Chenna’s room is at the opposite end of the hall, and though I can’t see her past the backs of Zhen, Zhin, Mariko, and Aoki crowding in her doorway, I assume she’s somewhere inside. Sure enough, her voice floats out a second later.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I roll my neck as I amble over, easing out the crick from sleeping. Wren’s door is shut, and so is Blue’s, but as I step in front of her room, there’s a movement behind the rice-paper screen and I notice the very Blue-shaped shadow bunched at the edge of the door. I push down the urge to call her out, instead turning to where the other girls are clustered in the doorway across the hall. Zhen and Zhin greet me as I join them, but Aoki and Mariko don’t look away from Chenna.
“Just a few details,” Mariko presses, leaning in, the shoulder of her robe slinking down her arm. She flips it back up distractedly. “We’ll find out for ourselves soon enough.”
“Exactly.” Chenna’s face is tight, a slight flush of color darkening the apples of her cheeks. But apart from that, she looks just as she did the day before—unruffled. The picture of composure. “So you don’t have long to wait.”
Mariko pouts at this, but the twins nod.
“We’re sorry,” Zhin says. “You don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to.”
“But if you do need to talk,” Zhen adds, “we’re here.”
With a kind smile, the twins return to their rooms with their arms linked, heads close. As Mariko huffs and moves away, I slip in beside Aoki. She blinks, barely registering me.
“Oh! Hi, Lei.” Her eyes click back to Chenna. “Well, thanks anyway…” she mumbles before heading off.
“Lei,” Chenna greets me unsmilingly. “I suppose you have a hundred questions, too?”
“Actually, just one.” I drop my voice. “How do you feel? I hope… I hope you’re all right.”
Chenna blinks at me. She smiles, though it’s stiff. “I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”
Her eyes glide past my shoulder as the door behind me opens. I brace myself for the cutting remark that’s surely about to come, but instead Blue’s voice floats out calmly and politely.
“Good morning, Chenna. Nine.”
I lift a brow, glancing round to see Blue slink down the corridor, her long azure hair swishing.
“Wow,” Chenna says once she’s gone. “She’s really annoyed.”
I give her a wry smile. “She was so sure she was going to be picked first.”
A frown puckers Chenna’s forehead. “You know, I thought so, too, what with her father’s position in the court. But when I asked the King why he chose me, he said it was because of some dream he had the night before. He’d been in Jana, flying over the southern deserts. He thought it was a sign from the heavenly rulers that they wanted him to select me.”
“Maybe I can bribe a shaman to keep his dreams out of Xienzo,” I murmur.
As she goes to shut the door, Chenna adds, eyes not quite meeting mine, “Or all of Ikhara, for that matter.”
As the days sift past, my life dissolves into a blur of routine and ritual. It surprises me how quickly I fall into the palace’s rhythms, the shape of my world before coming here erased as though by water on ink and replaced with a new life of lessons and gossip, banquets and ceremonies, rules and rituals. I don’t forget about wanting to find out what happened to my mother, but I’m so busy I don’t get the chance. I also know that kind of thing won’t go unnoticed, and General Yu’s threat is still fresh in my mind.
You are going to try, and you are going to succeed! Or else your family—what pitiful part that’s left of it—will be punished. Make no mistake, keeda. Their blood will be here. Do you understand me?
On your hands.
Any time I have the urge to give up or defy Madam Himura’s orders, the General’s cool voice slinks back into my ears, and I know the only option is to keep going.
At least, for now.
Each day as a Paper Girl begins with the morning gong. The maids will have woken earlier to ready the braziers and bathing barrels and light incense, their smoky-sweet scent always in the air. Lill takes me to the bathing courtyard to wash before dressing me in simple cotton robes, my hair swept into a tight bun on the top of my head. Once we’re ready, we have breakfast—usually rice balls, pickled vegetables and salted fish, and delicate cuts of fresh fruit: peaches, papaya, honey apple, winter melon—before heading to our first lesson of the day.
After my embarrassing performance at the Unveiling Ceremony, most of the teachers don’t seem to expect much of me. One of them especially takes an instant dislike to me. Mistress Tunga is a broad-hipped woman with wide-set eyes who leads our lessons in movement, covering everything from how to walk elegantly to the proper way to kneel in robes. She often singles me out as an example of how not to do things. She’ll have me pace the length of the room in front of the other girls, a practice block held between my knees, while she points out every mistake. “No, no, walk taller, Lei-zhi! Remember what I said last week? Imagine a thread running from the base of your feet to the top of your head. Now, lean back just so and let your hips jut out the tiniest amount.… Not like that! You look as though you’re about to keel over from too much sake. After what happened at the Unveiling Ceremony, that’s the last thing you want others to think of you. All right, settle down, girls! Sniggering isn’t becoming.”
Just as bad are our dance classes. They’re taught by Madam Chu, a dignified old swan-form demon, the pearly feathers flowing over her slender body tinged with gray. She flits around us, feathers rustling as she sets us into place. This isn’t dancing the way I saw it done back home, all abandon and laughter and loose limbs. This is a kind of clockwork, technical thing. Every flute of a wrist, every curve and bend of a limb is measured—or not, as it often applies to me.
After our morning classes we return to Paper House for lunch, either with Mistress Eira or Madam Himura, to update them on our progress. If the King desires the company of one of the girls, this is usually when we’re notified, and that girl is taken away for preparations. For the rest of us, it’s back for more lessons until sunset. By then I’m desperate for sleep, but our nights are just as busy. There are banquets with court officials, trips to plays and dance recitals, ceremonies to attend.
By the time we finally return to our rooms, it’s often past midnight. Despite our tiredness, Aoki and I usually stay up for a while, sipping tea and snacking on pineapple tarts Lill sneaks us from the kitchens. In these stolen moments, all the stress of our lessons, of being away from our families and having to adjust to this new way of life, melts away, and I go to sleep afterward with a smile on my lips and warmth in my chest that feels a lot like happiness.
And yet.
As the days go by without my name appearing on the bamboo chip, an uncomfortable notion starts to grow inside me: that it never will. And while part of me, most of me, is relieved, there is also shame, and the bright, cruel sear of failure.
Even though Aoki still hasn’t been chosen, either, it’s me Madam Himura scolds. Every day she reminds me what a disappointment I am. “You’d better find a way to show him those heavens-blessed eyes of yours soon, before I throw you out like the waste of space you’ve so far proven to be.”