“I am,” said a smooth voice.
Standing in the doorway was a heavyset man in the most elaborate court outfit Mara had ever seen, even in the scrolls in the Order’s library. A silk, indigo-colored robe brushed his feet, and over it he wore a heavy vest of deep saffron yellow. Both the vest and the robe were so thickly crusted with silver embroidery that it looked like the man’s clothing was covered with frost. He had peculiar gray-brown eyes, set in a lined face, and there was gray in his beard. He didn’t appear to have any weapons.
“Lord u’Gra,” Revathi said, and her voice was so completely neutral, so unemotional, that Mara had to push down the urge to shove this stranger out of the room. But when Revathi put her hands together and bowed, Mara did the same.
“Lady Revathi,” the man said, inclining his head. “I hoped to find you yesterday.”
“I was with your son yesterday,” Revathi said. “He was kind enough to escort me on a shopping expedition.”
“Ah, young love,” the man said, stroking his beard. “The boy I raised would rather face a herd of angry elephants than a market. You are a remarkably softening influence on him.”
“Tamas is very concerned with my safety,” Revathi said. “He came as my protection.” She ran her fingers through her loose mass of hair. “May I ask what prompted you to call on me in my private quarters before I’m fully dressed? Surely not a desire to discuss my shopping habits.”
The man smiled, a hollow smile like a painted mask’s. “I wished to invite you and the Lady Ekisa to dinner with Tamas and me. A . . . family affair, shall we say?” His eyes slid to Mara. “Though if you wish to bring a friend, you may.”
“Mara is my new guard,” Revathi said. “Tamas thought I might need one.”
The man studied Mara as if he was assessing her for market. “I would not have thought Tamas to have such initiative,” he said. “She looks competent enough, I suppose.” He looked back at Revathi. “I assume tonight will be acceptable.”
“You assume incorrectly,” Revathi said. “As flattered as I am by your generous invitation, tonight is far too short a notice. We haven’t a free night for at least a week.”
The man’s fingers curled almost into fists, then relaxed. “Forgive me for my presumption,” he said. “I thought that with your parents away and the court quiet, you would be searching for ways to occupy your time.”
Revathi’s back tensed, but the pleasant expression on her face didn’t change. “Sadly, the house of sa’Hoi carries too much responsibility for that,” she said evenly. “And my parents’ absence only increases the burden on my grandmother and me. Our days are more than full.”
Mara thought she saw a frown cross Lord u’Gra’s face, but she blinked and it was gone. “Of course,” he said, bowing. “Perhaps you could consult with your grandmother and settle on a date that would work for both of you?”
“Of course,” Revathi said, her voice sweet. “We’ll let you know as soon as possible. I do have things to attend to this morning, so unless you have anything else to discuss . . .”
“Don’t let me keep you from your duties. I look forward to having you in my house very soon.” Lord u’Gra bowed again. Then he turned and strode away.
Mara waited a few moments, then poked her head out of the room to make sure he was gone. “Well,” she said, trying to sound casual. Best to hide her intense dislike of the man until she knew more about him. “He was certainly insistent.”
“Sathvik u’Gra is a self-important, vicious warthog,” Revathi said, twisting her hair a little tighter with every word. She pinned it into a low knot and scowled. “But when he says he runs the Empire, he’s not far off the mark. He’s very close to Emperor Saro right now.”
“How did that happen?” Mara asked, startled out of her caution. She wouldn’t have put a man who smiled that way in charge of anything.
Revathi went to her shelf and pulled off a carved wooden box inlaid with ebony. She pulled something out of it, a long, thin metal object topped by a butterfly made of amethysts.
“Sathvik u’Gra lost his wife last year,” she said, sliding the object into her thick hair so that just the butterfly was visible, sparkling against her dark waves. “It gives him a card to play, a way to connect with the Emperor in his grief. People in pain are easily swayed. Not to mention that Sathvik is the current head of the Council of Lesser Princes, which is where all the powerful nobles sit. He’s good at what he does, and like his son, he’s very charming when it suits him.”
She put both hands on her hips and looked Mara up and down. “Enough about court politics. We need to get you cleaned up and properly attired.”
“Oh, right.” Mara looked down at her dirty tunic and trousers and put a hand up to her short, messy hair. “I’m not used to thinking about how I look.”
“I’ve noticed,” Revathi said, a smile playing around her mouth. “It’s refreshing.” She gestured Mara out of the room and followed her. “But rule two in the Lotus Court is this: never forget that appearance can be a weapon.”
Revathi led Mara to a bathing room as large as the bedchamber they’d just left. It was tiled with pale stone painted with swirls of blue and white. On one wall, someone had painted a large portrait of one of the Ancestors, a woman with loose, wavy hair and an owl on her shoulder. Her hand was held up, palm facing out, and her face was calm and kind. Several bronze sculptures of owls had been placed about the room as well.
There were several women already in the sunken tubs. Water gleamed on their brown shoulders and shone on their wet, dark hair. Flower petals filled the water around them, drifting swirls of red, yellow, and purple. The air smelled of roses.
Servants moved between the baths, refreshing the water, adding more flowers, or offering trays of sliced fruit. Revathi gestured to them, and before Mara knew it, she was stripped and pushed gently into one of the unoccupied baths. The next half hour was a blur of sensation, the feel of warm water on her skin, soft petals between her fingers, and firm fingers washing her hair.
When she was allowed to dry off, one of the servants gave her new clothing, a supple leather tunic and matching trousers. The clothes were dyed a soft gray and trimmed with red and brown embroidery. Mara slid them on and buckled her dagger belt around her waist. The familiar weight on her hips was reassuring.
There was a mirror on the wall and Mara walked over to it, unable to resist the urge to look at her human form. There were no mirrors in the Order, only the distorted reflections on metal and rippled glimpses in water. It had been years since Mara had truly seen herself at all.
The girl in the mirror had a straight, unsmiling mouth. Her wet hair had been combed back, making her face look severe. The gold flecks in her eyes had faded to invisibility, and she moved like a trained warrior, not a wild thing.
She looked . . . human. As if she’d never been anything else.
Suddenly Mara couldn’t bear to look into her own eyes. She turned and left the room.
WHEN EMIL AND Esmer reached the high walls surrounding Kamal, Emil stopped to stare. “It’s bigger than I remembered.”
Esmer didn’t comment. She’d changed to cat form a couple of times on the way to the city, running circles around Emil and darting off into the woods. Now she looked up at the huge main gate, her lips thin and tight.
“Esmer . . .”
“Emil, if you ask me one more time if I’m sure, I will scratch you.”
Emil swallowed the words he’d been about to say and walked forward to the registration table.
“Emil Arvi,” he told the scribe at the table. “Here to look for work.”
The scribe nodded to a nearby soldier, who stepped forward and grabbed Emil’s scarred shoulder. His grip was hard and painful, his fingers grinding into the raised pattern of Emil’s scars. “He’s Wind caste,” the soldier said.
“Of course he is,” the scribe muttered. “All right, boy, listen up. You’ll have three days and two nights to obtain a work permit.” The scribe s
poke in the rapid monotone of someone who says the same thing many times a day. His reed pen scratched across the papers in front of him. “If at the end of that time, you have not obtained a permit, you must leave the city. It will be another three days and two nights before you’re allowed back in to try again. If you fail to leave the city when your trial time is up and we catch you, you’ll be marked with whiteflower dye and thrown out. You won’t be able to come back until the dye fades.”
“How long does that take?” Emil asked.
“Anywhere from thirty to fifty days,” the scribe said. “Long enough to starve. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Emil swallowed. “Understood.”
“Good.” The scribe finished writing, blotted the paper, and handed it to Emil. It had the mark of the day and season on it and was imprinted with a seal. “Present this to the person who hires you, and they will give you a full work permit. Next!”
Esmer strode forward to the registration table, her neck straight and her chin up. The scribe raised his eyebrows.
“Name?”
“Esmer, of the Marjara-Sune.”
“Huh.” The scribe looked her up and down. “Asatya, how’s the Sune quota?”
A man wearing captain’s cuffs unrolled one of the rice scrolls on the table and scanned it. “Five working in the Wind Circle and three in the Bamboo pleasure quarters. There’s that pet of Lord u’Gra’s, and of course, Garen. . . .”
“Garen doesn’t count,” the scribe said, his voice sour. “The Emperor has made that very clear.”
“Well, he’s the Emperor.” The captain shrugged. “If he wants to make exceptions to the law, who are we to object?”
“I still don’t like it,” the scribe muttered. He’d started writing again, not even looking in Esmer’s direction. “It’s not orderly. The whole reason to have a quota is so we can keep an eye on them, and keep out the really dangerous ones. We wouldn’t have this problem if they were in a caste of their own.”
“Good luck with trying to convince the Council of Lesser Princes of that,” the captain said. He rolled the scroll back up. “Anyway, looks like we have nine Sune right now. The quota’s fifteen, and her Tribe is listed as spotted cats. Harmless. She’ll pass.” He turned to the soldier who had checked Emil’s scars. “Mark her and let her go through.”
Throughout the conversation, Esmer hadn’t moved, just stared straight ahead with no expression. But now Emil saw her fingers bend a little, as if she were flexing nonexistent claws.
The other soldier grinned. He grabbed one of Esmer’s hands, drawing an X in black dye across it.
“Going to work in a pleasure house too, sweet one?” he asked, rubbing a thumb across her skin. He lowered his voice. “I hear there’s quite a demand for exotic pets there.”
Emil took a step forward, but Esmer jerked her free hand at him, a clear signal to stop. She put her chin down and stared at the man holding on to her. The gold flecks in her brown eyes were very bright, her pupils dilated wide. The look of a hunter about to pounce.
She stared at him until the soldier’s grin faded, and he dropped her hand. “Get out of here,” he said, taking a step back. “You’re holding up the line.”
Esmer walked through the gate. Emil following.
The transients’ area seemed more chaotic than he remembered, a barrage of noise and smells and shifting people. Esmer had one hand up, as if to shield herself from the noise. Emil put a hand on her shoulder and steered her through the collections of sleeping mats, looking for a quieter place to stop.
Soon the transients’ area gave way to narrow streets and small, jumbled dwellings. Most of the houses were made out of scrap wood, or tent material, or some combination of the two, and they were piled together like rolls of fabric in a sack. The noise of the gate quieted, replaced by the soft buzz of conversations and the shouts of children. But the smells were as chaotic as ever: sweaty skin and muddy feet, boiled rice and spiced tea, and the pervasive scent of dirty water from the canal.
Emil pulled Esmer into a small corner between two houses. “Back there, with the soldiers . . . is it always like that?”
The gold in Esmer’s eyes was dull, like tarnished bronze, and her shoulders slumped. “No,” she said, then fell silent as a man pushing a wooden tea cart walked by their alcove. The cups stacked on the cart clanked and rattled in protest as he passed, and Esmer watched him for a moment before speaking again. Her voice was soft.
“Sometimes it’s worse.”
Emil frowned. He’d just assumed Esmer never went to Kamal because she hated the crowds and the noise and the smell of the city. He’d never actually asked her why she didn’t like it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“No reason for you to,” Esmer said, lifting her shoulders in a brief shrug. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Sune and the Kildi get along so well? It’s because your people are the only ones who see us as human. Mostly, anyway.”
Emil thought of his father, the disapproval on his face when he spoke of Emil and Esmer possibly being in a relationship. Had that been because Esmer was a Sune? “I don’t understand,” he said. “What are they all afraid of?”
“Everything,” Esmer said. “Sune live outside the system; we don’t fit into the social order. We’re not slotted into neat, controllable boxes; we live wild and as we please. And we remind them of something they would like to forget, that once there was powerful magic in this land. Our transformations are fueled by magic; it runs in our blood and strengthens our bones. It’s one thing to tell stories and legends about magic, but actually having it in your city, walking your streets?” A faint smile crossed her face. “It makes people uncomfortable. The fact that some of us can turn into huge, dangerous animals probably doesn’t help.”
“I didn’t realize . . . ,” Emil said, the words hanging awkwardly between them. I didn’t realize your people were as hated as mine are. I didn’t realize you were hurting too.
“Well, now you do,” Esmer said. Her voice was back to its calm, practical tone, but her fingers rubbed against the black mark on her hand. “So now what? Are we going to camp out by the gate like everyone else?”
Emil reached into his tunic and pulled out the paper Lel had given him. “Not yet,” he said. “I have someone I need to find first.”
He started walking again, and Esmer fell into step beside him. They walked until the street opened up into a wide square of rough stone with a gurgling fountain in the center. Cramped booths lined the edges, selling everything from sticks of skewered meat to rough-made daggers and glass bead necklaces. A few sellers had splurged on jasmine vines that crawled over the wood of their booths. The scent of the tiny flowers made the air seem a little fresher.
All the sellers—and they were all men—bore either the small gold hoops in both ears that marked Bamboo merchant families or the single earring of a craftsman. They were dressed in rougher clothes than Emil had seen on most Bamboo caste, and most of them had swords or daggers hanging in plain sight on their belts.
“Doesn’t look like the safest place to conduct business,” Esmer remarked, and Emil had to agree.
“They’re selling the castoffs of their trade,” he said. “But there’s still enough value in their goods to make robbery a problem.”
“You’ve been here before?” Esmer asked.
“Not for several years,” Emil said. “I came on a trip with my uncle Pali. Kildi aren’t allowed to sell inside the walls, but he comes here a few times a year to make connections with the clothiers and tailors and arrange for future sales.” He scanned the square. It was thronged with Wind caste workers, most buying mugs of hot tea and slices of sour bread. “One of his biggest customers sells scrap here, and the family should have a booth right over . . . there.”
The booth in question was held by a lanky man in a blue tunic. A life of bending over counters had hunched his back and rounded his shoulders, but his smile beamed like a candle flame as Emil approa
ched.
“Need scraps for mending and sewing?” he called. “I have good quality ones, all double-washed and durable. Cotton, silk, thick wool, even cashmere.”
Emil examined the baskets of scraps on the counter. They were organized by color, and he spotted a basket of undyed material that looked familiar. “Is that Kildi cashmere?”
“It is indeed,” the man said. “My family has a contact in one of the Kildi clans who sells us the castoffs for a good price.”
“Pali Arvi?” Emil asked.
“Why, yes,” the man said. “How did you know?”
Emil put his hands together and bowed. “I’m his nephew.”
The man’s smile widened, and he bowed back. “How wonderful! Always nice to meet a member of the Arvi. Are you here to talk to the merchants? Pali usually speaks to my brother, and he isn’t here today.”
“Actually,” Emil said, “I’m looking for someone.” He held up Lel’s scrap of paper. “Do you know anyone by this name?”
The man’s face closed, his smiling mouth flattening into a thin line. “That way,” he said at last, pointing with two fingers to the other side of the market. “The red doors.” Then he looked past Emil to a pair of Wind caste girls. “Sturdy scraps for mending, ladies? I’ve got all kinds.”
Emil stood there for another moment, waiting to see if he could get any more information, but the man ignored him.
“That was strange,” Esmer said as they moved away from the booth. “Who is this Heema person anyway?”
Emil looked down at the scrawled name on the paper. “I think we’re about to find out.”
REVATHI WAS WAITING outside the bathing room, her dark hair still damp from her own bath, giving instructions to yet another servant. She looked up as Mara came out.
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