I slipped into our bed. Just as I expected, you were awake. You took me in your arms and held me close. In your porcelain embrace, I forgot myself. I covered my hands in the ink of your hair; I drank the wine of your plum lips. When we were spent, I held you near to me.
“Shefali,” you said, “let’s be like them one day.”
“You cannot nag me so much,” I said.
Laughter like bells. “You are right,” you said. “I’ll nag you more.”
Ah, Shizuka, I could write for years about the kiss you gave me then. It was the barest thing, the lightest caress of your lips against my chin—but even that is more potent than a thousand poems. In the twenty Ages of Hokkaro’s history, we have loved each other. Before the Qorin began telling stories, we swore our eternal devotion. Before Grandmother Sky yearned for Grandfather Earth—yes, even before then, our souls entwined together.
How I miss you.
Gods above, how I miss you.
It grows more and more difficult to write this. Yet I have come this far, and I must continue, no matter the pain. In reading this, you’ve remembered our time together. You must remember these perfumed days. You must remember our life in the Bronze Palace, free of worries and cares, and you must hold those memories as dear as I held you.
As you hold whoever it is that lies with you tonight.
For six months, we prepared for the tournament. For six months, we delayed our fears. My condition bettered somewhat, with the relaxing atmosphere and my newfound hobby. I was with my family again. With you. I ache to think of that half year; how could I have been so foolish? How could I have let those days slip between my fingers like milk?
If we are gods, as you say, then I command you to take us back. Take us back to the miniature palace in the garden. Take us back to the plum tree.
Take me back into your arms.
Take me back to the night of the eighth of Shu-zen, before the first Imperial messenger arrived. Before he offered you a scroll sealed with your uncle’s signature. Before your uncle came for us at all.
Before the day we lost everything.
THE AUTUMN TIME HAS COME
When you received it, you were in the drawing room, playing go with Baozhai. You were losing, which surprised absolutely no one, but you were losing more graciously than usual. A cup of plum wine sat near your hand on the table. Baozhai teased you about your reckless tactics; you teased her for being so cautious. In the other corner of the room, Kenshiro tried to teach me to play a simple melody on the shamisen.
It was a hazy, warm moment, shattered utterly when the Imperial Courier joined us. He didn’t bother greeting Kenshiro and Baozhai; he went straight to you and prostrated himself.
“Your Imperial Highness,” he said. “The Son of Heaven sends you this.”
All the comfort drained away from you. “My uncle?” you said. Your eyes fell on the scroll, on its seal. “You came all the way from Fujino? How did you find me?”
The messenger kept his eyes on the ground. “Highness,” he said, “I was sent from the Son of Heaven’s caravan. When I left, he was two days from Xian-Lai. He will be arriving tomorrow.”
You could do little to hide your shock. I went to your side immediately, positioning myself so that no one could see you shaking.
“Tomorrow?” you repeated. “You jest. The Son of Heaven right outside our walls, and no one noticed?”
“Highness, His Majesty ordered any who saw him to silence. He wished to speak with you personally, and has sent this letter in advance.”
You twisted toward Kenshiro. “Are your guards blind?” you snapped.
Kenshiro flinched.
You pressed your lips together and sighed. “I … did not mean to be so rude, Oshiro-lao.”
Kenshiro, shoulders slumped, nodded. “Considering the circumstances, anger is an acceptable response,” he said. “I am sorry, Lady of Ink, that you did not have more time to prepare.”
“You,” you said, waving to the messenger. “Wait for my response outside. When it is ready, you will be summoned.”
“The Son of Heaven requested I stay at your side.”
“The Son of Heaven,” you said, “is not present. You will wait outside.”
The messenger was not allowed to look you in the eyes, but he did stare at your feet in confusion. Either he could obey the (absent) Emperor’s orders and upset you, or he could listen to you and risk the Emperor’s ire. Technically, your uncle outranked you, and he was the only person living who did. In practice, you were the demonslayer, your calligraphy adorned official documents, your father’s poetry was read by lovers everywhere, your mother’s techniques obsessively studied by expert swordsmen.
Your uncle had the throne, but you had the people’s hearts.
The messenger stood and left.
You pried open the scroll. Next to you, I leaned in and squinted at the paper. Strokes wiggled in my vision, moving from one character to another. The more I looked, the more I got a headache.
But you blazed through it, and when you were done, you threw it clean across the room. The scroll crashed against a lacquer screen. Both clattered to the ground.
“Lady of Ink!” Kenshiro said.
“Shizuka, what’s wrong?”
You covered your face with your hands. I tried to hold you, but you collapsed toward your own knees.
“My uncle,” you seethed, “thinks he can rule me.”
“Is he recalling you to the palace?” Kenshiro asked. “You are nearly grown; your birthday is in two months, is it not? You can stay—”
“If it were that pedestrian, then I would not be so upset,” you snapped. You drew in a deep breath and pressed your fingertips to your temples. A storm swirled behind your eyes. “My uncle has made an Imperial Declaration: Any man who bests me in a duel is entitled to my hand in marriage.”
Six months, I’d avoided the bitter rage of my illness. Six months, I’d gone without thinking of killing anyone.
But the snarl that left my lips then was inhuman. You, Kenshiro, and Baozhai all paled to hear it. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth so tight; trails of drool left the corners of my mouth.
You touched my wrist. “Shefali,” you whispered, “no one will beat me. Please, do not worry.”
I smelled the deceit as it left your mouth, but I knew you were only trying to keep me in my own mind. I thought again of the still pool of water.
“Lady of Ink, I am sorry,” Kenshiro said. “I … this is my fault.”
All at once, we turned toward him. Alarm bells rang in my mind: He will lie he will lie he will lie.
“What do you mean?” you said. Your voice cracked. “Kenshiro-lun, what do you mean this is your fault?”
Kenshiro sniffled. His shoulders slumped, and the whites of his eyes went damp and red. Despite his great height, he shrank to a child. Baozhai reached for his wrist, but he shook his head.
“The Son of Heaven sent me word that he was coming,” he said.
“What?” you said. “You knew?”
He will lie.
Kenshiro fell to his knees before you, forehead to the ground. “He said that if I did not keep you here, he would take my and Baozhai’s titles. I’m sorry, Shizuka-lun—”
“Don’t you ‘lun’ me,” you snapped. “How dare you? You knew he was coming, and you didn’t warn me?”
The veins at your temple throbbed, as did the one by the base of your throat. I saw them, I smelled your rage, your fury.
I heard the voices laughing in my head. You see now, Steel-Eye?
“I didn’t want Baozhai to lose her ancestral palace—”
“You did not consult me,” said Baozhai. “Kenshiro, we could have found something to do.…”
My brother stayed there, his forehead against the ground. His big hands shook. I smelled the salt of tears coming off him, but …
I could not help how furious I was. He knew. My brother knew this was going to happen, and he lied to us, he lied to us—
&n
bsp; “This is not beyond saving, Lady,” said Baozhai. “My husband’s indiscretion aside. You have enough time to leave.”
You shook your head, exasperated, furious. “Then you’d lose your title for certain,” you hissed. “I know how important that is to your husband.”
“I didn’t know he was going to try to marry you off,” Kenshiro said, but no one was listening to him. Even Baozhai wore anger and shock. “I didn’t realize.”
So he was a storied scholar, but he could not realize your uncle’s intent? When had Yoshimoto ever tried to do anything good? Of course he meant to marry you away from his throne. Gods, how it hurt to think of. Qorin are nothing without our families—but my mother had disowned me, and now my brother sold us out to the Emperor.
“Lady Barsalyya,” Baozhai said. “Your, ah, your jaw…”
It was unhinged again. I snapped it back into place. With every blink, I saw my brother’s and sister’s and your dying forms. The laughing started up again.
“Steel-Eye, Steel-Eye, you’re going to lose her soon! Steel-Eye, Steel-Eye, marching toward your doom!”
Children chanting with decayed tongues danced in circles around you. Do not look at them, do not look at them, they are not real. The more you look at them, the more they revel in the attention, the more they grow, the stronger they get.
I pressed my palms into my eyes.
“Is there any way out of it?” Baozhai asked. “Could you not declare your intentions for a particular man, one you trust?”
“The only courtiers I ever trusted,” you said, “have been dead for almost six years. Whom would I marry? Uemura-zul? He ordered surgeons to cut Shefali open. Ikkimura-zul, Aiko-zul, Toji-zul? None of the Cardinal Generals are worthy of me. And do not get me started on that dog, Nozawa.”
You got to your feet.
“There is nothing to be done,” you said, “except to beat every single man with a sword who enters your doors tomorrow.”
“Lady of Ink,” Kenshiro said, still on the ground, “you must believe me—”
“I believe you’ve made the most foolish decision of your life, Oshiro Kenshiro. I believe I am furious with you, and I believe that I will not speak to you until I am ready to do so. Leave my presence. Baozhai, you may stay.”
Your tone—Shizuka, it was as if you spoke to a demon and not a man, not a man you’d known most of your life. When Kenshiro slunk away like a kicked dog, you watched him go without a word.
I ached. Gods, how I ached. What should I do? Go after him, when he’d betrayed us? Stay with you?
I squeezed my eyes shut. I would stay. You were the only family I had left.
“Lady of Ink,” said Baozhai. “I cannot begin to apologize enough. He never consulted me—”
“I know,” you said. “You wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”
Baozhai half-bowed to you again. In half a year at the palace, I’d never seen her so distressed. “If you need anything at all, I will provide it. There are ways out of the palace, ways only the Royal Family knows of, that I would be happy to show you.”
You slunk backwards. Your jaw was tense and your temple throbbed every few heartbeats; I could see the headache brewing already.
“I cannot spend my life running away,” you said. “This day … It was always going to come, one way or another.”
You dragged yourself to the writing desk. As stressed as you were, the lines on your face smoothed when you held a brush in hand. Ink met paper. You wrote off something short, only a few characters in length, and sealed it.
“Two days to prepare for an Imperial visit,” you said. Writing soothed you—your tone was more wry than furious. “Any lord in the Empire would pale at such a prospect.”
In better times, Baozhai might have laughed at that. Things being what they were she only pressed her lips into the ghost of a smile—but I knew from her posture she appreciated the levity. “With all due respect, Lady,” she said, “I do not run from challenges, either. The Bronze Palace will be ready.”
She was right, of course. Baozhai is one of a precious handful of women who makes things true by saying them aloud. Just as I always believed you when it came to our future, when it came to swords and ink, I always believed Baozhai when it came to the palace. The flurry of servants preparing for the visit was chaotic, at first, but only as bees flitting about their hives are chaotic to anyone but a bee.
We had two days to prepare for the tournament proper, but less for the early arrivals. Some lords like to impose upon others for as long as they possibly can. This is true for my people, as well. During the Festival of Manly Arts, there is always one chief who arrives four days too early so his people can have their fill of candied horsemeat.
After you sent your letter back with the messenger, only two hours passed before the first Xianese lord arrived. His name was Lord Shu, ruler of Xian-Shu, which lay on the western coast. Baozhai was not concerned with impressing him; I overheard her lamenting the dilapidated state of his own holdings at dinner once. The Bronze Palace on its own was spledid enough to humble him. His retinue consisted of his wife, young daughter, and two adult sons.
Both of whom were fool enough to challenge you. Foolish of them. You were already upset, and you needed something to do to let off steam.
Shu Huhai, the elder son, went first. In place of the straight sword favored by most Hokkarans, he used a club nearly as tall as you were. The thing was thick as my forearm and plated in steel. I’ve no idea where he found it or where he got the idea it would be useful in battle. It weighed as much as a child.
Shu Huhai stood tall enough that you had to crane your neck to look at him, and broad as two Hokkarans across. When he entered the dueling ring, he grunted and growled, and rolled his head from side to side like an animal.
“You do not wear any armor, Lady of Ink!” he shouted. “Have your servants fetch some for you, you will need it!”
“I will not,” you said.
And, yes, you stood in that same peacock dress. Your delicate, bare feet met the fresh-tilled ground. If it were not for the sheath in your hand, you would not look like a warrior at all.
“You fight me in your court frippery?” Shu Huhai said.
“I will have you know this dress was made for me by the finest tailor in Xian, and given to me by one of my best friends,” you said. “But, yes, I shall fight you in it. And I will win, without a single feather hitting the ground.”
“Very well,” said Shu Huhai. “You face your defeat bravely, and I admire that in a woman.”
It was predictable of him to heft up his club. For his first strike, he twisted at the hips just to get enough momentum going. An amateur move. Hips and shoulders give away a strike before it’s made. To be so graceless and brazen … well, it made your job very easy.
For the club was so heavy that it took him a moment to lift it, and in that moment, you ran toward him on his off side. With a flash of your blade, blood spurted from beneath his arm. By the time he’d staggered back into his stance, he’d already lost, and you were flicking his blood off your mother’s sword.
He stomped away as loud as he stomped in.
“You face defeat with cowardice!” you called out with a grin. “I admire a man who knows his place!”
Your second duel that day was with Shu Guang, the younger son. He was tall as his brother, though not so broad. Our age, I think.
When he entered the dueling ring, he had the sense to bow to you. “Lady of Ink,” he said. “I am honored to face you today.”
“You will be just as honored when you leave, Lord Shu,” you said. “Let us make this quick.”
And quick it was. Shu Guang fought with a straight sword. Not so thin as the Hokkaran one—this was a tapered thing, thin at the hilt and broad at the tip, made for slashing rather than piercing. Apparently no one informed him of this, as his opening stroke was a thrust for your stomach. You parried it with your sheath and knocked him in the nose with your pommel.
I
admit I laughed watching it. You broke the poor boy’s nose for first blood. He was, by far, the most approachable of all the suitors that came for you that day—and you broke his nose.
Shizuka, my darling Shizuka, I wonder at times how you have not broken my nose. But then again, you have tried to kill me.
But on that day, when your first two duels were done, I stood at your side.
“How many more can there be?” you said. “If they are all so unskilled, I can duel fifty. But if they are not…”
“Eighty,” I said. “Challenging.”
I said it warmly, to try to distract you from the gravity of the situation. You have always preferred a challenging fight, but you do not often meet someone who can offer you one.
Your smile was so slight, it might’ve been a trick of the light.
“Shefali,” you said. You entwined your pinky with mine. Such a small gesture—but if any of the lords present saw, it’d mean rumors. “What if I lose?”
I looked down at you. You hold yourself with such dignity that I forget how small you are. You are a phoenix crammed into a woman’s body; you are fire shaped into flesh; you are the sky at sunrise; how is it that you are so small?
But before you are any of those things, you are a woman. And you were a girl then, not yet eighteen. An orphan in expensive clothing; a girl facing the threat of a marriage she did not want.
I had to keep you safe from all this.
Yet there was nothing I could do. Only stand at your side and cheer you on as the duels kept coming, one after another. Besides Lord Shu’s sons, there were ten more on that first day. Twenty on the second. None of them posed you any real threat; you dispatched them all with a single stroke each.
One-Stroke Shizuka, they began to call you when they thought no one was listening. I’ve heard that name even here.
Yet despite the ease with which you fought, the stress wore on you. Whenever someone arrived, you’d have to perform a different version of the Eightfold Blessing, accept whatever gifts they offered, and keep a smile on your face, knowing they’d come only to conquer you. To own you. To brand you like a wayward mare.
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