Chapter 37 #3
“Others deserted later, once the regime in San-Er changed,” the woman goes on. “There are no more generals in Rincun. We took your example in the capital. You had your coup. We had ours.”
Venus swallows hard. So this is the state of Rincun. Ruled by rebels—a quiet takeover that the rest of the kingdom has heard nary a peep about. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse.
“We have brought a respectful treaty. Freedom for Rincun to become independent. Formally acknowledged by the throne in San-Er, so that the capital will no longer ask for taxes or devotion. All we ask in return is a continued trade route with San-Er. Only San-Er.”
The assailants do not react visibly to Venus’s proposal. The mountains, too, are indifferent.
“We mean no trouble,” she continues. Pleads. “All I want is to speak to the mayor in the yamen. Then we will be on our way. We’ll stay out of the province entirely after that, if needed.”
The woman folds her arms. She sighs.
“Councilmember Hailira,” she says. “I am the mayor of West Capital.”
Noise screeches in Venus’s ears. Before she can grapple with the ramifications of such a declaration, embarrassment sinks deeply through her cheeks, down her neck, warming her chest. She remembers calling the yamen of West Capital.
Speaking on the phone line with the mayor—her name was Erwen, and her family had been the officials governing the administrative affairs of Rincun long before the province was made a part of Talin, in the decades when it was an independent region, in the decades following their last war.
“But…” Venus trails off. She shakes her head. “You’re working with rebels.”
The other unmasked assailant strides forward. He has had enough.
“I would suggest we wrap up this conversation.”
“Hal,” Erwen chides.
“Nobles are to be disposed of as palace generals were,” Hal says, and he’s looking at Venus when he says it.
He wants to scare her, to threaten her life for what her family has done to his land, but Venus can’t quite find the fear she walked in with anymore.
All she feels is abandonment—by her father, by the capital she was raised in, by each force above her that she was merely trying to follow.
“Whose body did you steal?” Erwen asks.
It is a non sequitur. Venus glances over her shoulder, as though the mayor could be speaking to one of her attendants instead.
She has not heard that question in many years.
The palace—it cared so much in the beginning.
Where the body had come from. Its pedigree, its bloodline.
Venus did not possess the answers, because a part of her did not want the answers.
Whether the body had been retrieved empty, the perfect vessel awaiting her entrance, or if it had been forced empty, as was expected in San-Er, as anyone would assume was the case in San-Er.
“I don’t know.”
“You are doubled.”
Venus cradles the figurine tighter to her chest. “That’s not possible. It was empty when I acquired it.”
“There’s an immense amount of qi rippling off you. Do you not feel it?”
Hal, from behind the mayor, mutters something indecipherable. It was evident when Venus threw him off.
It was evident when Venus killed the Crescent in San-Er.
“No,” she says. She has never felt anything. She is an intruder even in this form that she has called her own for years and years.
Erwen steps forward. Despite the circumstances, her eyes are kind as she approaches Venus. She has the gentle manner of a mother, only wanting to caress someone’s lost child until help arrives.
When her cool fingers land on Venus’s cheek, the sensation is unbearable.
Venus teeters to her knees instantly, choking on her own spit, frothing on the qi that bubbles up her throat.
Her eyes roll back into her head. Pressure claws at her temples, cracking into her skull.
She screams, and she hears the cry of war, she hears the heavens and its clouds, breaking, rotting—
It stops.
Venus has lost time. She comes to with her head half-buried in the snow. The figurine has fallen from her hands, landing beside her. For a moment, the godling of greed’s blindfolded face is all she can see. The mirth in the quirk of its mouth; the ever-present surprise in its brow.
“Interesting,” Erwen says, looming above her.
Venus tries to wet her lips. Her mouth is bone-dry.
The assailants do not stand at a distance anymore.
Hal, in fact, offers her a handkerchief, and Venus takes it without knowing what she is supposed to be wiping.
She tries one swipe down her face, mopping the wet snow, and instead finds blood trickling from her nose.
“You’ve had a passenger all these years, did you know that?” Erwen asks.
A passenger?
“No,” Venus answers.
“Someone is sharing your vessel. Someone very, very old.”
Something happened in the few seconds she cannot recall. When the agonizing pain had taken her consciousness from her, shoved her deep into some abyss that she could not crawl out of.
“Rise,” Erwen says.
Venus does as she is asked. It is kind of Erwen to offer a hand when Venus staggers. She takes it.
Everything goes dark.