CHAPTER ONE
Thousands of red lanterns illuminated the Autumn Palace, suspended on strings so fine the lights looked like kites floating from roof to roof. I could have watched them all night, dancing on the wind and painting the twilight with a burnished glow—but my mind was elsewhere. For beneath the sea of bobbing lights, the Square of Splendid Harmony was staged for an imperial wedding.
Seeing all this red, in celebration of Emperor Khanujin’s marriage to Lady Sarnai, should have gladdened me. I’d worked so hard and sacrificed so much for the peace their union would finally bring to A’landi.
But I wasn’t the same Maia as before.
The Autumn Palace’s vermillion gates rumbled, and I pushed through the throng of servants to catch a glimpse of the wedding procession. At its helm would be Lady Sarnai’s father, the shansen. I wanted to see the man who had bled my country from within, whose war had taken two of my brothers, and whose name alone made grown men shudder.
The shansen, his gold-plated armor shining like dragon scales from under his rich emerald robes, rode on a majestic white stallion. Gray touched the tips of his beard and eyebrows. He did not look as fearsome as I had pictured—until I saw his eyes; they gleamed like black pearls, fierce as his daughter’s, but crueler.
Behind him rode his favored warrior, Lord Xina, followed by the shansen’s three sons, all with their father’s dark, unsettling eyes, and a legion of soldiers wearing patches on their sleeves embroidered with the shansen’s emblem—a tiger.
“The shansen will mount the steps to the Hall of Harmony,” announced Chief Minister Yun loudly, “where his daughter, Sarnai Opai’a Makang, will be presented as our emperor’s bride.
“Tomorrow,” Chief Minister Yun continued, “the Procession of Gifts will be presented to the emperor’s court. On the third day, Lady Sarnai will formally ascend to her place as empress beside Emperor Khanujin, Son of Heaven. A final banquet will be held to celebrate their marriage in the eyes of the gods.”
The wedding music swelled and merged with the clatter of the shansen and his men marching up the stairs. Firecrackers clapped, loud as thunder, and each stroke of the wedding drums boomed so deep the earth beneath my soles thrummed. Eight men strode across the hall bearing a golden carriage draped with embroidered silk and armored with glazed tiles painted with turquoise-and-gold dragons.
When the shansen took his place before the hall, Emperor Khanujin stepped out of his palanquin. The music ceased, and we all bowed to the ground.
“Ruler of a hundred lands,” we chanted, “Khagan of Kings, Son of Heaven, Favored of Amana, our Glorious Sovereign of A’landi. May you live ten thousand years.”
“Welcome, Lord Makangis,” Emperor Khanujin greeted him. “It is an honor to receive you at the Autumn Palace.”
Fireworks exploded from behind the palace, shooting high beyond the stars.
“Ah!” everyone gasped, marveling at the sight.
Briefly, I marveled too. I’d never seen fireworks before. Sendo tried to describe them to me once, though he’d never seen them either.
“They’re like lotuses blooming in the sky, made of fire and light,”he’d said.
“How do they get up so high?”
“Someone shoots them.”He’d shrugged when I frowned at him, skeptical.“Don’t make that face at me, Maia. I don’t know everything. Maybe it’s magic.”
“You say that about everything you don’t know how to explain.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I had laughed.“I don’t believe in magic.”
But as the fireworks burst into the sky now, lurid splatters of yellow and red against the black night, I knew magic looked nothing like this. Magic was the blood of stars falling from the sky, the song of my enchanted scissors—eager to make a miracle out of thread and hope. Not colored dust flung into the sky.
While those around me cheered, eight more young men carried another golden palanquin toward the emperor. Lanterns hung from its every side, illuminating an elaborately painted phoenix.
A phoenix to match the emperor’s dragon. To breathe new life into the country, helping it rise from the ashes of war.
The attendants lowered the palanquin, but Lady Sarnai didn’t step out. She was wailing so loudly that even from the back of the square, I could hear her. In some villages, it was the tradition for a bride to wail before her wedding, a sign of respect for her parents to show that she was distressed to leavethem.
But how unlike the shansen’s daughter.
A soldier parted the carriage’s curtains, and Lady Sarnai tottered forward to join the emperor and her father. An embroidered veil of ruby silk covered her face, and the train of her gown dragged behind her, crimson in the fragile moonlight. It did not even shimmer, as any of the dresses I’d made for her would have: woven with the laughter of the sun, embroidered with the tears of the moon, and painted with the blood of stars. Strange, that Khanujin would not have insisted she wear one of Amana’s dresses to show off to the shansen.
I frowned as she continued to wail, a shrill sound that pierced the tense silence.
She bowed before her father, then before the emperor, falling to her knees.
