The Girl King

by Mimi Yu

  “The Triarch of Yunis welcomes Princess Lu of the Empire of the First Flame to its court,” Prince Shen announced. “What is your purpose here?”

  “I come before you today the rightful heir to the throne of my empire. Through the machinations of a few evil men, I was usurped by my cousin, Lord Set of Family Li of the Bei Province.”

  Lu winced internally, hearing beneath the lofty polish of her words a hint of nervousness, a tremor in sync with the anxious skip of her heart.

  Keep on, she told herself. No one else has noticed.

  She straightened the fur stole over her shoulders and continued. “Since taking the throne, Lord Set has instituted policies for the empire that spell certain disaster and violence for our neighbors to the north—including the city of Yunis. In his greed and hubris, Lord Set put in motion a false war, based on lies, in order to take your land, your resources. He would see anyone who stands in his way obliterated. His reign will bring you nothing but a continuation—no, an intensification—of war and loss. Suffering and violence like never before.”

  Kindly ignore, Lu thought, that it was my grandfather who initiated that war and violence, and my beloved father who kept it alive.

  She looked up to see if the irony had registered among the Triarch, but the priestess merely stared back with that bemused, neutral face of hers. Prince Shen gave little more, and Prince Jin looked almost pitying. How was she meant to reach them?

  Perhaps it wasn’t them she had to reach.

  If she could not get what she wanted from the Triarch, maybe she could appeal to their people. She turned to face the audience, and caught a flash of annoyed surprise illuminating Prince Shen’s stoic face. It was a brief thing, but it gave her some satisfaction.

  The audience looked no less hostile than the Triarch, though. A thousand scrutinizing eyes raked over her face, tugged at the hem of her skirts. The only familiar face was Nasan’s … and beside Nasan sat Nok, skinny and drawn and beautifully alive.

  His shoulders were anxiously hunched; it couldn’t have been easy for him to be there, with his broken body, his distaste for crowds, his suspicion of royalty and politics. But there he was. Her breath hitched as his gaze settled on her.

  He nodded encouragingly. A smile trembled across his lips and it was a precious thing.

  “Citizens of Yunis,” Lu heard herself say, tearing her eyes from his to refocus on the crowd. “Set is marching here, right now, with the imperial army at his back. I come before you now as a messenger, an exile—but also as a potential ally and friend. I beg you: give me an army. Help me reclaim my throne and overthrow the false emperor Set. Only I know his weaknesses, his flaws.”

  She stepped forward, her voice full of fire. “As emperor, I will end the war and colonization ravaging the North. I will bring strength and friendship and prosperity between us. Grant your people the security and freedom to open your borders once more. Give me an army, and help me bring peace upon both our lands.”

  Her words rang in the stillness of the hall. Then, she fell back to her knees in a deep bow before the Triarch, her forehead pressed to the stone steps.

  The Yunians began to murmur.

  “Could she really do it?”

  “What of the cost to our people?”

  “It’s too great a risk …”

  Prince Shen stood. “Enough! The Triarch will have silence.”

  The voices evaporated.

  She looked up from the floor and met the prince’s hard gaze. “You speak well, Princess Lu of the Empire of the First Flame,” he said. “What you promise—peace between our lands—is, naturally, of utmost importance to us.” His mouth set in a firm line, he continued: “However, I fear we cannot give you what we do not have. Our army is but a small garrison, barely three hundred men and women. And each is needed to protect what is left of our city, especially in the wake of your cousin’s impending false war.” He turned his back and walked toward the end of the dais, as if to signal that was the end of it.

  “Please!” Lu cried, reaching out after him. It was pathetic, but she couldn’t care about that now. He was walking away with what little hope she had left in all the world. “I beg you, give me two hundred soldiers and when I win my throne, I will furnish you with a trained force of five thousand.”

  The prince stopped, but did not turn. “No. My sister protects us here. She is all we have, and she is all we need. I cannot risk what is for what might be.”

  “It’s as good a chance as—”

  “Chances do not interest me, Princess Lu. I am a steward, not a gambler. You have a good claim to the throne, but nothing else. No army, no allies. Not even the clothes on your back belong to you—”

  “She has my army.”

  As one, the room turned to seek the voice, like the tide following the moon. Lu whipped her head around to see Nasan standing alone and tall in the crowd.

  “Oh, indeed, does she?” Prince Shen retorted, his dour gravity giving way to something new—a glimmer of arrogance, of tired cynicism. “And what pretty promises did she pay you for it, Ashina Child?”

  Nasan shrugged, refusing to be baited. “The return of our lands—the Gifted lands—in the event of her victory. No more than we are owed.”

  Lu felt the controlled mask of her face slip and threaten to crash to the stone floor. If Nasan had wanted to support her in her plea, they should have organized a plan beforehand, presented themselves as a unified front.

  “Brother,” Prince Jin rose from his seat at the side of the stage, interrupting her thoughts. “Perhaps we could consider—”

  “We cannot!” Prince Shen snapped, whirling on his brother, sending the younger prince back into his little chair. Then, in a quieter voice, “The risk is too great.”

  Prince Jin uttered a sound of frustration. For half a breath he looked torn, but then he sprang back to his feet. “Perhaps a risk like this is just what we need now!”

  “One that could destroy us entirely? I think not.”

  “Is it better to live in this limbo? This stasis? Each day our numbers dwindle. Our people grow older, more isolated. What sort of life is that for us? For them?”

  “It is better to live in this ‘stasis,’ as you call it, than to die out completely,” countered his brother. “We cannot trust these imperials—”

  “Prince Shen,” Lu rose to her knees, voice quavering. “The empire is here, at your doorstep. You can receive it either as Set—death, destruction—or me, offering friendship, hope for all our futures. You have every reason to be wary, but I am not my father, nor my grandfather. I give you my word.”

  “How can I trust your word? You are not bound to us by any tangible means. You are not one of us,” Prince Shen replied coolly.

  “What if,” Prince Jin said slowly. “What if she were one of us?”

  “What do you mean?” his brother demanded.

  Prince Jin strode from his seat now, down to where Lu knelt. At first, his step was tentative, light, but he seemed to grow more confident the closer he came to her. “Princess Lu, your plea has touched my heart. I will vouch for you in any way that I can.”

  He extended his hand.

  “Thank you,” Lu said cautiously, accepting it. He drew her to her feet.

  “What if,” Jin said, his eyes never leaving hers, “we were to unite our kingdoms through family.”

  Family? Lu frowned, caught off balance. “I-I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Marry me,” Prince Jin blurted. For a moment, he looked years younger—a boy no older than twelve. Then, quick as it had appeared, the child in him blinked away, replaced by the handsome young man.

  “I will be your husband, your consort, live my days in your southern city. I will be the eyes and ears and wisdom and trust of Yunis, at your side. Surely my brother cannot ask for a more tangible bond than his own flesh and blood. Marry me, Princess, and you will have our army. Your army.”

  There was a ringing silence, as though Prince Jin had sucked all the
air from the room with his words. Then came pandemonium. Shouts of outrage mingled with shouts of shocked glee and hushed, rapid whispers. Lu had the distinct impression this was the most excitement the people of Yunis had seen in a very long time.

  There must have been a thousand eyes on her, but she turned and found Nokhai’s at once.

  His were black and still and faraway. The smile was gone from his lips. She thought frantically: I would do anything to bring it back.

  A lie. She already knew what she was going to do.

  Prince Shen seized the heavy poleax from a guardsman’s hands, banging the butt of it against the dais. “Quiet! Quiet!”

  As the crowd went still, Lu turned away from Nokhai and took care not to look at him again.

  Prince Shen was glowering at his brother. “Jin, what you propose is unprecedented.”

  “Yes,” the younger man agreed earnestly. “And why not? We live in unprecedented times.”

  Prince Shen’s brow furrowed as he stared at Jin, searching his face, looking for some hint of—what, exactly? Weakness? Doubt? But Prince Jin looked back boldly, chin held high.

  “Do you really wish this, little brother?” Shen’s voice was softened with disbelief.

  “I wish for hope,” Prince Jin responded, his voice quavering now, not with fear, but with fervor. “Hope for a better future for our city. Hope that our people might someday flourish, rather than just cower and merely survive.”

  “Prince Shen!” Lu cried out. She walked to the top step of the dais. The room was so quiet she could hear the rustle of her crimson robes—wrong, the wrong red.

  Prince Shen turned to watch her ascent. How did she look? Proud, defiant, tall? A woman grown? She could only hope.

  “Will you honor your brother’s proposal?” she demanded. “If Prince Jin and I marry, will I have my army?”

  There was a long silence. Then, “You will,” the prince said at last. “If you would have my brother, and the terms of our future peace, you will have our army.”

  Lu lowered her head. “Prince Jin,” she began, and found it was not as difficult as she might have thought to keep her voice steady. “I accept your offer.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Emptiness

  Princess Lu was the sole still thing in the room, the eye of a storm, the axis upon which the winds turned. She was staring at Prince Jin as though seeing him for the first time.

  The gathered crowd kicked back into an uproar. Five hundred different opinions seeking to be told at once. Nok flinched at the cacophony, the voices clashing and breaking over one another like soldiers in battle.

  “Clever,” Nasan mused beside him. “A marriage binds Yunis’s fate with Lu’s. Yunis is desperate for a chance to become a real city again, and the princess is desperate for an army. This way, win or lose, they’re in it together. She’s smart to take the offer.”

  Too late, Nok realized he should say something in response. He nodded.

  He never heard Prince Shen dismiss the court, but suddenly everyone was migrating toward the doorways at the rear of the hall. Nok stayed where he was, far away from all of it. Perhaps it was some quality of the Inbetween that spun his head so, made him feel as though he were drifting on the edge of a precipice, dizzy and strange. The hole in his side throbbed tender and overly warm.

  “Come on.” Nasan nudged his leg with the toe of her boot. “It’s over. Get up. Let’s go.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I’ll take you to the apartments they gave us,” his sister said. Then she peered down at him. “Are you all right? You look even paler than before.”

  Prince Jin emerged from the crowd before them and Nok blinked, looking at him much as Lu had: as though for the first time. He tried not to recoil.

  “Nokhai?” the prince said. He was polite as ever, but his eyes were lively and distracted, scanning the faces of the audience—perhaps to gauge their reaction to his proposal? “My sister, Vrea, would like a word with you.”

  Jin gestured to where the priestess stood, long and solemn and gray upon the dais beside Prince Shen. Lu crossed in front of the two of them just then, directed off the dais by a group of ladies-in-waiting. She didn’t see Nok at all. He forced his eyes not to follow her. What was the point? He felt a lance of self-hatred in his gut.

  Everyone always leaves me, he’d told her. And why should she be any different?

  “Nokhai?” Prince Jin peered anxiously at him.

  Nok looked from him to the priestess to Nasan. His sister just shrugged, as if to say, it’s up to you.

  “All right,” he said uncertainly.

  Nok looked back at the woman called Vrea. She nodded almost imperceptibly when Nok met her gaze. She walked off the dais, toward a door leading out the back. He followed after her.

  The door led out onto a wide stone balcony, large enough to accommodate a garden with a pair of bubbling fountains on either end.

  Nok felt a presence at his back and turned. Vrea was standing by the edge of the balcony, just outside the door. He’d walked right past her. At her side stood a wolf.

  His wolf.

  “That’s mine,” Nok said stupidly.

  “It is,” she agreed. Then she cocked her head. “You hurt.”

  “I … excuse me?”

  The woman smiled and gestured for him to come closer. He did so, not without trepidation. In the pale, overcast light of the Inbetween, she looked even paler than she had inside, almost translucent. He had the strangest sense she was somehow drifting out of sight, impossible to catch in his focus. Like trying to look at someone under the slippery duress of twilight.

  He thought of the ghost stories whispered among the Kith children in his youth—demons in the dunes, tricky ghouls emerging like vapor from the walls of caves. Eerie women like smoke in the night, coaxing foolish young boys to their deaths. A shiver tripped down the notches of his spine.

  She’s just a woman, he told himself. Just a very tall, very pale woman. Don’t be stupid.

  He took another step toward her, as though to prove to himself that he was not afraid. He focused on the wolf—his wolf—at her side. It was not afraid; why should he be?

  Vrea stroked an idle hand over the animal’s broad head, and Nok felt the tips of her fingernails on his own scalp. “You hurt,” she said again.

  “No,” he protested. “That is … what?”

  Vrea smiled her slow smile. “Allow yourself to feel it, Nokhai. The hurt.”

  “I—”

  The priestess slid closer, soundless and solemn as night. He willed himself not to take a step backward. The wolf stayed behind, and for a moment he thought he saw it flicker, like a mirage.

  “When you have lived as many lives as I have, you start to understand hurt differently,” Vrea told him. “Hurt and loss. And love. You recognize how short it all is, in the entirety of everything. But nevertheless, hurt is still hurt. Love is still love. They are real—insistently so—no matter how brief. And they must be heeded.”

  “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nok said, flinching.

  She stared with eerie, bottomless eyes, not unkindly.

  “Forgive me,” she said, her voice languid and low. “I’d forgotten. Humans have such shame about their feelings, don’t they? And yet, they have so many of them. It must be very tiring.”

  “I …” He frowned. Humans? What was she?

  Just a woman, he reminded himself. A tall, pale woman.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said tentatively, “but why did you want to speak with me?”

  “Of course,” she mused. “You must be exhausted. Your body is still healing. I will be direct.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Nokhai, you are an odd creature. The only one left of your kind.”

  “The Ashina?” he blurted. “I’m not the last. Nasan, my sister. There’s two of us. And there are a bunch more Gifted—”

  “No, Nokhai. Not an Ashina. A Pactmaker,” Vrea said. “
Do you know what this means? The magnitude of your importance?”

  “No. That is, yes, I know what it is. But, I …” He thought of his mother. His father. They never would have—they wouldn’t believe it. Tears stung his eyes. He was suddenly bone tired. “I-I don’t want it,” he said, hating how young and small he sounded.

  “People rarely want the things they get,” Vrea said, her voice never losing its evasive, lilting quality, borne between cheer and melancholy. “But nevertheless, that gift is yours, and you must choose what to do with it.”

  She sighed. “These are the final days of Yunis. It has been foretold by our Mother and Father, the Ana and the Aba. Shen was displeased, troubled, when our little brother offered to leave this place, this Inbetween, to live among the earthbound, but I was not surprised. He is the third of the Triarch, closest to the earth, and I think he specifically, our little Jin, has always longed for it. He tires of this place. And humanity intrigues him.”

  “What do you mean these are the last days of Yunis?” Nok demanded. “Are you saying you’re going to lose the war?”

  And does Lu know?

  “Will we lose the war?” Vrea repeated, smiling faintly. “That has not been told to me, not in so many words. What I do know is we should be prepared for the end, whatever that may mean. And that is in part where you come in.”

  “Me?”

  “After the imperial scouring of the North, and the breaking of all your Kith Pacts, the beast gods—the Gift Givers, as you called them—came back to the Inbetween, their ties with the earth and its people—your people—broken. The gods are like ghosts, here. It is not where they belong. They need a people. That is their purpose. And once the days of Yunis are over, I fear their spirits will be lost forever. Perhaps this means they will return to roam and haunt the earth as phantoms. Or perhaps they will die, as only a god can. Which is to say …,” she paused, cocking her head. “Very painfully. It has been a long, long time since a god has died. Longer than the stretch of my memory. From what I understand, it pulls a great deal of energy from all the realms when it happens. It can be quite … cataclysmic.”