by Rin Chupeco
A collection of creams, color sticks, powders, and oils crowded Mistress Parmina’s bed stand. I watched, curious in spite of myself at first, and then with slowly growing horror, as she applied liberal doses of a varied selection onto her face: beige face cream against her sagging neck, dark ink on the edges of her eyelids, pink rouge on her cheekbones. Despite my misgivings, the magic in those ointments worked. The lines around her eyes decreased; her face firmed up and lost a greater part of her excess skin. Mistress Parmina still looked old and crass and angry, and men were more likely to cross the street to avoid her than stop to admire—but now they might hesitate. She looked a little less forbidding, leaning toward seventy instead of ninety years old, which I thought was as much of an improvement as was possible for her.
Next, the old asha opened a wardrobe beside her bed, revealing drawers filled to the brim with jewel ornaments of every size, shape, and color. I believe anyone could live off the proceeds of such a collection not only for the rest of her life but also for the rest of her children’s and grandchildren’s. She selected a slim hairpin shaped like a heart and made of solid gold, with yellow and orange silk coltsfoot flowers to match her hua, and twin hairpins with fluttered crepe paper and red coral. She took her time weaving them through her long, white hair and finally turned to me. She looked—I would be lying if I said she looked beautiful or enchanting—powerful. I had never seen anyone who dripped energy and willpower and magic the way she did.
“So,” she said, voice clipped. “I suppose it is time for your punishment. Come with me. Hold the edges of my train. Dirty or damage it in any way, and I shall take the money for its repair from selling your hide if need be.”
Confused, I followed her out, careful not to trip over the yards of cloth trailing in her wake. Kana had been lounging out in the garden but quickly sprung to her feet at the sound of our footsteps and was furiously sweeping the entrance when we passed. The old woman paused to slip on her sandals, and the maid shot me a worried look. I could manage nothing more than a weak smile her way before Mistress Parmina picked up the pace, walking swiftly forward like the rest of her clothes weighed no more than a small bag of feathers.
Fox stood in front of the asha-ka. The expression on his face never changed, but I thought I sensed a quick flare of relief from somewhere inside my head before he fell into step behind us, careful to keep his distance from the asha and her yards-long robes. Mistress Parmina didn’t acknowledge my brother nor did she tell him to leave. We made an odd trio as we continued down the lane: the old woman at the head of the line, with her head thrown back in cool arrogance; me, trying to carry her voluminous train and walk at the same time; and Fox guarding the rear, favoring his leg a little but still looking every inch the soldier.
Everyone around us must have had the same thought; they all did their best to get out of the old asha’s way. Maids took one look at the woman stomping down the road and bolted. Apprentices bowed so low to her that their foreheads nearly hit their knees before they too went scurrying past. One asha strolling down the street in casual robes instead of her hua was more confident in her manners. She gave Mistress Parmina a graceful curtsy, but I saw her shoulders slump down in relief once she was safely past. They paid no attention to the girl on the other end of Mistress Parmina’s hua, and I was grateful for their inattention. If my last encounter with people in the Willows had told me anything, it was that I would much rather remain undetected in the shadows than saunter out into the light, with my flaws out for all to see.
We turned onto a street I had never been on before; there were no buildings here other than a long row of atelier shops, each boasting beautiful and expensive-looking hua in their storefronts. A few apprentices gathered beside a few of the boutiques, admiring the clothes on display. Mistress Parmina led me away from even these, toward the smallest shop at the farthest end of the street. Unlike the others, there was no hua for show. It looked like a private residence that had somehow gotten itself lost on the clothes-makers’ lane.
Mistress Parmina didn’t knock. She simply marched up to the front door and slid it back with little ceremony. “I’m here!” she announced. “Rahim! Where are you, you old rascal? Rahim!”
I found myself standing in the messiest, most disorderly room I have ever been in—and I have seen the worst my own brothers’ rooms had to offer. Strips of fabric lay scattered in such heaps and piles that I could barely see what color the floor was. Bolts of cloth were propped against the walls, and people dressed in white were rushing back and forth, carrying more. Despite their air of diligence, they all stopped to bow low to Mistress Parmina before they hurried on and somehow still managed to jostle into me as they did. Fox sidestepped them with little effort and looked around with interest.
“Parmina?” It wasn’t a voice; it was a roar that could have rattled glass, though none of the people running around so much as blinked. The largest and hairiest man I had ever seen in my life stepped into view. He was so tall that the top of his hair grazed the ceiling, and his arms looked as if a brown bear had mated with the fuzziest carpet in the land and produced twins. I could barely see his face, for his beard started somewhere near his eyebrows and ended at a carefully trimmed point several inches away from his chin, at the center of his chest. He wore a thick, knee-length jacket made of bright-silver silk and several gold rings bearing different cuts of diamonds on his fingers. His curly hair was pulled back from his face in a long ponytail, and his right ear was pierced with a crystal stud. In contrast, his heartsglass was unadorned and purple hued.
“Ah, Parminchka! How good to see you!” He reached us in three long strides and scooped Mistress Parmina up in his arms, swinging her around. This was a difficult feat, but the men and women around us simply ducked out of the way. I didn’t know if I was allowed to drop the asha’s train but decided at the last minute not to; when the man snatched the old woman up, he nearly jerked my arms off its sockets. “Ah, what should I do for you? I see you wear my most elaborate of hua today! Do you wish another? More dragotsennosti for you? More gold?”
I feared Mistress Parmina would slap him and was shocked when she threw her head back and laughed. “Put me down, you large buffoon! I have not come here to add to my collection, my milaya. I have come here to help this wretchling start hers.”
The man she called Rahim set her down, his attention now riveted on me. “Ah! Is this your new uchenik? Is she the little novice I have heard so much about, raising the corpses and causing damage to the Falling Leaf? Ah!” He clucked his tongue, a strangely matronly sound coming from someone who looked anything but. “But she is strong, ya? I can tell that much. As Dark as an asha can be. You will be my latest challenge, little uchenik, and your Mother Parminchka will thank me for performing yet another miracle on the Valerian. Agata! Pavel!”
A boy and a girl disengaged themselves from the rest of the people bustling about and hurried forward. The girl held a piece of parchment and a small quill, while the boy moved toward me, holding a curled piece of measuring tape.
“You will stay there and not move for the better part of an hour until I am done with you.” Rahim instructed me. “Stretch out your arms on either side of your body, like so.”
I obeyed dumbly. I thought I was on my way to be punished, not to be measured for…for what? “Mistress Parmina?” I asked weakly.
“Silence, girl.” The old woman kicked away a pile of doublets on a chair and settled herself comfortably on it. On cue, two more assistants appeared beside her. One carried an elegant crystal goblet with wine, and the other a footstool and a pile of cushions. The old asha lifted her feet, and the girl slid the footstool underneath them with practiced skill. Fox quietly retreated from the whirlwind of activity that was starting up around me, moving instead toward one of the tables laden with rough sketches of motifs and patterns. “You will only speak when spoken to. Do you understand me?”
She gave no indication that she
was going to explain any further, so I said nothing, only listened in a kind of daze while Rahim continued his one-sided conversation. He prowled around me, eyeing me the way a tiger might eye a young deer, while Agata took furious notes and Pavel measured me from all angles with his tape. “There is some promise in you, little uchenik. Skin between beige and barley, midnight eyes. Gold for accents only then, but you wrap yourself around as much silver as you want and still shine. Pavel! Under her arms and three inches below her bust.” The measuring tape dipped down to comply. “Thirty-four dyuymov, two and three-quarters. How do you like this sherwani, little girl?”
“Excuse me?” I was losing track of when he was talking to me, to his assistants, or to himself.
“I said, how do you like this sherwani?” Rahim tapped at the long coat he wore. “Popular for the men in Kion but not for the men in Tresea. Agata, take note. Eighteen inches down and across, three and a half in the waist. In Tresea, the men wear fur, but not in the fashionable ways. We kill the bears, the possums, the beavers, and then we stick them on the head, like so.” He gestured. “Boring and unappealing. So I move here to Kion, where the clothes have shape and the hats do not stare back, and your mistress, she has the heart of gold and took pity on the little downtrodden boy from the cold north. I start my shop with her support, and now we flourish. We flourish very much. Rahim Arrakan is now the best word in hua.”
“I think the correct phrase would be ‘the last word in hua,’” Fox murmured.
Rahim frowned. “No, we are the best word. I would prefer death than being last. Agata! Fourteen inches, twelve on each side. Don’t move, little uchenik. I must see how big your breasts are.”
I turned bright red and instinctively tried to cover myself.
“No, no, uchenik! We are all girls here.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke, and then large, burly hands enveloped my smaller ones, holding me still. “Except the handsome brother, of course. Pavel, line it up a santimetr to the right; we must accentuate her form like so…yes. Agata, twenty-one, twenty-seven, twenty-two.”
“Well, Rahim?” Mistress Parmina spoke up.
“Very nice, Parminchka. She has a nice form and will do very well in silks. Long legs and a high waist. Small or large, her breasts will be works of art in my gowns.”
I blushed harder. No one paid me any attention.
“But not the dark gold for this one, no. No oranges and peaches and brown leaves, and I shall know the day you hate me if it is the same day you let her wear all shades of pink, Parminchka. The embers are already in her skin in abundance, and she will have no need of their colors in her hua. The tasteful, bright-gold etchings, maybe. But mostly blues and greens and grays for this one. Do not touch that, boy!”
Fox, who was in the middle of reaching for one of the sketches on the worktable, paused.
“They’re spellholders, boy! A little smudge and they can go…” Rahim’s beefy hands began to raise but then lowered again. “Well, they will be hard to remake.”
“I will require a dozen official hua for her, my milaya. Two of each color you think best for her. And then half a dozen more in every kingdom’s style to start.”
“A dozen official hua?” I echoed.
Rahim looked kindly down at me.
“You still do not know, little uchenik? You are to debut as an apprentice in two months’ time, and it will not do to have no collection of your own. It will not be seeming to borrow one from another asha, for they might believe my Parminchka thinks cheaply of you.”
I stared, dumbfounded, back at Mistress Parmina.
“We shall need to leave in an hour’s time, Rahim milaya. We have an appointment with Chesh.”
Rahim beamed. “Excellent! She will pair her zivars nicely with my hua. Agata! Take down the blue swatches from the inner room and bring them here. Pavel, take the green and purple from Anabel.” He spun me around like I was a wooden ballerina doll and deftly wrapped my waist around a bolt of silver cloth before I had time to react. “See there, little apprentice? You look lovely in silver.”
I stared at the mirror, at my image with the beautiful and expensive fabrics wrapped around me. I’m not going to be punished, I thought numbly. Or is being an asha apprentice to be my punishment?
“And the purple drapes nicely here!” Rahim thrust a piece of paper under my nose. It had a rough but stunning sketch of a purple and bright-gold sunset overlooking a gray sea. “I had been saving this up for a special occasion, and you will be it. We will show you to the world in this two months from now. Isn’t that lovely? Now where are my girls with the cloths? Agata! Pavel! You there—you look like you have nice muscles for carrying. Come with me!”
He bustled off, dragging a confused Fox off with him. I looked away from the mirror and met Mistress Parmina’s steady gaze.
“Yes, Tea,” she said calmly. “I could have punished you and turned you out with nothing but the clothes on your back and your tail between your legs. You have caused more chaos among the asha-ka than has been seen in my lifetime, and that is a very long time indeed. But if there is one thing I will forgive for the mess you have made, no matter how indirectly your responsibility in it lies, it is that you are the strongest asha I have seen in recent times, and I will not have you loose on the population outside these walls, where you are likely to wreak even more havoc. You are strong in the Dark; I think that is punishment enough, as you will learn in your own time. What matters now is that you must be taught as soon as possible, so that the Dark will not have the better of you. Mykaela is rather fond of you, and I owe her that much at least. Do we understand each other, Tea?”
“You made my life difficult,” I said.
The old woman burst into laughter again. “If you think running errands and doing chores are difficult, child, then you are not ready to be an asha. But for all the indignities I heaped on you, you have held your head and done what was expected of you. And after your accident, I no longer see any reason to delay.” She drained the contents of her goblet. “You must, of course, earn your keep well. You will have to pay back the costs of these hua after you make your debut. It is the only proper thing to do.”
I am going to be an asha. I am going to be an asha.
“Yes,” I said weakly as Rahim and Fox returned, armed to the teeth with fabrics. The huge man looked triumphant, and Fox resigned. “It’s only proper.”
It took me two days to grow accustomed to the monster that roamed outside. Two days to be convinced that it would not come and eat me while I slept. The girl refused to answer any more questions about the beast’s purpose in between tales about her hints of war. I tossed and turned in my sleep; every time I dreamed, I saw the blue moon looking down on me, blinding me with its brightness, and I woke up sweating.
“You’re aware of the circumstances of my exile,” she said to me while the daeva dozed outside, unaffected by the hot sun baking down overhead. “You wouldn’t have sought me out otherwise.”
“I know that they accused you of conspiracy and of treason.”
“They accused me of many things. Of killing a king and an asha. Of being one of the Faceless. Of betraying the kingdoms. But I am only guilty of one of those.”
“But was it wrong for them to believe you capable of these things?”
“That is not quite true; I am more than capable.” She smiled wryly. “But the last time I tried to explain myself, I was cast out and banished for my troubles. I will let them sort out what I did and did not do when this is all over. My work is not yet complete.”
She showed me her collection of tiny bottles, all glass and different colors. It was a curious luxury, given her surroundings, but she disagreed. “This is our beauty secret,” she laughed and picked up a small vial that held a red liquid. She pressed the tip of her finger against the opening and upended the bottle, so that the liquid inside coated the skin but prevented more from spilling ou
t. She dabbed her finger against the sides of her neck. I caught a whiff of jasmine and flowers.
“These are my potions,” she explained, selecting another bottle that contained a thick, yellow concoction. “The cheapest of these spells are sold in the market commons all around the world. The more expensive spells are those that cater to each specific individual, made to draw out their strengths and hide their weaknesses. I have a blunt personality, more likely to say what I mean instead of sparing someone’s feelings. This will not temper my words, but it will help those who listen to me accept them with lesser offense. Of course, if one is strong in the magic themselves, this may not work on them. Or one might wear another spell that cancels out this magic. You cannot put on too many of the stronger spells all at once, for they muddle together and make themselves ineffective. Choosing which spells to wear is like playing a game, except you are forced to decide your moves without knowing what your opponent might bring to the fight.”
She selected a color stick next and gently daubed her cheekbones with it. “This is more for me than for show,” she admitted to me. “It keeps my strength up.” The rest she left on the table, and she drew the divider back to hide them once more from view. “I don’t wear them as much as I used to. Nowadays it’s easier to face people as myself instead of looking through a mask.” She looked around and added wryly, “Though the amount of visitors in the three months I have been here leave something to be desired.”
She turned back to me, and the changes became apparent. She looked softer somehow, more graceful as she stood. Her dainty feet moved over the uneven ground, and she lifted the hem of her dress to step over the threshold that separated the cave from the rest of the sandy shore. The stained, muddied fabric only further highlighted to me the difference between who she once was and the sympathetic state she was now in. She walked with her head bowed, and I admired the way she carried herself—even in exile, she remained dignified.