I’ve tried to reach out to the dead before, but so far, you’re the only one who’s been able to cross the threshold. I intend to find out why.
“This was the second person,” Sen said, speaking to the river rather than Lee.
He nodded as if that didn’t surprise him at all, then turned his gaze toward the moon.
“That makes sense,” he said airily, so quiet that Sen wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. “Maybe the bridge between life and death isn’t a bridge at all. Maybe it’s more like an ocean. You’re under the water, reaching for the surface, and I’m on the shore, dipping my hand into the sea.”
“Why would you reach out for death?” Sen said, frowning.
Lee looked away, his expression stiff. “I mean that I’ve killed someone too.”
Sen took in Lee’s wiry frame, his stark eyes, his thin fingers. “You killed a... human?” she clarified, wondering if it was a mistranslation.
Lee laughed, even though none of it was funny. “Yes, I killed a person,” he said. “A man.”
“On purpose?” Sen said, raising an eyebrow.
Lee swallowed, looking back to the sky as if considering.How can you not know?Sen wanted to ask, but the question seemed to trouble Lee.
“Yes,” he said at last, and this time he would not meet Sen’s gaze. It was the quietest word she had ever heard from him, carried away on the dying wind.
Slowly, she sat down on a rock by the river. She set her sword in her lap, then pulled off her shoes and dipped her socked feet in the water, letting the river wash the blood and dirt away. Lee watched her for a moment, then sat down beside her. A careful distance remained between them, but Sen felt somehow that here, in this river, they were as close as they could be without touching.
“You’re not going to ask why?” Lee said after a moment.
“Does it matter?” Sen said, shivering as the cold at her feet wormed its way into her bones.
“Some people would say it does.”
Sen turned to him then. In the darkness, his eyes looked like planets. “Some people who have never killed would say that it matters,” she said, feeling as if Lee’s bright eyes were unmaking her, pulling the words from her throat. “I could tell you many reasons why I killed that man, and maybe you would agree with some of them. But reasons are for people who want to forgive themselves, and I do not. There is no reason that matters.”
Lee tilted his head, clenched his jaw as if closing his teeth around her words, tasting them. “I don’t want to forgive myself,” he said after a moment. “I want to know myself.”
Sen dropped her gaze down to the river, where the cool water distorted the image of her feet. It seemed impossible for anyone to truly know Lee Turner. He was more a phenomenon than a person, a scattering of stars that dimmed and spun with the seasons. Even now, Sen couldn’t quite tell if she was looking at him or at fragmented light. Maybe that was why it was easier to talk to him than anyone else, like her words were no more than a prayer whispered into wind that would carry them far away.
“The imperial army has many reasons to kill me,” Sen said. “Some would call them good reasons. But they don’t matter to me.”
“The imperial army?” Lee echoed.
Sen shrugged. “They’ve been searching for my father for a while now, and I’m sure they’ll find us soon. I know it’s how I die. I’m sure you know it too.”
Lee’s lips parted, his gaze darting around her face for a moment. He closed his mouth, swallowed, turned away.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Did you tell your father that you need to leave Chiran?”
Sen let out a dry laugh. “He refuses,” she said, “so we will all die here.”
“Your father determines your fate?” Lee said, a bitter edge to his words.
“Yes,” Sen said. “You told me that in your world, you have no power at all. You might think it’s different for me, since I’m a warrior, but it isn’t. I’m only the arrow that lodges in a tree, not the archer who aims it.”
“You could still leave,” Lee said, his voice rising. Sen didn’t understand whythis, of all things, angered him. “You aren’t chained to this house.”
Sen shook her head. “The only thing worse than dying is leaving my father to die alone,” she said. “I won’t abandon him.”
At this, Lee fell quiet. She sensed that he wasn’t satisfied with her answer, that this sudden silence was more like the quiet preceding a storm.
“But before I die,” she said, sitting up straight, “I have a promise I need to fulfill.”
