by Mimi Yu
“We need to stop soon anyway,” she argued. “We’re almost out of food. We may as well see what’s around, and if the town feels big enough for us to pass unnoticed, we can look for an inn.”
“If it’s big enough for us to pass unnoticed, I guarantee you it’ll have just as many thieves as are in these woods. More, probably,” he said stubbornly. “And soldiers, to boot.”
“Well, what’re we to do?” she retorted. “Ride until the horse gives out, then eat it? Walk the rest of the way to Yunis and arrive shortly before the birth of my cousin’s third son?”
“Fine!” He sighed. “We can load up on some basics.”
“We need warmer clothes, too,” she pointed out, seizing on her victory. “The air’s getting cold and the mountains will be colder. And if by chance Omair’s map is wrong about where the gates are, we don’t know how long we’ll be wandering before we get to Yunis.”
“If it even still exists,” he muttered.
“It exists,” she said firmly. “And stop trying to change the subject.”
“Fine. Warmer clothes,” he allowed.
“And a blanket for you, since your modesty would sooner have you freeze to death than share bedding with me.”
“Modest …,” he said incredulously. “I’m trying to be polite, Princess.”
“Polite is declining once, then acquiescing to common sense,” she snorted. “You act like you’re the princess.”
He just glared. “Fine. A second blanket. Woolens. Oats for the horse and some grains for us. Anything else you want? Embroidered silk capes? Furs? Steel pots and pans? Rugs? Maybe we should just build a house here and stay forever while we’re at it.”
“Don’t be sore just because I was in the right,” she said primly, taking the horse’s reins and turning her back to him.
“Wait!” He grabbed for the reins. She turned and met his eyes just as their fingers brushed. He jerked his hand away.
She watched him do it, but only said, “What?”
“You look too …” He gestured in her direction and wrinkled his nose. “Too rich. People will definitely notice you.”
She looked down. She was wearing her own black leather breeches, but she had one of his own rough-hewn knee-length gray tunics thrown over a cotton shirt, belted with a rope.
“Right,” she scoffed. “I had forgotten how coveted rotting wool is these days.”
“No, not your clothes … although I think we ought to dirty up the leathers a bit. It’s more … ” He paused. “Your hair. And your teeth. And your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?” she demanded, her tone growing dangerous.
“Nothing’s wrong, you look …” He shook his head. “It’s just, no one besides a royal or maybe a First Ring lady would have hair that long. It’s impractical. And you stick your chin up too high; try to look more … tired. And like you don’t want to be seen. Yes, no, that’s better.”
She gave an exaggerated frown and lowered her face toward the ground.
“Should I furrow my brow and pout like you, too?” she asked.
“I don’t …” He broke off, unsure if he was being teased or not. He caught the barest hint of a smile on her lips.
Ignoring it, he muttered, “Wait here.” He slipped around the other side of the horse and dug through one of the saddlebags there, extracting a little grooming kit Lu had found in there days earlier. It must’ve belonged to the soldier whose horse they stole, though none of them had appeared particularly well-groomed in his memory.
He searched the kit until he found a small pair of scissors.
She regarded them suspiciously. “Are you going to give me a scar or something?”
He rolled his eyes and thrust them toward her. “No. You’re going to give yourself a haircut.”
“Fine.” She took the scissors and held them limply. “How do I do it?”
He stared at her.
“You look like I just asked you how to breathe.”
“You’ve never cut your own hair?” He groaned. “Of course you’ve never cut your own hair.”
“I’m a princess,” she confirmed. “I have handmaidens.”
“Oh, for heaven’s …,” he grumbled, grabbing the scissors away and waving them toward a fallen tree. “Go sit there.”
He cut her black hair in deft broad hanks, then more judiciously, so it fell in a straight, even line just beyond her shoulders. She sat stiffly but made no fuss when he used his fingers to turn her chin from side to side, measuring his work. Like many apothecarists, Omair occasionally provided barber services—cuts and shaves—out of their home, so he’d learned a bit here and there. He’d never cut a woman’s hair before, but the rhythm of the work was familiar enough, and he relaxed into it.
Her fringe was blunt and immaculately sculpted, and he used the points of the scissors to coarsen it with a few nicks and notches. She flinched, blinking rapidly as bits of hair fell, clinging to her eyelids and cheekbones.
“Thank you,” she murmured as he blew them away, looking up through the short dark trim of her lashes.
He grunted and ran a hand through her hair to shake it out. When his fingernails grazed her scalp, he felt her shiver under the touch.
He was suddenly aware of how close they were. It was the closest he’d ever been to a girl—to anyone, really. Besides Adé, when she’d kissed him.
Had Lu ever kissed anyone? Had she shivered like that beneath their touch?
Nok felt his face grow hot.
Remember who she is. What she is. Remember who you are.
He pulled his hand away, then stepped back to regard his work. She stood, pinching at the newly shortened ends.
“How do I look?” she asked with a self-deprecating tilt of her head.
“Better,” he said shortly. “Except for the teeth.”
“You’re not doing anything to my teeth,” she said firmly. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”
He turned to replace the scissors and grooming kit. “Not likely,” he muttered, hiding his smile.
CHAPTER 22
Loyalty
They had installed her father’s coffin in the main throne room in Kangmun Hall. It would remain there for the next hundred days. Afterward, a procession would escort it to its final resting place in the Imperial Mausoleum, outside Yulan City’s Eastern Gatehead.
The rituals had become the most interesting part of Min’s day. At first the very idea of them had frightened her. Her father’s coffin was magnificent: constructed from multiple layers of black wood, the surface inlaid with mother-of-pearl, crystal, and gold, and draped in cascades of silk and fresh flowers. Still, despite the meticulous trappings, how could she ignore that a dead body was only steps away? Even one that was, or had been, her father.
It must smell, she’d thought. Corpses smelled right away, especially when the weather was hot. The first few days she kept her breathing so shallow she nearly fainted. But afterward, a perverse impulse drove her to seek out any odor of death beneath everything else: the incense smoke, and the perfume of oils, and garlands of roses and jasmine draping the coffin. She never found it, though. The coffin was well sealed.
After that, the rituals were easier. And, she discovered, they were the only time she had occasion to see her cousin—my husband, she reminded herself, though that part scarcely felt real.
On this day like most, Set arrived late, taking his place between Min and her mother as the water monks chanted and waved their censers. Was it her imagination, or did he seem paler than usual? Certainly she was not imagining the dark circles beneath his eyes or the way his fingertips twitched impatiently, all but drumming against his thighs. Not once did he look her way.
He has duties, Min chided herself, forcing the strain of disappointment from her heart. Remember the burdens he bears.
She shivered, recalling the way he’d drawn back his foot and kicked that old prisoner, Ohn, over and over.
That wasn’t real, idiot. Just a dream. It was ju
st a dream.
Liar, whispered another voice.
“Princess,” hissed Butterfly, stirring Min from her thoughts. She started. The monks were signaling the end of the ritual. Min lowered herself in a bow.
Set was gone before Min’s nunas had finished helping her to her feet.
Afterward, the handmaidens gossiped and entertained themselves in the main rooms of her apartments, but Min retired to her bedchamber for a nap. She found herself increasingly exhausted of late, as though the panicked, helpless circles she was running in her mind were taking a toll on her body.
She collapsed across her bed, staring up at the ceiling. When they were little girls, Lu used to make up elaborate stories about the abstract shapes painted up there: great battles between the blue blobs and lavender swirls of smoke, or a doomed love between a red triangle and a green circle. But then Lu had grown out of that, and out of sharing a bed altogether, and Min found the stories she came up with on her own were never as entrancing. Now she was too old for them, too. And Lu …
Lu was gone. Disappeared. The whispered consensus was that she was lost somewhere deep in the Southwood, but she could just as easily be hunkered down in some farmer’s rice field or dead in a gutter in the Second Ring.
That final thought made Min’s stomach clench, but she told herself for the hundredth time it wasn’t possible. Her sister—but was she really her sister? she pushed the thought away—had always been invincible, a force of nature. Resolutely, defiantly bursting with life. And hadn’t she gone on hunting trips with their father and his men, even when they were little girls? Spent days tramping through the forest, flushing hideous boars out from the underbrush, drinking from streams with her own cupped hands?
Min wondered at that now, though. The occasional hunting trip aside, her sister—it was just a dream, just a dream—was raised much in the same manner Min had been, with a staff to prepare their meals, shins to schedule their days, nunas to wash and dress them—even cut and file their fingernails. For all her swordplay and athleticism, the life of a princess had prepared Lu for life outside the palace walls as little as it had for Min.
No. Her sister always just seemed to know how to do new things, or was quick to learn.
Lu is special. She’s always been special, she told herself, unable to keep the bitterness from pulling at the edges of the thought.
Hours later, when she emerged from her bedchamber to dress for supper, she found her nunas gone, and a note calling her to her mother’s apartments.
Her mother was waiting by her dressing table, comb in hand, when Min arrived.
“Where’s Butterfly? And Snowdrop?” Min blurted, unable to keep the wariness from her voice. The past few days had taught her that the unexpected usually meant something bad.
But her mother just smiled. “Amma Ruxin had some tasks for them. We’ve scarcely seen each other these past few days, so I thought I would help you dress, like I did when you were little. Won’t that be nice?”
What do you really want? Min wondered. That wasn’t the answer she was meant to give, though.
She took a seat at the vanity and allowed the empress to draw her comb through her long hair. It was as unkempt from her nap as it had ever been, but for once her mother did not chide her for it. Min tried not to flinch as the comb tugged at a snarl.
“You’re very quiet,” her mother murmured. “Are you unwell?”
Min thought of her father, dead, murdered. Of her sister—sister?—lost. She thought of a woman born of fire and spite. The curse within her body. The husband who scarcely saw her. The husband whom she’d seen kick a man half to death without hesitation. And her mother whom she had seen standing uncomplaining at his side. Her mother who had gone to her dying father and—
No, she told herself. You don’t know what you saw. Dreams. Only dreams.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice still creaky with sleep. She cleared her throat.
“I never had the chance to ask, what exactly did that old monk say to you after your wedding?”
There it is, Min thought. She’d been right to be wary of this sudden, unannounced audience. Her mother never did anything loving without some underlying, calculated reason. Maybe no one ever did.
“I know girls your age tell their mothers everything, but you’re a married woman now, so can you keep this confidence for your husband? Even from her?”
Brother had said this to her after she’d doused the fire-thing with tea, after he and Set had consoled her tears. Min had nodded mutely, though at the time she had secretly wondered if she would have the strength to keep the truth from her mother, even if she wanted to.
She blinked rapidly, trying to keep her lies straight—so many lies, to so many people—too late remembering she did so when she was nervous. It was a tic her mother would be sure to notice.
“Min?” her mother prompted, the comb going still in her hair.
She’d been silent for too long. Beads of sweat sprang up along her hairline, the back of her neck. Say something, idiot!
“Brother? H-he taught me … some things,” she said weakly. “Prayers and rituals,” she added.
Her mother pursed her lips, but the comb resumed its brusque, artless sweep through her hair. “What sort of rituals? We have the water monks and nuns for that purpose. What does an empress need that they do not know?”
“It pleases Set for me to know them,” Min said. That was good—perhaps the mention of her cousin would serve as a bulwark against her mother’s disapproval.
It seemed to work. Her mother set down the comb and began plucking apart strands of hair to make a plait. Min resumed breathing, slow and even, trying to keep her relieved exhale from rushing out.
But when her mother spoke again, it was of a much different subject: “You know that as empress, you will be expected to provide your emperor with an heir.”
Min felt her face heat in spite of herself. “Yes, of course.”
“You’re still young yet,” her mother reassured her. “Things being as uncertain as they were, it was necessary to wed you immediately. But it will be at least a year, likely more before you’re expected to even attempt to conceive. The physicians will first examine you, and the water priests will consult the stars and their vision pools to determine the most auspicious dates for conception.” Her mother sighed. “They did the same for me, though they were wrong about you by a good two months.”
“What about Lu?” Min asked, so lulled by the stroking in her hair and the rhythm of her voice that she forgot herself. Her mother’s fingers stuttered for a heartbeat but then resumed their steady plaiting.
Careful, Min scolded herself. What perverse impulse had driven her to ask that question?
“Lu,” her mother said tightly. “The monks did not see her coming at all. Perhaps Set is right to bring in that Brother of his. Perhaps the old mul ways no longer serve us as well as they once did. People say in the early days of the Hu conquest, when they still had their own religions, they would enlist their shamanesses for the job. Apparently, they were more accurate—”
“Shamanesses?” Min blurted, a flash of red obliterating her careful calm. “Like the Yunian shamanesses?”
Her mother’s hands stilled in her hair. “Yes, I suppose they were similar. Why? What do you know of the Yunian shamanesses?” The empress’s voice had gone odd and quiet, but it wasn’t dangerous, not yet.
“Just a bit, from my history lessons,” Min said quickly. She hadn’t had the exhaustive education that was granted her sister, but Amma Ruxin had taught her enough to hold a conversation.
“Is that all?” The empress reached the end of one plait and tied it off with a thong. She let the heavy rope fall. The hairs were laid less artfully than Min’s nunas were capable of. A few were pulled too tightly, and they tugged meanly at her scalp.
“Yes. That’s all,” Min forced her voice to be strong, as though saying a lie louder might make it true.
“I know girls your age tell thei
r mothers everything,” Brother’s voice echoed in Min’s head.
Was that really so? Even before, she hadn’t told her mother everything, not truly. Not the contents of her dreams or how much she loathed her painting classes. Not when she ate an extra egg tart at dinner. Not the bawdy jokes Butterfly whispered to the room after the nunas had blown out the lamps.
She saw then in her mind’s eye the hairpin she had accidentally stolen off her mother’s vanity, the day of Lu’s aborted Betrothal Ceremony. A beautiful trinket of agate and pearl shaped like a lily. Butterfly had told the other nunas in hushed tones about how she’d heard from a maid that the empress had Amma Wei flogged for losing it. Min had felt terrible for a moment. But servants were terrible gossips, weren’t they? Everyone knew what they said wasn’t always true.
Min had threaded the pin into the plush underside of a chair, where not even the chambermaids would see it. The chair was scarcely two paces away from the empress. That was a secret. She had secrets.
Stupid trivial things, she told herself dismissively.
But how stupid and trivial were those things, really? If you piled enough little things together, they could grow quite big.
Maybe all those little things together were bigger even than what her mother did know of her.
What was it that her mother knew of her? Just her too-round face and unkempt hair. That she was milder than her sister, more obedient, kinder, slower. Younger. Smaller. In the end was that really anything at all? A daughter understood only in relief—defined by what she wasn’t.
Her mother’s hands moved over her hair again, lacquered nails combing down loose hairs, scraping lightly against Min’s scalp.
“I was thinking,” the empress murmured. “With things being so hectic in the capital now, it might be nice for you to take a trip somewhere, before it gets too cold. Maybe the summer palace out east, or my family’s manor in Bei Province. You’ve never met my side of the family. It’s about time.”
Min turned in surprise. “Would Set come?”
“No, of course not. He has duties here.”
“I,” Min hesitated. “I heard he would go north again to lead the fight against Yunis.”