The doctor’s nostrils twitch. “Of course, Madam.” His voice is as scratchy-sounding as his hair looks. As Madam Himura moves aside, he steps closer, hunching to bring his face in line with mine. Then, before I can process what he’s doing, he reaches out and tugs my sash free.
My robes loosen. The doctor pulls to open them and I grapple against him to keep them shut, the blood rushing in my ears.
“W-what’s going on?” I gasp, looking past the doctor to where Madam Himura is settling herself in the corner of the room, a scroll unfurled on the floor in front of her.
“Stop struggling, girl,” she commands, not even glancing from her reading. A maid crouches in front of her, lifting a teapot. “Let the doctor inspect you.”
“But—”
“Navya! Go help.”
Jumping up, the maid rushes over. “Please, Mistress,” she pleads, clasping my arms. “The doctor won’t hurt you.”
But I continue to struggle as the robes are ripped from my body, first the outer layer, then the inner. The maid is Steel caste, like Lill—most of the servants here are—and even though her jackal eyes are kind and she doesn’t seem to enjoy herself as she helps the doctor undress me, my face burns with humiliation at my disrobing by two demons. It’s as though I’m somehow doubly unclothed in their presence, lacking in robes and demon adornments, and I feel very clearly in this moment what it means to be a Paper caste. To have a body sheathed in something so delicate and easily damaged.
“On the table,” the doctor orders.
Head low, tears stinging my eyes, I do as he says.
“Hold her.”
The maid pins my arms down, though she needn’t bother. I lie still from then on no matter how private the places the doctor touches are, Mistress Eira’s words from last night playing in my mind.
Your lives belong to the court now, girls. The sooner you understand that, the better.
Lying there on the doctor’s table, the dark truth of what she said hits me. It makes me imagine another time I might be lying naked for a demon, and the horror is so real then that I have to clamp my eyes shut, wish myself away.
When the inspection is finally over, I sit up and wrap my arms around my body. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes. The doctor moves away, but the young maid hovers nearby, watching me with her chin tipped down, hands clasped in front of her.
“Get dressed,” Madam Himura snaps. Her feathers rustle as she gets to her feet. “We don’t have all night.”
The rest of the assessments pass in a blur. There are a fortune-teller’s analysis and a meeting with the court’s most reputable astrologer, and a royal shaman checks for any magic I might have used to change my appearance. There’s also another doctor’s examination, though this time by a qi doctor, who, thankfully, doesn’t require me to take my clothes off.
It’s past midnight by the time I get back to my room, so I’m surprised to find Lill waiting for me. She leaps up to hug me the second I walk through the door. “I was so worried!” she cries.
“Has something happened?” I ask, untangling from her. The tone of my voice is hollow. Just as I feel.
Her doe ears drop. “I—I thought you’d have heard, Mistress. One of the girls… she didn’t come back from her inspection. She must have used an enchantment on herself during the selection process and the royal shaman found out. Apparently it’s happened before, but not for many years.” She adds shakily, “You were taking so long I got worried that something had happened to you, too.”
“They were just extra thorough with my assessments,” I explain. I think of Aoki. Cat-girl. “Which girl was it?”
“Mistress Rue. The girl from Rain. She seemed nice.”
A hazy memory returns to me from last night of a pale petite girl in an ice-blue dress. She had seemed shy, not meeting anyone’s eyes, but I noticed the quiet dignity in the way she held herself, her humble demeanor.
My belly knots. I didn’t even get a chance to speak to her.
Though I’m not sure I want to know the answer, I wet my lips and ask, “What’s going to happen to her?”
“Nothing good,” Lill says, long lashes hiding her eyes as her gaze drops, and I somehow know that we will never hear of Rue again.
EIGHT
I THOUGHT BLUE MIGHT STOP CALLING me Nine now that our numbers have dropped back down to the usual eight, but it’s the first thing she does when I arrive in the bathing courtyard the following morning.
“You let me down, Nine,” she says, thin lips curving. “I bet the others you’d be the one to be thrown out.”
I stiffen. Lill tugs on my elbow. “Ignore her, Mistress,” she mumbles. She tries to pull me onward, but I don’t move.
Blue is lying back in her tub, arms slung over its sides. Her collarbones are as sharp as a pair of featherless wings, stretched across her narrow chest like a necklace, and her breasts below—which she exposes without any hint of self-consciousness—are just as pointed.
Blue is all angles. Mind and body.
I meet her eyes with my own narrowed. “I hope you didn’t bet a lot. From what Madam Himura said, it doesn’t sound like your father will help you with your debts.”
The easy chatter of the courtyard drops in an instant. The only sounds are the coos of birds nesting in the eaves, the splash of water as the other girls shift uncomfortably.
Blue’s lip curls. “Don’t pretend to know anything about my life. What could an herb-shop owner’s daughter from Xienzo know? Especially one whose own mother left her family to become a whore.”
Her words hit me like a slap.
“What did you say?”
“News travels fast in the palace, Nine. Better get used to it.” She rises out of the barrel, wearing her nakedness proudly, like armor, eyeing me with a stare that dares me to look away. “It’s a shame your mother didn’t stick around,” she adds, picking a bathrobe from the nearest maid and wrapping it around her slim frame. “I bet she’d be so proud to see her daughter following in her footsteps.”
And then I’m running at her, snarling, my fingers flexing as though they could grow claws. I’m inches away from scraping her face off—that horrible, smug face, how dare she—when there’s a blur of movement at my side. Before I can react, a pair of arms encircle me, pulling me off my feet.
“Let go!” I yell, kicking out, but the girl’s grip is strong. She pins me against her, one elbow hooked at my waist, the other across the front of my body. A scent unfurls from her skin: something fresh, oceanlike.
Somehow I know it’s Cat-girl.
Blue’s face, shaken for a moment, settles quickly back into a sneer. “Well,” she says, fixing the tie of her bathrobe. “That’s no way for a Paper Girl to behave.”
“Enough, Blue,” Cat-girl snaps. “Before Madam Himura or Mistress Eira hear.”
I expect Blue to shoot back a scathing comment, or at least take offense at the way Cat-girl spoke to her. But after glaring at me a while more, she shrugs. “I suppose you’re right. No point wasting their time over something so petty.”
My hands wrap into fists. “Calling my mother a whore isn’t petty!” I shout.