by Paul Krueger
Jimuro sipped his tea politely and nodded. He’d heard as much from his many chats with Erega.
“I truly wished to use my elevated position to chart a change in course for Shang. But with the throne now permanently denied me, I fear you will be on your own.”
“You’re still an agent of the Li-Quan,” said Jimuro. “You have options.”
Xiulan chuckled ruefully. “Your estimation of my father’s character isn’t as strong as you would believe it to be, if you think he intends to let me do anything but sit idly in court and collect dust until he dies.”
Jimuro sighed. Truly, he could think of nothing meaningful he could do to help her, and that frustrated him. With Tala lying in bed on the other side of that door, he needed to feel like there was some way he could effect positive change. He had to prove that the spirits hadn’t made a mistake in leaving him alive.
“We Tomodanese have an old and famous saying,” he said eventually, “about the karmic nature of good deeds.”
“I fear I don’t know that one.”
Well, he’d tried. “I know this is a stupid question before I ask it, but is there anything I can do to help?”
“I fear not,” Xiulan said. “Though the tea is welcome. I confess, while your presence here isn’t unpleasant, my chief aim was to attend Lieutenant Tala. Might I inquire as to why you’ve not seen her yourself?”
Jimuro’s grip on his teacup tightened. For a moment he considered omitting the truth. But as Xiulan herself had just pointed out, she had been a traveling companion of Tala’s. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to go inside and look her in the eye. Pardon the expression.”
“I’m used to it.”
Jimuro sighed. And then he remembered: In the panic after Tala had disappeared, it had been Xiulan who had informed him that the man in the purple coat had stolen Dimangan. The spirits had shuffled the tiles of fate so that of all the hundreds of souls in the Palace of Steel, the one he could speak to most openly was the one who’d been trying to arrest him two nights prior.
“Dimangan was everything to her,” Jimuro said. “It’s because of me that she was ever put into a position to lose him. If I’d just listened to her, trusted her more…”
“My understanding of the matter is that the man in the purple coat was some sort of Sanbuna revenant that would have stalked the good lieutenant to the ends of the earth and back before resting,” Xiulan said. “With my deepest respects, Your Brilliance, I find the notion that you could have stopped him to be, ah, dubious at best. And besides,” she added, her eye straying to his hand, “I don’t believe she considers you to have sacrificed insufficiently in the pursuit of making things right.”
Jimuro’s gaze followed hers until it fell on the cloth of his right glove. Self-consciously, he slipped his other hand over it.
Xiulan rolled her eye. “Pardon me if my sympathy is limited.” She pulled back her bang, and Jimuro couldn’t help recoiling in surprise as she stared at him with the pactmark on her eyeball.
Shame welled up in him for reacting so childishly. “That was unworthy of me,” he said.
Xiulan’s acceptance of his apology was chilly, but it was acceptance nonetheless. She took another drag of her pipe, then set it down and exchanged it for her teacup. “You and the lieutenant might find you have more common ground than at first glance,” she said eventually. “For one thing, you two are the only ones in known history who are capable of both shadepacting and metalpacting.”
Jimuro nearly spat out his tea. “What?” he said, then self-consciously lowered his voice. “Tala can metalpact?” How many more secrets could the lieutenant possibly have?
“How do you suppose the man in the purple coat was relieved of a hand?” Xiulan said. “How do you suppose the lieutenant was able to make such a perfect shot last night, while in a weakened state and relying on her non-dominant hand?”
Jimuro had been kneeling upright, but at this revelation he sat back hard. Tala could metalpact. He could shadepact. It was incredible. Unprecedented. Surely, there had to be some meaning to it.
Xiulan seemed to be able to read his mind. “Perhaps there’s some larger significance at play,” she said. “Perhaps you two were simply thrust into the sorts of circumstances stressful enough to produce new branches to climb.”
“Branches?”
“A favored metaphor of mine when discussing mystical matters. Forgive me.”
Jimuro refilled his cup. “I need you to understand: I have no secret here. I did what I had to do to save Tala.”
“And I don’t blame you for it,” Xiulan said, shrugging. “You may recall, my own culture does not hold shadepacting in so low an estimation as yours does.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” he said. “I was so worried about what kind of Steel Lord I’d be. At least this way, I’ve gone and done something that guarantees they’ll hate me. Uncertainty’s no fun. I don’t even know how I did it, honestly. I just…knew I had to.”
“And now your soul’s split,” said Xiulan. “How are you adjusting to that, incidentally?”
“I’ve been made to understand that’s a personal question in shadepacting cultures.”
Xiulan beamed. “Hence my curiosity.”
In truth, he hadn’t spent any time with Fumiko so far. Posting himself outside Tala’s room had put him squarely in everyone’s line of sight for every hour he’d held vigil. He’d been aware of the extra consciousness within his own, though: curious and friendly, but untroubled by her dormancy. That made sense, he supposed. If there was any creature comfortable with being buried for long periods of time, it was the cicada.
“I wonder if I haven’t engineered circumstances so I won’t have to face her until I’m ready,” Jimuro sighed. “It’s exactly the sort of needlessly convoluted thing I would do in lieu of growing as a person.”
Xiulan nodded knowingly. “Kou and I were great friends before we pacted,” she said. “For us, pacting was simply the next logical step. But you…you truly believe you subjugated that cicada’s soul to make it a part of your own, don’t you?”
He was surprised by how stricken her blunt summation had made him feel. “I don’t know what I believe right now.”
“Of course you don’t.” She relit her pipe, which had apparently gone out. “But I would point out that we only ever found you because Lee’s shade wanted to find you, thanks to the past you share.”
That had been true enough. “Hn,” he grunted in acknowledgment, then caught himself.
“And last night, was it not the case that Tala’s shade chose to fight its former partner of its own volition? That the human-shade…”
“His name was Dimangan,” Jimuro said quietly.
“Dimangan,” Xiulan agreed. “He ultimately proved to be no slave, correct?”
Jimuro nodded.
“And most crucially of all…did the cicada not ask something of you in the formation of your pact? Something by which you agreed to abide?”
Jimuro nodded again.
“Then perhaps you should consider the possibility that if you yourself have not in fact taken in a slave, then you are no slaver.”
The logic followed smoothly enough, but it flew too much in the face of everything Jimuro understood to be true.
Xiulan seemed to sense what was going through his mind. “The notion is one that deserves to be thoroughly chewed before swallowing,” she said. “And one you may ultimately opt to spit out…though, if I might belabor the metaphor just a bit more, I have sufficient confidence in my culinary abilities that you won’t.”
Jimuro nodded mutely. He was still trying to work his way around it. But he couldn’t just let go of this guilt. What kind of unfeeling monster could just shrug off that weight as if it were nothing? And if he were that kind of monster who could, what w
as he doing anywhere near the Mountain Throne?
Xiulan sighed. “It’s the nature of life to gift us with clarity on the lives of others, while clouding our perception of our own.” She slid her pipe back into her coat. “I’ll come to call on Lieutenant Tala another day, I think.”
“There’s no reason you can’t see her.”
“I’m aware,” Xiulan said. “But I think you should first. You’ve clearly left much unsaid between you, and I believe some of it to be what the good lieutenant might need to hear in this dark teatime of her soul.” She rose, bowed low, tipped her trilby, and took her leave as well.
In the silence that followed Xiulan’s departure, Jimuro had no choice but to turn once more to the door across the hallway. He knew there were Kobaruto stationed near enough to come to his assistance should he need it, but for now he tried to enjoy the illusion of solitude.
He longed to cross the hall, slide the door open, and…he wasn’t sure what. What words could he say that could encompass everything he was feeling? What course of action could he possibly take that would assuage the pain she was in?
What could he do to make her whole?
Steel Lord Jimuro was a smart man: well educated, widely read, versed in wisdom both current and classic. But in the face of these questions, he had no choice but to stare down at his own hands and admit: He didn’t know.
Since she’d been a little girl, Xiulan had been keenly aware of abundance. She understood that even as part of a government-in-exile for a country under Tomodanese rule, she still had greater luxuries than any citizen of Shang. Though her own personal wealth was highly conditional and subject to change, she still had access to formidable resources. Whatever access her name alone hadn’t been able to buy her, her Li-Quan badge had. But the true abundance Xiulan had inherited, and the one she’d tried hardest to reject, was time.
At first, Xiulan had filled her leisure time with books. When she’d exhausted those as an outlet, she’d turned to law enforcement, spending a year and a half attempting to reestablish order and justice as the Snow-Feather Throne reclaimed vast swaths of the land that Tomoda had taken from it. She’d been particularly proud of the job she’d done there; she’d set the tone straightaway that Shang would no longer be a land where bureaucrats and functionaries could luxuriate and prosper at the peoples’ expense. But now she had no badge. No throne to strive for. And perhaps most cruelly of all, she didn’t even have a book.
When she’d woken up that morning, she’d known she was finished in Shang politics. Coming to Tala’s, and by extension the Steel Lord’s, aid had been the end of her career. It had been the cashew too sweet to ignore, even though it sat behind the snapping jaws of a rattrap. And of course Xiulan had taken it, exactly as Ruomei had predicted.
She tried to tell herself that she’d done the right thing: not just for Shang Xiulan, but for the world. She tried to tell herself that in her position, it was precisely the choice that Bai Junjie would have made. She told herself that history would vindicate her, and one day there would be stories about the nobility and selflessness of the Twenty-Eighth Princess’s sacrifice. But all those assurances together weren’t nearly enough to fill the empty hours before her.
Because her father was a spiteful man, she’d been barred from attending the peace proceedings, even as a nonspeaking delegate of Shang. He couldn’t stop her from going to the palace, so she’d been free to check in on Lieutenant Tala and confer with Steel Lord Jimuro. But after that, her docket seemed depressingly wide open. She’d been strongly encouraged by her father and Ruomei alike to put herself on the next boat back to Shang, but the one bittersweet victory in all of this was that neither her father nor her sister had any leverage on her anymore.
So she walked the streets of Hagane, the way Bai Junjie would prowl his home city of Sanjiang. She kept her hands thrust in her deep coat pockets, her trilby angled down and a jazzy song in her head, mournful and shapeless as smoke. There was a time when she might’ve been daunted to stalk the streets of the old enemy capital, but after last night she didn’t think she feared much of anything anymore.
She wished it could have been raining, just to reinforce the mood. Instead, the sun shone jubilantly in the sky. And why shouldn’t it? Xiulan thought. That was always what was supposed to happen after the battle was over and the good guys stood triumphant. The clouds parted, Bai said something pithy (or at least witty) to sum up the last three hundred pages, and then it was on to the promise of a new great adventure just around the corner.
She removed the pipe from her coat again and looked at it. She’d been so certain that it was a gift from Steel Lord Jimuro. She couldn’t think of anyone else in Hagane who would have thought to give it to her except for Lee, and Lee hardly had the resources to acquire one on such short notice.
She corrected herself. Lee didn’t need resources to acquire things. But Xiulan now had significant doubts that Lee would have ever bothered to do something so thoughtful.
She’d retired in the penthouse office last night, bone-tired and knowing full well it would be her last night in such accommodations. And knowing that, she’d invited Lee to join her, brazen as Shang Xiulan had ever been. Wearily, they’d peeled off their bloodstained clothes and collapsed together onto the waiting bed of red-lacquered wood. Xiulan didn’t even remember falling asleep; she just remembered the softness of Lee’s body as she held it in her arms, and the warmth of her breath as the world faded away around her.
And then this morning, she’d woken cold and alone.
She’d tried to tell herself that Lee had just gone for tea or something, as the words of Lee’s self-proclaimed one law rang through her head like a cruel song. When she’d discovered the pipe waiting there, she’d assumed at first, however irrationally, that it had been a gift from her partner. But when she’d begun asking the staff on duty, none of them seemed to remember seeing Lee Yeon-Ji that morning at all. Her name didn’t appear on any of the consulate’s visitor logs. She’d taken to the palace to keep her mind off things, but now Xiulan was truly out of distractions, and all she had left was the truth: Lee was gone. Again.
It didn’t make sense. Lee had been the first person to volunteer her services to find Tala. In the garden, the two had fought side by side. Xiulan had truly believed that Lee had turned a corner, that Xiulan had managed to get through to her. That was what was supposed to happen when the good guys triumphed, too, wasn’t it?
But Lee was never a “good guy,” she thought bitterly. That was what you liked about her in the first place. Remember, stupid White Rat?
She realized that she’d stopped walking. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there. Next to her stood a simple metal trash can, a little over waist-high.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was kicking it again and again, her boot gouging a larger and larger dent into it with each impact. The jazzy horns in her head screeched to an abrupt halt, drowned out by the frantic thunk-thunk-thunk of her boot’s reinforced toe striking aluminum.
She didn’t know how many times she kicked the trash can. When she staggered back, she was breathing hard, her face flushed with color and her bangs limp with sweat. She’d been in no shape to do that. Stupid, stupid White Rat. She had nothing, and thanks to her little tantrum, all she’d gained was the scorn of everyone around her and a left foot that could no longer bear her body’s weight. Instead of the smooth, driven gait of a detective on the prowl, she had to hobble away like a beaten dog.
“Kou,” she whispered, and the rat-shade materialized at her side. The Shang nearby gave her looks; Kou was well known, as far as individual shades went. The Tomodanese gave her looks, too, but those she expected.
She didn’t care about either of them, she decided as she went on her way, one white rat alongside another.
* * *
—
When she and Kou wandered back into the consulat
e, the staff greeted her warmly, but carefully. Theirs, Xiulan knew, was a delicate balance to strike. They had to show her respect, because even with his disfavor she was still a daughter of the Crane Emperor. But they also couldn’t be too personable, for fear of crossing societal boundaries and risking the Crane Emperor’s personal displeasure. Xiulan had been careful to keep herself isolated, but she knew if word got around that any functionary had helped her, that person would more than likely find themselves conveniently reassigned by Ruomei…all in the interests of efficiency, of course.
So she drifted through the lobby without speaking to any of them, thinking idly that clad as she was in all her whites, she and Kou must have looked something like ghosts. She supposed it was melodramatic to demand the comparison, but that was how she felt: like an echo that had begun to linger too long in the ears of everyone around her. Idly, she scratched Kou on his forehead.
She couldn’t let herself be set back by this, she thought as the elevator doors closed behind them. She was without rank or privilege, but she was not without allies. She still had Lieutenant Tala—
A freak of nature doomed to be cast out by her own people before long.
—Steel Lord Jimuro—
The one person in your father’s court more despised than you.
—her other sisters and brothers—
Who’ve always made it clear, given the choice, which sister they would pick.
She hung her head. She wanted to tell herself that she wasn’t thinking straight. That she was too emotional right now, and that with time she would be able to utilize her formidable intelligence to improve her station once again. She just had to find a different platform. Perhaps, she thought desperately, she could become a champion of the people. The Shang dynasty only held sway in the country it had named for itself because the people allowed it to. Before Shang, the land had been called Zhou, and Qizhong in the era before that, depending on the dynasty that sat the Snow-Feather Throne. Who was to say Shang couldn’t enter a new chapter in Xiulan’s lifetime?
