The Warrior Moon

by K Arsenault Rivera

  She hopes it doesn’t. Shizuka has never believed in the old gods, but she wishes she did now, for she wants to pray and there is no one to hear her. Her parents can’t grant her their protection, only their approval, and she knows they wouldn’t approve of this.

  She doesn’t want the sickle to come for her. She doesn’t want to fall into the ocean. She doesn’t want to die. She wants to be with Shefali somewhere the two of them can roam like wild horses, somewhere they can be together as two pine needles. No matter what the old gods have to say, she has always had Shefali.

  But that is the thought of the woman, and not the god. Her desires are no longer her own—and there are prayers she cannot leave unanswered.

  The window is open before her. So close as Shizuka is, it’s impossible to mistake the churning black sea for the shimmering sky. In the foam she sees Daishi, the cousin she slew with her own hands; in the bubbles she sees Mizuha, the creature that compelled her to such foul ends.

  If she hesitates, she is lost.

  Minami Shizuka hauls herself up through the window. Fortunately, as she clings for her dear life to the hooks the signalbearer used so easily, the sea is beneath her. She can’t see it, only hear it, and the sound isn’t so bad as the sight. She flails a little, clinging to the hook, and finds there is one near her foot. That small amount of stability transfers to her mood. She holds on and she does not fall, and she thinks to herself that she can do this thing.

  Another hook is jammed into the roof two handspans away. Shizuka sucks in a breath and reaches for it. At the same time, she hauls up her leg to the hook her hand had previously occupied.

  One step up.

  This isn’t so bad as she thought it would be. Like climbing a mountain, except that she’s never been the sort of woman who does that for fun. She wouldn’t need to now. The Ambition towers over the water; its summit a sight greater than Grandfather’s Crown.

  All she must do is continue climbing.

  She reaches for the next hook, pulls herself up, replaces her leg—

  Treachery! Her boot slips on the sea-slick wood. Only her grip on the new hook keeps her from dropping into the deep—and a single hook is not meant to support a person for long. Already it creaks with the weight of her.

  Do not look down. If she looks down, she is lost.

  She sucks in a breath and swings her body toward the foot-hook. After an eternal moment, she finds her footing. For a hundred beats of her hummingbird heart, she stays there, clinging to the two hooks.

  But she cannot stay there forever.

  So she pulls herself up again—careful this time. Precise. There are only two more left. She thinks of them as upstart nobles’ sons trying to duel her for her hand.

  One stroke is all it takes to fell them. One pull.

  At last her fingers meet the roof. Two final hooks and she will be on the roof.

  Two final hooks and she will see the ocean.

  She pulls herself up—and then almost falls back. Yes, that is the sea before her, endless and all-consuming; the infinite ocean! So massive is it that it fills her vision then, end to end, and suddenly the sky is not the sky, it is only the sea, only the sea—

  She’s going to fall in. She can feel it already. It’s in the air. The salt’s going to dry her out from the inside and then the sea will fill her and she will no longer be herself, no longer Minami Shizuka—

  The melody starts. A single note, played on flute, pierces through the crashing of the waves. Another follows and pierces through the haze of her fear.

  The enemy is here.

  And she is on her knees atop the Ambition, afraid to face them.

  But she was afraid when she faced the tigers, she was afraid when she dueled Leng, afraid when she dueled the suitors. Fear is her second-oldest friend. She knows this heartbeat as she knows her mother’s voice; she knows this ragged breathing as she knows the halls of the Jade Palace.

  One step, two. Shizuka stands on the rolling ship. Fear’s left her dizzy; the world feels like an inkwash painting she’s blustered into. But that is all right, that will be all right; once she’s spotted the enemy, she can go back into the ship, where it is safe.

  Or safer, at least.

  She reaches for her mother’s sword. A flash of gold, a torch against the night—warmth creeps up her arm as she holds it. The fire within her is burning now, brighter with every passing second. No ocean can dream of extinguishing it, of extinguishing her, of extinguishing the Phoenix Empress.

  Where are they?

  She scans the horizon as the melody climbs toward its climax. Only sky meets her, only the sea, only—

  There! A single spot where the stars do not shine, a single patch of unadorned black.

  How far is it?

  Does distance matter to a god?

  Four years ago she found perfect peace on the banks of the Kirin. As she closes her eyes now, she sets out to hunt it once more—but peace is a wily hare, running where it will, burrowing into the ground when you come near to it. For twenty breaths she chases after it.

  But the hare eludes her.

  A wave like rampaging bulls knocks into the ship. Shizuka slides on the roof, scrambling to regain her footing. In this she fails—she falls to the ground. Were it not for her armor, she’d have bruised her thigh. Still, there is no real wound except her pride, no real harm done except that her clothes are wet.

  Heavy and cold, they are. Her tunic is slapping against her sides. She’s beginning to shiver.

  No. Not now. Her mother’s sword is in her hand; she wears the Phoenix mask. She cannot fail.

  She grits her teeth, closes her eyes once more.

  The hare hides in a grove of flowers. She sees its ears poking up through the peonies and she laughs, for it is such a silly sight—what is it doing in there? Why not hide somewhere better? All she has to do is call to the peonies and they answer, their vines closing around the hare like a gentle hand. The hand carries the hare to her and she reaches out, grabs it—

  Peonies. Of course. She’d always loved them.

  They sink into her flesh and she sinks into their tangle.

  And soon she can feel the threads again. So many of them! As the threads of a loom are the prayers of the Empire. There are so many weaving together so quickly that she cannot hear them all. Part of her—the flesh of her, kneeling on the roof—regrets that she doesn’t have the time to tend to them all.

  But the god knows there will be time later.

  And she is a god now. Jade and gold her blood; peony-soft her skin. There is a fire within her that she does not understand and does not need to understand: it is a force as gravity is a force; it is eternal as the stars are eternal; it is bright and unconquerable and proud, so proud—

  She has always been this woman. She will always be this woman, this fire.

  There. Now that she has shed her eyes, she can see them clearly: the stolen ships of Iwa, cloaked in the Traitor’s darkness. Forty of them, if she does not miss her guess (and she is not really guessing), and a mixed fleet at that. There are two floating Axion castles, two dozen Hokkaran ships she has seen only in illustrations, one dozen Doanese ships, and two so strange she cannot imagine whence they’ve come. The two stranger ones are clad all over in metal.

  Aboard one of the floating castles is the demon playing the flute. It sits atop the mast, legs crossed beneath it, swinging its feet as it plays. Sayaka was right—its nose is abnormally long and pitted. Atop its head are two stubby horns, like those of a young goat. White, its beard, so fluffy and massive that it looks as if a cloud has consumed the thing’s face.

  How clearly she can see it! But she must see it clearer still. In her ethereal form, she holds aloft her phantom sword.

  One cut is all it takes her.

  She sees the burning arc fly into the sky; she sees it burst and fall like burning snow onto the ships of the enemy. Wherever a mote of conjured light lands, a fire is sure to follow. Already the sailors are scrambling to put
out the flames.

  But these are no normal flames, birthed by no normal woman. As one the sailors move, throwing water onto the largest flame—and to the water Shizuka simply says, No, you shall not consume me.

  Hotter she burns and hotter the flames on the ships. Her blood sings at the sight. How tall the flames are! Like pillars to the gods they rise, rise, rise—swirling like blown glass, reaching for the heavens! Within moments the ships are only memories, within moments they are cinder and ash swallowed by the boiling sea, within moments …

  How has she ever been afraid of the sea? For it bows to her now, as it well should. As the demon well should.

  But in the chaos, it leaped to the metal ship; in the chaos, it has traded its flute for the chain, and the chain—

  Something’s tugging at her throat.

  A thread?

  No, it cannot be a thread; she hardly feels those, and this is pinching at her skin, this is wrapping tight around her, around not just her throat but her body, too. Soon she cannot raise her hands at all; soon her skin is alight with pain.

  A sharp yank sends her reeling backwards, and it is only then she realizes what has happened.

  For it is then that her head snaps back and she sees the demon’s chain wrapped about her body. Then she sees that it is no normal chain at all, but one cast from gleaming black metal. Steam is coming off her body in thick tendrils.

  No.

  Nononono.

  “A beginner’s mistake, Four-Petal,” says the demon. “Never leave yourself unprotected.”

  It steps on the chain and she sees herself fall into the deep. How quickly she sinks, how quickly beneath—and now, though she has no lungs in this form, they are filling with water and she is screaming, screaming—

  The chains tighten around her.

  With the last gasps of clarity she has, she calls another pillar of flame. Orange and red and gold consume her; the sea beneath her boils and boils. If she burns hot enough, if she burns bright enough—

  The chains aren’t burning.

  The chains aren’t burning.

  Needles in the back of her neck, needles in her throat.

  She said she’d be safe. She said she’d be safe and now her body is somewhere in the middle of the ocean and she’s …

  Why does she feel so cold?

  No, she knows this feeling and she hates it, she won’t let it triumph over her, she won’t—

  “The Eternal King would like to have a word with you,” says the demon. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  MINAMI SAKURA

  THREE

  Nishikomi is the sort of city you never really leave. Like a dyer’s hands are always stained, so is the soul of someone raised in the Queen of Cities.

  This is not to say that Nishikomi is as splendid as Fujino. It isn’t. The sheer amount of people packed like ants into every crevice and corner of the place sees to that. There are streets you just don’t go down—not because they are dangerous, but because that’s where everyone leaves their trash.

  The dangerous streets are a different business altogether. Any native knows what to look out for—the dripping paint icons of this gang or that, the shift in colors from one neighborhood to the next.

  Sakura’s known these signs and portents for as long as she can remember. Maneater Matsutake’s gang runs the area around the Shrine of Jade Secrets. They came to the shrine three or four times a week, clad in brownish red. Most of the time they didn’t cause any trouble—just asked for their cut of the profits, stayed for a couple of drinks, and fucked off. Despite the frightening name, Matsutake knew a happy pleasure house brought in the best customers.

  And they thought it was really funny, too, having a kid in a place like that. When Sakura was younger, they’d always have treats for her. They called her Jade-lun. Her real name never mattered much—and maybe it was better, in the long run, if they didn’t know it. Most of her memories from childhood involve those people in some way or another—saving her from getting into fights, babysitting when her mother sent her out on errands.

  It was one of Matsutake’s people who gave Sakura her first set of paints. Nice paints, too. His name was Juzo, and he had a flat look behind his eyes, as if there was something he was desperately trying not to think about. The morning of the Sister’s Festival, he stopped by the shrine with a roll of half-decent paper in one hand and a tray of colorful ink blocks in the other.

  He called her over, and she hobbled right for him, and when he put the brush in her hand, she was so happy she almost fell over.

  “Look,” he said. She did. She watched him as he ground the ink and mixed it, as he dipped the brush in the mixture and held it above the paper. Two drops of red fell from the tip of the brush; she watched, wide eyed, as they grew and grew.

  Juzo guided her hand, painting a hungry red mouth. Five white teeth—two fangs on the bottom, and three on top—waited to bite at whatever was unfortunate enough to get caught between them.

  “As long as you see this,” he said, “you’re safe.”

  He probably meant for it to be reassuring—for her to look for that symbol wherever she went in the city. She did.

  But whenever she was nervous, she took to drawing it, too. After all, so long as she could see it, she was safe.

  Things like that get stuck in the swamp water of your soul. When she first boarded the ship to Xian-Lai, she drew that shape in all her sketchbooks; while she awaited Shefali’s reading of the letter, she drew hungry mouths in all her margins.

  And she finds herself drawing it now, looking out on five columns of fire in the bay. So bright do they burn that she cannot stand to look at them for long—to do so leaves columns of violet-green in her vision.

  She’d promised Baozhai that she’d look after her cousin.

  And where is she instead?

  On the top floor of her mother’s pleasure house.

  An awful quiet has seized the place. She does not need to be downstairs to know that the girls have all pressed themselves against the windows. The braver ones, anyway. Those more cautiously inclined will hide behind whatever is available, waiting for the news that it is safe.

  Which is Sakura?

  She came to Nishikomi, it’s true, and she had every intent of going to see her cousin. Of being with her, the way she’d so selfishly asked, back in Xian-Lai. That is a brave enough thing, isn’t it? Once all this is over, she can have one of the soldiers downstairs take her to wherever the Heavenly Ambition is docking. Shizuka will be surprised to see her, they’ll embrace, and she could continue on this insane warpath with a clear conscience.

  This is a battle she can safely observe—not one she has to involve herself in.

  That was her reasoning.

  But—well.

  Sakura knows her cousin. This is the first time she’s seen a … display of this caliber, but it is not the first time she’s seen one at all. Shizuka’s lit herself on fire more times than Sakura cares to count; she’s reached into a bonfire to fetch her scalding sake cup. Minor things—but godly all the same. A strange sense of wonder has always filled her watching Shizuka do such things—wonder mingled with worry.

  This is different.

  There’s hardly any wonder at all.

  When she glances down at her paper, it is covered in Matsutake’s mouths—the white like the marbling on a fine steak. Downstairs she hears someone—probably Momo—trying to soothe everyone’s nerves with the biwa. The gentle swell of the music only makes the roaring columns of fire all the more egregious.

  Sakura forces herself to look at them—to really look at them. The scholar’s part of her mind tries to take in the details. How wide are they? What is their exact color? Is this true fire, or only a facsimile? No, no, it must be true fire—look at how the ocean is steaming.

  Five columns. Two distant pyres, too, though those are much smaller and easily explained away as sinking ships. The columns are at least three times as wide, reaching like a desperate hand up, up, up into the n
ight sky.…

  But why only five?

  She taps the end of her brush against the table, sets the brush down, and stands.

  It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t. And the thought that wanders through her mind is worse than nonsensical—it’s outright stupid. She doesn’t want to indulge it, doesn’t want to leave out any food for it, but as she paces the room, it comes to her again and again, mewling for its supper.

  You promised you’d keep an eye on her.

  And she’ll be fine, won’t she? She’s always fine. Killed-a-demon-at-sixteen-shal, that was O-Shizuka.

  Screamed the first time Sakura tried to get her to take a bath when she got back from war, too. That was also O-Shizuka.

  And now she’s out on the water, and there are five columns of fire, but only five.…

  Before Sakura knows to stop herself, she’s headed downstairs. Just as imagined, there are two groups—those by the windows and those who have upturned the tables to hide behind. The latter group stares at her as she walks by.

  “Are you crazy?” calls Tsubaki.

  Sakura’s not sure how to answer. Maybe she is. If she stops to think about this, she’s going to change her mind—though she won’t yet admit to herself the decision she’s made. Instead of indulging Tsubaki, she keeps headed straight for the door, hopping over dropped instruments and scrolls alike.

  Scrolls. Half the girls here can’t even read. She idly wonders what secrets those props might hold, and decides that if she lives out the night, she might come back to find out.

  Sakura hops up the two steps near the door. Her shoes are waiting for her—absurdly high and absolutely not practical on the best of days. She steps into them anyway.

  “You can’t be serious,” says Kaede, one of the older women who has, by custom, changed her name away from a flower’s. “You’re going out there? Sa-lun, who knows what’s going to happen out there!”

  “Didn’t I tell you I’m a scholar now?” Sakura answers. “I’m the fucking idiot who’s got to write it all down for people.”