In the morning, I came to a decision: I would not decide. I would consult with Prince Kaito, and leave the matter up to him. After all, the "queen" was, formally, his prisoner, and it seemed at the time that he had seized the throne for himself and would soon be acknowledged sovereign of Kiiro.
Looking back, I can see with perfect clarity what a blatantly awful idea it was. To fully explain the situation, I had, of course, to tell the prince of the love affair between Len and the Midorian maiden, and also of his role in her death. I even showed him the letter. Through all of it he maintained a grave and dignified silence, which he broke only at the end to say, "Everything will proceed as planned. Never speak a word of this to anyone else.
(I realize now that in writing these notes I am defying his command. Good! Let's call them what they are: insubordination. I fully intend to upset the social and political order. Besides, the man deserves to be spited. He never did a thing but make a mess of wherever he went.)
I cannot remember much of what happened between that meeting and the execution. Time caught me up, dragged me along, and dropped me in Justice Square with the rope of the guillotine in my hands and the false princess laid out bound at my feet, his neck stretched across the block. Somehow he was smiling. I could not understand why until I thought to follow his gaze.
There she stood. Hooded and cloaked as she was, she seemed almost a different species from the lace-pelted beast in my memory. But the too-white hands clasped as though in prayer gave her away. She's come to rescue him, I thought. She will declare her presence, and the choice will be taken out of my hands. (For even with Prince Katio's order I felt the weight of choice.) But as precious seconds ticked by and she made no move, I gradually realized she was only there to watch. She was a coward — a selfish, useless coward whose violent acts had brought violence upon the person she loved most.
Must I say it? The blade came down.
I did not spare a glance for the corpse at my feet; my eyes stayed fixed on her as she crumpled sobbing to the ground. I had believed, only moments earlier as I pulled down on the rope and lifted the blade, that I was settling, putting aside my own desires for the sake of the country — or possibly just for the sake of convenience. Instead, I had reaped a more perfect vengeance than any I had ever dared to imagine. After so many months of burning with rage and volatile, molten hate that flared inward and outward and every which way, I suddenly felt empty and dead, drained of the force that moved my blood. And I wondered then — as I still do, to this very day — what was the point of any of it.
Some time must have passed between the thud of metal on wood and the shout of, "My lady! My lady, Prince Kaito is dead!" In my memory, it all blurs together; the first sound drove me into the darkest corner of my own head and the second brought me back to what is normally called reality.
"How is that possible?" I asked the messenger, one of my own soldiers rather than his, which went some way toward explaining her manner of addressing me.
The messenger faltered, as though she had somehow failed to anticipate that question. "An accident, my lady. He… he seems to have fallen on his own sword."
Throughout all of this I had been aware only in the most minimal sense of the crowd of peasants surrounding the scaffold. They did not concern me enough for me to put up with such games. Anyhow, the general population is more intelligent than the players of those games give them credit for; already I could here the sibilant storm of whispered gossip gathering like so many winds. "Don't be absurd," I snapped at the messenger. "Was it a murder or a suicide?"
"It… seems that he was alone at the time," was the most she could bring herself to say.
That was the simpler problem, but not by much. "Selfish! Who will lead this wretched country now?"
She fixed me with a pointed stare. "You will, my lady."
"How could I possibly?" I realized after those words were out that I could not fully explain how truly ill-suited I was without undermining everything, and fumbled for an excuse. "I don't have a drop of royal blood in me."
"Was this a revolution or not?
The people roared their approval, and I panicked for two reasons. The first was the prospect of having almost daily to make decisions like the one I had so recently worn myself out struggling against, decisions that would mean life or death. For passing off that responsibility as quickly as I could, I am today credited with an act of great magnanimity. (I am also credited with political brilliance for the representative system I set up in my place, though I took it almost whole cloth from my late master the printer and his comrades, and anyhow the best that I can say for it, looking at what a mess it has since then become, is that it is not measurably worse than monarchy.) The second and more immediate reason was that the former queen had separated from the crowd and was now almost out of view.
I leapt from the scaffold and, without pausing to shake off the pain of the impact in my joints, broke into a run. "Burn the body immediately!" I called to the guards standing at the steps. "No one else must touch it! And no one must follow me, either!" I did not wait for an answer. The old fire in my heart had not been entirely extinguished after all; the thought of her escaping reignited it, and now it once more burned me from within and heated my blood.
The queen tried to run when she realized she was being chased. I do mean that she tried; I doubt she'd ever run before in her life, at least since she was a small child, and she was terrible at it. I caught her easily and threw her to the ground, where she lay crying and choking out her brother's name. These were no crystal tears, no delicate, shining-wet streaks. Her face was red and puffed with salt and slimy with snot, drool, and yesterday's make-up. She cried not like a queen, but like a real girl with a real heart. I looked at her then, and in that moment I saw her for what she was: not a monster, not some beautiful demon or fallen angel, but a spoiled, ignorant child with more power than she could handle.
"No," I told her, "I won't kill you. You get to live with this guilt for the rest of your life. That's my punishment. Let it be yours too. It's no mercy; I don't think I could come up with anything worse."
"You're a brute!" she cried helplessly. "You're nothing but a common animal! Len! Oh, Len!"
"That's right," I said, and the calmness of my own voice surprised me. "Call me all the names you can think of. Haven't you realized yet? Don't you see? We are the same."
She inhaled sharply, swallowing her last sob, and lay silent. I left her there, a sliver of flesh and bone and a heap of rough brown cloth in the gutter of a hostile city. That was the last I ever saw of her, but for all I know she's still alive. If she is, I doubt she is any happier than I am.
So there it is, all laid out in ink. This is my secret truth: that I killed the innocent twin and let the guilty one go free — all out of pure spite.
The Midorian girl we call a martyr was of a kind with Queen Rin and myself; there was someone she loved, and her own selfish vindictiveness destroyed him. Prince Kaito was little better. It is no secret that he dragged his army and his people into war for the sake of a personal vendetta. Yet even knowing this, Kiiroans celebrate him as a hero for the same act, albeit on a smaller scale, for which we killed our queen. I think I like Len best. Perhaps he was, as he said, as guilty as anyone else, but out of all of us he was the only one who worked to protect something rather than to destroy — even if it was the thing that least deserved protecting.
But now I have veered off from history and am talking nonsense. Or — now that I have worked through my compulsion, I must ask myself — is that how it's been from the beginning? I suddenly feel quite certain that no one will read these notes, no matter how conspicuously I place them. If they begin to, they will shake their heads and say, "The poor batty old woman!" and, repulsed, move on to something else. I think this was a mistake. Before I sat down to write, I must have confused myself into believing there were people — thousands upon thousands of people, nearly all of the people in Kiiro — with such a great interest in me that not even revulsion could turn them away. I must have forgotten that it isn't me they care about, but Meiko Sakine the Bold, Meiko Sakine the heroine of the so-called Liberty War. Perhaps I am her, somewhere deep inside, but I am also Meiko Sakine the Spiteful. Meiko Sakine the Venegeful. Meiko Sakine the Coward. And now I am Meiko Sakine the Penitent, the lonely old woman plagued by doubt and regret, without enough of a heart left to heal or a soul to absolve. Meiko Sakine the Burnt-Out and Hollow. History has no room for so many Meiko Sakines.
Perhaps I will burn these notes. Perhaps not. Let history be what it is, and may my grave seal it off from my ears.