by Mimi Yu
CHAPTER 9
Dawn
Lu woke to darkness in the earliest hours of the morning. She had her nunas draw her bath, comb and brush her hair, then comb it again before pulling it into a series of intricate plaits. Her face was scrubbed and buffed and painted. Silly. She would sweat it off in a few hours, but ceremony was ceremony.
She exited her apartments to find Hyacinth waiting in the garden. The nuna leaned against a trellis, her face lit pale by the ghost of a heavy-bellied moon. Lu followed her tense gaze, but there was nothing there, just gardenias and tumbles of petunias. Last night’s rain had left its damp fingerprints on everything.
“Why so glum?” Lu asked, making the nuna start. “Don’t tell me you’re worried I’m going to lose.”
Hyacinth pushed a grin onto her face. “You? Lose? Never.”
“I told you you’re going to be the first head amma of the first empress in our history, and I intend to keep that promise,” Lu said with exaggerated severity.
“I believe you.” The smile slipped from Hyacinth’s face again, and she ran a hand thoughtfully over her tightly braided hair, dropping the hood of her robe. The moonlight bisected her face so that one half seemed to glow, while the other was shrouded in shadow. “A messenger came while you were in the bath,” she said hesitantly. “Your father—”
Lu’s chest clenched. “What’s happened? Is he all right?”
Hyacinth nodded, raising a placating hand. “He’s—well, he had one of his spells this morning, but the physicians are attending to him. He’s resting. But he won’t be able to join the hunt.”
Lu felt her body go slack. “I should go to him,” she said.
“I thought you’d say that,” Hyacinth sighed. “The physicians insist he just needs rest and quiet. They said to check with them after the hunt.”
“We’re not returning for days,” Lu protested.
“Your mother’s with him,” Hyacinth said, as though that were meant to be reassuring. Lu gave her a look and the nuna smiled wryly. “I know. But the physicians say he’ll be fine. He’s not going anywhere.”
Lu frowned, then nodded. The last thing she wanted right now was to see her mother.
“Listen,” Hyacinth said. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I know it’s poor timing, but I was thinking I ought to make a visit home soon. It’s been months.”
It often felt as if Hyacinth was more a sister to her than Min. It was easy to forget that she had a family of her own.
When nunas were chosen, they were assigned new names by the judges, based on their personalities and attributes. Over their years together, Lu had learned their birth names, but she only ever remembered Hyacinth’s: Inka, of Family Cui.
“Wonin’s grown so big I scarcely feel I can call him my little brother anymore,” Hyacinth murmured, almost to herself.
“He looks nearly a man now,” Lu agreed, recalling the lanky youth she’d seen in court.
“I know—” Hyacinth broke off as Min appeared farther up the path, flanked by her nunas. As they approached, Snowdrop tried and failed to stifle a yawn. It was catching; Min followed, covering her mouth hurriedly with her sleeve.
“Good morning!” Lu called out. “What brings you here at this fine hour?”
Min blinked back at her with distracted gray eyes, starting belatedly. “Sister,” she squeaked as they drew closer. Her nunas curtsied. Min’s gaze lowered swiftly, almost guiltily. It occurred to Lu that she hadn’t seen her since the Betrothal Feast. Had Min been avoiding her? She did that sometimes when Lu angered their mother, as though worried she might contract the empress’s ire by proximity.
“You look very beautiful,” her sister mumbled politely, gesturing at Lu’s deep, blood-colored robes, flecked with embellishments of gold thread and turquoise stones.
Gods, sometimes Min spoke to her as though she were a stranger.
“I know. You, on the other hand, look nervous,” Lu countered. She’d meant it playfully, but the words came out sharper than she’d intended. “You’re not the one being tested here, you do realize?”
“Mother says I have to stand with her while we see you and Se—Lord Set off,” Min said meekly, as though that explained anything. “There will be a lot of people.”
“And how is our dear mother?” Lu asked blandly. “I haven’t seen her in days. Can’t imagine why.” Behind her, Hyacinth snorted, and Butterfly did a poor job of hiding a smile. Instead of laughing though, Min frowned.
“Oh, Mother’s been in a terrible mood—”
“I’m sure she has.” Lu grinned and lowered her voice, “Do you think she’s more likely to murder me or Father first?”
“Don’t say that,” Min mumbled vaguely. “She cares about you …” Her voice trailed off, as though even she couldn’t believe her own words.
Lu felt a familiar pinprick of annoyance. Sisters, she was fairly certain, were supposed to present a unified front against their parents. Min acted more like a twice-shot, over-burdened messenger, running ragged between Lu and their mother, trying to keep the peace. Their mother was a tyrant, true, but if only her sister would stand up for herself now and again.
“It was a joke,” Lu said, nudging her sister in the ribs with her elbow. Min flinched, and Lu bit back a sigh. Her sister was only a year younger than her, but sometimes—often—she still acted like a timid child. “Jokes are funny, Min. You can laugh. And don’t worry, I won’t do anything to upset Mother further, so long as she doesn’t try anything with me, all right?”
Min made a vaguely agreeable sound in her throat. A breeze washed over them, scattering white jasmine petals from the vines overhead. Min winced as one kissed her eyelid.
“Do you want to walk to the gate together?” she asked.
Lu glanced back at Hyacinth. The handmaiden shrugged. “Oleander and Siringa are still dressing.”
“No,” Lu told her sister. “You and your nunas go on. We’ll come soon enough.”
Min nodded and turned away.
Lu watched the darkness swallow her up. The flesh of her arms prickled. The air was far from cold, but it carried something of the autumn; an underlying bite, a hint of frost and leaf mold. Golden and eerie and sad. Lu shook her head. She couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Not today.
“Shall I go fetch the others, Princess?” Hyacinth asked.
“Yes,” Lu told her. She stretched her arms overhead and tossed a smirk over her shoulder at the other girl. “And get ready to call me empress.”
The sun rose as the gates of the Immaculate City opened, creating a path from the palace Heart to the beginnings of Kangmun Boulevard within the First Ring. Lu guided Yaksun along it. She gave the elk an affectionate pat on his neck. He snorted and shook his head, the mantle of beveled jewels and copper bells decking his antlers jingling merrily.
Set was farther back in the line, surrounded by his fawning retinue and draped in blue Hana finery. She bristled and looked adamantly forward. It had been nearly a week since she had last seen her cousin. The day after the Betrothal Ceremony, her mother had cajoled her and Min into a private dinner with him. The evening had ended in a shouting match when Set began talking of expelling the Ellandaise from the city once he was emperor. Min had burst into tears when Lu shattered his plate against the wall.
The whole of the Rings had come to see them off, merchants staring from the doorways of their shops, and little children waving colorful silks out the windows of sky manses while their parents looked on. Everywhere there was laughter and excited chatter.
Everywhere but where her mother stood like a streak of gloom just inside the palace gate. She’d huffed in impatience when Lu passed by, as though the whole affair were a childish charade she could hardly stand to partake in. At her side, Min had looked slight and sleepy; Lu hadn’t been able to catch her eye, so anxiously transfixed had her sister been on their mother.
Lu felt a tug of discomfort in her gut. Her father should be there with her. She recalled the last tim
e she’d seen him—how he had sought her eyes during the Betrothal Ceremony. How she had looked away, the picture of contempt and spite. Who knew how long he had left? Not long enough for her to waste. Shame welled up in her. She resolved to see him the moment she returned.
Set rode up alongside her, waving graciously toward a group of Second Ring children gawking at them from a shaved-ice stand. When he turned back to her, though, his gray eyes were angry little chips of flint. “You’ve managed to rile the people up with this competition of yours, I’ll give you that much,” he bit out.
“You’re welcome to end it at any time,” she responded, her face a cheery rictus. “Just go back home.”
They were approaching the Northern Gatehead separating the Second Ring from the sprawling country beyond. Built of wood and iron, the gate was as high as twenty men, and inscribed with auspicious tidings and protective runes. The captain at the lead of their party gave a shout to the posted guards. With a deep creaking of gears, it began to rise.
“A diversion,” Set sneered, barely audible above the sound. “That’s all this is, in the end. Isn’t it?”
Lu bristled. “For me, perhaps. For you, it will be the end of your career.”
The gate reached the peak of its ascent with a final screech, then let off a deep, metallic shudder as the guards locked it into place. The captain shouted once more to the guards who confirmed it was safe to pass.
Lu looked her cousin in his gray Hana eyes, narrowed with contempt and suspicion.
“Once this betrothal nonsense is over, I would write to your mother in Bei Province and tell her to prepare the household for your return,” she told him lightly. “They’ll want to restock the poppy resin, no doubt.”
It was a cruel jab, but then beneath all his gentility and elegant silks, her cousin was a cruel man.
He stiffened visibly, then reined up. His stallion threw its head and gave a blustery snort. “We shall see soon enough, cousin, whose end comes first.” Then he surged ahead.
Beyond the city walls the soft rolling land was blanketed in the greenery of late summer, flecked intermittently with tiny farmhouses of wood and stone. As their party maneuvered down Kangmun Boulevard, Lu noted distant men and women in the fields, hunkered down over low-growing bean shrubs and wading through rice paddies. To her right, a plowman drove a pair of yoked oxen through a newly fallow field.
Before them lay the northern forest, where the hunt would commence. Rising up from behind the trees, the harsh, snow-buffeted peaks of the northern Ruvai Mountains stabbed the sky. Miles of unknown wilderness.
She cast a sidelong glare at Set. Her cousin sat upon his white stallion with lazy elegance, joking with one of his Hana entourage. The other man laughed deferentially. Lu gritted her teeth.
A quartet of adolescent Hu boys upon elk fell in beside her, followed by a group of their Hana peers riding young stallions they seemed scarcely able to control. Royal hunts always meant the debut of a new crop of well-bred boys eager to prove themselves.
She recognized one of the Hu, Wonin—Hyacinth’s younger brother. He met her eyes and gave a deferential nod of his head. She winked in response, watching as he made his elk prance delicate as a pony for the amusement of the other boys.
As the party reached the edge of the Northwood, the captain of the guard signaled toward his subordinates with a stiff gesture of his arm. Wordlessly, the men moved their elk into two meticulous lines around the party, one toward the front, and one toward the rear.
Normally her father would have spoken here, but today there was no mention of him. No one wanted to admit their emperor was ailing. Instead, the captain of the guard cleared his throat and announced, “Shin Mung, adviser to the Emperor, our Lord of Ten Thousand Years, will now recite an excerpt from the Analecta to initiate the hunt.”
A thin, bookish man, Shin Mung slipped somewhat gracelessly from his elk and stepped forward. He recited in a quavering voice: “When the true king rules humanely, according in every manner with the Ways of the Heavens, then his kingdom will experience peace and prosperity …”
Lu passed her cousin a glance. Set was poised in his saddle, the trace of an idle smile twisting his elegant lips. But there was something new beneath its placid surface—something brimming, trembling. Anxiety, perhaps?
No. Eagerness.
“The true emperor is not he who holds the sharpest sword, but he who inspires his kingdom through his own righteous conduct,” droned Shin Mung.
It had been five years since she’d seen Set swing a sword or string a bow. He’d been of unremarkable talent at the time—neither particularly good nor bad. But he’d become a general since. Even if it was nepotism that had won him that rank, he must have acquired some martial skills in the interim.
Lu flexed her fingers, itching to reach for her bow, her sword. Some weapon. Instead she took the leather gloves from her saddlebag and pulled them on.
“… may your mounts be swift, and your aim be true,” Shin Mung concluded.
And with that, they were off.
They rode deeper into the forest and prepared to split off into two groups. Sleek, athletic hounds laced artfully between the mounted horses and elk, alternating between efficiently sniffing the air for potential prey and nipping at one another in clumsy, puppyish discord.
Set raised an arm to call his men toward him, delegating and strategizing. Lu called over her own men. Yuri came first, reining up beside her.
“Princess,” he said tersely.
Something in his tone made Lu meet his eyes. They were tight at the corners, and overly bright with some unspoken urgency. A cold finger of fear scraped down her spine.
“Shin Yuri,” she said, leaning in toward him. “I’m glad you were able to come! I wasn’t sure you’d be here. I haven’t seen you in a few days.” It was true—he’d disappeared after the Betrothal Ceremony. Had he even been at the banquet? She couldn’t recall. Somehow the idea frightened her now. She’d overlooked something, she realized. What was it?
Yuri snatched her by the wrist, hard. He raised his other hand high; it held a knife. He brought it down, but she threw an elbow, hitting him in the wrist and knocking it from his hands. Just as he had taught her to do. Just as he must have known she would.
She met his eyes, wild and searching. His were grimly satisfied.
He hauled her close, nearly yanking her from her saddle. The coarse stubble on his face scoured her skin, and she heard him hiss a single word in her ear.
“Run.”
That was when the first arrow flew at her.
CHAPTER 10
Shamaness
A magnolia tree grew just outside the window next to Min’s bed. She would track its changes through the year, watching the spring’s crop of tight velveted buds soften and flare fuschia at their tips, then unfurl into fleshy stars spangling the bare branches. It struck her as sad in a way; each change so grand and lovely, and yet never final, always fruitless, always doomed to begin again.
Today, though, Min looked through the tree, trying to recall her dreams from the night before. Every time she grasped for them, they receded, as irrevocable as the tide. All she remembered was that her sister had been there, but when Min called out to her, Lu had turned around and it hadn’t been Lu at all.
“I wonder what’s happening.” Snowdrop’s high voice pierced Min’s reverie. Min looked over to where her nunas were gathered in the corner of the room, chattering and eating candied haws from little bowls. Butterfly had unraveled her long black hair and was slowly running a comb through it.
“Oh, I so wish we could watch the hunt,” Snowdrop chirped on.
Tea Rose laughed. “What do you know about hunting, Snowdrop?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to hunt; I just wish I could see it!”
Min felt a stab of annoyance. “What time is it?” she asked. Not that it mattered. Her lessons for the day had been canceled.
“Princess, do you need something?” Butterfly swept over to he
r, reordering the bedding Min had disturbed. “Are you hungry?”
Min clung at the coverlet draped across her lap, drawing it down. A waxy streak of white powder and lip rouge was smeared across the edge—makeup from yesterday. For a moment she thought of how the nunas would be forced to strip the bed later for careful washing and felt a pang of panicked guilt, but she pushed it away. That was their duty. To serve her needs.
They should have done a better job of removing her makeup in the first place.
“Leave me!” she snapped, so suddenly that Butterfly dropped the blanket she was holding. It collapsed to the floor in a silken puddle.
“Princess?” the nuna asked hesitantly.
“I wish to be alone,” Min said.
There was, she discovered, a mean pleasure to be taken in the other girl’s uncertainty.
What is wrong with me?
Nothing. It wasn’t her, it was them. Butterfly always seemed so sure of herself, but in the end she was only a servant.
The others were staring now. Min glowered back at them. It was time they recognized her as their mistress, not their charge. “Go! All of you!”
They filed out, wordless and radiantly uncomfortable. Snowdrop moved as though to close the pocket doors, but Butterfly yanked her along by the sleeve, leaving the doors open a crack.
Min collapsed back into her bed, scowling into the swallowing softness of the blankets. Outside, she could hear the faint, traipsing giggle of the stream in her courtyard garden, but that was all. It occurred to her that this was the most alone she’d been in a long time. Perhaps ever. It felt nice, just lying there by herself.
Except for the hard pain against her chest. Something was trapped between her and the wooden platform of her bed. She propped herself up onto her elbows and tucked her chin to her neck to look down. Of course—her quartz necklace, heavy on its chain. Set’s necklace.
She felt a trill of excitement in her belly. Stupid, really. She wasn’t some flighty little baby to be awed by a handsome boy, and he was a man grown, and most likely going to marry her sister …
Still. She sighed and flopped down onto the bed again, squeezing the crystal tightly in her palm. It was warm, just as it had been the night he’d given it to her. The night that had felt like a dream, she thought. Another rush of pleasure tickled her belly when she remembered how he’d called it their secret. And it was. No one else knew—not her mother, not Lu, not her nunas. It belonged to them—to her—alone.