Mr. Sastrowardoyo’s dramatic, courtroom-trained manner was not dimmed one bit by his disapproving audience of two. He had the precise, inventive diction of someone who had learned all his English from books, and the waver of his accent only grew stronger with emotion. He stabbed the air with a finger, raised his voice to its signature boom.
“When a sailor cut the queue for lemon ices in front of him, he spelled his name in cursed boils upon their forehead. When the Sage of Seven Forests became a wolf to snap him up in her jaws, he made himself into a mosquito and stung her till she cried forfeit! He’s the reason Josiah Lim spent three months as a stoat, and in his last duel, he—”
“Papa! You’re making Margo sick!”
“I’m all right,” Margo managed, though it felt a little like the room was spinning around her. Chastened, Mr. Sastrowardoyo patted her on the shoulder with considerably less force than before, and Pippa helped her into the velvet-upholstered armchair her father kept for only the most important guests.
“Don’t fret. Legally, he can’t inflict any permanent damage,” said Mr. Sastrowardoyo.
“My parents are both cultivators. They can fly, and I can barely even hop sideways! Mr. Frakes is going to humiliate my whole family, and, worse, I’m going to be a laughingstock! I think that’s rather permanent enough!”
Margo put her head in her hands, hunched over in absolute misery and despair. Pippa braced protectively over her and began to rub her back a little, which only further cemented Margo’s determination to never cheer up.
“If it’s that bad, I’m surprised the two of you haven’t used the easiest way out yet. Since you’re dueling for Pippa’s hand, all it would take is for her to claim a prior attachment and render the challenge moot. And since she already—”
“No!”
Pippa’s cry of protest was loud enough that Margo was certain it could be heard on the street, but by the time she looked up Pippa had already regained her usual unruffled poise, as prim and dainty as a rose.
“I don’t have any current romantic attachments, thank you,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Papa...” Pippa tugged an unresisting Margo away. They ensconced themselves back in her bedroom, where Pippa had attached a rug to the window with clothespins to block out the light.
“Are you sure you don’t have anyone?” asked Margo tentatively, fixing her eyes on the wall so she wouldn’t have to see Pippa’s expression, whatever it was. “Not even a flirtation, or a one-sided yearning, or a tiny little pash? I know you said as much, but your father was there, and you’ve always been damned secretive about your paramours...”
“There’s no one,” Pippa said, her mouth pressed into a thin line. She drew a blanket back over herself, and the slight cotton barrier felt as impregnable as the old city’s siege walls.
* * *
After a long afternoon spent lying around feeling sorry for themselves and snacking on the cassava cakes that Pippa had secreted about her room for exactly this sort of eventuality, the two of them determined that they would go to the University Abstruse and plead their case with Mr. Frakes themselves.
Ordinarily, one had to answer three riddles, navigate a maze of mirrors, and whisper their deepest secret into the trunk of an elephant to access the university, but Pippa and Margo entered through the back way with the launderers instead. They did have to do an arcane ritual for Mr. Frakes’s room number, but Margo had begged the instructions and a stick of camphor off her second brother years ago for a prank.
“Do you think we did it right?” Pippa asked, tilting one of the glowing glyphs upside down to get a better look. “Only it doesn’t seem—”
A plume of smoke erupted from the center of the room, little fizzing sparks dancing in spirals through the air. A cloak of the darkest shadow blotted out the fading light of sunset, and guttural, demonic laughter emanated from the floor. When it all cleared, Margo saw a blond man lounging on a floating cushion. His sumptuous wizard’s robes, the exact shade and texture of a waterfall, were long enough to brush the floor.
“Hullo,” he said. “I suppose you’re here about the duel.”
“Yes! I wanted to explain that it was all a massive misunderstanding, and there’s no need for a duel at all. Very funny, really. You see, the thing is... the reason why... It’s...”
They’d planned a script for Margo to say in advance, but faced with a man who was even now spinning little balls of lightning in between his hands, all their prepared words rushed out of Margo’s mind like sand through a sieve. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Mr. Frakes had already cursed her into a state of magical panic, but unfortunately the sensation was familiar enough for her to realize that the blank nothing in her mind was entirely her own.
“You don’t want to marry Pippa,” Margo said, the words emerging fully formed onto her tongue with little to no input from the conscious centers of her mind. “And that’s because... It’s because she’s disgusting.”
“Madge!”
“I find that quite hard to believe,” said Mr. Frakes, giving Pippa what Margo supposed was his version of a charming smile. Margo glanced over at Pippa, who had cleaned up for their visit and was looking quite neat and fresh in her teal-green day gown. This was going to be a more difficult argument than she’d thought.
Margo had forgotten that when other people looked at Pippa, all they saw was a pretty, graceful young lady with a charming smile and elegantly turned-out ankles. They hadn’t seen, like Margo had, Pippa creeping to the kitchens in the middle of the night to pour jam down her throat straight from the jar. If they knew her as Margo did, they’d know that Pippa was not a thing to be won. She could only be followed, and listened to, and sometimes, very occasionally, coaxed.
“She leaves all her clothes on the ground,” Margo blurted. “They’re everywhere. And if she can’t tell if something’s from the dirty or clean pile, she’ll just wear it again anyway.”
“I do not!” Pippa yelped, completely undermining Margo’s argument. Margo gave her a significant look, which Pippa somehow failed to psychically understand, then gave up and dragged her off to the side for a whispered conference.
“I’m trying to keep him from wanting to duel me, if you haven’t noticed!”
Pippa crossed her eyes at her. Margo frowned back. Then, as unstoppable and ominous as an oncoming train, a smile of pure mischief crossed Pippa’s face. Margo had seen that look before, usually immediately preceding ideas that had gotten them both banned from establishments of ill repute all across the city. She reached out, but it was too late. Pippa, the very picture of demure elegance, had already glided back to Mr. Frakes.
“My friend has neglected to mention the most important reason you ought to cancel the duel, which is that it would be beneath you. You see, Margo doesn’t have any magic at all, and what’s more, she’s very stupid.”
“Am not!”
“She may look strong, but all that muscular development has hindered the growth of her brain. Did you know she once asked me if an oligarchy was a type of cheese?”
Pippa glanced at Margo with that little sally, her smug smirk calling to mind a very specific and lurid fantasy of Margo tackling her bodily onto the carpet, and wiping that taunting smile off her face by, er. Wrestling, Margo supposed. At that point the fantasy dissolved into hazy images that Margo did not like to dwell on in public.
“Yes, well, you drink your coffee by pouring it into the sugar bowl until it becomes a sort of brownish sludge, which is a far more compelling reason—”
“What’s more, Margo is a coward, as evidenced by her debilitating fear of ballerinas—”
“The way they move is legitimately disconcerting! And what about your—you pranked me last month by putting crushed chilies in my open mouth as I slept, and I ought to warn Mr. Frakes that that’s what he could be waking up to every morning!”
“Well, you deserved that one, especially after—”
Abruptly, Pippa fell silent, her hands flying to her thr
oat in alarm. When Margo tried to ask her what was wrong, she found herself unable to speak, either. As one, they turned towards Mr. Frakes lying indolently upon his cushion, his lips crackling with the telltale sparks of a curse.
“One by one, please,” he drawled, letting one of his little lightning bolts strike the ceiling. Even though it came nowhere near her, Margo couldn’t help but flinch. He pointed at Pippa first.
“While I may have indulged in certain youthful japes, I must assure you that I am quite respectable, and what’s more, Margo—”
Mr. Frakes silenced her with a gesture. Apparently, it was Margo’s turn to speak.
“I’m not a coward,” Margo said. “And as a matter of fact, my family’s cultivation is stronger than any sort of Western mystical mumbling, so I’ll thank you not to underestimate—”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Frakes, the hem of his robe beginning to evaporate into mist. “If Miss Sastrowardoyo is a lady and Miss Lai is a worthy opponent, then I don’t see either of your objections. Besides, I like to duel.”
With alarm, Margo realized that his legs had started to fade as well, and the cushion was quick to follow. Before either of them could protest, his chest disappeared, then his head, then finally his stupid floppy hair.
“I hate wizards,” Pippa said, and Margo could only heartily concur.
The university had rearranged itself around them so that they had to take the long way back out. Margo and Pippa walked through hallways that had them floating up to the ceilings if they stepped on the wrong floor tile and past a bubbling moat of greenish, sour-smelling slime. Pippa was unusually quiet throughout the walk. The only sound she made was the whisper of her dress against the floor.
“You don’t really see me that way, right?” she asked suddenly. “Disgusting, I mean. I know all those things you said were true, but—”
“Uh,” said Margo. In front of her, right there on the path, was a jeweled ring. Something in the facet of the gem mesmerized her, a promise of love and glory insinuating itself into her mind. Margo kicked it into the moat.
“A little bit, maybe? I do think the way you take your coffee is utterly nauseating, but”—and here she hastened to stave off Pippa’s offense, or worse, her hurt—“I like that part of you. It might be my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m dead impressed by how good you are with words and clothes and things, but I wouldn’t like you half as much as I do if you were Pippa the Perfect all the time.”
The next corridor had eschewed a floor entirely in favor of a path made of massive, floating stones. Pippa skipped merrily onto the first and offered a gallant hand to Margo to help her over. Even after they were safely on the path, she didn’t let go.
“I like who I am with you,” she said, squeezing Margo’s hand. “It’s nice acting perfect, sometimes, or at least it’s nice knowing that I can be convincing enough, but I’d much rather have fun.”
“That’s why we’re best friends, isn’t it?” said Margo. She squeezed back. Pippa’s hand was only very slightly larger than hers, close enough in size that they could press them fingertip to fingertip, palm to palm. “Though if you tell me that your favorite thing about me is that I’m so stupid, I’m going to salt your tea.”
* * *
The next morning, Pippa arrived at Margo’s house with a little basket of mangosteens for her parents and a plan.
“We’re going to have to fight Mr. Frakes on his own level,” she said, bouncing with unrestrained energy. “Magic runs in your family. Your father has one of the best scroll collections outside of Suzhou. I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of this before.”
“Possibly because I’ve never been able to understand my father’s magic. It’s all so...” Margo waved her hand in the air in a sort of whooshy way. Her father had tried several times to impart the family knowledge to her, but the lessons were always so philosophical, and Margo never understood the convoluted metaphors.
“Oh, we’re not going to make you the magician,” said Pippa. She paused, striking a subtle yet dramatic pose on Margo’s doorjamb. Just like her father sometimes, with his same love of playing to an audience.
“Get on with it!”
“I’ve been reading through the Duelists’ Code, and found quite the loophole,” said Pippa. “You might not be able to use magic at all, but I can, and the arena will let me. All we need is to convince your father to teach me magic.”
It fell upon Margo to carry out the delicate task of asking her father for the favor without letting slip any of the other aspects of the situation and landing herself in a heap of trouble, but it all seemed to go well.
“Of course I will,” he said, his ink-stained hands ponderously stroking his scholar’s beard. “These spells are secret only to our household, but Pippa, my dear, I have always eagerly awaited the day my daughter invited you to join our family.”
The blood in Margo’s veins turned to ice. She went still, like a rabbit feeling the gaze of the fox. She couldn’t look at Pippa. No, she had to. No, she couldn’t!
“Don’t say that,” she managed, barely remembering to switch into Chinese so the conversation couldn’t embarrass her any further. “I haven’t. We aren’t!”
“A man of integrity must always speak the truth,” said her father, which was honestly so typical.
“I’m going to go train,” Margo said, in English this time, and avoided Pippa’s gaze the entire way out. She didn’t want to know if Pippa was embarrassed, or disgusted, or worse, half-laughing at her with the glint in her eyes that usually seemed so inviting. What she did want was to go hit things with her sword.
She’d never minded Pippa laughing at her. They wouldn’t have met otherwise. In primary school, the children usually grouped together based on heritage, Chinese and Malay and Anglo and Igbo. Margo had always been too shy to speak to anyone she didn’t already know from her neighborhood. Then one day she was fumbling through a presentation she was entirely unprepared for, and Pippa had laughed.
At any other time, with any other two people, that would have been a humiliating incident of schoolyard bullying, but Margo had been grateful to hear something other than the sound of her own floundering voice. She saw Pippa mortified with her hands over her mouth, and wanted to make her laugh again. Her next sentence had been something about how the Tang Dynasty was named so for their groundbreaking invention of soup. By the time Teacher Liu finally forced Margo to sit back down, Pippa was clutching her stomach with laughter and Margo knew that they would be the best of friends.
It wasn’t like she didn’t sometimes wonder what it would be like to kiss Pippa, or occasionally imagine living together in some far-off, nebulous version of the future. She would make jokes about the way Pippa cooked breakfast and would fall asleep in a bed where Pippa’s side was always heaped up with extra blankets. They’d argue about the laundry, and Margo would trade dish duty for organizing their closet as she pleased.
But if Pippa wanted that, she would’ve said, wouldn’t she? She had never shied away from saying exactly what she wanted, not to Margo. There would’ve been a sign, some admiring look or casual brush of her hand. Margo spent enough of her time looking at Pippa that she ought to have noticed.
She didn’t like thinking about it. Margo picked up a wooden sword and headed into the garden where the training posts were, but her mother was already there.
“There you are. Come! We never finished our lesson.”
Another lesson where her mother talked at her with allusions to classical Chinese literature. It sounded only slightly better than thinking about Pippa, but Margo walked over and got into stance anyway. Her mother looked her over with a proud nod, as if already assuming Margo’s success despite the many previous lessons’ worth of evidence to the contrary.
“Feel the energy moving through your body, the way it’s connected to the energy around you. Chi means breath, and the breath in your body wants to be air. Let it, like so.”
Her mother leaped into the air, as if pull
ed upwards by invisible wire, and landed gracefully upon the rooftop. Margo tried the same, and landed gracefully in the flowerbed about a foot away.
“No, Margo! Think about the clouds, the way they drift in the air...”
There with the metaphors again, and Margo was feeling incredibly sorry for herself. She hoped Pippa was having more luck with her father. She hoped Pippa....
Pippa was watching her from the study window. If there had ever been a moment for a sign, that was it.
Margo pretended she hadn’t noticed Pippa at all. She unbuttoned her outer shirt, casually, and flexed her shoulders. She had good shoulders, didn’t she? She certainly spent enough time training them that she felt rather impressive, sometimes. She stretched, though she couldn’t quite get the right angle to see Pippa’s reaction without giving herself away, and took off running.
Halfway across the garden was almost enough. Margo leaped—be air, be air—and curled herself into a single weightless flip before crashing back down. Had Pippa seen? Was she looking, even now?
“Margo! Are you showing off?”
The laughter in Pippa’s voice made Margo’s ears turn red. She checked to see if her parents were watching and made a covert rude gesture in Pippa’s general direction. What a fool she was, to have expected admiration or perhaps uncontrollable lust. All she could do was amuse Pippa, and she ought not ever hope for more.
“Aren’t you supposed to be learning my ancient family spells?” she snapped.
“Already have,” said Pippa, holding up a calligraphic talisman that looked much neater than Margo’s usual wobbly, blotchy attempts. Margo was not feeling especially charitable, so she only grunted in reply. Pippa leaned out the window, hands resting on the sill, as pretty as a painting that had decided to come out of its frame.
“Margo? I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, looking rather contrite. “It was quite astounding, you know. All that raw physical skill and everything. I was very impressed.”
Silk & Steel Page 2
