glowered at the captain because anything was better than admitting the empress was right. Admitting I was afraid to die here. “Fine, I’ll help,” I said. “But you have to say please.”

  A wary smile flickered upon his lips. “Really?”

  “Really. No one ever asks nicely.”

  His smile twisted into a grimace. “All right. Please, Miss Marius, I need your help.”

  “We’ll work on it. Let’s go.”

  29. MIKO

  The maid clicked her tongue as the comb caught on a knot of hair. There had been no time to bathe so she had sponged the blood from it as best she could, hurried along by the hovering figure of Minister Manshin. He had arrived like a whirlwind, picking things up and dropping them back in ways that better suited him. Pacing the floor before me, he said, “You remember all of that?”

  He had been talking of Bahain and the Levanti, of war and revenge, of what it meant to be Kisian in our hearts. The words had washed over me, but all I could think of was Jie’s staring eyes and fat, protruding tongue. Now I sat in his room wearing his robe, and with the dawn I would face his army for a far different show than what they had gathered to see.

  Manshin stopped pacing. “Your Majesty? Are you hearing me?”

  “No,” I said, looking up and incurring another sharp tsk from the maid. “We need Oyamada.”

  “That is a dangerous proposition, Your Majesty.”

  “More dangerous without him, surely,” I said, my voice sounding flat even to my own ears. “You said Emperor Kin sold the people a story they wanted to believe, but he could only do that because he was already someone they listened to. None of these soldiers have ever listened to me, but they have listened to Oyamada.”

  The minister chewed his lip. “There is much in what you say, but I don’t think he will speak for you.”

  “Oh, I think he might. How long do I have?”

  He looked out the window to where the first hint of dawn stained a night long torn by firelight. “Not long.” He went out on the words, leaving me to the maid’s ministrations. Her hands had shaken as she bound my wounded arm, but every moment helping me prepare had returned some of her composure. I had let her dress me in jewels, let her do up my hair and straighten Emperor Kin’s imperial robe across my shoulders, and when I had tried to draw the line at paint, she had appealed to Minister Manshin with a level of entreaty that bordered on tears. One look in the mirror had been enough to make me relent. I looked terrible. Dark rings hung beneath my eyes and despite the maid’s ministrations my hair was a mess, my face was pale and strained, and so many days walking Kisia without adequate food and rest had left me thin and worn out. I needed food. I needed sleep. I needed to scrub away the memory of that dead face. Of the child who would be emperor.

  There would be time to grieve later. I had said that of my brother. My mother. Ryoji. How many lives would I have to grieve when the time finally came to rest? To stop.

  With another click of her tongue, the maid fixed up some paintwork around my eyes with the tiniest of brushes. Outside the sun crept ever up and there was no going back.

  After a time, footsteps reverberated through the house and Minister Manshin returned with Lord Oyamada. The man looked almost as bad as I did, dishevelled and bloodstained and pale beneath the blotching of tea-burned skin, but he straightened his back as he entered, his wrists straining against tight knots.

  “Where’s Jie?” Oyamada demanded as Manshin pushed him down onto the matting before me.

  I inclined my head in a stately way that would have made even my mother proud. “Emperor Jie is dead.”

  Lord Oyamada said nothing. Instead he eyed my robe and my hair and at last turned to look out the window at the rising sun. “I see,” he said. “And now I am to be executed.”

  “We could do that.”

  His brows lifted, disdain in every line. “Could?” He carried his pride like a mask, holding back his grief as I held back mine. “Your prattle about an alliance didn’t work on me before, and now you’ve killed my grandson it is unlikely to have a better effect.”

  Excuses and explanations leapt to my tongue but I swallowed them all. They were a weakness no emperor was allowed. Kin had taught me that, had named it one of his lessons that night in Koi before Tanaka’s return. Lesson five, never beg forgiveness. Gods are never wrong. It was not the lesson I needed now, however.

  Lesson three, find their weakness.

  I thought I had been doing so all along, but I had misjudged the man. I was not used to seeing familial love.

  “I wish to honour Jie and continue on in his name,” I said. “I wish to ensure it is known far and wide that he was Emperor Kin’s son and heir, and that I, his sister, Miko Ts’ai, intend to avenge his passing and that of his father, by reclaiming their empire. I wish to give due honour and position to your family.”
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br />   Lord Oyamada eyed me warily, his lips pressed tight against the spilling of grief or rage or both. Silence hung. The maid fussed with my hair. “A sentiment,” he began at last, having mastered his first impulse, “that may sound hollow and false to any who saw you take the throne in Mei’lian.”

  “Not if they understand Grace Bachita acted without authority. I stepped in then, as now, merely to ensure the protection of Kisia.”

  A smirk quirked his lips, but though I couldn’t doubt he wished to throw my failure in my face yet again, he did not. But nor did he decline my offer.

  “We have lost all sense of unity,” I said when he didn’t answer. “Not only with half of the north bowing to the Levanti but with the south fractured into factions. Jie was losing them. Kin lost Bahain before ever the Chiltaens set foot across the border. We have to do better. We have to be better. Emperor Kin was divisive. My mother was divisive. My brother—” Words choked in my throat and I forced them down. “Even Jie was divisive. I have a chance to step out there as neither Otako nor Ts’ai, but as the last surviving member of any imperial family. And with a lord of the south and a minister of the north beside me, perhaps the generals and their soldiers will listen.”

  “And this position you offer, does it see me chained whenever I am not dancing upon a stage?”

  “No. I said I would honour my brother, Jie, and his family. If you wish the same then I offer you the chance to stand with me, not against me.”

  The man sneered, but again he did not immediately answer. And as the silence stretched his sneer became a grimace and he looked away, afloat upon his undercurrent of grief. It drained as quickly as it had risen, and I couldn’t but honour him for having a heart to break.

  “I wish you had never been born, Your Majesty,” he said at last, speaking without rancour as a man might observe a change in the weather. “Kisia would have been better off without your mother seeking to tear down Emperor Kin. And without you and your brother, nothing but the diseased remnants of an exiled madman.”