So why was it so hard, then?
If O-Shizuka was going to be a warrior, she was going to have to take lives. And yet, looking at her mother she saw more than the present, mangled form. She saw O-Shizuru and O-Itsuki having tea together in the mornings, stealing kisses when they thought their daughter wouldn’t notice. She saw O-Shizuru’s stern face, heard her voice shouting to put the sword down and get back to the zither.
O-Shizuka has not forgotten what it was like to lift her mother’s pillow. She has not forgotten how heavy it seemed, steeped with the weight of her childhood memories.
She has not forgotten her own grim determination: if she hadn’t done it, then Uemura would have had to, and she could not bear to let her mother be killed by an outsider.
O-Shizuka has not forgotten how wrong it felt to hold the Daybreak blade. How her hands shook, disrupting the balance. The rattle of drawn metal as she pressed it against her mother’s pallid neck.
It had to be her. This was the duty of a warrior. Of a future Empress. Of a loving daughter who would never have her mother’s blessing on her wedding day, who would never again clamber into her parents’ bed during a nightmare, who would never again make her mother proud.
O-Shizuka wept as she slit her mother’s throat. She wept and she crumbled and she threw her arms around the corpse despite the danger her mother’s blood posed. She stayed there for …
She cannot remember how long.
But she has not forgotten what happened afterwards. She has not forgotten her hatred, burning like a forge in her stomach, how she’d thought it could grow no larger—but it was merely the first blossom beneath a frost. Her uncle had done this. Her uncle had given the order. Her uncle, who then kept her locked in her chambers, except when he paraded her at court like a mare in search of a stud. And only in her own rooms was she permitted to wear mourning white.
O-Shizuka drains the last swallow from her cup.
When the time had come to seize her uncle’s throne, she did not kill him. Yoshimoto—the Toad, the Limp Emperor—lived on private lands far, far away from Fujino. Let the souls of his ruined family, his tattered Empire haunt him. Let him toil in the fields. Let him see, from a distance, what his niece makes of the nation he could not salvage.
That will be his punishment, she thinks. The day that she returns with Shefali at her side, happy and healthy and thriving despite all his efforts to the contrary.
A sight her parents will never get to see, for they left not even bones to bury.
So she throws the bottle of rice wine against the wall. It shatters, sending shards flying through the air. By some miracle, none hit the Empress, at least not until she lies on the ground and weeps.
When sleep takes her, she is too drunk to notice.
In the morning, she awakes to a pounding headache. Whatever mess she’s made has disappeared as if by magic. O-Shizuka winces. She has a dim recollection of falling on the floor, and no memory of getting in bed.
Yet here she is, tucked in and comfortable in her sleeping gown.
The servants must’ve done it. Dimly, she thinks again that she must pay them more.
O-Shizuka forces herself to sit up. The room goes topsy-turvy for a moment, and she grabs her nightstand to steady herself. Hair falls like inky brushstrokes against her sleeping gown. The first few rays of the morning pierce through her blinds. She shields her eyes and sighs.
The scowl drops off her face the moment she sees Shefali’s letter. She laughs, in fact. Shefali never had to deal with hangovers. Maybe it was that rancid milk she insisted on drinking. O-Shizuka can picture her now: sipping from a skin in the eastern side of the ger, wearing her brightly colored deel. She takes a deep gulp and chuckles in that quiet way. “Try some.”
And Shizuka did, every time. And she forgot, every time, how much she hated kumaq. Shefali looked so happy drinking it, so it must be good, right?
O-Shizuka reaches for the manuscript. For her old friend, for her joy. She opens the pages, and her headache melts away.
THE MIDNIGHT MOON
“We are going back to Hokkaro,” you had said, “to the Wall of Flowers, where we are needed.”
At this, I put my hands on my hips and frowned. Even if we managed to avoid bandits, wolves, or worse, the Wall of Flowers was four months from Fujino. You could not just up and decide to ride that far. You could not do such a thing without careful planning. You could not do it without at the very least informing my mother of your intentions.
“Don’t look at me like that,” you said. “The Sun spoke to me this morning. Blackbloods creep—”
“The Sun?” I asked.
You frowned. I tried not to smile, but—you do have a cute frown, you know. “Yes,” you said. “The Sun. Does it not speak to you?”
“Does it … what does it sound like?” I asked. Oh, you looked foul! But I did not mean to make you feel awkward. I really was only curious.
You pursed your lips. Your eyebrows reached for each other. “Music,” you said. “All your favorite music, all playing at the same time, but … it does not sound jumbled. Whenever I hear her, my face gets warm. She makes me feel taller.”
I rested my chin on my hand. “Just the Sun?”
“And the flowers, sometimes,” you admitted.
That did not surprise me, after what you did when we were children. Whenever I see a flower, even now, I think of you. Sometimes I consider asking it how you are doing.
“It might not be the Sun for you,” you had said then, “but still, there must be something. You’ve heard it, haven’t you? It says to go North. Every few days, I hear it again—go North, where the blackbloods go, find your fortune there. This time it’s the loudest it’s ever been.”
I frowned again. Yes, I had heard that voice on the wind. Less often than you had, it seemed. My mother always liked having me around when plotting our routes, for I knew which way north was without consulting a compass. My uncles used to spin me around until I was near vomiting, then ask me to point north.
I was always right.
My mother said I had a fine career ahead of me as a Qorin messenger, if I could not make ruling work.
But the flowers themselves turned to face you. You could change their color. Wherever your bare feet touched Earth, blossoms appeared, though it often took a few days.
And I’d never missed a shot in my life, my horse spoke to me, and I never returned from a hunt empty-handed. I’d killed a tiger at eight years old. When I was ten, a demon had spoken to me as if she knew me.
How long could we profit from these small miracles, Shizuka, without paying the price for them?
*
NORTH.
I was an arrow trembling against a bowstring, and you were pulling me back.
*