The Warrior Moon Read online

  If Minami Shikei could tell the Empress to go fuck herself, then her granddaughter eighteen generations removed can make demands of the Empress Consort.

  Sakura marches down the halls toward the war room. Unlike some other visitors to the Bronze Palace, she knows how to keep her wooden sandals from clacking against the hard flooring. They won’t hear her coming. The Empress Consort’s got a nose like a perfumer—so Sakura bathed in Peizhi Lake this morning, and had the servants wash her clothes with the Crown Princess’s. If this is going to work, she needs to catch them both off guard.

  Although—is it possible to catch the Empress Consort by surprise?

  Only the people who never get anything done sit around asking questions like that. Sakura’s never been one of those people.

  Eight years ago she had come to the Bronze Palace with an undecipherable letter in her pocket—the only keepsake her birth mother left behind. Her ploy was as bold as her dress: to find a tutor who could teach her how to decipher it. For the most part, it had worked even better than she could have imagined. Scholars in Xian-Lai are reading things she’s written with her own two hands.

  But it took eight years to find someone who could read that letter—because it took Barsalai Shefali that long to come back home.

  And to this day, Barsalai had not divulged its contents to her.

  What could possibly be worth hiding from Sakura in this way?

  Nothing. Whatever secrets lay in that letter were hers by birthright.

  * * *

  SHE COMES TO a corner and leans against it. Here is the trick: she will act as if she is reading until Baozhai walks by with her entourage, which surely will signal that the meeting has adjourned. All Sakura has to do is slip in afterwards, distract her cousin, and drag the Empress Consort out for a little one-on-one. Easiest thing in the world.

  One breath, two breaths, twenty—she counts them to pass the time as she idly stares at the scroll she’s brought. A gift for her cousin, prepared two months ago. Sakura knows every word. She wrote them all. Of course, this means she doesn’t want to read any of them ever again, so she isn’t actually paying attention. The strokes are nice, she supposes. Just as nice as her cousin’s. It’s only a distraction, after all. An excuse to pry apart Empress Phoenix and Empress Wolf, if only for a few hours.

  It is two hundred breaths before the Thorned-Blossom Queen emerges from the war room. She and her entourage walk right by Sakura, leaving the air behind them thick with the scent of fresh-cut flowers. The girls with the flutes—Meili and Songli—start up one of their more complicated melodies on the way. The two men Sakura doesn’t know—but she catches one of them eyeing her and does her best to stare him down.

  The Thorned-Blossom Queen sees her, too. Sakura is sure of that much; there is little in the Bronze Palace that escapes Baozhai’s notice. Even before the revelation about their ancestral relationship to this place, Sakura had been certain there was some sort of thread. Like a mother always knowing when her son had wandered into the Shrine of Jade Secrets, no matter what lie he’d fed her beforehand.

  Six years spent in someone else’s company is long enough to learn their tells—even if it’s the Thorned-Blossom Queen, who does her absolute damnedest to hide them. That she calls the entourage to a halt is notable enough. On any other day she might have kept on walking without acknowledging Sakura at all. On days when the Queen was in a good mood she might nod in Sakura’s direction—that was about the extent of their niceties when she was in that getup.

  But today the Lady of the Bronze Palace comes to a full stop, and today she meets Sakura’s eyes.

  It’s the proper thing in this sort of situation to bow. Sakura’s never really cared about the proper thing to do, but when the Queen looks at her now, she feels hands on her shoulders, forcing her down. This time, she’ll acquiesce. It’s one thing to give your cousin’s sister-in-law a little lip over dinner—it’s another thing entirely to upset an angry sovereign who has never really liked you.

  “Court Historian,” the Queen says. Kenshiro insisted she be granted a formal title two years ago. A gift, of sorts—if she had a title, then Baozhai could not ignore her at all times.

  “Your Majesty,” Sakura answers. Brevity is the soul of keeping your head attached to your shoulders.

  “Do you have business with the Phoenix Empress?” Sakura hasn’t known her to be so blunt in years. And there’s something else, too, lurking in the corners of her eyes.

  “With Empress Consort Wolf,” Sakura says. The tension is thin as fraying rope—she does not want to be the one to sever it with a misplaced title.

  The flower painted between her eyes wrinkles. “See that you are brief,” she says. “Her Highness should not be bothered with trifling concerns.”

  Trifling concerns? Sakura must have misheard her. Maybe it was the Xianese. “I’m sorry; what was that?” Sakura says, this time in Hokkaran.

  “The Queen of Xian-Lai is not in the habit of repeating herself,” is the answer, a serpent’s bite in green and violet. “Our honored Sister-in-Law has chosen to live a short life. I—We—shall not stand idly by while you ruin her remaining days—”

  “No,” says Sakura. “I’m not going to put up with this. You can talk to your subjects like that, if you want, but I’m not one of them.” More tumble out of her before she can stop herself—and in spite of the Queen’s lips parting in surprise. “I didn’t toil away for six years in your dusty libraries for you to talk about me ruining her.”

  If she waits around for a reply, she might get thrown in prison. Not that Baozhai would ever dream of imprisoning her own family, even if by marriage—but until today Sakura thought their personal distaste extended no further than trading jabs at the dinner table. To be spoken to like that! She turns on her heel and storms toward the war room before the Queen can stop her.

  Just who does she think she is? Put a crown on her head and she starts to act like she owns the place. So what if she does? So what if she is a Queen? That doesn’t give her the right.

  Sakura’s cheeks go hot.

  She hates it—all of it. Gods, how could Baozhai say something like that?

  On the doors of the war room are two of the four Xianese gods—one of the men, and one of the women. Sakura knows their names but she is not inclined to give them her attention at the moment. If she does, it might get back to Baozhai somehow. Instead she grabs one of the handles and pulls. Her shoulders whine; her sandals skid along the smooth floor. The fifth king of Xian-Lai commissioned these doors, and he decreed that they be heavy enough that only an army or the gods themselves might rouse him from his plans. A lovely sentiment, to be sure—who beneath the sun and sky doesn’t want a little private time?—but in truth it takes only four soldiers to open each one.

  Or a single woman, if that woman is the Empress Consort.

  Sakura isn’t, but she isn’t going to let that stop her from trying. She steps out of her sandals. The floor is cool against her bare feet. Part of her thrills at the contact—not because it is pleasant, but because no one walked barefoot in the Bronze Palace. A grin spreads across her face.

  So sorry for tainting your floor, Sakura thinks to herself.

  Yet the added traction does not help. She grabs the signal fan–shaped door handle and pulls. Heaves, really; all her weight is focused on this particular endeavor.

  Then again—Sakura does not weigh much.

  For one minute, two minutes, three, she attempts this. Sweat beads on her brow. She lets out the most indelicate sounds in the world as she pulls and pulls and pulls, though not the most indelicate sounds she’s ever made.

  All for Barsalai Shefali, Empress Consort, to open the other door with one hand.

  Sakura is always a little surprised by Barsalai on the best days. It’s difficult not to be. Towering over her by two heads, wearing her tiger-striped deel and laughing fox war mask, Barsalai cuts an intimidating figure. That her face is hidden away does not help terribly much when her stee
l eye is still perfectly visible. She keeps one hand on the door and the other behind her, as if she knows her talons are off-putting.

  And that is the most incredible thing about her cousin’s wife: everything about her is intimidating except for her personality. In all her years working at the pleasure house, Sakura never encountered anyone quite so tranquil in the face of adversity. To be near Barsalai—to be really near her, near enough that you can hear her soft-spoken words—is to be reassured. She is unbreakable. Keep close and you might become unbreakable, too.

  But Sakura has been unbreakable for thirty years without the help of anyone. That’s why she’s going to win today.

  “Need help?” Barsalai says. Her voice is surprisingly relaxed for a woman so near to dying. Sakura kept expecting her to have an accent in Hokkaran, and maybe there is, but she hasn’t been able to catch it the whole time she’s been here.

  “I’m fine,” she says. “Is my cousin in a state for visitors?”

  She abandons her efforts, taking a spare moment to smooth over her robes and tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  Barsalai’s head turns, like an owl’s, toward the inside of the room. Sakura cannot see it with her standing in the threshold.

  “You could come in and ask me yourself, you know,” comes the answer. “It isn’t as if I’m a god.” There’s no mistaking the particular combination of arrogance and playfulness.

  “Your wife is kind of in the way,” says Sakura, raising her voice so that it better carries into the war room. “Are you in a state for visitors?”

  Barsalai leans against the door, crossing her arms over her chest. There’s a sliver of the room now visible. Are those…? Has Shizuka substituted catapults for boats?

  “Are you the visitor?”

  “I am,” says Sakura. “I got you a gift and everything. For Your Most Serene Majesty, the Daughter of Heaven, Empress—”

  “Finish that and I’m exiling you,” says Shizuka—but unlike Baozhai, there is no venom in her voice. This is the sort of teasing they’ve always done, the sort of banter that puts Sakura at ease.

  Not too at ease. Her eyes flick up to the teeth of Barsalai’s mask.

  Don’t take no for an answer.

  “Come in, come in,” Shizuka says. Barsalai opens the door wider and Sakura does just that. Her Imperial cousin—among the most important people in the world—sits with one leg crossed over the other on a stool near the table. If any of the Hokkaran courtiers were to see her like this, they’d drop dead on the spot; most of her right leg is visible. As Sakura enters, Shizuka smiles. “So you didn’t bring me an army? Sakura. I’m disappointed.”

  “Baozhai hates me enough without my marching an army through this place,” Sakura says.

  Shizuka’s smile goes flat. She turns her attention to the catapults, idly pushing one closer to the shards of a shattered pot. “Yes, well,” she says. “We can’t have that, now, can we?”

  Given how short their audience had been, and given the lack of Xianese soldiers on the map, it’s easy to hear the real meaning. You learn, when you grow up in a place like the Shrine of Jade Secrets, how to shape a conversation the way a gardener shapes his trees.

  Sakura takes the scroll case from her back and sets it in her cousin’s lap. “I’ll tell you what you can have,” she says. “Your birthday present.”

  “Isn’t it a little late?” Shizuka says. She crooks a brow—but she sets the case up vertically and starts teasing out its contents.

  “Didn’t feel right to hand you a gift with everything going on,” Sakura says. Her eyes flick over to Barsalai once more, who stands now behind her wife. She is the largest, most brightly attired shadow in creation.

  “Everything is still going on,” says Shizuka. The scroll now free, she lays the case on the map without care for what it knocks over. It is Barsalai who steps in to save the model horses. “For you, there’s only been more trouble since the double eighth.”

  Is “trouble” the right word for your life’s ambition collapsing in on itself? Perhaps. But Sakura doesn’t let it bother her. “It’s about that, sort of. I wanted to thank you—both of you—for what you did for me,” she says. She’s careful to catch Barsalai’s attention.

  Barsalai sniffs. Sakura is acutely aware of a bead of sweat rolling down her neck. She hopes it offers the Empress Consort’s nose no answers.

  Shizuka glances at the title of the work in her hands. The Empress of Hokkaro has an honest face; outside of court she never bothers to wear her courtier’s mask. Except now. She slips into it, her whole face going smooth as polished stone. Only her eyes give away her disappointment.

  Shit, Sakura thinks.

  “Shefali did all the reading, but you’ve only come with a gift for me,” says Shizuka. Her tone stays friendly, if a little strained; she does not hate Sakura for the gift. Only for its contents, it seems. But why? Shizuka loved stories about the Minami clan. “Don’t tell me you’re holding out on her. My wife is very sensitive, you know.”

  She is—Barsalai leaves the horses altogether to stand at her wife’s side. Shizuka takes her hand.

  Sakura is beginning to feel as if she’s getting pulled into an undertow. Give Shizuka a nice gift, offer to listen to Shefali tell her histories, confront her about the letter. That is how this was supposed to go. But the look those two are sharing! Something must have happened after Shefali read that letter. There’s something in it they’re not telling her. Well—a lot of it they aren’t telling her, because she still doesn’t know a single thing about it. Whatever Spiderlily Sayaka wrote in that foreign alphabet had soured Shizuka on her entire clan.

  Their clan.

  And yet Shefali still isn’t making any moves to share.

  Sakura wants to grit her teeth. She can’t, given the situation, so she digs her fingernail into her palm. She’s going to get to the bottom of this.

  “I was going to offer my services,” she says. Lightening the mood might give her room to break the surface of this frigid water.

  “Oh, please,” says Shizuka. “Shefali’s never had a fondness for painting.”

  “That’s not true,” says Shefali. The whole room goes quiet to hear her; Shizuka is practically holding her breath.

  “What do you mean that isn’t true?” says Shizuka.

  “Ikhthian paintings,” answers Shefali. “They’re beautiful.”

  “And huge,” says Shizuka. “Aren’t they as big as that wall, there?”

  Shefali nods. “Easy to lose yourself in the details. Like looking in on another world.”

  Shizuka gives her a quizzical look. It hasn’t escaped Sakura’s notice that she’s set the scroll down near its case. If she were not so determined, she’d feel a little insulted. Instead, she just feels relieved the joke worked. It’s easier to breathe now.

  “A lot of people talk about the Qorin that way,” she says. Now to put her piece on the table. “I was thinking that you didn’t have someone to tell your story, and I thought maybe I could be that person. I won’t be able to finish it in time, but I might be able to get started.”

  Won’t be able to finish it in time. Sakura suppresses an internal wince. She needed Barsalai to buy this, needed her to accept. There were so few things in this existence Barsalai wanted; an opportunity to be remembered is the only one Sakura can offer.

  And later, it can be the chip Sakura can exchange for the letter’s contents.

  Barsalai tilts her head. She doesn’t talk very much, but she’s expressive. Why you? she’s asking.

  “Ken-lun’s closer, you’re thinking,” she says. Barsalai nods. “He’s also busier. All this research he’s been doing with me—he hasn’t been able to see Baoyi at all. If you want him to write it, then I can take notes and pass them on to him. I get it, I do. You want a Qorin to tell a Qorin story.”

  Shizuka perches her head atop her hand. “A history would be useful,” she says. “If you are right about … our legacies.”

  Sakura knows
that she is, and that is the worst part. Reading histories from the time of the First Emperor is an absolute nightmare. All the stories about him and his son blur together; it’s near impossible to tell one from the other. And every now and again, you’ll catch a glimpse of another figure—someone hidden like a fishmaiden in the mist. Another ruler, one deposed when Emperor Yamai came to power.

  There have been other empires than this. Perhaps that’s something Shizuka can tell her about—when this is all over. If her cousin makes it back at all.

  It’s a stupid thought. Sakura shoves it aside. There are other things to focus on.

  Like Barsalai. How is she taking the idea? She’s narrowing her eyes not in suspicion, but in thought. Her posture’s easing, too; she’s set her hand on Shizuka’s shoulder.

  So she isn’t saying anything yet. Sakura knows Barsalai well enough to assume there’s some kind of epic being composed in that skull of hers.

  But it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to nudge her along. “Like I said, if you want him to write it, I’m sure he’d be thrilled. But having my notes would make things much easier, and it’d only take a Bell or two. I write pretty quickly.”

  Silence. Consideration, really; Barsalai is a woman of many silences.

  “We don’t have much time before we leave,” says Shizuka. “Shefali’s setting out the day after next to meet up with the Qorin.”

  Sakura smiles. “It won’t take long,” she repeats. “I promise.”

  Shizuka covers Shefali’s hand with her own. The two exchange a look. In that moment, Sakura knows she might as well be in Ikhtar for all the attention they’re paying her.

  Gods might have an eternity to deal with, but all three of them were still mortal. Some more than others. Not to mention if they waited too long, it’d be time for dinner, and that was more inexorable than even the blackblood’s call to go North.

  How she wants to clear her throat, to give them some sort of reminder … but look at them! How is she meant to interrupt when they’re busy writing love poems with their eyes?