Unravel the Dusk

by Elizabeth Lim

  No such luck.

  He clapped for one of the attendants to bring me the shansen’s gift.

  “You must be keen to test out your bow,” he said. “See that hawk in the sky? I’ll have the cooks roast it for the banquet tonight.”

  “It would be inauspicious for me to hunt,” I said tightly, “given it is our wedding day.”

  “Now you care about decorum? There’s been plenty of death in the palace, thanks to you. Surely the gods will overlook the death of one measly bird.”

  He thrust the bow at me, and my pulse shot up, my dress flaring in response. I clenched my fists, calming myself. “No, thank you.”

  “Why so dour, Sarnai?” the emperor taunted. “I’ve your lover in the dungeon. Aren’t you curious about him? Whether he’s still alive?”

  He circled me so I couldn’t pass him. “A hundred lashes last night,” he continued, “and a hundred this morning. That’s more than most men can survive, yet Xina is still alive. Barely. A quiet one, he’s always been.” Khanujin leaned closer to whisper in my ear, “They tell him if he’ll scream, they’ll stop. But he won’t. Wouldn’t you like to see him, Sarnai? His blood stains the walls of his cell. They had to send in two girls to mop up the mess when he fainted. When they were done, my guards woke him again for another hundred lashes. I wonder if you’d recognize him. He’s more of a thing now than a warrior. That is what Northern pride will do for you.”

  I raised my chin, my tongue heavy with a retort that I bit back.

  Pathetic, Maia, the voice inside me taunted. Why hold back? Have a taste of your power. The emperor is weak. Show him his place.

  Tensing, I pushed aside the voice. Tempting as it would be to punish Khanujin—for what he’d done to Lord Xina, to Edan, and to me—I was not Maia right now. I was Lady Sarnai.

  But the shansen’s daughter would have shown him his place. She would have crushed his toes with her heel and vowed to kill him in his sleep. She would have strangled him with the gold chains hanging from his neck. She would have sworn revenge.

  Too late, I realized it had been a mistake to bite back my anger.

  Khanujin grabbed my wrist and pulled me close, the power of my dress making his cheeks redden and his temples perspire.

  “You are not Sarnai.”

  My mask of calm faltered. “I—”

  I gave a sharp gasp as he tore off my headdress, my neck jerking up as the pearls and jeweled tassels clinked against the pavilion’s marbled floor. He stared at me. Recognition dawned, and his lips thinned with displeasure. “Tamarin.”

  “Your Majesty, I can explain—”

  “Consider your words carefully, tailor,” he warned, “lest they be your last. Where is she?”

  “In her residence. The dress, Your Majesty…she could not wear it. It…it harmed her.”

  A beat of silence. He deliberated my answer. Then—

  “And how is she now?”

  I wavered on how to answer. How was she? Truthfully, the dress’s magic had marked her beyond recognition. I couldn’t imagine the pain she suffered. Only someone as stubborn and hard-hearted as she would cling to life so tenaciously. Still, I wasn’t sure she would survive the week.

  But if I told the emperor Lady Sarnai was on the brink of death, I would endanger the wedding. For the sake of A’landi’s peace, I needed time to figure out what to do.

  “She is…recovering,” I replied. “Her maids are caring for her.”

  I expected him to lash out at me for deceiving him, but the corners of his mouth lifted. “You did well taking her place. Not even her father knows it is you.”

  He leaned forward, his dry lips brushing against my cheek in what everyone else perceived as a kiss. Except he whispered harshly, “Perhaps it is better this way, though I urge you not to be so taken with birds in the sky.”

  I swallowed. So that was what had given me away. I hadn’t known Khanujin to be such an observant man. Then again, I knew little of my emperor.

  “Edan will not be a hawk when my men find him,” he intoned. “He will be a man, like Xina. And he will be punished accordingly.”

  He rested his hand on my shoulder, squeezed the bone so hard I flinched. “I can be merciful, Maia Tamarin. I can be more merciful to him than I will be to Lord Xina. But that all depends on you.”

  “I don’t know where he’s gone,” I repeated. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.

  The emperor’s smirk vanished, and he gave my shoulder another cruel press before finally letting go. “Then pray the banquet tonight goes well.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A hundred dishes were spread out before Khanujin and me, enough to satiate a thousand. An artist could have blissfully died after capturing such a glorious buffet of food with his brush, every color and texture represented, every plate a thoughtfully curated piece of art for both the eyes as well as the tongue.

  The old Maia would have hated being seated at the center of this culinary theater. She would have bitten her lower lip and stared at the ground, fidgeting with the ends of her sleeves to ignore the rumbles in her belly. Yet she would have lusted after the spicy mung bean jelly lightly tossed with peanuts, the wood ear mushrooms marinated in vinegar and garlic, the fried fish fritters with ginger and plum sauce.

  Not tonight. Tonight, in my radiant gown of the sun, I sat rigid in my chair, coolly ignoring every stare and glance that darted my way. Every morsel of food that went into my mouth was forced.

  “You aren’t eating, daughter,” the shansen remarked.

  I picked up a chunk of roasted carp. Swallowed. A fish bone poked the roof of my mouth, and I swallowed it too, almost hoping I’d choke and be sent back to my chambers.

  Khanujin chuckled. “She is angry with me for putting her lover in the dungeon.”

  “She is fortunate Lord Xina is only in prison,” replied the shansen darkly. “If it had been me, his head would be mounted on a pole in the center of the banquet hall. And I would have forced Sarnai to drink his blood.”

  “That would be inauspicious, Lord Makangis.” Khanujin lowered his hand to my shoulder, and squeezed it tightly. “We shall wait until after the wedding for his execution.”

  I could feel the shansen studying me, as if waiting for the color to drain from my face. But it was his next words that made me pale.

  “I notice your most formidable guest is missing. Where is the enchanter?”

  “Away in service to me.”

  I nearly choked at the lie, but the shansen frowned. “He pays me no respect with his absence.”

  “You pay me no respect by bringing a legion of your soldiers to camp outside my palace.”

  The shansen smiled. “Insurance that the wedding will go as planned.”

  “My enchanter is preparing his own insurance.”

  All lies. I stared blankly ahead as the servants brought out a new dish, one of the final courses. It was a whole pheasant, braised with imported red wine and resting on a bed of glowing embers that sent sparks flying up to the ceiling. The guests clapped at the chef’s finesse and skill.

  The smoke wafted to my nose, tickling my anxiety. Edan no longer protected A’landi. That duty was now left to me—to make sure this wedding happened.

  If not, the shansen would strike. And A’landi would burn.

  I barely heard Chief Minister Yun announce, “Let us toast Lady Sarnai.”

  “Yes,” Emperor Khanujin said. “To her health and beauty.”

  The court raised their cups to me, unaware of the gleam in the emperor’s eye. I knew he was reveling in the secret knowledge that the shansen’s daughter was writhing in her apartments, brutally injured.

  I raised my cup and drank. The alcohol sent a wash of heat over my cheeks and made my lips tingle, but it was not strong enough to wash away the cold seeping into my blood
.

  As I set down my cup, a familiar face swirled in the cloudy liquid. A low, thick laugh rumbled from its depths, making my hands tremble.

  Bandur.

  Suddenly, the shansen and emperor’s guests vanished. In their places appeared ghosts with long white hair and sharp, gleaming teeth. Shadows leaked from their lips.

  Sentur’na, they called, a word—a name—I did not know. Their arms reached out to touch me, and I jerked away.

  Go back to Lapzur! I wanted to scream. Stop following me!

  Sentur’na, we are waiting for you. It is beginning. You cannot escape.

  All ghosts, except one: in the shansen’s place sat a demon.

  It wasn’t Bandur, who took on the form of a wolf. But a tiger I’d never seen before. A tiger whose scorching red eyes seared into me.

  You cannot escape.

  Fear bristled the back of my neck. “Who are you?”

  The demon merely smiled, raising its cup to me while the ghosts clamored:

  GIVE IN, SENTUR’NA. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. GIVE IN—

  The fire in the center of the table burned higher and higher as the ghosts chanted. Wine splashed out of their cups, staining my vision red.

  Enough! My dress flared, and I flung my wine into the fire.

  The ghosts vanished. The tiger demon in the shansen’s place vanished. The fire roared, and my bronze cup rattled and rolled off the table until a servant caught it.

  I blinked.

  No more ghosts. Only ministers, their wiry beards wet with wine, gawked at me. Even the servants had frozen in place to stare.

  The shansen stared too, a deep frown furrowing his thick brows.

  “Are you all right, Sarnai?” the emperor asked icily.

  Wine dripped from my fingers, and a servant hastily dabbed a napkin at my hands. Another servant refilled my wine.

  “Yes…,” I started to say, but then I looked into my cup.

  Bandur was gone, but the red eyes weren’t. They flickered like two pomegranate seeds floating in the cloudy white wine.

  My eyes.

  Terror seized me. I bolted up, throwing my napkin onto the table to cover my eyes with my hands.

  Spinning away from the attendants who tried to force me back into my chair, I fled the banquet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I didn’t remember collapsing in the middle of the Autumn Palace, but I woke in chambers that were not my own.

  A cushion supported my head, and my eyes were so dry it hurt to blink. When my vision focused, the sight of Emperor Khanujin standing before me made me leap out of bed.

  He greeted me in a menacing tone. “You’ve slept the day away, Tamarin. Unfortunate, given it may have been your last.”

  My heart skipped with panic. Had he seen my eyes turn red? Had the shansen?

  No. I’d be in the dungeon if he had. Not in one of Lady Sarnai’s rooms.

  “That outburst of yours last night will not happen again.”

  My voice came out hoarse. Raw. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. It was the truth.

  “They’re saying you’ve gone mad over Lord Xina’s imprisonment,” he said. Still fuming, he regarded me. “You will resume your masquerade tonight. You will eat and celebrate in silence. Should the shansen grow suspicious, you will do everything in your power to reassure him. Lives hang in the balance, Tamarin.”

  He spoke as if he cared about A’landi’s well-being. As if this wedding truly mattered to him. That surprised me, but I hated him too much to believe his words.

  “Why not kill him?” I asked, scarcely recognizing my words as I spoke them. “Why not poison the shansen? Or have an assassin murder him in the middle of the night?”

  Khanujin scoffed. “I don’t expect you, a peasant, to understand the intricacies of court.”

  “I’m not a peasant—”

  “You are what I say you are,” he interrupted. “I am the emperor, and I am trying to prevent a war, not start a new one. If you want your country to survive, I suggest you put on the damned dress and finish this wedding.” He pivoted for the door. “Fail me tonight, and I will have your father and brother hanged while you watch.”

  I bit back a stinging retort. How dare you threaten my family! I wanted to scream at him. But instead I knelt, glowering mutinously at the floor as I did. For all his palaces and his armies and his threats, the emperor was just a man. I was beginning to believe the shansen, however, might be more.

  I waited for the rustle of the emperor’s clothing to become silence, for the guards’ footsteps to fade into the sound of the distant wedding music, before I moved again.

  It took me some time to stand. My knees wobbled, and my skull pounded with echoes of the voices I had heard last night.

  Sentur’na, the ghosts had called me.

  Simply remembering the name brought a shiver racing down my spine. I didn’t know what that meant. Nor did I know how long I had left before my transformation. Once it happened, I’d never see my face in the mirror again. I’d never hear my name being called again.

  Never see my family again. Or Edan.

  From the back of Lady Sarnai’s chambers, a whimper broke the chilled silence.

  I called out, “Lady Sarnai?”

  I went to her. Her eyes were shut tight, dark metallic veins blistering across her neck and chest. There was a stack of folded towels on the table next to her, and I dipped one into the bowl of water and pressed it on her forehead.

  Guilt swept over me. It was because of my dress that she’d become disfigured like this. Kneeling by her side, I prayed to whichever gods might listen.

  “Please allow Lady Sarnai to recover,” I whispered. “For the sake of A’landi.”

  Jun and Zaini were there already, preparing the moon-embroidered gown for me to wear tonight. From their cowed silence, I knew Emperor Khanujin had threatened them the same way he’d threatened me. Their lives depended on my success with the shansen.

  “My father sought to unleash their powers on Emperor Khanujin,” Lady Sarnai had said, “but…one does not bargain with demons without paying a steep price.”

  What had that price been? I wondered. Did it have something to do with the tiger demon I’d seen in the shansen’s place last night when the ghosts came to me?

  “I can dress myself,” I said, dismissing Jun and Zaini.

  When they left, I lifted the dress of the moon. It was the most serene of the three gowns I had made, its silvery brocade casting a soft sheen over my skin like moonlight shimmering on a quiet pond. Whereas the dress of the sun’s skirt flared like a bell, this one was sleek. The skirt cascaded from my hips in a slim line, like a flute, and the hem brushed against my heels, soft and light as the feathers of a swan.

  I took out my magical scissors and cut a deep slit into the skirt. Invisible threads stitched themselves in place as I fashioned a pocket within the inner folds of the skirt.

  Then, before I could change my mind, I reached for the dagger I kept hidden against my spine and raised it to my lips.

  “Jinn,” I whispered. The secret word that unlocked the power in the dagger. One of Edan’s first names.

  I unsheathed the weapon, fingers trembling, and caught my reflection in the gleaming iron blade. But it was the other side of the dagger that I watched.

  How harmless it looked. Like gray, unpolished stone—at least to the unknowing eye.

  But I knew it wasn’t stone. It was meteorite. The dust of the stars.

  I’d seen firsthand what it could do to demons and ghosts. A mere graze of the blade had burned Bandur’s flesh into plumes of smoke.

  Holding my breath, I splayed my fingers above the meteorite, hovering there until I gathered enough courage to touch it.

 
Now, I told myself, lowering my fingers to brush the blade. A silent gasp jumped from my lips as the blade stung my skin. Just a sting. The touch had not burned.

  My flesh was still mine. Still human. For now.

  As I set the dagger down, slowly the weapon’s glow died away. Then I sheathed the blade and tucked it into the pocket I’d created.

  I’d been wearing the dagger because I valued it and didn’t trust leaving it in my room for the emperor’s men to find. But now, if the shansen was not all he seemed, I had a feeling I would actually need it.

  I prayed I was wrong.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Three enormous incense burners blazed in front of the Grand Temple. On this last day of the imperial wedding, the emperor and Lady Sarnai were to make an offering—to ask the gods to bless their union. Monks chanted in ancient A’landan.

  “Bow three times to the South,” the priest instructed us, “for the Immortals of the Water and Wind to bless this royal marriage and welcome Her Highness, the Lady Sarnai, as Empress of A’landi, Daughter of Heaven.”

  The emperor and I knelt side by side, thick silk cushions under our knees. Once we had finished bowing, a gong signaled for us to change direction. I numbed my mind as the priest gave the new blessing. All I needed to do was get through today. A’landi would be whole again, and I would have done everything I could for my country.

  When the ceremony was complete, the emperor and I proceeded to the final wedding banquet. Afterward, there would be a ritual to make sure the marriage was consummated.

  I wasn’t planning to stay in the palace long enough for that.

  The emperor strode three steps ahead of me, and I followed, my head held high, bearing an enormous phoenix crown with strands of pearls obscuring my face. Whereas the dress of the sun was so brilliant no one could even look at me, the dress of the moon shone gently, its silvery light more radiant than the thousands of lanterns illuminating the palace. Even under the afternoon sun, it was a beacon of splendor, and again, everyone looked at me instead of at the emperor. This time, he was not irked. It was part of his plan.