by Natasha Ngan
I stare at her. “Really?”
She nods. “A lot of the time we just talk. The King tells me about what’s going on in the kingdom—politics, all his trips and the people and things he’s seen. He asks for my opinions. He shares his hopes for the kingdom. Even his fears.” She bites her lip and looks down. “He… he makes me feel special.”
Something chilled trickles down my spine.
“You can’t mean that.”
Aoki winces at the roughness in my voice. Her sweet face darkens. Avoiding my eyes, she licks her lips and goes on, “He asks about you sometimes. I know he doesn’t show it, but it’s not easy for him, dealing with everything. Having to look after an entire kingdom. And despite what you think, he really does want us to be happy.” I snort at this, and she throws me a strange look, a stiff slant to her mouth. “Lei,” she says, “he told me he’s going to call for you soon.”
The night is already cold. But at Aoki’s words the air grows even colder. Stormy autumn winds spin around us, icy against my skin, and I clutch the fur shawl tighter around my neck.
I look ahead to where the other girls are sitting. The King is there, in his usual gold-and-black robes, throwing back his head to laugh at something Blue is saying to him. The sound is like a thunderclap, electric, cutting right through the air and into my bones. But the sight of him… laughing like that.
I stop. Aoki turns to me, forehead furrowed.
“I can’t do it,” I tell her, staring ahead at the King. My words are edged. Knifepoints.
The servants to either side of us keep their distance as they wait for us to continue, and the noise from the party is enough to hide our conversation. But I still keep my voice down, half whispering, half spitting, “I won’t let him touch me again.”
I don’t realize it until I speak it. And it’s different from the times I’ve said it before, or the way I’ve hoped it, as if dreaming something enough could birth it into being. I know it now with a certainty that has fitted into the lost core at the heart of me, as hard and angular as my hope was soft and shimmering.
The King will not have me.
Aoki’s eyes are as wide as moons. “You’re going to deny him again? This is your job, Lei. It’s not so bad—”
I whirl round. “Not so bad? Remember how you felt the first time?”
“But I told you, it’s gotten better. I think—I think I’m starting to enjoy being with him. To have the King’s whole attention…” A glaze enters her eyes, something feverish in her glow. “How many people in the kingdom get to experience that?”
“The hundreds of girls he’s bedded,” I reply coolly, and pink spots her cheeks.
“You could at least be grateful for what the King has given you.”
I goggle at her. “What he’s given me? Aoki, he took us from our homes!”
“At least we were given a new one! The Hidden Palace, Lei! So many girls are forced into prostitution, or married off to some horrible man—”
“That sounds familiar.”
We fall silent, glaring at each other. The sounds of the party drift around us like colored rain.
Aoki’s the first to break it. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t fair.”
I grab her hands, offering a smile. “I’m sorry, too. Look, if you really want to be with the King, and he’s as good to you as you say he is, then I’m happy for you. At least you can enjoy being here. But I don’t.”
“Maybe if you get to know him…”
“It’s not enough.”
After a glance to check the servants haven’t come any closer, Aoki asks in a whisper, “Is there someone else?”
Wren’s face flashes into my mind: her beautiful, dimpled smile, those smart, feline eyes.
“No,” I lie. “Of course not.”
Aoki looks relieved. “I don’t know why I needed to ask. Where would you have found a man in Women’s Court?”
Because it isn’t a man. For some reason, a trill of annoyance runs through me. Everyone’s assumption is for women and men to be together, and yet here we are, human girls, the Demon King’s concubines. Surely love between two women wouldn’t be so strange?
We are all the same really, little one. Deep down.
A tiny smile lifts my mouth. Mama would have understood. And the loss pierces me so freshly again that I have to push out a laugh to keep the tears away.
“Maybe,” I tell Aoki, “I fancy old Master Tekoa.”
She giggles, a hand flying to her mouth. “I knew it!”
But my smile drops as I focus again on the floating platform where the King is waiting. With a flex of my fingers, I start again toward it before I lose courage, Aoki hurrying to follow. We cross the short walkway onto the platform, and a servant announces our arrival.
At once, the conversations stop. The slap of water against the sides of the platform rises loud in the hush. A bark of laughter lifts from farther off in the party, and there’s something threatening about it, a dare for anyone else to interrupt the moment. Aoki moves forward first, but it’s me everyone is watching as we approach the King. I keep my own stare lowered to the floor, on the swishing tail of Aoki’s cheongsam in front of me.
She greets him sweetly, an ingratiating furl in her voice I’ve never heard before. Then she steps aside. I lower to my knees as gracefully as I can in my long-skirted dress. I palm my hands to the floor. The memory of the last time I was like this in front of the King jolts through me, pricking goose bumps across my skin.
Two months gave me space and something almost resembling peace. But time has a way of folding itself, like a map, distances and journeys and hours and minutes tucked neatly away to leave just the realness of the before and the now, as close as hands pressed on either side of a rice-paper door.
“My King,” I say into the quiet.
“Get up.”
His voice is the same deep rumble I remember. I do as he says, barely able to breathe for the dashing of my heart against my rib cage. Finally, I gather the courage to lift my eyes to his, but the expression on his face takes me by surprise, because it’s the last thing I expect to see.
Happiness.
He looks happy. To see me.
“Lei-zhi,” he greets—as though we were old friends, all smiles and lightness. As though the last time I saw him he hadn’t been chasing me through his chambers, half naked and roaring. “I’ve missed you. Let’s take a walk, just you and me. I want to talk.”
I get to my feet quickly, just in case he offers to help. Wren’s eyes find mine, and then the King lays a hand on my shoulder to lead me off the platform. Whispers unspool into the silence like a cat slinking through the feet of a crowd. It must be common knowledge by now what happened between the King and me, and it’s clear everyone is as surprised by his warm welcome as I am.
Surprised—and uneasy. Because what might his smile be hiding?
Lifting my chin against the stares, I follow the King into the party. Interconnected pathways run between the boats and floating hookah dens and teahouses, and we take a haphazard route through them. He seems intent on meandering. Breezily, he points out various guests, stopping to greet some, telling me about the banquet they had earlier and that I really must try the new sake he had imported from Shomu, matured for three years in total darkness! It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.
I mumble noncommittal responses. My pulse is still spiked at the closeness of him, the weight of his hand on my shoulder, and alongside the fear sparks something else: anger. Flame-hot and fierce. Because how can he speak like this to me after what happened the last time we met? The week of starvation and isolation he put me through?
“I owe you an apology, Lei-zhi.”
Abruptly, the King stops. We’re in the middle of a walkway. A pair of elegant gazelle-form men strolling arm in arm behind us almost bump into us, and they back away hastily, muttering apologies amidst fervent bows. Other guests ahead turn quickly around to take a different route. The noise of the party
seems to dim now, wrapping its arms around the King and me, an intimate embrace. The blue of his eyes fixes me to the spot. They’re an ice-cold color, shockingly bright against his golden-umber fur, like the sharpness of a cloudless winter sky.
“I suppose,” he starts, “I’m used to being in control. Or at least, having to appear in control.” He looses a long exhale. “I don’t admit it often, but it’s difficult. Being a King. Ruling. All of this”—he sweeps out an arm at the bustle of the party—“and more, the whole of Ikhara mine to look after. To protect. I try my best to be fair, but it’s impossible. There will always be those who lose out.” He rolls his shoulders, neck cording. “Ruling is like shaman’s magic. You can only give when you have taken.”
“Perhaps,” I reply in a level voice, “it’s about balancing who you take from.”
The King looks down his slender bovine nose at me, light from the party embellishing his outline and picking out the elaborate patterns of his gilded horns. “A fair point, I suppose, if rather naive. Not everyone can have everything. And not everyone has the same needs, or rights.”
I grit back a glower at this.
“And not everyone,” he continues, “has the same to give in the first place.” The King’s face tightens. “Take my brothers, for example. They were one, two years older than me. But at the age of seven I already understood more than they about what makes a strong ruler. I knew that if I took their lives, it would prove to the heavenly rulers and the court that I was infinitely more capable of taking over my dying father’s rule than either of them. They were put on this earth to give, while I was destined to take.” A dark current threads his words, and I hold down the instinct to squeeze my arms around my chest, to back away. “I demonstrated my worth. And still no one has acknowledged the sacrifices I made. Everything I have given for this kingdom. I am not even allowed a name. It is only Heavenly Master this, Heavenly Master that, all the godsdamn time, as though I’m just that, some heavenly ruler everyone expects to grant their prayers.”
I lick my lips, then say carefully, “Of course I’m no expert, my King, but… isn’t that sort of what a King’s job is?”
He regards me in silence from under full lashes, his face frozen in a rigid mask. For a second, it seems almost like he’s going to strike me. “People do not ask of the gods without offering them things in return,” he says stiffly.
Then he loosens. He offers me a smile, though it’s a shadow of his usual lazy grin, and I notice then the heaviness in his expression, fatigue in the dark circles under his eyes. And underneath it all, a touch of something a little delirious. “Have you heard of the Sickness, Lei-zhi?”
“The Sickness?” The phrase nudges a distant memory, though I can’t recall where I’ve heard it before.
“Something is making our land ill: forest fires in the mountains, earthquakes, crippling droughts in the southern provinces.… More than three times last year, River Zebe burst its banks. Two of my battalions are still in Marazi to aid reconstruction efforts. The reports have been coming in too fast for me to keep track. On the trip I just returned from, I saw countless villages and farmlands affected. There was even a Steel clan forced to seek refuge with a neighboring Paper clan.” He snorts. “The indignity of it. And with the increasing rebel activity, I’ve not had the time or resources to address it properly.”
“But aren’t those things natural?” I ask. “Earthquakes, droughts…”
“Indeed. But something is causing them to get worse. And I think I finally understand what it is.” With a tilt of his head, the King raises his eyes to the sky.
I follow his gaze. The wind has blown the clouds away to reveal a sky brilliant with starlight and the crescent of the moon hanging right overhead, sharp as a scythe. At first, I don’t understand what he’s suggesting. Then it hits me.
“You mean the gods?”
“They’re angry,” the King growls, the familiar bite returning to his voice. A muscle tics in his jaw. “They’re punishing us for something. See? Even Ahla takes her warrior form to taunt me.” His eyes are shiny. “I need to appease them.”
I remember what General Yu said to Mistress Eira about the King’s superstitious nature, what Chenna told me about the reasoning behind his picking her first. Our belief in the gods is so organic and deep-rooted there can often be something customary about it. But there is nothing perfunctory about the fever-glow now on the King’s face. Though it would be blasphemous to speak out loud, the question comes to me, undeniable.
Is this magic or madness I’m seeing? Faith or desperation?
“How—how will you do that?” I ask in a hushed voice.
The King’s bowed lips stretch, a grin more teeth than smile. “Punish those who disobey me,” he says huskily. “Rid the kingdom of those who are not faithful.” His frosted eyes slide my way, and the silence stretches out. Then, abruptly, the tension drains from his face. Slinging an arm around my shoulder, he spins us back round, the corners of his mouth lifted. “Come, Lei-zhi. We’d better get back to the others. I don’t want them getting jealous.”
And his chatter is once again so light and easy that I almost believe I imagined the threat in his words.
The party spirals on into the night in a whirl of laughter and starlight and the jewel-bright reflections of lantern light on water, everything colorful: the sounds, the conversations, the smiles, the dresses. It’s the first time there’s been such a big gathering, and from our corner of the floating tearoom, the girls swap gossip about the guests.
“Look!” Mariko cries, pointing to an elegant woman with porcelain skin. “That’s Mistress Lo, she’s one of the most famous Paper Girls. You must have heard of her. She runs a beauty parlor in Women’s Court. We must ask Madam Himura if we can visit it.…”
More pointing. “Oh, that’s Madam Daya! She was married to a General straight after her time as a Paper Girl. Apparently the General saved the King’s life in an assassination attempt and she was his reward.…”
“Isn’t that Mistress Ohura? She’s still so beautiful.…”
The voices of the girls float around me. My eyes keep sliding back to where Wren and the King are talking under a pagoda at the water’s edge. They’re too far to make out anything more than their outlines, but the closeness of their shadows, the King’s huge bulk dwarfing Wren, sends something sharp down my veins.
“They’ve been there for ages,” Aoki grumbles, her eyes following mine. There’s jealousy in her gaze, too.
He makes me feel special.
Disgust quivers through me at the memory of her words. I tear my eyes away. “I’m going for a walk,” I say, and get to my feet and start walking before she can follow.
I turn down a few of the floating walkways and head up onto the grassy bank of the river, picking a random direction to wander in. The noise of the party fades as I trudge into the dark grounds. Over my head, a flock of birds wheel noisily, wingtips kissing the sky. Their freedom pierces me. What would happen if I just took off right now? Chased after them, danced in the midnight shadow of their bodies so high above, and we could be mirrors, echoes, them in the air and me on the ground—
The thought cuts off. Because of course: the palace walls.
Somewhere in the distance, I sense their presence, their black embrace. The birds would fly right over them, and all I’d be able to do is watch, fingers pressed to the frozen rock.
Suddenly the darkness isn’t so welcoming anymore. I’ve just started to head back to the river when I stop at the sound of something in the shadows. Is that… crying?
Scanning the grounds, I spot a woman sitting on the sloping grass a few feet away. Reflections on the river’s surface outline her in shimmering silver. She’s wearing a patterned sari, its pale-pink fabric light against her brown skin. I recognize her robes—she’s one of the former Paper Girls, the one who was married to some General.
“Hello?” I call, taking a few steps toward her. “Madam Daya, is it?”
Hunched s
houlders tighten. “Get away!” she hisses. It comes out strangled, the words strange and contorted.
“Is everything all right?”
The woman doesn’t turn. “Who is that?” she replies, hoarse.
“I’m Lei. One of the Paper Girls—”
She whirls around in an instant, springing to her feet. I stagger back, but she catches me, nails pinching into my arms as she brings me close.
A scream catches in my throat. Madam Daya’s face is shadowed, but that only seems to heighten what a mess it is, moonlight glinting off the raw peeling skin slipping from her face like melted wax; rotted teeth; the bulbous, veined eyes.
Words tumble from my lips. “I—I didn’t mean—”
“Look at me!” she cries. “It’s all his fault!”
“Wh-whose fault?”
“My stupid husband’s! He made a mistake during the raid at Shomu Pass, and the King refused to grant him our annual magic allowance, and without my regular visits from the shaman…” She shakes me, crazed, tears leaking from those horrible red eyes. “I can’t go back to the party looking like this!”
As she talks, skin drips from her cheeks and chin. A ragged scrap unpeels, falling on my own face, and I shriek, tossing my head to get it off me.
Madam Daya lets out a mad laugh. “That’s it! Try to get away. But you’ll look like this one day, too, you know. When you’re forced to use endless enchantments just to keep yourself looking young and pretty for whatever worthless man the King gives you to like a prize show-tiger, you’ll understand. You’ll know.”
And it suddenly clicks what’s happened to her.
Qi draining.
Since magic is an element that comes from the closed circle of our world, it cannot be made, only exchanged through a shaman’s chanted dao. Yin and yang, energy, lifeblood, qi—all of it is a balance. A flow. It’s what the King was talking about earlier. Shamans must adhere to the equilibrium when drawing magic from the earth by offering gifts in return, whether it be burying money for spirits or scattering plant seeds, or carving tattoos in their skin, the pain serving as payment, the markings bindings of their loyalty. Even then, when too much magic is asked from the gods, their enchantments can start to fail, or even backfire.
