by Mimi Yu
Her mother looked ready to murder the singer performing before them. Instead, she cast her eyes away, as though repulsed, and seethed into her plate of pheasant. This, too, proved an unsatisfactory victim for her rage. A moment later she signaled for Amma Ruxin to help her down from the dais where they sat.
“Where are you going?” the emperor asked her.
“What concern is it of yours?” her mother snapped back.
Min watched her disappear, but she was distracted when the singing ended and a flush of servants arrived to clear their plates and dish up the next course.
She tried to recall which course they were on, but she had lost count somewhere between the braised ox fruit and the salad of exquisitely arranged edible flowers. Her stomach roiled at the sight of yet more food.
Tradition dictated that for the main course they would sup on the tusked stag killed by the groom-to-be at the Betrothal Ceremony. But then, tradition had dictated quite a number of things, all of which her sister had chosen to disregard, leaving them short a tusked stag.
Down the table, her cousin sat at her father’s side with all the handsome, easy grace of any wealthy young man at court. But Min could see a tension in his back, a wariness in his gray eyes. Min had felt a stab of pity for him; Set had clearly forgotten in their time apart that when it came to Lu, everyone had to play according to her rules. On another day, the thought might have been fond; today it felt sour, simmering.
The entertainment switched to a large band of musicians that included—horrifyingly—four different drummers. People flooded onto the floor to dance, leaving the dais almost empty.
Beside his wronged nephew, the emperor seemed if not oblivious to the tension, then certainly not guilty for it. He watched the people before them with studied attention, as though he were seeing dancing for the very first time. Min wondered if he was beginning to regret the promise he had made to allow Lu to compete for the throne.
As for Lu herself, she appeared to be the only truly happy person in the courtyard. Her sister stood by the floor, watched the dancing with a pleased kind of impatience, as though she were enjoying herself, but also looking forward to whatever was next. The trace of a smile stained her mouth like the plum wine she was swigging straight from the carafe.
Min was struck then with fury, hard as a hand across her face. Anger at the sheer unfairness of it all. Lu did as she pleased, while Min donned a heavy mask of politesse over her pain. For what? The Betrothal Ceremony of which Lu had made a public mockery? It wasn’t just herself Min thought of: Set had worked so hard to get where he was, only to lose that to the whims of an arrogant girl. And what of all the preparations by the ammas and nunas, the work by the palace staff Min had never even met or seen? Even their mother, who had made the day such an ordeal for Min, deserved better.
She watched her sister lean over to whisper what was undoubtedly a bawdy joke that had her nunas biting back barely stifled laughter behind their hands. It was too much. Her sister’s lean, strong body and that incorrigible swagger with which she carried herself.
Min knew she was being petulant, but that chagrin burned away at her insides, too. What if she was right? She could be right. She could allow herself that much—
“Little sister!” Min started at Lu’s voice in her ear, sudden and soaked with wine. Her sister threw her strong arms about Min’s neck in a crushing embrace. “Why so dour? Today is a good day!”
She hadn’t even had the chance to tell Lu about her woman’s blood, she realized. The thought left her feeling almost as guilty as she was sad. It seemed there must have been a time when she would’ve told Lu before anyone else. Hadn’t there? Perhaps sometime tonight, when they were alone, she could find a moment to confide—
“She has her first woman’s blood,” Snowdrop blurted from her station at the back of the dais.
“Your woman’s blood?” Lu’s head whipped back toward her, her voice perhaps a bit louder than she’d intended. “Well, this is a good day! Congratulations! Where is your wine—why have you no wine? We must drink to your new life as a woman! Snowdrop, hand me that cup there for my sister … that’s a girl …”
Min’s face flushed crimson and she whirled back at Snowdrop, wishing with her whole heart she could strangle the little handmaiden. She wanted to scream, wanted to reprimand this foolish nuna, show that she was a woman, that her sister was not the only princess capable of fulfilling her role and commanding respect, but the anger welled up inside her throat, choking off her words. It felt like a living thing, hot and animal and roiling, surging forth toward Snowdrop—
Oblivious, the nuna shuffled over and proffered the cup of plum wine to Min. “Here you are, Small Princess—”
Her words broke off into a scream as the cup in her hands shattered. Pink wine splashed the nuna’s face, the front of her robes, and bits of ceramic caught in her hair.
Lu cursed, brushing drops of wine from her face. “What on … Snowdrop, did you drop it?”
Snowdrop was already blubbering in shock, stammering apologies through her tears. “N-no! It … exploded! Right in my hands!” she squealed.
“It must have been cracked … oh gods,” Lu cursed again. “Snowdrop, you’re bleeding.” She pulled a handkerchief from her robes and held it to the red spot welling on the girl’s palm. “Go see the court physician,” Lu told her. “Have him clean and bind it.”
Min watched the scene before her as though from a distance. When the cup broke, she hadn’t screamed like Snowdrop or jerked away in surprise like Lu. It wasn’t that she had been expecting it, exactly. More that it seemed only right that it had happened. The natural progression of things. She felt oddly calm, watching Snowdrop walk off weeping with Butterfly in tow.
“That girl is an idiot,” Lu said flatly, when the nuna was out of earshot.
Min’s lips quirked into a smile. “I know.”
Lu cast a searching look around the table. “Well, we should still drink to you—there must be an extra cup around here …”
Min leaned forward and snatched the carafe from her sister’s hand, taking a deep swig and relishing the look of surprise on Lu’s face. She smacked her lips in satisfaction.
“It’s sweet,” she said.
Two hours later, the wine’s sweetness had gone sick and sour in Min’s belly. The feast was in full swing: a raucous dance circle had formed at the center of the floor with Lu and her nunas at its center. Min’s own handmaidens had left her side to join in, whooping and cheering loud as anyone. None of them noticed Min slip away.
The rain had ended, and the central gardens were eerily still but for the drip of water off the trees. Most of the servants had been reassigned to duties at the feast, and those that hadn’t had likely slipped off duty to watch the dancing. Min was grateful for their negligence, scuffing her way down an empty covered walkway. The night air was cool against her skin, perfumed with jasmine and citrus and wisteria. Blissfully quiet. At this distance, the stomping cacophony of the feast was muted. Big, but soft. Like the roar of the ocean.
The covered walkway ended at the Courtyard of Prayers, at the center of which stood the Gray Temple. The building had been abandoned since shortly before Min was born, but before then it had briefly housed the last order of Yunian shamanesses—hostages of the empire following the Gray City’s surrender of the Gray War. They had been Yunis’s best beloved, the most powerful and secretive wielders of northern magic, if the stories were to be believed.
But they had been an uneasy feature in the court of the empire, regarded as foxes in a henhouse. It had been only a matter of time until those suspicions had calcified to accusations; they were executed scarcely a year after their arrival.
Min shivered. As children her nunas had whispered the temple was haunted. Even now many of them would not walk by it without a whispered prayer of protection. When Min had mentioned it to Lu, however, her sister had just scoffed that nunas could be as ignorant as peasants sometimes.
It’s just an
old building, Min told herself. Whatever magic the shamanesses had brought with them from Yunis had died along with them. And she was a grown woman now, too old to be frightened by ghost tales.
She hurried through the courtyard, though, slowing only when she reached the next covered path. It was lit by an overhead string of lanterns, but these were easily outshone by the full moon. She looked up at it, flinching at the toll the movement took. The world heaved around her, and she closed her eyes against it. Perhaps she’d had too much to drink.
“It’s not like I’ve never had wine before,” Min grumbled to herself. She had had a cup at her father’s last birthday celebration. Nearly a whole cup. “At least half,” she continued. “It’s hardly—oh!”
Her voice broke off as a figure emerged from a stand of well-trained willows up ahead and stepped onto the path. As it turned toward her, she recognized Set.
He stopped when he saw her, taking an apprehensive step backward. The odd crystal he wore around his neck caught a ray from the full moon and flared, hot and white. Min flinched, instinctively covering her eyes.
The light burned so strong it blanched the world. It seemed to bleed past the boundaries of sight and became a sound—a high, clear note like the ringing of a glass bell so deafening she could scarcely hear the ordinary world. The merriment of the feast carrying across the courtyard, vulgar by contrast, went mute.
As abruptly as it had appeared, the light winked out. Its song stopped as well, abrupt as a slamming door.
She moved the hand from her eyes and saw Set was walking toward her, brushing stray drops of rainwater from his shoulders.
“Good evening, Small Princess. I did not expect to see you here.” His voice was cheerful, but she sensed it was forced.
“I …,” she hesitated, then curtsied. “Good evening, cousin.”
The world seemed so ordinary. Had she imagined the way his necklace had caught the light? An effect of the wine, probably. Drunkenness. That was all. The thought left her oddly bereft.
“What is the Small Princess doing, wandering so far from a court feast on her own?” Set asked.
Min’s heart dipped. Would he tell her mother he had found her wandering? Well, so what if he did? She was allowed to walk. Min hesitated before saying, “I felt faint, cousin. I did not wish to disturb the other guests on such a joyous—” her voice dropped off as she remembered that in fact, the day had been less than joyous for him.
He did not seem to register her folly, just nodded. “I am sorry to hear you are unwell. Allow me to accompany you back to the feast, so you might fetch your nunas. It does not do for a young girl to make her way in the dark alone …”
He is trying to get rid of me. Like she was some dumb child.
“No, I just … I wanted to tell you—” The words surged from Min’s mouth before she could stop them. As though to chase after them, she took a step forward, then tripped. These damned pot-bottomed shoes.
But the ground rushed up toward her, and there was no time to explain. Then one of Set’s hands was there, catching her own. His was warm and steady. He put the other on her waist, bracing her.
“The stones are wet. From the rain,” she blurted. Set had removed his hand from her waist, but the other was still wrapped securely about her own. Her fingers were curled tightly about his. She did not remember doing that. “The shoes …”
“I think you mean ‘the wine,’ ” he said. Min reddened, but when she looked up she saw he was smiling, and not unkindly.
“Forgive me. A joke,” he said, releasing her hand. He stood with his arms akimbo, regarding her. “Now. What was so important that you should throw yourself to the ground in your haste to say it?”
“I just wanted to say that today, that my sister—”
“Embarrassed me in front of the whole court?” Set suggested. “Made me look a complete fool? Perhaps reminded everyone of the weak-willed failure, the degenerate drug-addled child I used to be?” He smirked around the words, but there was no humor to it—only something cruel and loathing barely kept at bay, straining against his politesse. Min sensed a single wrong word might topple the dam, send it flooding forth.
She winced. She’d brought this on. Why was she so stupid? “No, of course you’re not those—things,” she said quickly. “How Lu treated you. It was … unkind. You’re not a drug-addled … you’re not those things.”
And he hadn’t been—at least, not while he was at court the last time. She’d been little, but she still remembered first laying eyes on him. He’d ridden through the palace gates upon a gray stallion, proud and tall, the sun gleaming off his long, black plait. Looking back, he had been scarcely more than a child. Younger than she was now. At the time, though, he had seemed so grown up to her. So handsome and new.
There had even been a time when she’d dared to hope she might wed him in place of Lu. After all, she’d reasoned, her sister clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and she couldn’t have imagined at that age that anyone—even their father and mother—could make Lu do anything she didn’t want. Min cringed thinking of it now. She’d been such a stupid child.
Of course, that had all been before. Before the trip to the North, before Lu had—
“Do you know why I began taking the poppy tears?” he asked abruptly.
Min blinked. “I … it is said—that is, they gave you them to treat the pain. After my s-sister broke your teeth in the desert.”
Her cousin smiled bitterly. “That is what they say, isn’t it? You were there on that trip North. What do you recall?”
“I was there,” she conceded, “but I didn’t see the fight. I’d gone to bed right after dinner.” It stung a bit that he so little remembered her, but then, it had been a long time ago. Besides, Min had been so young—what interest could Set have had in a dumb girl like her?
“Of course,” he said. “Well, the story your sister spread isn’t quite the full truth. She tends to leave out the bit where she and that Ashina boy she took such a liking to ganged up on me, two against one, doesn’t she?”
Min’s lips opened and closed. It was true; she had never heard that part before. Would Lu really do something so cowardly? She’d always been adamant about fighting her own battles, but still … her sister did have a fierce temper. It wasn’t so impossible to imagine her taking advantage of the opportunity to teach Set a lesson.
“Can I tell you a secret, Min?”
She stared. No one had ever entrusted her with a secret before. She’d hear her nunas whisper to one another about crushes on page boys and the sons of officials late at night when they thought she’d gone to sleep, but they’d never shared them with her. They thought she was too stupid, too uninteresting to fully appreciate them.
“Yes,” she heard herself say eagerly. “You can. Tell me a secret. I’d never—I’d keep it safe.”
Set looked at her with appraising eyes. “Of course you would. You’re Hana, like me. We’re kin; bound by blood. We want the same things, don’t we?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. “Your sister caused some damage with her fists and her little wooden sword in the desert that night, it’s true. But nothing lasting. Your mother wanted me to stay with your family. The court physicians were traveling with us—they could treat me. But your father … well.” He moved toward the edge of the walkway, smiling wryly out onto the dark, rain-heavy garden. “Lu had shown she could not bear to have me around, and your father can’t refuse her anything, can he?”
Min’s lips parted, but she did not know what to say.
“I had come to the capital for grooming,” he continued. “I left my family’s home in glory—the future emperor in all but name. But when I returned North, I returned in failure. My father is a man who does not tolerate failure.”
Min nodded uncertainly. She had never met Set’s father—her mother’s older brother. He was Hana, and wealthy, like the rest of that side of her family. That was all she knew.
“Do you know what he did to welcome m
e back, my father?” Set continued, oblivious to her ignorance. “He called me into the main hall of our manor. It was empty, save for him and his personal guards. I will never forget his exact words. They were: ‘I would not have raised a hand to the future emperor. But you’ve failed, and now you are nothing. You are not even my son.’ Right there in the hall of my childhood home, he ordered his guards to beat me within an inch of my life.”
Her cousin disdainfully flicked a cluster of wisteria hanging by his shoulder. Rainwater and white petals showered to the ground. He shook the damp from his hand.
“Bei Province is cold,” he murmured. “It is not a proper home for us Hana, the people of the First Flame. The Hu exiled our most powerful families up there following Kangmun’s conquest. Far enough away that we couldn’t cause any trouble. It does something to men, I think, to be torn from their lands.”
He sighed. “Exiled from our rightful center of power, we have grown dull, listless. We drink to endure the fog, smoke poppy tar to stave off the boredom. My father in particular is fond of spirits. Spirits can make the best of men mean and ill-tempered. My father was never the best of men.”
“I’m sorry,” Min whispered. Set looked up at her. “I didn’t know.”
“Few did,” he said lightly. “My mother runs a tight household and kept the story quiet. They’d been giving me poppy tears for the teeth your sister broke. After that day, they gave me more for a broken jaw and cracked ribs. The deep bruises, two blackened eyes. My mother could not bear to see me in pain, and she insisted they increase my doses. And so, even after I was healed, I needed it. My body craved it—and my mind. Behind its veil, I did not have to look into this new world in which my father had renounced me.”
“No one could blame you,” Min said softly.
Set turned to her and lifted one eyebrow. “Couldn’t they? It was a weakness in me. The poppy tears—and later, when I began to smoke it, the tar—protected me, made the edges of things soft. I was tested, and I chose weakness. Comfort. This is the person your sister and her ilk think I still am—but I’ve changed. I chose a different way. Do you know why?”