“Her name is Burqila Alshara, and the most notable thing Oshiro Yuichi ever did in his life was marry her,” said her mother. “The bravest woman I’ve ever met, and the finest warrior. Do you know what she did, when she realized her people were dying off in droves? She united them. If my daughter is even half that kind of woman, she’ll be eight times the ruler you are. May the Mother herself take me if I lie.”
O-Shizuka thought she knew silence. In a way, she did. The day Shefali almost died in the Imperial Forest, the day her best friend lay bleeding and motionless in her arms—silence accompanied her then.
But this was the silence of anticipation. This was the silence of a healer’s bed, this was the silence of rotting fields, this was the silence of a sword drawn from a leather sheath.
“Iori,” said Itsuki. “Iori, don’t be rash.”
The Emperor scoffed. His eyes—Imperial Amber—were so flat and dark that they reminded Shizuka of cinders.
“Unlike your wife,” he said, “we are capable of caution. Forgiveness, even, if she shows proper atonement. We have known you so many years, Minami Shizuru. What a lasting shame it would be if this were our final meeting.”
Shizuka’s ears burned. She sniffed. Burning roses scratched at the back of her throat. Hokkaran is a language of signs, a language where one word may have twenty meanings.
One did not need Itsuki’s talents to understand Yoshimoto’s implications.
O-Shizuru understood. She sheathed her sword and shook her head. “What a lasting shame indeed,” she said. “It is a good thing I’ve yet to meet my equal.”
Itsuki took his wife’s hand in full view of the court. He leaned over and whispered something to her. Shizuka was left standing alone with a single thought.
I am her equal already.
But this was not the time to crow about it. Not when half the court was waiting to see what would happen next and the other half was turning purple with fury at Itsuki and Shizuru’s display of affection.
They did not have to wait long.
“That is true,” said Yoshimoto. “So it will not burden you, then, to travel five hundred li north of Fujino. One of the villages bordering Shiseiki has begged our assistance. We’ve heard tell that a pack of blackbloods are trying to make it over the Wall of Flowers. If you have yet to meet your equal, then it will be a small matter for you.”
O-Shizuru, one year off from fifty, listened to her brother-in-law’s words with her typical stoicism. It was Itsuki who started to tremble. It was Itsuki’s smile that fell to the ground; it was Itsuki who leaned over as if he has been struck.
“She will have a company?” said Itsuki. “A small one, at least—”
“Did you not hear your wife?” said Yoshimoto. “She says she has no equal. Let her prove it, then, and inspire more of your pretty lines.”
“Iori,” growled Itsuki, but Shizuru raised her hand to cut him off.
“Your brother wants me to go kill some blackbloods,” she said. “What else is new? I’ll do it, Your Imperial Majesty. It shall be done. But we will meet again, upon my return.”
“When you return,” echoed Yoshimoto.
When they arrived home that day, Shizuka’s parents did not speak. Not while she was present, at least. They sent her up to her own private rooms. Her curiosity got the better of her—she has never been one to sit on her hands—and so she sneaked downstairs.
And she saw her mother lying in her father’s arms, a bottle of rice wine in one hand. She saw her father pressing teary kisses into her mother’s hair. And she heard Shizuru saying over and over and over—
“We’ll be fine, we are always fine.”
Shizuka, until now, had always known what to do. She always knew what to say, always knew how to jump into action, how to make people stand at attention.
But that night, she slumped herself against the wall and watched.
In the morning, before she left, O-Shizuru held her daughter close. “Remember what I said about you and Shefali-lun,” she said. “Together. Don’t let anyone tear you apart. I don’t care what racist nonsense your uncle tries to fill your head with. That girl is more family to you than your cousins are, do you understand?”
Why was she saying this? It angered Shizuka. It was as if Shizuru herself did not believe she was coming back.
“I’m not a child, Mother,” Shizuka said. “And I’m not going to stop talking to Shefali. No one else is worth talking to, anyway.”
“Good,” said Shizuru. She kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Don’t let your uncle marry you off while I’m away.”
“He’s welcome to try,” said Shizuka. “I’ll duel whoever he sends.”
Shizuru laughed, once. “That’s my girl,” she said. “When I get back, I’ll see if I can whip your swordsmanship into shape.”
This was it—the moment Shizuka had been waiting for. Personal lessons from the finest sword in Hokkaro. At last, her mother thought she was worth teaching.
But Shizuru also thought she was going to die.
What a bitter taste that left in Shizuka’s mouth.
“What am I going to learn from an old woman like you?” Shizuka snapped, but her heart was not really in it, and her mother knew.
“How to live this long when all you do is run face-first at danger, Shizuka,” her mother said with a wry smile. “Be safe, and pay attention to your tutors. We love you.”
We love you.
Did they still love her? she now wondered. Would they, knowing all the things she’d done, all the things she’d seen?
It did not matter if they loved her, did it? The Empire loved her well enough, and so did Shefali—wherever she’d found herself. And there was the other love—the one she dared not remember, even alone in her chambers, for she still had Shefali’s book sitting in her lap. What did filial affection matter to an Eternal Empress?
Why did it leave such an ache in her heart?
*
EMPRESS YUI OF HOKKARO lies back on her pillows. She presses her fingertips to her face, lays her hand along the thick scar over her nose.
She takes a deep, rattling breath. Shefali’s letter brings to mind things she’s long since forgotten. The struggle of taking the entire Imperial Garden to Oshiro, for one; a stunt she had to pay for with public zither performances. At the time, there was no higher price. Performing, in public, for people she hated, doing something she loathed? To this day courtiers reminisced about seeing her.
How many times has she heard this man or that woman say she remembers the day perfectly? Don’t they understand how it makes her feel? She was eight at the time. Eight, drowning under the weight of a proper woman’s robes, wearing a crown that hurt her neck, looking out on a crowd that did not see a girl before them.
They saw a symbol.
She remembers that day well. Her uncle had the stage covered in roses, to taunt her. He introduced her as Princess Solitude for the first time then, and everyone applauded, as if that were the finest name they’d ever heard.
Solitude, he said, would be her only true companion in life.
Yet, looking back, O-Shizuka wonders just how much it cost to hire five hundred servants to carry her flowers. She tries to figure it out in her mind. How much was it that her father used to pay their household? And what was the average?
How much was a single cash seal worth, again?