by Stacey Jay
But in the end, I’m a coward.
Leaping blindly from a balcony ledge or walking out into the desert is nothing compared to this. I can’t afford to be any more haunted than I am already, and a night with Gem would haunt me, I have no doubt.
THIRTEEN
BO
A dead snake. It’s only a dead snake—mangled skin and a bit of dried entrails dropped by a bird as it flew over the city—now stuck to the glass. That’s all. No crack in the dome, no danger, no sign that the covenant is weakening. Just a festering dead thing that will be washed away if the rains ever come again.
I give the signal that I’ve finished my examination, and Father personally reels me back in from my great height above the city. But even when my feet touch down on the stones atop the tallest building in Yuan, I’m still floating inside.
Isra is safe. For now. And now is all I want to think about.
“It’s nothing. Just a snake skin,” I pant as the other men unhitch me from the wire. “Some guts on the dome. Nothing to worry about.”
Relieved laughter erupts as the tension that has followed everyone attending to the inspection evaporates. Lok slaps me on the back, Nan clasps my hand for a hard shake, and Ru has the nerve to ruffle my hair like I’m still a boy, but I don’t care, because Isra’s blood is staying in her body, and I’m even more thankful than I imagined I’d be.
I can’t wait to tell her, to feel her arms around me when she thanks me for handling the investigation personally—and so quickly, too. I am the one who ordered that the crews setting up the rope-and-pulley system work day and night, allowing my inspection to take place a full day and a half early. She will be elated. She’ll certainly want more than a kiss on the cheek tonight, and I will most gladly oblige her. I will kiss her until she trembles in my arms and begs me to stay and warm her lonely tower bed.
“Are you certain there was no sign of weakness?” Father asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
He’s the only man on the roof not smiling. Beneath his oiled mustache, his cheeks droop solemnly on either side of his mouth; his eyes are as troubled as they were hours ago when he reminded me of my duty to report whatever I found, regardless of how frightening it might be for our people.
“There was nothing.” I hold his gaze as I work the buckles on my harness. “It was a dead snake. There wasn’t a nick in the glass. I swear it. The covenant is still strong.”
“That’s wonderful news,” he says, before adding beneath his breath in a voice too soft for the men beginning to dismantle the pulley system on the other side of the roof to hear, “But even if the dome were weakening, it wouldn’t change your destiny. You will be king. She has to live only long enough to speak her vows.”
My fingers grow clumsy. I drop my eyes to the buckles. “I don’t wish the death of my queen.”
“Of course not,” he says. “None of us do. She’s a dear girl.”
He says “dear girl” the same way he’d say “unfortunate accident,” and for the first time I wonder if my father hasn’t grown too powerful. I don’t like seeing him eager to spill royal blood. It feels wrong for him to speak casually about the sacrifice Isra will make.
“She is,” I say, choosing my next words carefully. I need Father to understand that I have no desire to hasten the moment of Isra’s death. “I’ve come to care for her. I look forward to our marriage and wish her as much life as possible. I know the day I lose her to the garden will be one of the darkest of my life.”
Father smiles and clasps my shoulder in a rare display of affection. “You sound like a king already.”
“Thank you.” I duck my head as I step out of the harness, grateful for the excuse to cross the roof and tuck the gear back into the box Nan holds open. I can’t look my father in the eye right now. If I do, I’ll see proof that he thinks I’m lying.
Worse, he’ll see proof that I’m not.
Baba has known Isra longer and more intimately than anyone else except the late king, but there is clearly no love in his heart for her. Maybe he knows something I do not, and Isra is a burden I’ll have to bear until the day of her death. I admit there have been times when I’ve worried about the state of her mind, like when I discovered her slippers in the mud outside the beast’s window two nights past. Her maid explained the slippers easily enough—Needle dropped them on her way to get them resoled—but there’s no explanation for Isra’s other odd behavior except … eccentricity. Maybe it’s harmless eccentricity, or maybe, as my father clearly fears, it’s the precursor to her mother’s madness.
I’m not sure which of us is right. I only know I can’t wait to give Isra the good news.
With a bow to my father, I step into the gondola and lower myself down the side of the building, the seventy-meter drop not nearly as intimidating after dangling three hundred meters in the air to inspect the dome. I reach the street to find a crowd gathered by the baker’s shop. Worried eyes meet mine, and I smile, but I don’t stop to assure the people that all is well. Isra’s subjects will hear the good news from their queen, who deserves to know before anyone else that the danger has passed.
I hurry through the cobblestone streets—past the towering buildings where the poorest citizens live with their children crowded five and six to a room, past the squatter, more decorative buildings where the skilled workers and their families live and run their shops, past the soldiers’ barracks, and onto the path leading through the royal garden. I’ve been avoiding this route through the city the past two days, but this evening the roses hold no terror for me. They’re beautiful in the fading pink light, and I find myself lingering near the oldest blooms.
I can feel the spirits of the former queens of Yuan here. One day I hope I will feel Isra’s spirit even more intimately.
Possessed by the notion, I drop to one knee in front of the giant blooms. “I will take good care of her,” I swear, imagining that the dead queens can hear my promise. “And when she’s gone, I will visit her here every day for the rest of my life.”
I smile. Father’s right; I do sound like a king.
Drunk on promises, I rise shakily to my feet, dizzied by how close I am to being the most powerful man in Yuan. By the time I reach the door to Isra’s tower, I’m certain tonight is the night. I’ll assure her that death is nowhere in her near future and then make my offer for her hand. Father said he wanted to discuss the betrothal without the potential husband present—as is the custom when negotiating a royal marriage—but I want Isra to remember the moment we decided to marry as something between the two of us.
So I wait until her maid leaves the tower to collect the dinner tray she has fetched for the queen since Isra requested her privacy. Then I dismiss the guards at the door, retrieve the key from its hiding place behind the loose stone, and let myself in.
“Isra?” I climb the stairs swiftly, not bothering to keep my steps soft. I don’t want to surprise her. I’m sure she’s been worried. A shock is the last thing she needs. “Isra, it’s Bo!” I call again, louder than before, but still no answer comes from the rooms above.
She must be out on the balcony. She seems to favor it there, though she can’t see the impressive view of the city spread out before her … yet.
But by next week, or the following, for certain …
Returning her sight. Just another thing my queen will love me for.
With a smile, I push through the door to her apartments, pass her empty sitting room, leaving the door to her private chamber closed—I doubt she’s asleep at this hour—and make my way to her music room. From the door, I can see that the balcony on the far side of the room is empty.
The bedroom it is, then, I think, secretly pleased to have an excuse to be alone with Isra in a room with a bed. I turn back down the hall and knock softly on her door. “Isra? Are you awake?”
Silence, but for the soft tick of a clock in the music room.
“Isra? It’s Bo. I have wonderful news.”
More silence, silence so complete
that it’s hard to believe she’s breathing in the room beyond. But she has to be in there. She isn’t in any of the other rooms, and she hasn’t left the tower since I walked her here two days ago. The guards outside would have alerted me immediately. I gave strict orders.
“Isra? Are you well?” I ask, growing concerned. “Isra?”
More silence. My stomach shrivels. What if she’s ill? What if she’s suffering in the absence of the poison the way the wine lovers suffer when our stores run dry? What if I’ve put her health in danger?
“Isra!” I pound on the door with my fist. “Answer me, or I’m coming in!” I wait a long moment, giving her one last chance to call out, before I turn the handle.
The heavy wood hits the wall behind with a thud that echoes in the empty room. In the center, Isra’s bed is neatly made, the quilt tucked tightly at the edges. In the corner, the maid’s narrow cot is also made, but the mattress shows signs that it held a body not too long ago—dips and depressions, a sagging place on one side where she sat as she put on her shoes. Isra’s mattress, however …
I cross the room to stare down at it. Perfectly smooth. Not a dent or a shadow. Either Needle shakes the mattress out and reshapes it every morning, or Isra hasn’t slept here recently.
And if she didn’t sleep in her bed last night … where did she sleep? And with whom?
“That lying … little …,” I murmur through clenched teeth.
My hands ball into fists, and it’s all I can do to keep from punching the wall near her headboard. Isra’s been using me to cover her indiscretions. She could be with another man right now, conceiving a bastard to bear after we marry.
I will not raise another man’s bastard. I will not.
She’d better pray there’s another explanation, I think as I slam the door to her bedroom behind me. If Isra loses my affection, she will have very few friends in this city.
And a queen without friends will find herself a dead queen sooner than later.
FOURTEEN
GEM
I woke before the sun, driven by the need to put an end to our adventure as soon as possible. After adding fuel to the fire and waking Isra long enough to assure her that I’d be back before the flames went out, I hurried up the mountain to fetch the bulbs we’d come for. I couldn’t risk telling her the truth about the garden.
No matter what happened between us last night, I still need an excuse to leave my cell. Come spring, I must steal the royal roses and return to my people.
Still, I didn’t like leaving her alone, even for a short time. I walked as quickly as my sore legs would carry me and was back by her side by the time the first pink light kissed the desert.
This time, she was where I had left her, curled in a ball on the ground, her sweater-covered hands pressed against her lips. I watched her sleep as I tied the gnarled roots of the bulbs together with strips of dried grass, dreading the moment she’d open her eyes.
The only thing worse than hating Isra is … whatever this is.
Wanting her, wanting her to realize what a fool she is. Wanting all this to be over.
I want to go home. I want to be back with people I know, in a world I understand. I’m sick to death of this upside-down place, where I crave the touch of a girl who holds me prisoner, and every other word I speak is a lie. Half the time I can’t even tell who I’m lying to. Her or myself.
I spend the day angry. At myself. At Isra. At the bulbs she insisted on fondling and sniffing before we headed down the mountain, at the rocks on the trail, at the sun and the wind and the dirt in my Smooth Skin shoes and the needles on every cactus where we stop to drink.
I am in a foul mood, made fouler by trying to hide it from Isra. The walk back to the dome has been torture. A part of me is eager to be back in my cell. At least there Isra can’t cling to my arm, or brush her body against mine, or sigh through her parted lips, or tilt her face up with that look in her eyes. The one that makes me want to strangle her. And kiss her. And strangle her some more. And maybe leap off a cliff after the strangling is done, just to put myself out of my misery.
“It won’t be long now,” Isra says, shielding her face from the setting sun with one narrow hand. “I can smell it.”
“Smell what?”
“The dome. I never realized it had a smell,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Like metal when it’s cold. And sour nutshells. Mixed together.”
I grunt in response.
“What do you think it smells like?” she asks.
“We’ll be close enough for the guards to catch sight of us soon,” I say, ignoring her question. I’m not in the mood to play her blind-girl games. Not everything has a smell, and if the dome had a smell, it would smell like death. Slow, creeping, unmerciful death. “We should stop here. Wait for it to get dark. There’s a mound of rocks just ahead. It should conceal us from anyone using a spyglass.”
I don’t tell her that my people gathered those rocks, that we piled them high enough to hide a scouting party of two or three. I don’t tell her that I came here on my first scouting mission when I was fourteen and stood behind the rocks, seething hatred for the dome that festers like a boil on the horizon.
It’s strange, to stand now in this place where my younger self vowed to destroy my enemy at all costs, with a Smooth Skin queen clinging to my arm. I once thought I knew everything I ever wanted to know about the Smooth Skins. Now … I know nothing. With every passing day, I grow more and more ignorant. If I keep it up, by the time I return to my people, I’ll be as rattled in the head as the queen of Yuan.
“Gem?” She tugs lightly at my sleeve. “Gem?”
“Yes?”
She leans closer, hugging my arm to her chest, making me aware of her, no matter how much I wish I weren’t. I want to push her away. I want to pull her closer. I want to punch the pile of rocks until my knuckles bleed.
The pain would be a welcome distraction.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I snap, then force myself to ask in a gentler voice, “How’s your head?”
She tilts her head to one side and then the other, stretching the long column of her neck. “It still hurts,” she says. “I’ve never had a headache like this before. I don’t know. Maybe I just need something to eat.”
“Soon.” I stare hard at the horizon, willing the sun to sink faster. “You’ll be back in your rooms not long after dark.”
She sighs, a mournful, defeated rush of breath, as if she is the one on her way to a cell. “I’ll miss this.”
“The desert?”
“Well … yes,” she says, sounding surprised. “I will. The wind especially, even though it’s cold. But …” Her fingers curl into my arm. “I didn’t mean the desert. I meant … I’ll miss being familiar. Being able to … touch.”
It’s the first either of us has said about that sort of thing all day. The closer we get to the dome, the more those moments by the fire seem like a fever dream. I can’t believe I tasted her, touched her; that I thought I could reach her with my words. That the real Isra and the real Gem might find a way to be allies. Maybe more than allies.
But Isra isn’t real. She’s a Smooth Skin. She was raised in an artificial world built on lies, bought and paid for with the lives of my people. The fact that I could forget that for even a moment proves how dangerously close I am to losing my mind. My purpose. My self. If only my father had left Gare instead. Gare would have already found a way to bring the roses home to our people. He would never have let his heart soften toward a Smooth Skin. He would never have loosened his grip on hate.
“Gem?” Isra tips her face up to mine. The dying light catches her eyes and shrinks her pupils to specks of black, leaving nothing but green so bright, I can’t stop staring. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” she whispers, pinching my arm through my shirt. “It’s impossible to think nothing. Even when you’re asleep, you’re thinking something.”
I grun
t.
“It’s true.” She closes her eyes, soaking in the last of the sun’s fading warmth. “How else would we dream?”
“My people believe some dreams come from the spirit world,” I say. “That they’re messages from the ancestors.”
“Hm.” Her eyes slit and her brow wrinkles. “I hope they’re wrong.”
“Why? Are your ancestors unhappy with you? Sending you bad dreams?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I have this same dream …” A strong breeze ruffles her hair, and she huddles closer to my side. When she speaks again, I have to strain to hear her over the howling of the wind. “I dream about the night the tower burned. Over and over again. My mother died that night. My father and I would have died, too, if the guards hadn’t reached us in time.”
For the first time since I awoke this morning, the tight, angry knot in my belly loosens. Fire is a terrible way to lose a life. And four years old is too young to lose a mother.
I place my hand on hers, warming her fingers. “That doesn’t sound like a dream from your ancestors.”
“No?” The muscles tighten in her jaw. “Maybe it is. Maybe the dream is my punishment.”
“For what? Did you set the fire?”
“No,” she says, voice breaking.
“Then stop blaming yourself. You were a child,” I say roughly. She seems determined to take on unnecessary pain. It’s incredible. Wasteful. It makes me angry at Isra on Isra’s behalf, which is just … confusing. “Your ancestors wouldn’t send a dream to torture you while you sleep,” I explain, trying to be patient. “Not without a reason.”
“That’s good to know.” She squints and rubs her fingers in a circle at her temple. Her head has been aching on and off all day. At one point, we had to sit down and rest until the pain passed. It’s best we’re nearing the dome. Isra isn’t made for the desert, no matter how much she enjoys the wind. “I had a strange dream last night. At least I think it was a dream,” she continues. “Before you found me on the trail, I dreamed of the fire again, but this time there was a face in one of the burning beams.”