“It’s time to go,” said Andahai, ignoring me. “The carriage is nearly here. You need to rest, Shiori. We all need to rest.”
Why did he flick his eyes at Hasho when he said it?
“What did I miss?” I glanced back at my youngest brother. He’d been quiet this whole time, keeping to himself and eating sparingly. A stray cat had trotted up to his side, and a sparrow perched on his shoulders, nibbling on leftover crumbs. He’d always been my most sensitive brother, and I assumed he needed extra time to recover from his transformation. “Is Hasho—”
“He’s fine.”
Andahai’s curt response triggered my suspicion, and before my brothers could stop me, I pushed my way to Hasho’s side.
“It’s too hot to be wearing a cloak,” I said, tugging on the heavy fabric draped over his shoulder. He flinched, and finally I understood why he had retreated from our company.
His right arm—the very one that Bandur had cursed—was still a wing. And black like a pocket of night.
“Hasho!” I exclaimed in shock.
Hasho lifted the wing, letting its ends peek out of the cloak. Its feathers were long and tapered, in a cruel imitation of fingers. A bird’s arm, not a man’s. Never could it grasp a cup of tea or write or draw or even fit into a sleeve.
“It’s one arm,” Hasho said, folding the wing to his side. “It could have been worse.” He managed a half grin. “I only need one hand to beat Reiji at chess.”
“Oh, Hasho,” I whispered, a sob racking my chest. “Why didn’t you…why didn’t you say something? Maybe Kiki can track Khramelan down, maybe it’s not too late and he can—”
“Nothing can be done,” my youngest brother interrupted. “I’ve known it for some time. I’ve accepted it.”
“But—”
Hasho stroked my cheek with his feathers. “This is hardly the worst of outcomes. I can still speak to the birds—and Kiki.”
His tone was gentle, but firm. Don’t argue, it pleaded.
My brother retracted his wing. “At least people will believe us when we tell them we spent our days as cranes.”
“People are already starting to believe,” I said through the ache in my throat. “And thanks to Khramelan, we’ll have to confront that sooner rather than later.”
I’d hoped Khramelan might help me solve Kiata’s demon problem, but he’d only aggravated them beyond measure. I couldn’t ignore the demons forever.
“Is it our right to keep them imprisoned?” I murmured, almost to myself. “Magic…and the demons. Maybe that was our ancestors’ mistake in the first place.”
“You can’t free the demons,” said Reiji. “That’d be madness.”
It would. And yet…I couldn’t bear the thought of Kiata suffocating for another thousand years without magic.
Maybe I was being selfish for thinking of how Hasho’s wing would brand him the rest of his life, of how a touch of Raikama’s curse would always haunt my brothers, of how I would never be able to traipse down Cherhao Street—or anywhere—without hearing whispers that I was a witch or a monster. Of how I so desperately wanted home to be home again.
Maybe I was being foolish for thinking I played any role in Kiata’s fate at all.
Yet if I did nothing, who would? Was it worse to be a kite with no anchor, wandering lost on the wind, or a kite that didn’t dare seize the wind and never flew? One at least had a chance of finding home, however slim. The other had none.
As I stepped into the carriage, I knew which kite I had to choose.
“You sent for me?” My voice wobbled, and I bowed as low as I could, the way I used to when I knew I was in for a stern reprimand. The only time Father ever summoned me alone to his private chambers was when I had done something inexcusable—and riding a dragon into the middle of Gindara put all my prior mischief to shame.
My imagination went wild: I braced myself to be banished, married off to an A’landan prince, or put in a cell and only fed mushy rice with bitter tea.
“Are you rested?” said Father, interrupting my thoughts.
From his harsh tone, I knew that wasn’t an invitation to rise. “Yes.”
“Demons of Tambu, daughter,” he grumbled then. “The commotion you’ve made in the last few hours…”
I’d never heard my father curse before. “I’m sorry. I know it’s my fault…. I shouldn’t have—”
“I want to see your arm,” he said. “Your brothers told me what the demon did. That he…he injured you.”
That wasn’t what I expected.
I rolled up my sleeve carefully and undid my old bandage. I’d bathed since my return, but I still smelled strongly of the ointment Takkan had slathered over my skin, and it prickled my nostrils.
Father’s jaw tensed at the gashes on my arm. It was a good thing Bandur was already locked away, because he looked ready to stab the demon and chop him into bits for stew.
“Your hands, too?” Father asked.
“Those are old wounds,” I explained of the scars on my fingers. Usually in his presence, I hid them under my sleeves, but now my hands moved while I spoke, and the scars on my fingers tingled. I’d stopped paying attention to them sometime on my journey to Ai’long. They’d served as a painful reminder of the price I had paid to save my brothers. But lately, I was starting to see them in a different way—as a sign of strength and all that still must be done.
“The bandages will need to be changed,” Father said. There was a bucket of hot water behind him, which made me realize he’d been waiting for me.
I started, but Father blocked me. “I’ll do it,” he said.
He chuckled softly at my surprise. “I wasn’t always an emperor, you know. Like your brothers, I trained to be a sentinel. My father made sure I laced and polished my own armor, scrubbed my own bowls, stitched my own wounds—same as any other soldier. Hold still, this may hurt.”
I bit down on my lip while he cleaned my wound, fixing my attention on the wooden window screen.
Father’s quarters were sparse, with a simple rosewood table, a matching shelf filled with scrolls and books, a long divan embellished with cranes and orchids, and a bronze mirror that had been in the palace since the reign of Kiata’s first emperor.
After Mother died, his quarters became his private sanctuary, and guests were permitted only into the forecourt. Even my brothers and I could count on one hand the number of times we’d been invited into Father’s residential apartments.
Yet here I was, shedding bandages onto a woolen carpet gifted by a king of Samaran, my wound stanched by raw silk that’d traveled the Spice Road from A’landi to Kiata, and my flesh sewn together by an emperor of the Nine Eternal Courts.