‘So it is,’ the man said, his voice softer, yet Remi sensed something behind his eyes. They might need Remi to be what they wanted, to get what they wanted, but they might not be willing to bow down to him as Emperor once they got it.
‘Why should I help you?’ Remi asked, standing slowly, the flames still burning in his hand. If only the rain came so easily. ‘Why should I turn my back on my family and my bride for the likes of you?’
‘Because it is the only way you will be free,’ Chonglin said, climbing to his feet. ‘You will never be free with her.’
‘We could be free together.’
Chonglin shook his head. ‘You must see the danger she is to you.’
Remi was more confused than he had been. He wanted so desperately to hate her for what she was, but he was the same. He wanted to blame her for making him what he was. But in his heart, he knew that wasn’t true.
‘You can’t do this without me,’ he said.
The man laughed, a high and screechy sound that echoed off the walls. ‘We have been doing this a long time without you. We don’t need you to win this. But the visions tell us that we can’t do this against you. I don’t care what you do, but they care. The Empire cares what you are, and they will never accept you as magic.’
‘My mother knows what I am.’
‘Yes, as she knew what her daughter was. And yet she did all she could to save her from your father. Would she do the same for you?’
‘She keeps the secret now.’
‘Does she? There are more who know your secret than you would want. Any one of them could tell your father.’
‘I can stand up to him.’
‘Can you? Can you stand up to Hui Te-Sze as well? How many men might he bring to your little palace of a night, if he knew the truth?’
Remi bit down on his lip. He had told the hunter what he was, in a way. He didn’t think the man had believed him. But he doubted Remi and his actions. That had been clear when they had come across the magic. The hunter knew he wasn’t acting as he should. Remi wasn’t sure who he was fighting any more.
‘And the maid, your brother’s lover—there is a hatred deep in her. She is willing to kill your bride, no matter what you ask of her or what friendship you think you have.’ Remi nodded slowly. ‘She might kill you quickly, at least, if she has any love for you left.’
Mu-Phi knew something was different about him. He had hoped it was her frustrations at his protecting Lis, but he knew Chonglin was right.
‘You are one of us,’ the man continued. ‘Whether you are the same or something else. You are magic; you are a threat to the Empire, and the people will not love you for it. You can run back to your little princess, try to mend the hurt between you. But you will always be the magic hunter, the man whose life has been a lie. They won’t trust you. They won’t forgive you.’
Remi’s flame burned brighter, hotter. Again, he feared it would take over his soul and burn him away.
‘She doesn’t love you, if that was ever important to you. That is not what marriage is. That is not what royalty do. She was just a girl you chose from a small group of girls. It would not have been any different had you chosen another. Whatever you think you have with this girl is an illusion. This was not her choice, but yours and your mother’s. Where would she be now if you had chosen another?’
Peng came to mind, the skinny boy he had met on the pier. Lis would consider herself content with that boy, and Remi knew there were still moments when she would rather be there than with him.
Chonglin pushed himself up from the wall. He was right, Remi knew. What he was telling him now, Remi had been telling himself since she had arrived, long before he had known what she was, what he was. This was not the life she wanted. He was not what she wanted.
‘You must do what you were meant to do. You must prepare to be Emperor.’
Remi could feel the fire burning. It didn’t glow or dance above his skin, but he felt somewhat more in control, despite the fact it burned within him. The cloud formed quickly above him, and as the fire burned hotter, lightning flashed beside him, scorching the flagstones.
‘Forget her,’ Chonglin whispered. ‘Be what you were destined to be.’
Chapter 26
‘The tutors have been told not to travel,’ Wei-Song said, entering the palace.
‘Travel to where?’ Lis asked.
‘There are posters up around the island discouraging any movement that isn’t necessary,’ Yang said.
‘When did they go up?’ Lis asked.
‘Have you not noticed how quiet it has been over the last few days?’
‘No quieter than usual. The guards still fill the garden, and I wouldn’t be allowed out no matter what posters are around the Palace Isle.’
‘The prince isn’t going to turn up and take you to your secret training ground,’ Yang said. ‘No matter what you wish for.’
‘It isn’t that secret,’ she replied, but it was still a place she had kept from them. She didn’t fully understand the hidden princess compound, and the last time she had visited had been during a dream in which the prince had tried to kill her again.
‘It isn’t somewhere we can visit either,’ he replied. She tried not to stare at him. She understood his frustrations, but there was nothing she could do to ease them. Nothing she could do to ease her own uncertainty, which she had felt growing over the past few weeks. There were more rumours of magics in the centre of the capital, and she had no idea what the prince had in mind. Nor what he was doing. He hadn’t visited again, not since he had discovered his sister living beneath her roof. And Lis couldn’t ask the empress about him, for she hadn’t seen her either.
‘How is your mother?’ she asked Wei-Song.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t get close. As soon as I am seen in the street, I am sent back or the guards want to travel with me.’
Lis studied the woman for a moment.
‘I can’t hide, not when there is so much uncertainty about magics out there. If I were discovered, it would do more harm for all of us.’
Yang at least had spent some time away from the small palace, searching with the hunter Te-Sze. Although they hadn’t found anything of use either. The stories of magics had increased, so Lis was thankful for the visits from the hunter. She thought he visited to see Yang and his healing hands more than to converse with her. She tried to ask after the crown prince as much as she could without sounding desperate, but the longer he stayed away, the more she understood that the prophecy might be right. They weren’t working together and would therefore work in opposition.
‘Do you think I will survive to become Empress, or will he kill me first?’ she asked.
Yang half growled at her before he cleared his throat. ‘Why do you always consider the worst scenario before you look for the hope?’
‘I haven’t much hope left. I don’t have the chance to learn what I can do, what I might be capable of. I thought we would learn together, combine our skills.’
‘Like you did with the flower?’ Wei-Song asked.
‘In a way. I would rather we work together, and without seeing him I don’t get that chance to build on what we had—the excitement of the magic working together. Instead I am living in fear that we will be facing each other and I’ll be trying to meet his fireballs with a rose.’
‘You must have more skill than that,’ Wei-Song said. ‘Maybe you can change what he directs at you. The connection might be more than you think.’
Lis shook her head. As soon as she felt that there was a connection and they might be able to work together for a better future, it all fell apart. ‘I don’t know what we have or had, but I think it has gone. Can’t you find out more? Can you talk with the child and see if the visions have changed?’
Wei-Song shook her head. ‘I can’t leave you.’
‘What of your mother?’ Lis asked softly. ‘She had dreams of something more.’
‘If you want to consider such things, then you ha
ve had enough dreams of your own.’
‘I need to get out,’ Lis cried, desperation overwhelming her. ‘I can’t spend another day surrounded by soldiers.’
‘The hunter calls too often. And he may not be as forgiving as you think if he were to see you throwing your magic around.’
‘I hardly throw it,’ she said.
‘Your cakes might not agree.’
Lis sighed, overwhelmed by the frustration and the unknown of what was to come.
‘There will come a time when you can to do more than you think you are capable of,’ Wei-Song reassured her. ‘It has been seen.’
‘But when will that be? If I can’t practice and explore what magic I have, then I’ll never know what I will be able to do.’
‘You have your barrier,’ Wei-Song said.
‘But I don’t know how I did that. I was so busy just trying to protect myself, to keep my magic hidden.’
‘And yet you were Hidden all along. How did your father discover your skills?’
‘I opened a jade flower on the end of a pin. We talked about this.’
‘Tell me more of the dreams with the prince,’ Wei-Song pushed.
Lis shrugged. ‘He is exploring, and then he sees me and turns his magic on me.’
‘Exploring?’ Yang asked.
‘The place of the hidden princesses. The black gate,’
‘The black gate?’ Wei-Song said, standing up.
‘You have heard of it?’
‘The girl, she told me something of the black gate.’
‘What exactly did she tell you? The gate seems to hold answers to something, but then it never gives us what we want to see.’
Wei-Song looked at her closely.
‘It has silver symbols on it. But they are sometimes hidden. The prince drew them forward, but they never show the same message. Sometimes I can’t understand it at all. In the last dream with the prince, he didn’t like the message, and although I couldn’t see it, I knew I made him angry—enough that he aimed his anger at me and burnt me to nothing.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I woke and found him here, grinning at me with the same hatred, although he wasn’t really here. I don’t know any more.’
‘I think we need to visit this place.’
‘What if the prince is waiting for us?’ Lis was sure she sounded as scared as she felt. She wanted this to work, yet she was too afraid to test it. ‘How can we get there? You have already told me we can’t go out.’
‘Yang can keep watch.’
‘Can I?’ he asked.
‘People listen to healers,’ Wei-Song said.
‘That hunter may not.’
‘He likes you,’ Lis offered.
‘And what will you two be doing?’
‘Heading for the hidden princesses, to discover what this hidden princess can do to save us,’ Wei-Song said quickly.
Lis sighed, and the two of them hid at the same time, heading out carefully through the yard. The stool that had rested against the wall was gone, and Lis wondered if the prince had ordered it moved. She stepped back as the gate suddenly opened and the hunter appeared. She could almost hear Yang groan from the doorway. As he stepped inside, Lis slipped through quickly, Wei-Song only a step behind.
‘I’m sorry,’ Yang said as the gate closed. ‘She isn’t well today. Could you call again another time?’
The gate opened again and the hunter appeared, looking disappointed. He sighed before he walked slowly back towards the centre of the island. Lis and Wei-Song headed in the opposite direction, but it wasn’t long before they realised he was following them. Wei-Song pulled Lis against a wall, and she held her breath. Te-Sze paused before continuing on, and Lis wondered if he was becoming attuned to what they were. All that time sitting at her table, he might have worked out that he could sense them in a way.
They followed him for a moment before he stopped and turned back, striding towards the main square. Lis held her breath as they waited for his steps to die away before the two of them continued towards the hidden princesses. They walked in silence, in case there was someone else nearby that they couldn’t see. Lis still had no idea what was on the other side of the walls around them.
When they reached the hidden princess gate, Lis wondered again what was on the other side of it. Wei-Song stopped and looked over it, her hand on the latch. The gate screeched, but it didn’t move. Lis tugged at her and indicated further along the wall. But when they reached the gate she had been using to get in, she found that the latch wouldn’t work at all.
Maybe the crown prince had been there and was trying to stop her getting back in. Her hand pulled away from the latch. What if he was here and she was putting Wei-Song in danger as well as herself?
Wei-Song took her hand and pulled her back down the laneway towards the first gate. ‘It won’t work,’ Lis whispered.
Wei-Song took a deep breath and held her hand over the latch. She closed her eyes, and Lis heard the sound of metal scraping against metal. She slowly moved her head to the left, and the gate swung open with a small click.
Lis stepped forward and looked around to ensure no one was near.
Wei-Song pushed it open a little further and then disappeared inside. After what seemed like too long, she reappeared and waved Lis inside.
‘How did you do that?’ Lis asked when she stood facing the princess inside the compound.
‘I am good with metals,’ Wei-Song said with a shrug
‘You could have done that with the other gate,’ Lis whispered, but then she wasn’t sure if the prince had been on the other side. She shivered and refocused on the woman before her.
‘It was too damaged to move, and this one has been used recently.’
Lis wondered what other skills Wei-Song might have, what else they could do if they had the opportunity to really learn and practice. ‘You have more skills than I was aware of,’ she said softly, unsure what she felt.
‘I have had the chance to learn,’ Wei-Song said, turning away from her.
Lis focused then on the world around them. They had entered not far from the quarters of the tutors, if that was what they were. She turned back and looked at the gate, which seemed like the entrance to any other palace on the island. She wondered why she hadn’t been able to find this side of it before, but then she had been distracted by the contents of the rooms ahead of her.
As Wei-Song looked around the space, Lis pushed ahead of her towards the end room. She opened the door slowly, worried she might disturb someone on the other side. She paused as the faces stared back at her. Stepping forward, she ran a hand over one of them. She didn’t recognise any of them from her dreams. If only she had managed to get paintings of the empresses, she might have been able to learn more.
These faces could have been anyone. Lis gently ran a finger across the mark on the bottom of the tile. She hadn’t got anywhere with that either. She couldn’t decipher them, and although Yang was sure he had seen something similar, he hadn’t been able to remember where. Lis wondered if they were still in existence.
‘I thought you said they had gone,’ Wei-Song said from the doorway.
‘They had,’ Lis whispered, scared she would frighten them away. ‘I think they only want certain people to see them. Maybe they hid from the prince once he started developing his magic.’
‘Maybe someone made them disappear,’ Wei-Song suggested.
Lis looked over the walls and ran her hand along another face. There was something familiar about it, but she couldn’t place it. But then there were so many faces; it could be that one of them would end up looking like someone else she knew. She gently touched the symbol in the bottom corner, different from the other one she had run her finger over but then similar to others. ‘I still don’t know what it means.’
‘Not a word. Maybe a spell,’ Wei-Song said, looking closer.
‘A spell?’
‘Maybe they link their magic in some way. All those with this sym
bol have a type of magic like fire or water, something to do with the earth, like yours.’
‘But they are all Hidden.’
‘Are they?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lis admitted. ‘There is so much I don’t know, so much I don’t understand.’
‘Where were you training?’
‘Through the black gate,’ Lis said, turning from the faces and heading out into the muted sunshine. Although it was still midday, it was the darkest it had been for a long time. Lis wondered if the sun was hiding from the fight that was to come.
Lis paused when they moved past the sleeping quarters, thinking that Wei-Song wanted to go in and look around, but she continued past the building and along the indistinct path. As they rounded the corner, she stopped.
‘The black gate?’
Lis nodded. There were no silver symbols visible. She wondered if she would be able to bring anything forward with Wei-Song present, or if it was something only for her and the prince.
Wei-Song ran her hand over it, but it didn’t change. ‘I can’t feel anything within it,’ she said.
‘Maybe it is only for the prince and I to find,’ Lis said.
‘You don’t call him by name,’ Wei-Song said, catching her off guard.
She shrugged and moved into the open space beyond the black gate. She could see the scorch marks on the other gate from this distance, but she wasn’t prepared to get closer. The prince had been here and had tried to prevent her entering. She wondered if he would return.
‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said, turning back to Wei-Song, who stared across the expanse and then up at the wall.
‘Is this safe?’
‘They can’t see us.’
‘You are sure?’
Lis nodded. ‘We tested it. But I wonder if the prince might return.’
‘It might be a chance to find some common ground. There was a connection, so we might be able to connect to you again.’
‘It might be too late for that,’ Lis said, holding her hand out over the dry earth and summoning a plant up to meet her. She longed for the fire to greet her as it opened its petals, but then she wasn’t sure she wanted to see flames.
The Magics of Rei-Een Box Set Page 48