O'otani

The door opens and I feel like I'm walking to a funeral.

They'll be dead soon. I can already see the red every time I blink.

"Maybe it will all be alright," Kaza offers, squeezing my hand in his own, attempting to offer some meager comfort as he escorts me towards the grave. I laugh, my own hand shaking horribly in his.

"And maybe I'll grow wings and fly to the citadel myself," I mutter. "Don't bother lying. We both know how this will end."

"You were pardoned."

"So I could be used as a political prop," I answer sharply. "They have outlived their usefulness. This will be their last sunrise."

Kaza sighs. He squeezes my hand again, acquiescing to the truth with calm resignation.

If only I could do the same. If only I could still the frantic tremors shaking me, weakening me. If only I could stop leaning on him for support. But my mind is heavy, so heavy, and it weights my body down.

"I wish I could do something for you, O'otani," he whispers as we round the corner. I wish his words meant something more than pity and a guilty conscience. More than that, I wish I could hate him the way I used to. Hate made me feel strong.

Where is my strength now? I ask myself as Sholu walks down the hall to meet us, a smile lighting up his face. He's dressed elegantly in grey and blue silk. The rings weighing down his fingers glint conspicuously in the light. It's obvious he's trying to play the respectable gentleman, but something is off. His smile stops at his lips. The ice in his eyes never melts.

Because he is no gentlemen. He's barely even a man. All the rings and silks in the world couldn't fool me: Sholu Verlaina is a no better than a beast. Heartless, merciless, and always hungry. A creature born into squalor and raised on ruin, an animal that would devour the entire world if it had a wide enough mouth. He's already trying to devour me.

"Good morning, Kionike," he says, taking me firmly by the arm. "I hope you slept well."

I barely slept at all. I woke up every few hours, panting and covered in sweat, like I was trying to run from the coming morning. But I don't say that. I don't give him the satisfaction.

"You look lovely," he tries when I fail to answer him. "Red suits you."

Yes, red. I wear red today, red like poppies and sunsets and slit throats and bullet holes. It's a thin dress, more air than fabric, but somehow it feels heavier than my training armor ever did. I might have loved this bright, violent gown once, but now I'm acutely aware that it's just another manipulation. He wants me to be seen. This is the color not of my power, but of his. I wear his violence against my naked skin.

"I look like a whore," I mutter, grinding my teeth together. I'm selling myself, every moment I walk arm and arm with him, I'm selling a lie... I'm tattooing the word traitor onto my own skin...

Halima, I remind myself. Think of Halima.

It's all for her. All of this forbearance, this letting my dress graze his thigh, letting his fingers tuck my hair behind my ear without trying to break them. I am going to set her free. I will save one thing from this madness, even if it isn't myself.

I wonder if I'm noble as we walk down the hall to the chamber where the trial will be held. If I'm stupid. What would my family think of me, selling my honor for one palace maid? They'd tell me she wasn't worth it, that I was mad.

But my family is dead. I cannot hear their rebukes.

And besides, Halima was there when they couldn't be. She held me, and wiped away my tears, and sung songs that held my aching soul together. She alone reached through the haze of rage and grief to save me from myself; she alone stayed true when all others fell away from me like chaff blown to the wind.

I cannot let her be murdered without consequence because of my pride. What is my pride worth now? My honor? I might be a madwoman, but I'm no fool. I know that I am yesterday's fire.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to do something good before I burn out. I feel that burn out coming, feel the wick growing short and the wax leaking slowly away. I wonder if what I portend is the death of the body or the mind. Either way, I feel it on the horizon, growing closer with each passing day.

I am not afraid like I should be. I am just empty, and angry.

But amidst the cavernous space and the rage echoing inside of it there lives a little bit of hope that's managed to survive. It isn't hope for myself; I gave that up on the gallows when I lost my name. It burns instead for Halima, for Shira, and for the death I might still be able to bring Sholu Verlaina.

I will save her, and I will kill him, I promise myself.

This thought alone keeps me from screaming as we enter the antechamber.

____

The room bleeds opulence. This is the first view any visitor will get of the manor's interior and the Kyorin have spared no expense. The floor is polished sunstone, glittering brilliantly in the light; several large Seramichen rugs cover it, as if the sunstone itself isn't almost too pretty to walk upon. Broad silk tapestries depicting ancient battles and family honors cover the walls. Where the tapestries break, arching windows with gold molding let in the bright afternoon light.

The manor's large wooden doors have been thrown open to admit a crowd some three hundred strong. Myriad more stand outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the family, or to hear a snippet of the proceedings. It's a larger crowd than I expected, larger even than the crowd that formed in Arzsa on the day I was supposed to hang; I wonder grimly what it is about the possibility of violence that makes politics into a spectator sport.

Sholu and I sit at a long table set up at the head of the crowd. The family Kyorin are standing several yards in front of us, surrounded by armed guards, their hands bound more for show than anything else. There's nowhere for them to go, no weapons for them to grasp.

I try not to look at them because I don't want to know if they're looking at me. It's cowardice on my part, I know, but I'm afraid that if I meet their eyes I might start crying. It's all too goddess-damned familiar. The fine dress. The grand hall. The family surrounded by guards and guns, waiting for death to come for them. I can practically hear the fireworks ringing in my ears.

I half expect Alya to walk up the dais and sit down beside me. She'd spread a napkin elegantly in her lap before leaning over to whisper some witty anecdote in my ear. She'd cut her duck and take a bite, then grab my hand and drag me away to dance. We'd laugh as we drunkenly tripped over each other's feet, trying to keep time with the music. Her eyes would glitter in the candle light and her wine-stained tongue would flash red as she laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Then she would freeze and the dancing would stop. The music might keep playing for a moment before she went limp in my arms, but only for a moment. I'd call her name. She wouldn't respond. A firework would explode, followed by the sound of her body hitting the stone floor. I'd scream for help. None would come.

Then the bullets would begin in earnest.

I flinch in my seat, as if I might move away from the memory. Like last night, my body is searching for an escape. If only I could run. The doors are open: I might cut through the crowd, scale the wall, and keep going for miles. I might end up alone in the desert, but at least I wouldn't be here, watching history repeat itself. At least the pain of exertion would push the worst of the memories from my mind.

I feel doubly a coward a moment later. I cannot leave Halima: without me Sholu has no reason to protect her. The guards would tear her apart. And the Kyorin- they are Dimaraste. They deserve better. I might not be able to save them, they might curse me with their dying breaths, but I should at least have the strength to watch them die.

"Welcome," the beast calls. His voice echoes off the walls so his words seem to come from everywhere at once. They surround me like a cage. "Today we judge and sentence those who thought themselves above the law, above us. Today we prove that not even gods are immune to justice!"

I clench my hands into fists. Hearing him say justice makes me want to laugh, to cry, to scream. To pull at my hair and gnash my teeth until the sound of those lying words leave my ears. Justice. Justice was gone from this room the moment we entered it.

"Gods are made by their believers!" He shouts. "Without us they are nothing. They mean nothing. And if they had remembered that maybe they wouldn't be here today, being tried by mortal men! But they did not remember us when they sat upon their clouds drinking wine from golden cups. They pushed us down like we were poison instead of the hands whose labor lifted them so high. But if we made them with those hands, we can unmake them just as easily."

And you can make yourself into their new god, I think derisively. He's setting this up as a trial of the divine; it's so easy to see through it's ludicrous. But it's dangerous. I can see a certain hunger in the eyes of the crowd, the look dogs get when raw meat is dangled in front of their muzzles. His argument is specious and inflammatory, but none of that matters: they want to believe it. They want to think themselves strong enough to remake their world.

And they're too stupid to realize that his leadership will end in a reign, not some shining democracy. They swallow his words with a blind confidence that makes me want to retch. Some gape at him like he's a messiah come to lead them to the citadel himself; some look away, like his light might blind them.

Fools, I think, biting my cheek. Idiots. Don't you know that he cares nothing for you? That he thinks of you as little more than stepping stones on the road to power? The moment you make him your god, the moment you build statues of him and kiss his feet and name your children in his honor, he will forget you. He will use you worse than the Kyorin ever did. He is a beast, can't you see? You are nothing to him but kindling.

Only a few Rizsavans seem to resist his sway. They look down at their feet instead of into his hypnotic eyes. Their shoulders hunch forward, as if weighed down by stones. The brave among them dare to lift their eyes and stare at the family Kyorin, sympathy animating their faces. That in itself is a detraction, a declaration of solidarity. A handful braver still glare openly at Sholu and I, their features hardened by hate.

I want to explain myself to them, to let them know that in my heart I stand with them, but I cannot. I cannot vent the rage, the pain, the self-loathing coiling inside of me like a family of desert vipers, each more deadly and agitated than the last. They strike out, piercing me internally, dragging my breath from me in pained silence. I am as useless as a statue standing at Sholu's side. I might as well be stone. At least then it wouldn't hurt so much.

"With me are representatives of the new regime," he calls out, interrupting my thoughts. "A regime that will lead Shikkah from blind dictatorship into self-reliant democracy, from a life oppressed to a life of freedom. Learn their faces well, for they are your liberators!"

Liberators. I would laugh if it wasn't such a perversion. Jackals do not liberate when they come upon a wounded animal. They rip their prey apart in a wild frenzy, feasting on the weak and the dead alike. They crawl inside carcasses and gorge until their muzzles are tinted red and their bellies are distended. And so it will be with Shikkah if these scavengers aren't stopped.

".. Today we mete out justice, not for ourselves, but for all the people of Shikkah who have lived trapped under the Dimaraste's thumb. The men and women who were trampled by their excesses."

I have to bite my cheek again to keep the placid smile plastered on my face. How prettily he lies. On and on about the oppression of the great families, the suffering of the people, our crimes of opulence and extravagance and arrogance.

He makes this revolution sound noble with gilded words. I want to scream that inside each syllable there is rot. There is a woman on her knees shot between the eyes, a dancing girl falling to the cold stone floor, a beautiful boy sent into hiding because they came for him in the dead of night with grins and guns and treachery.

But I just smile, like they told me to. I am a hollow shell, prettily painted.

"... Arzsa has fallen. The Amarin Dimaraste has been dismantled. The family was so corrupt, so unsalvageable, that its own protectress betrayed it!" My smile falters, the veneer threatening to crack. "O'otani Amarin, last of her name, stands at my side as an ally. She helped cleanse the desert of her family and for that alone has earned a place in the new Shikkah. The Shikkah we shall remake in the image of the citadel."

I try to keep my gaze straight ahead, trained at the horizon peaking through the open doors, but then I hear the sound of undisguised weeping. Airi Kyorin, the heir apparent, is doubled over sobbing like a baby set down by its nurse. His father Ezskor tries in vain to comfort him, to quiet him, fear of reprisal written plainly across his face. Airi is too far gone to notice. He lets the sorrow overcome him in a way that is both pitiable and repulsive.

His mother Mishira is better, listening to her own condemnation with a stoic pride I can't help but admire. Fire blazes in her light blue eyes, broadcasting to all the injustice of the situation. Her strong arms hold up her youngest daughter, Kasrin, offering some small comfort in the forms of gentle caresses.

She notices me staring and instantly her eyes harden. The fire in them shoots off sparks, as if metal has struck a hot forge. I feel their runaway heat singe my skin and bite at the soft fabric of my dress. In this moment she is a judge and I am on trial, and she condemns me with one glance. When our eyes meet, I bleed.

__

And so the trial commences! If you liked it, please leave me a comment or two. I'd love to hear your reaction! Also this is the last chapter of part two. Get hype for part three guys!

- Swpoet