Present

Koida, second princess of the Shyong San Empire, focused her breathing and stilled her mind. She focused on the meagre amount of amethyst Ro at her heartcenter, circling and swirling like a handful of purple sand tossed into a river. Disordered. Unmanageable. Something that would slip through her fingers the moment she tried to grab it.

“Are you ready, second princess?” Master Lao asked.

After another moment of intense focus, Koida tried to send the Ro through her shoulder, down the pathway in her arm. Instead, her veins tingled as the energy followed them, seeking out and forcing its way along the easiest routes, traveling down the outside bone of her lower arm and into the heel of her hand. She could feel the Ro manifesting off-balance, but there was nothing she could do to correct it. It was all that she could do to force enough into her hand to manifest a glowing purple bo-shan stick the length of her forearm. By the time she finished, sweat cooled her temples. The stick was barely there, translucent, a ghost of the weapon it should be. The color—still a perfect match for her eyes—was a visual reminder that at seventeen years old her Ro was no more advanced than that of six-year-old.

Koida opened her eyes. “Ready, Master.”

Lao stepped forward and swung his glowing red bo-shan stick—this one as solid as stone and the proper color for an advanced Ro—overhanded at her head. Koida sidestepped and countered, then spun and swung a counterattack upward at her master’s thigh. Lao blocked as he evaded, the impact of their sticks ringing in the midmorning air.

Across the courtyard, Koida’s personal guards looked up long enough to ascertain that she had not been harmed, then returned to their game of Stones and Tiles. It was a ridiculous precaution, being surrounded night and day by guards inside the secure walls of the Sun Palace, but while her father and sister were away, the guards watched over her like a band of mother tigers. Couldn’t leave the helpless Ro-cripple alone.

Koida bounced backward, evading another strike, and switched her feet. She stepped in and slashed her amethyst stick up from the reverse angle, this time at Master Lao’s ribs. He met her attack, another thwack sounding through the courtyard, then a scrape as he shoved her stick off. He sidestepped and dropped to one knee on the colorful glazed tiles of the courtyard, slapping his stick down at her toes. Koida switched feet again to avoid a broken toe and chopped downward at his collarbone. Still kneeling, Lao raised his arm over his head and knocked her attack aside with a hastily manifested High Shield—a glistening ruby shield the length of his forearm. Without a moment’s pause, he swung his stick at her shin.

She slid her foot backward, forced to waste valuable attacking opportunities on smacking Master Lao’s attack aside with her own bo-shan. She had never been able to manifest a shield. Or anything but a useless stick.

Lao spun away from her, spiraling up to standing once more. Koida snapped her wrist backward, whipping the amethyst stick over to rap her master on the head. He raised his arm and blocked with his High Shield again.

Movement by Lao’s left foot caught Koida’s eye. A fuzzy black and blue wool worm about as long as her pinkie crawling across the courtyard. The creature looked frantic, as if it were running for its life from the stomping feet of incomprehensible giants.

“Your weapon, princess,” Master Lao said, stepping over the wool worm without even noticing it. “Focus!”

In Koida’s hand, the bo-shan flickered like a guttering lamp and lost most of the little physical substance she’d been able to give it. Like this, a strike would more likely whistle right through the stick than be stopped by it.

Koida bit her lips together and forced as much Ro as she could manage down through her arm and into the weapon. If she let her mind wander too far, the stick would disappear, the Ro returning to her heartcenter, and there was no telling how long it would take her to remanifest the weapon—or if she even could. She could usually only manage one or two manifestations strong enough to train with per day, and never more than one at a time.

She still wasn’t able to force the Ro through the correct pathway to manifest the stick in a perfect fighting grip, but slowly, the weapon regained the lost sturdiness and color.

Koida nodded at Master Lao.

He pressed forward, feet following the zigzagging step pattern common to bo-shan combat, while he slashed the stick at her diagonally from the left and right, left and right. Koida blocked, blocked, blocked, then pulled her body out of line, giving Lao a smaller target, and spun around to his rear. She lashed out with a backfist from her free hand.

It almost landed on the back of Master Lao’s skull, but his High Shield arm swooped over his shoulder. Her bare knuckles struck the hard, glowing surface instead of his head. It felt as if they splintered on contact, like she had backfisted a ruby wall.

“Ah!” Koida cried out as much from surprise as the pain. Her bo-shan stick disappeared as she lost concentration completely. A small amount of her Ro prickled back up through her arm and shoulder into her heartcenter, but the majority formed a small cloud that filtered into Master Lao’s chest.

“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t conceded. This match isn’t over.”

With a terse downward snap of his fist, Master Lao dismissed his own bo-shan and grabbed Koida’s hand.

“You are incapacitated,” he said, studying the angry red skin along the ridge of her knuckles. They throbbed in time with her heart. “The match is over.”

“But I can continue fighting, Master,” she protested, forcing her voice to return to the polite student-speaking-to-master tone. In truth, it felt like her hand bones were jagged shards of glass, but she didn’t want to quit training for the day. She’d almost had him this time.

Within the Path of the Living Blade, Ro was absorbed through combat. A little through these training matches when one participant was incapacitated or yielded, and a lot through dueling, battle, and war when an enemy or opponent was killed. Though Koida always lost these training matches with Master Lao, she didn’t think she had lost this particular match, and she didn’t know why her Ro had behaved as if she’d been defeated. She hadn’t admitted defeat or been incapacitated; her weapon had just been broken. She could have finished the fight bare-handed—indeed, she would’ve had to if this had been a fight for her life, as it so often was in the world outside the palace.

“Apologies, second princess, but you cannot continue fighting.” Master Lao probed the red mark, eliciting a wince from her. “You may have a broken hand.”

“I would like to continue training, Master.” She couldn’t order him to continue their fight outright—even the second princess must respect the rules of the student-master dynamic—but she did infuse her voice with royal authority. She might not be able to remanifest her stick, but there were always hand and foot techniques. Perhaps she would never absorb enough Ro to use the weapon techniques as intended, but to learn them could only do her good.

Master Lao waved at the guards. “Please escort the second princess to the court alchemists. See if they can mix her a salve to repair the damage.”

Batsai, the captain of her personal guard, joined them.

“But, Master, I could practice kicks,” Koida said. “My legs aren’t injured.”

“This discussion is closed,” Lao said, his voice a stone wall. He covered his closed fist with a flat palm and bowed. “Good training today, second princess.”

“Thank you, Master.” Koida mirrored his motion, trying not to grimace with the frustration of being dismissed or the pain in her knuckles when she covered them.

Batsai waited for her to precede him, then fell into step beside her. The other three guards in her escort fanned out behind them.

“That spinning backfist looked good,” Batsai said as they stepped into the cool shade of the courtyard portico.

Koida frowned. “For a cripple.”

Batsai stopped and turned to face her.

“Do I grovel and fawn over you, second princess?” he asked. “Am I known to wheedle your favor through empty compliments?”

Personally responsible for her protection since she was a baby, Batsai was one of the few people in the Empire who wasn’t afraid to speak to her that way. His honesty was a rare treasure in a sea of courtiers and nobles all frightened of losing their heads to the royal executioner’s Falling Blade Wall technique.

“Apologies, Batsai,” Koida said. “My anger took control and shamed me. Can you forgive your princess?”

The captain let out a grunt and nodded. “Better learn to differentiate between the honesty of a friend and the sweet lies of a foe, little dragon, before you burn us all.”

Before he turned back and began walking again, his hand shot out, and he tweaked her nose as he had when she was still a child. Koida grinned and caught up to him, the rest of her guard following behind.

They climbed the steps from the training courtyard into the cool, shadowed halls of the Sun Palace. As they wound through the mazelike corridors, courtiers, officials, and her father’s concubines backed against the walls and bowed to the second princess.

Proper conduct didn’t require that Koida return their obeisance with acknowledgement—none of them ranked highly enough or were her blood relations or master—so she ignored them. A nod of her head would only serve as permission to speak with her, and she knew they were all dying to ingratiate themselves so she would plead their causes to her father, Emperor Hao. Over the seventeen years of her life, Koida had become adept at avoiding these smiling traps.

The Eastern tower was the only remaining section of the original castle, a stout stone fortification that the luxurious new palace had consumed long before Koida’s birth. These days it housed the court alchemists and eunuchs, far removed from where an explosion could harm one of the royal family.

Outside the door of the Eastern tower, Batsai stopped.

“Wait here,” he ordered the other three soldiers. “Guard the tower until we’ve returned.”

“Yes, captain.” They took up spots on either side of the doorway

Alone now, Koida and Batsai climbed the spiraling stairs.

“Why leave them behind?” she asked him.

The captain smirked. “Jun has been desperate to master the Serpentine Spear ever since his brother did. I wouldn’t put it past that idiot to try making off with something.”

“Oh.”

Koida could understand the young guard’s temptation. Though most of her visits to the Eastern tower now were for powders to ease her monthly pain, as a child watching her sister Shingti advance from student to mastery of the Path of the Living Blade with seeming ease, Koida had dreamed of a potion or pill that would advance her Ro and make her as strong and capable as anyone else in the empire. Unfortunately, even with all their knowledge and experimentation, the court alchemists had yet to find a concoction that would cure a Ro-cripple like her.

The higher they climbed, the more overwhelming the stink of strange metallic vapors and chemical salts became. Floorboards overhead creaked with activity, and muffled voices drifted down from above.

At the entrance to the laboratory—little more than a hatch in the ceiling—Batsai went in and inspected the room for any hidden threats to Koida, then returned and stood aside, allowing her to enter alone.

Inside, the smell was even more intense. Busy alchemists and apprentices leaned over bubbling cauldrons, dusting multicolored powders from grindstones into phials, and dipping precious gems in smoking solutions.

“Second princess?” An aging alchemist with black dye smudging her hairline and charcoal darkening her eyebrows bowed over. She rose gracefully and asked, “You wish for your monthly medicine?”

“Gratitude, Sulyeon, but Master Lao sent me.” Koida pulled her arms from her sleeves and showed Sulyeon her hand. “He believed it to be broken and requested that you mix a salve to repair the damage.”

In vexation, Sulyeon’s false eyebrows attempted to touch in the center of her forehead.

“May a thousand suns burn Lao and his ignorance,” she said, prodding Koida’s throbbing knuckles. “We have no salve that can repair broken bones in a day. We practice science here. If the fool wants magic, he should send the second princess to the eunuchs.” Sulyeon finished her rant and inspection of Koida’s knuckles at the same time. “Bruised, not broken. A tincture of distilled green haze will soothe the tenderness and prevent discoloration.”

While the alchemist went to a long workbench covered with jars and stone boxes and flasks, Koida’s attention was drawn to the rough wall of wooden shelves dividing the laboratory into a halfmoon. This wall of shelving had not existed on her last visit. She could see movement in the crack between two shelves but couldn’t discern what was being done on the other side or who was doing it.

Sulyeon returned with a gritty green ointment that smelled like sharp herbs and salts. She rubbed the concoction onto Koida’s knuckles, and within moments, the throbbing subsided.

“That is much better. I think I will tell Master Lao that your science is not far from magic,” Koida said, dipping her head to the reluctantly pleased alchemist. “Gratitude, gifted healer.”

Koida slipped her hands back inside her sleeves and was about to ask Sulyeon about the shelves dividing the room when a slender, white-haired form ducked out from behind the barrier into the laboratory.

“Cousin Yoichi?”

The young man stopped midstride, clearly surprised, then bowed to her. “Cousin Koida.”

She returned his bow. Though Yoichi was not truly her cousin, he was a blood relation. Shyong Liu Yoichi was her father’s only known son, a bastard from a harem girl. The version of his story Koida had heard was that, twenty-three years before, Shingti’s mother, the late First Empress, had been told by the eunuchs she could never have a child. Distraught, the First Empress asked the Emperor’s most beautiful harem girl to stop taking precautions and sent Emperor Hao to her. Two months later, both the First Empress and the harem girl were pregnant. The eunuchs who’d pronounced the First Empress infertile were put to death for their blunder. Not wanting her child to have competition for the throne but unwilling to kill a pregnant woman, the First Empress sent the harem girl away. Shingti was born the heir, and the First Empress died in childbirth. Her death seemed only a tragic accident until Koida was born to her father’s fourth wife, the Fourth Empress, who also died giving birth. One at a time over the following years, the remaining Empresses died of illnesses and accidents. Behind closed doors, citizens claimed the deaths were the result of a curse put on the Emperor’s wives by the wronged harem girl.

Rumors continued to fly until five summers previous when Yoichi had appeared at court to petition the Emperor for his right to the throne. Though his hair was snowy white, Yoichi’s high cheekbones, slanting jaw, and purple eyes left no doubt as to who had sired him. He was a looking glass image of Emperor Hao as a young man, but handsomer, nearly beautiful, as if an artist had refined the father’s characteristics in the son. His mother, Yoichi explained, had died in childbirth like Shingti’s and Koida’s, a complication the midwife had speculated came from their shared father. He then revealed his Heroic Record—the tattoos covering his arms and chest which recorded his greatest feats of battle. He had waited to come to the palace until he had advanced himself and mastered the Path of the Living Blade so that he would be worthy of his place in the Shyong San dynasty.

Though Emperor Hao had refused to take away Shingti’s birthright and give it to Yoichi, he had accepted his illegitimate son into the royal household, going so far as to give him the Shyong clan name and legalizing his rank as noble above any other being in the empire excepting the Emperor and his daughters. This had suited Yoichi, and to spare his half-sisters the shame of addressing a bastard as an equal, he had suggested they simply call one another cousin.

“What are you doing up here?” Koida asked.

“Ah…” A slight discomfort twisted Yoichi’s beautiful features. “That might be a conversation for a more…worldly woman than yourself, little cousin.”

“I’m worldly.” As she said it, she realized that the declaration made her sound even more childish than if she’d kept her mouth shut. But Cousin Yoichi was in his early twenties and always seemed to be up to something interesting. Whenever he was around, she wanted to impress him so that he would let her in on the secret.

Yoichi faltered. “Don’t tell your father that you saw me here or that I told you why I came. He’ll hang me for corrupting your innocence.”

“I swear,” Koida promised. “Not a word.”

“Sometimes men—” He cast around for the words. “—visit with women…alone…”

“Cousin, I am not a child. I know what intercourse is.” There were plenty of scrolls in the royal library explaining how it was done and giving tips on making the experience more enjoyable.

Yoichi’s pale eyebrows arched toward his shaggy white hair. Then a grin broke out on his face.

“Little cousin is already planning her harem,” he teased. They both knew that unless Shingti abdicated the throne, Koida would never be the empress and have no right to a harem. “Fine, if you know so much, then you know the consequences a careless night can have?”

Koida nodded. “Pregnancy.”

“But there are ways to prevent that.” He produced a stone phial from his sleeve. “I’m taking precautions to assure there will be no more bastards born into our family line. Not by me, in any case.”

“Oh.” Koida’s face colored as she realized the significance this precaution would have for one such as Yoichi. She pressed a closed fist to her heart and gave a remorseful bow. “Apologies, elder cousin. Your little cousin should not have pried.”

“It is nothing,” Yoichi returned easily. The phial disappeared back into his robes. “What force caused you to brave the stink of the Eastern tower today?”

“I bruised my knuckles training,” Koida explained, pushing back her sleeve to reveal the pungent green salve soaking into the back of her hand.

“Training?” Yoichi glanced down at her martial attire as if just only now seeing it. “I would have expected you to spend this morning dressing for court.”

“Court?” Koida canted her head. “Today? But Father and Shingti are still on campaign.”

“No one told you? A messenger came in during the night. The Wungs surrendered. The Emperor and first princess will return home this evening.”