Brigit's Flame Entry - June Week 5 - The Demon Spinning Webs
Brigit's Flame Entry (Week 3 - "For where we are is hell")
Word Count - 3373 words
Genre - Fiction (Tsuou 'verse, no prior knowledge necessary [hopefully, you have no idea how much time I've spent making sure that each reference to Otherworld was explained])
Chronology: (for those who are trying to piece together the chronology of my randomly written snippets): This takes place after Otherworld, which is technically the second novella (i did NaNoWriMo a lot) of Tsuou 'verse. It references the main plot of Otherworld, but every reference should be explained. There's a lot of culture dropped in this story (sorry, one day i'll properly write a story that's all culture and doesn't just reference it here and there), because the motivation of a major character of Otherworld hinges pretty much on one event in her life. It's referred to pretty explicitly in this story.
warnings, warnings, warnings! Tsuou-verse is not a happy fantasy 'verse. Mentions of murder, assassination, second hand accounts of blood and gore, some incestuous implications (nothing explicit, I cannot write anything explicit to save my life, I just cringe and feel awkward), uh, I can't think of anything else. @_@
Notes: title comes from my translation of Swallowtail Butterfly, originally by Fish Leong.
The Demon Spinning Webs
(The Trumpet of Angels)
The bed shifts, and Illin pulls the blankets closer to her. She doesn’t crack an eye open, but she can tell-from the pause and faint huff of laughter-that Sheren knows she’s awake. She’s given up trying to hide things from Sheren; not even Tasui Kirihari tries to hide from Sheren Entihari anymore.
He sits on the side of the bed. “Morning,” he says, and she can tell from the way his voice resonates in the room that he’s facing away, that he’s looking anywhere but her, that he is going to pretend that this didn’t happen.
She says, “Good morning, Sheren,” and rolls around to peer at him.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, faced away. He doesn’t turn around to acknowledge her, but the muscles in his back tense a bit. It’s probably the most she’ll get from him. “It’s a lovely morning,” he says, as if to himself.
Illin doesn’t reply, just blinks. She bunches the blankets up in her fists, lets her cheek rest against the softness of the pillow and waits. Sheren sits for a long time before he finally stands and dresses. She watches him, blinking steadily every ten seconds. It takes her thirty blinks before he’s dressed and standing at the doorway. He still hasn’t looked at her once.
His voice is quiet when he says-not to her, but to the air beside her, “Illin is so very young.” He doesn’t look at her as he walks out.
“Sheren,” Illin replies to the empty side of the bed, “is so very, very dumb.”
*
Kier meets her every morning at the training grounds. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t greet her good morning, just hands her a knife by the blade and says, “Ready?”
Illin always nods, always wraps her smaller fingers around the grip and sinks into a ready stance. She lets her body-wrapped in swathes of heavy skirts-talk for her; it’s the only language that Kier and Illin share.
This time she doesn’t take the knife. She tilts her head to the side and says, “I’m sleeping with Sheren.”
Kier says, “That isn’t wise.” He doesn’t put the knife away.
“I don’t care.” She tilts her chin up. “I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
“You don’t want to get involved with Sheren Entihari.” Kier’s hand shifts on the knife, adjusting the balance. His stance shifts, and Illin can read worry in his posture. “He’ll murder you if he thinks it’ll help Lord Tasui.”
“I’ll murder him if I think it helps Tasui,” Illin lies. She doesn’t move to take the knife, even though it’s still being offered to her. She tries to read into that, but Kier’s stance says worry and the outstretched knife says that he’s not worried about her, he’s worried for her. She doesn’t reach for it. “I think the two of us will be fine.”
Kier says, “Illin, you’re so young.”
“I’m an adult,” Illin says. “I passed the rite of adulthood. You were there. Sheren was there.” After a moment’s thought, she adds, “Tasui was there.”
“Lord Tasui,” Kier automatically corrects.
“Sheren calls him Tasui.” Illin bunches her hands in her skirt. The fabric is crisp and cool from the early morning air, and it rustles loudly in her ears. She doesn’t miss the way Kier’s eyes flicker to her hands, and then back to her face.
“You, little sister,” Kier says, “are not Sheren.”
*
Sheren doesn’t say anything to her in public. After last month, that’s probably for the best. Sheren never liked talking about his sister Yelin, and he’s even more reticent now. He only appears to speak briefly to Tasui Kirihari-and Aika Shari, they’re a pair now, the talk of all of Court.
Illin covers her face with a fan and lowers her eyes as expected of her. She stands in a dark corner and pretends that she doesn’t mind.
“You tell such pretty lies,” Sheren whispers at night, when it’s dark and she can’t see his face. “You say, ‘leave me alone’ when you mean ‘look at me’. You lie with your body, when everybody else lies with their mouth.”
“Only to you,” she says, and stares into the darkness. She can’t see him-perhaps he can see her, she never knows what Sheren can do. She’s never wanted to. She’s never tried to see.
“I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” Sheren says, his back against hers, facing away.
She breathes steadily, feigning sleep. Sheren knows the difference and continues talking. He talks for hours, and Illin listens. He stops talking when the sun begins to rise and sits up. Illin pulls the blankets to her chin, doesn’t open her eyes, and waits.
“Illin is so very young,” he says at the doorway. He hasn’t slept in a week-he calls it penance.
Illin calls it this: “Sheren is so very, very dumb.”
*
“Only a year ago,” Kier says, circling her, “you were a child.”
Illin doesn’t need the reminder. She stands straight, legs locked. She is not here to fight. She doesn’t turn when Kier moves into her blind spot, doesn’t close her eyes and let her ears and nose and skin see for her. She stands straight and looks forward, because she is not here to fight.
“And now you’re trying to make decisions that impact people beyond your reach.”
“Sheren isn’t beyond my reach.” Her skin prickles when Kier stops directly behind her. “He comes to me.”
“At night.”
Illin says, “So what?”
“Illin,” Keir says, “it’s not a coincidence that you look like Yelin Entihari.”
She doesn’t whirl around, even though she’d like to-like to hear her skirts snap in the wind, like to watch Keir blink in surprise, like to slide a knife out from up her sleeve.
Instead, she doesn’t turn. She lifts her chin as regally as she can and whispers, “I’m an adult.”
*
She’s in bed when Sheren comes in. His feet are silent and when he reaches her bed, he sits on the opposite side of it. It dips under her weight, and she lets her grip on the blankets go slack.
“Yelin,” he begins, “Yelin didn’t mean it.”
She waits. He strips and climbs into bed with her. His hand is cold on her shoulder, and he turns her bodily, reads her language in the way she lies limp.
“It’s Tauren,” he says. “She doesn’t remember him, just remembers that he died.”
She doesn’t call it an excuse-doesn’t need to, he knows it’s an excuse but it’s something to cling to in long dark nights.
A pause. “She was five when Tauren died,” he says. “I was four.” His hand tightens a bit, and then he says, “Yelin thought he would pass the rite. She didn’t know better. She was five, and Tauren was eight and invincible.”
Illin reached, let her hand rest against Sheren’s cheek. “Nobody is invincible.”
He moves her hand away, lies down so their shoulders are touching. “Tauren was never going to pass the rite of blood, even if he took it a year later. He wasn’t-”
She inhales with him, exhales with him, waits for ten seconds.
“He entered the rite because he wanted to,” Sheren says. “It had nothing to do with Tasui.”
Illin doesn’t keep track of the Kirihari rites. She knows what it is-everybody knows what the Kirihari rite is, knows that it’s the trial by blood and that it’s you and a room of wolves and passing means coming out alive-but she doesn’t know who failed, when, why. She knows that Tasui passed, Arinal passed, Tauren did not pass.
“Tasui saw it,” Sheren whispers into her hair. “Tasui saw it when he entered the rite. They showed it to him, Tauren dead by their teeth and claws. Tasui saw it and felt it and mourned it and you’ll still conspire for his death.”
She doesn’t say, “I am not Yelin,” because this is healing. She turns and closes her eyes and feigns sleep-Sheren whispers, “I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” and she knows that it’s Yelin he’s talking to.
*
“One oath doesn’t make you an adult,” Kier says. “The Rehari rites say that all you need is one completed oath to become an adult, but that’s just in name.”
He doesn’t attack her, and she doesn’t defend. Instead he stops circling her; he stands directly behind her, in her blind spot, and talks. She can’t read his body language, and he can read hers-she keeps her posture carefully relaxed, blank, expressionless. They are equals in this conversation.
She doesn’t remember ever talking to Kier alone, just the two of them; it’s always been her in the center of the circle and Keir just outside, waiting to pounce. It’s been older brother training younger sister, never the brother and sister as equals, or even the other way around.
She says, “You were younger when you passed the rite.”
“Lord Tasui was three when he passed the Kirihari rites. That didn’t make him any more an adult than me at three.”
It does, Illin thinks. She thinks of blood and the edge of a knife running along a palm. At night, Sheren paints the scene of Tasui in a dark room, wolf-eyes gleaming, blood everywhere. He says Tasui doesn’t have nightmares, but that’s only because there are more things out there to be terrified of.
She says, “I know enough.”
Kier says, “Sheren is dangerous. Yelin was his sister. You shouldn’t be involved with him.”
“I’m an adult, older brother.” Illin doesn’t take the knife, doesn’t whirl around to slap an open palm into his chest, doesn’t move from the center of the circle. “I can do what I please.”
*
“Yelin,” Sheren whispers, “why would you do this?”
Illin modulates her breathing, just a bit deeper, a bit more like sleep. They say that Yelin was killed in her sleep-Sheren could slide a knife between her ribs right now, and she doesn’t know if she would stop him.
“What would killing Tasui have gotten you? Tauren would still be dead. Arinal was never your ally, your patron, your vassal. You set up Tasui against Arinal, even though neither of them wanted to fight against each other.
“You would have stayed Yelin Entihari, and you know as well as I that even if you wanted to go through the rite, you’re too old to try.”
A pause, a bitter laugh, and then, “Even if you were young enough, it wouldn’t matter would it, Yelin? You’re a girl and there are no women Kirihari. Is that what drove you to madness? That Tauren failed and you couldn’t try? Was it because if Tauren failed, then nobody was allowed to succeed?”
Sheren hisses into the darkness, “I want you to answer me!”
Illin says nothing, just lies there with her fair hair tumbled along her shoulders. In the dark, under blankets, her back to Sheren’s, she can be the Yelin that Sheren needs to confront. She doesn’t turn to Sheren, because Yelin never answered to her younger brother. Sheren doesn’t turn to face her, because even the night can’t hide the fact that her eyes are green and Yelin’s eyes were brown.
And when the morning chill begins to set in, he whispers, “What did Tasui do to you?” His voice shakes, he inhales deeply. “He wasn’t the one to kill Tauren. He wasn’t the one to push Tauren into the rite. Why Tasui? Why would you kill the one person who mattered to me?”
*
Illin says, “I’m old enough to make my own choices.”
Kier snaps, “This isn’t what you want.”
She wants to whirl around and shout, “And what would you know about what I want? You see Aika Shari and Yelin Entihari and think that every woman is one of the two-ready to change the world by brute force if necessary. I’m not Yelin Entihari, even though I look like her and I can see that whenever I’m in Court. I’m not Aika Shari, even though that’s what you’d want.”
Illin simply murmurs peacefully (because that’s what’s expected), “It doesn’t matter; I’m old enough to make my own choices.”
*
Illin lies down of her own choice, let’s Sheren enter of her own choice, let’s his hand rest against hers and listens to his voice washing over her ears until the dawn-of her own choice.
“At least,” she thinks as Sheren talks, “this is my choice.”
A week ago, Illin goes to Yuika; Yuika’s rooms are cold-she keeps the fire banked and sits in the dark, doing embroidery by touch. Illin doesn’t step around the subject, just accepts the teacup and begins, “Your family asked you to seduce Tasui Kirihari.”
Yuika blinks her wide brown eyes. “Yes,” she says softly, and dips her head demurely.
“Don’t,” Illin says. Court has been talking about how Yuika’s family pushed her into it when her elder cousin ran away, about how Yuika was a fool to end up in league with Yelin, but how could she have suspected that Yelin didn’t have her best interests at heart? She knows the story that Yuika’s spread-like cut string of pearls-and she doesn’t need to hear it.
Yuika blinks, lips pursed and hands clasped around a cup.
“I need to know how.”
Yuika murmurs, “How I was asked?”
Illin’s hands are cold. “Please don’t,” she says, fisting them in her skirt. “I’m not Aika Shari.” She stares straight at Yuika.
She bends over her cup and says, “I can see that.” She smiles into her tea and says, “Who?”
Illin says, “I look rather like Yelin Entihari, don’t I,” and doesn’t think of the chill in her bones. She does this out of her own choice, not like Yuika.
Sheren whispers, “Why did you choose Tasui? I could have forgiven you if it were Arinal that you choose for revenge, but why Tasui?”
Illin thinks, “I chose this, Yuika.”
*
“You don’t have to,” Kier says finally. “I can go to Lord Tasui. We can get somebody else.”
But it wasn’t, Illin thinks. It wasn’t Tasui who came to her and asked her to meet Sheren in the dark of the night and pry his secrets out. It was her who approached Tasui and asked what she could do.
It’s only been a month since Yelin’s tried to assassinate Tasui and Aika Shari’s put a knife in her instead. Yuika’s been accused and acquitted, Aika’s been lauded as a hero, and Sheren has fallen to the wayside. It’s Illin who goes to Tasui and asks to be of service, and Tasui looks at her and says, “This isn’t a job for a child.”
Illin replies, demurely, “I won’t be a child if I succeed.”
Tasui doesn’t smile. He says, “The Rehari rites aren’t simply an oath, are they? They’re also an assignment, and its success. It takes that to be an adult of the Rehari line.”
Illin says, “Just to be an adult in name,” and, “Yes, you’re right.”
Tasui says, “I would rather have it be anything but this.”
She doesn’t say, “Sheren needs somebody to support him unconditionally.” Instead she says, “I am ready.” She goes to Yuika the next day, prepares for a week, and finally lies in her room and waits.
Now, Kier says that she doesn’t have to, that he’ll go to Tasui and ask him to prevent what’s already happened. There is nobody else, because she’s done her duty and she’s an adult who can make her own choices.
She says, “I’m an adult, Kier,” and wills her older brother to understand. She turns around then, faces him squarely, lets him see her. “I make my own choices.”
He sees what she wants him to see, and snaps, “This isn’t what you want. This is what Tasui wants.” He inhales sharply. “This is want Yelin wants!”
It’s daylight, and Sheren is nowhere in sight. The sun reflects of her hair, and she knows it’s bright like gold instead of dull like Yelin’s softer brown. “Don’t,” she says, takes a breath and continues, “don’t consider me one of Yelin’s pawns.”
*
Sheren comes at night, after she’s invited him to her room with coy glances and a whisper in his ear. He comes and she feigns sleep.
“You tell such pretty lies,” Sheren whispers when he comes in. “You say, ‘leave me alone’ when you mean ‘look at me’. You lie with your body, when everybody else lies with their mouth.”
Yelin lied to everybody in Court, Yuika said. She spread her poison, a word here and a word there, manipulating everybody. She was skilled with words.
Sheren is talking to Illin.
“Only to you,” she says, and wonders if she should lower her voice so it fits Yelin’s register. Yelin is a good five years older, but Illin’s voice is mature for her age.
“Yelin,” he begins, “Yelin didn’t mean it.”
She closes her eyes, doesn’t respond. She lets Sheren talk. He joins her under the covers, talks to a shapeless figure with pale hair like his sister. He asks the questions he never asked when Yelin was alive, and doesn’t expect answers either.
“I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” Sheren says-to Yelin? To Illin?
Yelin, she thinks, when he continues. She lets him ask his questions-she doesn’t know the answers, nobody will know them now. Yelin wasn’t foolish enough to write down her every thought, and so Sheren will never know why his sister thought that assassinating Tasui Kirihari would bring justice to Tauren’s death. He asks them with her in the room, pausing after each to give her time to respond.
She doesn’t, not even when Sheren snaps, “I want you to answer me!” It isn’t her he’s talking to. It’s Yelin, who’s been dead a month but still has her poison in all of them, making them question each other, driving Sheren to this.
She thinks that Yelin might have liked Aika Shari. They both like changing the world to get what they want. They’re both willing to hurt anybody who hurts the people they love. They’re very much the same-she doesn’t voice her thoughts though. Tonight is for Sheren.
Before down, he asks, “Why did you choose Tasui? I could have forgiven you if it were Arinal that you choose for revenge, but why Tasui?”
Ah, she thinks then, the pre-dawn air cool against her cheeks. Wouldn’t that be convenient for Sheren-he could mourn Yelin guiltlessly. He shifts a bit, and she stop. They wait for the dawn together, back to back, silent.
He gets up at dawn, dresses. He doesn’t look at her, not even when she turns to look at him. She looks too much, too little, like Yelin. Enough, she thinks wryly, that in the dark he can ask her his questions, that in the morning he can’t bear to look at the sister who almost killed Tasui. He stands tall though, a month of mourning done in a night. It won’t be enough, she thinks, but he knows where she sleeps now.
She bunches the blankets to her chin, wonders if he can read her intent through the rustle of sheets alone.
His voice is hesitant, and he avoids looking at her as he leaves. “Illin is so very young,” he says, as if that will erase this night.
It won’t. Illin stares at the empty side of the bed. “Sheren,” she whispers, “is so very, very dumb.”
Perhaps not-he entered knowing that it wasn’t love that drove him to Illin’s bed. He knew very well what this was. One night and she’s signed her life away to Sheren Entihari. She doesn’t think she’ll fight this: Illin Rehari could do worse than Sheren Entihari.
“You’ve made me an adult, Yelin Entihari,” she says, and rises to meet Kier for morning practice.
*
She walks away from Kier, head held high.
Some battles are not fought with knives.
end.
Word Count - 3373 words
Genre - Fiction (Tsuou 'verse, no prior knowledge necessary [hopefully, you have no idea how much time I've spent making sure that each reference to Otherworld was explained])
Chronology: (for those who are trying to piece together the chronology of my randomly written snippets): This takes place after Otherworld, which is technically the second novella (i did NaNoWriMo a lot) of Tsuou 'verse. It references the main plot of Otherworld, but every reference should be explained. There's a lot of culture dropped in this story (sorry, one day i'll properly write a story that's all culture and doesn't just reference it here and there), because the motivation of a major character of Otherworld hinges pretty much on one event in her life. It's referred to pretty explicitly in this story.
warnings, warnings, warnings! Tsuou-verse is not a happy fantasy 'verse. Mentions of murder, assassination, second hand accounts of blood and gore, some incestuous implications (nothing explicit, I cannot write anything explicit to save my life, I just cringe and feel awkward), uh, I can't think of anything else. @_@
Notes: title comes from my translation of Swallowtail Butterfly, originally by Fish Leong.
The Demon Spinning Webs
(The Trumpet of Angels)
The bed shifts, and Illin pulls the blankets closer to her. She doesn’t crack an eye open, but she can tell-from the pause and faint huff of laughter-that Sheren knows she’s awake. She’s given up trying to hide things from Sheren; not even Tasui Kirihari tries to hide from Sheren Entihari anymore.
He sits on the side of the bed. “Morning,” he says, and she can tell from the way his voice resonates in the room that he’s facing away, that he’s looking anywhere but her, that he is going to pretend that this didn’t happen.
She says, “Good morning, Sheren,” and rolls around to peer at him.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, faced away. He doesn’t turn around to acknowledge her, but the muscles in his back tense a bit. It’s probably the most she’ll get from him. “It’s a lovely morning,” he says, as if to himself.
Illin doesn’t reply, just blinks. She bunches the blankets up in her fists, lets her cheek rest against the softness of the pillow and waits. Sheren sits for a long time before he finally stands and dresses. She watches him, blinking steadily every ten seconds. It takes her thirty blinks before he’s dressed and standing at the doorway. He still hasn’t looked at her once.
His voice is quiet when he says-not to her, but to the air beside her, “Illin is so very young.” He doesn’t look at her as he walks out.
“Sheren,” Illin replies to the empty side of the bed, “is so very, very dumb.”
*
Kier meets her every morning at the training grounds. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t greet her good morning, just hands her a knife by the blade and says, “Ready?”
Illin always nods, always wraps her smaller fingers around the grip and sinks into a ready stance. She lets her body-wrapped in swathes of heavy skirts-talk for her; it’s the only language that Kier and Illin share.
This time she doesn’t take the knife. She tilts her head to the side and says, “I’m sleeping with Sheren.”
Kier says, “That isn’t wise.” He doesn’t put the knife away.
“I don’t care.” She tilts her chin up. “I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
“You don’t want to get involved with Sheren Entihari.” Kier’s hand shifts on the knife, adjusting the balance. His stance shifts, and Illin can read worry in his posture. “He’ll murder you if he thinks it’ll help Lord Tasui.”
“I’ll murder him if I think it helps Tasui,” Illin lies. She doesn’t move to take the knife, even though it’s still being offered to her. She tries to read into that, but Kier’s stance says worry and the outstretched knife says that he’s not worried about her, he’s worried for her. She doesn’t reach for it. “I think the two of us will be fine.”
Kier says, “Illin, you’re so young.”
“I’m an adult,” Illin says. “I passed the rite of adulthood. You were there. Sheren was there.” After a moment’s thought, she adds, “Tasui was there.”
“Lord Tasui,” Kier automatically corrects.
“Sheren calls him Tasui.” Illin bunches her hands in her skirt. The fabric is crisp and cool from the early morning air, and it rustles loudly in her ears. She doesn’t miss the way Kier’s eyes flicker to her hands, and then back to her face.
“You, little sister,” Kier says, “are not Sheren.”
*
Sheren doesn’t say anything to her in public. After last month, that’s probably for the best. Sheren never liked talking about his sister Yelin, and he’s even more reticent now. He only appears to speak briefly to Tasui Kirihari-and Aika Shari, they’re a pair now, the talk of all of Court.
Illin covers her face with a fan and lowers her eyes as expected of her. She stands in a dark corner and pretends that she doesn’t mind.
“You tell such pretty lies,” Sheren whispers at night, when it’s dark and she can’t see his face. “You say, ‘leave me alone’ when you mean ‘look at me’. You lie with your body, when everybody else lies with their mouth.”
“Only to you,” she says, and stares into the darkness. She can’t see him-perhaps he can see her, she never knows what Sheren can do. She’s never wanted to. She’s never tried to see.
“I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” Sheren says, his back against hers, facing away.
She breathes steadily, feigning sleep. Sheren knows the difference and continues talking. He talks for hours, and Illin listens. He stops talking when the sun begins to rise and sits up. Illin pulls the blankets to her chin, doesn’t open her eyes, and waits.
“Illin is so very young,” he says at the doorway. He hasn’t slept in a week-he calls it penance.
Illin calls it this: “Sheren is so very, very dumb.”
*
“Only a year ago,” Kier says, circling her, “you were a child.”
Illin doesn’t need the reminder. She stands straight, legs locked. She is not here to fight. She doesn’t turn when Kier moves into her blind spot, doesn’t close her eyes and let her ears and nose and skin see for her. She stands straight and looks forward, because she is not here to fight.
“And now you’re trying to make decisions that impact people beyond your reach.”
“Sheren isn’t beyond my reach.” Her skin prickles when Kier stops directly behind her. “He comes to me.”
“At night.”
Illin says, “So what?”
“Illin,” Keir says, “it’s not a coincidence that you look like Yelin Entihari.”
She doesn’t whirl around, even though she’d like to-like to hear her skirts snap in the wind, like to watch Keir blink in surprise, like to slide a knife out from up her sleeve.
Instead, she doesn’t turn. She lifts her chin as regally as she can and whispers, “I’m an adult.”
*
She’s in bed when Sheren comes in. His feet are silent and when he reaches her bed, he sits on the opposite side of it. It dips under her weight, and she lets her grip on the blankets go slack.
“Yelin,” he begins, “Yelin didn’t mean it.”
She waits. He strips and climbs into bed with her. His hand is cold on her shoulder, and he turns her bodily, reads her language in the way she lies limp.
“It’s Tauren,” he says. “She doesn’t remember him, just remembers that he died.”
She doesn’t call it an excuse-doesn’t need to, he knows it’s an excuse but it’s something to cling to in long dark nights.
A pause. “She was five when Tauren died,” he says. “I was four.” His hand tightens a bit, and then he says, “Yelin thought he would pass the rite. She didn’t know better. She was five, and Tauren was eight and invincible.”
Illin reached, let her hand rest against Sheren’s cheek. “Nobody is invincible.”
He moves her hand away, lies down so their shoulders are touching. “Tauren was never going to pass the rite of blood, even if he took it a year later. He wasn’t-”
She inhales with him, exhales with him, waits for ten seconds.
“He entered the rite because he wanted to,” Sheren says. “It had nothing to do with Tasui.”
Illin doesn’t keep track of the Kirihari rites. She knows what it is-everybody knows what the Kirihari rite is, knows that it’s the trial by blood and that it’s you and a room of wolves and passing means coming out alive-but she doesn’t know who failed, when, why. She knows that Tasui passed, Arinal passed, Tauren did not pass.
“Tasui saw it,” Sheren whispers into her hair. “Tasui saw it when he entered the rite. They showed it to him, Tauren dead by their teeth and claws. Tasui saw it and felt it and mourned it and you’ll still conspire for his death.”
She doesn’t say, “I am not Yelin,” because this is healing. She turns and closes her eyes and feigns sleep-Sheren whispers, “I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” and she knows that it’s Yelin he’s talking to.
*
“One oath doesn’t make you an adult,” Kier says. “The Rehari rites say that all you need is one completed oath to become an adult, but that’s just in name.”
He doesn’t attack her, and she doesn’t defend. Instead he stops circling her; he stands directly behind her, in her blind spot, and talks. She can’t read his body language, and he can read hers-she keeps her posture carefully relaxed, blank, expressionless. They are equals in this conversation.
She doesn’t remember ever talking to Kier alone, just the two of them; it’s always been her in the center of the circle and Keir just outside, waiting to pounce. It’s been older brother training younger sister, never the brother and sister as equals, or even the other way around.
She says, “You were younger when you passed the rite.”
“Lord Tasui was three when he passed the Kirihari rites. That didn’t make him any more an adult than me at three.”
It does, Illin thinks. She thinks of blood and the edge of a knife running along a palm. At night, Sheren paints the scene of Tasui in a dark room, wolf-eyes gleaming, blood everywhere. He says Tasui doesn’t have nightmares, but that’s only because there are more things out there to be terrified of.
She says, “I know enough.”
Kier says, “Sheren is dangerous. Yelin was his sister. You shouldn’t be involved with him.”
“I’m an adult, older brother.” Illin doesn’t take the knife, doesn’t whirl around to slap an open palm into his chest, doesn’t move from the center of the circle. “I can do what I please.”
*
“Yelin,” Sheren whispers, “why would you do this?”
Illin modulates her breathing, just a bit deeper, a bit more like sleep. They say that Yelin was killed in her sleep-Sheren could slide a knife between her ribs right now, and she doesn’t know if she would stop him.
“What would killing Tasui have gotten you? Tauren would still be dead. Arinal was never your ally, your patron, your vassal. You set up Tasui against Arinal, even though neither of them wanted to fight against each other.
“You would have stayed Yelin Entihari, and you know as well as I that even if you wanted to go through the rite, you’re too old to try.”
A pause, a bitter laugh, and then, “Even if you were young enough, it wouldn’t matter would it, Yelin? You’re a girl and there are no women Kirihari. Is that what drove you to madness? That Tauren failed and you couldn’t try? Was it because if Tauren failed, then nobody was allowed to succeed?”
Sheren hisses into the darkness, “I want you to answer me!”
Illin says nothing, just lies there with her fair hair tumbled along her shoulders. In the dark, under blankets, her back to Sheren’s, she can be the Yelin that Sheren needs to confront. She doesn’t turn to Sheren, because Yelin never answered to her younger brother. Sheren doesn’t turn to face her, because even the night can’t hide the fact that her eyes are green and Yelin’s eyes were brown.
And when the morning chill begins to set in, he whispers, “What did Tasui do to you?” His voice shakes, he inhales deeply. “He wasn’t the one to kill Tauren. He wasn’t the one to push Tauren into the rite. Why Tasui? Why would you kill the one person who mattered to me?”
*
Illin says, “I’m old enough to make my own choices.”
Kier snaps, “This isn’t what you want.”
She wants to whirl around and shout, “And what would you know about what I want? You see Aika Shari and Yelin Entihari and think that every woman is one of the two-ready to change the world by brute force if necessary. I’m not Yelin Entihari, even though I look like her and I can see that whenever I’m in Court. I’m not Aika Shari, even though that’s what you’d want.”
Illin simply murmurs peacefully (because that’s what’s expected), “It doesn’t matter; I’m old enough to make my own choices.”
*
Illin lies down of her own choice, let’s Sheren enter of her own choice, let’s his hand rest against hers and listens to his voice washing over her ears until the dawn-of her own choice.
“At least,” she thinks as Sheren talks, “this is my choice.”
A week ago, Illin goes to Yuika; Yuika’s rooms are cold-she keeps the fire banked and sits in the dark, doing embroidery by touch. Illin doesn’t step around the subject, just accepts the teacup and begins, “Your family asked you to seduce Tasui Kirihari.”
Yuika blinks her wide brown eyes. “Yes,” she says softly, and dips her head demurely.
“Don’t,” Illin says. Court has been talking about how Yuika’s family pushed her into it when her elder cousin ran away, about how Yuika was a fool to end up in league with Yelin, but how could she have suspected that Yelin didn’t have her best interests at heart? She knows the story that Yuika’s spread-like cut string of pearls-and she doesn’t need to hear it.
Yuika blinks, lips pursed and hands clasped around a cup.
“I need to know how.”
Yuika murmurs, “How I was asked?”
Illin’s hands are cold. “Please don’t,” she says, fisting them in her skirt. “I’m not Aika Shari.” She stares straight at Yuika.
She bends over her cup and says, “I can see that.” She smiles into her tea and says, “Who?”
Illin says, “I look rather like Yelin Entihari, don’t I,” and doesn’t think of the chill in her bones. She does this out of her own choice, not like Yuika.
Sheren whispers, “Why did you choose Tasui? I could have forgiven you if it were Arinal that you choose for revenge, but why Tasui?”
Illin thinks, “I chose this, Yuika.”
*
“You don’t have to,” Kier says finally. “I can go to Lord Tasui. We can get somebody else.”
But it wasn’t, Illin thinks. It wasn’t Tasui who came to her and asked her to meet Sheren in the dark of the night and pry his secrets out. It was her who approached Tasui and asked what she could do.
It’s only been a month since Yelin’s tried to assassinate Tasui and Aika Shari’s put a knife in her instead. Yuika’s been accused and acquitted, Aika’s been lauded as a hero, and Sheren has fallen to the wayside. It’s Illin who goes to Tasui and asks to be of service, and Tasui looks at her and says, “This isn’t a job for a child.”
Illin replies, demurely, “I won’t be a child if I succeed.”
Tasui doesn’t smile. He says, “The Rehari rites aren’t simply an oath, are they? They’re also an assignment, and its success. It takes that to be an adult of the Rehari line.”
Illin says, “Just to be an adult in name,” and, “Yes, you’re right.”
Tasui says, “I would rather have it be anything but this.”
She doesn’t say, “Sheren needs somebody to support him unconditionally.” Instead she says, “I am ready.” She goes to Yuika the next day, prepares for a week, and finally lies in her room and waits.
Now, Kier says that she doesn’t have to, that he’ll go to Tasui and ask him to prevent what’s already happened. There is nobody else, because she’s done her duty and she’s an adult who can make her own choices.
She says, “I’m an adult, Kier,” and wills her older brother to understand. She turns around then, faces him squarely, lets him see her. “I make my own choices.”
He sees what she wants him to see, and snaps, “This isn’t what you want. This is what Tasui wants.” He inhales sharply. “This is want Yelin wants!”
It’s daylight, and Sheren is nowhere in sight. The sun reflects of her hair, and she knows it’s bright like gold instead of dull like Yelin’s softer brown. “Don’t,” she says, takes a breath and continues, “don’t consider me one of Yelin’s pawns.”
*
Sheren comes at night, after she’s invited him to her room with coy glances and a whisper in his ear. He comes and she feigns sleep.
“You tell such pretty lies,” Sheren whispers when he comes in. “You say, ‘leave me alone’ when you mean ‘look at me’. You lie with your body, when everybody else lies with their mouth.”
Yelin lied to everybody in Court, Yuika said. She spread her poison, a word here and a word there, manipulating everybody. She was skilled with words.
Sheren is talking to Illin.
“Only to you,” she says, and wonders if she should lower her voice so it fits Yelin’s register. Yelin is a good five years older, but Illin’s voice is mature for her age.
“Yelin,” he begins, “Yelin didn’t mean it.”
She closes her eyes, doesn’t respond. She lets Sheren talk. He joins her under the covers, talks to a shapeless figure with pale hair like his sister. He asks the questions he never asked when Yelin was alive, and doesn’t expect answers either.
“I won’t let you hurt Tasui,” Sheren says-to Yelin? To Illin?
Yelin, she thinks, when he continues. She lets him ask his questions-she doesn’t know the answers, nobody will know them now. Yelin wasn’t foolish enough to write down her every thought, and so Sheren will never know why his sister thought that assassinating Tasui Kirihari would bring justice to Tauren’s death. He asks them with her in the room, pausing after each to give her time to respond.
She doesn’t, not even when Sheren snaps, “I want you to answer me!” It isn’t her he’s talking to. It’s Yelin, who’s been dead a month but still has her poison in all of them, making them question each other, driving Sheren to this.
She thinks that Yelin might have liked Aika Shari. They both like changing the world to get what they want. They’re both willing to hurt anybody who hurts the people they love. They’re very much the same-she doesn’t voice her thoughts though. Tonight is for Sheren.
Before down, he asks, “Why did you choose Tasui? I could have forgiven you if it were Arinal that you choose for revenge, but why Tasui?”
Ah, she thinks then, the pre-dawn air cool against her cheeks. Wouldn’t that be convenient for Sheren-he could mourn Yelin guiltlessly. He shifts a bit, and she stop. They wait for the dawn together, back to back, silent.
He gets up at dawn, dresses. He doesn’t look at her, not even when she turns to look at him. She looks too much, too little, like Yelin. Enough, she thinks wryly, that in the dark he can ask her his questions, that in the morning he can’t bear to look at the sister who almost killed Tasui. He stands tall though, a month of mourning done in a night. It won’t be enough, she thinks, but he knows where she sleeps now.
She bunches the blankets to her chin, wonders if he can read her intent through the rustle of sheets alone.
His voice is hesitant, and he avoids looking at her as he leaves. “Illin is so very young,” he says, as if that will erase this night.
It won’t. Illin stares at the empty side of the bed. “Sheren,” she whispers, “is so very, very dumb.”
Perhaps not-he entered knowing that it wasn’t love that drove him to Illin’s bed. He knew very well what this was. One night and she’s signed her life away to Sheren Entihari. She doesn’t think she’ll fight this: Illin Rehari could do worse than Sheren Entihari.
“You’ve made me an adult, Yelin Entihari,” she says, and rises to meet Kier for morning practice.
*
She walks away from Kier, head held high.
Some battles are not fought with knives.
end.