The Girl King

by Mimi Yu

  She shook her head.

  “My father—perhaps he was ashamed of me, perhaps of himself—he left a year after my beating for our family’s summer retreat farther south. I’ve only been once in my life. It’s a pretty bit of property, right on a small lake. A bit warmer than where we lived. A good place for relaxing and thinking on one’s own. Which is what he did. He relaxed and thought … and drank. And drank. For four years now he’s been doing this, never returning home once. Never sending a single letter.”

  “He—he was wrong to do it,” Min murmured. Children weren’t to criticize their elders, Min knew, but Set looked so proud and yet so devastated—what else could she say? “It was cruel.”

  Set sighed. “Do you know, Min, what it is like to hate your father? Your own parent?”

  Yes, whispered a small voice within her. No! she corrected herself. She pictured her mother’s face. Then, more vaguely, as though it were hard to recall, her father’s.

  Yes.

  How could she think such a thing? I don’t hate anyone, she told herself quickly. I don’t. But it was too late. There were some thoughts so ugly and so true that once released they could not be unthought. Like a drop of blood spilled on white silk.

  Set wasn’t paying her any mind. Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to answer.

  “The Analecta, the monks, they tell us we shouldn’t hate our parents,” he went on. “That we can’t. We came into this world to serve them, that it is our duty by the laws of man and heaven. But the day my father left, I swore I would never serve an unworthy master again. Not him, not his memory, not the pain he caused me, and not the poppy tar I had been smoking. So I sought out the best healers and priests the North had to offer. Physicians to backwoods shamans, it made no difference to me what their pedigree was, so long as they could show me a way to stop. And Brother—the loyal monk who serves me—fresh from the labor camps along the front lines, he did.”

  “How?” Min asked without meaning to.

  “How?” Set paused, then seemed to gather himself. He didn’t move away, but she had the sense he’d stepped back several paces. “Perhaps one day I’ll tell you,” he said. “It is a complicated story, and not very interesting for a girl your age, I think. But the important thing was I made a choice. I chose to find what was true in this world—what was constant, and real, and unbreakable beneath the filth and noise of everyday life. I figured out what I wanted, and I chose to pursue only that goal. And one day, very soon, I’ll make them all see that—my father, your sister, all those backbiters and naysayers in court. They’ll all see who I truly am, what I am capable of, when I’m their emperor. I advise you to do the same as me, cousin. Find what is true, and live only for that.”

  But what could that possibly be? Min could never hope for the power to which he aspired. All she knew was an endless monotony of embroidery lessons, disrespectful servants, her mother’s disapproval, her sister’s ostentatious rebellions that she never saw fit to share with Min, and a thousand lovely silk robes leading up to the one they would bury her in. How could she ever expect to find truth when her existence amounted to little more than a politely stifled yawn?

  Aloud she said, “I’ll try my best. To do what you said.”

  “You’re a good listener, Min,” he told her absently. “A good girl.”

  “Oh, I’m not a girl,” she blurted. “I’m a woman.”

  Set blinked in surprise, fixing his cool gray eyes upon her.

  “Oh?” he said.

  She lowered her own gaze. “I know you don’t think it, no one does,” she said, her voice struggling to rise above its accustomed whisper. “But it’s true.”

  When she dared look up again, his eyes reflected bemusement, and something else—curiosity?

  He was seeing her. Truly seeing her. Before she had been like the mottled brown moth that blends in against the bark of a tree to hide from predators, but she had moved, and he had glimpsed the colorful undersides of her wings. He saw her.

  Around them, the rain picked back up. Min shivered. She felt an odd kind of fear—not the jumpy sort that had sent her hurrying past the shamaness temple, but something new. Like taking two stairs down by mistake, but righting yourself before you fall. A small exhilaration.

  “A woman. Yes,” Set said, his voice soft beneath the steady beating of the monsoon rain. “Yes, of course. I see it now. A young woman.”

  “I am,” she agreed, her voice high with relief.

  He seemed to mull this over. “And yet, earlier, when I arrived, I presented you with a set of porcelain dolls—a gift suitable for a child half your age. Most inappropriate. I fear I’ve insulted you, and embarrassed myself in the process.”

  “Oh, no …” She flushed, remembering. He’d barely looked at her, placing the velvet-lined box of dolls in her hands before flitting off to speak with her mother. “N-no, cousin. Your gifts—they were lovely. Truly, I cherish them with all the affection and delight they warrant.”

  “Nonsense! I would not leave you so unduly insulted. Much could be said against the young scion of the Hana, but few have called me miserly.”

  “I would never—”

  But he held up a long, pale hand. “You are in the right. Tell me what you would like, and come the morning you will receive your new, much improved gift, Small Princess.”

  “Minyi,” she said. “Call me Minyi. If you wish.” That was the polite thing to do, was it not? He was her elder, he ought to call her by her given name. True, she had the higher rank for now perhaps, but he was her cousin, and one day he would be her emperor—she felt a flash of guilt, as though the very thought were a betrayal of Lu.

  Not that she would care. The thought pricked meanly at the skin of her nape. She could hardly deny the truth of it, though; what use did her sister have of Min’s opinion either way?

  “Minyi,” Set was repeating slowly, as though weighing each syllable with his tongue. He reflected for a moment, then said, “Your mother always called you Min, as I recall.”

  “Min is only a pet name. A child’s name.”

  “And as we established, you are no child.”

  “No,” Min agreed. “I am not.”

  In spite of herself, she grinned. It was nice, this rhythm, this verbal dance into which they had fallen. Her nunas did this with each other sometimes, but never with her.

  “Well, Minyi.” Set quirked his lips into a smile that she thought really very pleasant, after all. “What should we do about finding you a more appropriate gift? What would you have of me? A pair of silver earrings dripping moonstones down to your shoulders? A carved hairpin of green nephrite?”

  “I have earrings. And hairpins,” she ventured coyly.

  He grinned in encouragement. “Tell me what you wish for, and it will be yours.”

  “The crystal around your neck.” She blurted the words out without thinking.

  Surprise flickered across Set’s still, handsome face, followed by a peculiar uncertainty.

  “This crystal?” He laughed, but the sound was hollow.

  Gods, what had she done? He could grant her literally anything within her imagination and of course she had asked him for the one thing he wasn’t willing to give.

  “Dear Minyi, this charm is only quartz. Worthless. You deserve fine, polished jewels. Aquamarine and amethyst to stoke your gray eyes. Veined agate and saltwater pearls nested in a setting of silver polished until it gleams.”

  She blushed scarlet. Things had grown so nice between them. Why had she gone and spoiled it? That was the wrong thing, Min—no, the worst thing you could have asked for. Idiot! Look at his face. This crystal clearly means a good deal to him.

  “It was wrong of me to—forgive me.”

  He seemed to consider her carefully. It reminded her of the way a sleepy cat might idly watch a bird. “Small Princess—Minyi,” he said. “Tell me what attracts you to this trinket.”

  “I-I was only being foolish. I know so little of the world, I did not realize it was w
orth so little.”

  “But you admired it nevertheless.”

  “When I first saw you—that is, when I first saw it about your neck, it—it sang to me.”

  “It sang to you?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her for what felt like ages. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Well. That is interesting. You see, this pendant is from Yunis. Brother and I recently investigated the ruins of their old city, and I came upon this fragment in the rubble. So I took a piece and had a jeweler turn it into a necklace. Just a keepsake from my travels.”

  Then he shrugged. “No doubt there is more where it came from. And we are soon to be brother and sister, so I suppose I can see it any time I wish. Just as I can see you any time I wish.” He lifted the chain over his head, and with little ceremony draped it over hers, careful to avoid catching her hair.

  Min looked down to where the crystal rested on the high curve of her breast, touched it delicately. It felt oddly warm and animal. Alive. Her robes weren’t so constricting anymore. She felt as though she were floating, made of cool air and moonlight.

  When she looked up, Set was watching her with bemused, attentive eyes.

  “Now, if I may be so bold to ask, what did it sound like?” he asked.

  Min considered the question, then the questioner. High above them, the sky darkened and reopened. Rain fell in a deluge. Where it struck, heat rose from the earth as steam. Under the cover of the walkway, the hanging lamps seemed oddly bright, blazing about Set’s face like a corona. Fiery white and shivering. A thousand eyes staring down at her, sharing his same glowing curiosity.

  Min’s mouth was dry and thick, and the rice wine had left her throat scratchy, but her voice came out clear and strong. “It sounded like magic,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Stranger

  A dash of wet brushed Nok’s cheek. Rain. He looked up. The sky had grown dark and marbled as a new bruise. He cursed under his breath. With luck, it would just be a passing summer shower rather than the first thundering downpour of monsoon season.

  “Come on, hurry,” Nok muttered, pushing Bo’s stubborn bulk in the direction of Omair’s house. It had been a long day of delivering medicines around Ansana, but Nok was grateful. Work meant doing rather than thinking, and after his encounter with the shamaness, Nok could do with less thinking.

  A vision of the beggar woman flashed in his mind.

  Slipskin?

  His throat tightened, and unconsciously he scrubbed his eyes, as though to wipe the old woman away.

  Around him, the village was still under the threatening sky. Only Mother Wang was out, shooing a stray chicken into its coop. At the sound of Nok’s approach she looked up, her face souring. Nok did not know the woman well. The closest they’d come to talking was last spring, when he had made the mistake of cutting through one of their fallow fields on his way back from the city. She had set their dogs on him.

  Dogs usually liked Nok, but these were mean creatures. He had barely gotten away with the clothes on his back.

  When he reached the path leading up to Omair’s house, Nok noted light glowing from the small windows at the base of the trunk. A pleasant tendril of smoke, purpled in the gloaming, curled from the chimney. Omair would have porridge simmering over the waning fire. Nok’s stomach growled in anticipation.

  He pulled a reluctant Bo toward the stable. “Why we even keep you around, I don’t know,” he muttered. Then he gave the old mule a gentle scratch behind the ears, where the hair was surprisingly downy and soft. “Ready for dinner?”

  Nok opened the stable door and froze. There was a horse inside. A big one, with a lean, proud build. The dirty saddle blankets draped over its back didn’t quite manage to hide the lustrous black-brown coat beneath.

  A Hana warhorse. Unmistakable. Nok had seen enough to recognize one ten lifetimes from now. A cold finger of fear scraped down his spine.

  For their part, Bo and the strange horse snorted at one another with a look of mutual disdain.

  “Well, Bo,” Nok said, slowly backing out. “Looks like we have a guest.”

  Had Omair ever had a guest before? He occasionally received patients from neighboring villages and settlements. Farmers, mostly. Certainly no one who would be in possession of a horse like this.

  Nok left Bo in the yard and made his way cautiously toward the rear of the house. The late summer night air had only the barest hint of autumn chill, but the sweat drying on his skin left him cold.

  He lifted a hand to open the door. Muffled voices came through from the other side. Nok dropped his hand and crouched by the window instead.

  The stranger was speaking. His voice was gruff, as though from years of tobacco smoking, but his accent refined, lofty. Definitely Inner Ring. At least. It matched the mystery horse in the stable. “I’m telling you, Ohn—”

  “Omair.”

  A snort. “Omair? Is that what you’re going by these days? What is that, southern?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be cautious. They were looking for me a long time.”

  “To that end, you would do well to think less about your name and more about your reputation. How do you think I found you? A country apothecarist with your talents—word spreads.”

  The whispers of the villagers wormed their way into Nok’s thoughts: Unnatural. Magic, its manipulations of energy, its sacred rites, had been banned within the empire since the Yunian War. But that didn’t mean it went away. There were still places in the Second Ring where you could find fortune-tellers, vendors touting love spells, fast wealth with the swig of a potion.

  But that wasn’t Omair. Nok had always known the old man was special—a true healer among the usual crop of charlatans. Now, though, he wondered just who Omair—Ohn?—was. What he was. What he had been.

  Nok wrung his hands together, felt his scars catch. It wasn’t that these questions hadn’t occurred to him; more that he didn’t wish to know. Let dead things stay buried. That was the way it had always been with Omair—they didn’t need to know their pasts to trust one another. Did they?

  Absently, Nok palmed at the knife in his boot.

  “Something tells me,” Omair said pointedly, “I don’t think you came all this way under the cover of dusk to talk about my name.”

  The stranger conceded with a grunt. “You’ve heard the emperor named that Hana boy his successor?”

  “Indeed. And that Princess Lu has challenged him for the title,” Omair replied. “We do hear things out here.”

  Princess Lu. Nok’s stomach clenched at the sudden memory of her narrow face, hair dark and iridescent as the wings of a raven. He pushed the vision away. He’d hoped those memories were behind him, in the dust of the North, with the bones of his family.

  “The princess has challenged him, it’s true, but the boy behaves as though the throne is already his. I’ve been watching him—who he meets with, what he promises them. He’s building support, mostly among the military. And there are well enough many in court who would sooner follow a Hana man—any man, any Hana—than her. Set knows it. Lu, she’s too young to see it. Too sheltered. She thinks that her wits and pedigree and the love of her father will be enough to carry her. But Set’s planning something. I just don’t know exactly what.”

  Omair made a sound of acknowledgment. “It’s hard to believe that Daagmun—that the emperor hasn’t caught wind of this.”

  “You’ve been away too long,” the stranger said. “You forget how the court works—secrets are both currency and weaponry. The clever ones hoard them until the right opportunity. And if you’re not clever, you don’t survive.”

  “Then how are you still around?” Omair retorted, but his voice was fond. Nok had never heard the old man speak this way—it felt not unlike how Adé teased Nok.

  “That’s good,” snapped the stranger. “That’s very funny. Well, here’s another joke for you: Set believes he’s found Yunis.”

  Nok frowned. Yunis. The Gray City in the North. Where r
ites and devotions and diplomatic meetings between the half a hundred Gifted Kith took place for a thousand years. Until the imperials razed it a year before Nok’s birth.

  It had been beyond a dark time for all the Gifted—Nok’s mother often said he and Nasan had been born after the end of the world. But of course, she hadn’t known what was yet to come.

  “Yunis was destroyed,” Omair said, as though echoing Nok’s thoughts. There was a creak as he leaned back in his chair.

  “The old city was,” countered the stranger firmly. “There were always rumors of survivors—”

  “Just rumors.”

  There was a long pause. “I still have friends in the North. Men I fought beside in battle. Men I trust my life to.”

  “And?”

  “I have it on good faith that Prince Jin—the youngest of the Triarch—was recently seen patrolling their borders with a force ten thousand strong.”

  “That’s one royal. If there’s any truth to the story at all.”

  The stranger chose to ignore Omair’s second comment. “That one royal is the one that matters—he controls their army.”

  “It seems unlikely there would be anywhere left for them to hide,” Omair mused. “The colonies have grown so. I hear they’re using sparkstone to crumble the mountains.”

  “Just the foothills, here and there. If anywhere could hide a city, it would be the Gray Mountains,” the stranger said. Then he snorted. “And the situation up there is far more precarious than the emperor would like—than his advisers let on. I suppose you heard about the prison break earlier this moon? Fifty slipskins and convicts freed—”

  Nok’s breath caught in his throat. Slipskins. For half a heartbeat, his sister’s face hovered in front of his own and something in him soared. No, he said, yanking it back down. It was a familiar feeling; how many times had he woken thinking the past year, then two years, five years, had been a terrible dream, only to remember it was all too real?