As the five families quieted their rage, the festivities were announced and the court moved to the Merchants’ Hall, where refreshments had been laid on fine bonewood tables. Nik waited until the most eminent lords and ladies had been served, then slipped into line in front of Astrid.
“Last chance,” she murmured as she took a piece of cheese with a lump of jam on it.
“I beg your pardon, Your Highness. Last chance for what?” Astrid asked, carefully polite in case anyone was listening.
“You know what.” Nik moved away, and Astrid followed. She kept her face composed, opening her scribe’s book as though she were still working. Nik pressed gingerly on the side that had taken the quarterstaff blow. Her red-gold hair stuck sweaty to her forehead. “I can’t win forever. Every day risks... everything.” Her blue eyes filled with pain.
She wasn’t looking for a grand gesture. She was looking for a way out. A way to escape forced marriage and everything that came with it.
“I want to,” Astrid whispered, worrying her lower lip between her teeth and looking down at the scribe’s book in her hands. “I’m thinking.”
“About what?” Nik asked.
She never got her answer. The music began and Felag Eik asked Astrid for a dance. As she allowed him to lead her to the floor, she glanced back at Nik. Nik’s mouth was a thin slash, her eyes going hollow. As if her faith was being sapped from her. Perhaps it was no more than Astrid deserved. But she remembered the constant ache of hunger, and she looked at the space where her sold fingers once sat, and she tried to ignore the stab in her chest.
In addition to being piqued that he’d lost his axe-fight earlier that day, Felag Eik was utterly talentless at dancing. He had the size of Agmund Birk, but lacked the grace. He stepped on her toes with a muttered apology as the roundel started up, then turned in the wrong direction and nearly hit Lady Embla in the chest. Astrid had never been plagued by so incompetent a dance partner. Except Nik, she thought with a bitter twist of her heart. And at least she had the grace to look embarrassed—
Astrid stumbled into Felag. She knew what she wanted to do. And perhaps it would get her fined a thousand daler she didn’t have, but it was a grand enough gesture. And maybe, maybe it could get them what they wanted.
* * *
On the third day of the tournament, Astrid dressed in the best dress she owned, a wine-red thing with capped sleeves and fine lace across the bodice. Her skirt was full but fluid and her fan was of a rich, red, heavy silk, tipped with bronze. She put her hair not in the semi-practical braid crown, but piled upon her head in the tradition of grander ladies. When she looked at herself in her speckled mirror, she saw a fraud. The sort of woman who dressed wealthier than she was to catch a rich man’s eye. But isn’t that what you’re after? she thought. Minus the man, of course. Besides, if she succeeded, she’d be facing this feeling every day. She might as well get used to it.
She received a few surprised looks for her appearance, though not as many as she’d feared. Plenty of court women were dressed more opulently and no one had time to look at a scribe with no family name. The king’s steward frowned, but it was less severe than the look he’d given her yesterday. She willed the knot in her stomach to loosen as she took her place and set out her materials. She couldn’t afford to be sick all over her gown.
In the light of day this felt like a much more foolish proposition than it had last night.
She glanced at Nik, who was pulling on leather gloves, her face resolute. Nik didn’t look to her. She stifled a pang. Just don’t give up today.
Nik’s first suitor was a third or fourth Embla cousin, who’d chosen the broad sword as his weapon. His well-muscled stature caused a flurry around the room as people assessed his chances. He was surprisingly swift, too, darting forward almost before Nik got her guard up and forcing her to make an awkward pirouette to avoid getting impaled in the arm. When she tried to retaliate he batted her sword aside with lazy confidence. He was much stronger than Nik, and he knew it. Astrid smoothed one hand over her dress as she tried to keep her other from shaking against her pen. Around the room, fans slid open and shut in appreciation. He pressed his attack in a series of swings that made Nik’s arm shake and Astrid’s ears ring. Nik kept conceding ground, backing up until she reached the edge of the stage. Her teeth were bared, though in anger or in concentration Astrid couldn’t say.
Embla smiled wide. But his lazy arrogance was his undoing. Nik feinted left, right, then dodged left. His sloppy footwork caused him to stumble, and Nik’s sword flashed across his wrist. He shouted a curse and his sword fell to the ground. A few fat drops of blood spattered around it.
Nik pinned her hair out of her eyes and took her weapons master’s handkerchief. “Next?” She smiled, a sun of a smile, a smile that said no one could touch her. But she would still not look at Astrid.
Her victory seemed to dishearten the next two young men, who were nervous from the start and easily defeated. Her anger was radiant. As though she’d given up on Astrid and now all she had left to fight for was herself. She didn’t hold back as she crossed knives with the cardinal’s nephew and she kicked Lady la Yr’s third son in the stomach when he tried to seize her around the waist. And maybe, Astrid thought, it was too late to make her grand play.
After the sixth victory, Nik peeled off her gloves. “That’s it,” she said.
“There is one more name on the list...” the king’s steward said, frowning at it.
Nik turned to her father, narrowing her eyes. “We agreed six per day.” Accusation colored her voice.
Her father put up a conciliatory hand. “We did. I have condoned nothing.”
Astrid swallowed. She’d snuck to the steward’s book while he was arranging the mid-afternoon refreshments, and added her name in the standard court script.
“Who is Astrid Garwe?” the steward demanded.
Nik’s head whipped around. Astrid stood, smoothing the front of her dress. “I am she,” she said in her practiced court lilt. She tried to ignore the way the fans lashed into complicated judgments around the room. She flipped open her own fan and took a deep breath. “I am Astrid Garwe, of no family, of no land, of no tithe. I wish to compete.”
Nik’s eyes widened in panic. The steward, on the other hand, gave a short, ugly laugh. “With what weapon?”
Astrid tilted her chin. “If I win, I take the princess’s hand. If I lose, I pay the full fine of a thousand daler.” She’d have to sell the rest of her left hand to get it, but, well—grand gestures and all that. “Are we agreed?”
The steward glanced to his king.
“There is no restriction upon age or standing. Anyone who can defeat Her Highness in combat may claim the right to wed her,” Astrid pushed.
There was a rustling around the hall. The king could hardly refute her after claiming that the contest was so egalitarian.
“Any man,” the king said. He smiled tightly, but Astrid could see the anger behind that smile. Perhaps he guessed who Astrid was—or perhaps he just didn’t like the reminder that Nik didn’t want to marry a man. “I’m afraid, my dear, that any man who defeats my daughter in combat may have the right to marry her. You don’t qualify.”
Astrid straightened and took a deep breath. She wanted to be queen, and queens didn’t bow. “If I may beg clarification on a matter of law: in year thirty-four of the reign of your esteemed father, the Giant Inheritance Laws established that any individual who was, at most, one-sixteenth giant, was to be considered a man.” She folded her right hand around her left. “And as I am one thirty-second giant, am I not legally of the race of man?”
Around the room, the murmurs were more appraising than damning. It was a classic play—the humble woman of the people against her monarch. And it was support Astrid would need.
Nik’s mouth twitched. “The law is the law, Father dear.” She spoke as though she did not particularly care, but Olve narrowed his eyes, suspicious. She slid her gloves back on. “I’ll accept th
e challenge. Name your weapon.”
The only sign she was nervous was the slight bob in her throat. Astrid smiled and said, “I challenge you to the Parnassian courante.”
The conversation that flowed around the room was much less friendly this time. It was one thing to bend the rules, another to make up new ones.
The king snorted. “We haven’t offered anyone else art contests or poetry readings.”
“Yet many dances have come from a form of combat. Weaponless martial arts have been accepted under the terms of the contest. And the Parnassian courante is directly developed from Jotun war dances.” She fluttered her fan. “I’ll even dance you to first blood,” she offered sweetly.
They were silent for a moment. Then Nik threw back her head and laughed. It was a loud laugh, a triumphant laugh, a laugh that promised Astrid everything and set her on fire from her toes to the top of her head. “Are you sure you don’t approve, Father? She’ll make an excellent politician.” Around the room, fans swayed—many in disapproval, many in approval. Nik raised her voice. “I accept your challenge. After all, it should be my choice, shouldn’t it? And I have not yet turned a candidate away.”
“We will need music,” Astrid said, waving to the king’s chamber musicians who waited to start the evening’s music.
Astrid didn’t look to the king for permission. She kept her eyes on Nik, who was still laughing like Astrid had told a joke that had just changed her life. As the music began Astrid skipped back, forward, back again, turning into Nik’s outstretched hands as she fumbled half-forgotten steps. Her fan snapped and sliced across Nik’s arm. Nik gasped and stopped, gaping at her hand.
“Papercut?” Astrid said.
A red stain flushed the cuff of her cream shirt. Nik laughed louder than ever.
* * *
“Don’t go yet,” Nik grumbled, pulling Astrid closer. She buried her nose in Astrid’s shoulder.
“We’re getting married in five hours. I have to prepare.” Astrid tried to wiggle from beneath the coverlet, only to find Nik’s arm wrapped solidly around her waist. “I’m not even supposed to be in here,” she giggled as she kissed Nik’s forehead.
“As if you ever cared before,” Nik said.
“I’ve never gotten married before,” Astrid pointed out.
“But as soon as you go out there, you’ll be set on by everyone. I won’t have you to myself anymore.”
“Look on the bright side,” Astrid said. “Your father’s come round.” Perhaps it was because most everyone else had, or perhaps it was because she’d danced several ambassadors into a corner and pledged them to agreeable trade deals. Six months later and he even greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.
Nik only snorted at that.
Astrid cupped her cheek. “Let’s go,” she said. Warmth pulsed inside her. “Tomorrow will be even better than today.”
Nik rolled on top of her, pressing skin to skin, pinning Astrid’s wrists to the bed. “I don’t know about that,” she murmured, dipping down to brush Astrid’s lips with her own. “I intend to make today a very good day.”
And that was a challenge Astrid was willing to suffer.
The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute
by Aliette de Bodard
Liên’s first duel at the Phụng Academy was bewildering, and almost unfair in its simplicity.
She let Mei—the fey, mercurial schoolmate half the academy seemed to avoid—take her to the arena. They paused at iron-wrought gates with a huge lock and a clear sight of what lay beyond: a crumbling platform by the river, overgrown by banyan roots. On the lock were characters that slowly morphed into letters. Liên bent, and her seal—Mother’s seal, the one she’d carried on a chain around her neck for more than nine years—touched the lock, and the letters shivered and rearranged themselves to match Mother’s style name on the seal.
The Hermit of the Bamboo Grove.
The doors creaked open. Leaves rustled, the ceaseless sound of a monsoon wind whipping tree branches in the forest.
“I must ask,” Mei said. “Are you sure?” She was so oddly formal. Her tone and the pronouns she used for herself and for Liên sounded like something from a scholar’s chronicle.
“Why?” Liên asked. She readjusted the hairpins in her topknot: they’d slipped sideways while she was walking to the arena. She hadn’t been told much, merely rumors: that the arena was where the best scholar students went to prove themselves; that Mei was the key; that Mei’s revered teacher, the chair of the Academy, held power beyond Liên’s wildest dreams, and it all flowed through Mei.
Liên didn’t much care about dreams, or power, but she wanted to excel. She needed to excel, because she was the scholarship kid, the one on sufferance from the poorest family, the orphan everyone looked at with naked pity in their eyes.
Liên wanted to be seen for who she truly was.
Mei’s face was utterly still. Her skin shone with the translucence of the finest jade, as if she were nothing more than a mask over light incarnate. “Why? Because it’s dangerous.”
Liên frowned. “You mean, it might get me expelled?”
Mei laughed. As she did so, Liên finally realized the sound that had been bothering her since the gates opened wasn’t the background noises of the forest, but a slow and plaintive noise, the first bars of a poem set to music. “No. It might get you killed.”
Inside, on the platform, someone was waiting for Liên. They were nothing but a dark silhouette at first—and then, as light slowly flooded the arena, seeping from Mei’s body into the stone, and from the stone into the banyan roots and the neighboring river, Liên saw who they were. Dinh, another of her classmates, an arrogant and borderline abusive woman who thought the world belonged to her.
She was holding a flute. It wasn’t yet to her mouth, but her fingers were on the holes already, and everything in her suggested impatience to play. “Younger aunt,” she said, to Liên. “What a pleasure. Let’s get on with it.”
It might get you killed. “Wait. This is a music competition?” Liên said. “I don’t understand.”
But Mei's hands were already on her chest—an odd flutter as they connected, then they did something that Liên didn’t fully see or understand, and a sharp, stabbing pain ran through her, as something that seemed to have become stuck between her ribs came out one small, excruciating bit at a time—and it hurt as it came out, and Liên couldn’t breathe anymore, and it felt like the time she’d knelt by her parents’ coffins, hoping against all hope they’d come back. “Mei,” she tried to say, but it tasted like fire and blood in her mouth.
“It’s all right,” Mei said. “Take it.”
“Take what?” But Liên’s hand closed on the thing protruding from her chest, and she drew it out with the same ease as she’d draw a brush from its holder.
It was a flute. A plain bamboo one, unlike the bone-white one Dinh was holding, with three simple holes and a shadowy, ghostly fourth one. It was so achingly familiar, so achingly comforting, and Liên let out a breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding. Her fingers fit easily onto the first three holes, and the flute was at her mouth, the smooth and warm touch of bamboo on her lips.
“Elder aunt,” she said to Mei. “What’s—”
Mei’s face was grave. “Your instrument.”
Liên lowered the flute away from her mouth. It cost her. “People just don’t grow flutes!” Not even the famed scholars, whose ranks Liên so desperately ached to join.
Mei’s hand swept the arena. It was awash with light, the banyan’s roots receding into shadow, and in the luminous mass of the river Liên saw a flash of large and iridescent scales. Dragons? No one had seen dragons in the world for centuries. Surely.... “Many things are possible, here,” Mei said.
“The power—” Liên started, and then stopped, because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what was being offered here beyond myths and legends. “You said it could change the world.”
Mei’s smile was dazzling. “It
can do everything you could ever need or want, elder aunt. If you follow the rules. If you reach the end of the duels.”
“What are the rules?”
Another smile. “Play. Be ranked. Advance.”
Liên’s hands tightened on the flute. A chance to be the brightest scholar in the world, to advise emperors and sages. To leave her mark at the heart of things. “Power,” she whispered. And, to her dead, revered parents, “Watch over me, Father and Mother.”
“Begin,” Mei said. She was standing in the middle of the platform, on one of the banyan roots.
She didn’t know how! But then Dinh started playing, and Liên’s words of protest froze on her lips. It was haunting and beautiful: a slow-rising melody about solitude and the need for strength, and the beauty of geese flying in the sky, and the banyan’s roots seen from the moon. As she played, the light flickered in the banyan roots and in the river, and Liên could see how the flute in Dinh’s hands beat the same rhythm as the heart in her chest.
And then it was over, and Mei turned to Liên. “You,” she said.
“I can’t—” Liên began, but her hands were already moving.
When she breathed into the flute, she felt, not music, but words come out—all the poems she’d written in her room at the Academy, trying to capture the beauty of rivers as dark as smoke, of willow leaves scattered in empty rooms—all the essays and the memorials and the pleas she’d trained herself to write for the good of the empire—and the other things, too, the courtship songs she’d burnt before they ever reached the courtesan she had a crush on, the ones about lips like moths’ wings and skin the color of jade. Her fingers moved on the holes of the flute, towards that shadowy fourth hole at the end—finally touching it with a stretch that felt as natural as breathing. When her last finger slid over it she remembered Mother’s poems and songs, the ones about dragons in the river and cockerels whose song could destroy citadels, and pearls of blood at the bottom of wells—she was playing and speaking and it all felt like one long breath that burnt in her lungs forever and ever, and then....
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