The Girl King Page 3
He rubbed his hands together, brushing off blood and bits of fly. The ropey scars crisscrossing his palms caught and chafed on one another. They used to hurt when he was tired, or sometimes when his dreams were especially bad, but that had been years ago. Now they felt nothing.
He stooped to pat his boot and confirm the knife he kept there was in place. The blade was made for cutting herbs from the garden, but it would go through a man’s eye, if it came to that. Not that he had any reason to expect trouble—but experience taught him trouble didn’t come only when expected.
He was triple-checking the saddlebags to make sure he had everything he needed for Market Day when Omair emerged from inside the house.
The house was carved from one of the many thick-bodied silver trees that dotted Ansana’s sloping hills. The farmers along the northern periphery of Yulan City had built their homes like this for centuries, developing a method of hollowing out the tree so it still lived and grew around them.
“Oh, good, you haven’t left yet.” Omair sauntered forward, slowed by his perpetually swollen knees.
“Stay there, I’ll come to you,” Nok said, already hurrying forward.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re treating me like I’m old,” Omair groused, but he stopped.
Nokhai did not know Omair’s exact age. At times, the apothecarist seemed almost gleefully ancient. Then, at turns, the decades seemed to slough off his stooped shoulders until he looked no older than forty, maybe fifty.
He was a short, stout man with a bald head he oiled until it gleamed. Barely visible beneath the hoary bracken of his beard, his brown face teemed with pockmarks and limpid trails of scar tissue. But his eyes were an odd, misplaced gift: a warm, lively red-brown shot through with veins of yellow, like rivulets of gold running through good earth.
He held out a poultice. “Do me a favor and give this to Adé. It’s for her mother.”
Nok frowned, not taking it. “Adé? I was just going to run the errands and come straight home.”
“If you’re going all that way you may as well see her,” Omair tutted. “I worry about you, living out here with no friends. It’s not healthy for a sixteen-year-old boy to be so lonely.”
“I’m not lonely,” Nok said immediately.
Most of Ansana’s denizens were closer to Omair’s age than his own sixteen years. Their closest neighbors, the Wangs, had two boys Nok’s age; they ignored Nok on good days, and pitched rocks at him on worse ones. But Nok had never felt a lack for it. Solitude was safety. Trouble only happened when other people were around to start it.
It had been nearly seventeen years since Omair moved to Ansana and rehabilitated an abandoned house, filling the desperately empty niche of a village healer. But in towns like this, families went so far back it was as though they had emerged there, right out of the damp earth at the dawn of time.
“The old man’s hiding something,” they would mutter. “Did you see how fast Peng’s ax cut healed up? Unnatural. And he says that boy’s an apprentice, but where did he find him? Just appeared one day, in the dark of night. Who—what is he really?”
And if any of them learned the answer to that … but, no, it was better not to even think of it.
Omair pressed the poultice into Nok’s hands. “Indulge an old man and be young, would you? Tell Adé to make you laugh. Talk to other people who aren’t me for a change.”
The crush of Yulan City felt denser than ever. Locals shouldered past farmers from the empire’s rural outskirts, who cried out their offerings of fresh produce. Livestock lowed and brayed. Foreigners from every distant port—dazed travelers and seasoned traders alike—edged their way to and from the docks. Wooden carts wheeled in a dizzy, creaking maelstrom, piled high with squash and turnips and crisp greens, clanging racks of metal pots and pans, piles of combs carved of bone, and blanched wicker baskets. All of it pervaded with the aroma of a hundred different spices, and the damp, brackish breath of the Milk River.
Nok cut through the Scrap-Patch Row section of the Ring, so called for the way its denizens cobbled together their homes from spare bits of brick, metal, and cloth—whatever they could find. Perhaps once upon a time, it had even been a row as its name suggested. Now it engulfed nearly a quarter of the Ring, its untidy borders spilling ever outward. The city’s population of poor folk was ever growing, and they had to live somewhere.
The crowds thinned as he entered the Silk Passage. The cacophonous shouts of merchants and grunting of livestock were replaced by gentle voices and the quiet murmur of a fountain located in the center of a wide, well-swept plaza. The pungent scent of spices gave way to refined orange blossom oil. Nok found his feet were no longer catching in wagon ruts, or open puddles of filth.
A man panting under the weight of a painted rickshaw passed him. The rickshaw bore two foreign women holding parasols to shade their pinkish faces from the sun. They stared curiously at Nok, their pale eyes moving from his long, uncombed hair down to his muddy boots. When he met their gaze, they quickly turned away.
Pink men everywhere these days. There were those who resented their foreign presence, their fancy sector of town, and the wealth with which they’d purchased that land. Nok had no feelings about them either way; they weren’t the ones he had to worry about.
Nok came to a stop in front of a two-story dress and cloth shop. A weathered wooden sign bearing a carving of a peony hung over the door. He peered into the window, past the displayed bolts of silk and damask, a jade-green robe draped elegantly over a headless mannequin.
There were two shopgirls amid the throng of patrons, dressed in identical uniforms. The smaller of the two—the one he sought—had a pretty, heart-shaped face, warm dark brown skin, and a cloud of black curls bound tightly at the base of her neck in a chignon.
As he watched, she showed a bolt of blue ribbon to a well-heeled older woman. The shopgirl pulled out a length for the woman’s inspection, smiling pleasantly, though the expression did not reach her eyes. The customer tested the ribbon between two suspicious fingers and, apparently displeased with what she felt, shook her head and departed.
Nok passed the woman on his way in. She stiffened visibly at the sight of him. Little brass bells tinkled over his head as the door closed behind him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The shopgirl he had been watching through the window approached. She gazed down her nose at him the best she could—no easy feat, given she was a good head shorter.
“Yes, in fact,” he said, playing along. “I’ve heard your shop boasts the finest blue ribbon in the entire Ring—”
Adé burst out laughing and threw her arms around his neck. He tensed up at the touch; she was always doing things like that. He brusquely moved her to arm’s length.
“How long have you been spying on me?” she demanded.
“Just long enough to see you botch your sale—”
She swatted at him. “Oh, that lady’s horrid! Always coming in here on Market Day and asking us to pull down this bolt and that silk and hardly ever buying anything. She’s a nightmare. Acts like she’s got a sky manse when she’s some Ring-born butcher’s wife. We all want to tell her off, but of course if we did that the Ox would have our heads—”
“The Ox?”
“Oh.” Adé waved a hand as though she were chasing off a fly. “That’s what we call the shop owner when he’s not around. And he’s usually not around …” She glanced about quickly before leaning in to whisper, “Word is, he’s got a mistress half his age holed up in an apartment down the street.”
Nok smiled and shook his head. “Listen to you. Talking like a real shopgirl.”
“I am a real shopgirl!”
She did look the part, dressed in the Blue Peony’s uniform: muted blue robes cut in the old Hana style to invoke a sense of nostalgic luxury. Silken slippers hugged her small feet, and from her ears hung dainty white pearls.
He poked at one, sending it jiggling. “These are new.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Adé laughed. “Good point. Me neither, I guess.” She was always so cheerful; not an easy trait to retain after a childhood like hers. Nok still found it mystifying after all this time.
It was Adé who had helped Omair nurse Nok back from the dead, back when Omair had first taken him in. She’d been the old man’s first apprentice. Once Nok had recovered, the two of them spent their days side by side, mashing herbs and beeswax into salves, until two years ago, when Adé’s mother Lin Mak decided to move the family back to Yulan City.
“Where’s Bo?” Adé pushed past him to peer out the window expectantly. She turned, horror dawning on her face. “Oh, heavens. He hasn’t died, has he?”
Nok had to laugh. “No, he’s still kicking. Literally. I stabled him at the Northern Gatehead this morning.”
“So,” Adé leaned in conspiratorially. “You must have heard the news.”
He shook his head. “What news?” Outside of making Omair’s purchases, he hadn’t spoken to anyone.
“The emperor announced his successor today.”
“Oh, that.” He’d heard murmurs about the so-called Girl King in the market, but he’d shut them out. Just the mention of the princess made him feel eleven years old again, even after all this time.
She’d been an aberration back then, drenched in scarlet, every hair in place, apparently oblivious to the desert heat. Even stripped of the jewels, the silks, she would have been unmistakable as royalty. That tall oaf Chundo had sneered she had a face like a sand fox; Nok had secretly thought if that were true, it wasn’t such a bad thing.
Some traitorous part of him wondered what she might look like now.
Tall, probably, he thought, firmly putting an end to it.
“Makes no difference really who the emperor is,” he heard himself say. “It’s not like she’s going to help people like us.”
Adé’s eyes widened in surprise. “Goodness, you haven’t heard, have you?” She shook her head before he could respond. “The emperor didn’t pick Princess Lu—he named her cousin. Lord Set.”
The very name tore Nok from the present, and suddenly he was there again.
I’ll kill you!
The girl’s screams rent the still desert air. Her fists were flying, lashing the body beneath her again and again.
Mercy, mercy—
Back in the marketplace, Nok’s scars began to throb.
“You know,” Adé prodded, mistaking his silence for confusion. “Set, the Hana scion? The empress’s nephew? Decorated general of the northern territories?”
“No—I,” Nok said. His voice sounded weak. His father would hate that. He cleared his throat. His father was dead. “No, I know. Just—surprised is all.”
And how must the princess feel?
I’ll kill you!
And she nearly had. For all the good it had done her, in the end.
“I think we were all surprised, but then, we’ve never had a woman emperor before, have we?” Adé sighed. “And now I suppose we never will. Not in our lifetimes.”
She shrugged. “So, how long until you head back to Ansana? It’s hot today. Let’s go get some iced fruit—my treat!”
Nok looked around the crowded shop, regaining his bearings. “Are you not working? It looks like you’re working.”
She winked. “No worries. Mei will cover for me.”
“Oh?” he said. “Does she know that?”
But Adé’s mind was made up. “Mei, cover for me, would you?” she called out to the other shopgirl.
Mei’s face soured. “I covered for you two weeks ago.”
“I had to walk my brothers to school.”
“That wasn’t my problem.”
“I’ll take all of your Market Day hours next moon!” Adé pushed Nokhai toward the front door. “Come on. Go, go! Before she decides to rat on me. She hates me,” she whispered confidentially.
“I can’t imagine why,” Nok said.
“Oh, who knows?” Adé sighed, letting the door slam closed behind them. “Some people are just awful.”
The crowd along Kangmun Boulevard had grown since Nok had run his errands; it moved like thick mud. Someone swore loudly at him to get out of the way. Nok jumped aside. An elderly woman hobbled by, pulling a wagon laden with knives that gleamed fiercely in the afternoon sun.
“Come on!” Adé seized his hand and lunged down the street. The noise and smells of Market Day always seemed to invigorate her as much as they exhausted Nok. “Come on,” she repeated, tugging at his wrist like she meant to wrench it off.
“Cut it out,” he complained, trying without success to shake his hand from her grasp. It wouldn’t do to have someone see them hand in hand. People might talk. People always talked, even where there was nothing to say.
Adé wedged her way between the swollen belly of a free-roaming donkey and a cart of dusty yams. Nok had no choice but to follow.
“I’m not as tiny as you are!” he protested, jabbing the donkey with his elbow to avoid being crushed to death.
“Tiny!” she yelped. If she had more to say about it, though, he didn’t hear. Her voice was drowned out by the mumbling drone of the crowd.
Nok caught up with her as she extricated a slippered foot from a dark, suspicious-looking puddle. “I should’ve changed out of my work clothes,” she said forlornly. “If I get anything on this stupid dress the Ox will kill me. And if that happens, my mother really will kill me.”
She sighed, shaking her foot. Foul-smelling muck splattered everywhere, leaving a sad gray stain on her shoe. “I’m supposed to see Carmine this evening, and Mama gets so worked up if I don’t look perfect for him.”
Carmine. So, Adé’s Ellandaise suitor was still around, then. A sturdy, well-fed young man with pink skin, pale dun-colored hair, and an easy smile. Nice enough. His father was a merchant. Rich and well connected.
“How’s Carmine doing?” Nok asked lightly.
“Good,” Adé said, hesitant. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. I—”
But Nok’s attention was drawn away. A troop of soldiers had materialized up ahead, by the gate embedded in the wall of the Ring.
“Hey,” Adé said, sticking Nok in the side with a sharp finger.
“Ow!” he snapped. “What is it?”
“About … you know, Carmine and all …?”
“Clear the street! The gate is opening! Make way!” the urgent call came from somewhere ahead of them. Nok craned his head instinctively, searching for its source. The crowd was stirring, agitated—a beehive poked with a stick.
“Clear the street!” the call came again. “Make way for the Ellandaise emissaries!”
Nok couldn’t see how it was possible, but the crowds seemed to intensify, as though a few hundred extra bodies had formed up out of the packed-earth streets.
“We should get off Kangmun Boulevard.” Adé tugged anxiously at Nok’s sleeve. “Is there an open turnoff anywhere? I can’t see a damned thing—”
“Clear the street!” The call came again, now urgent, and close.
Nok spotted an opening beside a cart of persimmons. “There! We can—” Nok turned, but Adé had disappeared.
“Clear the street!” The crier was so close now it felt as if he were shouting straight in Nok’s ears.
“Adé?” he called.
The faint cry of her voice came from somewhere far off to his left. He looked frantically in the direction of the call, but a heavyset man slid behind him blocking his view.
“Nok!”
He whirled again, but didn’t see her.
“Adé!” Nok scanned the slowly thinning crowd for her face, but she had disappeared. Cursing, he ducked into the nearest alley. It was blissfully empty.
The crowd was beginning to
stream southward, toward the harbor. If he ran, he might be able to outpace them using the city’s alleyways, then scan the passing crowd for Adé. If she hadn’t been crushed.
No. Adé would be fine, he told himself. She’d grown up on these streets, knew her way around far better than he did. He would find her again—so long as he didn’t lose himself in the alleyways, which wound tight and numerous as capillaries around the artery of Kangmun Boulevard.
He headed in what he hoped was a vaguely southward direction.
“Mercy, young man … mercy.” A beggar woman rattled a bowl of coins at him as he wended his way through a particularly narrow alley. Just a pair of skinny, leathered hands and ankles poking out of a pile of filthy rags; an unremarkable sight. Nok nearly ran on, until he glimpsed the face beneath her ragged cowl.
Dozens of dull blue dots formed trails of ink just beneath the skin of her cheekbones and down her chin—the unmistakable facial tattoos of a northern mountain temple shamaness.
He did not recognize her particular designs, but then, the mountains had once been full of unaffiliated lesser temples—usually practicing some unsanctioned amalgamation of Hana Mul rites, Yunian traditions, and local customs.
“Mercy,” the shamaness repeated. She shook her bowl at him again hopefully; the coins inside clinking coldly against one another.
In spite of himself, Nok felt a stab of pity. How a mountain shamaness had come to the crooked alleys of Scrap-Patch Row, he could not fathom, but then, how he had gotten there defied belief as well.
He reached into his tunic and pulled two coins from the pouch strapped to his chest.
“Here,” he said roughly, dropping the coins in the shamaness’s bowl. She peered up at him gratefully. She was younger than he would’ve guessed, no more than forty. When their eyes met, her ingratiating smile vanished, and she drew back with a hiss of surprise. Before he could react, she reached out and snatched his wrist up in a surprisingly strong, gnarled hand.