Minami Shizuka stands in her place. Not the Empress, her blood stained black; not the General, her hands still unclean.
Her mother’s daughter, and her father’s. Shefali’s wife. The woman who is afraid of water. The Phoenix.
“We’re setting sail,” she says.
“What?” says Munenori. “We’ve got sailors on shore still—”
“Recall them,” Shizuka says. She turns from the window and tugs on her gauntlets. “The music is the key. It’s my own fault; I should have been above deck.”
He follows as she heads up, step by step, until she stands above deck. Above her a canopy of bronze and wood blocks out the sky. The sailors salute as she walks by, as she makes her way to the signalbearer. A wiry little lad he is, his hair a sooty explosion atop his head. When he sees her, he snaps to his feet, then reconsiders and kneels back down. Shizuka stops him just as his knee touches the deck.
“Send word to the others that we’ll be setting sail shortly,” she says. “As soon as they’ve recalled their people. We must be deeper into the bay by nightfall.”
They want to taunt her? They want to make her afraid? She’ll show them what she thinks of that.
The boy doesn’t question this, picking up the fans he uses for his trade and heading toward the window. Shizuka averts her eyes rather than look out onto the water. It’s all around her, but if she focuses on the sailors and the ship, she can pretend they’re in a strange-looking palace.
Munenori’s gone to speak to some of the others—they hurry off down the gangplanks to recover their companions. As he returns, he calls out for the firebreathers to ready the cannons. The Ambition is humming now, as if it has awoken from a long sleep.
“What can I help with?” she asks Munenori. He is so stunned by the question that it takes him a moment to respond. When he does, it’s with a joke.
“We’ve always need of more strong backs to row,” he says.
Shizuka nods. “Send for me when the moon rises.”
Before he can stop her, she descends the stairs again. If the Daughter herself had joined the rowers, they might’ve been less surprised. To question her would be suicidal, but to stare at her quizzically—this is allowed.
“Your Majesty?” says the headman.
“Don’t mind me,” she says. “I’m only here to help.”
She takes a seat at one of the benches and grabs hold of the oar.
They won’t be moving for a while yet, but it’s good to have a spot. The man next to her goes milk white. She gives him a good-natured elbow. The sort of thing Dorbentei would do. Dorbentei seems like the woman to emulate about now, not that Shizuka would ever dream of telling her so.
“What’s the matter?” she says. “Never seen an Empress before?”
He guffaws. “Can’t say I have,” he says. “Let’s hope your back is as strong as your sword arm!”
It is easier, here, where there are fewer windows. So long as she does not look out the portholes, she won’t have to deal with the open sea.
Well—it is easy until it is hard. When the foreman first beats the drum, when they first begin to row, Shizuka’s back ignites. Duelists aren’t known for their strength, and she is no exception. Were it not for her seatmate Haruki-tun and the other rowers, she’d be flying off wherever the oar led her. When had it gotten so hard to row? Had it always been this way? No wonder sailors appeared so often as romantic heroes, no wonder she’d never met one who did not have aurochs’ shoulders. The oar is moving her, and not the other way around!
Yet even this is comforting in its own way—the beating of the drums drowns out the sound of the waves, and focusing as she is on the motion of the oar, she cannot focus on the ocean itself. When the rower’s song starts, she fumbles through the words, and that, too, is comforting, for if she is singing, then she cannot think.
She has almost forgotten that she will have to leave when Munenori appears in the doorway, when he jerks his thumb up toward the deck. From the set of his jaw, the news isn’t good.
In her haste to rise, she does not time it well. The oar slams into her stomach. Armor can soften a blow, but it can’t negate it, especially when the blow in question is delivered by six men in unison. Winded she doubles over, reaches out to steady herself and—
A child in a bath has paper boats to amuse her. When one displeases her, she brings her fist down on the water. The waves the little god summons threaten to upend the ships, sending them careening this way and that.
The Ambition is one such ship. All at once the decks quake, all at once a massive hammer strikes at their hull, all at once the rowers on that side are flung from their seats as the ship itself tilts sideways. What was once the ceiling is now her right-hand wall. Like dolls the sailors fall from their places—the rowers on the left side of the room cling in desperation to their oars to avoid sliding across the ship.
Shizuka isn’t ready.
When the blow strikes them, she is already on shaky footing; she can’t right herself in time once the ship tilts. Though she windmills her arms to try to find some new balance, it’s no use. She falls to the ground, knocks her head against the deck, and slams right into Haruki. Her ears are ringing; Munenori’s shouting something at her but she can’t hear him, can’t hear anything except her own heart. Dust and sweat are getting in her eyes. Just as she pushes herself up, the ship rocks back to normal—this time Haruki dares to catch her by the arm before she can fall.
“Thank you!” she shouts, or she thinks she shouts thank you—she bows a little as she pulls away, as she heads for Munenori still standing in the stairwell. He’s telling her something and she still can’t hear it. Had a cannon hit them? Had their cannons fired? Perhaps this is why Dragon’s Fire was outlawed through the Empire; she’d heard thunderclaps with more subtlety.
It’s only the war that keeps her functioning, only the memory of the oncoming shades. When surrounded by the enemy, disorientation is the last thing you can afford.
So she slaps at her own ears in a vain effort to awaken them. In the meanwhile she scans the Ambition: sailors now running at full tilt from place to place, shouting, pointing to this window or that. Munenori must realize she can’t hear a thing: he takes her to a window where she can see the ships burning outside. Two of them—Doanese ships if the shape of them is any indication. Like prayer tags, they’re burning, crumpling up at the edges; even from here she can see the tiny shapes of the sailors jumping into—
She sucks in a breath. The water.
Some of the words are starting to come in now. Munenori’s screaming in her ear and she is thankful, for she doesn’t know if she’d hear him otherwise.
“The Fragrant Mist and the Morning Fog!” he says. Nim and Nuyoru’s ships. No wonder. Part of her feels guilty for allowing them the use of firebreathers—but she tells herself that sailors so reckless would’ve found some other way to meet their end. Maybe. She’ll worry about it later, when they aren’t under fire.
And they are under fire, Shizuka can see that now: flaming arrows arc toward them in the night. None of them can pierce the bronze roof of the Ambition, nor the roof of the Crane, but impact is impact all the same.
“The Wing’s readying their trebuchet,” says Munenori. “We can’t see them, but she’s going to take her best guess. We’ve orders to follow her lead. Are you confirming?”
Which one is the Wing? Ah, she sees it now on the other side of the ship; the massive trebuchet atop it is a little hard to miss. Nothing like the Qorin models Shefali’s aunt always seemed so proud of—this is the sort powered by ropes your whole crew pulls on at once. Dreadfully inefficient.
But the Ambition has cannons. Those are far better.
“I already told you, Munenori-tul,” she says. “You and the others manage the sea battle. I’ll…”
She glances out to the ocean again. Forces herself to. Where are they coming from? The arrows fly in from the northeast, but that can’t be right—the Father’s Teeth are there. To p
osition yourself so close to them is suicidal at best.
The violet sky beyond the Wall, the false sun.
She swallows.
Munenori’s left her to give orders to the rest of the crew. Shizuka stands alone near the window, unable to look away as wave after wave of arrows come toward them. As they scrape against the roof, it almost sounds like hail. She allows herself to remember winter on the steppes for a moment, allows herself to remember going out for a ride with Shefali only to be driven back to the ger once the hail started up. Shefali had torn the deel from her own back just to give Shizuka a bit of cushioning against it.
She’d always known. She’d always known.
To the left, the Wing readies. A creak of rope, a screech of wood—the stones fly through the air to the northeast, batting away the arrows as they go—and then sink into the water without hitting anything at all.
The flute’s back. There is the strange melody, there is the prickling at the back of Shizuka’s neck. The Ambition turns toward the arrows to allow the cannons to fire.
The deck rumbles beneath her; the air smells of pitch and fire. She plugs her ears just before the explosion.
Just before the arrows at last find their purchase.
Through the signalbearer’s window come most of them—five that land in the boy’s back and send him crumpling forward. Two come in through the thin windows somehow, one landing in someone’s leg. The second sailor takes an arrow to the throat and sinks to the deck clutching at the wound. He’s trying to stop the bleeding but it won’t work, it won’t work.
Shizuka’s mouth goes dry.
What horrifies her is not seeing them die, what horrifies her is how little sorrow she feels.
When did this become mundane to her? For her first thought on seeing the boy go facedown is that someone should plug up the window, not that he had his whole life ahead of him.
Not that he is here only because of her.
This person she is becoming—is she a person at all, or just a husk of one? How many times can she wander into war like this before something in her dies?
Two sailors rush to the boy and move his body out of the way.
“Did the cannons hit?” she asks, since no one is keen on telling her.
Munenori answers, his voice steady in spite of his own building worries. “No, Your Majesty. Wing’s approaching them, or where we think they are; we’re following.”
Without the signalbearer, there won’t be any way to communicate, will there?
She swallows, holds on to the wall as the ship turns once more. Once they’ve turned, the arrows are less of a worry—the two that slipped through the slits were an exception. They’ll be all right now. She tells herself they’ll be all right now.
The man with the arrow in his throat dies as they close distance with the Wing. She will think of something to say for him and the boy once this is all over with.
Up ahead the Teeth are jutting out of the ocean. Trin’s ship, the Fragrant Mist, is as close to them as anyone might dare to get. That is youth for you, she supposes; he is swinging in from the west to try to pincer the enemy against the rocks.
The enemy that they still can’t see.
If this keeps up …
Her eyes go to the window. Baozhai told her to be safe. Shefali told her to take care of herself. She shouldn’t consider what’s obviously a foolish option.
But if this keeps up, well. Someone is going to have to cut through the veil the enemy’s using, and Shizuka is the only woman on board with a magic sword.
The Wing readies again, now that they’re closer. Shizuka holds tight to the wall—
Another explosion rocks the ship, and this time it isn’t coming from below decks. Again the Ambition teeters over; Shizuka dangles for a moment from the wall, her arms and shoulders straining to hold her own weight. She can’t see for all the wood flying through the air—but there’s nothing to stop her hearing. Wails hit her, wails and screams.
“Get down!”
“He’s … He’s in two pieces!”
She is one of the luckier ones.
For this time, it is clear what caused the explosion.
Were she not seeing it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t believe it was there: a sickle wide as twenty men, the body of it a strange gleaming black, the blade a shining silver. The chain at the end of it is the same shade of black—and it is just as wide, wider than any Shizuka has ever seen. Somehow the thing punched through the hull of the Ambition; somehow it’s cut through ten sailors already. Blood coats the decks as they call out for help.
Unfortunately, the healer is among those wounded. Shizuka sees him over by the man who ate the arrow—the sickle sliced into him the way a hungry soldier cuts into their meat.
The air smells of death and sea salt and she can hardly breathe at all—but she has to think. This isn’t the worst she’s ever seen. To lose herself to the horror of it is to doom all of them. She is a Minami, she is a god, and the water is the only thing that frightens her here. Not the enemy.
She eyes the sickle as they return to their normal positioning, as she can once more stand on her own two feet.
All around her the sailors are panicking. They need a symbol. She will give them one.
She draws the Daybreak Blade in one fluid movement. In five steps she reaches the sickle, reaches the chain.
To her left the ocean roars—but it is nothing compared to her. This fire within her—she feeds the sword only a little of it, and she makes her cut.
She expects a little resistance. She expects that it will hurt her shoulders to do this. She expects any number of things, except for the sword’s failing to cut through the chain.
Yet that is exactly what happens—the Daybreak Blade crashes against the metal and bounces off, creating a sea of sparks but not cutting through, not cutting through.
What?
But that is impossible; the Daybreak Blade cuts through thick layers of armor with no issue, it cuts through solid stone, it cuts through jade.
And she hasn’t severed the chain?
Is it something she did?
She hardly has time to think about it—whoever is on the other end of the chain yanks it back. Only by dropping chest to the ground does she avoid getting sliced in half as it flies back to its owner, tearing open the hull as it goes. Thankfully it’s only the top deck, thankfully water isn’t coming in, but they’re open to the next wave of arrows now.
Munenori’s swearing behind her.
The sword in her hand hums. As the sea rages outside, the sword is the only thing keeping her calm: the warmth of it, the brightness of it. All her life the Daybreak Blade has felt like an extension of herself.
And yet it couldn’t …
She must have cut wrong.
That’s it—she must have used the wrong cut.
She won’t make that mistake next time. There isn’t any space to. Her next cut has to be perfect.
It’s going to have to be her, isn’t it? For the Wing doesn’t know where to shoot, and the Fog hasn’t rammed into anything at all. If she waits much longer, if the sickle comes again, they may not have many sailors left aboard the Ambition.
It’s going to have to be her.
At that moment, Minami Shizuka’s soul is as weary as it has ever been. She didn’t want it to go this way. She had wanted to win this battle with her ships and her soldiers; why did she ever think that was possible? Chen Luoyi’s first rule of war is to know your enemy. Shizuka knew the Traitor’s forces wouldn’t play fair, and so why had she bothered?
It was always going to have to be her.
Guilt is a blade she’s swallowed. Will she ever learn?
She sheathes the sword. Climbing up onto the roof will be hard enough without one of her hands full. One step, two. She makes her way to where the window once was, where the signalbearer climbed up and out.
In the dark it is harder to tell where the sea ends and where the sky begins; she chooses to believe that th
e whole world outside the ship is sky. They are sailing through the river of stars now, fearless explorers confronted with unthinkable evil.
“Your Majesty,” says Munenori. “I have absolute faith in you. You know this.”
When did he get here? Perhaps he sees where she is going, perhaps he has some idea what she is about to do. Well. If he means to stop her, he isn’t going to be successful. Shizuka’s already made up her mind.
“I do. That is why I trust you to capitalize on the opportunity I am about to create.”
“Well,” he says, “if you told me, perhaps, what to expect—”
“They’re hiding,” says Shizuka. She is at the edge now. One wrong step or one more rock will send her falling into the sea. She’s dizzy, but she holds on to what remains of the hull here to pretend otherwise. “I’m going to cut through their disguise, that is all. The combat itself I leave to you and Captain Dai.”
“Cut through their disguise…,” repeats Munenori. “You’re going…”
Shizuka nods. She doesn’t want to say it either, but if she’s on the roof, perhaps the next sickle will head straight for her. Perhaps they can avoid any more unnecessary death.
She is gambling her life on this word, “perhaps,” but it is better than gambling with others’.
“Munenori-zul,” she says, swallowing. “If I should fall—”
“You won’t,” he says.
“All the same, if I should—promise you will throw me rope. I … I cannot drown twice.”
He bows deeply. “If you fall, I’ll fish you out myself,” he says. “Do you need help getting up there?”
Shizuka sees now the hooks the boy used to pull himself up. What a strong grip he must have had—if she falters, she will slip, and if she slips …
Munenori will throw her rope, he said. And she cannot die here in Nishikomi so far from her wife. No matter how stupid this plan is.
“No,” she says.
One step toward the window, two. Should she remove her armor? It will be harder to haul herself up if she doesn’t, but if the enemy fires at her—she’s promised Baozhai she’d be safe, she’s promised Shefali she will take care of herself. Armor it is—even if it won’t help if the sickle comes for her.
The Warrior Moon Page 10
