Present

The feast carried on well into the night, as the return celebrations often did. When the hard wine was brought out, the Emperor announced that he would retire, which allowed Koida to slip away as well. Though her father had given little indication through the night that he noticed Koida’s presence, it was still offensive to leave before the Emperor did.

The moment she arose from her seat, Koida’s personal guard sidled away from the conversations and dances they were engaged in and followed her out of the hall.

“Had enough celebration?” Batsai asked.

She smiled up at him. “I miss the quiet of an empty palace.”

“You would make a good soldier’s wife,” he teased. “Pine for him until he comes home, then wish he would get back to war already.”

Koida let this go. She loved having her family home. It was being forced to spend time around the rest of the royal entourage she could do without.

They traversed the mazelike corridors to the royal residence wing of the palace. Once there, they fell into a single file to follow the snaking pattern of boards that would not trigger the shrieking of the nightcaller floors. Nightcaller floors were one of the palace’s many precautions against assassins. Should anyone who didn’t know the pattern attempt to sneak into a residence at night, the hinged boards’ high-pitched scraping would alert every guard within hearing distance and likely wake the sleeping target as well. The serpentine patterns were well-guarded secrets which only the most trusted members of palace staff were privy to.

At Koida’s residence, her guard spread out and searched each chamber thoroughly for hidden threats, then inspected her furniture for poisoned needles, deadly habu adders, and venomous spiders. As usual, they found nothing.

“Be sure you stay closeted tonight, little dragon,” Batsai warned her as she walked him to her outermost chamber. He and Jun had the watch that night and would stay in the sitting room until daybreak when Hyung-Po and Qing would relieve them. “A countryside full of drunken soldiers and unfamiliar faces is a danger to any man, woman, or child, let alone a princess.”

“Of course.” Koida feigned a yawn. “I am exhausted from the wine, anyway. My ladies should come soon to help me undress. Will you let them in?”

Batsai nodded, then took his post at the door. Koida went into her dressing chamber and rang for her waiting ladies, then stood before the looking glass and began attempting to pick bells out of her dark brown, nearly black hair. Her dark hair and purple eyes had come from her father, though her irises were a light violet instead of the plum color Hao, Yoichi, and Shingti all shared. Overall, there was very little of her father in her appearance. Her face was as round as the moon and nearly as pale, marked by a measure of the legendary loveliness of her mother. Perhaps the Fourth Empress had been the silent carrier of the Ro-crippling deficiency that plagued Koida. Her mother had had nearly a full arm’s worth of Heroic Record to prove that she had no trouble controlling her own Ro, but Emperor Hao’s two other extraordinary children were clear proof that he wasn’t to blame for his second daughter’s uselessness.

Koida was still scowling and picking at the first bell cascade when feminine giggling in the outer chamber announced her ladies’ arrival. Jun was an interminable flirt. Batsai showed the ladies into the inner chamber, then let himself back out. The ladies began taking apart Koida’s ceremonial robes, hair dressing, and jewelry while hinting at their desire to gossip about the celebration. Koida ignored their obvious leading. Even in the best of moods, she hated idle chatter.

Finally, the chittering monkeys finished helping Koida into her nightdress and left, taking their constant stream of babble with them.

Koida stuck her head into the outer chamber. Batsai was seated on a cushion, reading a scroll, while Jun practiced Pose of the Mountain, holding himself horizontal to the floor on an extended Spear Hand. His Ro glimmered red in the shape of a serpentine spearhead, the sharp tip lodged in the wooden floorboards. The greatest of artists were said to be capable of holding the Mountain for hours at a time, but Jun’s Ro spear flickered as she watched. He would drop forward soon and have to begin again.

“Good night, Batsai.”

“Good night, little dragon. Dream vast breaths of endless fire,” came his familiar reply.

She slid closed the door and walked to her bed platform, then slid off her velvet residence slippers and climbed up onto the soft layers of feather ticking and luxurious demon beast furs. She put out the bedside lantern and sat in the darkness, eyes adjusting to the scant silver-blue moonlight filtering in around the wooden sliding door closing off her balcony. In the winter, heavy drapes were hung about the door to seal out the cold, but in this early fall, those were still hidden away somewhere. The stretch of nightcaller floor between the balcony and her bed had no pattern of silent boards to follow.

In the outer chamber, Koida heard the floor squeal and a heavy bump, followed by Jun’s muffled curse. Batsai murmured something. Jun groaned and resumed the pose.

As Batsai began to speak again, Koida stood and grabbed the closest of the thick wooden beams crossing her ceiling. Hand over hand, she climbed to the exterior wall, bypassing the unforgiving section of nightcaller floor, then shoved the balcony door with her toe. It rolled open without a sound. She kept the wheels and track heavily greased year-round.

With a swing of her legs, Koida dropped herself onto the stone floor of the balcony, landing as silently as a moth. She slid the door closed behind herself, then found the loose stone in the waist-high wall surrounding the balcony. Behind it, a set of black silks in the style of peasant clothes, but much finer, were folded around a pair of soft leather boots. Working quickly in the chill fall air, she traded her nightdress for the black pants and shirt, then laced on the boots.

Now more appropriately outfitted, she swung herself over the edge of the balcony and scaled the stone wall down to the palace gardens, where numerous fountains burbled into the night. Guards patrolled the perimeter and pathways, occasionally rousting drunken couples out of the shrubbery. Koida crouched and watched, wondering whether Yoichi was somewhere out there with one of the worldly women he’d mentioned, then whether Shingti was. Her sister was never one to brag about her non-martial conquests, but Koida knew there had been several.

Finally, Koida’s chance came. The guards were all facing away from the garden wall, sending off a particularly amorous couple who didn’t want to leave and who declared so loudly. She darted to the garden wall, ran two steps up the side and grabbed onto the top, hauling herself over. She dropped to the other side and slid along the wall like a shadow until she came to the royal stables.

A reinforced lantern cast yellow light through the open doors at both ends of the long building. Peering in through the nearest window, Koida could see the stable hands and drivers were all gathered around a game of Stones and Tiles, laying bets and passing the time while they waited for the visiting nobles and soldiers to return and demand their carriages or mounts for a tipsy ride home.

Koida slipped down the stable wall until she came to the right window, then climbed inside.

An enormous black destrier snorted and stamped his wide hoof in fury.

“Shh.” Koida leaned into the light shining through his stall doors so the monstrous horse could see her face. “It’s only me, you big brute.”

When Pernicious saw it was her, he quieted instantly and began to nuzzle her side. Koida dug into her shirt’s pockets until she found the candied blood oranges she had stashed there for him. His wide eyes flashed bloody red fire, but he nibbled them out of her palm as delicately as a kitten lapping up milk.

Like her sister’s and father’s warmounts, Pernicious was a half-demon, half-horse, built out of unholy slabs of thick muscle, bred to ride down enemies in the chaos of battle. The bloodthirsty half-demon could never be tamed, but he could be befriended. He’d taken a liking to Koida when she was little more than a toddler who had wandered into the stables with a handful candied blood oranges. At the time, her inadequacy manifesting Ro had yet to be discovered, and it was assumed she and Pernicious would dominate the battlefield together with Shingti and their father. Now that everyone knew better, Pernicious mostly spent his time terrifying the stable hands, escaping when he wanted, spreading his seed to every mare he could scent, and smashing small animals that wandered too close. No one but Koida could get near the half-demon safely, let alone ride him. The last one who’d tried had been decapitated with one kick from his broad brimstone hoof.

Candied offering consumed, Pernicious folded his legs and knelt. Koida grabbed his shaggy black mane and lifted a leg to climb on, but he lurched back to his feet, throwing her down.

“Ha ha.” Koida scowled up at him. This was a game he found particularly funny. “There’s enough meat on your bones to feed the war hounds for a month, you know.”

He whickered softly, an almost-human chuckle, and lowered himself again. But as soon as Koida moved her leg, he stood back up.

“That’s the sort of night this is going to be, then?” she asked in a low voice.

Pernicious tossed his head, his mane and tail flying.

“So be it.”

Koida ran up the stall wall and kicked off lightly, launching herself at the warhorse’s broad back. With a screaming whinny, Pernicious circled away, his hairy fetlocks glowing with fiery tongues of orange, yellow, and red Ro as he activated his Darting Evasion. Koida hit his spinning haunches and bounced off. Just before she slammed into the far wall, she grabbed a hank of his tail and pulled, snapping her body perpendicular to his and letting her feet land against the wall like a floor. She flipped backward, arms thrown wide, and dropped into place on his back.

Pernicious howled, his scream split into nine minor harmonics, and reared. It was his Petrifying Shriek of Legions, intended to paralyze anyone within hearing distance with fear.

Koida just laughed in victory and grabbed his mane. The beast’s demonic scream had never worked against her. Most likely because she knew that all it took was a handful of candied fruit to reduce him to an oversized lapdog.

With a kick of one enormous hoof, Pernicious smashed the stall door open and stormed down the center of the stables. He made straight for the stable hands and carriage drivers.

“No,” Koida snapped, yanking sharply with both hands and pulling his head to the left. “We’ll find you something bigger to kill.”

Mollified by the promise of deadlier prey, Pernicious wove around the terrified servants and galloped out into the moonlit night.

Together, they raced across the countryside, the cold fall wind tearing at their hair. They followed the Horned Serpent River to Boking Iri, then turned sharply into the city, Pernicious’s brimstone hooves striking sparks on the paving stones. He let loose another Petrifying Shriek of Legions, rattling the air and ensuring that no late-night busybody would look out their window and see the second princess riding through the city.

They whirled down several streets and switchbacks and a few alleyways almost too narrow for Pernicious’s broad body before coming to the beggar’s row. Here the Ro-crippled, the addicts, and the insane huddled together around smoldering rag fires and crouched inside poorly constructed shelters of stolen or scavenged boards. These were the Empire’s untouchables, forced into the dark corners where no one from polite society had to look at—or smell—them. And, Koida knew, this was where she would be if she had been born anything but the daughter of the Emperor. Forgotten and homeless. Cast away.

She didn’t slow Pernicious, just threw the bagful of silver she’d brought along at the foot of the largest group of them as she rode through. Behind her, she heard the mad scramble to collect the shiny links but didn’t look back.

After the city, the princess and the destrier crossed the river, Pernicious taking them straight through the deepest part and soaking Koida to the bone. They rode through the forest, searching out the promised prey. Animals were getting harder and harder to come by this close to Boking Iri, and the demon beasts were almost nonexistent in the area, hunted off by fur traders dealing in the most tender and resilient of pelts and students of the Path of the Living Blade hoping to advance themselves to masters by absorbing a demon’s Ro and consuming the precious stone at the demon’s core. After an hour’s hunt, however, Pernicious tracked down a mountain lion to fight. Their competing screams echoed off the trees and frightened sleeping birds from the branches as they circled and brawled. The mountain lion tried to leap onto Pernicious’s back, but the warhorse activated his Darting Evasion, kicking at the same time. The mountain lion yowled. The flaming brimstone hooves struck its skull with a splintering crack. The big cat fell dead. Pernicious stomped on the back of its neck for good measure.

A white-gold cloud of Ro filtered up from the mountain lion’s chest, lighting up the trampled undergrowth and the clawed and torn trees as it flowed into Pernicious’s broad chest. The half-demon’s eyes glowed fiery orange as he absorbed the Ro into his heartcenter.

Koida had seen the process many times, both when Pernicious killed another beast and when Master Lao defeated her in sparring, but still she watched with wide-eyed fascination. It was brutal and beautiful all at once, the essence of the Path of the Living Blade. The strong survived, the victor went on to more victories, until the day they met an opponent stronger than themselves and became the defeated.

With the warhorse’s desire for battle satisfied, they followed the river north, out of the forest and into the mountains, climbing higher and higher until they came to a cliff beside the Horns, the twin waterfalls that gave the Horned Serpent its name.

Pernicious folded his legs and rolled in the dewy grass, trying to crush Koida, but she leapt off before she was caught under him. Making a rude gesture at the enormous warhorse, she went to the cliff and dangled her legs off the edge. Stretching out below was the valley, its forest a dark shadow along the silvery strand that was the river. Lights glowed yellow like neighboring stars in the windows of the Sun Palace, and farther downstream, smaller stars marked Boking Iri, the jagged teeth of the Shangyang Mountains hemming them in from the south.

It was the entire world to Koida, everything she had ever known. She’d never been outside the valley. She sat up on the cliff’s edge and stared down at it, wondering what it was like anywhere else. Uncountable ages later, an inferno of muscle and fur scooted up behind her, head down and eyes closed so he couldn’t see over the edge. She leaned back against Pernicious and fell asleep.