Nothing said, “Why do you think I can help, Sky?”
“They say nothing can penetrate the Fifth Mountain.”
She pursed her lips in a frown. A trick of words did not a rescue make.
Sky added, “You knew what it was. You knew it was not Kirin and…” He ducked his head in shame. “I was not brave enough to admit the truth and act. You are fearless.”
The dragon-lily spirit snorted and leaned down, one claw tugging on her hair.
“You are friendly with the great demon of the palace and so maybe can be friendly with the great demon of the Fifth Mountain. And while the sorceress will not be interested in me, not enough to open her doors, you are a girl with a heart she can eat.”
Nothing imagined an elegant lady cracking open her chest to lick the bloody mass of her heart, and she held her tongue.
Sky said, “I will do whatever I must to save the Heir to the Moon, Nothing. Will you?”
“I want to go too,” the dragon-lily spirit said, and its blister-pink eyes sparked with determination.
“You must remain with your house,” she said absently. She felt light-headed and wondered if this decision had been made the moment she stabbed her knife into the imposter’s neck.
“Meet me at the gates of the seventh circle in two hours,” Sky said. “I will have some food and supplies. You need only bring sturdy shoes and layered robes. Do you have one in wool, or leather? As we go higher, it will grow colder and damp.”
Nothing said, “I will manage.”
The demon-kissed bodyguard stood stiffly and departed.
SIX
NOTHING SLIPPED INTO THE elaborate corridors of the Second Consort’s tailoring suite to find Whisper. The young woman’s stitches were so tiny it was said she did not sew seams but murmured pretty songs to convince the silks and threads to join together of their own accord. Her nature of tender tolerance had made her ideal for befriending Nothing, and she’d done it with glances and the occasional touch that never was followed by a demand or a need. Whisper had simply made it known to Nothing that she was available, and interested. To most, Nothing was an oddity or no better than an exotic pet, or a trick to be suspicious of. It was a relief to be welcomed into Whisper’s space like a ray of quiet sunshine.
Many people might notice when Nothing vanished, but only Whisper would miss her.
At first Nothing went between the walls and through smoke ways, but eventually she had to step into the open corridor alongside the bright embroidery hall, her slippers silent on the wooden floor, her robe a hiss against the painted screen door. Latticed windows composed the entirety of the southern wall, open to the air and sun now, though they could be closed with thin fibrous screens or heavy wooden shutters. Whisper sat at the end of a row of six tailors, each of them working on a different elaborate flower along the same hemline. This wide train would be for the empress herself, it seemed, a silk so black it swallowed light, with white and fire-pink rhododendron along the hem and black starbursts nearly invisible. The spread was so beautiful Nothing paused to stare, wondering what such glory would feel like draped over her shoulders, sweeping behind her in a way none could ignore or miss.
A tailor gasped, his mouth open and staring straight back at Nothing. Vivid green colored his lips and streaked up in swirls like clouds to cup his dark-brown eyes. “Nothing!”
Another tailor squeaked and put her finger in her mouth to lick away blood.
A third said, “We might rename you, for the action you have taken today.”
Nothing exaggerated a grimace, as if her face were a mask.
“Little Hero,” suggested the first, and “Prince Killer,” another, then “Brave but Extremely Strange and Quiet.”
How terrible it was to be noticed.
Whisper kept quiet, but she set down her embroidery and put a bare arm around Nothing. Most tailors wore sleeveless robes wrapped tight to their bodies to keep low any chance of entanglement. She led Nothing to a low table in the resting corner set with cool tea and sweet cheese soft enough to eat with a spoon. “Are you well?” Whisper asked, kneeling upon a flat pillow the crystal color of a noontime sky. It clashed perfectly with Whisper’s rust-red robe.
Nothing knelt. “Yes,” she said quietly, “but I am leaving the palace, and you may not see me for some time.”
Whisper handed Nothing a small cup of tea and Nothing sipped it, though she did not much like this mix unless it was steaming hot. She let Whisper sprinkle fennel seed onto a spoonful of cheese and feed it to her, then herself.
“Why?” Whisper asked, folding her hands in her lap.
Nothing resisted a glance over her shoulder to see that the tailors continued their work and did not strain to hear every word. “I am going to find Kirin.”
“Alone?”
“With The Day the Sky Opened.” She held her face blank, not wanting to accidentally express something she was unsure of: she did not know how to feel, except anxious, but she knew she wanted to say goodbye without creating a burden of worry for her friend.
“I am sure he will be a fine companion,” Whisper said softly.
For a few sips of tea, they remained silent.
Whisper said, “Do you know where he is?”
“Sky believes he does.” Nothing said no more, because she could not hint at the truth. The truth would ruin Kirin. It was not that Sky loved the prince or that the prince loved him in return; such was to be expected. But they were not allowed to touch before Kirin’s investiture. As the Heir to the Moon he was required to remain pure—he could not have anything inside him before the Moon was inside him. Not finger nor tongue nor unblessed spoon. Kirin and Sky had certainly broken that purity—Nothing had seen so with her own eyes—and if any priests suspected the truth of their relationship, the entire line of inheritance would be destroyed.
Worse, by taking up the identity of a woman, Kirin had slipped into an unhallowed space: just as there was night and day, left and right, up and down, there was man and woman, and anything in between was the realm of spirits, demons, and the Queens of Heaven. That was what made dawn and dusk the holiest of times, made blending colors and shape-shifting the space of sorcerers, not humans. Decent people had to be one or the other. Anything else was too frightening.
Kirin had risked everything to spend his summer with Sky, to live as he wished. And he hadn’t told Nothing his intentions.
She’d have argued ferociously against endangering himself. Kirin always told her to avoid attention if she wished to be safe, but he’d not taken even a sliver of his own advice. Now the Sorceress Who Eats Girls had him. Nothing felt he was alive, but for how long? And how could they keep this a secret? Everyone would want to know why he’d been taken by the sorceress.
But Whisper asked no more. It was part of why they were friends. Nothing said, “I will not return without our prince. You may say that if you are asked.”
“I will.” Whisper took the tea from Nothing and clasped her hand. “You ought to adopt a facade to venture out into the world. At least some face paint to be The Day the Sky Opened’s servant.”
Nothing leaned in and kissed Whisper. Then she quickly rose and left, sparing no glance for the other tailors. Her chest felt tight as she walked down the corridor and out of the second circle of the palace. She made her way back to the fifth circle, clambered up into a stale smoke way, then down into the old abandoned bath she used as her secret home. The tiles burst red and white, blood purple and orange, in elaborate star patterns. The plumbing had failed several years ago, and the great demon kept it broken for her, but the heating mechanisms worked, warming her when she slept tucked among scavenged old pillows and threadbare blankets. She’d strung threads between thin pillars from which to hang curtains in a variety of sheer colors, giving the bathhouse a rainbow blur of light at different times of the day.
Inside a wicker basket full of broken pottery, tiles, and toys, Nothing kept the pale-green silk cloth embroidered with the many-petaled flower she
’d been swaddled in as a baby, and she withdrew it to wrap around her throat like a scarf. She stuffed her feet, still slippered, into walking boots and hooked them closed around her ankles, then put her hands on her hips, wondering what to wear. Layers, Sky had said. She had nothing weatherproof at all.
Twisting her lips in dissatisfaction, Nothing removed her robe and undergarments, then tied on a new loincloth and baggy trousers that laced just over her boots. She put on a long shirt and purple tunic, then a threadbare red wool jacket. Around it all she tied a wide sash of eye-piercing green. She clubbed her hair high at the back of her head, wrapping that, too, with scraps of silk ribbons, until she looked more like an actor than like Nothing. The vivid colors very likely washed out her face into a wan mask, but Nothing did not even own paint. She’d have to rely on whatever Sky carried.
Before she departed, Nothing pressed herself against the wall, hands flat until her palms tingled against the red-wash, her cheek brushing it too, so that when she closed her eyes and whispered, “I am leaving, great demon,” it would hear her. Having once been spirits, living pieces of aether, demons craved life and magic and possessed to survive, draining powerful life from people, animals, and places until they were dead too. There was debate among the priests as to what made a demon great—either it was as simple as a great spirit dying, becoming a great demon quickly enough to maintain connections to the aether, or a demon managed to find a permanent home, somehow rooting itself deeply enough to reconnect with aether, so that it could again be its own source of power.
This great demon of the palace was one of only two known in the world. The other lived in the Fifth Mountain. It was the Fifth Mountain, some said.
Nothing had never cared much for the details of why or how the great demon of the palace existed. She liked the comforting rumble of its presence as it took little strands of life and power from everything, so subtly nobody much noticed except for her. Besides, the great demon gave trickles of power back, too, as if the empress and her court were all its masters.
“Did you hear me?” she whispered again. “I must leave.”
A sigh trembled through the foundations, gentle enough only someone similarly pressed would notice.
why? have I not warmed you little one?
“Oh very much, great demon. I need to find another friend. The prince is missing—Kirin Dark-Smile.”
My prince he has not returned from his investiture summer when he returns he will be Mine forever.
Nothing frowned. She did not understand the connection between the investiture ritual and the great demon. “We thought Kirin had returned, great demon. Did you not hear the celebrations these two days? We gathered for the investiture, but I—it was not him. It was an imposter.”
The wall beneath her palms shivered with a growl so deep it could not be heard.
“I am going to find our Kirin,” Nothing said. “I swear.”
bring him to Me.
The command rumbled loudly, and Nothing closed her eyes. Everyone must have heard it.
She brushed her hands against the plaster. “Shh, shh. I promise, great demon,” she murmured.
It purred, liking her touch, as always. Nothing kept up her soothing and felt the tingle of other prayers as priests knelt at shrines throughout the palace, making promises too, to calm it down.
your leaving will change My walls, the demon grumbled eventually.
“You will miss me,” she said, pleased.
who will tickle Me in the afternoons with her little feet? who will scratch at the itchy crack in the fourth circle roof ?
Nothing kissed the rough red-wash. “When I return, for my reward I will ask the prince to have the itch repaired.”
Its answer was a satisfied sigh.
With that, Nothing left the only home she’d ever known. She crawled and snuck through the smoke ways, still—especially dressed in these bright colors—concerned about being stopped. All the way to the lowest seventh circle she went before emerging to walk across a sand garden striped in red and black, with pink granite and sparkling white marble boulders disrupting the pattern. Her boots sank into the sand unexpectedly, and Nothing paused, startled. How odd it would be to leave marks wherever she passed.
Nothing had never been outside the seven circles of the palace. She rarely thought beyond its borders, as if she were a spirit or demon herself and this palace her house to inhabit. Demons never leave their house.
She had to remind herself that she was a human, and humans are their own house—if a human died badly they did not become a demon, but a ghost, lost and homeless and angry, and only a priest could bind it with a naming amulet and send it to the Queens of Heaven.
Nothing was a human. She carried her house with her.
Shivering, though it was the end of summer and quite warm, Nothing dashed across the remaining garden and into the shadows of the gatehouse where Sky waited.
Gardeners lifted their heads as she passed, and she ducked between warriors serving as gatehouse guards, ignoring their gossip and questions. Sky stood with a bag over his wide shoulder and another dangling from a strong hand. He wore his sword sheathed at his hip. He’d clubbed his hair back too, and put a streak of blue paint over his eyes. His clothing was black and sapphire blue. It did not contrast, but rather matched. I do not care if I am beautiful, it said.
“Nothing,” he murmured.
“I don’t know how to paint myself for the outside world,” she said.
Sky smeared his thumb across the wide band of blue paint on his cheek. He pressed it to her forehead and drew an arc there. It was like claiming her, for she was not demon-kissed. “That will do,” he said.
“I’m too young to be a wife,” she muttered.
For once the bodyguard smiled. “It will be a good excuse for traveling quickly and without fanfare, if we’ve gone to elope.”
“You would make Kirin your First Consort and me your Second?” she snapped. He was the only person in the world who made her sharp.
“Better than you his First.”
With that Sky started off, moving as if he belonged, as if he’d been commanded to go. Nothing scurried to catch up, stepping purposefully upon the edges of his shadow cast by the setting sun.
SEVEN
DEEP IN THE HEART of the Fifth Mountain, a sorceress walked along a black corridor. Her silk slippers shredded against the rough pumice floor, and she dragged her fingernails along the walls, sharpening them into claws. Above her head tiny blue lights bobbed, as if pieces of the afternoon sky had been torn free and tethered to her crown of delicate bat-wing bones.
She hummed to herself as she went, a hollow melody intended to fill the space before her, which had been empty since the mountain itself had stopped breathing. The sorceress was beautiful, and monstrous, for she was both woman and spirit, and her flesh shaped into smooth pale-copper limbs draped with layers of black and white and heart-pink silk. Her hair looped in a layered cascade, pinned with crystal forks and cloisonné combs that dripped with seed pearls and amethyst unicorn tears. She smiled with ruby-red lips, and her cheeks spread prettily, but her teeth were as sharp and jagged as a shark’s, her eyes evergreen and death white, bisected each by a long red snake pupil. Perhaps her fingers were too long, which made the claws tipping them seem just right; perhaps her silken slippers hid the cloven hooves of a unicorn or the gripping talons of an eagle balled into a fist the better to walk upon. Perhaps her feet were perfect, delicate woman’s feet. Her pace was smooth as a snake, and her voice whispered like a lovely moon sprite’s cry as she sang a gentle dirge.
Her shadow drifted behind her reluctantly, bound in the shape of flared wings. The darkness drew in her wake like caressing hands, pulling sound with her, until every echo was swallowed up and stitched with magic into the trailing hems of her robes.
The sorceress turned a curve in the deep corridor, into a low-hung cavern that dripped with glittering diamond and ruby veins and thick black obsidian eyes that once had gl
owed with the presence of the Fifth Mountain’s great demon.
Far in the corner the sorceress had bade rocks heat and flow into the shape of teeth from both the floor and the ceiling, until they joined into thin bars. It had become the grinning, sharp mouth of a prison cell. Within: an oil lamp, dimly lit; a gilt-edged ceramic bowl too pretty for the use to which it had been put; a nest of woolen quilts; a maiden in a tattered gown.
“O Prince Who Is Also a Maiden,” said the sorceress, “good afternoon.”
Kirin raised his face, and a beautiful face it was, despite soot-streaked tears and chewed away lipstick, despite the tangle of impossibly black hair framing his ashy-white cheeks, spilling in knots still half-braided with silver threads and sky-blue threads, despite the necklace of white and green pearls looped again and again around his long neck, despite the torn peacock-green gown and black-gold-red embroidered flowers. Despite the blood at his fingers from scraping against the bars of his cage.
He did not reply, only studied her with eyes the chipped-brown color of ancient amber.
The sorceress knelt, skirts and robes pooling perfectly about her, and the winged shadows wrapped up the dim lamplight until only her shards of sky-blue crown tossed away deep darkness. “Are you hungry? Would you eat today?”
Still the prince said nothing.
“There is water,” she said, and a narrow pitcher appeared beside his bare foot. “Flavored with mint and rose petals, just how you like it.”
The prince reached and dipped a single finger over the rim, touching a ripple to the surface of the water.
“Prince, will they discover my secret? Will they notice the thing I sent back to them? Maiden, will they come for you?”
Kirin smiled then—a soft, dark smile. “Nothing will come for me,” he said.
EIGHT
FOR THE FIRST SEVERAL days, Nothing and The Day the Sky Opened traveled easily along the Way of King-Trees. The Way was broad and filled with travelers and merchants heading north into the rain forest. Because of the crowd, Nothing and Sky were ignored entirely. At first the road was paved with bricks and long flagstones, the edges marked by massive pillars of redwood gilded at the top to glow like the sun, with tiny shrines cut into their bases. These pillars were meant to invite the spirits of the King-Trees lining the road farther north to venture south sometimes, protecting the entire Way. Every traveler paused occasionally at one of the small shrines to drip wine or leave the last of their breakfast bun, a flower, or a tiny seed.
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