Just when will he choose to devour me?
TEN
MY VIEW IS OBSTRUCTED BY THE long sashes hanging over the palanquin’s open sides, so this is how I see the palace properly for the first time: in snatched glimpses, the blur of movement and color. The lowering sun tints everything in a golden haze. It looks dreamlike, and feels it, too, as though I were looking out through someone else’s eyes. I’m about to become a Paper Girl. The concept is still ridiculous and ungraspable, even though here I am, sheathed in silver, hundreds of humans and demons watching my carriage pass, craning for one look at my face.
Yesterday Mistress Eira showed us a map of the palace. I picture it now, trying to keep track of where we’re going. I haven’t forgotten about finding my mother. Maybe I’ll see something that will give me a clue as to where she might be.
The palace grounds are arranged in a gridlike system, divided into courts, which are further separated into two areas: the Outer Courts, where all the daily services, work, and residential areas are, and the private Inner Courts, where only those of certain positions are allowed. Women’s Court is in the northeast block of the palace, in the Outer Courts. We first travel south, passing through City Court, a vast, bustling area of trade, markets, and restaurants. Then we head west through Ceremony Court, the square behind the main gates where I arrived with the General, and on to Industry Court, with its smoking forges and leather-tanning houses. Next, we move up the west side of the palace. We pass through Mortal Court—Lill’s family’s home, another citylike area where the maids, servants, and low-level government officials live—and then Military Court, home to the training grounds and army barracks.
There are two areas in the Outer Courts we don’t visit. At the northwest tip of the palace, Ghost Court is the official burial grounds. It would be bad luck to pass through such a place on a night of celebration. We also avoid Temple Court, which is within the exterior walls of the palace itself. The royal shamans must never be disturbed; only with the King’s permission can one enter their holy grounds. At one point, though, when we take a perimeter road through one of the courts that takes us right up to the wall, a warm, prickly sensation ripples across my body, the thrum of magic imbued in my dress seeming to shiver and rustle in response.
Night has fallen by the time we arrive at the Inner Courts. At once, the crowds thin out. It’s still busy, with every court official and their servants out to greet us, but the grounds here are more spacious, so the effect is of a sudden dampening, like a thick fog pillowing the world. The quiet comes as a shock after the jubilant atmosphere of the Outer Courts, and suddenly I miss the noise and chaos. I watch the darkening grounds through the window with a growing sense of unease, my tongue padded and dry in my mouth.
We’re almost there.
The landscape of the Inner Courts is a mix of lantern-lit streets, elegant pearl-white squares, and manicured gardens, the perfume of flowers cloying in the air. Moonlight reflects off a sweeping crescent of water that loops in and out of sight as we travel—the River of Infinity. It flows in a figure eight through Royal Court, the area at the heart of the palace, designed to bring the heavens’ fortune on the King.
The last part of our journey is marked when we pass over the central-most point of the river where the four curves meet. A gilded bridge arches over the water, lined with onlookers. They toss red blossoms at us, the petals catching in the wind and swirling around our carriages like a blood-drenched snowstorm.
“Heavens’ blessings!”
“May the gods smile down upon you!”
Their words are well meaning, but much less exuberant than those of the Outer Courts. The closeness of all these demons makes me press back from the window. We’re almost over the bridge when there’s the thud of something ramming the carriage.
I fling out my arms as it jerks to the left.
Another thud.
This time the carriage lurches sideways, almost tipping over. I smash into the side, fingers scrabbling for hold just in time. A few seconds later and I would have fallen through the open side. As the oryx right the carriage, I steady myself, rubbing my right shoulder where it hit the wood. Yells and shouts are coming from outside. Still cradling my shoulder, I cross the floor and peer out through the fluttering ribbons.
And gasp.
A human—Paper caste, her furless, scaleless, clawless body standing out against the otherness of the demons all around—is being pinned to the ground by two guards. Her robes are thin and worn. Servants’ clothes. Paper caste servants aren’t allowed in the Inner Courts; she must have snuck in somehow.
Just then, she lifts her head and our eyes meet. I don’t know what I was expecting. That they’d be filled with compassion, maybe, a kindred connection from one human to another. But instead, her look is fire.
“Dzarja!” she shrieks. Flickering lantern-light distorts her face, making her mouth seem too wide, her cheeks sunken hollows. “Dirty sluts! You shame us all!”
Above her, a guard lifts a club.
I look away, but not quickly enough. The heavy crunch rings in my ears. The accusatory glare in her eyes just before the club was brought down on her skull shimmers on the back of my eyelids, a ghostly afterimage. Lowering my lashes, I hover my fingers at my chest, then turn them outward with my thumbs crossed: the sky gods salute for a newly departed soul.
“Mistress, are you all right?”
I jolt as a horned face, part rhino, skin thick like hide, appears through the ribbons.
I open my mouth a few times before finding my voice. “Y-yes.”
“Apologies for the disruption. You will be continuing on your way now.” The guard bows.
“Wait!” I say as he turns to leave. “The woman. Why did—why was she—”
His expression doesn’t change. “Why was she killed?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“She was a slave. She wasn’t permitted to be in the Inner Courts. And she posed a threat to the King’s property.”
It takes me a moment to realize he means me.
“But—you could have arrested her. You didn’t have to… to kill her.”
“Guards are permitted to execute Paper castes on the spot.” The leathery skin of his forehead wrinkles. “Is that all, Mistress?”
The tone of his voice makes me stiffen. He says it so easily, so bluntly, as though it weren’t anything at all.
“Mistress?” he repeats at my silence. “Is that all?”
I go to nod, then change it to a shake at the memory of the searing look in her eyes. “The woman, she—she called me something. Dzarja. What does it mean?”
He scowls. “It is an ugly expression.”
“For what?”
“‘Traitor,’” he says, and lowers his hand, ducking his head out of the carriage, the ribbons fluttering back into place.
Dzarja. The word haunts me as our procession starts back up. How easily the guard took the woman’s life, just the arc of a muscled arm. She wasn’t that much older than my mother when she was stolen, and I get a flash of a Paper caste face—Mama’s this time—mouth wide with terror as she is pinned down by a demon guard. I’ve been so focused on the thought that all she needed was to survive the journey here that I didn’t consider how difficult it might be for her to survive once she arrived.