“It could have been good,” he finally whispers. “You and I.”
I don’t say a word, though I agree with him. In a way.
We
into my life. If not for Gem, I might have mistaken faint stirrings and
budding friendship for something more. I might have thought love could
grow between Bo and me. I would have agreed to marry him and would be
looking forward to however many years we’d have together before I made
the ultimate sacrifice for my city.
now that I’m free of the roses. I will never lie down in that wretched bed
and slit my own throat. The realization makes my breath come faster,
makes my ribs shake with something too hysterical to be laughter. “I don’t
have to do it.”
“I’m afraid you won’t have a choice,” Bo says, watching me from the
corner of his eye, clearly seeing my relief as another sign of madness.
“Father says the law allows the advisors to compel you to marry.”
My ribs grow still, even as my heart beats faster behind them.
Junjie will kill me if I refuse to go to the roses. I know he will. As soon
as Bo and I are married and the city begins to fail, he’ll slip poison into my
food or slit my throat while I sleep. Then, once I’m dead, Bo will remarry
and that poor girl will pay the price for my refusal to honor the covenant.
She will be a bride in the morning and a dead woman by nightfall, and the
wicked thing at the city’s core will never be stopped.
I can’t let that happen. I have to find some proof of what I felt in the
garden tonight. I have to convince my advisors and my people that the
power sustaining our city is evil.
“But how?” I mumble, biting my lip.
“I don’t know,” Bo says, continuing to labor under the delusion that
I’m speaking to him. “I suppose one of the advisors will say your vows and
the sacred words for you if you refuse to say them yourself.”
So refusing to speak won’t be enough.… What if … What if I …
“Take me back to the tower,” I say, gripping Bo’s arm. “I want to see
Needle.”
“But I—”
“My arms and legs hurt. Needle will tend to them,” I say, not
bothering to explain myself any further. A woman has a right to change her
mind, and a madwoman even more so. There’s nothing I can do for Gem
here and now, but if I can rid myself of Bo and move quickly, while the
guards are distracted …
“I’ll send for the healers as soon as you’re safe in your rooms,” Bo
says as he leads me through the orchard.
I start to tell him no, that Needle is the only attendant I need, but I
think better of it. I don’t want to make him suspicious, and his mission to
fetch the healers will keep him busy while I throw together what I’ll need
for my journey.
next autumn’s flowers planted in the enriched dirt.
will die and I will never see Gem again.
I can’t leave. I can’t stay. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know
what’s right; I’ve never felt so ripped apart inside.
“Don’t cry,” Bo mumbles beneath his breath. “Please.”
I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, hissing as salty tears
sting into the cuts at my wrist. I didn’t even realize I was crying, but I am.
Weeping as if my heart is broken. Which it is. Broken in two. One half here
in Yuan, with the city I was raised to serve. One half with Gem as he—I
hope—runs into the desert to save his people.
Everything is happening so fast. I need more time!
“It won’t be a miserable life for you when we’re married. I won’t be
cruel,” Bo says, motioning aside the soldiers guarding the door of the
tower. The two men stand gaping for a long moment without moving,
before first one and then the other scrambles out of the way.
Bo and I are climbing the stairs by the time I realize why the guards
were so surprised. They have no idea how I got out, let alone came to be
covered in my own blood.
serious thinking. I’ll tell her everything that’s happened and see what she
believes I should do. Needle is more practical and selfless than I’ll ever be.
She’ll have advice. Good advice.
“Needle, bring the medicine kit,” I call at the top of the stairs. “And
water, please, with two cups.”
Poor Needle. She’s going to be beside herself when she sees what’s
happened to the skin she’s fussed over all these years. I wipe at my face
again, trying hard to pull myself together.
I’m so busy worrying about the look on Needle’s face when she sees
me that it takes me longer than it should to realize she didn’t come when I
called.
“Needle?” I call again.
A strange cawing sound comes from the music room in response. I
pull away from Bo and race down the hall as fast as my aching legs will
carry me. I fling myself through the doorway at the same moment Needle
flies through it in the opposite direction. I cry out as we collide, but when
my hands find her shoulders, I don’t let her go. Her face is streaked with
tears, and one cheek bears an ugly red handprint.
“Who did this to you? Who’s here?” I demand, searching the room
behind her. At first I see nothing, but then, movement on the balcony.
Three pairs of wide shoulders shifting, six big hands lifting, two hand
trowels busy spreading sluggish gray mortar between heavy red bricks.
They’re building a wall. A wall to take away the world.
, Needle signs beneath my hand.
your rooms,” he says. “And Father was worried. I didn’t tell him about last
night, but after what happened today, and with your mother …”
“No,” I whisper, breath coming faster, feeling more trapped than I
have in my entire life. It’s been years since I was truly a captive in the
tower, and I’ve never had so many reasons to gain my freedom.
“It’s not forever,” Bo says. “Once we’re married, and you start feeling
better …”
No. No, no, no!
I’ll never feel better. I’ll never feel the wind in my hair again. I’ll never
race through a damp field in bare feet. I’ll never sneak away to the King’s
Gate or the desert beyond. Even if Gem sets a fire burning by the gathering
of stones, I’ll never see it. I’ll never see Gem again.
I’ll never leave this tower, not until the day they lead me to the
garden to die.
My knees give way and I crumple to the floor, but I don’t cry out. I
don’t sob or scream. There’s no point in it. Bo is here by my side, three
strong men occupy my balcony, and guards with spears and sleeping darts
wait at the bottom of the stairs. There is no way out. There is nowhere to
run. It’s over. Everything is over. I am over.
The world goes soft around the edges, my mind softer.
I don’t remember rising from the floor. I don’t remember Needle
tending my wounds or mixing a sleeping draft or tucking me into
bed—though she must have, because when I come back to myself hours
later, I am bandaged, and the bitter taste of valerian root is strong in my
mouth.
I don’t remember throwing off my sheets or dragging the chair in the
corner across the room. I don’t remember ordering Needle to help me lift it
on top of my bed, or threatening her with dismissal if she refused to assist
me. I don’t even remember climbing up to stand on top of the tower of
furniture and nearly falling in the process.
Later, when Needle asks me how I knew the diary was there, I tell her
it must have come to me in a dream, but the first thing I recall between my
falling to the ground at Bo’s feet and the slender volume dropping into my
hand is reaching for the beam above my bed, fingers prickling as I released
the secret latch I was certain I’d find on one side.
I tell Needle it must have been an ancestor dream, like Gem said. My
father was always proud that we could trace our ancestry all the way back
to King Sato and his third queen.
I don’t know what he’d feel if he were alive to read our ancestor’s
words now. It takes more time for Needle to read and sign each word than
it would if I could read the diary myself, but still it doesn’t take long to learn
that the volume belonged to that very queen. Or that everything I’ve been
raised to believe is a lie.
than fear. I’m already at the King’s Gate with the pack of food and supplies
strapped to my back, and they’re coming from the direction of the royal
garden. They must have found Isra and freed her from the roses. I know
these people have no issue with killing a queen, but only after she’s
married, and that day is still months away. Isra should be safe until I return.
barely visible over the rise, I step through the door and walk away from
Yuan.
I walk. There’s no need to hurry. It’s too dark for their arrows to find
me, and the soldiers won’t dare follow me into the desert.
I walk until the dome is a faintly glowing speck on the horizon, on
through the darkest part of the night, and into the next morning. I walk
until the sun bakes my head, and the straps of my pack rub blisters on the
scale-free flesh on the undersides of my arms, on through another night
and the pale blush of a second morning, before exhaustion hits like a rock
slide crushing me into the ground. I collapse into a hollow between two
cactus plants, but I don’t sleep for long. I don’t know which is stronger, the
need to reach my people, or the need to return to Isra, but both drive me
like nothing has before.
I walk until my good leg throbs and my bad leg screams for mercy. I
walk until both legs go numb and my joints begin to creak like the wheel of
an overloaded cart. I walk until my entire body is a collection of aches and
pains and my mind exists outside it all, lulled by the endless rhythm of my
footfalls, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the misery of my flesh. I drink
little; I eat even less, determined to save as much food for the others as I
possibly can. The pack is brimming with dried fruit and nuts and salted
meat, enough to keep the hundred souls still remaining in my tribe from
starvation for a month if the food is rationed carefully.
I think of how wonderful it will be to see my father’s face, my son’s
smile as he gums a piece of dried fruit, the relief in my people’s eyes as
they eat well for the first time in months. I think of Isra, of her lips on mine
that night in her tower.
I can’t be without her. Seeing her held captive by the roses settled
any question about that. I can’t accept her death as a necessary evil. I won’t
have her blood spilled. Not for Yuan, not for the Desert People, or anyone
else.
Gare will never understand. Father, maybe, if I explain myself well,
but Gare … never. He’ll never forgive me for caring for a Smooth Skin. He’ll
hate me until the day he dies, and he’ll go to his funeral pyre with a curse
for me lingering in his soul.
I’m sure most of my people will feel the same way. The Smooth Skins
are the enemy. Our rage against them has been building for centuries, a
bonfire stoked and fanned by every loved one lost too soon, every night
spent listening to a child cry out in hunger, every morning a mother rolls
over to find her baby starved to death on the pallet beside her.
I know now that most of the Smooth Skins have no idea how their
actions have affected my people, but I still have hate for them in my heart. I
hate Bo and his father and the soldiers who damaged my legs, but I care for
Isra more than I loathe them. I … I love her. And love is stronger than hate. I
believe that. I believe Isra and I can change our worlds. Together. If we are
brave.
I finally feel brave. I won’t ask Father to cut my warrior’s braid. I’m
not a coward. I’m a different kind of warrior, one who will fight with my
heart instead of my hands, and I’ll start by telling my people the truth. It
would be easier to lie, but lies will never change the way they see the
Smooth Skins, and we’ve all told too many lies. I’m sick of them.
Sick …
I’m nearly half a day’s walk from my tribe’s winter camp when I smell
it. Smoke. Funeral smoke. In the middle of the day. My people burn our
dead at night, but there’s no mistaking the smell—charred and oily,
bittersweet, musky … terrible. The smell of burned hair and melting flesh
and all the dreams the dead will never dream going up in flames.
I start to run. My leg buckles and bends the wrong way, and my
bones knock together with a sick crunch. Pain and heat explode behind my
kneecap, but I don’t stop. I run toward the smoke billowing on the horizon,
with my leg burning like fire. I run until my ankle turns and my run becomes
a hobble. I hobble until my good leg fails me and I fall to the ground and
crawl.
I come into the midst of the fires on my hands and knees, and I’m
glad. This isn’t something to see standing up. It isn’t one fire or three or
even five. There are a
mourners gathered below to cry their souls into the next world.
Where are they? Where are the families? The mates? The friends?