I was in my father’s body again, my hands pressed against the surface of a table. I recognized the questioning room where Shiyen had always asked me about my memories; I caught a glimpse of the balcony beyond where he liked to gaze over the city. But it wasn’t Shiyen before me. It was his mother, a middle-aged woman, her silvering hair pulled back into a severe series of knots. She wore a silk jacket painted with cherry blossoms, the collar high and the waist long. She held a long, thin stick in one hand – a branch stripped bare of bark.

“We lived in harmony with the Alanga for a time, or at least what passed for it,” she said. “But then the wars began, and us commoners were simply in the way. We say it was the Sukais that figured out how to kill the Alanga, but it was a traitor that gave us the information, who helped to create the swords. Why do you think we keep that secret?”

Shiyen rubbed one hand against the table’s polished surface before answering. “Because we cannot allow any of the Alanga to be seen as good.”

His mother tapped the table with her stick and Shiyen flinched. “Yes. People don’t understand or grasp nuance. Can an individual? Yes. But people in general must be led. We are the ones that saved the Empire; the Alanga are the ones who sought to destroy it.” She put down the stick and lifted her hands, gesturing in a circular motion to indicate each group. “What happens if we let these concepts intermingle?” She twined her fingers together.

“It becomes too difficult for people to know who is good and who is bad.”

“Precisely. We are the saviors, my son. We must always be seen so.”

I felt Shiyen squirm in his seat. “But are we not actually the saviors? Isn’t that the truth?”

In a flash, the Emperor seized the stick and lashed it, whip-like, over his knuckles. I felt the stinging pain as though it were my own; Shiyen’s movements mirroring what would have been mine. He cupped the hand to his breast, cradling it. In that moment, I couldn’t separate us. I was Shiyen.

“The masses think we are saviors. We did what we had to. We killed them all, my son. We could not know which would hurt us and which would protect us – and they all had too much power. So we killed every last man, woman and child. All the Alanga. The traitor helped us create the swords. He helped us hunt them all down. Was he good, to turn against his own people? Were we good, to kill all of them?”