CHAPTER TWELVE

THE SOUGEN ROYALS

Usurper, of course, was a debatable word. Could one usurp a throne that didn’t exist?

Yu-yan, the heart of the Sougen region, was traditionally run by rice merchants, not the royals. The merchant families sat on the council and functioned as city officials, voting amongst themselves and organizing their politics as they saw fit. The Dragonthrone didn’t care—we allowed each province to function independently, making a fuss only with taxes and reports, and we certainly weren’t going to interfere with a system that had worked for centuries.

That all changed during my father’s war. Ojika Anyu, then a much younger and more physically capable version of himself, arrived with a few thousand soldiers to take control of the city. No one knew how this army had materialized without anyone catching wind of it—one of the many shortcomings of Rysaran as my predecessor. He had been so focused on his quest for a dragon that he had neglected his duties for years. It was said that even when Rysaran was in the Dragon Palace, he had allowed his regent to rule, choosing instead to bury his nose in books. Not that the nation should’ve expected anything less from an Ikessar, but…

Because of my father’s war, everyone was too busy trying to stay alive or kill their enemies, and there was no one on the throne that could bring the Anyu clan to swift justice. By the time the war was over, the Anyus had been in Yu-yan for five years. Ojika Anyu appeared on the day of my birth to bow at my cradle and swear his fealty to the future queen. My father chose to pardon him as a sign of goodwill, that Jin-Sayeng’s time of bloodshed was over.

Yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s failings. I spent the entire night thinking them over in bed after a hot bath and with a bellyful of beef, carrot, and potato stew, which resulted in wild dreams of the warlords screeching at the top of their lungs while hacking each other’s heads off. It was oddly cathartic.

I woke up to the sound of screaming and clanging swords, and groggily reached for my own, thinking we were under attack. I heard the door open before I could hit the end of the mattress. “My queen,” Nor said. “Breakfast is served.”

My senses cleared. “What’s happening outside?”

“Oh, that?” She grimaced. “The men decided they were going to do some sword practice.”

“Men,” I repeated. “What men?”

“Agos and Lamang,” she said.

“You mean Cho?” I asked.

“Khine.”

I tried to keep a straight face as I followed her to the dining hall. Dai wasn’t there. A servant came by with a bowl of chicken and rice porridge and a note from her master, telling me he had gone visiting his farmers and would be back by lunch. I set the note aside and turned to my food. It felt good to wake up to a decent meal again, and the porridge was creamy, with enough bits of crunchy garlic, boiled chicken, and preserved egg to keep me busy.

I made my way to the yard after breakfast. The sound of metal on metal intensified, followed by the unmistakable thwack! of a fist hitting flesh. Khine stumbled back. Cho, who was sitting on top of the stone fence, chortled.

“How is that even fair?” I heard Khine call out. He was wearing his inner shirt, a thin piece of grey fabric that showed off the muscles of his bare arms.

“Nothing’s fair in a fight,” Agos spat out. He was shirtless, which was usually how he liked to practice. Sweat didn’t so much drip out of his skin as gush from it. The size and shape of him left little question as to who was the seasoned fighter. “You had an opening. I took it. Keep that in your soft little Zarojo head, Lamang.”

“Got bored waiting around, gentlemen?” I asked as I approached.

Agos wiped his jaw. “I got sick of watching Lamang whine his way through every scrape we’ve gotten ourselves into. If you insist on him tagging along, he’s got to earn his keep.”

“Well, I do have other ski—” Khine began.

Agos rushed at him. Khine had been hit that morning one too many times, because he jumped aside almost at once. His reflexes would’ve been impressive, except he wasn’t holding his sword in a proper defensive position, and Agos simply reached back and clouted him over the head again.

Khine threw the sword aside and made a fist.

“You probably shouldn’t—” I didn’t have time to finish as his hand connected with Agos’s jaw. Agos barely flinched. Khine doubled back in pain and started swearing like a sailor.

Agos flexed his neck and grinned. “If I had a coin for every time a recruit tried to punch me, I could buy Oka Shto from her.”

“It’s not for sale,” I snorted. I turned to Khine. “I was going to warn you. He’s got the hardest chin I know.”

“No shit,” Khine replied, face red. “I’m done.”

“The hell you are, Lamang,” Agos said. “Pick up your sword. You’ve stopped looking like a monkey dancing with a stick. That’s progress, at least.”

“High praise, coming from him,” I assured Khine.

He gave me a look. “I’m not sure if your guardsman’s praise is something I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

Agos laughed. “You’ll either get this guardsman’s praise or his fist up your ass.”

“I didn’t know you liked me that way, Agos.”

“Shut the fuck up and pick up your sword before I throw it at you!”

Khine gave a long sigh before ambling over to the sword on the ground. He fixed his stance as he faced Agos. There was a definite improvement, at least compared with how I’d seen him hold a sword before. I wondered how long they had been out here. Since before dawn, at least.

“Try to go easy on his head!” I called out. “I’m almost sure I need it.”

“I’m almost sure you shouldn’t be encouraging this,” Khine said just as Agos charged him again.

“What’s this?” I heard Lahei call behind me. She was coming up the garden path with Nor. “Some sort of pre-mating ritual?”

I turned red. “Wait a minute—”

“I meant with each other,” Lahei said, one eyebrow raised. “You’re really not familiar with army vernacular, are you?”

“I am,” I retorted hotly. “I was just—distracted, that’s all.”

Nor shook her head.

“That distraction got anything to do with rippling muscles and heaving chests?” Lahei asked.

“I really shouldn’t let you get away with such comments, Kaggawa,” Nor said. “But—”

“No harm in looking,” Lahei finished for her with a grin.

Nor’s face remained expressionless.

“You’re terrible,” I said. “And Khine’s getting his ass handed to him.”

Lahei grinned. It was the first time I had seen her look so amused. “You’ve got to admit that it’s a good-looking ass.”

Nor crossed her arms and gave her a grunt of disapproval before turning back to me. “That’s how they learn, Beloved Queen. You know what my opinion is about Agos, but his skill at making half-decent soldiers out of the most terrible recruits is well-known. They carry his name as a badge of honour, if they survive his training regimen.” In the distance, we heard Khine grunt as he received yet another beating. “It’s partly why Lord General Ozo loved him as much as he did.”

I sighed. “I’ve always thought I could rely on General Ozo. But if it was indeed his doing that kept me in the Zarojo Empire, I’m not sure I can stay my hand. He’ll have to die.”

Nor’s face tightened. “I don’t know what to say, my queen. Before we had left for Anzhao, I would’ve been the first to assure you of Lord General Ozo’s loyalty. Now…”

There was a loud clash. I looked up to see Agos holding up a bleeding thumb. “The fuck, Lamang!” he groaned.

Khine looked insufferably smug, the wind rustling through his shaggy hair. “You did say don’t fight fair.”

“No one uses a sword like that!”

“He’s right,” Nor called out. “Do that in a real battle and you’d be dead right about now.”

“How the fuck can you protect the queen like that?” Agos thundered. “You’ll make a fool of yourself and get her killed, all in the same breath!”

“Ah, lighten up, Agos,” Khine said. “She can take care of herself just fine. She’s strong enough.”

Agos grabbed him by the collar, dragging him up to his chest. He whispered something in Khine’s ear that seemed to knock the smile off his face. Eventually, Agos shoved him away, and he limped to me with a frown.

“And you said you wanted to be a soldier?” I asked Khine, speaking in Zirano.

He gave me a pained look before whistling at Cho. “I’m done,” he said. “You go be his punching bag.” He dropped the practice sword with a flourish.

Cho rushed forward eagerly, all knees and bone. Agos gestured at him. “Don’t think that just because you’re some weak-kneed snot-nosed kid, I’ll go easy.”

“He probably won’t understand half your terrible insults, so I’d save my breath if I were you,” Khine said.

“I do too!” Cho cried. Even with such simple words, his Jinan was terrible.

Khine strode up to me. He was a lot more hurt than I figured—there were bruises running up his face and arms, and there was a bleeding cut on his forehead, right above his brow. “What possessed you to agree to spar with him?” I asked. “You look like you went into a cage with a bull.”

“Apt description,” Khine said. He wiped his face and looked down at his fingers, as if amazed to see so much blood on them. “He dragged me out of bed this morning and told me he needed me to learn to be a little less useless. It didn’t sound like a bad idea. Maybe I do need to learn to fight.”

“Right. And now who’s supposed to patch you up?”

“I’m sure I can talk you through it,” he said. His voice was surprisingly sincere.

The cut on Khine’s brow needed to be stitched. Khine flatly refused Lahei’s offer of going all the way to Yu-yan, reasoning that he didn’t want to wait hours for treatment and that a Jinsein healer was probably going to butcher his face into shreds. We went to the kitchen to clean him up, and while I was searching through the collection of bandages, he coughed and insisted I do it.

I blanched at his suggestion. “Agos must’ve rattled your brain loose.”

“Cho’s awful at following instructions, and I don’t trust your guards with anything pointy that close to my eye,” Khine said, crossing his arms. He waved the needle and thread in the air. “Just do it like I showed you. There’s nothing to it.”

“I’m a queen, you know. I shouldn’t be taking orders from you.” But I went to take the implements from him. He settled back against the bench, and after a moment’s hesitation, I stuck the needle in. I had rubbed some sort of numbing salve over it, but Khine’s face still twitched as the sharp end punctured his flesh. I bit back the sudden wave of nausea, cringing as I pulled the skin shut and hooked the sutures together.

I snipped the thread, wiped the blood off my fingers with a towel, and began the process all over again. “You’re going to feel this tomorrow,” I said with an exaggerated nod, as if this was something I did all the time.

He grew serious. “Physical pain is better than the alternative.”

I paused over his wound. “There is that,” I murmured. “Though I hardly think getting the sorrow pounded out of you is an appropriate cure.”

“No,” Khine replied. “Only time, and even then…” His shoulders heaved as he sighed.

I pulled back from the third stitch. “I think that’ll do,” I said. I reached down for more salve and applied it liberally over the cut. The entire process had taxed my nerves, and I was already starting to shake.

Khine grabbed hold of my bloodied hand and placed it over his heart.

I didn’t pull away immediately. I stared at it, aware only of his heartbeat underneath my fingers and the warmth coming from his own. I felt like I wanted to hack my arm off so I could leave my hand there while the rest of me drifted away.

Outside, we heard Agos laughing.

The spell broke. The edges of his lips moved.

“What did he whisper to you back there?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“Khine—”

“You’re going to find it patronizing.”

“Pretend I won’t.”

He hesitated. “Agos told me…when I said that you were strong enough to protect yourself. He said he knows. He grew up with you. He has no doubt you could take on anyone you wanted to. But even the strongest woman in the world is allowed to get tired once in a while. And he said when that happens, I have to be ready to bear the burden until you’re ready to take it again.”

He said it with gravity enough to make my cheeks burn. I turned away and lifted my hand under the pretence of getting more salve. “What do you think of backwards Jinsein medicine now?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. “We know our way with herbs, at least.”

He smirked. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m really not qualified to have opinions about it.”

“So that whole thing about a Jinsein doctor butchering your face…”

“Fact. Not opinion.”

“Ah.” I peered at my handiwork. “Well then, from one quack to another, I think you’ll be fine. You’ll get a scar. That’s not usually a bad thing. Gives your face character.”

“Maybe for you Jinseins. Zarojo women are particular about flawless skin.”

“Maybe you should lay off from further activities that limit your options.” I set the tray of bandages aside. “I’ll ask Lahei to get someone up here to clean up. I believe I have to get ready for a trip to Yu-yan.”

“If you give me an hour’s sleep, I can join you.”

“Are you sure? I was thinking of taking just Agos with me.”

“From what I understand, you’ll be walking into a lion’s den. Having all of us with you is better. This is hardly the worst shape I’ve been in, and you’ve got a penchant for attracting trouble.”

“Speak for yourself,” I snorted.

Khine leaned back on the table. “I won’t disagree with you there. I did find you.”

I started to protest when I heard the door open. “Anong Kaggawa wishes to see you,” the servant whispered, scuttling through the kitchen. She looked upset. My smile faded. Without a word, I patted Khine’s knee and got up to follow her.

Dai was pacing in his office when I arrived. “You’re back early,” I said.

He rubbed his hands together before pulling himself into his chair. “You were entertaining Huan Anyu as a suitor?” he finally asked. His eyes, I noticed, were dark, so dark they were almost black.

“Ah. That’s what this is about? I’m surprised you didn’t know. I thought everyone did. And with your penchant for hunting down information, I figured you would’ve been in line.”

“I don’t pay attention to needless gossip. I’ve heard about rumours of suitors, and we had always known that Huan was one of these men. But it was brought to my attention this morning that you favoured him in particular.”

I leaned across the table to look him in the eye. “I don’t see what the problem is. I had been without news of my husband for years. It was almost expected that I would start getting offers. I couldn’t reject them outright. Needless gossip, like you said.”

He looked the way I figured my own father might’ve, listening to me defend myself. “I didn’t just imagine your friendliness with him yesterday.”

“Of course I’d be friendly with him. Lord Huan was as eligible a prospect as any. He is a royal, his father is a warlord…” I knew as soon as I dropped the words that it was the wrong thing to say. Dai’s eyes widened, and what started as irritation was turning into full-fledged anger.

“He stole this land from under our noses,” Dai growled.

“Warlord Yeshin pardoned him.”

“He had no right to!” Dai slammed his fists. “This was our land, Queen Talyien. We toiled in these fields, we took care of our own with blood and sweat and tears—the Anyus took things too far, claiming what wasn’t theirs to claim. And you royals let them!”

“Kaggawa,” I said, my voice growing cold. “Enough. Remember who stands in front of you.”

“Yeshin’s bitch pup,” he said under his breath. He shook his head. “I thought you were different. I thought—”

“Because I was courteous to them?” I asked. “Perhaps it is you who disappoints me, Kaggawa. After all of your talk, you’re no better than a Jinsein royal, taking offense at every perceived slight. I never gave Lord Huan anything more than the hope that I may start thinking about moving forward if I could prove Lord Rayyel’s lack of interest in returning to me. Clearly, he grew tired of waiting—he married another while I was away. Or were you not paying attention?”

“If our daughters spoke to me like you do…”

“I am not your daughter, Kaggawa. I am your queen. You will let me speak to you however I want.”

Dai curled his lip, dark eyes dancing. “Is this how you want to play it?”

“I wasn’t aware we were in a game. You really didn’t expect that I lived out in isolation in Oka Shto, did you?”

Judging from the look on his face, I realized that perhaps he thought I did. The reputation of the Bitch Queen was a hard one to shake off.

“I understand your concerns about them,” I continued. “It’s in our best interests to prevent the sort of disaster Rysaran’s dragon visited on our land. But until I find evidence the Anyus have been involved in foul play, my hands are tied. The council won’t entertain baseless accusations.”

“They will try to speak ill of me when you are alone with them,” Dai said in a low voice. “Warlord Ojika will do everything in his power for you to see me as the enemy.”

“Perhaps he will, perhaps he won’t.”

“Yesterday, you were laughing with them like every other simpering royal I’ve met. But I suppose I’m as wrong about you as I was with your husband. As we were with your father. You are all alike—Ikessar hens and Oren-yaro dogs with your empty words and your empty smiles and your meaningless tenets, dragging this land down, bringing us all to ruin.” He leaned across the table, breathing hard. “I am not your enemy, Queen Talyien, but you’ve left me no choice. I will not begrudge you for dallying with your fellow royals, but I need the assurance that you will return to us. That you will not scheme with the Anyus because you think I’ve let my guard down. When you ride to Yu-yan this afternoon, your men must stay behind.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“I’m dealing with a queen who doesn’t understand half of what’s going on in her kingdom,” Dai continued. “I think I’m being fair. Lenient, almost.” He calmed himself with a quick breath and pulled away. “You can take the boy. The rest will stay. Remember that their lives are at stake, should you decide to do anything drastic.” He walked to the door, where I heard him call for his men and order my people brought to his dungeons. I didn’t stop him. Everything else told me I should—my father’s teachings, my hand on my sword, the hard Oren-yaro values that I used to think ran through my blood—but the voices seemed to have lost all power over me. Meaningless tenets. Perhaps the merchant had it right, after all.

A commoner’s tongue, a royal’s temper, so the saying went. It hurt to see the look on my companions’ faces as the hospitality was pulled from under their feet and they were dragged away like common prisoners. I had never felt the leaden weight of the queen’s mask bear down on me as hard as that moment. I remember Khine telling me how much it angered him—how much I angered him whenever I fell back on that familiar pattern. You’d think that would’ve been enough.

The Anyus came to fetch me that afternoon. I greeted them with my head held high, as if nothing was amiss. Lord Huan’s eyes twinkled as he bowed. He was a handsome man, almost near Rayyel’s equal if the women’s gossip was anything to go by, though it was his easygoing manner that briefly attracted me to him. I remembered that night—a drunken kiss during one of the loneliest times of my life, a quiet promise of consideration, and nothing more. Small moments that others could easily set aside. Not me, it seemed. Good intentions don’t come cloaked with instructions. Seeing myself through the eyes of a man like Kaggawa, who was completely unimpressed with anything that had to do with the royal castes, was the final straw. I thought of the girl who wouldn’t cry at her father’s deathbed and could feel the last threads of his shadow slipping from me. Have you discarded who you really are because you’re not who you think you’re supposed to be? I must’ve. Trying to find yourself in a heap of broken shards shouldn’t have to be this hard.

We rode north with only Cho and Lahei as my guard. Cho followed closely in silence, grumbling under his breath once in a while. When I found the opportunity, I rode next to him. “You’re not in Shang Azi anymore, boy,” I murmured, tapping the sword on my hip. “You Zarojo think the Jinsein uncouth, uncivilized. Keep your mouth shut and maybe you’ll see the truth of that.”

He was too shocked to speak back. It wasn’t even that I was exaggerating. Back in the Zarojo Empire, murder was seen as an offense worth dragging someone to court over. In Jin-Sayeng, heads could roll and it would come down to the warlord’s judgment. A necessary death could be reduced to an unfortunate circumstance. Even the idea of blood money was foreign to us. If Lo Bahn was Jinsein, the men who died under his watch would’ve been written off as casualties. The families would’ve been lucky to get an apology.

Yu-yan was a testament to how much the warlords get away with. Once a thriving city known for open trade and bustling markets, it was now a walled fortress against a mountain backdrop, with soldiers at the gates. Soldiers were a common sight at many checkpoints throughout Jin-Sayeng, so that by itself wasn’t strange—even my own father once taxed visitors to Oren-yaro to help pay for the roads. It was the contrast between what Yu-yan had once been and what Warlord Ojika had turned it into that was remarkable. It made me understand Dai’s animosity towards the Anyus, if not his methods of dealing with it. Perhaps I should have visited years ago.

The gates opened as we came within sight of the city. I heard Lahei give a small gasp, which told me this was out of the ordinary. I looked past the soldiers and noted a long line of people on the side of the road, waiting to get in. We stepped past the bridge, and the gates closed behind us.

“What is the security for?” I asked.

“Thieves, bandits, general riff-raff,” Huan replied. “It’s mostly a formality. We don’t really require much in the way of paperwork—just a quick description of what a visitor means to do in the city and how long they’re staying for.”

I heard Lahei snort.

Huan smiled. “Do you disagree, Mistress Kaggawa?”

“You know I do,” she said. “Not that my opinion means anything to you.”

“The rice merchants think we’re being too harsh, you see,” Huan explained. “Quite unfortunate, really. All this resistance…if they would only work with us, we could bring the province into progress further than we already have. Look to your left, Beloved Queen.”

I turned and saw a grand tower, the sort that wouldn’t be out of place in Old Oren-yaro or Shirrokaru or Sutan. Only this one was newly built, not old and crumbling, and it rose taller than the surrounding walls, cresting up almost halfway to the mountain against which Yu-yan was built. A dragon-tower.

I turned back to Huan and Eikaro. They were beaming. “You’re not even trying to hide it, are you?” I asked.

“Hide what, Beloved Queen?” Eikaro asked.

“You’re trying to tame the dragons,” I said. “This thing—why have I never received reports of it? It couldn’t have cropped up overnight. You will explain this at once to me, Lord Huan, Lord Eikaro. I had been led to believe that our relationship was amicable all these years. Was I wrong?”

“Let me guess,” Huan said. “Kaggawa’s doing?”

Lahei’s face twitched, but she refrained from commenting.

“I’m not blind, my lords. I don’t need Kaggawa to tell me what I’m looking at,” I pointed out. “If the Dragonthrone had known all about this, we would’ve put a stop to it. The land still carries scars from Rysaran’s dragon. I can’t gaze out of my balcony in Oka Shto without the bleak reminder staring back at me. You’ve both seen the ruins of Old Oren-yaro. We couldn’t even rebuild on top of it after everything that had transpired.”

“We knew you would react this way, Beloved Queen,” Eikaro replied. “But remember—we invited you when Huan asked for your hand in marriage. We were only starting construction then—had you come, you would’ve received full reports on everything.”

“And then you disappeared,” Huan said.

Eikaro grinned. “Life…”

“Had to go on, right.” I grunted. “So you’ve told me how, but not why.”

“Kaggawa is only partly correct,” Huan said, glancing at Lahei with a smile. “We’re trying to tame the dragons…but only to help defend the city against the onslaught of wild dragons, which attack once in a blue moon. We built the dragon-tower as the first line of defense—if we succeed in taming our own, we can easily traverse to and from the city.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m lost. Are we talking about the same dragons? The mad dragons that have been plaguing these lands for years?”

Eikaro and Huan gave each other a quick look before turning to me. “The idea that these dragons are mad was perpetuated by Kaggawa,” Huan said. “No offense to Mistress Lahei, of course.”

“Don’t even bother with the pleasantries,” Lahei replied. “We all know what you really mean. And you’re lying through your teeth. Don’t think I can’t tell when you royals are throwing your honeyed words about.”

Eikaro grinned. “But maybe we should give you a tour while we talk, Beloved Queen. We hope what you will see will ease your mind.”

“Very little does that these days,” I said with a sigh. “But let’s go.” I dismounted from my horse and followed them down the street and up the wide stone steps that led to the tower, its shadowed form looming over the city like a rotting tooth.