by Paul Krueger
His form flickered. Tala sucked in a shallow breath, and her chest burned. When he re-formed, he wore a stricken expression on his huge face. “Lala,” he said. “You’re—”
He faded again, and the world faded with him. A surge of panic ran through her as she felt her throat closing up, her breath growing shallow as a saucer, her vision blackening around its edges.
Dimangan appeared one more time. She could barely feel his hands envelop her shoulders, could only just tell he was shaking her as gently as his deadly strength would allow. His lips were moving, and she could feel his breath on her face, but the words bounced off her ears like bullets off a tank.
At last, her will gave out. She felt the connection inside retract itself as he disappeared in a burst of bright-blue light. Her body fell back to the floor. The soul-pain bled out of her, but even that relief only underscored how alone she was now. Alone, and dying.
She breathed.
The world darkened.
She breathed.
The last sounds in her ears died.
She breathed.
The last tension drained from her body.
She breathed.
Her eyes closed.
And she hoped she would breathe again.
* * *
—
The national dish of the Sanbu Islands was adobo: meat, either chicken or pork, stewed in a combination of soy sauce, garlic, pepper, and sugarcane vinegar. It was often joked to be the one thing the ten Sanbu Islands had in common, but even that wasn’t true. Recipes varied from island to island, city to city, even family member to family member. There was only one thing all Sanbunas could actually agree on when it came to adobo: Their ina’s was best.
On other islands, Sanbunas added things like sugar, fried onions, or even coconut milk to their adobo. But Tala’s ina was a purist, and insisted that anyone who needed the sweetness to temper the sharp sauce might as well be eating bland Tomodanese food. For her, all adobo needed were those four ingredients: vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, pepper. When she cooked it, the whole house was filled with an aroma so hearty, even breathing it in felt fattening.
It was that smell that brought Tala back to life.
She sat up before she remembered she couldn’t move anymore. Her throat was so dry that even breathing hurt, but at least she was breathing deep again. Her muscles screamed in protest with every twitch and motion, but when she willed them to move they obeyed. And while the light stabbed at her eyes, they saw as clearly as ever.
She blinked. Iron Prince Jimuro stood at the stove, working the contents of a wide, shallow pan with a pair of long metal chopsticks. He wore a different kimono than the one he’d washed up in, and his tight topknot had been undone, revealing a curtain of hair longer than her own that framed his cheekbones just so. She inhaled again and didn’t know what surprised her more: the smell of adobo here in Tomoda, or her still being alive to smell it.
She studied Prince Jimuro as he calmly went about cooking the adobo. Though she’d mostly seen him in various states of sullenness and panic, here she saw him unhurried and possibly even enjoying himself. It wasn’t like he was whistling while he worked, but there was a calm satisfaction about him that lent certainty and confidence to his movements.
Then he looked up, saw her, and dropped his chopsticks with a squawk. “Sergeant!” he said, then forced himself to calm down. “You’re awake.”
“Barely,” Tala said. She rubbed her temples and felt how clumsy her arms and fingers still were. Briefly, fear gripped her: Had the venom’s damage been permanent? Was this how she would always feel from now on? But she pushed it from her mind. She had other things to worry about. “Report.”
Prince Jimuro only seemed slightly put off by her brusque demeanor, but she wasn’t about to make apologies for it. He seemed to understand that, because rather than demand one, he reported.
“You’ve been asleep for the better part of a day and a night,” he said. “By the time I returned and got the antivenin into you, you were more dead than alive.”
She groaned. Now that the thrill of surviving was done with, her body had started cashing in on the debt of pains and sores she’d racked up. It was enough to make her think maybe dying wouldn’t have been the worst thing. She eyed a ceramic kettle on the stove, next to a bubbling rice pot. “Coffee,” she croaked.
“Ah. Yes.” Prince Jimuro produced a simple white ceramic cup, then from the kettle poured a thin stream of pale green tea. A woody scent cut into the overpowering adobo smell, subtle but undeniably present.
“That looks like the opposite of coffee,” Tala said as the prince brought it over.
“You’re the better for it,” he said, pulling a face as he handed it to her.
Tala frowned down into the cup’s translucent green contents, at the bits of leaf floating at the bottom. “This some kind of Tomodanese medicine tea?”
“Hardly,” Prince Jimuro said. “Just my mother’s favorite.”
That got Tala to raise an eyebrow—a gesture that, like every other, hurt something fierce. Tea was no kind of acceptable substitute for coffee, and she doubted the tepid leaf water in her cup would give her any sensation except that of a mouthful of mulch. Still, she had to admit: The idea of sampling her hated enemy’s favorite leaves did make her curious…
When she sipped, a peaty, bitter taste hit her tongue. But she couldn’t deny that her shoulders and her stomach felt lighter.
She took another sip. It was no coffee, but it would do.
At least until she got some coffee.
That was the moment it truly sank in for her: She was in Tomoda now. Last time, it’d been with supply trains and full complements of rations. But now she was full-on behind enemy lines and in survivalist mode. As far as she knew, the Tomodanese didn’t even drink coffee.
Shades take her. She was staring down a three-day drive with the Iron Prince of Tomoda and no coffee.
She nodded to the pan he held. “Adobo?”
“I’m sure it must be quite the surprise for you,” Prince Jimuro said, more than a little proud of himself. “I developed a taste for your native dishes over the course of my long captivity. When she wasn’t on the front, Erega would often take her meals with me and discuss matters of state.”
That made Tala do a proper double take, which she immediately regretted. “She what?”
Prince Jimuro shot her a look over the top rim of his glasses. With his hair down, his expression felt less severe and more thoughtful. “Being a head of state is a lonely thing, Sergeant.”
Tala thought back to the war, after she’d earned her stripes. It’d been an impromptu thing in the heat of battle, born less out of her suitability and more out of the fact that she was the only one of the 13-52-2 to step up. At the time, she’d done it because her squad had needed someone to lead it. But afterward, her troops had treated her differently. They still joked with her, but now there was a slight tension in the way they addressed her. It’d been isolating. Eventually, it’d even made her lonely. It was part of what had made Maki such a good person to talk to. He was the only other one on the ship who’d understood.
Ice ran through her veins at the thought of him. Of Privates Kapona, and Minip, and Radnan, and all the rest. Each absence was another twist of the knife, as was the realization that she was truly the only one left.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember their faces. For now, the details were sharp, but she knew they would fade with time. She only vaguely remembered what her own parents looked like anymore. But she would hold on to the memories of every soul dead aboard the Marlin for as long as she could.
When she opened her eyes, a steaming bowl of adobo and white rice sat in her lap, a pair of wooden chopsticks resting on the bowl’s rim. But Tala stopped short of tearing into it when she eyed the strange round shapes in the bowl, lapping up a
ll its rich brown sauce.
She prodded one, and then looked back up at the prince. “This isn’t adobo.”
“Mushroom adobo is adobo,” said Prince Jimuro. “All of your national dish’s rich flavor, none of the senseless slaughter, and a certain Tomodanese umami as a bonus.” He turned from her and went back to tending the stove before she could issue a rebuttal.
Tala set aside her tea and picked up the bowl. It smelled enough like adobo. She wasn’t used to eating adobo with chopsticks, but they picked up the mushroom caps easily enough. She popped one into her mouth and chewed. There was that burst of salty and sour and herbal tastes she’d grown up on, but the tender mushrooms added an earthy dimension she’d never tasted in adobo before. Her whole body shuddered from the familiar flavor of it, and for just a moment she felt ten again, transported right back to her home in Lisan City.
Something seared across the back of her head, and her rapture burst like a balloon.
Prince Jimuro looked down at her expectantly. “Well?” he said. “Does it measure up?”
Carefully, she fed herself a glob of sauce-stained rice. “It’s fine,” she said quietly. “We need to hit the road today.”
“Not necessarily,” Prince Jimuro said carefully. For a moment, something resembling apprehension shone in his eyes. But then with an unexpected gruffness, he added: “As I said before, I need a bodyguard that can run and fight. As of this moment, you’re in the shape to do neither.”
“I’m touched by your concern for my well-being, Your Brilliance,” Tala deadpanned. “But the longer we stay here, the more danger you’re in.” This felt better. Just a moment ago, they’d veered dangerously close to banter. This, at least, was an argument.
“Nobody knows I’m here,” said the prince. “Nobody even knows I’m in the country yet.”
“No one was supposed to know you were on the Marlin,” Tala said darkly.
A shadow cast itself over Prince Jimuro’s expression. “He’s dead and gone, though.” Tala didn’t miss the quiet note of pleading in his voice. She shared his desperation to be shut of the splintersoul, but she couldn’t share his certainty.
“Even if he is, we don’t know who sent him or why he was after you,” she said.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” the prince said, “but he seemed so intent on getting to me. What in the world do you think I did to earn such contempt?”
Knowing you, Tala thought, probably talked to him.
“Very well,” the prince went on. “I suppose you’re right; we should leave as soon as you’ve eaten. You can use the drive to recover more of your strength. I managed to get us a bit more food, as well as some new clothes for traveling. You’ll need them; you already look enough like an outlander.”
Tala slurped down the last of her adobo. The mushrooms had long disappeared, but she honestly liked the sauce and rice more than she liked the actual adobo itself. She put the bowl down and experimentally flexed her arms. They still felt weak, but even a bit of food in her belly improved the feeling immensely. In a few weeks, she’d be back at full strength and this whole ordeal would be long behind her.
“How’d you pay for it?” she said.
“Hm?”
“Food. Antivenin. Clothes. Our money sank with the Marlin, so how’d you pay for it all?”
Before he could stop himself, the prince’s eyes flitted to the floor by the front hallway, near where Tala’s gun lay atop the neatly folded top half of her uniform. “Don’t concern yourself with that.”
Tala frowned. She didn’t care much about the Tomodanese people at all. She didn’t even care that her gun had been used as a tool to rob them. But the tiny embers of goodwill she’d begun to feel for the prince snuffed themselves out. Whoever those people in town had been, they’d been the prince’s own subjects. She’d expected that kind of callousness from the Tomodanese, but for the first time in her life a small part of her wouldn’t have minded being proven wrong.
Unsteadily, she stood. She groped for the wall to brace herself, but found after a few steps she didn’t need it. Every inch of her felt like a wrung-out towel, but if she could stand, she could walk. If she could walk, she could run.
And if she could run, she could fight.
She’d been stripped of her boots, shirt, and jacket, but she still had her pants and undershirt. She eyed the door. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Not dressed like that, you aren’t,” said the prince.
“I’m not going far,” Tala muttered. “I just need fresh air. Wait for me.”
Though it was the height of summer, she was surprised by how cool and crisp it was outside when she shut the door behind her. The sun was not yet at its peak, and the air was thicker with cicada song than it was with humidity. She breathed deep, and though the air was Tomodanese, it was still sweeter on her tongue than the staleness of the prince’s cabin.
She found herself in a clearing, surrounded by tall spruce trees that kept the cabin permanently shrouded in shadow. A narrow dirt road led into the wood, and right at its mouth was parked a simple black car. Unlike the cars that they’d packed into the Marlin’s hold back in Sanbu, this one was of Tomodanese make and would only move through metalpacting. If Tala went with the prince now, she wouldn’t be able to drive.
She glanced back at the house, then pointed. “Beaky.” And after a moment to brace herself for the pain: “Dimangan.”
A purple flash issued from one hand and a blue one from the other as her two shades emerged. Whether they were manifested or not, the two of them couldn’t communicate directly with each other the way each could with Tala. But she could sense what each of them was feeling, as if she were standing in the cross breeze from two drafty rooms. Each shade regarded the other coolly—Mang because he considered the bird’s surliness to be unpleasant, and Beaky because…well, because he was an unpleasantly surly bird.
Beaky cawed and stretched his wings, then took to the air. Tala mentally cautioned him not to fly too high, lest an obvious shade attract attention here in Tomoda.
The response she got back amounted to Yeah, yeah, as he flew higher and higher in a lazy spiral.
Mang hunched before her on his haunches. “Lala. Shades take me, you’re alive.” Gingerly, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She angled herself carefully to avoid the sharp bone growths bursting from his broad chest. “I mean, I knew you were, because I could still feel myself in there, but I didn’t know if you’d—if I’d ever—”
“At ease,” Tala said, patting him. Her head throbbed with the effort of keeping him manifested.
“So how’d you do it?” he said. “How’d you wake up so fast?”
Tala nodded to the car behind him. “The prince came back.”
Mang withdrew from their embrace and looked at the car in quiet disbelief. Or at least, it was quiet on the outside. Thanks to their empathic link, the disbelief inside him was anything but quiet to Tala.
“What does he want from you in return?” he said eventually.
“Just to honor my orders,” Tala said. “Escort him to Hagane. Make sure he gets seated safely on the throne. After he gets crowned the Steel Lord, he stops being my problem.”
“Our problem,” Mang rumbled.
The sudden spike of annoyance she felt from him caught her wrong-footed, and with it came a sudden sharpness to the pain that made both of them wince.
“Right, sorry,” she said carefully. “It’s our problem, not just mine.” But even with her apology, the current of tension flowing off him didn’t abate. She exhaled. “What?”
“When you saved me—”
A generous term for it, she thought.
“—you tied our souls together. And then you went off to fight in a war. It put us both in danger every day, and most of the time you couldn’t even use me to keep you safe. But
I made my peace with that, because that was a war that needed fighting, and nothing was gonna stop you from fighting that.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“The war was over, Lala,” Mang said, his impatience now as naked as he was. “It was over, and then you volunteered for another tour of duty, and for what? For him?” He gestured to the house. “He’s the face of the enemy. The one who most deserves to hang for Tomoda’s crimes. And you jumped at the chance to protect him—”
“I didn’t jump at—” Tala tried to say, but Mang plowed right over her, his anger bringing a fresh wave of agony that almost dropped her to her knees.
“—and you did it without even trying to consult me,” Mang finished.
Tala’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
Dimangan leveled a simmering stare at her and sat further back on his haunches.
“I didn’t have a chance,” she said. “Erega asked for volunteers. I couldn’t just sneak away and ask you.”
“Then you should’ve said no,” Mang growled. “This mission wasn’t just your choice. Your life is the only thing sustaining both of us, and you almost spent it trying to protect a steelhound. Have you forgotten what they took from us?”
“Of course I haven’t,” Tala snapped. Normally, she tried to be patient with Mang. Their need to keep him secret meant he could come out so rarely. But the spider-shade’s venom had sapped her patience along with her strength. “Why do you think I threw myself into that war?”
“Because you promised that bird—”
“Because I promised you.” Tala cut across him even as more intense pain crackled between them. “I wanted to make every last one of those monsters pay. I wanted to make them regret leaving me alive.”
“But you’ll lay your life down to protect their king.”
“To honor the sacrifice of my squad!” Tala said. “If I don’t get the Iron Prince to Hagane—”
“—they’ll have died for nothing?” Mang said. “Because they weren’t dead when you signed up.”
