The Girl King

by Mimi Yu

  “You mean the princess?” Nasan countered with a raised eyebrow.

  He studied his sister. There was a challenge, a prodding in her voice he wasn’t sure how to interpret. He nodded. “Yes. The princess. Is she all right?”

  “Relax. She’s fine. Not a scratch on her. I’ll take you to her when you’re up for it.” She pushed him back down. “Just rest.”

  “I don’t need to rest.” Where were they? Nok craned his head to look, but all he could see out the room’s single window was a dense thatch of greenery.

  Nasan sighed. “In that case, I have some questions. First off, what are you doing here? How did you get out of the labor camp?”

  “An imperial officer,” he said, experimentally propping himself up on one elbow. “He got me out.”

  “Why?”

  He considered explaining the extent of Yuri’s past, the old man’s connection to Lu—but, no. Later. When he better understood the lay of things.

  “I got sick after you … after they took you,” he said instead. “Really sick. They tossed me into the medical tent with the other lost causes. But the officer, he seemed to think I could be saved—I don’t know; I guess he felt sorry for everything they’d done. He was on his way back down to the capital, so he sneaked me away with him. Left me with an apothecarist friend of his—I’ve been the apothecarist’s apprentice ever since.”

  Nasan laughed. “In the capital? Right in the belly of the beast?”

  “Not quite,” Nok corrected. “Little farming town just to the north.”

  Thinking of Omair flooded him with restless urgency. It hadn’t been long—less than a moon’s pass—since he’d last seen him. But it felt a lifetime ago. Had the old apothecarist been relegated to some palace dungeon this whole time? Had there been a trial? Was he even still alive?

  There was no way of knowing. All Nok could do was press on, move forward with Lu’s plan. But Nasan and her friends had plowed through their path with the grace of a sandstorm.

  What was the plan now?

  In lieu of family, Nok had had Omair. Once he had had Adé. And now he was stuck with Lu. But—a smaller, uglier voice in the back of his mind thought—now he had Nasan back. Didn’t he?

  “Nok?” Nasan was watching him with careful, catlike eyes. “Are you all right? Do you need to rest?”

  You owe Omair a debt, he told himself harshly.

  “I was just … it’s a lot to take in at once,” he said. “I assumed you must be dead—that monk killed all the children he took, didn’t he?”

  “Almost all of them,” Nasan said. “The same night they took me, we left the camp. Me and ten or so other specially chosen kids—anyone who retained any hint of the Gift. We were loaded into a wagon and traveled for miles. They kept the windows covered so we couldn’t see where we were going, but I could tell the air was getting drier, colder. We were in the Gray Mountains. The monk had some sort of cottage set up there. Full of cages.”

  “The others said he peeled the skin off the kids he took,” Nok murmured. “That he was looking for magic under their skin.”

  “Not quite,” Nasan said. “He took three of us the first night we were there—me and two boys. I was the only one who came back. He took us up into the mountains. H-he had this map, marked with a location he thought might be a gateway into Yunis.”

  “Yunis?” Nok repeated in surprise.

  “Yes,” his sister confirmed. Her face took on a closed, careful look. Anyone else might have missed it, but there were some things siblings never forgot.

  It was the same look that she used to get when their mother accused her of making off with the last dessert plum. Nasan had been clever enough to know she could never convincingly mime innocence, so instead turned deceit into a game of endurance, sustaining her lie louder and longer than her opponent was willing or able to deny it. Persuasion by exhaustion, Nok had called it.

  The look had grown subtler over their four years of separation, but Nok still saw it for what it was.

  What was she hiding?

  “The monk had this notion that the city was—what was the word he used?—‘slumbering.’ That the Yunians had magicked it into hiding, and with the right combination of spells and sacrifices of his own, he could worm his way in.”

  “And then what?”

  Nasan shrugged. “Damned if I know. He didn’t share it with us. Anyway, when they got there it didn’t look like anything special, but he seemed sure that it was that particular spot.”

  “So, what happened?”

  She sighed. “He killed the other two right there, trying to use their blood to open the gate. When that didn’t work, he tried to make me caul on the site. Right there on the ground, on my knees in the other kids’ blood. Thought he was going to kill me when I couldn’t, but he just took me back to the cottage. The next night, me and four of the others ran.”

  “And now you’re here,” Nok said.

  “And now we’re here.”

  “Who are all your other … friends?” Nok gestured around, referring to the other children he’d seen earlier. “And how many of you are there?”

  She smiled, a hint of affection lighting her face. “Sixty-eight of us. Mostly Gifted, though there are a few ungifted who were also displaced by the colonies. Some are Gifted orphans we found wandering the woods after their Kith were slaughtered, a few are escapees like me, and about twenty are rescues from when we raided a labor camp a few months back.”

  “That was you?” Nok asked, dumbfounded.

  “You heard about that?”

  “They were talking about that all the way down in the capital,” he told her.

  “I looked for you, you know,” his sister told him. “We raided the same camp we were taken to—number four, they call it. Creative.”

  “I wasn’t there anymore,” Nok said, thinking again of Omair.

  “No,” Nasan agreed. “Neither were any of the others. Karakk, Mitri, Chundo, Ammi, Moha, and Dohti … all the kids taken from our Kith. I didn’t see any of them.”

  “Dead?” Nok asked.

  Nasan just shrugged. “Probably.” Her voice wasn’t cold, exactly. Just unconcerned.

  The unreality of seeing his sister sitting here, breathing, radiant, thriving, was beginning to wear off, replaced by a growing sense of unease.

  “Lu—the princess, can I see her now?” he asked.

  “I said she’s all right. Don’t you trust me?” His sister grinned at him, but behind the flash of teeth she was all cautious calculation.

  Lu was a valuable commodity; what did Nasan want with her? Her face gave nothing away.

  “She’s quite the fighter, your princess,” continued his sister. “Pretty, too. She nearly took out my best lieutenant’s eye.”

  “She’s not my princess,” Nok said, pulling himself up to his elbows. This time she didn’t try to stop him. “And your best lieutenant …? Nasan, who—what are you?”

  A wall went up over Nasan’s face. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  She didn’t answer the question but instead asked, “What are you doing with the Hu princess, Nok?”

  “Helping her get north. To Yunis.” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  “To—to get an army, regain her throne. If I help her, she’ll free Omair, the apothecarist who saved me.”

  “You’re helping an imperial—a member of the very family that killed our parents, our Kith—for some peasant doctor.”

  “Yes.” How to make her understand what Omair meant, what Nok owed him?

  Nasan’s eyes, so like his own but so different, narrowed in suspicion.

  Nok felt a prickle of fear. On instinct, he reached down to pat for the knife in his boot. He wouldn’t use it; just wanted the assurance that it was there.

  It wasn’t. Of course; he’d dropped it in his botched attack on Ony.

  His sister’s eyes flicked down to where his hand was groping for it and she raised an eyebrow.

  H
e’d kept a knife there, too, when they were children. She understood.

  “I need her,” he said. “To get Omair back. What are you going to do with her?”

  “That depends on what she’s willing to do for me.” Nasan’s tone did not invite further questioning. “Do you think you could convince her to help me?”

  Nok very much doubted anyone could convince Lu to do anything she didn’t want to do, but his sister didn’t want to hear that.

  “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

  He licked his lips. This was his sister, as sure as the sun rose in the east, but what could that mean stretched so thin over four years of separation? There was a lot Nasan wasn’t telling him; more than he even knew to look for. He was sure of it. The way they were talking, it was like two dogs circling one another, unsure of the other’s strength.

  He almost laughed; if only his father could see how hard he’d turned out. The old man would never believe it.

  “I’d like to see Lu now,” he said decisively.

  Nasan sat back on her heels. Something in her posture slackened, tentatively. “Are you sure you’re up for it? You look terrible. Your face is all messed up.”

  The irony of her words cut through the fog of his suspicion. “Yes. Because you messed it up.”

  She smiled at that, all fierce joy and sharp teeth. “It could’ve been worse, big brother. At least I didn’t kill you.”

  Nasan led him out the door, then abruptly swung an arm back to stop him in his tracks. When he looked down he saw why: they were a good thirty feet above the ground, standing on a narrow platform in the massive boughs of a tree. So, his sister didn’t want him dead. At least not yet.

  “I’ve been living in a tree, too,” he told her when his shock wore off. “What a coincidence.”

  She gave him a quizzical look, like she wasn’t sure if he were joking or not, but just pointed to a massive wooden basket hanging on an elaborate pulley of rope that swung all the way down to the ground. “We’ll ride down in that,” she told him. “I don’t think you could make the climb in your state.”

  “Right,” he said with a snort. “It’s only because of me. Otherwise you’d be scampering down to the ground, no problem.” Then, seeing her solemn face, “Wait, you’re not serious?”

  “I make that climb every day,” she told him. “These are my quarters.”

  Quarters? He stared at her again, wondering for the hundredth time since he’d woken exactly who his sister had become. It was strange, how familiar she felt—it was so easy to slip into their old roles like they hadn’t missed a day. But he had to mind the massive gaps between them, precarious holes of missing time and knowledge he kept threatening to fall through.

  As they climbed into the basket, he wanted to reach out to her, say something to bridge the maw between them, but all that came out was, “I always knew you were part sparrow.”

  When they reached the ground Nasan turned to the girl who helped them out of the basket—a lieutenant, perhaps? Nok wondered—and asked, “Where’s the princess?”

  “She’s in the lockup,” said the other girl. “No one wants to get nearer to her than we have to.” Nok peered more closely and noticed long scratch marks raking one side of her face. He smirked; Lu’s work. The girl saw him looking and scowled, then spat on the ground.

  “She’s bound, isn’t she?” Nasan demanded.

  “Yes,” the girl agreed. “And gagged. Still.”

  “There’re dozens of us. I think we can handle one royal,” Nasan snapped. “Bring her out to the lower clearing. Tell Ony to do it.”

  Nasan walked forward, tapping Nok lightly on the back to suggest he do the same. At least he wasn’t bound and gagged. Yet.

  He followed his sister into a clearing where children of various ages—mostly girls, but some boys—were gathered in clusters, honing weapons, cleaning root vegetables, or darning clothing. Nasan led them past a troupe of little ones turning some small rodent—a squirrel, most like—over a cook fire. The smell of roasting meat made Nok’s stomach growl.

  Many of the children looked up and saluted as his sister passed. Nok noticed that many of them bore crude tattoos of animals upon their upper arms. Not just animals, he realized, the Kith gods. Here, he saw the red stag of the Fonti, a tulip clutched in its mouth, stars tangled in its antlers; there a golden eagle of the Iarudi, resplendent against the corona of the sun. And as his sister swung her well-muscled arms in sync with her long stride, he saw the stark blue wolf of the Ashina, fierce and hard under a crescent moon, peeking out from beneath the sleeve of her tunic.

  “The tattoos are meant to show what Kith each person is from,” he blurted as the realization came to him.

  Nasan nodded. When she spoke, it was with a heaviness—a sense of pride wounded. “Since we don’t have our cauls anymore, we inscribed the memory of them on our skins. Maybe we should do you, too.”

  The Gifting Dream. He’d forgotten to tell her—or had he just neglected to? He’d have to tell her eventually.

  “Funny thing—remember how when we were kids, everyone assumed I was defective, a weakling, a disappointment to our family lineage? Well, it turns out I may actually be a Pactmaker, the one to bring our Kith back from the dead!”

  He cast his eyes upward to the canopy instead. They were in a denser, older part of the forest than he and Lu had been captured in earlier. Here, the trees were regal and massive, arching up toward the sky, centuries bound up within their trunks. Nok saw dozens of little tree houses like the one Nasan had referred to as her quarters dotting their lower boughs. A system of pulleys and rope lines connected them.

  They came to a stop.

  “Here she is!”

  Nok jerked his head toward the voice and saw three of Nasan’s people prodding Lu forward. Behind them, Ony had Lu’s bow strapped to her back. In her hands, Nok saw with a flutter of his heart, Lu’s sword gleamed.

  Lu’s hands were bound behind her back, and a stretch of white cotton tied around her mouth. Her captors used a long stick to prod her forward.

  One of them gave her a hard shove with the butt of it. Lu went down to her knees. She huffed with the effort, but her eyes remained active, alert. Defiant.

  Nok didn’t realize he had moved toward her until Nasan’s hand shot across his chest to stop him.

  “Stay here,” his sister said in a low voice. Then she walked forward and tugged the gag down around Lu’s neck. “All right then, Tigress. Nok here wanted to make sure you were safe. Are you safe?”

  A flicker of confusion passed Lu’s features—did she recognize Nasan? As far as Nok could recall, they hadn’t interacted back when the emperor visited the Ashina; they’d all been young enough at the time that their difference in age had seemed more significant.

  The princess seemed to wrestle with how to react, but the look resolved right before she spat in Nasan’s face.

  A cry went up among the crowd, and a few of the assembled began to whoop, as though anticipating a brawl.

  “Lu!” Nok cried out. Lu whipped her head toward the sound of his voice. “It’s Nok! I’m here!”

  “Nokhai!” she called out, the relief in her voice palpable.

  He pushed his way through the crowd and crouched at her side. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine!” she snapped, sounding more annoyed than frightened. “What is happening? Why does this girl have your face?”

  “It’s …” He looked at Nasan. “Can I untie her? I promise she won’t run.” Then he glanced back at Lu. “You won’t run, will you?”

  “Well, since you promised,” she said tartly.

  Nasan nodded reluctantly and a girl stepped forward to slit a knife through the ropes tying Lu’s wrists. She surged forward and Nok flinched, but she just threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. I thought they’d killed you.”

  He froze at the weight of her body pressed against his. His hands had gone up instinctively, raised at s
houlder level. For a moment he had thought she might kiss him again. He wasn’t sure if he’d meant to push her away or return the embrace. It might look like either; the thought sent a flush up his neck.

  Looking around the circle of strangers, he saw more than a few pairs of eyes had softened. The Tigress was human, after all. Nasan, though, just looked baffled. Nok lowered his hands.

  “I’m fine,” he told the princess as she released him. “Really.”

  His sister shook her head as though to clear her confusion. “You’re fine, she’s fine. We’re all fine.” She stepped forward. “Are you satisfied, big brother?”

  “Brother?” Lu repeated, eyes widening. “This is your little sister? That sister? You said she was dead.”

  “It would appear I was mistaken,” Nok said. Lu left a hand on his shoulder, as though she were afraid the others might try to tear them apart again.

  Ony stepped forward toward Nasan. “You wanted to see her weapons?”

  “Bring them here.” Her voice tapered into a low appreciative whistle as Ony placed the sword in her hands.

  A breeze stirred the trees overhead and a pale glimmer of light fell through, dancing along the length of the blade. The steel flared white like a flame set to oil. Around them, the others fell silent, as though their voices had been sucked out of them.

  “Well, this is a pretty thing,” Nasan said. She lifted it, her movements delicate, almost reverent. Even so, Nok could feel Lu’s body seize up beside his as his sister swung the blade in a slow, languid arc, testing the weight of it.

  “The craftsmanship is incredible, Princess.” She stroked a finger along its edge and hissed delightedly when it drew a bead of blood. “I wonder how many of us you could cut down if you got your hands on it—”

  “She wouldn’t,” Nok interjected.

  “Wouldn’t she?”

  Nasan looked up at him curiously. She pointed the sword skyward and cocked her head as though considering it. Then without warning, she tossed it toward him.

  Instinct took ahold of Nok and he leaped aside, the cold weight of steel cutting through the air where moments ago his ear had been. A cry went up through the assembled, though whether it was one of dread or amusement he couldn’t tell. The sword, still upright, fell toward the ground—