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The Girl King

Page 28

by Mimi Yu


  Nok interrupted before Nasan could respond, as though sensing a spat coming on. “Maybe we should stop here and one of us can go scout to make sure the way is clear.”

  “I’ll go,” Lu and Nasan said immediately, in unison. Then they turned to one another and glared.

  “You’re not going together.” Nok shook his head. “You’ll kill each other before you even get to the top.”

  “There’s no way I’m not going—no one is as familiar with imperial scouts as I am,” Lu said at the same time that she heard Nasan protest, “I’m the only one who’s been here before, you wouldn’t even know what to look for!”

  Nok put his face in his hands.

  “Forget it,” Lu said. “Let’s all just go.”

  Nasan frowned grudgingly. “Fine by me,” she said.

  The trees had become sparse and thin as the days passed—staggering pines transitioning into bent scrub trees, until those too became few and far between. As they scaled the ridge, whatever remained of the forest fell away into a jagged landscape of barren foothills.

  “It’s very desolate,” Lu said.

  Nasan smirked and bumped Nokhai’s shoulder with her own. “I think it’s homey, don’t you, brother?”

  But Nokhai’s eyes were far away. He was chewing on his lip so hard it looked like he might draw blood.

  “Are you all right?” Lu whispered, touching his arm. He started, as though he had forgotten she was there.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just … feels strange here.”

  “Well,” she said carefully. “Lot of memories for you, probably.”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I mean, yes, but it’s not that … it’s physical. Like … like, there’s something humming just below my feet. Like it’s shooting straight up into my bones.”

  “I feel it, too.” Nasan was looking over her shoulder. “Happens every time we get this far north. It’s the ghost of the Pact, brother. The land, or rather, the magic in the land. We might’ve lost our cauls, but a trace of it will be in us always. Our blood remembers.”

  Nok shivered. Lu saw in his eyes that he still hadn’t told his sister about his Gifting Dream—none of it.

  Well. That was his business.

  They fell into silence as they approached the top of the ridge, the ground now so steep that they were forced to their hands and knees. Lu thanked the heavens she’d held on to her leather hunting gloves as she searched for handholds in the rocky earth. She was panting now, her breath ragged.

  Beside her, Nok seemed to grow stronger and surer the higher they climbed. At one point, she slipped in the dirt, and his hand shot out to grab hers before she had scarcely fallen at all.

  She gave him a questioning look and he shrugged, looking just as surprised. “Maybe Nasan is right … something in the earth makes us stronger. Like it recognizes us.”

  For her part, Nasan barely seemed to register the change in their surroundings. She reached the top first, to Lu’s chagrin, casting a wink back at them before peeking over the other side.

  Immediately, her face changed. Gone was the glib amusement, replaced by fear. She ducked back and put a finger to her lips, then motioned them forward. Lu glanced at Nok, who shrugged, his face taut and dark with worry.

  When they reached the top, Lu peered over.

  There was the promised lake, placid and eerily blue as the sky. A mirrored bowl set in the center of the dry valley. And along its shore, a writhing mass of metal.

  Soldiers. Hundreds of them.

  In their gleaming steel-plated armor, they looked like a stream of glittering beetles amassing on a corpse. Close enough that she could nearly make out the faces beneath their helmets.

  Then she noticed the tents, and the central flagpole flying the flag of the Hu Empire—and just below that, the blue banner of the Family Li. Set’s men.

  “Gods,” Nok breathed beside her.

  In unison, they ducked back down and turned to Nasan.

  “I thought you said this gate was unguarded!” Lu hissed, just as Nok growled, “What is this, Nasan?”

  “Keep it down,” the other girl snapped, but her dark eyes gleamed uncertainly. “Obviously something changed. You think I just overlooked a thousand imperials the last time I was here?”

  Lu bit back a retort and instead peered over the ridge again. “The far side of the slope is more densely wooded. Do you think we could make it down that way?”

  Nasan frowned. “There’s some cover down at the shore … but I don’t think we can make it undetected.”

  Lu nodded reluctantly. “Maybe we could go one at a time. They’d be less likely to see us if—”

  The blast of a horn rang out from below.

  Lu knew the sound right away: a military scout. It took her a moment to realize it had come from the wrong side of the ridge—back from the direction they had come. She whipped around.

  “Watch out!” Nokhai hissed, grabbing Lu’s arm.

  Before she could respond, the first of the crossbow bolts whipped past her ear, where her face had been a moment earlier. She turned in the direction it had come from and saw them: five imperial scouts in blue.

  “Get down!” she bellowed as the riders unleashed another round of bolts. Nasan and Nok were already scrambling back in the direction they’d come, but two of the riders broke off, forcing them back up the ridge, toward the valley. Cornered, they leaped over the side, tumbling and scrabbling for purchase.

  Lu half crawled and half fell after them, her knees scraping against the hard earth. She came to a rough stop a short drop below.

  “We’ve got to get back—”

  But Nasan grabbed her wrist.

  “What—?”

  Before their eyes, Nok seemed to grow. One moment, he was scrabbling down the ridge on hands and knees, and the next there were claws springing from his fingers, thick blue-gray fur sweeping easy as a wind across his face and back.

  “Nokhai!” the cry tore from her, but the wolf that had been Nokhai was hurtling away from them, impossibly fast.

  Lu saw the glittering blue and chrome armor of near a dozen mounted Hana soldiers cut through the scrub trees below, their swords flashing in the eerie northern light. Then she caught a blur of gray-blue fur knifing through them, lightning quick, leaving a wake of bucking horses.

  “He’s not … this can’t be,” Nasan whispered. She was still clutching Lu’s arm as if she were set to wrench it off. “It’s not possible. The Pact was broken—”

  “He’s done it before,” Lu admitted. “When I first met him in the forest, he was like that. He hasn’t been able to do it again since then, though. He can’t control it yet, but—”

  “Gods,” Nasan breathed, dropping Lu’s wrist. “My brother is a Pactmaker.”

  A shriek drew Lu’s eyes away.

  Below them, two soldiers were on the ground, one very still and seeping red-black out of his eyes; the other screaming horribly, dark blood making a geyser from his arm. Something glinted in the sun—the fallen man’s sword. Still clutched in his severed hand, yards away.

  Nokhai, Lu thought, seeing the jagged edges of the man’s torn arm. No weapon had done that.

  She fit an arrow into her bow. Beside her, Nasan hefted her staff in both hands.

  Lu’s first shot took a soldier in the side. He flew from his horse. Another shot back at her, but she ducked. The arrow thunked hard into a narrow little scrub tree behind her. She ran, heart slamming in her chest, but before her assailant could follow, she caught a blur of gray and the man was torn from his saddle. Nok’s massive wolf clutched him by the throat, gave him a single hard shake, throwing the mangled body to the ground. The other soldiers circled the wolf warily as the creature bared its teeth.

  Lu started toward him, but Nok cried out to her in thought-speak.

  Don’t. I can distract them. Get to safety—both of you.

  There was no safety.

  An arrow speared the dry earth just to Lu’s right. Another one flew at her
face …

  Nasan knocked it from the air with her staff. Behind her, Lu saw a horse that had lost its rider. The creature reared, and Lu darted forward, seizing the reins and whispering rapid nonsense until it stilled. She spun toward Nasan. “Can you ride?”

  Nasan stared. “Ride?”

  “A horse!” Lu shouted. “Can you ride a horse?”

  “How hard can it be? Try not to fall off, right?”

  “Ride down to the copse of trees we saw over the ridge,” she yelled. “Find the Yunians and tell them to open the gate. Nokhai and I will meet you.”

  Doubt rippled across Nasan’s face, but she was already scrambling into the saddle. “There’s no guarantee they’ll answer my call.”

  “We’re all guaranteed to die if we stay here.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Nasan said, and then she was gone.

  Lu!

  She spun at the sound of Nok’s thought-speak. The boy’s wolf was surging toward her. Lu’s heart dropped; its long gray fur was streaked dark with blood. Behind it, a tangle of soldiers lay on the ground, their throats a hopeless seeping mess of red gore. Three were still on their horses, though, closing in behind him.

  Lu nocked an arrow and took one of the men in the throat, striking him clear from his horse, but not before a second loosed a crossbow bolt straight into the wolf’s ribs. It hit home with a hollow thunk. Nokhai jerked hard at the impact, letting off a yowl of pain.

  “Nok!” Lu screamed, but he was still coming toward her, determined.

  Get on! he shouted at her.

  Madness. He would collapse with the added burden of her weight. But he was approaching fast. Madness, she thought again as she seized a hank of fur about his ruff and swung a leg over the beast’s broad back.

  “I sent Nasan ahead,” she gasped out, then bore down close against his back as a crossbow bolt whizzed past her ear. “Trees by the lake. Meet her there.”

  Nasan—he repeated, breaking off as another crossbow bolt narrowly missed his flank and embedded itself in the dirt where a moment ago his paws had been pounding.

  “She’s fine,” Lu panted, hoping it was true. “She’ll be fine.”

  The short blat of a scout’s horn came from behind them.

  “There’s only one of them now,” she said. “Where did the others go?”

  To get reinforcements?

  She groaned. “Most likely. If that’s the case …”

  We only counted about a thousand soldiers, he cut in, pain pulling taut at the edges of his words.

  They broke over the ridge and plunged into the paltry trees spangling its face. Nokhai cut through them, wending a deft, jagged path, trying to shake their attackers. The scout’s horn blasted again, but this time it came from farther away, as if he were losing ground.

  Listen, Nok said, and she was alarmed to hear how ragged he sounded. If I can’t make it all the way with you, you have to go on, all right?

  “Shut up!” she snapped.

  No, he said, and his voice was coming thin and terse now. You have to protect Nasan, and you need to keep your promise to her, and all those kids of hers. And you have to get Omair—

  “Shut up!” she repeated.

  Please promise me, Lu. Omair. Do you promise?

  They were so close. “Shut up, or I swear I’ll—”

  The wolf’s legs gave out.

  They skidded hard down the remaining distance of the slope, carried by its momentum, kicking up stones as big and hard as fists. Clouds of yellow-gray dirt blew across Lu’s face, stinging her eyes shut. Distantly, she felt the flesh of her left forearm split like wet paper, but she felt no pain. Not yet.

  They jolted to a stop in a settling cloud of dust and gravel. Lu swiped at her face to clear it and felt wetness in its wake. Blood from her mangled palms. She smelled copper, smelled salt. Someone was moaning, low and ragged, and she recognized her own voice. She blinked hard, forced her swollen eyes to open.

  They were at the edge of the lakeshore. Another thirty feet and they would be in the water.

  A dark violet-gray fog rolled in over the lake, curling and swelling toward them. The ghostly form of Nok’s wolf loped down the shore into it, paws skimming the surface of the open water.

  Lu squinted her dust-stung eyes, trying to focus, but they welled with tears. When she managed to open them again the wolf was gone, but the fog remained.

  Then she saw the boy’s body lying on the shore. His broken, all-too-human body.

  “Nokhai!” She flew down toward him. He was still moving, but his breath was ragged, and she saw that every wound and mark carved into the wolf was now left upon his own skin. The shaft of the crossbow bolt had snapped clean off in the fall, leaving only the ragged point lodged into his ribs.

  His eyes were distant, but they focused on her when she touched him.

  “Go,” he rasped. “Get out of here.”

  “I am not leaving you,” she hissed. His eyes … he was having trouble focusing, but they fluttered at the blast of the scout’s horn, much closer now. Another horn responded in kind. Then another. Close. She heard the hard clip of a thousand hooves on stone, rippling toward them like a wave. She looked for them—the soldiers—but the fog had grown too dense around them.

  All she could see were her own bloodied hands, clutching at Nokhai’s pallid face, smearing red across his skin.

  “You have to go,” he told her.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “They’re coming.” And beneath the pain, the fear, she felt his iron, his mettle. “Go now.”

  “Not without you,” she said. She hauled him up onto her back, struggling to stand. She made it to a crouch before her knees buckled and she fell back against the stones.

  The soldiers were upon them. She could hear the shouts of men over the slamming hooves against rock, the labored huff of the beasts.

  “Over there!”

  The call came behind them, unexpected, from the direction of the water. Lu half rose, her hand poised on the hilt of her sword. But then she recognized the voice.

  “Nasan?” she cried out, her voice cracking with hope and disbelief. “Nasan!”

  Something large cut through the smoke-gray fog over the lake, as if it were pushing its way through a curtain: a scow with a hull carved into the likeness of a dragon, painted ivory-white. Then, no—it was a blushing fuchsia, then the palest blue. Impossible. Lu drew in a sharp breath. The boat was hewn entirely from crystal, scintillating in the low light.

  A hooded figure was poling the boat along. Nasan waved frantically from its prow.

  The blast of the Hana scout’s trumpet came again, and it should have been close, closer, but it sounded impossibly far away. The air was oddly still. Something had changed.

  The horses, Lu realized. The thundering of hooves had disappeared.

  “Nokhai,” Lu whispered, bending to pull at his shoulders. His eyelids fluttered but did not open. “Nokhai?” She shook him, frantic now. “We’re here. We’re saved. Please …”

  The boat bumped against the edge of the shore, and the tall, hooded figure within emerged. They walked strong and upright, but as they advanced, Lu glimpsed beneath their cowl the face of a very old man, his skin spotted with age, eyes and mouth drooping not unpleasantly at the corners.

  “Please!” she called out to him. “My friend …”

  The man bent over Nokhai swiftly, touched his throat, his temple, his chest. “He lives,” he assured her. “We must hurry—bring him to my sister. But he lives.”

  He withdrew the cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it around Nokhai’s limp frame. Lu looked up to thank him—but the face she had glimpsed before was gone, replaced by that of a young man no more than two or three years her senior. He stood, lifting Nokhai in his arms as though he weighed no more than a cat.

  “Princess Lu?” the young man said politely, his eyes searching her face with a curious, almost boyish wonder.

  “Yes, I …” She blinked, baffled at the
sight of his dark, unhooded eyes, and soft, affable features where the old man had been moments earlier. “And you are …?”

  “My name is Prince Jin,” the young man said. “Welcome to Yunis.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Gray City

  Nok’s eyes fluttered open.

  He saw a high-flown arched ceiling carved from stone. All around him, silence. He blinked, and the pain came rushing in.

  Even as it knocked the breath from him, he knew it was a good pain, a healing pain. His hand went to his ribs, felt clean bandages wrapped taut around his middle. The air smelled sharp and medicinal.

  He sat up as slowly as possible, resting heavily on his left side to do so. It took him what felt like an hour to rise, but at long last he pressed his feet to the cold stone floor. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to stand, but he tried it, anyway, and found he could.

  He was thirsty, and desperate to make water. He shuffled about the room until he found a chamber pot and relieved himself.

  As he cast his eyes about for where he might find drinking water, there was movement in the doorway; a swift, gray blur pushing past the white linen curtain that hung there.

  Nok jumped, then flinched in pain. When he looked back, whatever had been there was gone, though the curtain still swayed in its wake.

  He took an exploratory step forward. Then another.

  Behind the curtain, the hall was empty and massive and gray, so gray. The side of the corridor on which he stood was punctuated with curtained doorways like his, while the other was let with open archways taller than trees. Each had a delicate, spindly banister carved at its base like stone vines.

  The ceilings here were higher than they had been in his room, and it struck Nok that they looked not so much made from stone, as cut into it. As though the building in which he stood were carved in relief out of the side of a mountain.

  He went to one of the archways. Sticking his head out over the balustrade, he saw he was at least partially correct: the building was embedded in a steeply ridged mountain. Close to the base of the mountain, a manmade section flared out, connecting to a temple erected just below. The temple was blocky and four-sided, with sides that sloped slightly inward toward the top. A tepid breeze tousled his hair, threw it almost playfully over his eyes. He brushed the strands back, flinching at the pain that shot through his side when he moved his arm. The air felt neither cold nor warm, as though it were the exact temperature of his body. He felt light-headed.

 

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