Her dark hair is coiled on top of her head like a nest of snakes. Her
lips are stained the red of a cactus flower. Her body is covered in a dress
the color of her eyes, but not a dress as Desert Women know it. Our
women’s dresses tie with straps at the back of the neck. They end at the
knee, with slits up the sides to give their legs room to move. This dress has
sleeves that clutch at the girl’s arms, holding her shoulders prisoner. It
squeezes her chest and waist. I roll my head to see that the squeezing
continues all the way to her ankles.
She looks like a worm wrapped up in green silk for a spider’s dinner.
“I asked you a question,” she says, still calm, unmoving except for her
red lips. It feels like we’re alone in this room, but she doesn’t seem afraid.
I roll my head, forcing my stiff neck to turn one way and then the
other. My eyes roam, taking in the stone walls, the barred windows, the
heavy wooden door. Still a cage, but not as miserable a cage. And we
I turn back to her, watch her pale throat work as she swallows. I
could kill her now. I’m weaker than I’ve ever been, and my legs ache in a
way that assures me that standing isn’t possible, but I could still take her
life. My arms aren’t restrained. One swipe of my claws at her neck where
the blood flows quickest, and it would be done. She’d bleed to death before
the guards could open the door.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Her lips twitch.
My right hand flexes. My claws descend with a sluggish
, oozing
from above my nail beds.
“It would be a tragedy for the city.” Her words float on their own
cloud, hovering above us in the crisp air. “I should be married,” she
announces suddenly, proving she’s as rattled in the head as I remember.
“Seventeen is young, and I’m in mourning until the spring, but I could do it.
I’m sure someone would be willing to risk the bad luck that comes from
breaking tradition.”
Seventeen. Two years younger than me. Not young at all.
“But then they’d have no reason to humor me.” She sighs. “Being the
keeper of the covenant only goes so far, you know. I’ve learned that in the
time you’ve been sleeping. People still feel free to tell a blind girl what to
do. My maid had to sneak a sleeping draft into your guards’ tea in order for
me to be granted a private visit with my own prisoner. Maybe it would be
different if …” Her empty eyes slide toward the door, her ears lift until the
tips are hidden in her hair. “They’ll lock me up again if they find me here,”
she whispers. “Junjie will take my father’s place as jailer. I will never be
seen again.”
“Then … go,” I rasp.
Her lips curve in a hard smile. “I knew you’d speak to me. Sooner or
later.” She leans closer, stretching her long neck. “How did you learn our
language out in the desert?”
I think about refusing to answer, but I don’t want the princess to
leave, not until I’ve decided whether or not I’ll take my piece of her. “My
mother.” I lift my fingers and let them drop, one by one, bringing life back
into my hand. “She carried the tradition.”
“What does that mean?”
“She carried Yuan words in her mind. Her mother carried them
before her, my great-grandmother before that.” With a steady movement I
pull the whisper-soft blanket down my body. It slips off my shoulders, down
my chest. I keep pulling, slowly baring my right hand. “Women usually carry
language. They take words faster. But I have no sisters. I was the youngest,
so my mother taught me.”
“How did your ancestors learn?”
“I don’t know.” My hand is almost free. My focus is on ridding myself
of the blanket. “Mother never told me, and she died four winters …” My
words trail away as I realize what I’ve said.
The princess is quiet. I lie still, not wanting her to hear me
rearranging the covers. “My mama is dead, too. When I was four years old.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t feel sorry. The Smooth Skins deserve to
suffer, this girl most of all.
“Well …” She clears her throat. “You speak well.”
“Thank you.”
Her laughter startles me. My arm jerks, baring my claws in one swift
pull. But there is still no sound, and the princess doesn’t flinch. Thank the
ancestors the girl is blind.
“And good manners,” she says. “Strange …” Her curved lips droop.
“The other Monstrous killed my father.”
I pause. Is she telling the truth? Is the king of Yuan dead?
“They cut him open from his throat to his belly. I felt the wounds.
Before we put him in the river,” she says, her throat working harder. Her
bound shoulders tremble, straining the seams of her dress. It looks as if it
were made for someone else, some girl even frailer than this one. “He was
taking a walk. He was unarmed. He wouldn’t have hurt them.”
the king.” I let my arm creep toward her neck, remembering how her flesh
parted so easily for my claws the first time. “But I told you, being queen
only goes so far. My advisor said we should send the others back to your
people with a warning to stay away from the city. Junjie could
communicate with your leader. They drew symbols on the dirt floor of the
cell. Your leader—your father, if he’s to be believed—offered to leave you
here as a gesture of good faith. He knows we’ll kill you if the city is attacked
again.”
Her words would wound, but I remember what Father said that night
I lay shivering in my cell. I’m not a gesture of good faith; I’m a weed in their
garden.
“He seemed confident that you’d recover. I wasn’t sure.” She reaches
out. I hold my breath, ready to drop my hand back to the pallet, but her
fingers alight on my forehead, not my arm. “But you’re cool now.” The pads
of her fingers trace the slope of my nose, over my lips, sending a strange
zinging sensation across my skin.
She continues, over my chin, down to my neck, where her hand curls.
Her fingers begin to squeeze, and the zing is banished by the
I swallow, throat rippling beneath her fingers. “We’re hungry. We
hoped to steal food to take back to our people.” I can’t tell her that my
chief’s vision revealed that the roses are the secret to the Smooth Skin’s
paradise under the dome. And I can’t kill her. If I do, I’ll never leave this
room alive.
My arm falls; my claws ease back into their beds. I don’t know why
I’m alive, but I am, and I must make the most of it. I have to find a way into
the garden.
“My people are starving,” I say.
She makes an angry sound beneath her breath. “If my father weren’t
dead, I would feel sorry for you.” Her fingers tighten again, until my eyes
ache and green and pink spots dance around her face. “I would have put
food outside the gate.”
“Liar,” I grunt, fighting for breath.
“Maybe.” She bends close, and I smell her breath, sweet like sticky
fruit and … roses. “Maybe I
people will continue to
comes for me with a balled-up fist that hits my chest and glances off
without damage, and I snatch that wrist as well, holding tight as she
struggles. I am so weak that my heart slams inside my chest and my head
spins from even this small effort, but she’s weaker. Like a child.
“Release me,” she demands.
“You’re the one who wanted to fight.” I pin her wrists together and
hold them, like Gare did to me when I was small and wanted to play rough.
I am determined to show her that I won’t tolerate her abuse, but she
struggles only a moment, before her neck bends and her forehead drops to
her hands.
I flinch as her eyes shut and her shoulders begin to shake. Water
spills from behind her lids, fat drops that slide down her cheeks to fall onto
my bare chest.
It wasn’t a fever dream, then.
“What is that?” I breathe.
She lifts her face. Her eyes aren’t empty now. They’re swimming with
misery and pain. This girl wouldn’t run through the garden laughing like a
child. The death of her father cut that part of her away and left her
bleeding inside where wounds hurt the most.
I tell myself it’s no less than she deserves, but my voice is softer
when I repeat, “What
She swallows and sniffs as she pulls her fists to her chest. “Tears?”
“Tears.” I remember the word, but only vaguely. It wasn’t one that
came up often in my lessons or Mother’s songs. My people don’t tear.
Water comes from our skin to cool it, from our body to rid it of toxins, but
not from our eyes. We aren’t leaky and fragile like the Smooth Skins.
Yet
as she speaks of my people’s hunger; their queen runs her hands over my
face and tightens her fingers at my throat, and I must lie here and do
nothing.
I smear the tears on my chest away, but some have already soaked
into my skin. I can feel them, as if she has marked me, infected me with
Smooth Skin weakness.
“Get out,” I growl, hatred burning in my belly.
“Not yet. I have—”
“Now!”
“Quiet, or you’ll wake the guards,” she hisses, her own hatred
flashing in her eyes. “
you’ll do what I say, when I say it.”
“I’ll cut you open,” I snarl through gritted teeth.
“You’ll do no such thing.” She doesn’t flinch, or move away from the
bed. “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it already.”
“I nearly did.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Do you believe these?” My claws are at her neck a second later, the
tips puckering the skin at either side. Her lips part and a strangled sound
gurgles in her chest, but she doesn’t move. She has realized that the
slightest twitch will open her throat. “You seem curious about what will
happen when you die,” I whisper. “Maybe it’s time for your curiosity to be
satisfied.”
She sips air, swallowing like a three-hooved gert picking its way down
the rocky slope of a canyon. I tighten my grip. The five puckers on her
throat deepen. A little more pressure, and her blood will flow. I tell myself
it will be justice, but I’m not thinking about justice. I’m thinking about the
way she stuck her nose in the air when she told me I’d do as she says. I’m
thinking that I prefer fear in her eyes to any other emotion I’ve seen.
I’m thinking I would rather be a monster than her slave.
“Your father told Junjie that you were a healer.” Each word is careful,
formed mostly with her lips, using as little breath as possible.
“I am a warrior.” I come from a family of warriors, the greatest family
of warriors. At least until
voice. “You don’t grow and mix herbs for the Monstrous?”
“We are the Desert People.”
escape the domed city, is to win the Smooth Skins’ trust. So far, none of
them have bothered to speak to me. Only this girl. But she is the
princess—no,
like. And she wants to know about herbs Father said I could mix. I know
certain common remedies, but I’ve never mixed a true healing pouch in my
life.
My father isn’t a stupid man. There must be a good reason for his lie.
If I weren’t on the verge of committing murder, I could probably think of it.
I relax my grip. Almost immediately, my head clears—
roses, giving the queen a reason to let me out of my cage.
“I know plants. And herbs.” I retract my claws. The queen gives a
shuddery breath. “Why?”
“I have … a field. A large one,” she pants, hands fluttering at her
neck. “I want you to help me plant it with healing herbs, especially those
that the Mon”—she clears her throat—“that the Desert People use to ward
off further mutation.”
Herbs to ward off mutation? There is no such thing. At least, not that
I know of. But just like my lie about the poison in my claws, this lie must
serve a purpose. If I agree to assist this girl, I will find out what it is.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll help.”
“Good.” She stands, wobbling in her narrow dress. “I’ll talk to Junjie
and have guards sent to fetch you in the morning. You’ll be bound when
you leave this room, but the chains will be loose enough to allow you to
work.” She goes to the door but turns back almost immediately. “When the
guards come, tell them nothing about what we’ll be growing. I don’t want
my people to know. Not yet.”
“Why?”
She pulls a silver key from a pocket near her hip. The sight of it makes
my damaged legs ache. If I were whole, I could rush her and take the key.
But I’m not whole. Thanks to this girl and her men.
“You seem like a clever beast,” she says, fitting the key in the lock.
“I’m sure you’ll understand. Sooner or later.”
good to tell her. I must show her.
out the door as swiftly and silently as a tear down a Smooth Skin’s cheek.
Tomorrow, I will serve and obey. I will be on my very best behavior. I
will use only Yuan words and keep my claws sheathed. But tonight I will
close my eyes and pretend I am not her prisoner.
Tonight I will remember the fear in her eyes and let it fill my mouth
with a taste as sweet as her rose-and-sugar breath.