Girls of Paper and Fire

by Natasha Ngan

  When she looks around to see if I’ve gone, she lets out an exasperated growl. “Just go!”

  Jaw clenched, I move forward.

  And drop into darkness.

  The fall is short, as Wren promised. I land awkwardly. Pain shoots through my ankle, but I grit my teeth and roll out of the way as Aoki follows with a shout. I’m helping her to her feet when Wren lands, impossibly lightly, as graceful as a cat.

  She strides down the tunnel, not even looking in the other direction. “This way,” she orders.

  We hurry after her. Seconds later, there’s a fourth thud behind us.

  The growl of a male voice.

  “Stop.”

  In one quick movement, Wren shoves us back. It’s dark here under the theater, the air still clogged with smoke, but some light sparks down from the flames above, casting eerie flickers through the gloom. It illuminates the intense calmness on Wren’s face as she strides past us toward the shadowy figure. Despite the heat, horrible shivers run across my skin as I see that her irises have turned white—pure, startlingly white—the whole of the eyes solid like ice. Fire reflects off them, sliding yellow flames on white.

  “Leave us,” she tells the figure. “The King isn’t here.”

  And I flinch—because her voice is different, too. It has a deep echo to it, as though many Wrens were speaking through her, and in the space where her words hang in the air, there’s a current of coldness.

  The only answer is the screech of steel as the man draws his blade from its scabbard.

  With a cry, he moves forward. Wren ducks as the sword slices through the air. The man raises it again, thrusting toward her.

  She dances out of his way. Rolls to field a third blow. She dips, skating away from another parry, then with a whirl of her silk robes she jumps. Her left leg flies up and catches the man on the shoulder.

  He staggers. Recovers. Loosening yet another battle cry, he lunges at her with a curving cut of his blade.

  Wren is too quick for him; too quick for anyone. The way she moves is unnatural, her hair and robes flowing around her as if sifting through water, her movements fluid and precise. She leaps easily aside. While he’s still propelled forward from the momentum of his strike, she moves behind him and hooks an arm around his neck. He lets out a startled cry as she knocks the sword from his hand and catches the blade, turning it toward him—

  And sinks it into his chest.

  It happens so quickly, so smoothly, that the man doesn’t seem to comprehend at first what has occurred. His mouth is stuck in a surprised, almost comical O. Then he lets out a deep, awful groan. His face slackens. One hand grasps weakly at the sword, but his fingers slip on the handle, coming away slick with blood, and he rocks forward, limbs limp.

  Wren lowers him to the floor. Her hands make the sky gods salute over his slumped body before she looks up at me, still with that eerie white stare.

  In an instant, her eyes return to their normal black-brown. The focused expression drops from her face. She gets to her feet. “Lei,” she starts, coming toward me with her hands held out.

  If it’s meant as a calming gesture, it has the opposite effect. Her palms are dark with blood, and I jerk away from them, a ragged shudder rippling down my spine.

  “You’re Xia,” I say in a hollow voice that doesn’t sound like my own.

  She wipes her hands on her dress. “I already told you—”

  “No. I mean, you’re Xia.”

  Because I’m not talking about what she’s already told me about being born to the warrior clan. She’s not just Xia by heritage.

  She’s a warrior.

  Not just by blood, but in practice.

  We stare at each other through the shifting smoke. It stings my eyes, and I double over, coughing. The smoke is growing thicker, pooling the tunnel in dark, swirling coils.

  “We have to get out of here,” Wren says, turning. “Where’s Aoki?”

  I spin around. It takes me a few seconds to make out her slumped form on the floor. At once, I hurry to her side, pressing two fingertips under the curve of her jawbone.

  “Is she all right?” Wren asks.

  A pulse flutters against my touch, weak but steady. “I—I think so. She must have fainted.”

  Reaching past me, Wren threads an arm under Aoki’s back and slings her over one shoulder in an easy movement. “Let’s go.”

  Though Aoki is small, she isn’t so light that Wren should be able to lift her this way. I follow her in silence, scared to get too close to this girl with the bloodstained hands.

  The tunnel isn’t long. At its end, we open the trap door overhead. Rain greets our upturned faces. Wren helps me out first—I cringe at the smell of blood on her—and then together we lift out Aoki. With another easy movement, Wren picks Aoki back up and we hurry around the side of the building, keeping a safe distance from the flames.

  A crowd has gathered. As we join them, my eyes alert for the other girls, a number of carriages pull up to the front of the theater. I recognize the black handprint symbol on the sides of their carriages as the same as those on the robes of the shamans who purified me before seeing the King—and the one who fixed my bruises after.

  The royal shamans.

  Wren sets Aoki down. I kneel beside her to check she’s breathing, shielding her face from the rain with my arm before turning my attention back to the carriages. Black-robed figures are filing out of them, orderly and calm. Even though their skin is hidden, I can picture the dark web of tattoos on their bodies, their skin a forest of ink, like some kind of dark map of sacrifice and pain. The shamans form a ring around the theater. In perfect synchrony, they raise their hands and begin to draw glowing characters in the air in front of them, chanting as they write.

  The warm prickle of magic radiates from them, a growing thrum. When the air is so full of pressure it’s like being in the midst of a thunderstorm, the shamans whip their hands upward. A gust of wind bursts from their circle. It blasts in both directions, billowing into us—making our eyes water and clothes fly out—and rushing toward the theater, swelling and rising to tower over the domed building, solidifying into a roiling pewter cloud.

  It hangs there, dark and growling. Then it drops from the air, transforming as it falls into a plunging torrent of water.

  Water gushes over the theater, swallowing the flames. Hitting the ground, we’re soaked through in an instant as the wave barrels into us.

  Aoki comes round with a gasp. I help her up, shoving the wet hair from her face. I’m gasping myself, numb from the chill night air on my wet skin, and we clutch each other, both shaking.

  “What—what happened?” she cries, looking left and right. “Did you see them, Lei? I think someone followed us into the tunnel—” She cuts off, coughing.

  I rub her back. “It was just something falling. A piece of wood. Don’t worry.”

  “But—”

  “You fainted, Aoki. Take it easy. I’m going to get you something warm to wear. Can you wait here?”

  Still trembling, she nods. As I get to my feet, Wren puts a hand on my shoulder. “Lei—”

  “Look after her. I won’t be long.” I take a sharp inhale, continuing in a low voice, “You knew the trap door was there, Wren. You knew how to fight. How to kill.”

  The crowd is moving around us, and someone bumps into me, knocking me into Wren. She lifts her arms to steady me, but I jerk back, the image of her in the tunnel reentering my mind.

  “I thought I knew you,” I say weakly.

  She flinches. “You do know me.”

  “I’m going to get some robes or a blanket for Aoki,” I go on, avoiding her eyes. “We can talk when you’re ready to tell me the truth about what the gods just happened.”

  Wren catches me as I turn. “I haven’t lied to you, Lei,” she promises.

  “Well, you haven’t exactly told me the truth, either.”

  Her mouth parts, something pained pinching her face, and I force myself to walk away.
r />   TWENTY-FIVE

  WE SPEND A SLEEPLESS NIGHT BACK at Paper House, waiting in one of the parlors as a group of doctors and shamans check us over one by one. The hours slip by in shocked silence, all of us dazed. Madam Himura calls us to her suite early the next morning. We haven’t even had a chance to bathe or eat breakfast, and our hair and clothes still reek of smoke. “The royal messenger just left,” she tells us once we’ve all sat down. “Our guesses were right. The attack was an assassination attempt.”

  Wren shifts forward, her back rod-straight. “Who by?” she asks.

  “All we know is that they were a group of ten Paper caste men. Three were taken alive. The other seven were killed at the theater by guards.”

  An image comes to me of Wren’s white eyes as she turned the man’s sword on himself. Not just guards. I sense her looking my way and stare ahead, my jaw set.

  “But the King wasn’t even at the theater,” Chenna points out.

  Madam Himura clacks her beak. “Thank the heavenly rulers! A messenger came to stop him just as he arrived. One of the royal fortune-tellers had a premonition of the attack. That’s how they got the shamans to the theater so quickly.”

  Blue shifts forward, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. “Was anyone hurt?” she asks, and though her voice is steady, there’s an undercurrent of something nervous in it. The gray morning light picks out her cheekbones, carving dark hollows beneath them. “From the audience, I mean.”

  “Two court officials were killed. Twelve more injured.”

  “Because my father was there,” Blue goes on, “and I haven’t heard from him—”

  Madam Himura holds up a hand to silence her. She looks around at us down the hook of her curved beak-nose, her yellow eyes unblinking. “The King has taken the assassins for questioning. For now, he has ordered your usual schedule to be on hold. You’re to stay in Paper House until further notice.”

  As the rest of us go to leave, Blue makes a beeline for Madam Himura. “My father,” she starts again, but the eagle-woman waves her away.

  “Not now, girl.”

  “But—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Madam Himura squawks. “Just because your father is a member of the court does not mean it affords you any special privileges! Open your mouth once more today, and I will not hesitate to throw you out.”

  Blue’s lips flatten into a bloodless line. Glowering, she strides past us, Mariko hurrying after her.

  Aoki and I are the last to leave. We walk slowly down the corridor. “Two people dead,” she mutters. She gives me a sideways glance. “Can you believe it? It could have been us, Lei. Thank the gods Wren found that trap door.”

  I make a noncommittal murmur—because I saw the look on her face, and it wasn’t surprise. It was surety.

  The two of us head to the bathing courtyard. I’m eager to get the stink of smoke out of my hair, the traces of darkened blood on my skin from where Wren lifted me out of the tunnel. We’re just passing through the corridor where our bedrooms are when there’s the sound of a door opening behind us. Zhen’s head pokes out of her room.

  “Oh,” she says, looking relieved. “We thought it might be Mariko and Blue. Do you want to join us?”

  I know what they’re doing, and talking about last night is the last thing I feel like. Not least because since I confronted her outside the theater, Wren hasn’t come to talk to me yet, and I’m starting to wonder whether maybe I was too hard on her. She was just protecting us, after all, like Aoki said. But Aoki nods, and I follow her into Zhen’s bedroom, not wanting to be alone right now, either.

  Chenna and the twins are inside. They look grim, Zhin sitting against the wall under the window with her legs pulled up to her chin while Zhen kneels on the bamboo mat floor, her dirt-stained robes ripped at one shoulder. Chenna gives me a humorless smile, shifting slightly to make room for us. As I kneel, I smooth down the rumpled fabric of my cheongsam. My fingers catch on a torn slash. Through it, the skin of my thigh shines palely. Even burnt and dirty, the dress is still almost the same hue as the flames that scorched it, making me think of what Blue said to me before the play began.

  Looks like Master Tekoa was right about all that fire, Nine. You’re practically a human lantern.

  Was that what happened last night? Did I somehow, unknowingly, cause the attack?

  “You were saying you think the assassins are from Noei?” Zhen directs at Chenna once we’re settled. “The same region as those slaves at the koyo party?”

  Chenna lifts a shoulder. “It’s just a guess. But it seems too much of a coincidence that this happens a week after they were brought here, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure,” Zhin replies. She rubs her arms where they’re looped round her legs. “There are so many Paper families and clans with reasons to hate the King.”

  “And the raids have been going on all over Ikhara,” her sister adds. “Our father told us before coming here that the King is blaming them on the rebels. That they’re doing it to discredit him with the Paper castes.”

  Beside me, Aoki shifts, fluting her fingers over her skirt. “I don’t think the King would do that.…”

  “I’m not sure what the King wouldn’t do,” Chenna says stonily, and though I agree with her, I don’t say so.

  Aoki’s cheeks color. “He has a lot to deal with,” she mutters.

  “Yes,” Chenna retorts. “It must be hard for him here in this luxurious palace, with all these beautiful things around him.”

  “You mean like us?”

  The girls stare at me, an uncomfortable silence descending over the room. I haven’t ever told them what I really think of being here—excluding Aoki and Wren, of course—though I suppose my actions have made it explicit enough. I’ve guessed at Chenna feeling a similar way; she wears her duty well, but grudgingly. But Zhen and Zhin have always seemed happy to be here.

  “Don’t you feel bad for the things we’ve seen happen to Paper castes here who aren’t protected by the King in the same way we are?” I ask into the quiet. “Didn’t you feel anything for those slaves the other night?”

  “Of course I did,” Chenna says, shooting me a stern, almost hurt look. I remember the disgust in her eyes as we watched the slaves, side by side in a crowd of demons. Her prayer to Kunih. She lifts her chin. “But what can we do about it? It’s the same outside the palace. Even my father, as well respected as he is in Uazu, has had to suffer bullying from Steels and Moons. I’ve seen the way they look at us. The whispers behind our backs. Most of the time, they don’t even bother to whisper.”

  “It was like that for us, too,” Zhen says. “Sometimes the worst of it even came from other Paper castes. Like we were somehow betraying them by being involved in the court.”

  “That’s what I mean,” I press. “Here, we’re not experiencing life the way most Paper castes do.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Aoki’s flush deepens as all of us turn to her. “I mean,” she continues, more tentatively, picking at the torn threads of her hem, “we’re treated well here. We’re looked after—”

  “Oh, like how I was chained to the floor and starved for a week?”

  “Well,” she says, her cheeks pink, “it could have been worse.”

  Her words hit me with the shock of a slap. The twins stare as Aoki and I glare at each other.

  “Look,” Chenna says, raising her palms, her voice steady. “You both make good points. I hear what you’re saying, Lei. I’m sure we all do. We’re not denying the privilege our status has brought us. But I don’t see how we can change anything. Aoki’s right. It could have been a lot worse for you—and what you went through was already so bad. And that was for offending the King in a personal way. This is Ikharan politics we’re talking about. This is bigger than us.”

  That’s exactly what I’m trying to say! I want to shout. But I’m still reeling from Aoki’s comment, and underneath their wariness, Chenna and the twins look exhausted. The
same fatigue hits me afresh. After what we all just went through, we don’t need to be fighting among ourselves as well.

  The pleading look on Wren’s face last night comes back to me. How she must be feeling even worse, given what she did to protect us.

  I shift my legs uncomfortably. Now I’m sure I was too harsh on her.

  Zhin clears her throat. “So. What do you think will happen to the assassins?”

  I look across at her, grateful for the change of subject. “Well, we know they’re being questioned.”

  She shakes her head, brow knitted. “I mean… after.”

  “Court law for treason of any kind is execution,” Chenna states matter-of-factly.

  Execution. The word is as sharp as its meaning.

  “And in the palace,” she goes on, “executions are public events.”

  My mouth twists. “We’ll have to watch?”

  Chenna nods. The twins share an apprehensive look. Aoki stares fixedly ahead, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

  “Maybe they’ll just imprison them,” Zhin suggests eventually.

  “And I suppose,” Zhen says, “they could always, maybe, find them not guilty?”

  Chenna and I both raise our eyebrows at her.

  “They would have killed him,” Aoki says, quiet and a little shaky, looking down at her palms. “Are we forgetting that?” When no one replies, she scrambles to her feet, hands clutched into fists. “I’m tired of listening to this,” she declares, her face red. “The King might be scared, too. Did any of you think about that? And we’re not even allowed to see if he’s all right. He’s worried, and hurt, and all alone.…”

  “Aoki—” I start, getting to my feet.

  “Not now, Lei,” she mumbles thickly. Rubbing her face with the heels of her hands, she puffs out a loud breath before rushing out of the room.

  “Maybe you should give her some time,” Chenna suggests quietly when I move to follow her. “She’s probably just in shock after what happened. She needs to rest.”

  Zhin’s eyes click to me. “I think we all do.”