Starburner

by Claire Luana

  What she wanted was a seishen of her own. She deserved one. More than Koji did, anyway. She had been a good princess her whole life, had done her duty preparing to be queen. Learning diplomacy, history, military strategy, language, science, mathematics. She had given up sunny days and adventures with friends, time for astrology and art and the things she really wanted to do. She knew what it took to be a good ruler—to be as fair and honorable as her parents were. Her brother, on the other hand, had run around like a feral child, refusing to listen to anyone or do anything but play in the armory.

  And now, what did they have to show for their respective upbringings? She enjoyed a crushing loneliness and fear that her powers would never come. That all her sacrifices would be for nothing. Because by law, the queen had to be a moonburner. No powers, no crown. No purpose, no point. And Koji, for all his antics, had everything she had ever wanted and would probably step in to rule in the face of her failure. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  They rode through the palace gates to shouts of applause and the sound of music and revelry. The party had already begun while the royal family made the annual parade through the city. Rika reined her horse to a stop and Quitsu turned to her. “It’s a night for celebration. You must find something to be glad for.”

  She nodded woodenly, and he turned, smacking her in the face with his fluffy fox tail before jumping to the ground. She watched him go as he trotted up to join her mother where she was already greeting her guests with smiles and embraces.

  Rika straightened, steadying herself. Find something to be glad for. Something. Anything. She nodded. Otherwise, it would be a long, unhappy night. It would be a long, unhappy life.

  RIKA WAS THE first human to the breakfast table the next morning. She found Ryu, her father’s seishen, sitting by the giant fireplace, licking a great golden paw.

  “Morning, Ryu,” she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “Everyone else still in bed?”

  “They’re up,” he rumbled, “but there is a lot of cursing the second bottle of sake. I thought it best to remove myself.”

  Rika smiled and sat down, her stomach rumbling at the sight of the food that had already been laid out on the table. She poured herself a cup of green tea and began piling her plate with an assortment of fruit, fluffy white rice, and slices of smoked fish.

  The celebration hadn’t been as terrible as she had feared during the parade. Her two best friends, Oma and Sadele, had found her soon after she had dismounted and whisked her into an evening filled with dancing, sneaking sake, and eyeing the cute sons of Yoshai’s nobles. Her parents, caught up in their own celebration, hadn’t paid any attention to Rika, and Koji had thankfully left her alone. All in all, it had been a pretty good night.

  Rika was mid-bite when her parents breezed through the door. Her father had his arm around her mother and was nuzzling at her neck while she playfully swatted at him. Rika swallowed thickly. Ugh. Her parents were always all over each other. You’d think after twenty years of marriage, they’d be sick of each other. Kai finally pushed Hiro away with more force and seemed to register Rika’s presence.

  “Darling!” Kai said, coming around the table and kissing Rika on the top of her head. She snagged a berry off Rika’s plate, popping it in her mouth. “That tea smells heavenly. Pour me a cup?” Kai slid into the seat next to Rika while Hiro took the chair at the head of the table, rubbing his face vigorously to wake up. “Did you have fun last night, panda?” he asked, using the nickname that had followed her since she’d been a baby. Apparently, she had been ridiculously chubby. “We hardly saw you with all our guests.”

  “It was great,” Rika said, forcing a smile while she poured her mother a cup of tea. “A perfect night.”

  “It was a perfect night,” Kai said, taking the cup from Rika and passing it to Hiro. “So clear—perfect for the fireworks. And unseasonably warm. You always know how to pick the most auspicious dates. What did you say? Last night was a conjunction of the blue dragon constellation and the kinsei planet?”

  Rika poured a third cup of tea and handed it to Kai, who wrapped her hands around it like it was sacred, breathing in the trails of hot vapor.

  “Yep. Master Fortin and I calculated the angles ourselves.” Master Fortin was her astrology teacher. She tolerated the rest of her lessons as part of her royal duties, but her favorites were astronomy and astrology. She had begged her parents for months for tutors in those particular subjects. They hadn’t seen it as a necessary part of her curriculum. But for Rika…being out among the moon and the stars….it was the time she felt the most clarity, the most herself. That, and her fighting classes. Somehow the dance of fighting made sense to her. It was an art form of its own. She didn’t care for archery or throwing knives, but whirling with the staffs or swords in hand-to-hand combat… She smiled despite herself at the thought of the last class, when she had landed two blows on Armsmistress Emi. Those were good days too.

  Her smile crumbled as her brother slouched in, still in his crumpled pants and shirt from the night before. Quitsu padded behind him. “You didn’t need to send Quitsu in to attack me, Mom,” he grumbled, collapsing into a chair across from Rika. “I barely got any sleep as it is.”

  “Staying up late isn’t an excuse to shirk your duties the following day,” Hiro said. “The kingdom doesn’t sleep in late if we do.”

  “Besides,” Kai said brightly. “I thought today we could spend some time together as a family.”

  “Mother, no,” Rika and Koji both protested, their eyes meeting in surprise at their unexpected alliance.

  “I had plans to go to the beach with Oma and Sadele today,” Rika said, thinking quickly. “We haven’t gone in forever, and it’s supposed to be sunny today.”

  “And Armsmistress Emi was going to work with me and Enzo today on some joint fighting moves we could do. We need to learn to work together.”

  “Joint fighting moves?” Rika snorted. “What, is he going to spear people with his horn?”

  “I’ll have him start with you,” Koji said, throwing a grape at her with narrowed eyes.

  Rika picked up a piece of fish to lob back at him when Hiro’s voice cut through their feud. “No throwing food at the table. Rika, put the tuna down.”

  She dropped it on her plate, glaring at her brother. Why couldn’t she have been an only child?

  Kai sighed, looking between her children. “Are you sure you can’t make an exception? I feel like I hardly see my babies anymore.”

  “We’re not your babies anymore,” Koji said. “I’m a sunburner with my own seishen.”

  Rika opened her mouth to make a quip about his “beard” but saw the warning look from Hiro and shut it. “You’re fourteen,” Hiro said. “You have a lot left to learn. Including a little humility.”

  “Mother, I’m sorry, but I really want to spend the day with Oma and Sadele,” Rika said. “Some other time?”

  Kai patted Rika’s hand. “Of course. Maybe we can spend the day together,” she brightened, looking at Hiro. At that moment, a servant entered, dropping a pile of scrolls onto the table next to Hiro. He winced. “Duty calls, my love.”

  They spent the rest of the meal in silence, as they usually did, both her parents buried nose deep in scrolls and letters pertaining to the business of the kingdom. Rika pushed the food around on her plate, no longer feeling hungry. She didn’t really have plans with her friends today; she just didn’t think she could stand to spend the entire day with her magical family and their seishen.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents—she did—and she knew she was lucky to have them. It was just that she didn’t fit. She looked around the table, eyeing her mother, her silver hair pulled into a messy bun, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose. Her mother didn’t look her near-forty years of age—she was willowy and strong, with a smattering of freckles across her small nose. Rika herself took more after her father, with his square face and striking features, but she had gotten her mother’s f
reckles and small, thin build. She wasn’t sure where the little gap between her two front teeth had come from. Koji was an immature, gangly version of their father but was already tall and sprouting more muscle than was fair. He would be as handsome as Hiro when he was grown, Rika thought begrudgingly. Some of the girls at the festival last night already had their sights on him. Gold and silver hair aside, she looked like part of this family. But the hair was impossible to ignore. As much as she wished otherwise, it was plain to see she didn’t belong.

  Rika dressed in a pair of white leggings and a long lavender tunic belted with a braided obi of silver. She had to make herself scarce today, so her parents didn’t catch her in her lie about going to the beach. The town of Yoshai in which they lived was about an hour’s ride from the southern coast of Kita-Miina, or Kitina, as they had taken to calling it for short. After her parents had wed and defeated the tengu, they had merged the two lands under joint rule. If Rika’s powers ever came in, she would rule everything from the Akashi Mountains in the north to the frothing oceans in the south, and all the lands in between. If her powers ever came in.

  She walked through the palace, enjoying the sunlight streaming through the broad windows. The palace had been built on the highest hill in the city and was tiered, so nearly every garden, walkway, and room had a sweeping view over the checkerboard city down to the sea. The water was as blue as she had ever seen it today, shimmering like a ribbon of jewels in the distance. The palace was filled with gardens, and Rika had explored every one. There were a few that were her favorites, including the one she found her feet had led her to now. It held a sundial set in the ground, as well as other carvings that Master Fortin had explained marked the movements of the moon and planets. Around the dial were climbing jasmine vines and flowering orange trees that attracted butterflies and flitting hummingbirds. She loved to watch the hummingbirds darting about so fast their wings looked invisible.

  Rika took a seat in a spill of sunshine, her face turned to bask in the morning glow. The crisp spring was giving way to warmer days of summer, and she, for one, was ready. She loved the heat—it seemed it was never hot enough for her, even when the rest of the palace was complaining about the steamiest days of summer.

  “Come to my garden yet again?” A lilting voice rang out. “You always seem to find yourself here.”

  Rika jumped at the intrusion. “Roweni. This isn’t your garden. And I like it. It’s my favorite.”

  A diminutive woman emerged from the flowering bushes, a tiny silver owl seishen on her shoulder. The woman had short, silver hair and violet eyes unlike any Rika had ever seen. She was the moonburner Oracle. According to Kai, she had made many prophecies over the years—prophecies that were uncannily accurate. But there was only one Rika cared about. The one that said that Rika would have magic someday. That prophecy was the only reason Rika hadn’t completely lost hope.

  “It is my favorite too,” Roweni said.

  “It’s big enough for two,” Rika said defensively, though in truth, she would have rather have been alone.

  “Perhaps, but your troubles take up far more space than they have a right to.”

  Rika bristled, standing. The woman was always impossible to talk to. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you with my woes. If your prophecy showed signs of ever coming true, I wouldn’t be so concerned.”

  “My prophecies always come true,” she said. “But rarely in the way we expect.”

  Rika was twirling the end of her black hair between her fingers and angrily dropped her hand. “I can’t wait anymore, Roweni. Some days I feel like I’m going to explode. If I’m not magical, then fine. I’ll deal with it, move on with my life. Koji will take the crown, and I’ll go…tell horoscopes in some backwater town. But the not knowing, the wondering…I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You must.”

  Rika ground her teeth in frustration. “I’ve dissected the prophecy a thousand times! Dark shadow falls, great danger calls; the first-born’s power fights at last hour. Was there nothing more? No explanation, no other verses?”

  “I am not a reference book, child,” Roweni said. “Don’t you think I would ask for more explanation from the universe if I could get it? Some clear direction?”

  Rika sighed, pacing across the face of the sundial. “I know. I’m sorry. Perhaps I need to find the answer elsewhere. I’ve looked everywhere in this palace, the library, nothing. Maybe I need to go journey to find Tsuki, to ask the goddess for insight. Or the seishen elder.” She had grown up hearing of her parents’ exploits in dealing with these wise and ancient gods. Surely, they would have insight into her circumstances. A thought occurred to her. “Maybe I could go to the Misty Forest and find my seishen. Why should I wait for it to come to me? Perhaps it’s waiting for me there!”

  “Seishen come when they are ready. And when you are ready. You know that. You can’t force it,” Roweni said.

  Rika closed her eyes, despair coiling deep within her. “I feel like…I’d rather throw myself off the palace walls than wait one more day.” A light flashed behind her closed eyelids, like one of the prior night’s fireworks had exploded. “What was that?”

  Roweni’s seishen, Giselli, was fluttering in the air, its little wings whirling with agitation. Roweni was looking out towards the sea, her face an inscrutable mask.

  Rika followed her gaze, and her heart skipped a beat. On the horizon, a shadow had fallen across a broad swath of the glistening sea—as if the sun didn’t reach. There was a patch of…darkness.

  Roweni and Rika both drew to the end of the garden, pressing themselves against the balcony wall. Rika squinted, shading her eyes with her hand. What was it? She hissed in a breath when she made it out. It wasn’t a patch of shadow or darkness.

  It was an armada.

  Ships with billowing, black sails, packed so tightly that no blue was visible between them. Thousands of ships.

  “Where did those come from?” Rika whispered.

  “Great shadow falls. Great danger calls,” Roweni said. “It seems your wait is over.”

  RIKA FOUND HER mother striding through the hallways towards the royal council room, her seishen Quitsu trotting at her side. “You’ve seen them?” Rika asked breathlessly.

  “Impossible to miss.” Kai nodded.

  Rika fell into step beside her mother. “Can I sit in on the council meeting?”

  Kai looked at her daughter sideways, considering. “You may observe. Not a peep out of you, understood?”

  “Understood,” Rika said eagerly. “Mother…I was with Roweni when the ships appeared. She said…a great shadow.”

  Kai frowned, and then her eyes opened wide. “She thinks this concerns your prophecy?”

  Rika shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You must be pleased as a fox in the henhouse,” Kai said.

  “At a threatening armada at our shore? I’m not that selfish, Mother,” Rika said. But inside, she was jumping with excitement, twirling and spinning. Of course, she didn’t want any threat to come to her homeland. But the prophecy seemed to say her power would manifest when the threat arose. Maybe her wait was truly over…

  They reached the council room and Kai pointed at a chair at the far end of the table. “Sit. Listen.”

  Rika sank into it, shoving her hands under her knees to keep them from shaking with excitement. The council room was built like so many at the palace of Yoshai, a long chamber full of windows that let in the remarkable view of the city and sea. A long, black polished wooden table paralleled the row of glass that now held a perfect view of the stain that darkened their crystal sea. Rika couldn’t help herself, she stood and went to the windows, pressing her nose to the glass. The ships were reaching the shoreline, and had begun to spread to make the landing. There were so many of them. Kitina had no significant naval force, as it had no enemies that would attack by sea. Or so they had thought.

  She turned as her father and Ryu entered, and Hiro enveloped Kai in a comforting embrace. “Daarco and
Emi are on their way, as is Master Tato. Nanase had some business in town, but I sent a messenger to fetch her.”

  “I sent for Colum,” Kai said. “He’s the most extensively traveled of us all. Perhaps he knows something.”

  “No doubt he stole something from these people and they’re here to get it back,” Hiro said, and Kai swatted at him. Hiro wrapped his arm around Kai’s shoulder, and they walked to the window beside Rika. “You’ll sit in?” he asked.

  Rika nodded.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kai said, her face grave. “It’s hard to imagine they come in peace.”

  “Not in such numbers…and with black sails.” Hiro shook his head. “Who are they?”

  “Where did they come from?” Kai asked. “Our sailors have traveled as far south as three months’ provisions would take them before turning back. They’ve never found evidence of any land that direction.”

  “When they appeared, there was a flash of light. Did you see it?” Rika asked.

  Kai and Hiro both shook their heads.

  “One minute, they weren’t there, and then the next minute they were. Like…”

  “Magic,” Kai finished. “But what kind of sorcery could manifest a fleet of vessels? And, presumably, men to sail them? There’s no way someone could use burning for such a purpose.”

  “We have to assume it’s a new kind of magic,” a new voice said from the door.

  They all turned, and found a tall, willowy man with golden hair and a stack of books under his arm. Master Tato, the chief librarian, and a member of her parents’ council. He had always struck Rika as too young, and frankly too handsome, to be interested in a lifetime buried in dusty books, but they seemed to be his true love. Rika had only hazy memories of the prior historian, Master Vita, as he had passed away of old age when she’d been five. But those memories of his half-moon spectacles and halo of his bright white hair were much more suited to the post of librarian.