by T. A. Miles
“It is precisely what the Phoenix intended,” Shirisae interrupted, and felt the final, full release of that truth draw warmth to her eyes. It skewed her vision of his delicate frown. “I wish it wasn’t, because I’m afraid now…to have a god involved in something that I would want anyway.”
She didn’t realize how cold her skin had gotten, until he softly laid his fingers against the side of her face. The warmth of his touch inspired desire she yearned to express and knew she could not.
“The gods have been involved since before the first breath of a mortal being,” Xu Liang told her. “They will remain involved long after the last.”
Shirisae closed her eyes, expelling all thought of gods, and of Blades, and any purpose beyond what existed expressly between herself and Xu Liang. “I will enter into this betrothal,” she said. “I will do whatever is required along the path to becoming your wife.”
She opened her eyes again, and expected to see her future husband bow in the customary way, but when he lowered his head it was to kiss her for the second time. Deeper than the first, it extended promise that would render the coming months among her most difficult to endure.
“I’M COMING WITH you,” Taya announced, small hands on her hips and a look of daring in her hazel eyes—daring Shirisae to challenge her determination in this matter.
Shirisae wouldn’t dare. “Of course, you are,” she said to the young dwarf. “I’ve already left you alone with a houseful of unattached men for quite long enough.”
Taya’s mouth popped open for a scandalized moment, but quickly reformed a frown. This time, the look was more of indignation struggling with satisfaction. “Well…all right, then.”
Shirisae smiled at her, secretly relieved that she would not be made to sequester with a horde of females she could in no way claim to know. All of her experience with the Empress had been during formal address. She found it oddly more challenging that the Empress was such a young girl. Shirisae had no fear of authority—her mother would undoubtedly be the first to confirm—but she was unaccustomed to spending any important amount of time with human girls, or even young elf women. The majority of her time had been spent in the company of her elders, and her brother. It had taken her quite long enough to grow used to little Taya and even to gain a proper perspective on Tristus—who was quite young in spite of his mature way of living among his fellow humans. Unfortunately, Alere was helplessly adolescent in her eyes. Twenty years for an elf was on the very edge of adulthood, even among the Verressi, whose lifespans could be considerably shorter than other elves.
Among their group, it was really only Xu Liang who had seemed older to her, in spite of the fact that few if any humans in all of Dryth could survive to what was still considered her youth. The thought was not allowed to wander far past its formation. She was not about to begin counting Xu Liang’s years. He had already been granted an extension on them by the Phoenix and that meant that no one was qualified to gauge the time he yet had, not even elves.
She sat upon the edge of the compartment bed in the room she’d shared with Taya determining not to consider much of anything too deliberately for the remainder of the evening. While she would be escorted to the Empress’ palaces immediately, she would not begin acclimation into the Empress’ personal court until the following day. Taya had spent some time with the women of the palace; she would ask questions of her and otherwise wait to see what such an environment entailed. In the meantime, she had very little in the way of personal effects, but Taya had a reasonable inventory she wanted to bring.
Shirisae waited with her elbows propped on her legs, observing the dwarf’s natural wont to horde. When Tristus came in, she smiled at him automatically, though he looked in a characteristically sentimental state that she had considered finding a way to avoid. Had she done so, she knew she would have regretted it. Tristus loved her very much, in all the ways she would have initially fought against. And she had come to love him equally in those precise same ways.
The knight came to the bed and sat beside her, hands hanging relaxed in front of him while he leaned forward, so as not to knock his head on the framework of the Fanese bed. “I scarcely believe what’s been told to me,” he said quietly.
Shirisae would not begrudge him any disappointment he felt. She did know how he loved Xu Liang. She had seen it immediately and having grown to regard Xu Liang romantically herself, she would consider herself cruel to deny him his reaction.
“I know you love him,” she said.
Tristus hesitated to leap at that. Instead, he said, “I think that ultimately what I wanted for him was to be loved, deeply. I formed hopes that he would not only be that, but that he would feel such love himself as well. A large part of my battle might have become over that second aspect.”
Shirisae looked at him without interrupting.
“He deserves devotion,” Tristus continued. “But more than that; he deserves a heart that he can hold mutually. Too often, those who have loved him must have held too tightly and, to my profound remorse, I’ve been among them.”
Though she had come to similar conclusions regarding Xu Liang’s past experiences, she said nothing. She would not have put Tristus within the ranks of those who had selfishly sought to love Xu Liang by entrapping him. Her assessment of Xu Liang’s past was not filled with worship in the way that Tristus expressed it, but with manipulation that eventually led to Xu Liang’s disinterest—if not his distress. She would not be so arrogant as to assume that only she could have reawakened that aspect of him—his ability to take interest in someone beyond intellectual and spiritual. She knew that the Phoenix had been a guide in connecting her to him in an exclusive sense, but she knew also that he had chosen to take her hand when she reached out.
“Be all that you can for each other, Shirisae, with my sincerest blessing,” Tristus said, drawing her gaze to his smile.
She touched his hand, because what he was letting go of did not have to leave him feeling abandoned, or left behind.
He allowed her fingers to intertwine with his, then squeezed gently and kissed the side of her head. “You are my sister in arms and in heart, and by our blades, we are siblings in spirit as well. I will support you in this to my last breath. I swear it.”
He said nothing more, and what he had said seemed to present him with the strength or the will to leave.
Taya sighed peevishly after he’d gone. “Well, I guess he’s not bothered if I go anywhere, since I’m not getting married to anyone.”
“Is there someone who catches your eye, Taya?” Shirisae quipped, and caught the cushion that the dwarf girl threw at her in retaliation.
ALERE STOOD WITHIN the outermost entryway of the mystic’s house, lingering in the darkness long after the carriage that had come for Shirisae and Taya had borne them away.
“Kirlothden likes you,” Shirisae had said to him before going. “Would you watch over him during the winter months?”
Alere had said nothing immediately, though he detected that it was not a request primarily; it had been a method by which she hoped to reach for any kinship that may have existed between them. He had not been receptive to previous attempts, and could not say that he was overly receptive now, but he’d felt a peculiar vulnerability that made him eventually respond, as if he could reach out to take hold of the pending change they all faced and stop it getting away.
“You’ll come to see him occasionally,” he had said. It had been more a question than a statement. He found himself, in the moment he’d said it, concerned over her answer.
“I’ll come, Alere,” Shirisae had promised.
And now Alere could only be left to wonder whether she had been referring to Kirlothden, to Xu Liang—who they were both equally protective over—or to himself.
Transitions
THE PALACE OF Heavenly Peace felt as if it were one more city, within a city, within a city. Shirisae marked her way with care mentally. She had no desire to be trapped within any walls, no matter how be
nign they were meant to be. She disliked entering with an air of distrust, but it was her instinct while away from home. It would have been relevant if her brother had been present to take note of her internal state, since he liked to accuse her of being too trusting when dealing with those outside of Vilciel.
The thought reminded her that neither her brother nor her mother would be present to witness the events unfolding in Sheng Fan, except in spirit. In some ways that was enough, but at the moment a part of her would have wished the locations reversed again. But Xu Liang had been subject to Vilciel and her culture in a lasting way already. In honor of the balance he so valued, she decided that this was fair.
“I know many of the girls already,” Taya was saying while they were escorted by Huang Shang-san and a small unit of guards beyond formidable doors, through vast halls littered with Fanese sculpture, tapestries, and wall carvings. “I’m especially fond of Song Bin Ce. She’s older than most of them, and she used to be the Emperor’s wife.”
“Is that so?” Shirisae replied. In truth, she scarcely cared, though she knew that if a dwarf enjoyed anything, it was boasting about something they knew.
“Yes, it is,” Taya said. “Of course, he was not the Emperor for very long. We probably shouldn’t talk about that lots.”
Shirisae only nodded, looking over the great columns they were passing, which could have competed with the trees of the legendary Forests of the Ancients. Recall of that aspect of the greater mythologies of the elves reminded her that she was not the first elf to have ever entered into marriage with a human. In fact, it was said that many of the Shillan elves had taken human spouses over the course of generations, rendering them a largely mixed group, as elves went. It was a fact that needled their immediate neighbors on both sides, though as Shirisae understood it, the Shillan people were still considered elves first and foremost, to themselves as well as to others.
“You will stay in a private room tonight,” Huang Shang-san told her, enunciating the words in Yvarian. “Rest yourself. You will be received by the Empress tomorrow and then you will begin study.”
“Study for what?” Shirisae asked, looking at the elder.
“For learning all that you must know on becoming the wife of the Imperial Tactician,” he explained, “and a daughter of Sheng Fan.”
“A daughter…”
“Our policies will not allow an official of the Imperial Court to marry outside of Sheng Fan.” He said it, not only as a matter of stating policy—as he called it—but as if he attached some personal note to the stipulation.
It made Shirisae look at him again in an attempt to decipher what that might have been. She had little success, but felt less attacked by his mention of it, and therefore less inclined to openly challenge it. She could see that she was going to have to make a deliberate effort to rein herself in regarding such matters. It was not her desire to embarrass Xu Liang or to defy his culture. If she had to form official ties in achieving personal ties to him, then so be it. There was no context for challenge of her birthright, or her status as an elf. Her mother had lived for nearly one thousand years and not been aware of Sheng Fan. No true political arrangement or threat could exist between their cultures at their distance. She had vowed to support Xu Liang and to help him to support what he believed in. She would do so, until the Phoenix called her back to Vilciel.
SHE WAS THE most peculiar form of beauty Song Da-Xiao had seen in a person, but…Shirisae was beautiful, in a similar way to…to nature, she decided. With that, it was easy to envision a portrayal of Clouded Fox in a relief of a forest, surrounded by deer, foxes, and rabbits. Song Da-Xiao would not retract the suggestion that had been lightly made, that Shirisae was an emissary of a goddess. There were legends of incarnations and agents of the gods visiting the mortal plane, so this would be such an event, but it would be a romance, in which the visiting entity became married to the mortal hero. While that satisfied Song Da-Xiao in some ways, it also intrigued her. She herself was considered a divine persona among her people. She had yet to feel empowered by it, save through Xu Liang…particularly during the sequestering, while he was absent from the court, but had tied himself to her in spirit.
“You are promised to my most beloved servant,” Song Da-Xiao told Shirisae, unsure whether or not she would even understand the words. “You will become a daughter of Sheng Fan, and a lady of the Imperial Court. Already, you have become a hero of Sheng Fan and been granted the title of general. Your unique status will enable you to support your husband in ways not customary for a wife. Rather than allow you to gain a reputation of rogue independence, it is important that you are guided to a status that attaches you to your future husband as a wife with agency. Agency to do what I know you have done, which is to protect and to support. I ask now that you do so, not only for him, but for all of Sheng Fan as well, no longer only without of the court, but within it as well.”
Shirisae received translation from Huang Shang-san, and then surprised Song Da-Xiao by speaking her answer in Fanese. “Xu Liang has earned the allegiance and love of all of the bearers from outside of Sheng Fan. Through him, we all have come to respect and cherish his homeland. We are all here to support the Empire against chaos, as he has supported us in that same challenge, versus the various forms chaos has taken throughout the world.”
Song Da-Xiao nodded. “Huang Shang-san has agreed to adopt you, that you may have paternal sponsorship. Your recognized Fanese name shall be Huang Rin-fei, until the time of your marriage, when you will be adopted into the Xu family by way of your husband.”
It pained Song Da-Xiao to speak the words, but she held strong, knowing that this was release for both of them. For Song Da-Xiao it meant that there would no longer be the overly qualified option for a husband—and for an emperor—so near at hand. She will have secured her role and need only protect it. A consort for her could only be a man with less support and less charisma. The idea was entirely unappealing, so perhaps she would remain alone, and concern herself with a love for her people, something she had never felt so strongly than when she had been connected spiritually to Xu Liang. It could make her believe that the feeling had not been hers, so much as it originated from him. She would follow his example, and she would draw upon the strength of her late brother, and the wisdom of her late father. Over the coming months she would learn independence from the bearer of the Storm Blade, as she had witnessed sacrifice from the bearer of the Dawn Blade, determination from the bearer of the Twilight Blade, and loyalty from the bearer of the Night Blade. The bearer of the Moon Blade had taught her protection, and been her protection for long enough.
SHIRISAE GLANCED OVER her shoulder at Huang Shang-san once the Empress had taken her leave. She knew very little of the elder who had just claimed her paternally, though it was more than what she knew of her own father. The most important aspect of Huang Shang-san was that he was a dear and trusted friend of Xu Liang, one who had volunteered time and effort to helping Xu Liang’s foreign allies find at least a temporary place in Sheng Fan while they contributed the magic of the weapons they held. But Shirisae’s place was to be less temporary…perhaps the goodly portion of a Fanese lifetime.
Huang Shang-san bowed when he noticed her looking at him, but that wasn’t enough for Shirisae. Since she had yet to be ushered to anyplace in particular, she turned and approached the Minister of Ceremonies.
“What does Rin-fei mean?” she asked him.
He smiled. “It means ‘foreign daughter’.”
“Do you have any children?” she wondered aloud.
The elder was not given time to answer. A Fanese woman approached, bowing formally.
“Lady Huang Rin-fei,” she said. “I am Song Bin Ce. Please, come with me.”
Shirisae did as she was asked, and was shown the expanded area that would be her dwelling place for the coming seasons. She would share her space with handmaidens, who she was not to be amongst, necessarily, but who would attend her and teach her. Her comprehension of Fanes
e would be a strong focus, primarily so that she could attain a better grasp of the different applications each gender had. More or less, she’d been learning to speak as a man tended to speak, though she’d been assured that many scholars utilized a more neutrally proper way of speaking. So, she had been learning to speak as a scholar. She would not complain about that, nor of understanding the differences. Elvish had its own versions of male, female, and neuter language. As well, she would learn the social expectations put upon a wife in Sheng Fan. She planned to disregard some of it, but she was quite interested in knowing what was more or less proper and what would do Xu Liang a worse disservice, over what might be ignorable. Clearly, her fighting alongside him was not a tremendous social burden for him; she had been praised by his men. She understood that they had put some aspects of a divine connotation onto her presence, but there did happen to be a divine presence in the Phoenix and it was connected to her and to Xu Liang equally. She was not ordinary or typical, not even among her own people. She saw no reason to allow herself to be pressed into a mundane role and she would strive to maintain a proper and balanced image—one that married her to Xu Liang in a universal sense, over a confined sense. The name ‘foreign daughter’ was appropriate. She would become a daughter of the Empire while simultaneously maintaining that she was the daughter of Ahjenta.
There was little other option besides. She had not lied to Xu Liang; it was her duty to stay by D’Jenti’s side. That she loved him made it all the more important not to fight his environment or his people. The Phoenix wanted this, as much as she did. Unfortunately, it was the Phoenix’s long term plans that frightened her, well more than her own.
“YOU SAID THAT the outlet veered north,” Xu Liang said.
“Yes,” Alere answered. He, Tristus, Tarfan, and Guang Ci were all gathered in his office. Their answers assisted Xu Liang in roughly mapping the area beneath the city.
