Dragon Rebellion

by M. Lynn

  Now, like everything else in Piao, it seemed bleak and without magic.

  Jian gestured to one of the settees, and Nainai sat with a weary sigh.

  “Tell me what has happened to Hua.” She folded her hands on her lap as if to appear calm, but the tremor in her voice gave away her fear.

  Jian sat across from her, his heart hammering against his ribs. He’d seen the Nagi with his own eyes. Even if Hua kept her from shifting, the Nagi controlled her. Yet, voicing those words out loud seemed an insurmountable task.

  “She is here.” He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Hua…” He didn’t know what to say next. She’d tried to kill herself to save them all? She sat in a cell awaiting her sentence? “She gave up.” That was what it all came down to. The fierce warrior who’d faced the Kou with him had stopped fighting.

  Nainai’s hands shook as she wrung them together again. “My Hua is the strongest person I have ever known.”

  He nodded. Before he’d watched the knife plunge into her stomach, he’d have said the same thing. “The Nagi… it has her. I don’t know how to bring her back.” He hunched forward, burying his face in his hands as the dam broke and emotions poured over him. “She…”

  A hand rubbed his back, and he looked up to find Nainai beside him. “It’s not over, Jian.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The moment Ru told me he’d seen you, I knew Hua was here, that you’d found her. I also knew if anyone could help her, it was you.”

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’ve tried.”

  “Master Delun would not have aided you if he did not believe Hua could be helped.”

  His eyes snapped to hers. “How did you know about Master Delun?” He’d told Ru about the dragon, but not the dragon’s name.

  She wrapped an arm around his shoulders in the kind of familial embrace he’d rarely received in his life. There was comfort in the act. “There are many things you do not know about the Minglans of Zhouchang, secrets we hold that cannot yet be uncovered. Jian, do you trust me?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Then please, take me to Hua, to the Nagi.”

  Jian stood, realizing she had as much right to see Hua as him. But before he could agree, the door burst open and Luca rushed in. “The Kou are coming.”

  29

  Jian

  Jian stormed out of the room, needing to find Bo. Luca and Nainai walked behind him.

  “I rode out to speak with my father today, and a messenger arrived at our door looking for a fresh horse to get to the palace. He’d been riding through the night from the Liudong Valley. The Kou have slipped past our forces in Kanyuan and march toward the capital.”

  “Jian.” Nainai stepped up to walk with him. “It is more imperative than ever that I speak with my granddaughter.”

  Jian looked from Nainai to Luca, torn as to which direction was best. “I won’t let you go to her alone.”

  She lifted a brow. “I can handle Hua and that beast inside her.”

  Luca glanced down the hall where two of the consorts peeked their heads out of a door. “We need to find Bo.”

  With a sigh, Jian snagged the arm of a passing guard. “Take this woman to the cells. Do not leave her alone in there. Do you understand?”

  The guard nodded.

  “Thank you, Jian.” Nainai followed the guard toward the opposite end of the hall.

  Empress Yanyu stepped out of a door to the right, a scowl on her face. “You two should not be in this wing of the palace.”

  “Where is Bo?” Jian had no time for her hatred.

  “The emperor is in his quarters.”

  Jian brushed past her, and Luca ran to catch up.

  “How long until the Kou reach Dasha do you think?” Jian tried to calculate it in his head.

  “For a full army?” Luca thought for a moment. “It’s a four-day march from the Liudong Valley.”

  “And for a single rider?”

  “Two.”

  So, the Kou were most likely two days behind the messenger, two days from overtaking this city. Again.

  He pushed open Bo’s door without knocking to find the emperor sprawled on his floor in a fit of laughter as Chichi and Ru both tackled him. Duyi watched on with a grin on his face. It was a moment that didn’t belong on a day like this, a day when the world they’d created started caving in.

  Jian ignored the ache in his side from the wound. There’d be a lot more pain before this was done.

  Duyi noticed Jian and Luca first, his smile sliding from his face. “Bo.” He nudged his brother with his foot.

  Bo looked up, his smile widening when he saw them. It only lasted a moment, a fraction of a moment, before he sat up and took them in more fully from their dour expressions to the tense set of their shoulders.

  Even Chichi seemed to sense something was not right. He sat back on his haunches.

  Jian cleared his throat. “We must speak with you. It’s urgent.”

  Bo got to his feet, smoothing out his robe. Yanyu would have been aghast to see him on the floor wrinkling his clothing. “Duyi, will you watch Ru?”

  Duyi shook his head. “Whatever it is, I want to know. I’m old enough.”

  Bo put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, didi. You’re right.” He walked into the hall and knocked on another door. A woman Jian recognized as Holea answered. She was one of Bo’s consorts, but Jian barely knew any of them.

  Holea bowed as Bo spoke softly to her. When she rose, she nodded, not speaking a word. Bo turned to Ru. “Holea will look after you.” He leaned down and dropped his voice. “Make sure Chichi behaves himself.”

  Ru nodded. “If I’m good, will I get to see Hua?”

  Bo’s tormented eyes met Jian’s, their pain calling to each other. “I don’t know, Ru.”

  Ru sniffed before squaring his shoulders. “If you can’t save her, I will.”

  Jian rested a hand on the kid’s head and ushered him toward Holea. For once, the Nagi wasn’t the biggest problem on Jian’s mind.

  Once Holea took Ru and Chichi into her room, Bo took off in the direction of his meeting room. The throne room in Piao was nothing more than a symbol. The real work took place at the far end of the palace where his advisors could come and go without using the main entrance in view of the public.

  “Tell me.” Bo gestured for Luca and Jian to follow him.

  “The Kou will be here in two days.” Luca didn’t hold back.

  Bo’s steps faltered before he picked up speed. “Explain.”

  Luca told him of the messenger searching for a fresh horse, and Bo shook his head. “Can his account be trusted?”

  “He looked like he’d been through battle. There are four villages in the Liudong Valley, and he says each was attacked. The Kou are burning everything in their wake. Crops. Homes. It is the only thing slowing them down.”

  Jian pictured General Altan riding at the head of his army, having managed to get through one of the mountain passes, avoiding Kanyuan and the army stationed there. “We didn’t think they’d get through the snow this time of year.”

  “We were wrong,” Bo snapped. Jian’s congenial brother was gone, leaving a determined emperor in his wake. He pushed through the door into the meeting room to find his advisors waiting.

  “Your Majesty.” A man Jian didn’t know crossed the room. “We’ve just received a messenger from General Yang. The Kou have slipped past them, and our army is currently chasing them across the Liudong Valley.”

  Bo looked to Jian. “Well, that answers that question. Our army is coming.”

  Jian should have felt relief at that, he should have felt something. Instead, he snapped into commander mode. No emotion. No fear. Only orders.

  “Our first priority is to protect the people.” He stepped up to a round table and put his palms against the wood. “Those outside the city walls must be brought into Dasha for protection.”

  Luca stood at his side. “My father and General Gen
Minglan are already riding to nearby farms east of the city. We must send riders to the west and the south.”

  Jian looked to the man on his left. “You. Go.”

  The advisor’s jaw dropped open. “Your Majesty, I cannot take orders from a disgraced commander.”

  Bo didn’t even look at him. “You will do as my brother says. Go prepare the riders.”

  The advisor speared them with one more look before turning on his heel and storming away.

  Bo glanced at each of his advisors in turn. “I am putting Commander Jian Li in charge of this city’s defenses. You will obey his commands as if they came from me. We must send scouts north of the city to bring us news of the Kou army.”

  A guard snapped to attention and bowed. “I will see to it, your Majesty.”

  “Good. We will gather here again at dusk once we know what we face.” Bo turned and left them all staring after him.

  Jian ran to catch up with him. “You can’t put me in charge of the city’s defenses.”

  Bo didn’t stop as he pushed his way into the courtyard separating the main palace from the temple at the back. “I seem to remember being the emperor. I can do as I please.”

  “Bo.”

  He kept walking as if he couldn’t hear the way Jian’s voice cracked on his name. Putting a hand on the ornate golden doors, Bo pushed them open.

  “Please.”

  Bo froze with his hand still on the door. He stared down the aisle between golden statues to the gauzy curtain he liked to disappear behind. When Bo set foot in his temple, he wasn’t the emperor anymore, not in his mind. He’d admitted that to Jian once. He became another servant of Buddha, another person stuck in Samsura.

  His shoulders hunched forward for just a moment before he straightened and entered the sacred space, his steps echoing off the red marble floor. The only other sound was the faint trickling of a fountain inside the door.

  Jian wanted to follow him, to continue this conversation and lay out all the reasons he should not be the commander once more, but he let Bo have the last few moments of peace any of them might see.

  As he turned to walk away, every doubt he’d had rose to the surface of his mind.

  He’d failed his men in the Shan mountain passes.

  And again when the Kou attacked their camp.

  He’d failed his people, his warriors, but also a girl who sat in a cell beneath this very palace. His feet took him there before he realized where he was headed. How was Piao supposed to survive the Kou and the Nagi?

  The only way to remain standing once the dust of battle settled was to choose which threat to face and which to embrace. The Kou wanted Piao’s fertile land, its trading routes, its access to the sea.

  And the Nagi? Piao’s destruction.

  Yet, the Nagi had something General Altan did not. Hua. She was the conscience, the heart. And he had to believe that influence was stronger than any need for revenge.

  He nodded to the guards as he passed them but stopped when voices reached him. Nainai sat in Hua’s cell, only feet from the dangerous beast her granddaughter had become. But when Jian registered their words, he couldn’t force himself to move.

  “I sensed the history in your family.” The Nagi’s voice was low, hushed.

  Nainai didn’t respond right away. “The history in me, you mean.”

  From the shadows, Jian saw the Nagi nod. A conversation he’d had with Nainai in what seemed like another lifetime came back to him. “I am the reason the Nagi chose Hua.”

  He hadn’t understood it then. This family is strong, Jian.

  She hadn’t only meant they were strong enough to recover from the battle and destruction of their home. She’d meant something else.

  The Nagi continued. “When?”

  “I was fifteen the first time I felt a presence within me.” She smiled as if remembering a fond memory.

  Jian’s eyes widened. For hundreds of years, Piao thought the Nagi were gone, that dragons were a fabled creature, part myth and part history.

  “Jian.” The Nagi spoke into the darkness. “I can feel you watching us. Come.”

  Jian couldn’t have resisted if he tried. He approached the bars and wrapped long fingers around them, his eyes finding Nainai. “You… you’re Nagi?”

  Sadness entered her gaze, and she shook her head. “No. As a young girl, I had a Nagi in me, but it left me long ago.”

  “It… left?” He looked from Nainai to the Nagi, hope sparking in his chest.

  “Each Nagi comes to our world with a mission.” Nainai shrugged. “Once it is completed, they have no reason to stay.”

  He swallowed. “And what was the mission of yours?”

  “There was a young man who needed my help. I found him dying along the roadside and took him home for my mama, the village healer, to save. You see, he had a role to play in the future of the empire. Everything has a purpose, Jian. Every action, every event. They call to us from a higher power, leading us onto the path we must endure. The Nagi who came to me was only a small piece of a much greater plan for the future of Piao and its protection.”

  A growl rumbled in the Nagi’s throat. “Our purpose is no longer to protect Piao. They have betrayed our kind.”

  Nainai reached out, boldly taking the Nagi’s hand. “Dear, you are wrong. The Nagi have never had the hearts of men. Your soul comes from Buddha himself; your mission is his. You are beyond vengeance.” She smoothed out her wool robe and stood.

  Jian gestured to one of the guards, and he approached to open the cell. As she passed him, Nainai gripped his arm. “You must rest, Jian. The Nagi tells me you suffered an injury, and I’m afraid you will need your strength in the days to come.” She patted his arm and moved past him to let a guard escort her from the damp cells.

  Jian couldn’t leave, not yet. He stepped into the cell and slid the bars closed behind him.

  The Nagi didn’t move, she didn’t look at him. “I will have my revenge, Jian Li.” Her words were weak.

  Jian sat on the cool stone, his eyes focusing on the area of the ground where he’d seen the light fade from Hua’s eyes. She hadn’t trusted the Nagi to be anything other than evil, an assassin. But Nainai believed the Nagi could be more. She hadn’t said those words, but the meaning was there.

  “How does she do it?” he asked, his eyes not leaving the ground as memories of wooden buckets and bloody water tried to steal the air from his lungs.

  The Nagi didn’t ask what he meant. Somehow, she knew. “This body is not mine. I can control it and control the mind, but shifting into my true form has little to do with the mind. And this heart…” She put a hand over her chest. “It still belongs to her. I caught her by surprise in Kanyuan, and she opened her heart to me. And again in the mountains when she let herself fall away, surrendering complete control, thinking it was the right thing to do. But now, as long as Hua remains a presence inside me, her heart will not bend to my will.”

  Her heart. Jian closed his eyes, hearing Hua telling him she could keep herself from loving him. She’d taken the words back, but they’d never go away. Instead of being a spear of pain sharper than any wound, they now bolstered his hope, his faith. If Hua could control her heart, she’d never be lost.

  “Would you have left her?” he asked. “After killing the emperor when your mission was complete.”

  “If that was my true mission.”

  Nainai didn’t believe it was. “Do you have doubts?”

  It was the most honest conversation he’d ever had with the Nagi, but it was time he understood her. As the Kou rode toward Dasha, their greatest enemy remained right here in this cell.

  The Nagi sat back on the cot and pushed Hua’s long, normally beautiful hair out of her face. Now, the stringy clumps shone with grease. “Hua wanted revenge.”

  As had he. They’d both wanted to chase after Altan in a single-minded pursuit. “But not because of Piao. She wanted to protect her empire.”

  “An empire that terrified her.” The
Nagi sighed. “You will never understand what it is to live with such fear, Jian. The moment I entered her mind, I felt it. I was here long before she knew, long before she ever came to Dasha. That is what my people have suffered, unimaginable terror. Of discovery. Of death. They cannot change their heritage, yet your people would hunt them for it.”

  Tears gathered in Jian’s eyes but not only for Hua. He’d seen the dragon festivals as a child, where the emperor held executions as part of the festivities. He’d heard stories of the emperor’s soldiers roaming the countryside in search of the blooded. Neighbors turning on neighbors. Friends turning on friends. And it had been happening for centuries.

  But there was a difference between hearing stories and facing the truths in front of him. His heart ached for Hua, for her family, for Piao.

  “You’re right,” he whispered. “I cannot understand. I have been an outcast most of my life, but even that does not compare. This empire has destroyed the faith between its citizens and the Nagi. We do not deserve mercy.”

  “And yet, you will ask it of me.”

  Jian touched the cold stone that had once held a pool of Hua’s blood. “I do not. She does. Hua Minglan, the girl you say has lived in fear, tried sacrificing her life for this empire.” She was unlike anyone he’d ever met. The horror of that moment would always be with him, but so would the honor. She’d tried to save his brother any way she could. The terror the Nagi spoke of must have been strong in her as she rode toward the palace.

  “I’ve said it before, but Bo Xu Wei is not like his predecessors. Hua recognized this. She barely knew him yet tried to give up everything for the belief that Piao needed him.” He couldn’t sit there any longer staring into Hua’s eyes and only seeing the Nagi, not when the Kou were coming, not when Bo needed him too.

  If the Nagi refused to see her ties to Piao mattered still, there was nothing more he could do. She didn’t speak as he rose to his feet or opened the door. A guard stepped forward to lock the bars in place as Jian trudged down the dark hall, the remaining pieces of his heart scattered in his path.