And so she does.
The woman prostrates herself. She wears a lilac-colored robe, with a scandalous red one visible underneath. As much as O-Shizuka hates to admit it, she is lovely—lustrous dark hair tucked expertly into a flowering shape; painted pink lips and striking cheekbones. She has the look of a woman who knows something private about you, something that at once amuses her and makes you close friends.
The sight of her is so appealing, in fact, that it at once sours O-Shizuka’s mood.
“You are called Ren,” she says, her tone turning a simple statement into an interrogation. She circles the woman but does not bid her to rise.
“I am,” the older woman says. “I am honored by your presence, O Phoenix Queen.” Her voice is throaty and rich, like unsweetened tea.
O-Shizuka sniffs. “You will tell me all you know of Barsalyya Shefali.”
Ren does not respond as fast as O-Shizuka would like. More reason to dislike her. O-Shizuka cannot shake the feeling that when the woman does open her mouth, she’ll spout some nonsense poetry. As if Barsalyya Shefali can be contained within nonsense poetry! No. No one knows her the way O-Shizuka does.
But then Ren speaks. “Barsalai Shefali does not speak much, but every word that leaves her is worth eighty pages of poetry,” she says. “A starry sky of heroes await her, for she is as brave, honest, and as kind a woman as I have ever met. She is handsome as a carving, with warm skin that aches to be touched; she is tall, and her legs bow under the weight of the false accusations she carries with her.”
O-Shizuka clears her throat. She said Barsalai, did she?
She tells herself that she has grown past challenging people to duels, and she thinks now of the boy who will forever bear the weight of losing to her. O-Shizuka thinks that she is beyond jealousy, but only because she would not want Shefali to be furious with her. Jealousy. The more she thinks on it, the guiltier O-Shizuka feels. How dare she be so hypocritical? How dare she be jealous of Shefali, when she’s done far worse herself?
“You speak as if you know her well,” O-Shizuka says. “Did she share your bed, Ren? This great and mighty hero, did you ply your trade with her? Perhaps you do not know her as well as you think.”
Ren touches her forehead to the ground again. “Regrettably, I did not,” Ren says. “Barsalai Shefali’s heart is stolen by another, whom she loves as purely as moonlight. In another life, I think. In another life, I would be honored to—”
“Stop,” O-Shizuka almost shouts. She raises one hand to cut Ren off and pinches her nose with the other. “I cannot listen to this anymore.”
Purely as moonlight. Yes, that was right, wasn’t it? Shefali’s love for her was the purest in the Empire, and here was Shizuka …
“My sincere apologies, Imperial Majesty,” says Ren. And damn it all, she does sound sympathetic. “I knew her lover was a noble, but I had no idea it was the Empress.”
“I was not Empress at the time,” says O-Shizuka. Tantamount to blasphemy, if anyone else heard. Shizuka is too tired to care about that. The Empress is always the Empress, from the moment she is born. When she takes the throne, she simply assumes the title. “But, yes, I am Barsalyya’s great love. And you were intimate with her, though you did not share a bed.”
It is some time before Ren next speaks. She does not rise, does not level her eyes with the Empress’s, does not so much as raise her forehead from the floor. Yet when she speaks, each word is a caress, each syllable a touch, each delicate sound the hush of bodies moving beneath silk.
“Your Majesty,” she says. “You should know how Barsalai spoke of you. On all other subjects, she was a lake, but when I asked about you in the smallest way, she became a river. I may have been intimate with her for that moment, Your Majesty, I may have helped her through a dark time—but you have always been her light. She would never dream of casting you aside.”
These words are wind beneath O-Shizuka’s heart. The image is clear to her: There is Shefali, huddled in some brothel, dimples showing on her cheeks. In her quiet voice, she speaks of the time Shizuka stared at two Qorin mid coitus, of the blush that flushed royal cheeks. Flickering lantern lights ring green eyes with orange; she’s smiling so hard, it makes Shizuka’s jaw hurt in sympathy.
O-Shizuka touches her chest.
She knows this is just an image. From what Shefali wrote, she knows there were probably tears trailing down her love’s face, snot dribbling from her nose, black veins on her eyes.
But she clings to the idea that Shefali was happy, for she has so few happy memories left.
Will she still be so happy, Shizuka wonders, when she returns? When she realizes?
She licks her lips. “Ren,” she says, “I called you here because of a letter Barsalai wrote to me. When she was so far gone—when I could not reach her—she found comfort with you.”
A pause. These words taste so bitter on her tongue, and they have not yet been birthed. Yet she must speak them.
She must slay the jealous girl inside herself. She must slay her own guilt.
“I do not know if you are aware,” she says, “but Barsalyya thought of ending her life. Your intervention saved her. And so I must thank you. You may rise.”
Ren does. She is careful to keep her gaze on O-Shizuka’s feet, but she rises quickly and with pride, as one would expect from a woman of her position.
O-Shizuka reaches for a sealed letter on her desk. She hands it to the madam. Ren places it in her lap without opening it. Good. She knows how disrespectful it would be to open it without O-Shizuka’s consent.
“A year and a half ago, one of my least favorite courtiers ceased pestering me,” she says. “He was never fool enough to say anything obvious, but I believe he doubted me. Even after Shiseiki, he doubted me. And one day, he just—”
She holds up her hands, makes a gesture like sprinkling water on plants.
“I was curious about this, and so I sent my spymaster to investigate. The man moved to the countryside in Fuyutsuki Province. He lives as a beggar now, in a hovel near the rice paddies. No one knows his name. I wondered what impoverished him so. My spymaster informed me.
“It seems the man had a taste for singing girls,” continues O-Shizuka. “A specific taste. He liked women who bore childbirth scars. And when he summoned them, he would cut them along their lower bellies and stick his fingers in the wound, and he would send them back with triple pay.”
Ren flinches.
O-Shizuka does not. “The last brothel he visited was yours. Only hours later, he left Fujino in the dark of night, with nothing save what he could carry on his back.”
Now Ren’s eyes flicker up toward the Empress’s.