We arrived in Tokyo on the grounds of the Imperial Palace, which had been cordoned off for Aki’s enthronement. The stewards guided us to a dais separate from the other dignitaries, befitting the Dragon Empress’ status, but still slightly lower than the building where the ceremony would take place. The Empress reclined on the tatami mats they’d provided for her, and I stood with my hands behind my back at her shoulder. Two goldenscales servants stood on the other side behind her, ready to assist. My mother, in her goldenscales body, lay on the tatami in front of me – Aki had invited her as well, to honour her relationship with both of us.
The buildings had been reconstructed, and the pavilion stood above us on the hillside – a hundred metres to a side and raised on stilts, elegantly understated in its minimalist grace. The other dignitaries were guided to their seats on a large stand next to us, and an old-fashioned brass band played parade music as they found their places.
The Empress lowered her head, then gestured for me to attend her. I moved closer.
‘What are these mats made of? They smell divine,’ she said.
‘Rice straw,’ I said.
‘They are the ideal softness for my royal behind. I must order some.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be delighted to provide them.’
‘Make way for the Imperial family!’ a steward shouted, and the crowd went quiet.
The band stopped playing, and Haruka appeared at the end of the glass-walled corridor that ran along the side of the building. He was wearing the wide traditional Japanese male formal outfit of pants and jacket, with a hat that had a flange standing up and bending towards the back. He held a sceptre vertically in one hand and walked extremely slowly towards the coronation room at the end of the building.
Goodness, he looks totally ridiculous, the Empress said to me.
Can’t tell the difference from how he normally looks, I replied with a straight face, and my mother thumped me on the arm. She wasn’t telepathic, but still knew when I was misbehaving.
When Haruka was at the room, he turned and stood to one side in front of the small curtained tent that would hold Aki. The stewards and senior government officials were lined up behind him, wearing pre-nineteenth-century styled Western formal gear. They all stood with their faces carefully composed and without moving. Normally during a coronation, the male and female Household members would enter the room in a procession and stand on either side; in this case Haruka was the only other family member left.
‘Make way for the Emperor!’ the steward shouted, and everybody gasped.
‘What?’ I said out loud, feeling a rush of hope. They weren’t going to make Aki do this after all?
Another man appeared in traditional male dress, holding the sceptre, his kimono deep bronze in colour. His hat’s flange stood straight up for nearly a metre. Then I saw his face – he looked about twenty-five years old, but he was Aki.
The crowd stirred, making soft comments, then someone up the back loudly hushed them and they went still.
She was definitely a woman, right? the Empress said.
Definitely, I said.
Well she’s a man now, the Empress said.
Marque spoke into my ear and I heard the echo as he spoke softly to the other dignitaries present. ‘Now that you’ve seen her, the privacy seal is off and I’m allowed to explain. The last time Japan had an Empress, there were sixteen years of major natural disasters, and they’ve decided that having a woman on the throne is an insult to the spirits of the land. Aki had a fatal “accident”, and I “messed up” when I created the cloned body for her, producing the man that they needed.’
‘She agreed to this?’ I said, incredulous.
‘It was her idea. She doesn’t want to let her people down.’
‘So brave,’ the Empress cooed.
‘This isn’t birth-natural,’ I said loud enough for a few heads to turn towards us. I lowered my voice. ‘It’s a cloned body, not naturally born!’
‘I’ve made no alterations to the body – apart from the sex chromosome thing,’ Marque said. ‘It’s effectively birth-natural. The previous Emperor had leukaemia as a child and moved into a birth-natural cloned body as well, so there’s precedent. In light of the alternatives, the stewards have decided that this is the best option for satisfactory continuation of the line.’
‘What about Kenji?’ I said.
‘He also agreed to it – but now that Aki’s a man, they need to find an Empress for their new Emperor.’
I felt a bolt of hope. Would she have me again? Would they let me be with her? Could I live in that stifling atmosphere? If it was with Aki, I could—
‘It can’t be you, Jian, the Empress must be pure-blood Japanese and birth-natural. You could be a concubine, but then you’d have to be completely hidden from the world and never go out at all. You’d effectively be a prisoner. Aki requested that you not even consider it, and if you try to join her, she will reject you.’
‘You must love this drama,’ I said.
‘Delicious,’ it said without emotion.
Aki entered the two-metre-wide curtained tent at the back of the room, and the area was silent for at least ten minutes. Two stewards pulled back the curtains to reveal Aki, standing unnaturally still and holding her . . . his . . . sceptre. It took another painful five minutes for the stewards to carefully fold and secure the curtains, then they moved back. Tokugawa himself stepped up to Aki and bowed to him. Aki nodded back, and Tokugawa handed him an accordion-folded document. Aki opened the document and read the speech from it in stiff ultraformal Japanese, sounding completely different from the woman I’d known.
Aki was Emperor.
*
A huge reception was held for all the visiting royalty in another pavilion overlooking the grounds of the castle. My mum stayed close beside me, intimidated by the guests.
‘I’m half my real size, I’m worried someone will step on me,’ she said. ‘I keep looking up people’s noses. Oh, there’s Aki. Doesn’t she . . . he . . . look strange?’
‘He looks like my Aki,’ I said as he approached, and heard the lie in my voice.
He’d changed into a Western-style suit similar to what the stewards were wearing; an outfit so ancient in its fashion that it looked more like a costume. He had several medals pinned to his chest, a ribbon across the whole lot, and he looked like something out of an archaic photograph.
‘I am so sorry about this,’ he said, and again his voice was completely different. ‘Please come outside onto the veranda with me, and I’ll explain.’
I gazed into his eyes, looking for my Aki in this serious young man, and not finding her.
‘Of course,’ I said.
He gestured over his shoulder at two guards in old-fashioned soldiers’ uniforms. ‘With us.’ He smiled sadly at me. ‘I can’t be seen in public alone with a woman.’
‘Marque,’ I said. ‘Move Graf to the entrance of the hall, Namazozo next to the Empress, and keep Five-Shriek on the roof.’
‘Done.’
‘Does it feel strange, being a man?’ I asked Aki as I walked beside him onto the veranda. ‘I’ve wondered what it would feel like to change sex, now that the option is open to us.’
‘It’s awful.’ He looked down at himself. ‘I feel sorry for your family. It’s bad enough being the wrong sex; being a completely different species must be devastating.’
‘It’s only for five years,’ I said.
‘Not for me,’ he said bitterly.
The generous veranda spanned the width of the building. We went to the edge where it overlooked a Zen garden of raked white sand in ripple patterns around weathered black stones, and surrounded by manicured pine trees.
‘I still have the miniature sand garden that you gave me a couple of years ago for our anniversary,’ I said. ‘It’s in my Captain’s quarters in the Imperial Palace.’
His smile was deeply sad. ‘Jian, I erased the memories of our time together.’
I stood gasping at him like a goldfish. Eventually I struggled out, ‘Why?’
‘Because being apart from you was breaking my heart. It was affecting my mental health to such a degree that I was contemplating suicide. The doctors were afraid I’d actually do it.’ He leaned both arms on the railing and looked out over the garden. ‘The memories are in Marque storage, and Haruka has a stored backup. When my duty is done . . .’ He turned back to me. ‘I’ll have them restored, move back into my real body, and we can be together again.’
‘So you don’t love me at all right now?’ I said with disbelief.
‘I’m fond of you,’ he said, in such a restrained burst of mild affection that I nearly screamed at him. ‘Don’t worry, once my memories are restored, we can go back to what we had.’
‘Now I’m terrified that you won’t feel the same way when you do restore them,’ I said.
‘You don’t need to worry. Here with you I’m finding myself . . . enchanted, and we should probably not spend too much time together before my duty is done.’
‘You just have to hurry up and have a couple of kids,’ I said. ‘Have you selected an Empress yet?’
‘Don’t even think about trying to get into the Household,’ he said. ‘If you attempt anything at all they will throw you out. No. The search is ongoing for the right woman.’
‘Surely all she needs to be is fertile, royal, and breathing?’ I said with more irritation than I intended. I winced. ‘Sorry.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s all that is required, but I’m going to be spending years with her, so I’d prefer a good friend who’s intellectually stimulating, stubborn, loyal and gallant to a fault.’ He moved to take my hand, and one of the guards coughed loudly. He withdrew his hand from mine. ‘So they’re looking for a copy of you and we’re all aware of the fact that they won’t find one. There’s the added complication that everybody knows what a shitshow it is in the Imperial Household, and nobody is willing to take the job.’
Some shouts rang out from inside the pavilion and one of the guards approached.
‘Captain Choumali, your mother is involved in an . . . incident.’
‘Oh shit,’ Aki and I said in unison, and hurried into the pavilion.
Mum was standing in the middle of a small group of people, her dragon head raised as she yelled at the purple dragon next to her.
‘And you will treat me with the respect earned by the mother of a war hero, by the mother of the Captain of the Imperial Guard, and if one more dragon asks me to fetch her a drink, I will practise my non-existent folding skills on them!’
‘I am so sorry,’ the purple dragon said. She had six legs and no wings, and a short, stubby head with teeth that protruded from her jaws. ‘It won’t happen again, Ms Choumali, I can’t believe I made this mistake.’
‘You coloured dragons have been making this mistake since I was put into this damn body,’ my mother grumbled. ‘I am not a servant!’ She saw me. ‘Come on, Jian, I want to see this Zen garden my other friend – who was treating me with respect – was describing.’
She stormed out of the room onto the veranda and I trailed after her. Aki didn’t follow us; he was led by one of the stewards into an exceptionally polite and restrained scrum of officials as they discussed how to deal with the incident.
‘This has happened before?’ I said as we stood at the railing overlooking the garden.
‘It happens all the damn time,’ she said, impatient. She took a deep breath. ‘Jian, sweetie, I didn’t want to bring this up with you when it’s so soon, but I need your opinion.’
‘On what?’
She ran one claw over the railing. ‘I’m very vulnerable right now. We all are. It will take five years for these stones to be attuned, and if anything happens to me before then, it’s the Real Death.’
‘Just keep yourself safe.’ I put my hand on her shoulder; her scales were warm and textured with tiny ridges. ‘I need you.’
‘Are you sure?’ She put her claw on my hand and looked up into my eyes. ‘Could you do without me for five years?’
I froze. ‘What?’
‘It’s an option. Marque can put me into hibernation, in a coma, in a secure location – a bunker – until the stone is attuned.’
‘You’ll be unconscious for five years?’ I realised what she was saying. ‘This is because of the body, isn’t it? You want to sleep through attunement because being in this body is a pain in the ass.’
‘You always could see through me,’ she said wryly. ‘It’s not just the . . . racism from the other dragons. Here we are, in an enlightened interstellar society, and the last thing you’d expect is racism.’
‘You should see the Imperial Guard records,’ I said wryly.
She continued. ‘This body isn’t me. It’s wrong. I hate being in it, I hate walking around in it, and waking up every morning in it is driving me crazy. If I allow Marque to store me during the attunement, I can sleep through it and then be myself again. My real self.’
‘Have you talked to Victor and Dianne?’
‘They feel the same way.’
‘I’ll lose my entire family?’ I said, incredulous.
‘You’ll have your son. Oliver will keep you company. It’s only for five years. If you say no, that you really need me, I won’t do it, but I’d prefer to sleep through this god-awful body.’
I rubbed her shoulder. ‘If it’s that bad – of course. Sleep through it. I’ll be busy guarding the Imperial Silverbutt.’
‘Thank you.’ She grinned. ‘You’ll need to find someone else to mind your dog while you’re traipsing around.’
‘Oliver can do it. He’s moving into the Imperial Palace, he’ll be close by.’
‘Thank you. One other thing.’ She glared at me. ‘When I wake up, I want you to be in a happy relationship with someone.’
‘But Aki . . .’
‘Aki will be married to someone else for twenty years. Don’t you dare wait for her. Find someone, Jian; twenty years is a long time to be alone. Most relationships don’t last that long anyway.’ She reached up to take my hand. ‘Find someone.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ I said patiently.
‘Just not a dragon,’ she said.
‘Oh, you can talk!’ I said.
Mum’s head drooped. ‘Another reason to skip five years. Yuki is unable to love me like this.’
‘Oh I am so sorry, I forgot about that . . .’ I took her dragon head in my hands. ‘Will she wait for you?’
‘She says she will, and that five years is nothing.’
‘You won’t rush into this, will you? We can spend some time together before you do it?’
‘Of course. I need to sort out my crops – and my project – and make sure they’re cared for.’
‘I’ll miss you, Mum.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
Marque flashed an image into my vision of five armed people – wearing samurai-style outfits and carrying guns, with swords shoved into their belts – charging towards the hall.
‘They’re modified,’ he said. ‘Select a plan.’
‘Beta,’ I said, and ran inside.
The attackers were almost as enhanced as me. The crowd was in slow motion as the attackers operated with flawless teamwork. One threw a concussion grenade into the middle of the room and Namazozo leaped on top of it in an attempt to stop the blast. Namazozo was only the size of a weasel and didn’t have much effect on the blast, exploding everywhere in a fountain of blood and flesh. Marque deadened the blast, but it still knocked people and furniture over and deafened me. Everything was thumping bass as I picked myself up off the floor, half-stunned, to protect the Empress, who’d been talking to the Queen of Euroterre.
Another of the attackers used a laser-based weapon to fire a red-hot beam on Marque’s sphere, and the sphere was forced to protect itself with an energy barrier. With Marque occupied in self-defence it was on me to defend the Empress. She quickly moved into the corner of the room, away from the other people present. One of the attackers fired a similar energy weapon at the Empress. I shot the attacker’s hand off and she missed the Empress, but the wood behind the Empress was scorched and started to burn. I shot the attacker in the chest to finish her off.
‘Running out,’ Marque said in my ear.
‘Gotcha.’ Another attacker raced towards the Empress, pulling a sword from his sash. I shot him in the chest before he could reach her, and he fell with a look of confusion on his face. I went up to him and picked up his sword, then turned to face the rest of the attackers. The attacker who had been focusing the beam on Marque turned to run towards the Empress, and I shot her before she could attack the dragon. Another ran to the Empress and I shot him in the chest before he could reach us.
The last attacker shot at the Marque sphere and must have winged it as it was running out of energy; it fell out of the air. With Marque down I was no longer invisible, and the attacker turned the weapon on me and fired, but missed because Graf lifted him from behind and dangled him from Graf’s front legs. Graf ripped the gun from him, taking his hand with it, and the attacker screamed with agony as he pulled his blade out with his other hand.
‘Don’t let him kill himself – he has no stone!’ I shouted as the human stabbed himself in the abdomen and ripped the blade up through his lungs and heart.
I staggered to the Empress as someone found a fire extinguisher and put out the blazing wood behind her. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘You were all magnificent.’
I looked out onto the veranda to check on my mother, and didn’t see her. I went to the door and found her cowering as far away as possible.
‘Stay there,’ I said. ‘I think we have all of them.’
She stared at me blankly.
I went back in and spoke to Graf. ‘Did we get them all?’
Graf made some random clicks, waving its front pincers.
I switched to dragonspeak. ‘Marque must be completely down. That means there could be others around. Five-Shriek,’ I shouted at the ceiling.
‘I’m checking the perimeter,’ the flyer shouted back in dragon. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Do a thorough search of the area for any other armed humans.’
‘Ma’am.’
Graf stood holding the dead attacker with a look of confusion on its face.
‘My dragon is terrible,’ it said with a thick mushy accent.
‘I can understand you, so good enough,’ I said.
People were picking themselves up, but a couple were still prone on the floor, possibly killed by the grenade. Something was wrong with my left side, and when I my put my hand to it, it came away wet with blood – I’d been injured and didn’t even know how or when it had happened. I went to the woman lying on the floor closest to me, and saw it was the Queen – she’d been knocked over but seemed to be okay. She was breathing and blinking with confusion at the ceiling. The man next to her was the Prince-Consort, and he must have jumped in front of her to protect her from the blast, because he had a couple of broken bones, and from his racing pulse and cold skin could be either in shock or have internal bleeding. Namazozo was shredded by the blast, and I looked around for her stone. It must be embedded in one of the lumps of her flesh.
Aki came and crouched next to me. ‘What can I do?’
‘Find medical assistance,’ I said. I raised my head and shouted, ‘I need a dragon.’
‘I’m here,’ my mother said behind me.
I turned to see her. ‘No, I need a dragon to fold us a new Marque sphere.’
‘Masako already went,’ Haruka said. He crouched next to the Prince-Consort, raised his eyelids, and felt his pulse. ‘Nothing life-threatening, but he should go to the Palace infirmary. Is it functional? Or should they go to a hospital?’
‘It’s functional,’ Aki said. ‘It needed to be – to do this—’ he gestured towards himself ‘—to me.’
Masako appeared next to him with a new Marque sphere. ‘Are you okay, Mother?’
‘I’m fine,’ the Empress said from behind me. ‘Poor Namazozo. Is her stone anywhere around?’
‘We’ll find it,’ I said.
Five-Shriek spoke to me through comms. ‘We found their backup team, ma’am, in a vehicle just outside the secure perimeter. Your orders?’
‘I sincerely hope they are scared of spiders, because Graf and I are on our way,’ I said. I rosed and brushed at my stained blue and silver uniform, and my hand came away wet with more blood. ‘Time to have some fun with the man in the van.’ I took a step and the polished floorboards rushed up to meet me, hitting me hard on the head.
*
I rose into wakefulness in a bed full of the scent of miso soup and barley tea, and I was at home with Aki beside me. I opened my eyes and the ceiling was wrong, then looked left and saw the Empress watching me. It all came back to me and I lifted the blanket and pulled up the hospital gown to see a sheet of artificial skin twenty centimetres to a side covering a scar nearly fifteen centimetres long over the left side of my abdomen. I dropped the blanket and turned to the Empress, feeling the twinge as I did.
‘What hit me?’
‘Namazozo’s soulstone. You cushioned its impact with your body, and saved Namazozo’s life.’
‘Oh.’
‘Jian.’ She put one claw on the sheet. ‘Did you see that they weren’t wearing soulstones?’
‘After the first one, yes, I did.’
‘And you shot them in the chest instead of the head anyway?’
I smiled without humour. ‘I couldn’t help it. Extensive training with battle hobbyists. We all know that the location of the stone is sacred, even if they take it out beforehand.’
She nodded. ‘Excellent. It’s good to know that my Captain will take care not to inflict the Real Death, regardless of the circumstances.’
‘Did they have stones stored elsewhere? Marque would know,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘So I did inflict the Real Death.’
‘Do you feel guilt about that?’
I hesitated, then said, ‘No. It was their choice to attack us and I was doing my job.’
‘Good.’
Aki came in. ‘How are you feeling, Jian?’
‘Sore and woozy but I’ll be fine,’ I said.
Aki turned to the Empress and bowed deeply. ‘I take personal responsibility for this outrageous crime. The terrorists are dead—’
‘Aki,’ the Empress said gently, and Aki stopped. ‘This has happened every single time our colonised species realised what we were doing. There’d always be an assassination attempt; in fact, many dragons bet on how long it would take. The attempts always stopped when the reproductive conquest was complete.’
‘When you become family,’ I said.
‘Precisely.’ She raised her silver claw. ‘In the case of Earth, you negotiated your way out of conquest, and your subjugation will never be complete. Never more than half of your population will be dragonscales. It will be fascinating to see if the assassination attempts continue.’ She turned her head to me. ‘Do you need more staff in the guard?’
‘No, we had it under complete control, even with Marque as limited as it was. On a planet with a full-size Marque you would be in no danger at all.’
‘Good.’ The Empress turned back to Aki. ‘This is why I have living guards as well as Marque. It happens all the time.’
‘I would still like to pay reparation for the uncouth behaviour of my people,’ Aki said stiffly.
‘There’s no need . . .’ The Empress’ voice trailed off. ‘Actually, come to think of it, my royal behind has an extremely good suggestion.’