by Devin Madson
“There is no time, Majesty.” Manshin’s tone held no apology. “Without Grace Bahain we cannot bargain support from the Koalis. We aren’t safe here. Not even for an hour. At best we could get caught in the castle, unable to leave. At worst they may incite the people against us.”
I didn’t like the look they shared before Manshin, hands clasped behind his back, added, “They are not loyal to you. They are loyal to Grace Bahain. You have killed Grace Bahain, which will not give them reason to be more loyal now.”
You. I noted the distancing once again.
“A token force is all that’s required to hold the castle against Governor Koali, given its fortifications,” Manshin finished. “But if you want to march for Kogahaera this season, we go now.”
Our success on the battlefield overnight would count for little if we ended up trapped inside our own castle while others fought for the empire. I would have preferred to move at my own speed, not to look like I was fleeing, but it was escape now or end up at war with the city of Syan.
I let out a tired sigh. “All right, we march for Kogahaera. Oyamada must be almost there with the rest of the army by now.”
Both men bowed as though the order had been mine from the beginning, and I was grateful for that at least. “I will speak to the Levanti translator and discover their intentions,” General Moto said, bowing a second time. “If you will excuse me, Majesty.”
Almost I said I would join him, but the set of Minister Manshin’s jaw gave me pause. There the face of a man who had something else he wanted to say. I lifted my brows. “There is something more?”
He flicked a glance at General Ryoji beside me. “I would speak alone, Your Majesty.”
A burst of panic stayed my tongue, but I managed to nod dismissal to Ryoji. We were hardly alone in a courtyard full of busy people hurrying about their tasks, but the absence of either general seemed to satisfy Manshin. He drew himself up. As if that were needed given his height. “You cannot march west with the Levanti.”
It wasn’t a question or a recommendation, but a statement of fact, and it took me a moment to be sure I had heard him correctly. “Cannot?” I said, bristling at so stringent a command.
“They are not our allies. They are our enemies.”
“Do correct me if I’m wrong, Minister, but without them we would be preparing for a protracted siege right now. If fighting for us when we had not enough soldiers to fight for ourselves does not make them allies, I’m not sure what would.”
Around us the Levanti were as busy as any of our returning soldiers, the whole courtyard packed with men I had every reason to be proud of.
“A fight which led to the death of Grace Bahain when we most needed him alive. Killed by a Levanti archer, I understand. It would be of great help to their Emperor Gideon if we were trapped here unable to fight, and that is why you cannot call them allies. You cannot trust them.”
“Is that advice more prudence or prejudice?”
Manshin stiffened. “Prudence, Your Majesty. Anyone willing to bow to a Levanti, to take orders from a Levanti, to see their leader marching with Levanti, has already chosen to side with Emperor Gideon. Those who have not want no Levanti here.”
“While I take your point, it sounds as much like prejudice as it does prudence, Minister.”
He took a small step closer, forcing my neck up at a sharper angle. “I will allow that Rah e’Torin appears to be an honourable man by the standards of such things, but you cannot judge his people by the actions of one man. One man who, if he better understood his place, would not be seen so close to you.”
“And you ought not judge them all by the actions of Gideon e’Torin.”
“My way is safer.”
He was right, but the Levanti were powerful allies, and I trusted Rah more than I trusted most of my generals. To ignore that and brand them as nothing but enemies, nothing but barbarians who had taken our lands, was to ignore the real hurt the Chiltaens had done them, even if that hurt had been inflicted in the process of hurting us. Simplifying it to good and bad was wrong on every level, even if it was how you got people to fight for you. Clear, unassailable lines. Us good. Them bad. Did it matter that it bore no resemblance to the truth?
“I do not pretend to understand the complexities of their culture,” Manshin went on more quietly. “But if they want to go home, let them go. That is what I believed they wanted when I let them join me at Otobaru. Ships so they might leave our shores.”
“And if they don’t want to go? If they want to stay? Or fight their own at Kogahaera?”
He met my direct gaze without any sign of discomfort. “Lock them up. Or kill them.”
“No.”
Manshin lifted his brows.
“No,” I repeated. “I will not be that sort of ruler.”
He did not reply, but I was sure he thought The sort of ruler who keeps her empire? to himself, and a sick feeling rose up my throat. I made to walk past him, only for him to step in my path as though I had been a common servant. “If your reluctance is due to your personal interest in Rah e’Torin,” he whispered, every word harsh, “I must, once again it seems, advise you most strongly against associating yourself with a man whose very presence in your army will forever taint you in the eyes of your own people.”
Anger shook me. Embarrassment, too. I knew my face to be growing hot, but there was nothing I could do but meet his stare or capitulate. “You want to know how I feel about him?” I hissed back. “Yes, I do want Rah e’Torin to stay. I trust him. But this is not about him or anyone else. I want to rule an empire built on tolerance, not division. I want to unite Kisia, and if I walk the same path to the throne as Emperor Kin, nothing will change.”
“You cannot have ideals until you’re strong enough to wear their consequences. What do commoners care for tolerance toward outsiders when they are afraid? When all they see is their leader putting others before them?”
Around us, my triumphant soldiers had joined the preparations, a sense of excitement building that we were moving toward Kogahaera at last. To them we were but empress and minister discussing details, while the very stones beneath my feet seemed to be cracking. I had built everything upon my faith in Minister Manshin, upon our shared purpose. When had our hopes and intentions diverged so completely?
“As always, I thank you for your advice, Minister,” I said, determined to be stately and confident whatever I might feel inside. “I will consider your words, but will make no hasty decisions. The Levanti are, after all, the only reason we are not at this moment very dead.”
I strode away before I said anything I would regret, and it was a dozen hasty steps before I realised I had no destination in mind. I kept walking because to stop would look foolish, but I felt heavy, disconnected from the people around me, even those who spoke my language and shared my culture. Did they all feel as Minister Manshin did? That the Levanti presence undercut my rule no matter how hard they fought alongside us? Even so, could we as easily attack Kogahaera without them? No matter how you considered it, the answer was no, and I would be a fool to throw away such a comfortable advantage.
“Complaisance is the road to defeat.” I couldn’t recall who Mama had been quoting every time she’d said that, but it gnawed at me now as I made for the stairs. Laying siege to Kogahaera with a large army was a strong plan, but what if there was a way to leverage it into a clever plan? Something more I could use against this man who was not only an enemy, but an emperor.
An idea began to form and at last I had a destination.
Maids were in my room packing my clothes, though it wasn’t really my room and they weren’t my clothes. Wanting to be alone, I took a writing table and carried it toward the Cavern.
“Allow me, Your Majesty,” one of them said, following me into the passage.
“No, I can manage, but run and fetch Tor. The Levanti translator. With the long hair.” The girl looked like I had asked her to jump off the balcony, but she bowed and hurried away.
>
The Cavern was empty and cold, two lit braziers doing little to combat the morning chill making its way beneath the balcony overhang. Preferring to keep near the warmth, I set up to work beside one, listening with half an ear for footsteps heralding Tor’s approach. Yet having set my brush to the ink, I sat with it hovering above the paper. How did one address a false emperor? A man who was not even Kisian? Who had done nothing to earn the title he chose except to take it by force like Kin had done before him?
I smiled. Usurper.
Choosing my words carefully, I began to write. It was not easy to find all the right words, yet I had finished before Tor arrived at the speed of one who would rather be anywhere else. From the doorway he lifted his brows in both greeting and question.
“Tor,” I said, realising I had sent for him without considering I was asking a favour. He was not mine to command. “I… I would greatly appreciate it if you could assist me. I have written a letter to your Emperor Gideon—”
“He is not mine.”
I adjusted my thoughts. Talking to Tor often felt like one was walking blindfolded across a room with holes in the floor. “My apologies. I have written to the usurper Emperor Gideon, but I would rather it be read by him than to him by someone else—”
“You want me to translate it.”
Surely, interrupting was a discourtesy in Levanti society as well, so I let go the hope that after our last conversation his opinion of me, or at least his manner, might have softened. “Yes, please,” I said as though I had not been an empress. “If you could rewrite it in Levanti for me, I would be most grateful.”
He hovered on the threshold, undecided, and stared at me as though I had said something strange. I had no one else to ask and no way to pressure him even had I been inclined to, so all I could do was smile and hope. Tor parted his lips and I was sure he was about to refuse, but he snapped his jaw closed, nodded, and strode to the desk, all long limbs and sullen scowl.
In silence he took up my letter and read it through. I held my breath as he traced the lines with the tip of his finger. It didn’t matter what he thought of it. What he thought of me. Yet it was all I could do not to ask if it was acceptable. Once at the end he didn’t ask any questions, just sighed, flipped a length of hair out of his face, and took up the brush.
I paced while he worked, trying to keep my steps slow and my tread soft. Trying not to think about what Minister Manshin had said. About Levanti support. About Rah. Rah, who had invited my embrace, who I had been so sure had wanted me like I had wanted him, until he hadn’t.
“What does ichasha mean?” I said, turning to Tor. “In Levanti?”
He had been flicking his gaze between my letter and his, slowly translating, but his hands stilled and his brows sank low. “It means ‘blood.’ Why?”
Blood? I must have misheard because that made no sense, but I could hardly ask him what words sounded like ichasha could have been uttered in such a situation.
Anyone else would have taken my silence as the end of the conversation, but not Tor. “Did Rah say that?” he asked, something like a long-suffering sigh escaping with the words.
“Yes.” My cheeks heated at the mere possibility we were about to have this conversation. “At least I thought it was, but it doesn’t make sense so it was probably something else. Forget I asked.”
I busied myself straightening my sleeve, watching out of the corner of my eye for him to go back to the letter, but he didn’t move. A long minute dragged by, full of the comfortable sounds of clinking coals, distant activity, and the ever-present barrage of the sea, yet over it all the sound of Tor putting down the brush was the loudest of all. Fabric rustled as he turned to look at me.
“Yes?” I said. “What is it?”
“He wouldn’t have sex with you?”
He asked the question with such appalling ease, and my cheeks flamed. I looked away, beginning to stammer out a reproof for speaking so, only for him to talk over the top of me. “Excuse my assumption if I am in error, but we have a few different words for ‘blood’ in Levanti. Ichasha is specific to the menstrual blood a woman loses each cycle of the Goddess Moon.”
To ask the question was one thing, but to go on talking about it as one would speak of the weather made me thrust out my hand and squeeze shut my eyes, as though obscuring him from my sight would block his words.
He stopped talking, but the silence was no improvement, and my cheeks stubbornly refused to cool. When I risked glancing at him again, he was still looking at me. The brush lay untouched on the paper. “I’m… sorry?” he said, seeming to be venturing an idea he was unsure about. “Is this… is this something you don’t… talk about?”
“No! No, we don’t just openly discuss… blood and sex, like we’re—”
I turned away. Almost I had called his people savages, and I hated how easily the word had come to my lips, but though I had stopped myself, of course he knew what I had so nearly said.
“It is rather more barbaric to suppress discussion of natural and important things, don’t you think?” he asked quietly.
I couldn’t answer, wished I had never asked, that he would finish the letter and go away, but Tor seemed intent on punishing me.
“Food and water are precious resources on the plains,” he said, getting to his feet. “So we cannot just allow a herd to grow without limit. Each season there can only be so many children added to the number of mouths we must feed. Sometimes it’s a good number. Sometimes it’s a very small number. Either way it is the responsibility of all members of the herd to keep to that number and not stretch our resources, so we are careful. As a bare minimum, Levanti men do not have sex with a woman without asking where she is in her cycle, and Levanti women keep track of their cycle. Do you… do you just have babies whenever?”
There was not an ounce of shame or discomfort in his expression, and I couldn’t but hate him for it, and for the slight sneer in his question.
“Do men here at least drink epaya?”
“I… What is that?” I said.
“It’s crushed epa seeds, you know, the fruit? Maybe you call it something else here, but it decreases a man’s potency.”
I screwed up my nose, grateful for any opportunity to shift the subject however slightly. “That sounds foul. What does it taste like?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tasted it.”
There was something guarded in his reply, in the way he fiddled with the hem of his tunic, that made him look young and awkward. This a man I had seen kill one of his own people, who could ride more skilfully than any Kisian I had ever seen and could talk about a woman’s blood like it was nothing, embarrassed at last.
“How many cycles old are you, Tor?” I said. As the words left my mouth, I realised how personal the question sounded, especially with his name on the end like I was pulling him close. “I mean, if… if that’s all right for me to ask. In your culture.”
“I told you already. When you asked if I would be Made.”
Somehow the embarrassment of having forgotten, of making a fool of myself, was worse than the conversation about my blood, and I pressed my hands over my face. “You did. I’m sorry.”
“Nineteen next season,” he said, taking pity on me.
Convention dictated I reply in kind, but silence stretched where my answer should have been. In many ways my age was as much a barrier as my womanhood, but I wanted to tell him. To trust him. Not just wanted to, but already did in the same way I trusted Rah. These men who had no reason to want me ousted from my position, who had no reason to look down on me for what I was, were far more honourable than my advisors, with their predetermined and immutable ideas of what I was capable of.
“I’m… about a year behind you.”
His eyes widened a moment, but he coughed to hide his surprise.
“Everyone knows I’m young, of course,” I said hurriedly. “If they calculate. But Mama always said most of keeping power is appearing to deserve it, so… please keep that b
etween us.”
He nodded with such a fixed mask I couldn’t tell if I’d angered him.
“The words you want are ki ichasha sorii.”
“Ki ichasha sorii?”
“It means you’re at a safe point in your cycle, having just finished bleeding or being about to.”
I looked away, having forgotten for a moment what had brought us here. It felt like a terrible time to admit I had never paid as much attention as I ought, aside from cursing bleeding days when they arrived for their added annoyance.
“As long as you are at a safe point in your cycle,” he added, perhaps sensing something of my reluctance. “We take these things seriously. Everyone should.”
Two steps took him back to the table and the letter I had all but forgotten. “Here.” He held it out. “It is done but for your name.”
“Oh, thank you.”
He bowed, at the same time pressing his fists together in a Levanti salute. “Your Majesty.”
And without asking if I needed anything more, he was gone, leaving me with a slew of complicated thoughts I had very little time to consider. That my mother had taught me so little about the way my body worked beyond how to protect garments against blood seemed suddenly a grievous oversight. And to be worrying about it when I was about to march out with my army, more foolish still. It was not the time, but I couldn’t help wishing I had someone I could ask. A female friend who would understand.
There had only ever been Sichi. I had not spoken of our plans that day in the bathhouse, and now she was married to a Levanti emperor instead of my brother. And I had just killed her uncle in an ambush and taken his castle. Not a good time to have such conversations even had it been possible.
I thought of her as I signed my name on a letter to her husband, glad at least that if he was anything like Rah and Tor, Gideon e’Torin would respect her.
All was ready when I returned to the courtyard, my soldiers prepared to depart, though carts were still being loaded with what goods we could salvage. The Levanti were mounted but had kept themselves apart. That I registered relief they were still present worried me. What had I thought Manshin capable of in my absence?
