Ji-hyeon had originally thought about going all out, making it a real production, but in the end it was a very understated, tasteful ceremony, with only the necessary officials and a few of their closest friends and family in attendance. The dress code was left to the discretion of the guests, save for the prohibition on wearing white. Othean had mourned enough for five hundred years, and this was a joyous occasion.
The festival boats launched from the new dock under construction on the northern end of the Winter Palace, drifting leisurely across Lake Othean. The waters were so clear they could see the mighty roots winding beneath them like the arms of a kraken, melding with the reflection of the skyscraping boughs overhead. The Gate-ash had taken on especial importance to the Dreaming Priests, who declared it the manifestation of the spirit world’s intervention on behalf of mortalkind in their moment of darkest peril. Reading the more sinister legends about rowans and then gazing at it with her devil-eye Ji-hyeon had been less than convinced. Not because of what it showed her, but because of what it didn’t—which was anything. From where its trunk disappeared into the lake to where its highest leaves brushed the clouds the entire Gate-ash was pure ebon nothingness, a black silhouette that seemed to tug on Ji-hyeon’s altered eye even as it made her sick to her stomach. In all her many exploits throughout strange worlds it was the first thing other than a Gate that her devil-eye couldn’t penetrate, at least not at first, but while she felt the familiar itching to keep gazing at the enigma, to come in for a closer look, she denied her eye and slipped her patch back into place. In time she would turn her attention to investigating it further—and no doubt the Court of the Dreaming Priests were already way ahead of her—but at present everyone seemed very confident that any forces that might lurk within the wood were bound tight.
For now, anyway, and it never hurt to treat the unknown with respect. To that end her modest fleet circled its castle-thick trunk three times before continuing on their way, winding another band of warding ribbons around its width on their final pass. It never hurt to take precautions, either.
Under cobalt heavens they passed over the sunken ruins of the inner wall and the Autumn Palace, where Yunjin claimed harpyfish now held court, and then out along the channel in the outer wall. The lake had used the breach in Othean’s defenses to escape its enclosure and form a new shore on the distant edges of the former pumpkin fields. It filled Ji-hyeon’s eyes to see the little white temple rising from the waters like a buoy in the flood; she remembered how it had reminded her of a lighthouse so many years ago. This was where it had all started—her troubles and her conquests, her heartbreaks and her heroics—and it seemed a fitting place to end that chapter of her life, and begin a new one. How lucky she was that her three closest friends were still with her as she did so.
She looked for them from her bench on the prow where she sat with Hyori and Yunjin, her two sisters debating whether it would be appropriate for Yunjin to chant one of her throat-songs after the ceremony. Choi was easy to spot, as she was standing with the rest of the Samjok-o Guard on the next boat over. Between her new suit of jade-tinged armor and the Imperial cavalry saber on her hip, Ji-hyeon’s old Honor Guard looked, well, immaculate, but even from this distance Ji-hyeon could tell her face was even sterner than usual. Maroto’s condition must have further declined. Ji-hyeon knew from Sullen’s frequent visits to his uncle’s sickbed that the man was not long for the world of mortals, and Choi had formed an attachment that was as obvious as it was unexpected.
Almost as unexpected as Maroto clinging to life as long as he had, really—by all accounts he had been poisoned and wounded even before falling the last hundred feet from the Gate-ash, and from that height the waters of the lake must have hit him as hard as steel. Sullen’s theory was that the only thing keeping the man alive was his need to get high with his absent friends one more time. If that was true he might perish at any moment, seeing as Zosia had just arrived at the Winter Palace with Purna, Hoartrap, Sullen’s mother, and, of course, Keun-ju. If they had been an hour later Ji-hyeon’s former Virtue Guard wouldn’t have been able to take part in the ceremony, and she craned her neck around to find him as they sailed toward the Temple he had so fervently tried to talk her out of visiting the fateful night of the Equinox Ceremony, when they were both so young …
She finally caught sight of him on the third and final ship, standing at the railing with Sullen. They were holding hands, and she felt her eyes dampen anew at how blissfully they were all enjoying their reunion. Under different circumstances the vision of the handsome men sharing a moment would have dampened something else, but this was a solemn ceremony and she turned her thoughts from such matters … after only a momentary indulgence.
“Your Elegance,” said Fennec, stepping up behind her on the deck strewn with gingko leaves and hibiscus blossoms. He still wore his Cobalt uniform despite how much gall it raised in certain sections of the Immaculate military. He’d offered to retire it for her, but she’d told him he could wear anything he damn well pleased, considering the debt all the Isles owed the Cobalt Companies for their defense of the realm … and given how relatively bloodless the coup had been, for that matter. “The Court of the Dreaming Priests have informed me that the condemned declines your benevolent invitation to make a final public address.”
“Told you,” said Yunjin.
“Good morning, General Fennec,” said Hyori, her own parade dress decked with blue swashes and ostentatious medals. Ji-hyeon’s formerly younger sister had taken something of a shine to the Usban fox, which Fennec bore with his usual charm (though he’d drunkenly joked to Ji-hyeon that if Kang-ho had borne a son, well then … at which point Ji-hyeon had tugged his ponytail—also a little drunkenly, perhaps).
“And a very good morning to you both, General Hyori, Sister Yunjin,” he replied, offering a smart salute to the women. “Is there anything you wish me to convey to the Court before we begin?”
“Maybe ask them again why they’re so opposed to holding elections if the heavens will ordain the proper ruler and her ministers anyway,” said Ji-hyeon.
“We have been through this and through this and through this—the time is not yet right,” said Yunjin, sticking up for her new coven the way she always did. Ji-hyeon had initially been pleased when her sister had revealed that their first father had been a member of the somewhat secret society, and that as a result the Bong family had major inroads with the power behind the Samjok-o Throne, but ever since they’d gotten back and Yunjin had joined the Court of the Dreaming Priests it was one damn thing after another with this girl.
“The time is always right to snap the shackles of the oppressor,” said Ji-hyeon, at which Hyori snorted and pointed at Ji-hyeon’s chunky bracelets.
“I would suggest starting with those, Your Elegance, but I fear you’d break your scrawny fingers in the bargain.”
“I’ll snap something, don’t you fret.”
“Sisters,” said Yunjin in the authoritative tone only eldest siblings can ever master. “We’re here.”
So they were. Taking a deep breath, Ji-hyeon rose to her sandaled feet from her thronelike bench, and all the guests on the trio of boats stood as well. They bobbed close together at three points of the compass, representing Othean’s three intact palaces: the royal craft in the north, the military craft in the east, and the boat that carried only the condemned and her keepers to the south. Their destination occupied the west.
A long gangplank extended from the southern boat, and then a second, and a third, creating a wide bridge from the prow of the small ship to where the lake lapped at the top stair of the Temple of Pentacles. They watched in silence as the deposed empress Ryuki was led out from the cabin, her unicorn devil at her side.
Ji-hyeon’s heart beat faster, a part of her hoping the condemned woman would try to fight after all, but then if she’d preferred death to this she could have accepted her conqueror’s other offer. Ji-hyeon had thought it more than fair, and more than she deserved, but the woman had still chosen to take her chances with the Gate rather than be exiled to Hwabun. Maybe she was counting on finding her way back for revenge, the way the Bong Sisters had. Or maybe she just knew her chances for survival were better in the First Dark than on the Isle she had ordered scraped of all life, its soil salted and its water poisoned, so that Ji-hyeon’s childhood home was no better than a barren spit of rock upon the edge of the Haunted Sea.
They walked down the bridge to the Temple of Pentacles, the lady and the monster. Ji-hyeon really hadn’t expected it to come to this, had assumed the former regent would loose her devil and escape long before the sentence could be carried out. Yet each morning the woman was still in her cell with the sardonically smiling fiend. Perhaps after everything that had happened to her family and her city Ryuki had lost the will to fight back … or perhaps the unicorn knew where they were destined, and so declined the freedom she offered it, as certain powerful devils were said to do.
Ji-hyeon felt an unexpected surge of sentimentality as the woman who had stolen her fathers stepped from the gangplank onto the top stair of the Temple of Pentacles. She drew her black sword and pointed it at the woman, just as she had when she’d made a silent promise to the empress at this very spot to one day avenge her people. Yet as much as she wanted Ryuki to turn and see her and remember it, too, the defeated tyrant denied her. She and her devil walked into the Gate without looking back.
Ji-hyeon would soon follow her. She must return to the outer realms for the many noncombatants of the Cobalt Company who had remained behind until the war for the Star was won. On that jubilant day the refugees would parade home through the Temple of Pentacles … but that day was not today. For now silence stretched out over Othean Lake, and taking a final lesson from her predecessor, the Empress Ji-hyeon Bong directed her people home without a backward glance.