Emahla only rolled her eyes. “Telling stories again? You’re such a liar.”
The crab twisted in my grip and pinched the meaty flesh between my thumb and forefinger with a claw. “Ow! Dammit!” I shook it loose, and Emahla had laughed.
The rain had started then, all at once. Clouds had been threatening it for days, but had chosen that moment to follow through.
We’d both been born in a wet season, though it had been a long time since. It still rained in a dry season, but not like this. This was as though heaven held an ocean, and the dam keeping it there had finally burst. Water rained from the sky like a waterfall. Emahla had laughed again, throwing her arms and her head back, letting her bucket of clams fall to the sand. Just like that – with the rain sticking her hair to her skull, gathering like glass beads on her eyelashes, running like tears down flushed cheeks – I knew.
“You’re beautiful,” I’d blurted out, and had changed our friendship for ever.
All the joy had rushed out of her. “You’re such a liar,” she said again, but this time, she didn’t sound sure. And then she’d turned and run from the beach, leaving her bucket behind.
She hadn’t spoken to me again for fourteen days, which to me had seemed like a lifetime. I’d knocked on her door several times, only to be turned away kindly by her mother or father. The one time her younger sister had opened the door, she’d bluntly said, “She doesn’t want to see you,” and had shut the door before I’d had a chance to ask for anything.
I’d forgotten what life was like before we’d been friends. I tried to find other boys and girls to play with, and while they accepted me into their groups with little protest, they asked first if I spoke any Poyer, if it was true the Poyer had bears for pets and what did my name mean? Surely it had to mean something. They didn’t laugh at the same jokes Emahla did. They had their own language, and I floundered when I tried to adapt, because I did not want to. I wanted the comfort of Emahla’s presence, the way we understood one another.
When finally she’d knocked on my door again, I’d been breathless with relief. She didn’t try to pretend it had never happened, or even try to slip into our old conversations first. She stood in my doorway, her black hair streaming in satin ribbons about a solemn face. Eyes so dark I thought they could swallow me. “We can be friends,” she said simply. “Nothing more.”
I was little more than a boy, and had all the clumsy eagerness of a pup. “I was only joking. Come on, don’t scare me like that. I didn’t mean it.”
She stared at me, and my lies were like wet sheets of paper, disintegrating at the slightest touch. I wilted beneath her gaze. She sighed, probably out of pity more than anything. “Do you want to go pick coconuts?”
I’d nodded and slipped on my shoes.
It was never the same again after that, though we both tried. I’d noticed that I liked women, and Emahla was fast growing into one, and I liked her more than any of all the others combined.
Later, on nights where we’d sit on the beach and gaze at the stars, she told me that she fell in love with me on a rainy day in my mother’s kitchen. “You were helping your mother make dumplings,” she’d said, her head pillowed on my shoulder. “You were quiet. For once in your life, you were quiet. And when I sat next to you to help, shoulder to shoulder, I could feel a future in that silence. You always say so many things. Always, always talking. So many stories! But it wasn’t until you were silent that I could feel the truth of you beneath all the words, all the stories. I always knew we could laugh together, that we could do fun things. But I never thought I could tell you what was in my heart, to share pain and disappointment and to have you cup that in your hands. To breathe back your own sorrows. I always thought you’d just make a joke or tell me a funny story about a fisherman who accidentally hooked the moon.”
She’d kissed me the day after the dumplings, solemn as the day she’d told me we could only be friends. And then she’d laughed when it was done, and I’d laughed, and then I’d kissed her again and again, as if the world was the ocean and she the only air I could breathe.
Sitting in my boat, remembering this, I couldn’t tell if I was crying. The rain was warm against my cheeks. Mephi crept over to my feet. He stared at my face and then leapt into my lap. He rose onto his haunches and placed his paws on my chest. “Not good?” he said, looking into my eyes.
“No.” I cleared my throat. “It’s the sort of good that you get sad about because you no longer have it. A very good.”
He pressed his head to my chin, his whiskers tickling my neck. “A very good,” he cooed.
I rubbed the little nubs on his head. I thought of what Emahla would make of this creature. “Someday. Someday we’ll find it again.”
He leaned against my chest and sighed.
18
Lin
Imperial Island
I could feel the pulse of my heart at my neck, throbbing beneath my ear. My father locked his gaze with mine. I wanted very much to avert my eyes, to look away, to make some apology. Why had I drawn his attention to me instead of Bayan? Would he send Tirang to cut me down? But I kept my head high and I studied each movement in his face. Anger, hot as the blacksmith’s forge, then dismay. Fear, so quick I almost missed it. He settled finally into embarrassment. “Perhaps imprudence can be a learned trait,” he said grudgingly. “I do my best not to teach it.” He lowered his hand to the table.
Tirang strode back to his cushioned seat, as if he’d not been about to wreak violence at all.
I let out a breath. Bayan looked sick with relief.
But I’d not escaped all consequence. Father’s gaze still rested on me. “Do you claim more prudence, that you should lecture me on the lack of it?”
“No, of course not,” I said, and this time I did lower my eyes.
“May I remind you that you only have six keys.”
Nine, I corrected in my head. “That is true.”
I heard him shifting on his cushion, the brush of fingers against the table. When I looked at him again, he’d moved his plate to the side, his hands clasped in front of him. “You said you’ve been meditating on your past. I think it’s good that you’re finally putting in some effort, and effort does not go unnoticed.” He reached into his sash pocket and produced a key. It clicked against the wood as he laid it on the table. “I have some questions for you.”
For the first time I didn’t feel weak with wanting. Anger roared in my belly. He laid the key on the table like I was a dog and the key a treat. He’d give the treat to me, yes, but only if I performed first. So many times I’d been denied satisfaction. But this time I’d read some of the journal. My journal. “Ask,” I said.
I must have given some hint of my anger, for Father looked a little taken aback. Bayan, next to him, shrank into his seat as though he wished he could sink into the floor. But soon Father gathered himself. “What was the name of your best childhood friend?”
I let the first two questions pass – he always asked three – though I hemmed and hawed as if I were truly struggling to find an answer. “Perhaps I need to meditate more,” I said after the second.
Father only looked displeased and asked me his third question. “What was your favorite flower?”
A sprig of jasmine blossoms had been pressed into the front pages of the book, the scent of it mingling with old paper. “Jasmine,” I said. I paused and closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath. “I think I used to keep some of it even when it was out of season. I’d press it and smell it, even long after the petals had dried out.”
Father’s face went slack. Amazement and something else. Hope? Did he truly hope for me to regain my memories? If he did, why didn’t he tell me my old memories, all the times we’d interacted? Surely that would jog loose memories more swiftly than this. “Yes,” he said softly. “You loved jasmine, even more than all the exotic lilies in the garden.” His gaze went far and away.
I let him have whatever memory paraded in his skull, though I really
just wanted to shake him and ask what he saw in his mind. Instead, I waited and then cleared my throat. “The key?”
Father shook himself, appearing more like the old man he truly was. “Yes.” He slid the key across the table to me.
I waited until his hand was back at his side before I took it. It was bronze and small and still warm to the touch, a simple bamboo pattern stamped onto its bow. Certainly a less elaborate key than others I’d seen upon my father’s chain, but I was beginning to find out that the intricacy of the key had little to do with the value of the secrets I’d find behind its door. “Which door does it go to?”
Father waved a dismissive hand. “You can find out yourself. The both of you may go.”
Bayan started as though expecting another blow. I’d barely touched my meal but I rose to my feet and watched as Bayan did the same. He seemed to regain some of his dignity as he straightened, running his hands over his tunic and wiping at the corner of his mouth. He gave my father a wide berth as he made his way to the door, and gave the four constructs an even wider berth. I followed him into the hall.
The door clicked shut behind me, and I heard Uphilia’s voice as she spoke to my father about taxes and licence fees.
Bayan didn’t leave straight away; he lingered in a restless way, shifting from foot to foot like he knew he had to be somewhere but wasn’t sure where.
I made as if to pass him.
“Thank you,” he blurted out. “You didn’t have to come to my aid. It would have been better for you if you hadn’t.”
I gave him a considering look. “If I hadn’t, I would have had to watch Tirang wash the floors with your blood. Not my idea of dinnertime entertainment.”
Bayan barked out a short, nervous laugh. All the grace and cleverness had washed out of him. “You didn’t have to do it.” He pressed his lips together, and the wild look in his eyes faded, though sweat still beaded on his brow. “Thank you,” he said again.
“I should thank you for telling me to meditate,” I said. “It obviously helped.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t tell you to help you. I didn’t have good intentions.”
“I know.” But he didn’t hate me. Strangely enough, I was feeling grateful for that.
We both stared at one another for a moment, Bayan’s gaze considering, as though he were weighing something. Then he thrust his hands into his pocket and nodded at my hand. “The key. I know where it leads.”
I was still holding it, the metal cool in my grasp. “Where?”
“I’ll show you.”
I would have rather he just told me, but I didn’t want to risk losing this small kindness from a rival. So I followed him through the twists and turns of the palace. He never turned around even once to check if I was still there, not even as we passed servants and climbed stairs to the smaller third floor. We ended at a place I’d not passed through often near the back of the palace, where it nestled into the mountains. The door we stopped at was brown and small, so that Bayan would have to stoop to get through it. The wood was worn, the varnish peeling toward the bottom.
“Here?”
Bayan nodded.
Feeling a little odd, I fit the key into the lock and turned.
It opened to the sky. Walls on either side of the door sheltered the path from wind and intruders. These walls were better kept than the ones surrounding the palace, the plaster smooth and unbroken. Stairs led up a mountainside, the setting sun outlining each step in gold.
Bayan slipped in after me before I closed the door. I gave him a questioning look but he said nothing, only waiting until I’d locked the door. I brushed past him as I made for the stairs. He had the same sandalwood smell as Father did. I wondered if it was a thing done with calculation, like an orphaned pup trying to absorb an adult’s scent so the adult would claim it. Or perhaps he was more alike to my father than I was, even choosing the same perfumes.
The stairs were uneven, some so tall I had to brace myself against the wall to climb them. Others were barely the height of two of my fingers pressed together. I was more than a little jealous of Bayan’s long legs. But he didn’t stride past me. He waited as I struggled, though I heard him laugh more than once when I struggled with a particularly difficult step. I gritted my teeth. Once, I glanced back to see how far I’d come, squinting against the sun. The array of steps below was dizzying; the tiled rooftops of the palace buildings spread beneath me. I felt like I could land on them if only I jumped hard enough.
When I finally reached the top, I had more than the climb to take my breath away.
The stairs leveled out into a round courtyard, bound on all sides by the same wall. Mountains rose beyond the courtyard, jagged edges framing the stone. In the middle of the courtyard, its branches curling out over nearly the entire space, was a cloud juniper.
If I’d seen one before, I didn’t remember. All I did remember were paintings of them, or carvings. They grew mostly in the mountains, with enormous taproots that reached to the very depths of the islands. Most of the living cloud junipers were either inaccessible or walled off in monasteries, where they were cared for and worshiped. Their berries and their leaves and their bark were managed by the monks and doled out sparingly.
I took a few hesitant steps toward it, still unsure if it was real. And then I lifted a hand to cup a branch in my fingers. The sharp, evergreen scent of it filled my nostrils, the short needles pricking my palm. A few dark berries dotted the ends. I wanted to bury my face in it and breathe it all in.
“Be careful not to take anything,” Bayan said. “You can’t take any of it without the Emperor’s permission.”
“Who cares for it?”
“I do,” Bayan said, “though I expect your father will ask you to take on some of those duties as well.”
“Is that why you showed it to me?” I said, amused. “So you’d have someone else to help?” I peered into the branches and saw one of Ilith’s little spies, its tail curled around the needles. It squeaked when it saw me, climbed higher, and then turned to rebuke me again. How like Father to not even trust his own foster-son.
“Can you blame me?” Bayan said. “The Emperor has me learning all the commands – it’s like learning an entirely new language – putting together constructs, taking care of the cloud juniper and learning politics. I have hardly a moment to myself before he summons me again for one task or another.” Bayan looked to the spy construct. “Go on, report all that too. I don’t care.” It only twitched its tail and watched us. “At least he leaves you alone.”
I huffed out a breath, and it tasted of bitterness. “Yes, he leaves me alone because to him I am broken.”
“But mending a little,” Bayan said.
I looked at him – with his black, shining eyes, his full lips, his angular jaw – and wondered if I could ever trust him. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. It wasn’t blank, but it didn’t divulge its secrets either. I didn’t really know Bayan, except as a rival. Almost as soon as I’d recovered from my illness, even as I searched my mind for some memories of my prior life, he’d been there – a constant threat. Father had made it clear from the very beginning what I was up against. “Do you want to be Emperor?”
“Of course I do,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re made Emperor, then what happens to me? Will you be content to have another person living in this palace who knows all your secret magic? Your family has always guarded the bone shard magic zealously. And now your father fosters me, teaches me everything he knows. I’m not a fool. I know what happens to me. I’m a liability if left alive.”
He was right, though the thought of ordering Bayan’s death made me ill. There had to be another way. “Is that the only reason?”
He leaned against the trunk of the cloud juniper. He looked as tired as my father did, and Bayan a fraction of his age. “What does it matter? I do this to survive. You too do this to survive. And now look. We both have seven keys.”
“We
are rivals.”
“Yes. And here, that’s the only thing that matters.” He swept away from me, back down the steps so quickly I could not follow.
The sun slipped below the horizon, casting everything in a wan, blue light. And I was alone in the darkening courtyard, the wind rattling through the cloud juniper branches.
19
Phalue
Nephilanu Island
Phalue lifted the mug to her lips and pretended to drink. Her father, at the head of the table, cast her an approving glance, and she did her best not to roll her eyes. “You should try to relax sometimes,” he’d said to her more than once. Other than his broad shoulders and his height, she wasn’t sure what she’d inherited from him. He sat upon his cushion with indolent gracelessness, his black hair tied back, his lanky limbs hidden behind various brocaded fabrics. Phalue hated brocade. It was hot, itchy, and heavy. She preferred her clothes simple and functional. Phalue liked to spar; her father abhorred physical exertion. She enjoyed walking in the city, among its citizens. He remained in his palace like a turtle inside his shell.
And Ranami had the nerve to tell Phalue she didn’t know enough outside her sphere? She knew plenty. Her mother was a commoner. Yes, her mother’s house was quite a bit nicer than Ranami’s tiny abode, and she had more money after marrying a governor – but she’d grown up with two brothers all squeezed into the same room. Her mother had known hardship. And Phalue often spent time with the people of the city. She’d tempted more than one to her bed, back before she’d met Ranami. What didn’t she know about the people her father ruled over? Why did Ranami keep insisting that she didn’t understand? Was this a contest – who had suffered more? And if she lost such a contest, was it even her fault?
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