Ken Liu - The Wall of Storms

Two of the Lyucu warriors stepped forward and lifted him from the bed, and he groaned as he twisted his face away from the light. The crews of the Imperial airships gasped.

Kuni had kept the injury in his toe hidden from the guards until it had become infected. By the time his rotting wound was finally discovered, the only option was an amputation of his gangrenous foot. But even after severing the limb, his condition did not seem to improve. The doctors the pékyu sent for declared Kuni to be on the verge of death.

Pékyu Tenryo had wanted to use Kuni as his secret weapon. He had suspected that Empress Jia might stage some last act of resistance, and he had planned to bring out his prized prisoner at the right moment as a way to grind down the morale of Dara’s defenders.

Given the condition of the crippled and dying Kuni, the pékyu thought it was no longer necessary to keep him in a bone cage; rather, he left him lying on a bed under a canopy watched over by a few guards.

Even held up, Kuni appeared to remain in a deep and feverish slumber; he didn’t react to the commotion around him.

Confused whispers passed through the crews of Silkmotic Arrow and the other airships. They were glad to see that their emperor was still alive, and most suspected that the pékyu was lying about the emperor’s abdication and his orders to stand down. Nonetheless, the archers lowered their weapons.

“Target the emperor,” Gin Mazoti said, her voice calm and steady.

Dafiro repeated her order and glanced at her. Though the marshal’s voice betrayed no emotion, he could only imagine the turmoil that raged in her heart. Kuni Garu was the man who had lifted her out of obscurity and made her into the greatest general of Dara, but he had also stood by as she was accused of treason and stripped of her title and dignity.

She had once been willing to die for him, and now she was forced to kill him to preserve the fruits of his revolution.

Mazoti took a deep breath. This was a sacrifice that she could not avoid. As long as Kuni remained alive, her forces would not be able to fight freely. There would always be doubt among the soldiers that they were thwarting the emperor’s will. Yet once she gave the order to kill Kuni, she would never be able to free herself from suspicion that she had, indeed, intended to betray him.

It was a price she had to pay to secure victory. To win, she had to give up her name and endure the judgment of history.

Mazoti steeled herself to give the order to fire.

Kuni looked around him, confused.

He was in Pan, the Harmonious City, standing in the middle of the broad expanse of Cruben Square in front of the palace. ( How can I be standing, when I’ve lost my foot? ) Normally the square was empty, save for children who flew kites in spring and summer and built ice statues in winter. Occasionally an Imperial airship landed in it, and nearby citizens would gather to watch.

But today the square was not empty. He was surrounded by colossal statues of the gods of Dara. The statues, each as tall as the Grand Examination Hall, were made with bronze and iron and painted with bright, lifelike colors.

Kuni remembered that Emperor Mapidéré was said to have wanted to confiscate all the weapons of Dara, all the swords and spears, all the knives and arrows, and melt them down into their constituent metals so that they could be turned into statues honoring the gods. Without weapons, there would be eternal peace in the world.

That vision had never been realized, just like Kuni’s dream of a more just Dara, a Dara where a woman had as much power as a man, where a poor peasant’s daughter from Dasu had as much chance to succeed as a wealthy merchant’s son from Wolf’s Paw, where anyone who had talent would be found and given a place to shine.

The emperor examined the statues more closely. There was something strange about them; they weren’t depicting the gods in their traditional form.

Over Kiji’s shoulders sat both a Mingén falcon and a garinafin; above Kana’s head, her black raven hovered inside a golden globe as bright as the rays of the sun; above Rapa’s head, her white raven floated inside a silver halo like the glow of the moon; Tututika’s carp was swimming next to her in a maze of a thousand streams; Rufizo’s white dove watched over a flock of long-haired cattle and sheep.

But the statues of Fithowéo, Lutho, and Tazu were the strangest of all. The left half of Fithowéo was male while the right half was female. The god of war carried a long, obsidian-tipped spear in the left hand and a bone-handled war club in the right. The statues of Lutho and Tazu, on the other hand, were fused together, as though the gods of calculation and of chance were but two aspects of the same deity.

What has happened? Kuni asked himself. Who has committed such sacrilege?

The statues of the gods and goddesses shifted and came to life.

The emperor was too stunned to move or speak.

“You don’t have much time, Ragin,” said Tututika, her voice at once familiar and strange. Kuni thought he could hear echoes of both the gentle streams of her homeland, the Beautiful Island, as well as something wilder and less predictable, like the flash floods of a distant plain full of scrubs and shrubs.

“Am I about to cross over the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Rapa simply, her voice as cold as the icy moon.

“I still have so much to do. Dara is under threat, Lady Rapa!”

“Everyone pleads for more time,” said Kana, her voice as hot as the blazing sun, as impatient as an exploding volcano. “Mapidéré was the same way.”

“The tasks of great heroes are never done,” said Rufizo, the kind shepherd and healer of wounds. He waved his hand and Kuni felt some of his anxiety soothed away.

Kuni felt both pride and sorrow at this. The gods of Dara had declared him a great hero, but he was never going to complete his dream. This was the way of the world, wasn’t it? No matter how carefully you planned things, fate intruded.

“Have I made the right choices?” asked Kuni Garu. “Have I been a grace of kings?” His heart pounded as he waited for the answer from the gods.

“You have lived an interesting life,” said Kiji, whose voice sounded like the beating of wings, both feathered and leather. “You’ve soared as high as a dandelion seed riding the wind above the clouds; you’ve dived as deep as a cruben cruising the currents far beneath the waves.”

“You betrayed reluctantly; you loved passionately; you sacrificed the affections of your children and wives; you were also a good father and husband; you defeated a tyrant; you brought peace to Dara; thousands died because of you; millions more were saved because of you; you tried to balance and accommodate competing interests; you strove to speak for those without a voice and wield power for those without influence,” said Fithowéo, the blind god of war as well as the club maiden for the All-Father. “You know the world isn’t perfect, but you’ve never ceased to believe that it could be perfected.”

“Yet Dara is changing,” said Lutho-Tazu, the trickster duo, wise and cunning, calculating and uncertain. “For all of us, mortal and immortal, change is the only constant. A new era requires new heroes; new pilots must guide Dara through the Wall of Storms.”

Kuni knelt down before the gods. “I submit myself to the judgment of history.”

“Go not gentle into the eternal storm,” all the gods said together.

Kuni opened his eyes.