The Warrior Moon

by K Arsenault Rivera

  “If I take it?” says Shizuka. It is her mother’s own sword: a pure white sheath chased with gold. When she looks down, it is no longer in her own hands, no longer at her own waist.

  “Then this is as far as you go,” says the woman. “But you must grasp it by the blade.”

  There it is once more: her natural inclination to argue. “If I take it by the handle?”

  The fox-woman’s eyes narrow. Shizuka knows precisely that look—and it is painful to recognize it. “To wield a sword is to be cut by it, one way or another. You must accept that if you are to take it.”

  She wants to ask. She wants to voice it, this conviction in her heart, this recognition. But if she does—well, this goddess has always hated recognition. “What if I leave it here?”

  A pause, pregnant with the unspoken. Yes—she is sure of it, now, when she sees how the fox-woman softens. “Then you keep going.”

  In the end, it was no true decision. If Shizuka continues into the cavern she will leave Shefali behind, leave her people and duty behind, and that is no existence worth having.

  So she kneels.

  “You will suffer,” says the woman.

  “And I will survive,” answers Shizuka. The corners of her lips turn up. “I always do, don’t I?”

  She reaches for the sword.

  The woman grabs her by the wrist. Her grip is tight as iron and just as cool. “Are you willing to give your heart? Are you willing to give your soul?”

  It hurts: the woman’s grip, the desperation in her voice. It hurts, being questioned like this. “I’ve given both away already. Where Shefali goes, I go. It’s always been as simple as that.”

  Another silence between the two of them. This time, it is Shizuka who slays it. “If you were in my position, you’d say the same thing. You always did.”

  It is then that the woman drops Shizuka’s wrist. She sits up, straighter than before, the mask somehow more of a face now than ever. “You cannot take what the living say seriously,” she says. “They do not know.”

  “I think we know well enough what we’re getting ourselves into. I’ve been to war since I saw you last,” Shizuka answers. That they’re still arguing, even like this … “I am making this decision. I know where it leads. I know it will hurt. I know I will suffer. Still, it is my decision to make.”

  Once more she reaches for the sword. The fox-woman makes no move to stop her, but does close her eyes. “For the last time,” she says. “Please. Please, come home.”

  Thirteen years of ache and twelve years of an open wound. When the sword cuts into her, Shizuka hardly feels it. “Home is among the living.”

  Blood slicks her skin. She cannot look at the woman in the mask anymore: she looks at her hand, instead, at the crescent scar on her palm. She expected to see it cloaked in red.

  But it is gold, instead: molten gold.

  The woman in the fox mask laughs once, twice: a resigned sound, but not one without pride. “The trouble with this bloodline is that we’re all too much alike.”

  Shizuka holds up her hand. “Did you bleed gold, too?”

  “One of us did,” says the woman in the fox mask. “The memories start to blur, when you’re like this.”

  What would it be like to wear that mask? To have it soldered against her skin? One day, she supposes, she will find out. “What happens next?”

  “When you’re ready, you leave,” says the woman. “Right back the way you came. You go back to your war, and you win it, or else none of this will have mattered.”

  She wants to stay a little longer. She wants to talk to this woman. There are all sorts of questions she might ask, questions to which the answers will hurt more than the sword, more than her ribs, more than it hurts to breathe.

  But she is needed, so she stands. So, too, does the woman.

  She takes Shizuka by the shoulder. This time, her grip is looser. Shizuka stiffens, unaccustomed as she is to any sort of contact.

  “When you come home,” she says, “we can drink together. All of us.”

  Her throat aches. She shoves the sword into its sheath, and the sheath through her belt. “I don’t drink anymore.”

  Another silence. The woman in the mask softens—before finally pulling her closer. She smells of the sea, smells of Blessing, smells of the forest and the sun.

  “Remember,” says the woman. “You are—”

  “A swamp lily,” answers Shizuka. The block in her throat is shrinking, shrinking. Her ribs ache, as if she has been coughing for some time.

  The woman in the fox mask nods. “You shall not sink, so long as you allow yourself to float.”

  “Will I see you again?” Shizuka asks, for by then, she can see from here the black ink at the edge of the woman’s wrist, the way she holds her right arm stiff at her side.

  She is that woman, and she is not, and Shizuka’s heart aches at the thought.

  The fox does not answer.

  Shizuka’s fingers tingle. She doesn’t dare to look down, but she can feel what is happening all the same—the threads wrapping themselves around her joints, tugging, tugging.

  You are needed, they say.

  “Please,” she says. “Please, before I have to go.”

  The fox’s eyes flare. Shizuka blinks away from the flash of light. In its afterimage, she sees a woman in a soiled bed. Another flare—a woman on her knees before the shores of Nishikomi, a sunbeam piercing through her chest.

  The threads wind about her wrist so tightly that she begins to lose feeling in her fingers. Harder, they tug, harder—she takes one stumbling step backwards.

  “You have to tell me!” she says. She can hear her own voice echoing off the walls of the cavern. Has she always sounded so young, so afraid?

  “You said you’d … it would be when I was ready!”

  The threads have her by the arm. They pull and pull, strong enough that she wonders if even Shefali would be able to stand against them. No matter how she digs in her heels, she cannot resist them for very long. With her remaining arm, she raises her mother’s sword—

  Threads wrap about her mouth, about her eyes, about her throat—

  Just one more moment, just one—

  “Listen to your father, when the time comes,” says the fox.

  Shizuka reaches for her, blind though she may be. The corners of her eyes sting and she feels, for a moment, as if she might be … as if in this place, she can …

  A pike is cruelly yanked from the sea. Air surrounds it, filling its lungs and drying its scales, and it gasps for breath. So terrified is it of this unfathomable world that it does not even realize the hook has already pierced its mouth. It writhes and flaps uselessly, staring at the sea with glassy eyes, yearning, yearning …

  So, too—Shizuka writhes atop the Father’s Sea. Sputtering up water feels like cracking her own ribs open over and over just to empty herself out—but she does. She does. Still, the threads bind her; still they tug at her now-conscious mind.

  Whatever she’s doing out there, I hope she wins. My daughter needs to see an Empress triumph.

  Keep my sailor safe. Please, that’s all I ask of you.

  If I die saving you …

  No.

  No, all of this is …

  She can’t hear herself think, can’t focus. Where is she? Shizuka opens her eyes and wishes she hadn’t. Some part of her hoped she’d been brought to shore. The rippling, glass-smooth sea beneath her tells another story.

  So, too, does the blazing sword in her hand.

  How did she get here? Ah yes—she fell.

  Five columns of fire surround her. Their roar makes it even harder to think, harder to remember.

  There is so much, and she can hear all of it, all of it, and—

  Sky, she wants it to stop. She wants to hear herself, she wants to be herself. Her headache will kill her if this demon doesn’t.

  And there is a demon before her. A whole fleet of them waiting to be dealt with.

  Very well—sh
e will deal with them. The Phoenix Empress will deal with them.

  But first—there is a thread right beneath her, a thread burning gold amid all the red. Shizuka—no, she has shed that name!—the Empress wills the blade of her sword to lengthen. Cool yourself, she tells it, and it is quick to answer.

  She drives this lance into the water. The golden thread wraps itself around, and she pulls it back.

  Minami Sakura flops like a pike against the water.

  “You’re…,” Sakura stammers. “You’re really…”

  But the Empress cannot afford to divide her attention much further. The Minami woman will need a place to rest, and the water—the confounded water—will not heed the Empress for much longer.

  And so she dips her right hand into the murk.

  “Grow,” she says.

  The kelp heeds her. Up and up, higher and higher, weaving itself weft through warp. In her mind she sees the platform—and soon, it floats just beneath her palm.

  Shizuka’s cousin is swearing up a storm—but she will live, and the kelp has sworn it shall not abandon her.

  Which leaves only the ships.

  Yes—she sees the creature perfectly well, sitting atop the mast of the largest ship. If she tries—if she forces herself from the constraints of this body—she can see its shock. The flute’s quieted. She wonders distantly if that is because the sea has claimed the instrument.

  One step forward. Another. The ocean boils beneath her feet; the flaring sun of her blade burns hotter and hotter. Five columns of fire widen and widen. She pulls them in with a thought, as if she is closing the fingers of her right hand.

  Like crushing autumn leaves—crushing the ships of the enemy. Fire consumes most of them. The chunks of wood and iron and flesh that fly from her grasp she leaves to the sea.

  The demon’s ship lies in the center of her palm, untouched by the columns, just as the Empress wanted.

  “The Fourth wishes to speak with me,” she says in her voice of storms and wonders, in her voice of wildfires and thunder. She notices, in a distant way, that there are flames crowning her—that the light above her comes from a divine shroud.

  In desperation, the demon reaches for its chain. Once more it sails through the sky, straight toward the Empress.

  Her sword will not cut it.

  But her fires might.

  With a flick of her wrist, as if she were opening a fan before a suitor, the Empress speaks to her flaming shroud. Burn, she tells it, consume.

  And so it does. Metal turns thick as rice porridge the moment it makes contact with her blue flames.

  Still, she walks toward the demon. When she is eight steps away from the towering ship—then she runs a fingertip along the edge of her mother’s sword. From orange to blue to painful white, its light.

  “Listen to me—I am going to give you my message for your Traitor King.”

  There is a distant part of her that thinks what she is about to do is preposterous. The girl, most likely; the woman whose body she has worn for so many years; the ashes to which she will soon return. She cannot stay this way forever, she knows; her body is still mortal. It is not yet her time.

  Perhaps it is preposterous—but it is necessary, too.

  The Phoenix Empress falls into her duelist’s stance. Shizuka takes a breath to center herself. It does little, with all the threads straining for her attention, but it is the ritual that is important.

  “Tell him I am sick and tired of messengers.”

  With her next breath, she makes her cut.

  As a bamboo cutter’s axe splitting a culm—so the brilliant arc of the Empress’s sword carves through the floating fortress.

  As lightning striking tinder—so the Empress’s flames blast the ship’s hull.

  For a moment, the Empress stays where she is, slightly doubled over with the force of the cut, and admires her handiwork. Truly, it is the finest cut she has ever made—quick and clean, decisive and unerring. Has there ever been a single blow that saved this many lives? For if this ship reached the shore, she shudders to imagine what it might have done to her people. Its belly was empty for a reason.

  Yet her celebration does not last long. When she looks up to the mast, the demon is gone.

  The Empress narrows her eyes. Is that a glimmer she sees where it once sat? The night sky there is like the wind through a gauzy black curtain; she can see it twisting.

  No matter. If the thing had the sense to run, and she’d already crushed the ships, the battle’s been won.

  She feels no joy. It’s difficult to feel anything at all, removed as she is, but she knows she should feel proud of herself.

  Instead there is only this awful hollowness.

  Please come home, she thinks, tracing the line of her jaw.

  When she returns to her earthly form, she will gasp and tear at her hair, she will rake her nails across her face, she will cry out: I didn’t tell her how much I miss her.

  But the Phoenix Empress will not weep.

  She lost that ability long ago.

  BARSALAI SHEFALI

  FOUR

  “You’ve got the map, Soyiketu. Come on. Let’s see it,” says Otgar. Soyiketu—her half brother—grabs a large tube lying on top of the wardrobe. He unfurls it over the table. Shefali’s seen quite a few maps in her time, but this one is more detailed than most. She hadn’t known Soyiketu for a cartographer—but then, he was ten the last time Shefali saw him, and now he is a man grown, having paid his bride-price. He’s going to get married during the Jubilee. Maybe Shefali will go.

  At the sight of the map, Otgar punches her thin cousin so hard on the shoulder that he sways on his feet. “That’s it!” she says. “That’s my baby brother doing something useful!”

  Shefali does not envy him. She turns her attention to his work instead. There they are at the northern edge of the Minami swamps. Half a day’s ride away is Nishikomi; two days past that are the Tokuma Mountains. Shizuka and her fleet are represented by a phoenix painted in red out in the bay; the infantry by a caricature at best unkind and at worst … Well. She may accidentally spill ink on it later.

  She ignores the drawing to focus on the mountains. Shiratori is a craggy province indeed, covered in rocky, treacherous ground; if they are going to ride to the base of the mountain, they will have to take the Azure Promise Road. Qorin horses are fast and hardy—but not so sure-footed as those little Hokkaran ponies.

  The Azure Promise Road twists like a serpent in its effort to provide the safest possible journey. Fine enough for travelers, for daredevils intent on climbing the tallest peaks of Hokkaro, but awful for an army. Every bend in the road is another place they might be attacked. Shefali bites at her knuckle without thinking as she studies the map—then quickly bandages herself when she realizes she’s broken skin.

  Only as she’s wrapping her finger does she see her mother gesturing. Otgar speaks soon after.

  “Here’s the snake we’re dealing with,” she says. “Since Hokkarans see mountains and rough ground and say, ‘Let us live there where the earth hates us,’ we find ourselves on this road. It’ll be near impossible to defend this position—” She points to the very base of the mountain. “—and so we aren’t going to try that. We’re going to set up traps instead.”

  “Engineers setting out tonight, then?” says Auntie Dalaansuv. She’s the youngest of Alshara’s sisters, only five years older than Otgar. She’s also in charge of every single engineer they’ve adopted into the clan or taught themselves.

  “Try after this meal,” says Otgar.

  Dalaansuv grinds her teeth, shakes her head. “I wanted to do some hunting,” she says.

  “Why do you need to hunt?” says Ganzorig. “I fed you!”

  “It’s the feeling of it,” says Dalaansuv. “Helps to clear my mind. Barsalai knows what I mean.”

  Shefali knows exactly what she means, and she also knows that Grandfather Earth has forsaken the swamp. Five days she has hunted here, and in that time, the finest
thing she caught was a single deer. One. She’s found plenty of crocodiles. She has discovered that she hates crocodiles, and that they are not overly fond of her.

  “Don’t bother,” Shefali says. “Too moist here. It’ll ruin your bow.”

  Khadiyyar nods. “Already told all my riders to leave their bows in their cases. The air here. Ugh. I’m surprised we could light a fire at all.”

  “Needlenose is right,” says Otgar. “You shouldn’t bother. And you should realize when the clan’s needs are more important than your own, Auntie. We have to clear the pass of blackbloods if Barstoq’s army is going to be joining us.”

  Dalaansuv glares at her but relents with a sigh. “Suppose you’re right, Dorbentei,” she says. “What’ll we be needing, trapwise? Even you, dear sister, wouldn’t send me off to feed the crows on my own.”

  Alshara smirks. Her fingers form the answer and Otgar voices it. “Would I do that to my own baby sister?”

  “To your brothers, maybe,” says Khadiyyar, who by all accounts didn’t completely hate Shefali’s two fallen uncles. She is the only sister who didn’t, and at times she and Alshara butt heads over how the situation was handled.

  “Our brothers deserved what they got,” Otgar translates. “They weren’t prepared. But we are. Soyiketu, the list?”

  Soyiketu quietly fetches another list. He doesn’t talk much. Shefali once thought perhaps he’d grow out of it, but he seems just as tight lipped as an adult. She likes him for that, and has spent more than one of these precious nights sharing kumaq with him by the fire.

  Dalaansuv studies the list like a Hokkaran studying their family lineage. As she does, all her earlier hesitation melts away. Giddy as a child, she speaks. “Burqila, it says here that we’re using cannons.”

  Alshara returns her sister’s grin. Wolfish, she is. “We are,” says Otgar.

  “You’re allowing me to use cannons again.”

  Alshara nods.

  “For the first time since the Wall. Since you let Khadiyya use the cannons, and she didn’t even like using them.”

  “They’re too loud,” says Khadiyya.

  “Too loud?!” says Dalaansuv. “They are a wonder of engineering, Khadiyya, you cannot possibly ignore that—”