by Devin Madson
“That’s not the goal. I don’t live by them to be admired, or to be better than others, rather so I am free in my own conscience. So I can live and die knowing I did the best I could.”
So many questions were piling up, but someone was coming along the passage with quick light steps, so I held my tongue, not wanting to be overheard. In the back of my mind, Hana was wrestling with the problem at hand, trying to figure out how we could kill Unus without him knowing we were coming. Perhaps we could make use of his visits to Yakono? Perhaps even ask for Yakono’s help? It didn’t matter which of us killed him as long as he died.
Do you think he’ll succeed in turning Yakono to the faith? I asked, thinking of Leo’s intoxicating voice as he read.
You make it sound like a disease rather than a religion, and not in and of itself a terrible one. Captain Aeneas was a good man and a devout believer. Both are possible. Now go back to your flirting and let me think.
Flirt—
Shhhh.
The footsteps had faded away, leaving us alone again.
“Cassandra? Are you all right?”
My chest constricted at the words so few people had ever asked. “Yes, I’m fine. But tell me, why do you think assassination is important? Apart from the desire to ensure a respectful end for people who would be killed anyway.”
“Ideologically?” Yakono asked, his voice muffled. “This is perhaps a cold way of thinking about people, but I see people as being a bit like plants. In a garden, not every plant is made equal in terms of what they give to the garden as a whole. There are plants that shade others, that provide homes for creatures, or food, while others are parasitic and give nothing back. If we can get rid of some of those plants, the garden flourishes. Societies are the same.”
“You want to make a difference.”
“Ideologically, yes. But in practice I do not consider myself, or anyone, infallible enough to make nuanced decisions about who serves society and who takes from it.”
“What if you could be sure someone had done great wrong?”
He shifted against the wall, and his voice grew less muffled. “You’re talking about Dom Villius, aren’t you?”
“Yes. How important, would you say, given your research into the Chiltaen political situation, is his death to the future of Chiltae?”
“That depends on the future you want it to have. I’m not a prescient. Not even an expert on Chiltaen politics. But that he has an almost terrifying level of control through numerous avenues is undeniable. If you agree with his philosophy then that’s a good thing. If you don’t it’s cause for concern.”
“Are you always so sensible?”
“I try.”
Cassandra. I’ve got an idea, the empress said. You aren’t going to like it.
She was right. I didn’t. But we were running out of strength, running out of time, and the faster we could move the more surprise we could maintain. It wasn’t like we’d had any better ideas. Or any other ideas at all.
“Cassandra?” Yakono said, after we’d been silent for a long time. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. But I need you to do something for me. I’m afraid it might go against your precepts a little, but… I need your help.”
“If it helps you it cannot be against my precepts. And even if it was, I would do it.”
I closed my eyes, the constriction in my chest hard to dispel after such words. “Thank you,” I managed, hating how pathetic my reply sounded, how weak and pitiful and full of… sentiment.
It’s harder to care than not to, the empress said. It takes more courage and strength to care, not more weakness. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you don’t have more time to get to know him better.
Against the wall, I heard Yakono shift about, and I wished I could see his face, could see his expression, could put more than imaginings to the sound of his voice. “What is it you need me to do?”
Yakono’s shouts brought footsteps running along the passage. The door slid and the room filled with guards and servants, and I flopped back and moaned as dramatically as I dared.
“She needs a physician,” Yakono cried from the next room. “Take her upstairs and call for a physician.”
I had asked him to say those words, hoping the general panic would keep them from realising it was advice from a prisoner, and it seemed to work.
“Yes, quick, you, pick her up,” one of the men said. “Carry her to the receiving room. You, send someone for Master Ao. We can’t—” Whoever had been speaking broke off to hustle others about their tasks. Someone else shouted for everyone to get out of the way. Another voice called for water and tea and food to be brought up and a clean robe found and many other things lost in the swirl of noise. A swirl of noise beneath which Yakono’s voice was swallowed, and I hoped he would not later suffer for the part I had asked him to play.
Carried like a sick child, we were jolted along the passage toward the main rooms. There, I listened for Leo’s voice, but there was no sign of him, only a hum of panic as people afraid of angering him hurried about their tasks.
I was set lightly down upon a divan and risked opening my eyes to slits. No Unus, but Septum still lay upon the opposite divan. Of course he had not moved. Could not. Yet.
Don’t think too far ahead, just focus.
“What’s going on?” Kaysa, an edge of panic in her voice.
“She was having a fit. We’ve sent for Master Ao.”
“A fit?” Kaysa’s voice reached a higher pitch, but anyone who didn’t know her, didn’t know me, probably wouldn’t notice. Nice to know, after all this time, that she did actually care.
Opening my eyes, I let out a groan and tried to sit up, failing the first time, which didn’t even need to be feigned I felt so weak. The second attempt sent shoots of agony branching down every muscle and tightened knots around my heart. If I wasn’t careful, I wouldn’t need to fake how bad I was.
“I’m fine,” I cried out, trying to sound fine, to sound calm and collected though it came out like the weak complaint of a child. “There is no need to trouble Master Ao. I just need rest and I will be well.”
Are you ready? I said.
Yes.
You will have to be totally quiet.
I know.
No screaming.
I know.
And you’re sure you can?
I was so close to handling him last time. Trust me, Cassandra.
And I was surprised to find I did.
Goodbye, Your Majesty.
Hana, she corrected. Goodbye, Cassandra.
I got to my feet, preparing to walk back to my room, and didn’t have to fake the weakening of my legs that dropped a knee from beneath me. I had been moving forward and the tumble threw me toward Septum’s divan. To fall atop him would be too obvious, to fall too short more obvious still, but his hand sat right near the edge and as my knees smacked into the wood, I gripped the divan for support.
It was the merest brushing of skin against skin, but the empress leaked out through the contact and was gone, leaving me a shrivelled husk in her absence. I felt so empty without her, so wrong, so broken, and I slumped onto hands and knees on the floor, barely managing to make the pained moans we had planned to cover any small sounds Septum might make at her arrival.
“No,” I said as again someone suggested running for Master Ao. “No, I just need rest. Kaysa?”
She was there at the sound of her name, crouching close but not close enough, the deception she feared most that I would try to return to our body. Without the empress I wasn’t even sure I could. There was every chance I had long been trapped here.
“Kaysa.” I lifted my head but did not move. “Tell them I’m fine and just need to return to my room to lie down.”
Whatever her doubts, she nodded and stood. “There is no reason to be troubled,” she said to whoever was still present. “She just needs rest. We cannot have her worn out with our worrying when His Holiness needs her well. Help her back
to her room and have her meal served there.”
Someone argued, but the words were all becoming distant. Unimportant. All I could focus on was the weave of the matting floor beneath my hands and the inhale and exhale of my rough breath through a mouth that hung open and would not close. I had hardly the energy to wonder how the empress was getting on inside Septum, whether the other Leos would know she was there, whether I could ever get her out. She could get trapped in there, as I had gotten trapped in her skin.
A hand gripped my arm, helping me up. The room spun, but before I could get my bearings, we were walking, my feet dragging with each step back along the passage. It seemed to be my whole world now, this corridor and my room, nothing else existing. Not the gardens outside, nor the empire, not even Genava, though I had such fond memories of the city in which I had suffered a lifetime of pain and doubt and confusion.
The whole house spun around me, but I held in bile with clenched teeth and allowed myself to be lowered onto my sleeping mat, murmuring assurances that I would soon be well if only I could be left to sleep.
They must have believed me for they left, soft footsteps exiting into the passage and closing the door behind them. I was glad they had gone and yet to be so alone when I felt so ill, when darkness was closing in, was frightening. It had been comforting to think that if I were to die in this body, at least I wouldn’t be alone. In a twisted way it was amusing that letting the empress go was what might finally kill her. Kill me.
I rolled against the wall, shivering so violently my teeth clacked. “Yakono?”
“Cassandra.”
Tears pricked my eyes at the sound of his voice. I was not alone.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” I said. “No, but it’s all right.” It wasn’t, but I couldn’t say so, didn’t have the energy to reassure him. “Thank you for earlier. I’m… very glad I met you.”
I’d never said anything like it to anyone, and it all felt wrong and yet so right, the knowledge the end was upon me freeing my tongue. “I’m sorry I can’t stay.”
“What do you mean?”
He sounded concerned—concerned! Tears rolled down my cheeks and I could not stop them. Didn’t even want to.
“Yakono, will you talk to me? Tell me a story.”
“Any story in particular?”
“A story that makes you happy.”
Yakono shifted his weight against the wall, fabric catching as he got himself comfortable. “A story that makes me happy?” he said, and I closed my eyes at the deep, warm roll of his voice. “Well, one memory I always look back on fondly is the day Master Luko brought my sister Sara home. I’d been living and training there for three or four years, long enough to forget about life alone on the streets, but she arrived and stood hunched in the doorway like a wild animal, her arms folded, watching us prepare our evening meal like she thought we were going to cook her.”
He chuckled at the memory but I could not, the breath needed for such an action locked in my chest. It came out in a slow rattle, and I focussed on his words to keep from panicking.
“Even when we set food on the table, hoping to tempt her to join us, she wouldn’t move from the door. And when we started our evening discussion of our failings, she looked at us like we were mad.”
The room darkened as he spoke, but at least it had slowed its spinning. Every breath was a hard thing to draw, seeming to come through the tiniest of holes.
“And I remembered what it was like, living on the streets, being cold and starving and sick, only to have a hand held down to me, to pull me up off the hard stones and into a new life, and to see the realisation dawn across Sara’s face was like living it all over again, and she…”
He must have kept talking, must have gone on shifting his weight against the wall and laughing his low, rumbling laugh, but as life leaked out of me on the last of my breaths, I knew no more.
24. DISHIVA
Leo was out there. He was fucking out there standing at the head of the Chiltaen army, and for a full minute I couldn’t move, could only stare at him and want to be sick. Beside me, Lady Sichi seemed similarly afflicted. We had rolled him into the pond. He hadn’t been found. I’d checked. Four times. He was still there. Still dead. Yet there he stood outside the gates.
“That’s bad,” I said.
An ill-assorted collection of the remaining Levanti and Kisians had gathered on the narrow wall. It wasn’t as thick and sturdy as the city walls of Mei’lian had been, but it would hold a while. Hopefully long enough for us to come up with a better plan.
Standing in the dawn sunlight like the god he thought he was, Leo spread his arms and called up to us. In Kisian first, but Sichi’s gasp prepared me for when he switched to Levanti.
“My dear friends,” he said, making my skin pimple with a chill shiver. “My soldiers were marching here to be of use to your cause, to our cause—”
“Horseshit,” I muttered, looking at the array of siege weapons they had with them.
“—but it seems whatever friendship I believed we had, whatever partnership in looking toward the future, I was alone. I don’t know what you were told, but I was murdered.” He paused dramatically upon the word, and I glanced along at the gathered Levanti. Already the Kisians were scowling and muttering. “Murdered,” he repeated. “By Empress Sichi and her supporters. You have a choice. You can give the empress up, and I will take my army and leave. Or we will have to see God’s justice done by force.”
Had he demanded Gideon he might have gotten what he wanted, but Sichi had become as beloved of the Levanti as of the Kisians, and the outcry against his demand rang along the parapet. She remained standing proud beside me, but I could hear the ragged edge to her every breath.
On her other side, Edo whispered to Nuru, who leaned toward me. “Any sign of the Kisian army?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you think Lady Sichi’s message got out?”
She had sent her letter with Jass the previous day, but there was no way to know if he had even reached their camp yet, let alone gotten a response. “I hope so,” I said, trying not to consider what could have held him up. I had to believe Jass had gotten through all right, both for himself and because I had no idea what I would do with Gideon if he didn’t.
Nuru passed the message back. Edo gave a little nod and, drawing himself up, stepped forward. “It is not murder when you commit treason against our emperor,” Nuru translated. “You were discovered in the act of manipulating and assassinating Emperor Gideon e’Torin, a crime for which you would have been executed had you not turned on his empress and been killed in self-defence. Do not think you can peddle your lies here anymore, Priest.”
“Whose word do you think carries the greater weight of truth, Lord Edo? Or should I say, Grace Bahain.” He made a little bow in acknowledgement of the title Edo now carried. “An overwrought and emotional empress”—Sichi growled in the back of her throat—“or a true child of God given new life to fulfil his purpose?”
“Even were she overwrought, I would still take Empress Sichi’s word over yours, you Chiltaen snake.”
Hisses spread along the narrow parapet. Bows held below the edge of the stonework were passed from hand to hand, other hands shifted toward sword hilts, only a few Levanti glancing Sichi’s way as though considering their options.
“It’s a pity you have so hastily condemned all the people who stand with you, Lord Edo,” Nuru whispered to me as Leo replied. “But you never had your father’s courage and wisdom, did you?”
“The courage to shame my family by throwing my cousin, our empress, at you like meat to dogs? No, I haven’t got that kind of courage and wouldn’t want it when I can stand up and fight for my people. You are nothing but Chiltaen oppressors in different clothes. You will get nothing from us.”
“Are you sure those are your final words, Lord Edo?”
“No, my final words are ‘Go to the hells, you shit.’”
An angry cheer tore thr
ough the Kisians atop the wall, fists and bows and swords lifted into the air. It was all noise to me, but they chanted, and proud looks were thrown Edo’s way. At least we could be sure they followed him, whatever else might happen, and for a moment I thought we might even get through this.
Until they launched the catapults. Enormous stones flew, swelling panic in place of cheers. Soldiers pushed to be out of their paths, and down in the courtyard Levanti started shouting. The first boulder crashed through the parapet, scattering stones and soldiers like they were nothing but sticks, sending them flying.
I heard no order, but all around me archers nocked and loosed, and Edo was shouting. I gripped Nuru’s arm. “We have to get Sichi out of here!”
She was no warrior. Nuru and I carried our blades, but neither of us had bows or javelins and were just in the way. Yet Sichi hesitated, determined she ought to be a leader, be seen. Until a second boulder slammed into the base of the wall, shaking it so violently she gripped Nuru’s arm and capitulated.
Our plan had been to retreat into the courtyard and help where we could, with the injured or with supplies, but barely had we reached the stones than Lord Nishi strode toward us in a towering fury.
The man snarled in Sichi’s face, Leo’s name all I understood. The rest of Leo’s followers had been secured in the city, only the rich Kisian they called Lord Salt allowed to remain out of respect for his title. I had said it was a bad idea, but I wasn’t pleased to be proved right.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” I demanded of Nuru while Sichi replied more calmly than I could have.
“He thinks Leo is still alive and we’re just hiding him.”
“What? Has he looked at who is out there attacking us?”
“Sichi is attempting to explain that,” Nuru whispered. “But he’s insisting on searching the manor. He says he has concerned soldiers and servants who will help him.”
I stared at the railing lord, waving his hands around in a rage and not letting Sichi speak more than a few words every time she opened her mouth. Another boulder roared through the air, smashing through a nearby section of wall. Lord Nishi merely glared at it.
