The Girl King

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The Girl King Page 15

by Mimi Yu


  “It has to be crazy,” Lu countered. “What’s happened to me is crazy. Extraordinary. And it will take extraordinary measures to set things right.”

  “You know that expression ‘fighting fire with fire’?” the boy said sarcastically. “I don’t think it’s meant to be taken as advice.”

  “When can we leave for Yunis?” Lu said, turning back to Omair.

  “We?” the boy repeated. “No way,” he said flatly, rounding on Omair. “She can do whatever she likes, but there’s no way we’re helping her with whatever crazy plan she comes up with.”

  Lu frowned. The old man did look unsteady now, but she suspected there was more to him than met the eye. “It’s his decision,” she told the Ashina boy. “If he wants to join me, it’s his choice.”

  “Stay out of it,” the boy bit back.

  “This concerns me as much as it does you,” Lu objected, struggling to keep her patience. “More so, even. The fate of thousands could rest upon this. Do you think your life will be better with my cousin on the throne?”

  “It won’t make an ounce of difference to me. Both of you are imperial swine.”

  The words stung more than they had any right to. “You met my cousin when he was just a boy. You know what a monster he was—is. Imagine that same monster with command over armies. You’re not seeing the big picture.”

  The boy whirled on her. “And that’s all you see, isn’t it! Winning your damned throne. Not the people whose lives you’ll ruin or end to get there.”

  It was too much. Her cousin’s betrayal—the betrayal of inner court officials her father had trusted, who had known her since infancy. Exile. And now this wrathful boy, this specter from her past whom she could not seem to quite reconcile to the present, insisted on standing in the way of the one solution she had to any of her problems.

  Without meaning to, she took a step forward so they were eye to eye. The boy glared back with steely resolve. Lu was pleased to find she was slightly taller than him. “What is your contention with me? What did I ever do to you?”

  The boy laughed in her face. It sounded like a bark, spare and hard and devoid of mirth. “What did you ever do to me? What did … I’ll tell you—”

  Omair banged his cane on the floor. “Enough, enough! Nok, I am sorry, I know you must see this as a betrayal of sorts, but I will be going north with Princess Lu. Please try to understand. She is correct—our lives will not be better seeing Lord Set on the throne.”

  Then he sighed and cast his eyes out the window. The sun had set since they had arrived, Lu saw, the sky a middling cobalt blue, wavering uncertainly between twilight and darkness. Omair turned to her. “Princess,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to my apprentice alone. We can go out into the garden.”

  Lu shook her head, glaring at the Ashina boy as she turned on her heel toward the back door. “No,” she said. “I’ll go. Far be it from me to displace anyone from their home. Again.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Known

  Nok clenched his fists, watching the princess storm outside. If only she were leaving for good.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned and saw Omair regarding him sadly.

  Nok swallowed. “For what?”

  “For keeping the truth from you.”

  “You never lied to me,” Nok said flatly. “I didn’t want to know anything I didn’t ask for.” Perhaps, he thought belatedly, Omair had taken advantage of that. Well, if so, he’d been a willing collaborator.

  Omair was studying his face. “I saw … I saw your caul,” he said finally. “Magnificent. Have you ever done it before?”

  “No!” Nok said immediately. “No, never. That was the whole … it was shameful that I couldn’t. I was the son of a Kith father and I couldn’t caul.”

  “And yet, today, you did. How?”

  “I don’t know,” Nok sighed, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “First I had this strange experience in the woods—”

  “The Gifting Dream?”

  “I suppose that’s what it must have been. But after that … I couldn’t control it. It came and went of its own accord, really fast.”

  “Can you try now? Just to see if you can will it.”

  “I … I don’t know,” Nok repeated doubtfully. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine the feel of the caul descending upon him, soft as snow, warm as sun. Tried to imagine pacing the earth with massive paws, black-blue hair sprouting over his shoulders and all down his back …

  He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Just now, back in the forest, I think I sort of was able to force it, but maybe that was only because my life was in danger.”

  Omair considered the logic of this. “And you were in danger the first time as well?”

  The memory of the Wangs’ dogs snapping at his legs flooded Nok’s vision. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “But it kept hold of me even after the danger was gone. I only came out of it after I found—after I saw the princess.”

  The wolf had been looking for her, he remembered with an unpleasant jolt. Seeking her out.

  He didn’t share the thought with Omair, but the old man seemed to hear it anyway. “And how did you find her?”

  “The princess?”

  “Yes.”

  Nok didn’t have an answer for that; he didn’t want one. He didn’t want to think about her at all. Omair raised his eyebrows at Nok’s silence but didn’t press the question.

  “Your Kith must have passed down ways to control the caul, from generation to generation,” he said instead.

  “They did. But children learned it from the elders upon receiving the Gifting Dream. No Gifting, no initiation.” Nok barked out a laugh. “And now, there’re no elders.”

  “Do you remember anything about the labor camp?” The question was gentled by the softness of Omair’s voice.

  Nok hesitated. It was nothing he wanted to think on, but he couldn’t refuse Omair. He closed his eyes, trying in earnest to recall that time. See it fully, for the first time in four years.

  They killed his sister first.

  That small, soft-spoken man had entered their barracks. If he had a name, he didn’t share it, only introduced himself as the camp’s healer. He was accompanied by two soldiers armed to the teeth and carrying lanterns. Nok and Nasan had shared a bunk—the room was overcrowded, piled high with crying, unwashed children. Half of them didn’t speak any common languages, but they were all united under the imperial slur: slipskins. Most were ill, coughing and shivering with fever in their bunks.

  The healer ignored them, though, only stopping when he reached Nok and Nasan. A soldier had held a lantern up to their faces. “That’s the one,” the healer had said. “The girl.”

  Nok’s hands shook, recalling how tightly he’d clung to her, how she’d dug her fingernails into his arms and bared her teeth—her blunt, all-too-human teeth—and fought. She’d always been the fiercest child in their Kith. But how could the fists of a child compare to batons the soldiers brought down upon their hands and faces, separating them blow by blow?

  He never saw Nasan again.

  The next day, a burning fever caught in Nok and wouldn’t quell. They brought him to the camp’s sickroom—little more than a flimsy tent stretched over a pile of overheated, slowly dehydrating, slowly dying bodies. Periodically, someone would come through with a barrow to collect the dead. Finally they came to collect him, so Nok had assumed he was dead, too.

  Only it hadn’t been an undertaker who took him—it had been a soldier.

  “Yuri,” he blurted suddenly. He opened his eyes, tearing himself back into the present. Back to Omair. “It was Yuri who brought me to you. I remember now.”

  “He had just abandoned his post,” Omair said. “He was sick to death of the killing, the senseless brutality. He grabbed you on the way out—I suppose he saw it as the least he could do, some gesture at redemption.” The old man sighed. “He knew he couldn’t take you to the capital, so he found me.
I hadn’t seen him in years. And then, there he was, at my doorstep, holding a half-dead boy.”

  Nok spread his hands helplessly. “So why did he do it? Why me?”

  Omair looked him in the eye. “Whatever they did to your sister?”

  Nok nodded.

  “You were next.”

  Nok turned away, angry and ashamed. That was no good answer. “There must have been a hundred others on the list right after me. I wish he’d saved one of them instead. I wish he’d saved Nasan.”

  “I know.”

  Nok looked up. Dark shadows weighed heavy along Omair’s cheekbones and under his eyes. The apothecarist was far from young, but he appeared to have aged about ten years in the last day. “I know,” he repeated. “But, Nok, he didn’t. He chose you. And now your Kith’s wolf has chosen you. It brought you to Princess Lu.

  The princess.

  “Maybe that means something,” Omair pressed.

  “Maybe it doesn’t.”

  “Perhaps not. But you’re alive now. You have a chance to do something with that life. To help change the course of the empire.”

  Nok shook his head before Omair even spoke. “I need you,” he said. “The princess does, too. I’m old; I won’t have the strength—we won’t make it without your help.”

  Nok stood, agitated. “You need someone brave, someone good. That’s not me. That was Nasan. Your friend should’ve chosen better. He should’ve developed a conscience sooner.”

  Omair sighed, sitting back. “At least think on it over the next few days while the princess recovers.”

  Nok opened his mouth to object, but Omair held up a conciliatory hand. “You can just pretend to think on it. Do that much for me.”

  Nok set his mouth and stared down at his hands. “Fine.” Omair beamed up at him. “Thank you. Now, why don’t you go tell our guest to come back inside?”

  The girl was standing by the dense bracken along the edge of the forest when he found her. He felt a flush of annoyance. She should stay hidden; anyone could see her out there. Before he could call to her and say as much, she hunched forward and vomited.

  “Did the porridge sit poorly with you?” he said.

  She whirled around, startled. As she turned, he saw her hand was already upon the handle of the dagger at her waist. Strong reflexes; she might survive out in the world on her own.

  “Not used to peasant food, are you?” he said.

  The princess relaxed, hand dropping to her side. She used the back of the other to wipe her mouth, then spat. “I was thinking about earlier. That boy I … the boys I killed.”

  As he drew closer, his lamp cast long shadows across the girl’s face. Her eyes were rimmed red and the skin below them dark as a bruise. In the low light it gave her a haunted, wary look.

  He understood, suddenly. “You’d never killed anyone before.”

  “It was not what … it was not as I expected. Killing, I mean.” A shudder seized her and she hugged herself around the waist. He thought for a moment that she would be sick again, but she closed her eyes and seemed to will herself still.

  “What did you expect it would be?” he demanded. “Bloodless? Clean? Triumphant?”

  “Not bloodless,” she retorted. “Only, I was taught to fight the Hu way—with pride. There is no pride in defeating, let alone in killing … slaughtering … someone weaker than you. A child.”

  “Is that the Hu way? My people would be delighted to hear it, if only they were around to.” Nok laughed and was startled by the bitterness of the sound. “There is no pride in killing. Nor in fighting, nor in dying, nor in living. Not the sort you mean. There is only despair and blood and fear.”

  The princess shivered again, though whether from the chill night air or from his words, Nok could not know. Her eyes were a tumult of flint and outrage, and something like sorrow.

  He turned away toward the house. “Come back inside before someone sees you out here.”

  Before he could walk away, she snatched his wrist, wrenching his hand upward until the fingers splayed open.

  “Hey!”

  Ignoring his protests, she examined the flesh of his palm. Just as abruptly, she dropped his hand and grabbed him by the chin, raising his face up so she could better see it.

  “You still have the scars,” she said, almost in wonder, tracing a fingertip over the twisted purpled flesh beneath his eye. “I could scarcely believe it’s you, but those scars don’t lie. You really are the same Ashina boy I met all those years ago.”

  He jerked away from her. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Why did you lie to me in the forest?” Her voice was full of accusation and something that sounded remarkably like hurt.

  They glared at each other in silence until at last he said, “I didn’t lie. That boy … he’s not me. Not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I liked him better than whoever you are now.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have killed him,” he snapped.

  Nok turned and left her standing there. For a moment he thought she might try to stop him, but for once she was quiet.

  CHAPTER 17

  New Day

  It was perverse to wear her funerary whites to a wedding, Min thought. Her own wedding, no less. A real ceremony, with all its pomp and cheer, was forbidden: in the one hundred days following the death of an emperor, while everyone was garbed for mourning, there were to be no celebrations of any sort.

  But the empire would have an emperor. And in this case, for Set to claim that title, he needed to marry a direct descendant to the Hu line, of which Min was the only remaining option. A quiet, efficient ceremony would have to suffice.

  And so, she found herself kneeling alone in front of her embroidery easel within her locked and heavily guarded chambers, clad in snow white from head to toe. Waiting.

  All around, it did not fit with any of her fantasies. She’d never known who she was to marry—the groom had ever been a vague tall, handsome specter, a role her cousin did fulfill, to his credit—but she had known the how and where. Had relied on those exquisite details—especially the vermillion bridal robes they would drape over her, drenching her in color and expectation. A scarlet peony on the cusp of plucking for the court to marvel at. But her emperor father was dead—passed like smoke from this world on to the next—and this was now her life.

  Her father …

  Her father had lied, and so her sister killed him in vengeance. That was what they had told Min. What they’d told everyone.

  The emperor had never meant for her sister to rule. His empty promises had been a diversion, a father humoring his favorite daughter. And Lu, learning this, had poisoned him immediately prior to the hunt—murdered him in cold fury.

  Then, during the hunt, she had isolated and attacked her cousin, who managed to fend her off until his soldiers came to his aid. Lu had fled, a coward in the end.

  She was driven mad with her lust for power. That was the truth on everyone’s lips. That is what happens when you give a girl too much allowance, too much to believe in. This is what people said when they thought Min could not hear.

  It was true. It had to be true.

  Only her sister was many things, some good: loyal, quick-witted, vehement, almost violent in her loyalty and her affections. And some bad: arrogant, hot-headed, stubborn. But, Min could not stop the voice in her head from whispering, Lu was no coward. Never a coward. Not wise enough to be a coward, even when being a coward was the far better option. No, her sister burned fast and bright and golden, heedless of the consequences.

  Lu did not sneak. She did not run.

  And then, too, there was Min’s strange waking dream. The slim, black-eyed shamaness in white who had taken her hand and shown her a very different version of events. Her mother standing over her father, the empty vial relieved of its poison vanishing up her tailored sleeve.

  Min’s heart trembled at the memory, and for a horrible moment the shamaness’s black eyes flashed in her mind,
like moonlight skimming dark water.

  Only a dream.

  A vivid one, brought on by the slight fever that accompanied her woman’s blood, but not real. There was no such thing as ghosts, and there was no magic left in the world anymore. Only a dream, she told herself. Only …

  Her father’s funeral emerged in her mind’s eye. Her mother had stood beside her, implacable and radiant. Min had studied her from the corner of her eye, determined to discover therein a tear, a tightness in the throat, some sign of distress.

  But there had been nothing.

  Good breeding; nothing sinister. Only a dream.

  How would she even allow for it to be true? That her mother could murder her own husband, that she could exile Lu, her own child, was unthinkable.

  And, whatever the cause, Min had lost a sister and a father.

  Mother is all I have left. The thought made her stomach clench. Do I want to lose her as well?

  The pocket doors of her room opened, and like magic, the empress was there. Min felt a jolt of guilt at the sight of her, as though her mother could hear her thoughts. Before Min could speak, though, Set entered the room behind her. Min’s heart leaped.

  He was also draped head to toe in mourning whites, though Min thought it made him look ethereal and striking. But his jaw was clenched, and he had a distant, preoccupied look that made Min’s heart twinge with reflexive longing. She hated that look. Helplessly, she recalled how they had last spoken; he’d looked at her—no, seen her. It had felt unlike anything in the world, to be reflected by those gray eyes. Now, though, his gaze was not a mirror but a wall. Every bit of him cold and closed.

  Be here, she willed. This is our wedding. Be here with me.

  The empress, conversely, was beaming. It was, Min realized, the happiest her mother had ever looked. She looked years younger—almost like a girl. “Your cousin,” her mother said proudly, by way of greeting, “has drafted his first decree. He will present it in court tomorrow morning after your union is announced.”

  Her cousin did not seem to register the glow in his aunt’s voice. “It will hardly matter what I announce,” he snapped, “if my claim to the throne is still in question.”

 

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