There were some who refused to be burned. Some who wandered farther and farther from the clan. North, they went. Always North. Hunters leaving in the middle of the night became a commonplace occurrence, second only to morning funeral pyres.
And when my mother learned of the source of this unspeakable evil—my mother, with a newly united Qorin people at her back—she promised to wreak vengeance upon the wall-sitters. The horde rode to Sur-Shar. When we returned from the land of a thousand spires, my mother blew a hole in the Wall of Stone and collected a scalp for every one of us who had died.
This was your grandfather’s doing, Shizuka, though I know you’ve done your best to distance yourself from it.
Your uncle, on the other hand …
“Eight years,” you said. “He used to send me gifts, eight years ago.”
I did not want to think of the sort of gifts such a man might send you. I did not want to remember that you shared his blood.
We rode through Oshiro with little trouble. I know the roads there well. But given how long it’d been since my last visit—and given my province’s mixed population—no one recognized me. Did they not remember what I looked like? Did they know who I was? Did they care? If my brother rode out in the open like this, he’d be mobbed.
Their adoration painted you in bright tones. You cloaked yourself in their attention; wrapped yourself in it; wore it as a mantle. Oh, you hated when they actually spoke to you—but you basked in their gazes. And though it was only you and I and the horses, you rode as if the entire Hokkaran army was at your back.
We stayed in warm homes when they were offered to us, inns when they were not. I preferred the inn rooms. Enclosed though they were, their walls provided some modicum of privacy. We could be together there, as we were meant to be.
It was during one of those nights I asked you what you thought would happen when we reached Shiseiki.
“We will find the blackbloods there and we will kill them,” you said.
“Why?” I asked.
You turned in my arms. Inky black hair hung over your shoulders; your eyes shone in the dark like twin moons.
“Because we must show them,” you said. You touched my face with one hand. “Because to them we are only girls, only mortals. Because they doubt us. If we do this—if we strike down enemies grown men fear to name—then we take our first step. Then they shall see.”
You say the Sun speaks to you, my love. You say she pours her golden words into your ears and sets you alight with purpose. I say that I do not need to speak to the Sun to know how that feels.
What little light there was in the room strove to illuminate you.
“I will follow you,” I said. “Wherever you lead.”
You grabbed me by the ears and brought our lips together. “You had better,” you said. “Whom else can I trust at my side?” More laughs left your plum-flavored lips. You spread your arms wide. “In all Hokkaro!” you said. “In all the world, only you and I are worthy!”
I did not know much about the world. I knew there was Hokkaro, large enough that it would take nearly a year to cross from east to west, and more than that from north to south. I knew that four Ages ago, Hokkaro consisted only of Fujino Province. Once, the eight provinces were four countries, until your ancestors saw fit to stitch them all together.
The steppes sat directly to the east of your great empire. Half a year’s ride from east to west, a bit more than that from north to south. To the east of us is great Sur-Shar, a land whose eastern border I had not yet seen. Beyond Sur-Shar was Ikhtar, which I’d never seen at all. To the south of the steppes were the Golden Sands; beyond them I did not know. Somewhere lived the Pale People. There were many things about this world I did not know then.
But still something of what you said rang right to me. If there were other warriors in the world of our caliber, they had not made themselves known. We may not have been the strongest. But we were the strongest we knew.
So I followed you.
*
FOUR MONTHS, I followed you. Four months, we traveled great Hokkaro. From the cliffs of Tsukaido to the wide mouth of the Kirin River we traveled. Do you remember how pale I went when we had to take a boat across the river? The Rokhon is a quarter as wide at most. We pulled up to the riverbank and there was just so much water, all moving at once, like swaying grass except wetter and deeper and smellier. Like all the rain in the world held in one place.
So what if I vomited?
You would have, too, if you hadn’t seen a river like that in your life.
And the boat! I spent the entire day in bed. No. I was not going to stand on some rickety wooden things held together by nails and goodwill. Why was this floating? What made it float? Why did it exist? These are all questions I asked myself as I emptied my stomach again and again into a pail by the bed.
“If we were in the Imperial barge,” you said, “you would not feel so terrible. It is much larger and does not sway so often. We keep both singing girls and actual musicians on board; you can hear the music rise and fade with the water—”
I groaned. Facedown in the blankets, I waved at you to stop talking. “I think,” I said, my already quiet voice muffled by the pillows, “the Traitor invented boats.”
“We’ll have to take one back…,” you teased.
At that point, we’d been on the gods-forsaken wood-chip pile for half a day. I wasn’t even vomiting up food anymore. Only bile. The back of my throat burned. With every rock of the boat, I thought I was going to slide off the bed. Looking around sent the whole room spinning; I had no sense of balance. And there was nowhere I could go to escape it all.
“I would rather die,” I said. And I was sure of this. I would rather die than suffer through riding a boat again.
When we made shore on the other side of the river, I fell onto the ground and kissed it. I swore to Grandmother Sky that I would never again abandon her husband. I didn’t even care when my back screamed with pain as I leaped into the saddle. I was mounted again, off that boat, and I would never be stepping foot in one again.
So I told myself.
Four months, we traveled. Four months together without anyone watching over us. Four months with you. Four months of restful nights spent together, four months I could stay out in the sun, four months without hearing that awful sound in my head, four months without seeing the Not-You, four months …
I can hardly believe it is real, looking back on it.
I remember the night we arrived at the Wall of Flowers. I remember the sight of it—half-wilted and sagging in places. One thousand years ago, the Daughter made this wall herself, summoning it after the Traitor slew her Brother. It was said a single petal contained so much of her presence, it would cause an entire field to spring up, if planted. Desperate farmers tried to steal petals so often, an entire branch of the Imperial Guard was dedicated to the Wall.