“Who . . . who are you?” Lu’s voice creaked in a most unregal fashion, blinking up at the man’s face. She tried to rise but found she was pinned to the earth by the weight of the Ashina boy, who had come to a rest across her knees.
He seemed as stunned as she, but the sound of her voice returned his bearings to him with a start. He jerked away from her as though he’d been burned where they touched, scrabbling away on elbows and heels.
Lu frowned. She’d been trying to protect him.
She made to push herself up, then let out a cry as she put her left hand to the earth. The crossbow wound. Her arm gushed hot blood at the sudden pressure. Shock and momentum had kept the pain at bay, but now it seared through her. Her arm felt on the verge of splitting in half.
“You’re hurt.”
The stranger lowered down to his knees with some effort. Then, with contradictory grace, he parted the silken tatters that had once been her sleeve to better view the wound.
“This will need to be sewn closed; it is very deep. For now I must staunch the bleeding.” He pulled a scarf from around his neck and wound it around her arm. Lu stifled a scream of agony as he pulled the cloth tight.
Desperate for something else to focus on, she cast her gaze toward where the Ashina boy was cautiously standing, testing his limbs and joints.
“Are you hurt?” she called to him, her voice strained.
“I’m fine,” he said coldly, as though he thought she might be disappointed by this news. He turned to look at the old man tending her arm. “Omair, what was that?”
Omair! The name gave her a start.
The old man shook his head and waved them up. “Inside! We cannot linger out here where someone might spot us.”
“Omair,” Lu repeated aloud, grabbing ahold of one gnarled brown hand. “Omair of Ansana? Shin Yuri sent me to you!” she stammered.
“Let’s go inside,” the old man repeated, casting a wary glance about them.
“Inside? Inside where?” She looked around properly for the first time. They were no longer in the depths of the inner forest, but on a grassy hilltop. Farmland sprawled about them. A large silvery tree stretched high overhead, casting dappled shade across her upturned face. There was a door in the trunk of the tree.
“Inside,” the man said as Lu took a step toward it. “Then we can talk.”
But talking was deferred in favor of the more immediate tasks of stitching up Lu’s arm, and—seemingly far less urgent in her mind—heating a large iron pot of porridge. At his prompting, the Ashina boy brought a bowl of it over to her with an air of hostile reluctance. Lu accepted it, but her stomach felt like a knot of twisted iron, heavy and sullen. Politesse required she take a bite, but looking at the pale mash, she wondered if she would ever want food again. She set the bowl down.
The man regarded her with keen, curious eyes. “Yuri was right,” he said. “There’s something about you that feels just the same as your mother.”
There was a weight in his voice she didn’t understand. How could this stranger know her mother? The empress did not make a habit of befriending rural peasant apothecarists, surely.
Lu stood, fighting off a wave of dizziness. Her arm ached at the sudden rush of blood. “I must go back. My cousin—I don’t know what he has planned.”
“Yuri told me to keep you hidden until he arrived.”
Her hand twitched toward the sword at her waist. This old man couldn’t keep her imprisoned against her will—he could hardly stand up straight. But then she remembered whatever it was he had done in the forest. And there was the slipskin wolf to consider. She glanced sidelong to where the Ashina boy sat moodily on a stool by the cook fire. She doubted he would put up a fight; he wanted her gone.
It was hard to believe it was him, but there he was: the same hard-angled ochre face, the coarse black hair forever falling across his black eyes. Those eyes, though . . . they had changed. Once they’d sparkled like midnight starscapes.
Now they were black like an absence.
She could imagine what he’d been through since. The only true mystery was how he’d survived to end up here. She knew well enough what had happened to his Kith—to all the Gifted who had fought back.
They shouldn’t have fought at all, she thought with a sudden flare of anger. The slipskins had no business going up against the imperial army; what had they expected? And her father had offered them a way out. But they had been too proud for that, too in love with their land and their traditions and their magic.
She understood, in a way. It was the decision she herself would’ve chosen had she been in their position. Still, had they bent just a bit—
Someone gasped. Lu looked up in time to see the apothecarist pitch forward in a swoon.
“Omair!” The Ashina boy had been skulking around the edges of the room, passing uncertain looks at both Lu and the apothecarist before, but now he leaped forward. He caught the old man by the shoulders and guided him upright again.
There was an odd gentleness in his movements. Survivors of the northern expansion had been relocated to labor camps—and yet, this boy was here, just outside Yulan City. This Omair must have had something to do with that, she mused.
“I’m all right,” Omair murmured. “I’m fine.” He blinked, shaking his head, as though to clear his eyes of some obscuration. “I’m fine,” he repeated. “Only a bit depleted. The spell—back there in the forest. I haven’t worked magic like that in many years.”
Lu stared. This man knew her mother. And he knew magic. Not a few sleights of hand, or the recipe of some swindler’s herbal elixir. Real magic. The sort that was supposed to have disappeared years ago, along with Yunis.
“Who are you?” she blurted.
He smiled wryly. “That would depend on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you!” Lu snapped, more sharply than she’d intended. She’d had enough mystery to last a lifetime. “Why did Yuri send me here? How do you know him?”
If the apothecarist was offended by her tone, he didn’t show it. “That’s as good a place as any to start, I suppose,” he sighed. “Yuri and I grew up together.”
She frowned. “Yuri grew up in the court.”
“So did I, after a fashion.” He caught the skepticism on her face and smiled faintly. “I fit the part of the rural peasant well, don’t I? Well, that is how I was born. Poor and coarse, in a town not unlike this one. But I passed the civil service exam and attended the Imperial Academy, where I met Yuri. After the core years, we were divided into specialized colleges based on our aptitudes. Yuri went the martial route to become an officer—no surprise there—while I reluctantly found myself in the monastic order.”
“What you did back there,” Lu interrupted. “Hana monks don’t learn . . . that.”
“What? Magic?” he supplied. “They did. And they still do—of a sort. In the Imperial Academy we were initiated into lower-level, domesticated forms of magic—reading runes, energy healing, herbology; that sort of thing.”
Was he being willfully obtuse? “What you did back there was somewhat beyond herbology.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But all magics are related at their core. All come down to the manipulation of energies. What I did today would be considered the use of ‘free magic’—a bit of a misnomer, really. Lay folk call it that, but in the academy our instructors felt ‘free’ lent the misconception that it was free of cost, which no magic ever is. They preferred the label ‘feral magic,’ to impress upon us that it had the strength and the unpredictability of any wild thing. Because it is used by an individual and not an order, it must be paid for by individual sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?” the Ashina boy demanded warily. Lu had nearly forgotten about him, but he had retaken his seat on the periphery of the room.
“Blood, say, for quick, coarse bursts of magic,” Omair told them. “Or for more skilled wielders, life energy. Each person has it—some more, some less. And it can fluctuate during certain events in one’s life—childbirth, death, moments of strong grief or anger. Even menstruating can heighten a person’s powers.”
“That’s what you used to save us earlier,” Lu deduced. “Life energy. Your own.”
Omair nodded. “In part. I wasn’t sure if I had the strength left in me, but wild places—forests, mountains—are quite dense with their own loose magic, and I was able to draw from that as well.” He sighed. “Cities have their own sort of magic, but it’s more difficult to wield. People bring noise and disharmony. Makes it tricky, inconsistent.”
“But,” Lu pressed. “If you didn’t learn to use free magic at the academy—”
Omair nodded. “Yes, well. I had—extracurricular interests. I learned from a friend. I suppose you know the history of the Gray Shamanesses?”
Lu started at the change of topic. “Certainly. Everyone knows that.”
“Nok?”
The boy gave the barest affirmative nod of head. “Of course. Everyone knows.”
Lu narrowed her eyes, but the boy ignored her and continued: “The Gray Order were the elite shamanesses of Yunis. They served the Yunian mountain gods for five thousand years. Then the empire invaded and murdered everyone.”
“That is not what happened,” Lu retorted hotly. This boy had suffered at the hands of the empire, she knew, but someone had fed him outright lies. “My grandfather tried to broker a deal with the Yunians for the shared use of northern lands, but they refused. In the ensuing Gray War the shamanesses were a savage force, using unnatural magics to violently slaughter Hana and Hu troops.”
“Oh, right, while you noble imperials civilly slaughtered women and children using natural swords and crossbows.”
Her body bristled like a too-taut wire he had plucked. “War is brutal. Casualties are inevitable.” But even as the words fell from her mouth, she felt they came from someone else.
“It wasn’t a war; it was a massacre!” The boy stood so fast his stool knocked back up against the wall.
“Oh?” she retorted. “It happened long before either of us was born—were you there, somehow?”
“I didn’t need to be!” he snapped. “I saw what your forces did to my people.”
“We’re talking about the Gray War, not the Slipskin Rebellion,” she reminded him. “Yunis had an army.”
He ignored the last part. “Don’t play stupid. Yunis was a peaceful city, and their army was less than half the size of yours. And it doesn’t matter which war we’re talking of; you imperials won’t hesitate to attack defenseless people if they have something you want. You came after the Gifted Kith with your full strength, and we had no armies at all. You know that—you saw what we were with your own eyes!”
It was true. She remembered it still: the field of painted leather yurts dotting the northern desert, amid hunched scrub trees and stalwart yellow flowers scrabbling up through dry splits in the earth. Pretty brown goats led by herders; children chasing elders who taught songs and histories and crafts. A community, not an army.
She knew it all along, so why was she arguing with him? Was this how children grew to be adults who repeated the mistakes of their forefathers? Not by ill will, but by rote?
Lu felt suddenly very tired. “I’m sorry for what happened to you slipskins, but that—”
“Stop using that word. We’re Gifted Kith, not ‘slipskins.’ Gods, my father was right—you Hu have no respect for us, or what you used to be. Despicable. You’re traitors— worse than the Hana!”
Lu opened her mouth to counter, but Omair interrupted. “Enough,” he said quietly, firmly. “Both of you.”
Nok frowned but resumed his seat. Whatever hold the old apothecarist had over him was strong.
Omair turned to Lu once more. “Tell me what else you know about the shamanesses.”
She nodded, trying to hide how flustered she was. “As part of the treaty at the end of the Gray War, in exchange for allowing Yunis to retain its sovereignty, the Yunians agreed to discontinue their order. The existing shamanesses were too dangerous to leave in Yunian hands, of course, so they were sent south as wards of the empire—”
“Hostages,” the boy interjected.
Lu ignored him. “They were taken to the capital to live in the Immaculate City. There, the shamanesses were assigned menial tasks normally relegated to the lowest-ranking monks and nuns. Dressing bodies for burial, laundry duties, that sort of thing. Then, shortly after my birth, it was discovered the shamanesses had been plotting against the empire. In turn . . .”
She faltered, but forced herself to push forward. She did not look at the Ashina boy. “In turn, the entire order was executed.”
Omair nodded. “I believe the shamanesses were innocent of the crimes for which they died. The victims of politics, warring court factions.”
Lu opened her mouth to object, to demand evidence for this theory, but she hesitated. The shamanesses were too dangerous to live, she told herself. That was what she’d been taught. It had to be true; who would have innocent girls put to death, otherwise? She almost asked the question aloud, but Omair continued speaking before she could. She couldn’t help but be relieved.
“I was taught magic by one of the shamanesses.” The old man averted his eyes as he said the words, an odd flicker of shame crossing his face. “Tsai. She was . . . a good friend, to both me and Yuri. Slight, almost brittle to look at, but that exterior hid immense power. A star crammed inside a soap bubble, Yuri liked to joke.”
Lu waited for him to continue, but he did not. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said finally, “but I don’t understand what that has to do with what’s happening now.”
“Your grandfather thought that by removing the shamanesses, he was taking away the Yunians’ magic: the one weapon they had that the empire did not. What he failed to understand was that the actual magic, the raw energy, comes from the city itself—locked away in the bricks of its buildings, the stone of the mountains upon which it was erected.” He paused. “Yuri thinks your cousin knows this, and he seeks to take it for himself.”
“Set?” Lu demanded incredulously.
“Yes,” Omair confirmed. “His guru—that former monk he keeps with him?”
“The one he calls Brother,” Lu supplied.
“Yes, that is the one.” Omair nodded. “Long before he came into your cousin’s service, Brother was a Hana mul monk, specializing in energy healing. Talented but arrogant. He was assigned as a physician at one of the first labor camps up north. Instead, finding no supervision, he began carrying out his own agenda. He . . . experimented on the children.”
His sad eyes drifted past Lu then. “Nok, Yuri tells me you might remember him.”
Lu turned. The color had drained from the Ashina boy’s face. He looked small and faint.
“I remember him,” he said, his voice distant. Lu could see thoughts racing behind his eyes—he was making connections and drawing conclusions to which she was not privy.
Omair refocused on Lu. “Brother’s experiments failed, and he was soon removed from the camps. Too many healthy young workers dying on his watch. Yuri tracked him for a time, but the man disappeared. Then he reappeared at your cousin’s side, whispering in his ear. He—they—want to find Yunis. They want their secrets. Their knowledge—”
Omair nodded grimly. “The combination of the energy in the Ruvai Mountains and the Yunians’ ability to wield it was like nothing else on earth. Had they used it to its full power during the wars, I suspect they not only could have won but also marched south and left Yulan City a smoldering ruin.”
“So why didn’t they?”
Omair shook his head. “I don’t know. They were not a martial people. Perhaps they thought they could stay in place and withstand your grandfather’s army. Perhaps they did not want that blood on their hands. More likely, though, they knew that magic of that scale, that power, could not be properly controlled by humans. That it could have unforeseen, devastating consequences.”
“I don’t think my cousin would have such qualms,” Lu mused.
“No,” Omair agreed darkly. “Yuri thought not, either.”
Silence stretched between them. An ember in the cook fire popped and Lu jumped.
“So, what now?” the Ashina boy demanded. “She can’t stay here. Somebody—either a patient or the Wangs—is going to notice we have a mysterious houseguest who happens to match the age and description of a missing princess.”
Lu bristled. This isn’t any of your business, she wanted to tell him. “I’ll stay hidden,” she said instead.
“Please. Keeping you inside is like keeping a tiger in a cage—”
“Oh, now you know me so well all of a sudden!” she scoffed, cutting him short.
Omair closed his eyes as though the two of them were making it very difficult for him to exist.
“Stop yelling!” Nokhai snapped.
“I’m not yelling!” Lu hissed.
The boy rolled his eyes. “Well now you’re not, but you’ve already made enough noise to bring the entire imperial army down upon us—”
“The army,” Lu cut him off. “An army. I need an army. An army to dethrone Set.”
Omair opened his eyes.
“An army?” the Ashina boy repeated incredulously. “To rival that of the empire? Do you know how many men that is?”
“It wouldn’t have to be as big,” Lu countered, mind whirling now. She set her sword on the table and began pacing the narrow span of the room. “Smaller is better, so we can move covertly, maintain the element of surprise.”
“It could be enough,” Omair mused, dark eyes brightening. “If you were able to infiltrate the capital with them.”
“Yes,” Lu said, galvanized. “The royal guard is bound to come over to my side. Most of them are from Hu families, and they know me. They’ve watched me grow up. Set is an interloper—a stranger to them.”
“That’s all well and good,” countered Nokhai. “But where do you propose to find an army in the first place? I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Princess, but the empire is vast, and it—we— all belong to the emperor. Set. Not you—you’re just a pariah now. And you could travel for weeks in any direction and not reach a land where the empire doesn’t have soldiers and subjects.”
“Not any direction,” she said, scarcely realizing the truth of it before the words left her mouth. “Not north.”
“North?” the boy repeated. “Need I remind you again that you killed everyone up north?”
How many times do I have to tell him that wasn’t me? she wondered. Aloud though, she said, “Not the slipsk—not the Gifted Kith. Farther north.”
“Farther . . . Yunians?” He had the gall to laugh now. “Even if those sightings were real, I doubt they’d be happy to see you. You slaughtered them and razed their city years ago.”
“Not me,” she said, her heart quickening as the idea blossomed. “The empire did. And I’m a pariah now. But a pariah with a better claim to the throne than Set. And if the Yunians were to help me reclaim my rightful throne, I could facilitate very generous terms in their favor—especially if I warn them of Set’s interest in them.”
“It might work,” Omair murmured. “The Yunian force can’t be very strong. They would certainly welcome an opportunity to preempt a long, bloody fight.”
“Yes, exactly!” she said. “It will work.”
“Have you both lost your minds? Omair,” the Ashina boy pleaded. “This is crazy. You must see it’s crazy.”
“It has to be crazy,” Lu countered. “What’s happened to me is crazy. Extraordinary. And it will take extraordinary measures to set things right.”
“You know that expression ‘fighting fire with fire’?” the boy said sarcastically. “I don’t think it’s meant to be taken as advice.”
“When can we leave for Yunis?” Lu said, turning back to Omair.
“We?” the boy repeated. “No way,” he said flatly, rounding on Omair. “She can do whatever she likes, but there’s no way we’re helping her with whatever crazy plan she comes up with.”
Lu frowned. The old man did look unsteady now, but she suspected there was more to him than met the eye. “It’s his decision,” she told the Ashina boy. “If he wants to join me, it’s his choice.”
“Stay out of it,” the boy bit back.
“This concerns me as much as it does you,” Lu objected, struggling to keep her patience. “More so, even. The fate of thousands could rest upon this. Do you think your life will be better with my cousin on the throne?”
“It won’t make an ounce of difference to me. Both of you are imperial swine.”
The words stung more than they had any right to. “You met my cousin when he was just a boy. You know what a monster he was—is. Imagine that same monster with command over armies. You’re not seeing the big picture.”
The boy whirled on her. “And that’s all you see, isn’t it! Winning your damned throne. Not the people whose lives you’ll ruin or end to get there.”
It was too much. Her cousin’s betrayal—the betrayal of inner court officials her father had trusted, who had known her since infancy. Exile. And now this wrathful boy, this specter from her past whom she could not seem to quite reconcile to the present, insisted on standing in the way of the one solution she had to any of her problems.
Without meaning to, she took a step forward so they were eye to eye. The boy glared back with steely resolve. Lu was pleased to find she was slightly taller than him. “What is your contention with me? What did I ever do to you?”
The boy laughed in her face. It sounded like a bark, spare and hard and devoid of mirth. “What did you ever do to me? What did . . . I’ll tell you—”
Omair banged his cane on the floor. “Enough, enough! Nok, I am sorry, I know you must see this as a betrayal of sorts, but I will be going north with Princess Lu. Please try to understand. She is correct—our lives will not be better seeing Lord Set on the throne.”
Then he sighed and cast his eyes out the window. The sun had set since they had arrived, Lu saw, the sky a middling cobalt blue, wavering uncertainly between twilight and darkness. Omair turned to her. “Princess,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to my apprentice alone. We can go out into the garden.”
Lu shook her head, glaring at the Ashina boy as she turned on her heel toward the back door. “No,” she said. “I’ll go. Far be it from me to displace anyone from their home. Again.”