by Claire Luana
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty.”
“You have it.”
Kai and her companions waited at least an hour after the room fell silent to crack open the door of the wardrobe and peer out. The room was empty. It looked like the Oracle had been performing some spring cleaning; the rolled carpet was the only sign that anything unusual had happened. But Kai knew. Master Vita squeezed her hand tightly.
Both Quitsu and Master Vita tried to talk to her after they extricated themselves from the wardrobe. She didn’t want to talk. They offered her justifications and explanations, but she knew the truth. She had let that man die. She held his face in her mind, her memory tracing the contours of his dirty features. She would never forget what her cowardice had cost.
Kai threw herself into planning the next phase of their rescue. What else could she do? She was getting good at carrying on despite a mind numb with shock and sorrow.
The Oracle’s news that the crown had to charge for a full day and night was a setback. The eclipse was in three days’ time, which meant that the soonest Kai could get the crown to Hiro was the day before the eclipse. That was assuming that she was successful sneaking into the facility undetected. She presumed that her lock-melting trick on the city-side door had been noticed, and security had likely been increased on that side. Her best chance of getting in was through the throne room, which carried its own problems.
The queen had called a meeting of the moonburners in the central courtyard at daybreak the following day. That left Kai a few hours to figure out how to get through the throne room and facility undetected. That would be her best chance.
Kai found herself lurking behind a tree outside the throne room. She watched for an hour, and saw one set of guards pass into the building on the hour. The minutes stretched on, but finally the guards finished their rounds and left the building.
Kai strode into the front of the building, knowing that skulking would look more suspicious. The antechamber was deserted. She breathed a sigh of relief, and reached for the handle of the huge wooden door leading to the throne room.
“What are you doing?”
Kai whirled around, heightened awareness flooding every fiber of her body. Her mind raced to find a suitable excuse. Even in the time she watched the building, she hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse that didn’t fall flat.
But when she saw the figure that spoke, fear left her.
“Maaya?” Kai asked, running to the other girl and throwing her arms around her.
Maaya hissed as Kai’s arms encircled her, touching her back. Maaya had been flogged. So much had happened in just a few short days.
Kai pulled back. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot myself for a moment.”
“It’s okay,” Maaya said dully.
When Kai really looked at Maaya, what she saw twisted her heart. The girl seemed pale and flat, a dull version of her former bubbly self. It was as if the life had been sucked from her. Her skin was sallow, and she had deep purple circles under her eyes. Her hair had been pulled back into some semblance of a ponytail, but clearly hadn’t been washed in days. Her signature braids were gone. She was wearing a white servant’s uniform.
Kai tried to keep her dismay from showing on her face.
“Are you all right? I’m sorry I have been gone, they made me go to the mountains for testing . . .” Her excuse sounded lame even to her ears.
“I am alive,” Maaya said. “Which is more than I can say for Atsu.” Her voice choked at his name. “But I have been stripped of all rank and privilege. I have to serve the citadel for the rest of my life. I’m a slave. I suppose it’s what I deserve for disobeying.”
Kai shook her head fiercely. “You don’t deserve that. What they expect us to do . . . to give up . . . It’s wrong. I just wish I would have seen it sooner. You can’t be blamed for wanting something more than death and destruction. For wanting . . . life.”
Maaya opened her mouth to say something more, but then closed it, her face a mask.
“What is it?” Kai asked. “You can tell me.”
A tear leaked from the corner of Maaya’s eye. “They put lusteric in my food. I can’t moonburn anymore. I don’t know if they’ll ever let me.”
Kai’s anger flooded inside her, a raging river searching for release.
“It’s wrong,” she hissed. “This whole damn place is wrong. The queen needs to be stopped.”
Maaya’s eyes widened. “You’re talking about treason. If Queen Airi does this to fornicators,” she motioned to herself, “what do you think she does to traitors?”
“I don’t care. Someone has to do something. If we are all too afraid to stand up to her, she wins, and we all lose. I won’t ask you to put yourself at risk, but tell me. Is there a time where the throne room is completely empty? When I could slip inside unnoticed?”
“The guards do rounds on the hour. The maids clean twice a day, once after daybreak, once just after nightfall. I am only here because I forgot my cleaning bucket.”
“How long do the maids clean for?”
“An hour.”
“Thank you,” Kai grasped her friend’s hand, squeezing. “Things may change here very soon.”
Maaya smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “I wish I could believe you.”
The next twenty-four hours stretched to an unbearable length. All around the citadel, preparations were being made for the coming battle. Pura’s only orders for the time being were to eat and sleep, which Kai grudgingly followed despite her anxiety. She had to admit that after a bath, a hot meal and a few hours’ sleep, she did feel like she could think straight once again.
Quitsu had found Ryu near the waterfall behind the citadel’s walls. Ryu was furious and worried sick about Hiro, but Quitsu had convinced him that Kai had nothing to do with the moonburners descending upon the sunburner camp. Quitsu had sent Ryu to join the sunburner army that was rapidly making its way across the Churitsu Plain towards Kyuden. Kai prayed for Hiro and Ryu to be reunited after the queen was overthrown. Assuming they weren’t all dead. There were so many things that could go wrong.
Like the fact that Quitsu had not found Hanae. Kai had been clear with her instructions to her mother—they were supposed to meet by the waterfall. But she wasn’t there. Had her mother been harmed somehow? The thought of losing her mother a second time threatened to paralyze her. Kai didn’t think she could go through that again. Not to mention everything depended on her mother. Without a legitimate ruler to step in after the queen was dispatched, Kai would be dooming Miina to sunburner occupation or civil war. Kai wasn’t sure which was worse.
As light began to dawn in the east, Kai stood at the window, ready for the day to finally begin. Her nerves were jittery and her stomach flipped like a rabbit. Kai had a one hour window of time just after dawn when the maids and guards would be out of the throne room. Queen Airi would be giving her speech in the courtyard, detailing the coming battle. Kai knew from the Oracle that the moonburners would attack at nightfall, hoping to decimate the sunburners for as long as possible. Then, soon after dawn broke and the sunburners thought they were safe to mount their own attack, the eclipse would begin. With the sunburners drawn out and defenseless, the moonburners would attack. Kai prayed that she could stop it from happening.
“Are you ready?” Quitsu asked her.
She smiled. He always knew her thoughts before she voiced them. “You know I’m not. But we must do our best.”
“The plan is a good one. It will work,” he said.
Kai wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure her or himself.
“I know,” she said with more conviction than she felt. “We’ve come this far. Further than I thought we would. There’s nowhere to go but forward.”
Kai and Quitsu walked the long way to the throne room in silence. They came this way to avoid the gathering in the courtyard. Kai bore the solar crown in a leather satchel slung over her shoulder. It felt heavy. Perhaps the weight she felt was just in her min
d.
She ducked behind a tree near the entrance of the throne room. “Quitsu,” she said, kneeling down. “I need you to promise me something.”
His fox face was impassive. “What?”
“If something goes wrong, run. Get out. Don’t try to defend me. I need you to escape.”
“I’m not going to abandon you if something goes wrong!”
“You have to,” she said, stroking the soft fur of his head. “You are the only one who could get Master Vita, or my mother, or Maaya to help us. If something goes wrong, you need to expose what Queen Airi has been doing, and what it will mean. You are a seishen. Revered. They will believe you.”
“I am not going to leave you if you are fighting for your life.”
Her stomach tightened. Nothing would go wrong. She wouldn’t be fighting for her life.
“Please, Quitsu. I command this of you.”
His face grew stormy. “That’s not fair. Besides. If anything . . . happens to you, I die too, remember? So your little plan to ‘get the word out’ would be for nothing.”
Her brow furrowed. “I know. But, if I get caught, they probably won’t kill me, they’ll just throw me in one of those cells to use for breeding. You would be my only hope. The only hope for the future of the moonburners. And who knows, maybe the future of seishen. I don’t know exactly how the seishen are tied to the burners, but I think that if we go, you go.”
“Really? You’re playing the end of the species card with me now?” Quitsu wore a hint of a smile.
Kai broke into a grin. She had won. “I am most definitely playing that card.”
She picked him up and hugged him, her face buried in his silver fur, all decorum forgotten. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Quitsu. But I am grateful for you every day.”
“I don’t know, either,” he said, as she put him down.
A beat passed, and his eyebrows waggled.
Kai opened the door to the antechamber of the throne room and breathed a sigh of relief to find it empty. She wiped her sweaty palms on her uniform. She wasn’t cut out for this suspenseful stuff. She pushed open the next door into the throne room and started when she saw two moonburners standing there.
“You weren’t going to leave without us, were you?”
Kai sighed with relief. It was Emi, dressed in her moonburner blues, white bandage on her face. Leilu stood at her side.
“I didn’t know if we could get you out of the hospital ward,” Kai admitted. “Well, just your luck, I sprang myself,” Emi said. “There is no way you’re doing this without me.”
“Or me,” Leilu said. “You should have told me. We’re family now.”
“How did you know I would be here?” Kai asked.
“Master Vita,” Emi said.
That old traitor, Kai thought fondly.
“I didn’t want to involve anyone else,” Kai said. “What we’re talking about is treason.”
“Emi explained to me what the queen is planning. The queen forfeited our loyalty when she decided to use our sisters as brood mares. And if there is any chance that Stela is in there . . .” Leilu curled her hands into fists. “We have to get her out.”
“We’re with you. To the end. Whatever end comes,” Emi said. Kai’s throat grew a lump as tears threatened. She nodded.
“Thank you,” Quitsu said for her. “We’re lucky to have such friends.”
They padded across the empty room. Even their soft leather boots sounded thunderous on the empty marble floor. She moved aside the rich tapestry hanging on the back wall, woven in the blues and silvers of Miina. The door was there, just as she remembered it.
They made their way down the steps they had once come up. Everything was eerily quiet. Kai prayed that she would find Hiro below unharmed. At the thought of him, her chest tightened. She wanted to see him again. To see his golden hair in the firelight, the curve of his smile as it broke across his face. To hear his deep laugh that warmed her to the core.
She willed herself to force the feelings down. The last thing she needed was romantic notions clouding her judgment. Hiro thought she had betrayed him. He might never trust her again.
The stairway opened into the room lined with cells housing the sunburners and moonburner test subjects. The room appeared empty. She straightened and they walked into the room, trying to pretend that they belonged. She passed one moonburner who was swollen with child, and another who appeared normal. Perhaps the experiment had not worked on her.
Emi and Leilu were unable to disguise the horror on their faces, looking around at the burners.
Kai continued forward, peering into the cells. Most of the inhabitants appeared to be sleeping.
One silver-haired woman jerked upright as they passed her cell, her face a mass of bruises and cuts.
“Stela!” Leilu cried, rushing against the bars.
Stela, clothed in white, pressed herself to the other side of the bars, tears in her eyes.
“Thank the Goddess,” she said. “I thought I’d rot in here forever.”
Leilu stroked Stela’s hair through the bars, and the two women clung to each other, foreheads touching through the cold metal. The moment was strangely intimate and Kai turned away, meeting Emi’s eyes.
She had a sad smile on her face. “Let’s find your man,” Emi said.
They passed another cell, and Kai’s breath caught in her throat as she saw him. He was dirty and disheveled, but appeared unharmed. He was lying on a stone slab, one arm thrown over his face.
She approached the cell, wrapping her hands around the cold bars. “Hiro,” she whispered.
He was on his feet in an instant, like a coiled snake waiting to strike. She stepped back in surprise.
He approached the bars, radiating menace as he looked down at her. “What do you want? Here to gloat?”
Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. “No. I am here to help you. I didn’t betray you,” she said, dismayed at the desperation she heard in her own voice. Her heart felt as if it would shatter under the pressure of his displeasure.
“Then how did those moonburners find my camp?” he hissed. “People I care about were lost, Kai. People I swore to protect. I failed them. Because of you. Because I was soft.” He was practically spitting at her.
“I didn’t know they could track me. You have to believe me. I’ve never lied to you.”
“I don’t have to believe you,” he said, turning his face from her. “And I don’t know why I should.”
“Because I’m on your side,” she stepped forward. “You can trust me. Trust us.” She motioned to Quitsu. “Ryu trusted us.”
The venom returned to his face at the mention of Ryu. “And what did he get for it? To be some moonburner’s trophy?”
“No,” Kai said. “He’s alive. He’s on his way to your camp. I didn’t kill him.”
Hiro placed his hands over hers, tightening her fingers against the bars painfully. He looked into her eyes. Their faces were just inches apart. “Don’t lie to me. Is he alive?”
“Yes,” she said, willing every bit of sincerity and truth into her voice and her face. Goddess, what would she do if he didn’t believe her? She couldn’t unleash him to wreak havoc and possibly kill her.
“And I think that’s all the confession we need.” A triumphant voice rang out behind her.
Kai whirled around, her back to the bars of Hiro’s cell.
Geisa stood at the base of the staircase, flanked by four moonburner guards.
Kai’s mouth went dry. There was no way she could talk her way out of this. If she insisted she was loyal to the moonburners, she’d lose Hiro’s trust. If she admitted she was on his side, she’d be taken prisoner. No good options.
Another figure came into the light behind Geisa and her guards.
“Maaya?” Kai asked, crestfallen.
Maaya stood behind the moonburner in her servant’s uniform, head bowed.
“How could you?” Emi hissed.
“Oh, yes,” Geisa sa
id with relish. “Your good friend Maaya came to us as soon as she heard about the treason you were planning here. She understands the cost of opposing the moonburners.” Geisa looked at Maaya like a master might look at a dog who had just retrieved a duck from the field. “Excellent work, Maaya.”
Tears welled in Maaya’s eyes as she looked between her former friends. There was regret there. Kai’s bitterness at Maaya’s betrayal softened. Maaya had been broken. Kai should have known not to place too much on her shoulders.
“Arrest them,” Geisa said.
The four burners approached Kai and her friends, spears leveled. Kai pulled out her knife, and began slowly backing away from the women, towards the other end of the facility. Emi and Leilu seemed to have the same idea, pulling out weapons and taking up defensive stances. Kai hadn’t wanted it to come to this. Moonburner against moonburner. They were outnumbered.
In desperation, a plan sprang into Kai’s mind. She had to do what she came here to do. Free the prisoners. Even the odds.
“Burners,” Kai cried, her voice reverberating through the stone room. “We came here to free you from this place. Your captors have come to keep you here, to use you up like animals. Do not let them. Fight with us!”
She drew moonlight from the crown and burned it, melting the locks on each cell door. Splitting the moonlight into that many streams was difficult. She fell to her knees under the strain.
One of the moonburners darted behind her, wrenching her arm behind her painfully. Kai fell forward onto the ground, face in the dirt.
“You are free!” she cried. “The locks are broken!”
Another moonburner smashed the butt of her spear into Kai’s face.
The world turned black, and Kai’s ears rang.
When her vision cleared, Kai saw chaos. The prisoners had swarmed from their cells and were attacking with fists and nails and teeth. Geisa and her moonburner guards were fighting back, slicing at Emi, Leilu and the prisoners with their spears and knives, desperately trying to keep the press of bodies back. It wasn’t working. One of the moonburners went down, disappearing behind a closing circle of unwashed bodies.
