Girls of Paper and Fire

by Natasha Ngan

  We stop at a set of heavy opal doors set into an arched recess in the stone. The fox raps her knuckles against them and they glide slowly open, revealing a high-ceilinged black tunnel. I gag on the warm, perfumed air that rushes out.

  The fox female glares down her powder-white nose at me. “The King is ready for you.” Her voice rings high and cold, every syllable injected with disgust. Clearly she hates the fact that her precious King takes Paper caste girls to his bed.

  Well, fox, I want to tell her, I’m not so keen on it, either. But I don’t say, can’t say, anything. The darkness of the tunnel fixes my gaze. It seems to pull at me, coaxing me forward. But my feet stay rooted.

  The King is in there.

  Waiting for me.

  The fox makes a hissing sound with her teeth. “What,” she snarls with a flick of her tail, “have you never seen a door before? Oh. Of course. I forgot you’re from Xienzo. I suppose you keeda peasants can’t afford them.” Then she grabs me, whispering into my ear so only I can hear—“Whore!”—before shoving me inside.

  I pitch forward, just managing to stop myself from falling as the doors shut with a weighty thud behind me. The tunnel is dark. The heaviness of the air seems to press on me from all sides, and I hug my arms around myself, my breathing loud. The idea that I could just stand here and not move is tempting, but it would just be delaying the inevitable. With a shaky inhale, I straighten my spine and start forward.

  Soon I make out a faint red light up ahead. I move a little faster. A few moments later I emerge into a high, vaulted room. The ruby glow is coming from the hundreds of candles peppering the room—along the floor, in clusters on top of cabinets and side tables, even floating in the air—giving off heat and a cloyingly sweet aroma that makes my gut cramp. And there, in the center of the room on an enormous golden throne—

  The King.

  He’s dressed in his usual black-and-gold robes, but tonight they’re tied loosely, cutting a deep V down his torso, revealing chestnut-brown hair and the ripple of muscles. It strikes me again how humanlike his body is, and I recall Zelle’s words earlier about how similar the castes actually are. If you ignored his bull’s coat and the elongated pull of his jaw, the King could almost pass for human. Then my eyes travel down, to the muscled calves tapering into gold-plated gray hooves, as big as a pair of stone weights, and I remember seven years ago, the sound of demon footfall so alien to our village.

  I lower into a bow, knees and forehead to the floor. The polished rock is frozen against my skin. “H-heavenly Master,” I greet, and I’m furious with myself for the shake in my voice, the way it echoes weakly in the vast room.

  “Come, now, Lei-zhi,” the King says smoothly. “There’s no need to be so formal. Not when it’s just the two of us.” His tone is light, but the command in his words is clear. When I unravel from my bow, he beckons me forward, gesturing to the table in front of the throne. “The royal chefs have prepared us dinner. I took the time to find out what your favorite dishes are.” Candlelight picks out the copper hairs in his coat. He cocks a smile. It’s wonky, almost boyish, at odds with the deepness of his voice. “Sugared almonds are a particular weakness of mine, too.”

  My eyes take a quick sweep of the bowls and plates spread across the table. There are prawn dumplings and scallion pancakes, steamed turnip cakes and cuts of roasted chicken breasts glistening with sauce, wine-steeped dates and fried red bean dough balls covered in syrup and coconut flakes. A glass carafe of sake sits to one side, along with two bowls for serving. But even though the food looks delicious, I can’t smell anything over the horrible sweet perfume of the candles. My veins are clotted with it.

  Keeping my head low, I kneel at the table across from the King, still battling the urge to be sick. “I’m humbled by your thoughtfulness, Heavenly Master,” I murmur.

  He slaps his hand down onto the arm of his throne. “What did I just say?” His raised voice booms through the chamberlike room. “All you girls are the same. Heavenly Master this, Heavenly Master that. It’s tiring. Sometimes I think these rules were made just to bore me.” He leans forward, fixing me with his iced stare, the gold tips of his horns catching the light. “Do you know why my ancestor, the first Demon King of Ikhara, had the title Heavenly Master instated?”

  “N-no.”

  He eases back in his throne. “Other warlords and clan leaders are known individually by their names, the families they descended from. It allows for easy infamy. For reverence. But it also means anyone can make a name for themselves. After emerging victorious from the Night War, the Bull King chose to shed his name completely. He saw it as symbolic. A way to elevate his status. Instead of mere mortals, he and his successors would be revered as an all-powerful entity. We would be gods.” Something ugly wrings the King’s face. “Yet tell me, Lei-zhi, what is the point of a god whose people know nothing about him? Whose followers cannot call upon him by his own name?” He snorts. “It’s like worshipping a ghost.”

  I wrestle down a scowl. If only you were one.

  “And do you know,” he goes on, “when sons of the King are born they’re known only by the sequence in which they were birthed? Before I took over my father’s reign, I was Third Son. Third Son!” Again, he slaps his hand down, making me flinch. The sound rings through the room like a thunderclap. “As if anything about me is third-best!” But a muscle twitches in his temple, and there’s a broken edge to his voice. Behind the anger is something more. Regret? Fear?

  “What happened to your older brothers?” I ask tentatively.

  The King licks his lips. “I killed them so I could take the throne.” His words chill the air, power emanating from him like heat-shimmer. Then, abruptly, his face switches back to its wide, tooth-filled smile. “How about we start? You must be hungry, and I wouldn’t want the food to go cold.”

  As we were taught, I reach for the vial of sake to pour it for him. But he waves my hand away.

  “You’re my guest, Lei-zhi. Let me take care of you.”

  He pours two big helpings. Handing a bowl to me, his furred fingers brush mine for a brief moment, sending a wave of goose bumps across my arms. We hold them up, bowing our foreheads to the rim of the bowls, before bringing them to our lips. The King drains his drink in one. I try to match him; we’ve been taught it’s the polite thing to do. But I get only halfway through before my throat burns and I set my bowl down, eyes watering.

  “You don’t drink?” he asks.

  “Only on certain occasions.” My voice is still hoarse from the alcohol. I cough to clear it. “Otherwise we’re not allowed.”

  “Sometimes it’s necessary to break the rules,” the King replies. The corner of his mouth tugs up into a feral smile. “They tell me I’m not allowed to leave the Inner Courts without my guards. But I have my ways.”

  It sounds like a threat. Suddenly I’m all too aware of my skin, of how much is on show through my shirt. I start to pull my hair forward over my collarbones, but the King’s voice rings out.

  “Stop.”

  I freeze at the command.

  “You look better with your hair back. It shows off your beauty. Your eyes.”

  My pulse skitters as I drop my arms to let him look at me. The closeness of the room and the nearness of the King clamps tight, the air as heavy and unnourishing as concrete. My lashes are low, but I still feel the roam of his leer grazing my skin, like the projection of his touch, and I fixate on a spot on my skirt, trying to steady my breaths.

  “Let us eat,” he says eventually.

  For the next half an hour I force down helpings of dish after dish. The King talks the whole time. Like the food, I don’t register most of it. I’m so busy trying not to think of what’ll happen after dinner that it’s become the only thing I can think of. But at the mention of General Yu’s name, my ears prick up.

  “… his gift. I have to say, I was surprised. I didn’t expect much of him, especially after his abysmal performance in Jana.”

  I swallow th
e piece of salted fish I’ve been chewing on. “Heavenly Master,” I start, but at the look he cuts me, I amend quickly, “I mean, my King…”

  It seems to be the right thing to say. He leans in a little, something satisfied uncoiling in his expression. “Yes?”

  “About General Yu. If you don’t mind me asking, on the journey here he mentioned something about a… a raid. On my village, seven years ago. I was wondering if you—”

  In an instant, the King’s face hardens. “Why would you want to know about that?” he growls before I can finish.

  “Oh. I was… I was just hoping—”

  “Order has to be maintained. Are you suggesting I allow everyone in the kingdom to do exactly as they please?”

  “No, of course not—”

  “Or that I will tell you anything, just because we are to share a bed?”

  I flush. “No. I just meant—”

  The King edges forward in his throne, the muscles on his neck taut. “Do not underestimate me, Lei-zhi. I may be young, but I know how to be a King. I was born one. I don’t need a Paper Girl asking stupid questions about something she knows nothing about.”

  Under the fear, a spark of anger bursts to life. Something I know nothing about?

  I push out a long exhale. Then, as carefully as possible, I go on, “I’m sorry, my King. But my mother was taken during that raid.”

  There’s a pocket of silence. “That is a shame,” he replies stiffly.

  “Do you know what might have happened to her?” I clasp my hands in my lap and force the most deferential look I can muster across my face. “I’d like to know. For my own peace of mind.”

  He watches me in silence a few seconds more. Then he gives a small tilt of his head, scarlet light catching on the curve of his gilded horns. “Check the Night Houses’ list of courtesans.” He reaches with his chopsticks for a slice of barbecued pork belly and pops it into his mouth, the sauce glossy on his dark, bowed lips. “If she was brought back to the palace,” he mutters between chews, “that’s where she’d be.”

  I drop into a bow, half to hide the sudden rush of hope that’s spiraling through me, and stammer a thank-you to the floor.

  “See?” the King says, silky. There’s the rustle of clothes as he gets to his feet, the thud of hooves as he steps around the table. “I’m good to my Paper Girls, if they are good to me. Now, Lei-zhi. To bed.”

  The words crawl along my skin. He offers a hand, and there’s nothing I can do but take it. As his fingers close around mine—my palm tiny in his—the ground seems to shift under me, throwing everything off-balance, and even though it’s the last thing I want to do, I let him lift me to my feet.

  The King’s bedroom is another deep chamber. An immense bed dominates the room, the posts at each corner strung with charms and copper bells that I can guess at the purpose of. Then I realize that the room isn’t actually so large—it’s a trick of the mirrors, which cover the walls and ceiling. There are broken mirrors, speckled and old, with deep, jagged cracks, and ones as polished as the surface of a lake. They refract and reflect everything in a dizzying kaleidoscope of images: the flicker of candles, the sliding muscles of the King’s bare chest as he comes closer, the tensed line of my jaw as I turn away.

  “Look at me,” he growls.

  I do as he says, heart wild.

  Calloused fingers caress my cheek. “I’ve bedded so many women during my reign,” he muses, one hand trailing down my neck to the front of my shirt, where my skirt is tied. “And yet there is always something new to discover in each one. I’ve come to learn that beauty isn’t exhaustive. Desire cannot be tamed.”

  You’re right. I want to shove him away, scream at him, Tame this! But fear grips me in place.

  Then his fingers find the bow fastening my skirt.

  “Please,” I breathe. “Don’t—”

  He roars. “You do not command the King!”

  With a sudden movement, he rips the bow away. My skirt falls open. A half sob, half growl escapes me. I grab his hands, trying to peel them off me, but he bats me aside, hooks a finger on the front of my blouse, and tears it straight down the middle.

  Tears streak my cheeks. I cover myself with my hands, but he pries them away and shoves me back onto the bed. The bells cry out as he climbs on top of me and starts drawing off his robes. I squeeze my eyes shut. His body is hard all over, wired with muscle, but the hardest part of him pushes against my leg.

  I jerk back, recoiling.

  “Let’s see if you taste as delicious as last night,” he purrs huskily, and lowers his mouth to my neck. His tongue flicks out—rough. Hot.

  Revulsion sings in my bloodstream. I beat my fists against him, but it makes no difference; he’s too big, too heavy.

  His mouth roams downward. One of his horns presses into the soft underside of my chin: a knife edge, a silent threat.

  My heart is drumming hard enough to burst through my ribs. This is wrong. All wrong. Everything Zelle taught me earlier seems ungraspable, childish in the face of this ugly reality, far worse than anything I imagined. I think desperately of Wren, but I can’t even picture her face, and the tears come harder, my breaths faster, and I know then that I can’t do this. I’ll die if I have to endure even one more second.

  The King moves down past my navel. As he shifts his position, the balance of weight tips just enough for me to move.

  I slam into him.

  Shove him back.

  I roll off the bed with a grunt. Pain fissures up my back as I hit the floor. I scramble to my feet. There’s a rage-filled roar—the King—so deep it shudders my bones, but I’m already running, faster than he can come after me, desperation fueling my steps, and I sprint out the bedroom and into the main chamber, the floating tide of candles rippling away from me in waves.

  I race down the hallway. The door at the end swings open as I get to it. I barrel past the waiting soldiers and servants, who cry out in surprise, not caring that I’m half dressed or that I have no clue where to go, only focused on getting out, out, out—

  Something cracks against the back of my head.

  I crash to the floor, collapsing headfirst into darkness.

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN I WAS YOUNG, MAMA TAUGHT me a method for dealing with situations that upset me. “It’s all about yin and yang,” she said, stroking my hair in her slow, calming way, her voice as sweet and delicate as summer rain. “Balancing your energy. When you’re angry or upset, stop for a moment and close your eyes. Breathe in slowly. Imagine as you do that the air you take in is bright and golden, as lovely and light as your eyes. Let that brightness fill your belly. Then, when you exhale, picture the darkness that had been within you—whatever it was that upset you—and visualize it leaving your body as you release your breath. Joyful, golden light comes in… darkness goes out. Try it with me now.”

  I’ve always pictured happiness this way—as a light, something to summon at will to flush out the darkness poisoning my insides. But as I wake, the memory of the King’s touch is so oppressive I can’t imagine how it will ever leave me. It’s more than just a bit of blackness.

  It is a whole night sky, starless and cold.

  I come to slowly, disoriented. I’m lying on a sleeping mat. Someone has dressed me in a night robe, clean and cool against my skin. I must be back in Paper House, though I haven’t seen this room before. It’s small, plainly furnished like mine. Lantern light comes in through the gridlike pattern of a sliding shoji door. The building is muted, the room shadowed. It’s still night.

  For a while I lie unmoving, limbs so heavy they feel like lead, while at the same time I’m hollow, emptied of whatever vital force usually keeps our blood flowing and muscles moving. There’s a dull ache where I slammed into the stone floor of the King’s bedchamber, and the back of my head hurts. I recall the sudden crack. Crumpling to my feet. One of the soldiers must have hit me.

  Grimacing, I try to sit up, but something is weighing me down. At first I think it’s
my own weight, that I’m just laden with exhaustion. Then I notice the gold bands circling my wrists. With awkward, jerky movements, I manage to prop myself up on my elbows, and I spot the same bands laced around my ankles; two pairs of gold circles, slender as twine, warm with magic. But though they look delicate, they are so heavy I can barely lift them.

  Shamans’ work.

  I sit up again, this time carefully, my arms deadweight at my sides, just as hurried footsteps sound in the hallway.

  “Please, let her recover—”

  “You’ve been too soft on that girl since she arrived! I don’t care what the King’s orders are. She needs to be taught a lesson! Can you imagine? Denying the King? Who does she think she is?”

  “She was scared—”

  “They all are! That didn’t stop the rest of them from doing their job!”

  The door slams open. Madam Himura strides inside, Mistress Eira close behind. I shrink back against the wall, but the eagle-woman is on me in seconds, one wing-hand grasping the collar of my robe and lifting me off the floor. The other slaps me so hard my neck snaps round.

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you!” she shrieks, spit flecking my face. “Stupid girl! Did you think that you’re somehow above your duties because of the special treatment we granted you to be here? How dare you! You’ve shamed us in front of the King himself. And after everything we’ve done for you!”

  She hits me again, so hard it fractures my vision. The silver of her rings cut my cheek. There’s the warm trickle of blood, a kiss on my skin.

  “Himura, you’ll kill her!” Mistress Eira cries.

  “It’s the least she deserves!”

  “Well, think of the damage you’ll do to her face!”

  “The shamans can heal her. Don’t worry, Eira, she’ll be as pretty as before—though hopefully not as stupid!”

  Madam Himura’s arm flies back and she hits me again. She hits me until lights are sparking in my eyes and my ears ring and my mouth is filled with blood. Just when I’m close to passing out, she throws me to the floor.