The Girl King

by Mimi Yu

  “You don’t know what the camps are like,” he said flatly.

  She sat slowly beside him, leaving space between them. “No, I don’t.”

  “We’re never getting out of there, you know,” he told her.

  “We’ll find a way.”

  “No one gets out of there alive.”

  “You did.”

  “Did I?” The words should have been hostile, but his voice sounded vague, unstrung. Come apart. As though he didn’t quite remember who she was.

  Lu frowned. “You did,” she insisted. “You survived. You escaped.”

  “No,” he said softly. “Someone—that man, Yuri—he’s the one that saved me. He was there.”

  “Well, I’m here now. You’ve got me.”

  “Do I?”

  Not knowing what else to do, Lu slid one arm down in the narrow gap between their bodies as best she could given the narrow width of her chains, and took his hand in her own. Nokhai looked down, startled away from the edge of his terrible, empty reverie. For a moment she thought he would pull away, but he just rested his head back against the wall. Sighed, swallowed.

  Lu’s gaze went to his throat, watching the muscles work. Then she looked away, squeezing his hand in her own, hard enough for it to hurt. Just a little. Just enough. Like a fraying rope thrown down that familiar well he kept falling into.

  She had almost given up on getting a response when he squeezed her hand back. She met his black eyes, watching her almost curiously. Questioning. Like he was seeing her for the first time.

  “Did you know?” he asked, his voice catching on the hoarse edges of his words. “When your family toured the North, when you met my Kith, did you already know?”

  He didn’t have to elaborate; she knew what he meant.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I was only a child—”

  “But your father knew,” he threw back. “He came to the North and made us promises—but all along, he knew we were all going to die.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. Had he? She’d never really asked herself that question in the five years since. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know the answer. “I think that he believed he was offering you a choice between leaving and fighting. But maybe he was too afraid to recognize that wasn’t really a choice at all.”

  “He was a coward.”

  The words should have hurt, but Lu found herself nodding. “I suppose he was.”

  “What did you say when you learned what had happened to us?”

  “I wept,” Lu said, surprising herself with the memory. “Min cried, too.” She’d nearly forgotten. “It was odd—she’d been so shy around you all. I think perhaps she was afraid. But when we learned what—she cried.”

  “Tears are easy,” he said. He looked down at their joined hands as he spoke. She expected him to pull his away, but he didn’t. “Tears don’t cost anything.”

  “No,” she agreed, following his gaze. “I suppose not.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then in a different sort of voice, he said, “You could have run, back there. Why didn’t you?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to her. She wasn’t sure how to answer. “We’re … we have to stick together.”

  “No, we don’t,” he said flatly. “You’re a princess. You could leave me any time.”

  “I need you,” she said honestly. “I won’t make it to the North alone.”

  “You could,” he insisted. “You’re strong, and even though you don’t always act like it, you’re smart. You don’t need me.”

  “Well, who would cut my hair?” she said lightly, but her voice held an edge of embarrassment. For what? She wondered. A compliment? Stupid. “I won’t leave you.”

  “You might once you see the camp.” His voice was dry, but there was a tremor in it.

  She frowned. “Nokhai, I won’t leave you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would I?”

  There was a long pause. He didn’t respond, but she could hear the answer all the same. Everyone else has. She opened her mouth to protest, but—what did she know of it?

  “Not me,” she said at last, her voice more ragged than she’d intended.

  He looked up then and something in his gaze shifted. His eyes were bright and curious, and being held by them was like falling into deep water on a moonless night. She stared back, feeling as though she were floundering, swimming against the current. For the first time, she noticed a little freckle of red-brown in his left eye, an island in all that blackness, just below the pupil.

  She caught his mouth against hers. It wasn’t much, just the barest brush of their lips. Then they broke apart and it was nothing at all.

  He didn’t move, though. He was so close she could feel his breath quiver through the loose strands of her hair. Blood moved in her belly like the ocean.

  The caravan slammed to a halt, sending them tumbling toward the front in a tangled somersault. The chains of Lu’s manacles flew up and slapped hard across her bruised face.

  In the still that followed, she heard shouts from without, blunted by the caravan’s wooden walls. All at once, a volley of thuds hit the wood. Lu jumped up, her heart leaping.

  She’d recognize that sound anywhere.

  “Crossbow bolts,” she hissed.

  “Did we arrive?” Nokhai asked uncertainly. “We weren’t on the road for long enough, were we?”

  There was more shouting now, and Lu was surprised to hear higher voices, replacing those of the guards.

  “Something’s not right,” Lu said needlessly. “We’re under attack.”

  “By who?” Nok demanded.

  There was no time to respond, though. Lu heard shuffling at the rear of the caravan. She looked sharply at Nokhai. His eyes no longer held their dead, haunted look. He was alert, calculating.

  Good, she thought. He was here with her. She made up her mind.

  “We charge them,” she told him quickly. “Whatever happens, if you get out, run. I’ll catch up.”

  “You’re crazy,” he whispered. “Between the guards and whoever—whatever—else is out there? We’re not getting out alive.”

  Lu flashed a smile that she didn’t feel. “You have to stop thinking that.”

  The door creaked open.

  CHAPTER 25

  Pact

  Nok blinked owl-like in the sudden light. A figure stood in the doorway, hazy and indistinct to his unfocused eyes.

  A blur at his side. Lu charged at them, absurdly clutching her bedroll between her raised hands.

  The sword, he remembered. That would give the bedroll some weight, at least.

  It was enough. That, and the element of surprise. Lu hit the figure at a full run, catching them against the head with the bedroll. They both tumbled from the doorway, out into the light of day.

  Nok leaped after them.

  The caravan was tall. He miscalculated the drop, stumbling as he landed, pain lancing through his buckling calves. Casting a wild glance around, he registered that they were on a narrow dirt road, fringed on either side by pines and dry bracken.

  “Come on!” he yelled, perhaps at Lu, perhaps at himself. He could see the princess atop the figure from the doorway—another girl of age with them, small and compact. Lu had the bedroll still clutched in her chained hands, bashing the other girl’s face as best she could. Another figure staggered around the far end of the caravan, this one tall and clad in orange. A guard.

  Lu glanced the man’s way. The girl beneath her used the distraction to curl her legs up and kick the princess off. They both scrambled to their feet, looked at one another, then to the guard, who looked back. For a moment, no one moved.

  “Help!” the guard shouted. “There’s another over here—”

  The girls looked at one another for a moment. Then, in apparent wordless agreement, they both flew at him. Lu bashed him across the face with her bedroll. The other girl scooped a carved staff as tall as a man from the ground—she must have dropped it in t
he fall—and joined in. The guard went down with a crash.

  Sunlight caught something metallic at his waist as he fell.

  The keys!

  Lu must have had the same thought. While the other girl was busy choking the man with her staff, pressing it across his throat so hard he sputtered and quickly commenced to turning purple, the princess snaked her bound hands down to his belt.

  “Here!” she hollered, flinging the keys as best she could toward Nok. They fell in the grass yards away from him. He darted forward.

  He fumbled with the keys, pushing one into the lock on his chains. The first didn’t work—nearly snapped off, his hands were shaking so badly—but the second clicked, and the manacles fell away from his wrists.

  When he looked up, the girl from the doorway had stood and was binding the guard’s hands behind his back with a torn piece of his own tunic. He was conscious, but choking and wheezing into the dirt.

  Lu dove for her fallen bedroll, but the other girl was faster, and unencumbered by chains. “Oh, no you don’t!” she shouted. She grabbed the princess about the waist and flung her back to the ground.

  Lu pulled her legs in tight and launched them into the other girl’s knees, toppling her.

  “Lu!” Nok shouted, running toward her as she scrambled to her feet.

  She turned to meet his eyes.

  “Go!” she roared. “I’m right behind you. Go!”

  He stopped, pivoted, making for the forest. He dove into the bracken, throwing his arms up against the low branches flinging at his eyes. Stumbling over stones and fallen logs.

  On he went, until the only sound left was his own ragged breathing. No more shouting. Just the trill of cicadas and an odd falling branch here and there—the slow, immortal heartbeat of the forest. Quiet. He stopped. Where was he?

  The sharp, sweet smells of eucalyptus and pine filled his nose. Young fir trees fought for sunlight in dense packs hugging the trail, their black trunks slick from a recent rain, skeletal limbs garbed in wooly sleeves of pale green moss. He could be anywhere.

  Could he summon his caul? He closed his eyes against the world. Tamped down his panic. Come to me, he willed, envisioning the wolf. Come, he pleaded. If you won’t come now, then what good are you at all? Still, he felt nothing, save foolish and lost.

  He cursed, turning back toward the road.

  When he made it back to the edge of the wood, Lu was on her stomach in the road. The other girl had bound her feet with what looked like more torn strips of the guard’s orange tunic. The guard himself was trussed up similarly a few yards from the princess, awake and alert, but no longer shouting. Whoever the other girl was, her side had won this fight.

  Indeed, she stood over her captives, looking pleased.

  “Gods,” she cursed delightedly. Then she spat on the ground by the guard. She had excellent aim; it missed his face by the length of a coin. The man flinched.

  “You didn’t even know what you had, did you?” the girl continued, a smile tugging at her lips.

  She strode over to Lu, grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her face upward. And then she smiled in earnest. “Princess Lu, it’s an honor to finally meet you. My name’s Ony.”

  “You!” Lu shouted in recognition at the girl called Ony. “I saw you in the forest! You were following us …,” her voice broke off. “Following me.”

  She was giving him an out, Nok realized. If they hadn’t seen him, they wouldn’t know she had a companion, might think he was just another prisoner in the caravan. Might not look for him. It was generous of her. And she couldn’t even know he was watching. For all she knew, he could be halfway back to Ansana by now. Given how quickly he’d run before, she likely thought he was. Shame roiled in his stomach.

  “The princess?” The guard gaped, astonished. “That princess?”

  “That’s the one,” the girl called Ony agreed cheerfully. She released her grip on Lu’s hair. “Wait ’til my captain gets here, Princess. She was so disappointed when I lost you in the wood. She’s going to love this.”

  Nok cursed internally. They had been saved from the camps only to be captured again. And this time by who, exactly? This girl and her people were clearly no friend of the imperials, but that didn’t mean much. Most likely they were thieves, Lu’s bandits in the trees. Ready to sell the princess off to the highest bidder—no doubt her cousin.

  Lu must’ve been thinking the same. “Tell me who you serve,” she said quickly. “I am going to win back my throne. If you help me now, take me to the Yunian court, I will find ways to reward you beyond your wildest imagining.”

  Nok looked about. Aside from the girl Ony, and the bound guard, they were alone. He could hear others on the far side of the caravan, though the sounds they made were far more subdued now, as though they’d finished rounding everyone up.

  The guard wouldn’t be a problem, if he could keep him quiet. That left only the girl herself.

  He had to act quickly. He pulled the little paring knife from his boot, thanking every god in the heavens that the imperials hadn’t found it when they’d shackled him.

  His heart skipped wild like a rabbit. He didn’t even know who or what this girl Ony was. Could he really hurt her? Kill her?

  Omair, he reminded himself. Lu was the key to saving Omair. And Lu herself was—what exactly?

  Maybe I can just overpower her, he thought, focusing back on Ony. The girl was small but powerfully built. And he’d seen how quickly she’d moved. Still, he would have the element of surprise on his side, like Lu had when she’d barreled the two of them out of the caravan.

  It would have to do.

  He surged out from the bracken, knife in hand.

  Ony saw him before he made it halfway to her. In the time it took him to raise his knife, she’d yelled out a warning to her friends and hefted her staff up in both hands.

  Quick as a blink, she slammed it into his stomach.

  He all but ran into the blow. For a searing, breathless moment he folded over the staff like a fallen scarecrow, the pressure in his gut leaden and so big it felt beyond pain. The knife slipped from his hand.

  Ony retracted the staff, winding up for another strike. No need. Nok’s knees gave and he went down hard. That pain he did feel, splintering and keen and absolute.

  Ony’s friends were there in an instant, pouring around the corner of the caravan, raining down upon him like a storm. The first to reach him crashed a kick into his chest, laying him flat. The back of his skull hit the dry earth and he saw sparks.

  He blinked hard to clear them. The world was a smear of movement around him—he counted two, no, five, no, too many attackers. Most were his height or smaller—children. Only children. But they moved fast, fluid, certain. Experienced.

  A movement behind Ony caught his eye. Lu. Her hands and feet were still bound, but she was rolling toward the bedding where her sword was still hidden. Two of their assailants caught her by the shoulders and yanked her back. They held her tight, but suddenly one of them—a girl no older than himself—was reeling away, crying out in pain. Nok saw a flash of red against her hand; Lu had bitten her.

  Nok struggled to his knees, fumbling for his fallen knife. If he could reach Lu, cut the bonds from her feet …

  Something hard cracked across his skull with the force of a charging ox.

  The world around him went quiet like numbness. A heavy blanket falling over him. White stars burst, spectacular and searing before his eyes.

  As they dissolved, he found himself on the ground, staring up at his attacker.

  And that was when he knew he must be dead.

  His own face stared back at him. Same black eyes fringed with dark lashes, same sharp jawline. Its expression, though, was an inversion of his own fear and pain: fierce and gleeful, like a cat playing with a mouse.

  When their eyes locked, the look vanished, replaced with naked shock.

  “Nok?”

  He would know that voice anywhere. The voice that cried out in his d
reams for the past four years.

  I won’t let them take me! I won’t!

  “Ay!” she hollered over her shoulder, waving at the others, whistling sharply. “Stop! Stop! Someone come help me over here!”

  She bent over him now, shaking at his shoulders. He saw her clearly now. Not his face, not exactly. She had their father’s nose; he had their mother’s. That was what they’d been told growing up.

  “Nok!” she repeated, urgently.

  “Nasan,” he murmured.

  Then he slipped into darkness, never knowing if his sister had heard.

  CHAPTER 26

  Baby

  “Concentrate,” Brother instructed. “Close your eyes if you think it will help.”

  Min didn’t think it would—he made the same suggestion every day.

  What’s the point? Nothing ever changed. She never changed.

  But she did as he suggested, shutting out the monk, her bedroom, the table between them, arrayed with crystals and browned ledgers, a hand mirror, several odd metal contraptions she did not recognize, and disconcertingly, a small knife with a blade that looked hewn from glass. Brother’s “tools.”

  “Perhaps one of these will work, since the tea did not,” he had said when he’d arrived. That had been hours ago.

  She’d had to bite her tongue to stop herself from telling him that the tea had worked. But if that were the case, she would have to explain why she’d lied, all the things she had seen, what Set had done to that old man, what her mother had said about her sister—

  “Think of what it felt like when you broke the cup at the Betrothal Feast,” the monk pressed. “Try to conjure what was going through your mind. What you felt in your body, and where.”

  Min furrowed her brow. She’d been annoyed. At Snowdrop, at her sister. She searched for something deeper, something more meaningful, but all that surfaced was anger, harsh and red.

  “I need her with me!” Set bellowed. The sound was close; he was in her apartments. He, and her mother with him. Min winced. They’re fighting again. She flicked her eyes toward the red-lacquered pocket doors that stood between her and their chaos.

  Brother smiled encouragingly, as though he hadn’t heard anything at all. “Pay them no mind,” he told her. “Concentrate on—”