Xau himself barely scratched,

but the assassins’ blades

sticky with a poison

that crept along Xau’s veins

and burned him from within.

He tossed, tormented,

in the moonless country

between death and breath.

So Hana rode,

rode to marry Xau

if she could reach him in time,

if he could still mouth her name.

Rode,

willing Xau to fight as hard

for his own life

as he’d fought for his guards.

No man would tell her

whom she would or would not marry.

Not her brothers.

Not the horse lords.

Not the craven King Vihaz

whose name she cursed

as she rode—

Vihaz who hid behind walls

whilst others fought his battles,

Vihaz who thought Hana less

than his daughters,

Vihaz whom she defied

by choosing Xau—

Hana rode,

rode with her brothers

and two horse lords

and thirty spare horses.

No tents, no pack animals,

drinking their mares’ milk,

four hundred and ninety miles

in four days;

by dawn, day, dusk, dark,

across the grasslands

into the interior of Meqing

with its paved roads

and bricks and peasants

(the peasants abandoning

their wheelbarrows to gawp

at Hana and the others).

Rode,

the horses failing one by one,

until only Hana, her eldest brother,

and six horses remained.

Rode,

not knowing if she would ever

ride again:

if Xau, should he live,

would then, having won her,

wall her up like treasure

inside his palace,

until her heart died

remembering the plains,

the smell and sound and touch

of the horses she rode to reach him.

Rode faster

than the news of her coming,

so that, at the last,

Xau’s soldiers delayed her,

blocking her approach to the palace,

to Xau—who yet lived—

until she explained,

four times over,

who she was.

Surrendered her bow, her arrows,

her knife, her past,

her future

to come to the king.

VIGIL

Hard as battle this duty.

Li, captain of King Xau’s guards,

stood—useless—

as the king tossed, fevered,

pain-wracked, poisoned.

Day and night,

day after night after day after night,

sleeping only when the king slept,

starting awake each time

the king stirred.

Over the doctors’ objections,

Xau insisted on dictating letters

to the families of the two guards

killed protecting him.

If Xau had fled when Li shouted

more guards would likely have died,

but the king would have been unhurt.

A large matter,

but one understood

between them years ago.

That Xau would let his guards fight

for him, beside him,

but refused to run

while his guards fought.

Night after day after night

with nothing that needed to be said,

but Li could not watch, silent,

while Xau labored not to scream.

So Li spoke.

He spoke of his childhood,

of his father, a fisherman,

of hooks and baits and nets,

of gutting fish, cooking fish,

the price of fish, the smell of fish,

of oiling his father’s boots,

and the tunes his father played

on a wooden flute,

and his father’s pride

when Li became a soldier.

Day after night after day.