The Phoenix Empress by K. Arsenault Rivera

Author:K. Arsenault Rivera [rivera, k arsenault]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

Would I Have Dared it?

T here is no name for that battle.

This puzzles me to no small degree. Hokkarans love few things more than assigning ludicrous names to their fights—why not this one? There is a name for each skirmish we fought by the riverbed, a name for the skirmishes all the other armies engaged in on their way to the Broken Crown. Why should this one be any less notable?

You will think it is a small thing to be angry over. What does it matter if a battle has a name or not? A name will not raise the dead. It will not mend the bones of the fallen; it will not cleanse the blood of the corrupted. In every practical sense, a name is useless.

And yet we name most everything. Colors, the layers of a lady’s robes, flowers, bridges, roads, forests.

If a thousand people die like dogs in the middle of a bamboo forest—are they less worthy of a name than a noblewoman’s robes?

Beyond the flaps of the tent lay the aftermath.

How like a dream it felt, Shefali, how like a nightmare! Had I really been swallowed by that demon? What a ridiculous thing to think, and yet when I tried to prop myself up in bed, a jolt of pain confirmed my worst fears. A splint held each finger of my left hand in place—the slightest jostle was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Seeing it made my heart drop into my stomach, for though it was splinted, my fingers had swollen up like firecrackers. It looked as if a child had drawn a hand and stitched it to my body.

Yet it was mine, all the same.

And if my hand was truly hurt, then that meant …

My mouth dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips splitting open, I tried to force myself to stand—but I’d forgotten about my hip. I caught myself on a table. Was even walking beyond me? No, no—the Daybreak Blade lay within easy reach. I could use it as a crutch. Priceless though it was, the sword was a tool before it was anything else. I was certain my mother wouldn’t mind if I used it this way.

So, with the Daybreak Blade as my crutch, I left the tent.

I might as well have left the sword inside. What I saw brought me to my knees. The blood, Shefali. I thought I knew what war was like, I thought I’d read all the stories and seen all the paintings.

But the sight of the blood-soaked snow, the sight of hundreds of soldiers laid out on stretchers, the sound of them all moaning and crying out for aid …

Even those who remained standing were not well. I saw one of our surgeons moving from sickbed to sickbed, her expression so blank as she examined her patients that it may as well have been a mask. None of us in the van had escaped with our armor intact—so many around me bore smears of black, so many had their boots soaked through.

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