Guardian of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘It’s not worth the risk,’ Saki said. ‘Marque, what’s the chances of a gate failing, even after the goldenscales has been trained?’

  ‘Insufficient data to form a conclusion,’ Marque said.

  ‘Extrapolate from the results of fold training for the coloureds,’ Saki said.

  Marque hesitated, then said, ‘It’s too different, you’re too different, and the risk is exponentially higher. As you said, if a fold fails the dragon dies, but if a gate fails everybody dies.’

  ‘Coward,’ I said.

  ‘Raise your head if you believe Kana’s stone should be crushed. Lower it if you believe she should not pay the penalty for gating,’ Saki said.

  Only the Empress and Miko lowered their heads.

  ‘The vote is cast,’ Saki said.

  ‘You can still change your minds,’ the Empress said, desperate.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ Miko wailed.

  ‘Kana knew the consequences of her actions.’ Saki nodded to me. ‘Dear Captain Choumali, we understand your concern, but the penalty for gating must be enforced. We honour Kana’s sacrifice to save the people of Earth, but gating must be a method of last resort, and the price must remain this high.’

  ‘We will honour Kana’s sacrifice,’ another goldenscales said, and I didn’t recognise her. ‘We have a hall where we pay respects to our greatest sisters. We’ll build a statue of her to contain her crushed stone. She will be venerated for centuries.’

  ‘I can’t believe you will murder your own sister,’ I said. I strode up to the plinth to grab the stone, but Marque was protecting it in an energy field.

  ‘Back her up,’ Saki said, and Marque pushed me backwards and held me.

  ‘I will resign if you do this,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t work for us,’ Saki said. ‘Begin the ceremony, Marque.’

  ‘No!’ the Empress wailed, and thrashed against a similar barrier. ‘Don’t do it.’

  Marque floated a soft leather pouch to Saki, and she pulled a golden scale out, then passed the pouch to the goldenscales next to her. The dragons passed the pouch around, each taking a golden scale. They skipped Miko, who was behind the barrier with the Empress.

  The next goldenscales to take the pouch held up a silver scale – an Empress’ scale.

  ‘I can’t watch,’ the Empress said with her head bowed. ‘Why are you helping them, Marque? Why? Stop this now.’

  ‘It must be done,’ the goldenscales with the silver scale said. She stepped forward to the plinth, took Kana’s stone off it, placed it onto a silver bowl at the base of the plinth, and crushed it with her foot. It felt like my own heart was being crushed, and the Empress wailed softly with grief.

  ‘Why are you helping them commit this atrocity?’ I shouted at the ceiling.

  ‘Because I’m sorry, Jian, but they’re right,’ Marque said. ‘When they first started gating they nearly destroyed the entire universe – more than once – and it must not happen again. Any goldenscales that is willing to take the risk is too dangerous to live.’

  ‘My child,’ the Empress moaned, and collapsed sideways. Miko curled up next to her, leaned her head on the Empress’ shoulder and keened softly.

  The Empress raised her head and looked me in the eye. ‘Please don’t resign. Stay with me, Captain, so that next time – if there is a next time – you can help me hide the soulstone better so that my child will be safe.’

  Marque released me and I stood, shaking with fury. Then I turned on my heel and went out of the audience room. As I stormed angrily through the Palace to my office, I decided that I would stay with her, because she was right. The next time this happened, if it happened, I would stop them from taking an innocent – and courageous – dragon’s life. I couldn’t even tell the rest of the Empire about this atrocity because dear dead Kana had asked me not to tell anyone about their abilities, and I would keep my word to her.

  17

  We arrived in Tokyo on the grounds of the Imperial Palace, which had been cordoned off for Aki’s enthronement. The stewards guided us to a dais separate from the other dignitaries, befitting the Dragon Empress’ status, but still slightly lower than the building where the ceremony would take place. The Empress reclined on the tatami mats they’d provided for her, and I stood with my hands behind my back at her shoulder. Two goldenscales servants stood on the other side behind her, ready to assist. My mother, in her goldenscales body, lay on the tatami in front of me – Aki had invited her as well, to honour her relationship with both of us.

  The buildings had been reconstructed, and the pavilion stood above us on the hillside – a hundred metres to a side and raised on stilts, elegantly understated in its minimalist grace. The other dignitaries were guided to their seats on a large stand next to us, and an old-fashioned brass band played parade music as they found their places.

  The Empress lowered her head, then gestured for me to attend her. I moved closer.

  ‘What are these mats made of? They smell divine,’ she said.

  ‘Rice straw,’ I said.

  ‘They are the ideal softness for my royal behind. I must order some.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be delighted to provide them.’

  ‘Make way for the Imperial family!’ a steward shouted, and the crowd went quiet.

  The band stopped playing, and Haruka appeared at the end of the glass-walled corridor that ran along the side of the building. He was wearing the wide traditional Japanese male formal outfit of pants and jacket, with a hat that had a flange standing up and bending towards the back. He held a sceptre vertically in one hand and walked extremely slowly towards the coronation room at the end of the building.

  Goodness, he looks totally ridiculous, the Empress said to me.

  Can’t tell the difference from how he normally looks, I replied with a straight face, and my mother thumped me on the arm. She wasn’t telepathic, but still knew when I was misbehaving.

  When Haruka was at the room, he turned and stood to one side in front of the small curtained tent that would hold Aki. The stewards and senior government officials were lined up behind him, wearing pre-nineteenth-century styled Western formal gear. They all stood with their faces carefully composed and without moving. Normally during a coronation, the male and female Household members would enter the room in a procession and stand on either side; in this case Haruka was the only other family member left.

  ‘Make way for the Emperor!’ the steward shouted, and everybody gasped.

  ‘What?’ I said out loud, feeling a rush of hope. They weren’t going to make Aki do this after all?

  Another man appeared in traditional male dress, holding the sceptre, his kimono deep bronze in colour. His hat’s flange stood straight up for nearly a metre. Then I saw his face – he looked about twenty-five years old, but he was Aki.

  The crowd stirred, making soft comments, then someone up the back loudly hushed them and they went still.

  She was definitely a woman, right? the Empress said.

  Definitely, I said.

  Well she’s a man now, the Empress said.

  Marque spoke into my ear and I heard the echo as he spoke softly to the other dignitaries present. ‘Now that you’ve seen her, the privacy seal is off and I’m allowed to explain. The last time Japan had an Empress, there were sixteen years of major natural disasters, and they’ve decided that having a woman on the throne is an insult to the spirits of the land. Aki had a fatal “accident”, and I “messed up” when I created the cloned body for her, producing the man that they needed.’

  ‘She agreed to this?’ I said, incredulous.

  ‘It was her idea. She doesn’t want to let her people down.’

  ‘So brave,’ the Empress cooed.

  ‘This isn’t birth-natural,’ I said loud enough for a few heads to turn towards us. I lowered my voice. ‘It’s a cloned body, not naturally born!’

  ‘I’ve made no alterations to the body – apart from the sex chromosome thing,’ Marque said. ‘It�
��s effectively birth-natural. The previous Emperor had leukaemia as a child and moved into a birth-natural cloned body as well, so there’s precedent. In light of the alternatives, the stewards have decided that this is the best option for satisfactory continuation of the line.’

  ‘What about Kenji?’ I said.

  ‘He also agreed to it – but now that Aki’s a man, they need to find an Empress for their new Emperor.’

  I felt a bolt of hope. Would she have me again? Would they let me be with her? Could I live in that stifling atmosphere? If it was with Aki, I could—

  ‘It can’t be you, Jian, the Empress must be pure-blood Japanese and birth-natural. You could be a concubine, but then you’d have to be completely hidden from the world and never go out at all. You’d effectively be a prisoner. Aki requested that you not even consider it, and if you try to join her, she will reject you.’

  ‘You must love this drama,’ I said.

  ‘Delicious,’ it said without emotion.

  Aki entered the two-metre-wide curtained tent at the back of the room, and the area was silent for at least ten minutes. Two stewards pulled back the curtains to reveal Aki, standing unnaturally still and holding her . . . his . . . sceptre. It took another painful five minutes for the stewards to carefully fold and secure the curtains, then they moved back. Tokugawa himself stepped up to Aki and bowed to him. Aki nodded back, and Tokugawa handed him an accordion-folded document. Aki opened the document and read the speech from it in stiff ultraformal Japanese, sounding completely different from the woman I’d known.

  Aki was Emperor.

  *

  A huge reception was held for all the visiting royalty in another pavilion overlooking the grounds of the castle. My mum stayed close beside me, intimidated by the guests.

  ‘I’m half my real size, I’m worried someone will step on me,’ she said. ‘I keep looking up people’s noses. Oh, there’s Aki. Doesn’t she . . . he . . . look strange?’

  ‘He looks like my Aki,’ I said as he approached, and heard the lie in my voice.

  He’d changed into a Western-style suit similar to what the stewards were wearing; an outfit so ancient in its fashion that it looked more like a costume. He had several medals pinned to his chest, a ribbon across the whole lot, and he looked like something out of an archaic photograph.

  ‘I am so sorry about this,’ he said, and again his voice was completely different. ‘Please come outside onto the veranda with me, and I’ll explain.’

  I gazed into his eyes, looking for my Aki in this serious young man, and not finding her.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  He gestured over his shoulder at two guards in old-fashioned soldiers’ uniforms. ‘With us.’ He smiled sadly at me. ‘I can’t be seen in public alone with a woman.’

  ‘Marque,’ I said. ‘Move Graf to the entrance of the hall, Namazozo next to the Empress, and keep Five-Shriek on the roof.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Does it feel strange, being a man?’ I asked Aki as I walked beside him onto the veranda. ‘I’ve wondered what it would feel like to change sex, now that the option is open to us.’

  ‘It’s awful.’ He looked down at himself. ‘I feel sorry for your family. It’s bad enough being the wrong sex; being a completely different species must be devastating.’

  ‘It’s only for five years,’ I said.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said bitterly.

  The generous veranda spanned the width of the building. We went to the edge where it overlooked a Zen garden of raked white sand in ripple patterns around weathered black stones, and surrounded by manicured pine trees.

  ‘I still have the miniature sand garden that you gave me a couple of years ago for our anniversary,’ I said. ‘It’s in my Captain’s quarters in the Imperial Palace.’

  His smile was deeply sad. ‘Jian, I erased the memories of our time together.’

  I stood gasping at him like a goldfish. Eventually I struggled out, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because being apart from you was breaking my heart. It was affecting my mental health to such a degree that I was contemplating suicide. The doctors were afraid I’d actually do it.’ He leaned both arms on the railing and looked out over the garden. ‘The memories are in Marque storage, and Haruka has a stored backup. When my duty is done . . .’ He turned back to me. ‘I’ll have them restored, move back into my real body, and we can be together again.’

  ‘So you don’t love me at all right now?’ I said with disbelief.

  ‘I’m fond of you,’ he said, in such a restrained burst of mild affection that I nearly screamed at him. ‘Don’t worry, once my memories are restored, we can go back to what we had.’

  ‘Now I’m terrified that you won’t feel the same way when you do restore them,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t need to worry. Here with you I’m finding myself . . . enchanted, and we should probably not spend too much time together before my duty is done.’

  ‘You just have to hurry up and have a couple of kids,’ I said. ‘Have you selected an Empress yet?’

  ‘Don’t even think about trying to get into the Household,’ he said. ‘If you attempt anything at all they will throw you out. No. The search is ongoing for the right woman.’

  ‘Surely all she needs to be is fertile, royal, and breathing?’ I said with more irritation than I intended. I winced. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s all that is required, but I’m going to be spending years with her, so I’d prefer a good friend who’s intellectually stimulating, stubborn, loyal and gallant to a fault.’ He moved to take my hand, and one of the guards coughed loudly. He withdrew his hand from mine. ‘So they’re looking for a copy of you and we’re all aware of the fact that they won’t find one. There’s the added complication that everybody knows what a shitshow it is in the Imperial Household, and nobody is willing to take the job.’

  Some shouts rang out from inside the pavilion and one of the guards approached.

  ‘Captain Choumali, your mother is involved in an . . . incident.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Aki and I said in unison, and hurried into the pavilion.

  Mum was standing in the middle of a small group of people, her dragon head raised as she yelled at the purple dragon next to her.

  ‘And you will treat me with the respect earned by the mother of a war hero, by the mother of the Captain of the Imperial Guard, and if one more dragon asks me to fetch her a drink, I will practise my non-existent folding skills on them!’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ the purple dragon said. She had six legs and no wings, and a short, stubby head with teeth that protruded from her jaws. ‘It won’t happen again, Ms Choumali, I can’t believe I made this mistake.’

  ‘You coloured dragons have been making this mistake since I was put into this damn body,’ my mother grumbled. ‘I am not a servant!’ She saw me. ‘Come on, Jian, I want to see this Zen garden my other friend – who was treating me with respect – was describing.’

  She stormed out of the room onto the veranda and I trailed after her. Aki didn’t follow us; he was led by one of the stewards into an exceptionally polite and restrained scrum of officials as they discussed how to deal with the incident.

  ‘This has happened before?’ I said as we stood at the railing overlooking the garden.

  ‘It happens all the damn time,’ she said, impatient. She took a deep breath. ‘Jian, sweetie, I didn’t want to bring this up with you when it’s so soon, but I need your opinion.’

  ‘On what?’

  She ran one claw over the railing. ‘I’m very vulnerable right now. We all are. It will take five years for these stones to be attuned, and if anything happens to me before then, it’s the Real Death.’

  ‘Just keep yourself safe.’ I put my hand on her shoulder; her scales were warm and textured with tiny ridges. ‘I need you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ She put her claw on my hand and looked up into my eyes. ‘Could you do without me for five years?’

  I
froze. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s an option. Marque can put me into hibernation, in a coma, in a secure location – a bunker – until the stone is attuned.’

  ‘You’ll be unconscious for five years?’ I realised what she was saying. ‘This is because of the body, isn’t it? You want to sleep through attunement because being in this body is a pain in the ass.’

  ‘You always could see through me,’ she said wryly. ‘It’s not just the . . . racism from the other dragons. Here we are, in an enlightened interstellar society, and the last thing you’d expect is racism.’

  ‘You should see the Imperial Guard records,’ I said wryly.

  She continued. ‘This body isn’t me. It’s wrong. I hate being in it, I hate walking around in it, and waking up every morning in it is driving me crazy. If I allow Marque to store me during the attunement, I can sleep through it and then be myself again. My real self.’

  ‘Have you talked to Victor and Dianne?’

  ‘They feel the same way.’

  ‘I’ll lose my entire family?’ I said, incredulous.

  ‘You’ll have your son. Oliver will keep you company. It’s only for five years. If you say no, that you really need me, I won’t do it, but I’d prefer to sleep through this god-awful body.’

  I rubbed her shoulder. ‘If it’s that bad – of course. Sleep through it. I’ll be busy guarding the Imperial Silverbutt.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She grinned. ‘You’ll need to find someone else to mind your dog while you’re traipsing around.’

  ‘Oliver can do it. He’s moving into the Imperial Palace, he’ll be close by.’

  ‘Thank you. One other thing.’ She glared at me. ‘When I wake up, I want you to be in a happy relationship with someone.’

  ‘But Aki . . .’

  ‘Aki will be married to someone else for twenty years. Don’t you dare wait for her. Find someone, Jian; twenty years is a long time to be alone. Most relationships don’t last that long anyway.’ She reached up to take my hand. ‘Find someone.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ I said patiently.

  ‘Just not a dragon,’ she said.