Phoenix extravagant, p.26
Phoenix Extravagant, page 26
“This is,” Bongsunga said, “extremely inconvenient.”
“You can’t make me.”
For a terrified moment, Jebi thought that Bongsunga would apply pain. It wouldn’t take much, in the condition they were in.
“No,” she said, “I don’t suppose I can.” The cool resignation in her tone chilled Jebi more than they cared to express. “But you can’t stop our people from researching the matter, either. In any case, I have a funeral to arrange.”
Jebi’s mouth went dry; for a moment their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. They hadn’t considered the practical matter of preventing the ghosts of the dead from hanging around to curse to the living. “How many people?”
“On our side, or theirs? The tank divisions and accompanying infantry would have accounted for a few thousand. On our side... the artillery barrage took out about forty people. It would have been a slaughter if your dragon hadn’t intervened.”
{I’m sorry,} Jebi said again, ineffectually.
The tent’s entrance parted as a wedge-shaped metal head poked its way in. The dragon’s gaze pinned Jebi’s, its eyes burning lantern-bright. “I’m sorry people had to die at all. And that you got hurt.”
“I was far away from the action,” Jebi protested. “They weren’t aiming giant explodey things at me.” Never mind that Arazi had aimed itself at one of the giant explodey things. They didn’t want to mention that in front of Bongsunga, who might have another attack of Overprotective Older Sister.
Arazi made a discordant jangling noise that Jebi interpreted as a harrumph. “Jebi,” it said, “between firearms and archery, you could have died from a considerable distance.”
Jebi spent this sentence trying to signal with their eyebrows that Arazi should avoid this line of argument. No such luck. “I didn’t want you to,” they said eventually. “You didn’t have to do it for me.”
The dragon nuzzled Jebi’s shoulder with exquisite gentleness. “If standing on principle means that you lose the people those principles are meant to protect,” it said, “what’s the point? I oppose war; but I also oppose slaughter in all its forms. There wasn’t time for a more peaceful solution.”
Jebi nodded wordlessly, unable to think of a response past the lump in their throat.
Bongsunga cleared her throat. “There is going to be a funeral service tomorrow,” she said. “Arazi has been helping dig the graves. Its strength is a great boon to us.”
The lump dissolved long enough for Jebi to croak, “You have someone to find suitable grave sites?”
“You’ve been out for a while,” Bongsunga said. “We contacted a nearby village where there’s a geomancer. It took quite a sum to convince him to come out to where the earth itself turned to soup”—Jebi flinched at the reminder—“but he’ll site the graves and speak the rites.”
“I should be there,” Jebi said, squeezing their eyes shut.
“If you insist,” Bongsunga said.
“Will there—will there be a service for the Razanei too?”
The shadows across their sister’s face shifted. Jebi was glad they couldn’t interpret them clearly. “Of course,” she said, “if only to keep their ghosts from haunting us.”
“You shouldn’t try to walk yet,” Hyeja remarked as Jebi started getting out of bed.
“I want to see Girai Hafanden’s body,” Jebi said. “Before you dispose of him. Assuming you haven’t already.”
“Trust me,” Bongsunga said, her face shifting again. “You don’t want to. It’s only—forgive me for being crude—so much mangled meat.”
Jebi’s mouth firmed. “I want to be sure he’s dead.”
“I advise against this,” Hyeja said, “but if you are anything like my daughter, you’ll just sneak out of the tent. I’ll assist you.”
“Fine,” Bongsunga said. “But you’re to rest again after, you hear?”
IN A WAY, blurred vision was a mercy. The rebels had laid out the dead in rows on the hillsides, guards standing watch to scare off the carrion-eaters and scavengers. Hyeja remarked, on the way, that she saw birds circling overhead.
Jebi, using an improvised cane, tottered by the rows until they reached the section that held the Razanei dead. Surprisingly few had been recovered from the battlefield. Or maybe not so surprising, considering Hyeja’s description of the quicksand pit.
“It’s going to be there until the hills grow old,” Hyeja said as she guided Jebi through the graves. “At least you’d have to be drunk and wandering around the middle of nowhere at night to stumble into it.”
“I don’t want anyone else to drown in it,” Jebi said, words scraping out of their dry throat. “I’m an artist, not a...” Their voice trailed off. Not a murderer? People had died, and by their doing.
“I’ve killed people,” Hyeja said conversationally. “It’s how Vei’s father and I met, in fact.”
“You what?” Jebi demanded, distracted from their own guilt—what she’d intended, of course.
Hyeja shifted slightly—smiling? scowling? “The Westerners have a law for their physicians,” she said, “that they may never bring their patients knowingly to harm, unless that harm is itself in the service of healing. A law subject to a great deal of quarreling, as you might imagine.
“I was the most promising of my master’s students, foreigner though I was to them. But I would not swear to this law, so they cast me out. I found a place with Namgyu in the Blossom District once I traveled back home. I once”—and this time Jebi was positive that she was smiling, however macabrely—“provided poison with which to despoil several supply depots some years before the invasion, when the Razanei were sneaking more and more troops into our country under various pretexts of trade and intrigue.”
“I thought that was a myth,” Jebi admitted. “Or anyway, it seemed just as likely to be some kind of ordinary food poisoning.”
“There are many problems with poisoning that I won’t bore you with,” Hyeja said, which had the perhaps unintended effect of making Jebi intensely curious about the subject. “One of them is that, when you’re poisoning people en masse, you’re liable to get survivors because of inexact doses, or differing tolerances.”
Jebi nodded.
“Captain Dzuge Keizhi, who was stationed in Hwaguk long before the invasion, thanks to an agreement with one of the factions who collaborated with Razan, was not one of the ones who was poisoned,” Hyeja said, upsetting Jebi’s ideas of how this story would go. “You see, he happened not to like the particular type of delicious rice cakes filled with red bean paste that I had so temptingly poisoned. But he had servants—all the officers did. And he’d given his shares to the servants, not realizing—and when everyone fell sick around him, he sent for physicians.”
Hyeja’s voice softened. “I came because I was a fool; I wanted to see my handiwork, and report back to the faction I was then affiliated with.”
“You’re a ghoul,” Jebi exclaimed, finally understanding why Hyeja’s physician teacher might have had reservations about their student.
“If you want to put it that way, yes,” Hyeja said. “I have always been interested in all parts of the life cycle, and that includes its end.”
She knelt then, and pulled off the sheet covering Hafanden. Jebi had expected more of a smell, but this was winter, and bodies wouldn’t rot as quickly; small mercies.
Jebi bent down, putting their face close to the mangled corpse’s so their eyes would focus. Despite the trauma to the head, Jebi recognized the stern lines of Hafanden’s face, forever twisted in a rictus of agony. The entire back of his skull had been caved in. Jebi shuddered.
Jebi searched for words to distract themself from the violence of Hafanden’s death. “You were impressed by the captain’s generosity and repented your ghoulish ways?”
Hyeja laughed. “If that’s how you want the story to end. I was thinking of ways to finish the job. He persuaded me otherwise.”
Jebi didn’t ask what form that persuasion had taken, because the answer would only have embarrassed them both. Assuming Vei’s peculiar mother was capable of embarrassment, which they weren’t sure of. “Have you poisoned other people since then?”
Hyeja made a contemplative noise. “Poison? No. Kill? Only after long consideration.”
“I’m surprised anyone lets you treat them,” Jebi said, which was the nicer way of saying, I am never letting you get near me with your tools and medicines again.
“That’s legitimate too,” Hyeja said. “But, you see, you can’t understand the treatment of an organism without understanding the entire cycle, from the womb to the grave. And sometimes the best treatment looks like injury, but is necessary to save the organism.”
“You sound too much like my sister.”
“Yes,” Hyeja said, “she would understand this.”
It dawned on Jebi that Hyeja was, in the most roundabout way possible, counseling them about any possible regrets they had about Hafanden’s death. “Listen,” they said, wondering how to make this as little awkward as possible, “it’s all right. He needed to die. He was coming after us. Now they’ll have to appoint a successor, figure out how to restart his projects—if they even want to do so.”
“You were about to throw up when you heard what state the body was in,” Hyeja pointed out. “You’re not Vei. She’s inured to violence because it’s a necessity of her profession. We don’t usually, in this society, require our artists to think of people as assemblages of meat and bone and gristle.”
“Why?” Jebi couldn’t resist asking, their gaze drawn again to what remained of Hafanden. “Is there some society that does?”
“Some of the Western societies allow their artists to dissect corpses to improve their understanding of anatomy,” Hyeja said. This sounded so outlandish that Jebi immediately dismissed it as a grisly but fanciful story that Hyeja had latched onto. “Not something that will ever catch on here, I suppose.” She sounded regretful, and Jebi hoped that the woman never took up painting as a hobby.
“I’ve looked my fill,” Jebi said, grateful to be able to escape by using the truth. “I suppose it’s not really over. There will be another deputy minister after him. And reprisals. More people will die.”
“Yes,” Hyeja said, “but the revolutionaries have prepared for the eventuality.” She replaced the coarse sheet that had covered Hafanden. “You should get back to the infirmary, such as it is.”
“I want to see Vei.”
Slight hesitation, then: “Of course you do. Tell me, what is my daughter to you?”
As if that hadn’t been obvious. “Why,” Jebi said, “does it matter?”
“I may be an eccentric,” Hyeja said, “but I am still a parent. And I know what it is they say about artists, whether or not it’s true.” She might have studied medicine out of the country, but she would still know that artists were generally married to their profession. “What are your intentions?”
Jebi fought the urge to burst into hysterical laughter. Vei was unconscious, Jebi themself was recovering from a bullet wound, and Hyeja was concerned about intentions. “I’m not going to dump her for a succession of pretty lovers, if that’s what you mean,” Jebi said. “If—if she wants me, I want her. For as long as she wants me. I haven’t asked my sister what she thinks, but”—and the words came out in a rush—“I don’t care. I was never going to be carrying on the family lineage anyway.”
Besides, Bongsunga had made it clear that if Jebi chose Vei, they were turning their back on the family anyway.
Hyeja said, “Your happiness matters more to your sister than you think, for all her strategizing and plans and duties. Of this I am sure.”
“I’ll find out, I guess,” Jebi said.
HYEJA LED JEBI back to the one invalids’ tent that had a guard, presumably because Bongsunga’s people didn’t trust Vei even after what she’d done. Jebi couldn’t work up the energy to be offended. “Call if you need anything,” Hyeja said. “I have work to do.”
I’m sure you do, and that you love it more than anyone is comfortable with, Jebi thought. Did it matter if the physician had an unseemly fascination for the macabre as long as she got the job done? Jebi suddenly wondered how Hyeja’s courtship with Captain Dzuge and Namgyu had gone.
Namgyu, for their part, sat next to Vei’s pallet. Vei was sleeping fitfully, tossing and muttering unintelligibly in her sleep. “Namgyu?” Jebi asked, addressing the older person deferentially.
“Hyeja says our daughter will recover,” Namgyu said, “although it will be a while before she recovers full range of motion in her sword arm.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Well,” Namgyu said, “that depends on her plans, and yours.” They smiled, although Jebi couldn’t read the nuances of the expression. “The dragon has some thoughts, I hear.”
One of Arazi’s spiderlings clattered, and Jebi startled; they hadn’t seen it in the corner of the tent. “You can be part dragon and part spider-thing?” they demanded.
“My tail doesn’t need to be full-length for digging graves,” Arazi replied. “I thought you would feel easier with an additional guard.”
“I do,” Jebi admitted. “Thank you.”
Namgyu exhaled softly, then said, “I’d better see if Hyeja needs my assistance. If only in berating Keizhi for being a know-it-all.”
Jebi reached down, and was rewarded by the spiderling nudging their fingers. “What’s next for you?” they asked as they listened to the uneven rhythm of Vei’s breathing.
Before Arazi could answer, Vei roused, perhaps at the sound of Jebi’s voice. She did not, wonder of wonders, attempt to sit up, which had been Jebi’s first impulse. “Jebi,” she said. “And here I thought I’d be up before you were.”
“Just stubborn, I guess. Is it—is it all right to—?” Jebi mimed a kiss, only to be interrupted by a fresh wave of pain. Fuck you, they thought at the injury, I’m not going to let you prevent me from kissing the woman I love.
Vei laughed weakly. “I don’t think you can hurt me that way, Jebi.” She lifted her chin, and Jebi met her lips with their own. It was a gentle kiss, since they didn’t want to cause her pain. They couldn’t see Vei except as a pallid blur, but they knew her body language; knew that her hesitant movements didn’t just indicate injury—as if that had ever slowed her down—but uncertainty.
“I’m not leaving you, stupid,” Jebi said.
Vei laboriously raised their right arm, cocooned in a bandage though it was, and waggled her fingers at Jebi. “I’m not much good for—” Heat rushed to Jebi’s face, and never mind that they’d already done that together.
“There are other people in this tent!” Jebi reminded her.
“I doubt it’s the first time they’ve heard such talk,” Vei said, and only then did Jebi understand how badly the injury had shaken her.
Jebi pressed her hand against their heart. “I don’t want to stay here,” they said, forced to honesty. “But if you plan to, I will.” They’d figure out a way around Bongsunga. Go into exile with Vei, if necessary.
“About that,” Vei said, and Jebi’s heartbeat stuttered in alarm. “Arazi and I have been talking, on and off.”
“Oh?” Jebi said, not sure they wanted to hear this.
Arazi made a sound in between a chime and a sigh, drawing attention to itself. “After the funeral rites,” it said, “I am leaving. I will only draw the Ministry of Armor’s attention if I remain here.”
“Of course,” Jebi said, suppressing their sadness. “That... that makes sense.”
“I wanted to ask you to come with me, you and Vei,” it went on. “I don’t enjoy being alone. I spent enough time being alone, chained beneath the earth.”
Jebi’s breath caught. “Vei?”
“I was going to say yes,” Vei said, squeezing Jebi’s hand. “I won’t pretend that it won’t be hard to leave. But my mother was very clear about the damage to my arm. Until I become as good left-handed as I was with the right, my dueling days are over.”
“Oh, no, no, no, that can’t be true,” Jebi said, because even they had some idea of what dueling meant to someone like Vei. “You can fight left-handed. You’re better left-handed than most dueling masters are. You can’t give it up. And won’t you miss your family?”
“It’s not just that.” Vei stroked Jebi’s fingers, coaxing them to relax one by one. “My father told me once, when I was young, that no one wins a war except the crows. I didn’t understand him then, but it makes more sense now. What was it the sage said, thousands of years ago? That if you have to take to the battlefield you’ve already lost. Everyone loses—parents, siblings, children, cousins. Innocence, always.
“There’s a second war coming, Jebi, and this is just the beginning. Your sister is ready for it. I’ve been talking to her while you were unconscious. She’s been preparing for the conflict ever since I cut down her wife.” Vei’s voice was almost steady as she said this. “But so many people aren’t ready for this, Jebi. Artists. Charm-sellers. Grocers. Tailors. People who just want to get by, and who won’t be given a choice when the guns begin to speak again.”
Jebi’s hand trembled, and they stilled it with an effort. “What’s our part in this, then?”
Bongsunga spoke from the tent’s entrance. Jebi startled, even though the sudden draft should have alerted them to her arrival. “We can’t leave Hwaguk’s artwork where Girai Hafanden’s successors will destroy it,” she said. “But we can’t destroy it ourselves, either. It would be a betrayal of those artists and their work.” Her voice softened fractionally on artists; she was looking directly at Jebi.
“What,” Jebi said sarcastically, “you’re not going to use it for Phoenix Extravagant?”
“Not Hwagugin art, no,” Bongsunga said, betraying no reaction to Jebi’s tone. “Razanei art will be good enough for that, when we can get our hands on it. There are old collections still, and the occasional imports.”
