Текст книги "Of Beast and Beauty "

Автор книги: Stacey Jay

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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.

I tried to stop them, Needle signs beneath my hand. I tried.

“I’m sorry,” Bo says from behind me. “They shouldn’t have struck

her.”

“What is this?” I ask, unable to turn to look at him, unable to glance

away from the wall already rising as high as my thighs.

“It’s to keep you safe. I wanted to make sure the beast couldn’t enter

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.

TWENTY-FOUR

GEM

I hear the heavy footfalls and turn to see soldiers rushing around the

granaries, but the men scrambling through the tall grass inspire more relief

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.

Please let her be safe.

With one last glance back at the tower, the peak of its highest roof

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 dozen. No, more. Fourteen … fifteen. A city made of

funeral pyres, flaming houses eating up their lonely residents with no

mourners gathered below to cry their souls into the next world.

Where are they? Where are the families? The mates? The friends?

My breath comes faster. Pain and fear and dread swell so big inside

me that it feels like my cracked skin will have to tear wide open to let it all

out.

I look up. I force myself to look to the top of each pyre, guessing at

the identity of each burning corpse. Any one of the adult-sized bodies could

be my father or my brother. My friends. Meer.

And that one, that tiny one on the right …

It could be my son. It’s a baby. A tiny spot of dense and dark at the

center of a fire too big for a person with so few memories to burn away and

no life magic to gift to those left behind.

My son. That could be my son.

My eyes squeeze shut. Oh, please. By the ancestors, please, let my

son be alive, I beg, though I know my prayer is selfish. If my son is spared,

then that means it is some other baby burning on that pyre. Someone’s

baby is dead. Fourteen other mothers, sisters, brothers, lovers, fathers, are

dead.

Why is this? And where are the rest of my people while their loved

ones burn?

I emerge from the city of fire, and my question is answered. A line of

my people stands before our healer, their heads bowed in defeat. I see the

medicine man hand something to a young mother at the far end of the line,

and I try to scream—

“Meer!” But my throat is raw from the smoke, tight from dread,

strangled by terror. She doesn’t hear me. Her head stays down as she slips

whatever the medicine man gave her between our listless child’s lips and

rubs it back and forth across the baby’s tongue.

Instantly, I know what she’s holding. Poison root. Poison root. Poison

root in my baby’s mouth.

“No! Stop!” The words explode from deep inside me as I scramble

across the dirt on my hands and knees, the pressure inside my body

threatening to make my heart explode. “Meer! Stop!”

Meer’s arm jerks, pulling the root from my son’s mouth. From

somewhere farther down the line, a cry rises into the air. And then another,

and another, but there is no hope in the sounds. No celebration. I’m too

late. I know it; everyone knows it. Everyone knows I saw. I saw.

No. Please, no. I can’t have gotten here just in time to watch my son

die for no reason. When there is food here on my back and hope so close.

“Meer.” I gasp, but she doesn’t respond. Her eyes are wide and

empty in her painfully thin face, her jaw slack. Without emotion she

watches me crawl toward her for a long moment, before her head snaps

down and the arm cradling the baby lifts him closer to her face. She drops

the root and pats his cheek. She smoothes his hair away from his face. She

places one skeletal hand over his heart and holds it there for what feels like

an eternity.

And then she screams. She screams like her heart is being cut out.

He’s dead. He’s dead, oh no, please, no.

A strangled sound bursts from my throat. I push to my feet, only to

fall immediately back to the ground. No amount of will can make up for

how broken my body has become. Broken. Everything broken. My tribe, my

baby, my life, my heart.

Meer’s wail ends with a sob as she looks up, meeting my eyes with

an expression so terrible, I instantly feel what she feels. The pressure

building inside my chest and my head, crushing against the backs of my

eyes, becomes unbearable. Meer. My friend. If I could spare her this pain, I

would.

I’ll hold her and tell her I forgive her. I’ll tell her it’s my fault. I’ll—

Suddenly, Meer’s legs bend and her fingers reach for the dirt.

“No!” I scream, but it’s too late. The root she dropped is already in

her mouth, her teeth are already biting down. She’s already falling to the

ground, her eyes closing, her mouth falling open as her soul leaves her

body.

I watch her fall. I watch the limp bundle that was my child roll from

her dead arm, and then there is nothing but red.

Red behind my eyes as I scream and scream until my throat is raw

and I taste metal on my tongue. Red as I pound my fists into the ground

until my knuckles break open and weep blood onto the desert floor.

I howl until there is nothing left inside me. Until my head buzzes and

my muscles lose the last of their strength and I collapse onto the ground

with my too-late salvation still strapped to my back and the red world goes

black.

TWENTY-FIVE

ISRA

I am married. I wear a black dress and a black cap over my hair,

breaking mourning tradition and wedding tradition, making it clear I

consider the ceremony the blackest of rites. Bo holds my hand during our

vows, but he doesn’t stay in the tower that first night, or the next, or any

thereafter. I understand that he means to keep his promise not to be cruel,

and am grateful for small favors.

I’m grateful for big ones, too. As the world beneath the dome begins

to fade and falter, I know Bo is all that stands between me and death. He

begs the advisors to give me more time to come to my senses.

I beg the desert to send Gem back to me before it’s too late.

Needle sneaks to the wall every night after returning my dinner tray.

She watches for a fire by the gathered stones, while I stand by the door,

waiting for news of Gem, hoping so hard, it hurts.

I am always disappointed.

Winter ends and the days grow longer and warmer, but the crops

refuse to grow. The cows cease giving milk, and—as our stores are used up

and milk is replaced with water and wine—I learn what has caused the sad

state of my skin. An allergy to the milk I’ve drunk every morning and been

bathed in twice a day, every day, since Needle came to care for me. She

blames herself for not realizing the milk and honey baths were hurting

more than helping, but I assure her I’m not angry. I’m elated. Gem was right

about that, too. I add it to my list of things to tell him, but weeks pass and

he doesn’t come, and things only get worse.

The chickens refuse to lay eggs, and half the livestock fall over dead

in the fields. The orchard flowers rain to the ground, but no leaves or fruit

grow in their place. Beneath Yuan, the underground river becomes a

narrow stream. Water is rationed and the city’s worry becomes an

ever-present, buzzing fear. I know what game the Dark Heart plays, but I

refuse to panic. Gem will come. He will come and we will end this madness.

Forever. We can do it. I’ve read the queen’s diary. I know the secret now.

For a month I believe.

And then the month becomes two months. More. I stop waiting by

the door, no longer certain the black night outside the dome will ever be

broken by the light of Gem’s fire. I retreat to my bedroom to sleep the rest

of my life away, to dream and keep on dreaming.

I dream all the time.

There is nothing to do in my prison but sleep and dream, wake and

dream, sit staring at the scrap of sky visible through the mostly walled-up

window in my room, and ache for my freedom like a missing limb, and

dream and dream.…

I learn to speak the language of midnight, to communicate with

phantoms. I have long conversations with the burning face in the beam, my

ancestor, Ana, King Sato’s third wife. Reading her diary has opened a door

between us, and now we speak freely, without needing sleep as a meeting

place.

She tells me of Yuan at the end of its first hundred years, before the

Dark Heart was forgotten, when every soul in the city knew the roses were

the teeth of the monster they had created. She tells me of growing up

yearning for the world outside, watching from the wall walks the giant cats

roaming the grasslands, and longing to run free the way they did. She tells

me of her fourteenth birthday and the meager meal she shared with her

family at the end of a summer when the crops had refused to grow, the day

it was decided that the queen must die and Ana’s father promised her to

the king.

King Sato was tired then, already finished with two wives, and

decades older than his new bride. The king promised Ana’s father that he,

the king, would take his turn under the blade when it became necessary,

and he and Ana were married. Years passed and three children were born.

Then, just before Ana’s thirty-sixth birthday, the crops once again began to

fail. King Sato was nearing his ninetieth year, but when the advisors agreed

the time had come for a sacrifice, he refused to go to the roses.

Ana was told to kiss her children good-bye and prepare herself for

the ceremony the next morning.

Terrified, Ana ran from the tower, through failing fields begging for

blood, to the King’s Gate and out into the desert. She hid in the tall grass

that surrounded the city in those days, praying she wouldn’t be found by

wild animals, hoping the king would take his own life within a day or two

and she would be able to return home.

It was there, sleeping in the grass with her cheek pressed to the

earth, that she spoke to the Pure Heart of the planet for the first time.

She’d been raised to fear the Dark Heart’s other half, the magical force that

had caused the deformity of most of Yuan’s citizens, but she found the Pure

Heart anything but cruel. It spoke kindly to her; it offered her life instead of

death. It told her how to break the curse and restore the health of the

planet and all the creatures living upon it.

Ana was transformed, frightened, but also filled with the certainty

that her people must change their ways and end the division of the world.

She returned to the city and to her tower, where she wrote her last

diary entry, the one explaining how to break the curse, and why the people

of Yuan must reach out to the monsters in the desert.

The diary ends there, but Ana’s spirit shows me the morning the

guards came to escort her to the royal garden.

King Sato and the heads of the noble families were gathered around

the roses. The royal executioner was already wearing his hood. Ana begged

the king to listen to what she’d learned outside the dome, but he wouldn’t.

No one would. Just as no one would remind the king that—according to the

covenant—his life would serve as well as hers. The king threatened to kill

Ana and marry another if she refused to offer herself to the roses, while,

beneath the soil, the Dark Heart called to her, promising her peace and

rest, assuring her there was no choice but death.

Finally, Ana gave up. She knelt down. She took the knife in her hand

and opened her own throat. The executioner ensured that her death was

swift.

After the ceremony, King Sato buried the covenant beneath a paving

stone in the royal garden and ordered all copies of the text burned, hoping

to ensure the ignorance of his fourth wife. Unfortunately, the king didn’t

live to enjoy his new wife for long. Only two days after giving Ana’s

bloodless body to the river, the king suffered a heart attack in his bed and

died. His new wife—barely twenty and unprepared to rule—married Ana’s

eldest son the next afternoon and went on to give the city many sons and

daughters.

Ana had died for nothing. Her soul lingered to see that painful fact, to

see her diary hidden away by her maid, and to see the truth of the

covenant and the dark magic it nurtures lost to the people living beneath

the dome. Her spirit lingered for centuries, reaching out to Yuan’s rulers in

their dreams, hoping one would discover her diary. She was a part of the

city, but a piece that didn’t fit, the keeper of a secret even more important

than the location of the covenant, the keeper of the truth about the Dark

Heart and the only way to end the nightmare of life under the domes.

Love. The secret is love.

A citizen of the domed cities and a man or woman of the Monstrous

tribes must love each other more than they love anything else. When they

do, the cities will fall, life will return to the desert, and every creature

dwelling on the planet will be made whole and strong. All it takes is love.

My mother must have also somehow discovered the truth. That had

to be why she took me into the desert, and why she attempted to destroy

our family when she was locked in the tower and denied a way out of Yuan.

She wasn’t crazy. If she’d succeeded in burning the three of us to ash that

night, there would have been no blood for the Dark Heart. Murder would

have succeeded in destroying Yuan, but only love will heal our world.

I love Gem. I grow more certain of that every day. I also grow more

certain that Gem is dead.

He would have returned by now if he weren’t, I know he would. He

must have died out there in the desert, and now I will never be able to tell

him how much he means to me. At least, not in this life.

I ask Ana’s spirit if I will see Gem in the afterlife, but that is one

question she refuses to answer. She doesn’t want to believe I will share her

fate; she wants to believe Gem and I will end the curse, but I know better.

Yuan is failing. I awake each morning certain I’ll find Junjie and the guards

waiting outside my bedroom, prepared to kill me if I continue to refuse to

give my life for my city. Bo can hold them off for only so long. They will

come. Soon.

My time grows shorter than the thorns on the royal roses.

I tell Needle about the secret location of the covenant, but warn her

to stay away from the garden. Still, I’m not surprised when she returns one

evening with a scroll wrapped in cloth so ancient that it falls apart in my

hands.

I unroll the paper carefully. Needle reads and signs each word. I

follow along, flinching when she reaches the final line and I learn that Ana

was telling the truth. Our city’s bargain with the Dark Heart calls only for

the death of “one bound by oath of marriage to the first sacrifice.”

One bound by oath. Not a woman bound by oath. Not a queen. A

king would serve just as well.

It’s a little betrayal in a world ravaged by centuries of hatred and

suffering, but it doesn’t feel little. It feels like proof that there is nothing

good within the human heart. How could there be? If an entire generation

could condemn Yuan’s daughters to death because they found that

preferable to the death of Yuan’s sons?

What is there worth fighting for? Worth dying for? What have any of

my dreams ever been worth?

That night, I tuck the covenant beneath my mattress, lay my head on

my pillow, and dream of the day my mother took me walking outside the

dome. I smell the wild scent of the desert; I feel the sun hot on my cheeks. I

hear a whisper on the wind, a voice begging me to stand up to my people

and for my people, to force the darkness to end with me, to save my

daughters, to save myself.

To be brave.

I wasn’t brave. I was as afraid of that voice as I was of death itself. So

afraid I buried every memory of my life before I heard it, in an attempt to

keep myself from remembering what I had been asked to do. But I’m not

afraid anymore.

I am finished with my fearful heart. I am ready. I am brave.

Are you certain? Needle mouths.

“Yes. But I want you to go first,” I say, refusing to meet her sad eyes.

I look at the pile of bricks in the corner instead. Needle has been

gathering them—one by one, two by two—for the past month. As soon as

Bo left this afternoon—lips pressed into a thin line after all his pleading

won him nothing but a pat on the shoulder and a walk to the door—she

began pulling the bricks from their hiding places.

Tonight is the night. Tonight I will build my own walls.

First, a barrier to cover up the entrance to the tower, then a wall in

front of my bedroom door, and finally another behind. It should be enough

to hold the soldiers until tomorrow morning. And maybe even a bit longer.

It will be enough.

The city is on the brink.

Suddenly, this very morning, Yuan went from ailing to falling to

pieces. The walls began to crumble. Above our heads, the dome groans like

a field animal that’s swallowed something foul. Needle says only the nobles

still believe the city can be saved. The people from the Banished camp, the

farmers and their remaining livestock, and all but a few of the commoners

from the city center are fleeing into the desert, bound for Port South.

I hope they make it there safely. I don’t wish them any pain, but the

cost of saving Yuan is too great. The Dark Heart will not feed from this city

again.

I’ve failed to end the curse and heal our planet—either Gem is dead

or he never loved me the way I love him; I suppose I’ll never know

which—but I won’t fail in this. I’ll take one city away from the darkness.

Yuan will fall, and there will be only two cities left. And maybe someday, in

one of those cities, a girl or a boy will look out into the desert and see

someone who makes him or her want to change the world.

I close my eyes and see Gem’s face as clearly as ever. Nearly three

months, and I can still remember the way his eyes reflected the candlelight,

the warmth of his skin, the feel of his lips.

Bo didn’t mar that memory. He has been a better unwanted king

than I could have imagined—he has never stolen so much as a kiss. He has

refused to take what wasn’t freely offered.

Not a kiss, and certainly not my life.

I knew he’d been sent to kill me today. I knew it before he said a

word, before he fell to his knees, begging me to save the city and spare at

least one woman’s life. He warned me that his father would come tonight

with his own knife. Bo can’t protect me any longer. This evening, Junjie will

arrive at the tower to slit my throat, and Bo will marry another. The woman

has already been chosen, a woman older than Bo with two children she’ll

leave motherless, the oldest a five-year-old girl who will become next in

line for sacrifice if Bo never marries again. The woman’s wedding dress is

sewn and her mind made up. She will say her vows with a blade in her

hand, and willingly give her blood to the roses as soon as she is made the

queen.

Bo was so genuinely troubled by it all. It made me glad the covenant

is hidden in my room and will remain there until the city falls.

When I first learned the truth, I wanted nothing more than to throw

it in Bo’s face, to make it clear his blood would serve the roses as well as

mine. But in the end, I had to keep the ancient king’s secret. If Bo knew he

could feed the roses, he might pick up the knife and do so, and I can’t have

that. I need the Dark Heart to starve. I need the city to fall. Soon. Tonight, if

I’m lucky.

“You have to go.” I turn back to Needle, who has yet to budge. “You

have to tell the people of Port South how to end the curse.”

Her bird hands flit from my shoulder to my cheeks, but her kindness

offers no comfort.

There was a fire in the desert again last night, Needle mouths.

My stomach flutters. “It’s probably some of our people,” I say.

“Camping by the dome, waiting to see if the city will be restored.”

It could be him, she mouths. Let me go and see.

Him. Gem. Even thinking his name makes my heart do strange things

in my chest.

“It’s too late,” I whisper. “If he loved me, he would have come

sooner.”

Needle’s fingers move beneath my hand. Maybe he was prevented

from returning.

“How?” I ask.

Maybe he was hurt or grew ill. Maybe his people did the same thing

to him that yours have done to you.

“I don’t think the Monstrous have towers or walls made of stone.”

Needle scowls. Don’t make jokes. Junjie will kill you.

“Only if he can get through my walls before the city crumbles.”

Then the city will kill you.

“The city was always going to kill me,” I say. “At least this way I will

take Yuan with me.”

But what if Gem—

“Leave,” I snap, unable to bear thinking of Gem right now. “I have to

get started. Even the fast-setting mortar will need an hour to gain strength.

I must have the first wall built before sunset. You’re wasting my time.”

Needle’s lip trembles and her eyes shine with unshed tears, and I

immediately feel terrible. Poor, tired Needle, my dear friend.

“Please, love,” I say, taking her sweet face in my hands. “You have

been my mother and my sister and my slave and my keeper for too long.

Take your bag and go. Go to Port South and live. Find people you can trust

and tell them the truth. There can still be a future for this planet. All hope is

not lost.”

Except for me.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Gem who’s been lighting those fires by the

stones these past two nights. It’s too late. Even if I let myself believe in

Needle’s excuses for his long absence, there’s no way I can join him in the

desert. If I set foot outside the tower, I’m a dead woman. The soldiers have

been ordered to kill me on sight. Bo warned me of as much this afternoon.

Junjie is determined that I will die before sunset and has enlisted every

remaining citizen of Yuan to his cause.

Save one.

“You’ve been so good to me,” I say. “I want you to live and be

happy.”

I would rather stay, Needle signs, but I’ll do as you ask. She picks up

the pack we’ve filled with food and clothes and all of my jewels. No need

for them to be buried along with me, not when they could help Needle get

settled in her new home. I’m not sure how the people of Port South treat

their damaged people, but I know a rich mute woman has a better chance

than a penniless one.

I will miss you, my friend, she mouths, refuting my claim that she’s

been a slave or a keeper, with the same firm grace with which she’s always