We are all the same really, little one. Deep down.
A tiny smile lifts my mouth. Mama would have understood. And the loss pierces me so freshly again that I have to push out a laugh to keep the tears away.
“Maybe,” I tell Aoki, “I fancy old Master Tekoa.”
She giggles, a hand flying to her mouth. “I knew it!”
But my smile drops as I focus again on the floating platform where the King is waiting. With a flex of my fingers, I start again toward it before I lose courage, Aoki hurrying to follow. We cross the short walkway onto the platform, and a servant announces our arrival.
At once, the conversations stop. The slap of water against the sides of the platform rises loud in the hush. A bark of laughter lifts from farther off in the party, and there’s something threatening about it, a dare for anyone else to interrupt the moment. Aoki moves forward first, but it’s me everyone is watching as we approach the King. I keep my own stare lowered to the floor, on the swishing tail of Aoki’s cheongsam in front of me.
She greets him sweetly, an ingratiating furl in her voice I’ve never heard before. Then she steps aside. I lower to my knees as gracefully as I can in my long-skirted dress. I palm my hands to the floor. The memory of the last time I was like this in front of the King jolts through me, pricking goose bumps across my skin.
Two months gave me space and something almost resembling peace. But time has a way of folding itself, like a map, distances and journeys and hours and minutes tucked neatly away to leave just the realness of the before and the now, as close as hands pressed on either side of a rice-paper door.
“My King,” I say into the quiet.
“Get up.”
His voice is the same deep rumble I remember. I do as he says, barely able to breathe for the dashing of my heart against my rib cage. Finally, I gather the courage to lift my eyes to his, but the expression on his face takes me by surprise, because it’s the last thing I expect to see.
Happiness.
He looks happy. To see me.
“Lei-zhi,” he greets—as though we were old friends, all smiles and lightness. As though the last time I saw him he hadn’t been chasing me through his chambers, half naked and roaring. “I’ve missed you. Let’s take a walk, just you and me. I want to talk.”
I get to my feet quickly, just in case he offers to help. Wren’s eyes find mine, and then the King lays a hand on my shoulder to lead me off the platform. Whispers unspool into the silence like a cat slinking through the feet of a crowd. It must be common knowledge by now what happened between the King and me, and it’s clear everyone is as surprised by his warm welcome as I am.
Surprised—and uneasy. Because what might his smile be hiding?
Lifting my chin against the stares, I follow the King into the party. Interconnected pathways run between the boats and floating hookah dens and teahouses, and we take a haphazard route through them. He seems intent on meandering. Breezily, he points out various guests, stopping to greet some, telling me about the banquet they had earlier and that I really must try the new sake he had imported from Shomu, matured for three years in total darkness! It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.
I mumble noncommittal responses. My pulse is still spiked at the closeness of him, the weight of his hand on my shoulder, and alongside the fear sparks something else: anger. Flame-hot and fierce. Because how can he speak like this to me after what happened the last time we met? The week of starvation and isolation he put me through?
“I owe you an apology, Lei-zhi.”
Abruptly, the King stops. We’re in the middle of a walkway. A pair of elegant gazelle-form men strolling arm in arm behind us almost bump into us, and they back away hastily, muttering apologies amidst fervent bows. Other guests ahead turn quickly around to take a different route. The noise of the party seems to dim now, wrapping its arms around the King and me, an intimate embrace. The blue of his eyes fixes me to the spot. They’re an ice-cold color, shockingly bright against his golden-umber fur, like the sharpness of a cloudless winter sky.
“I suppose,” he starts, “I’m used to being in control. Or at least, having to appear in control.” He looses a long exhale. “I don’t admit it often, but it’s difficult. Being a King. Ruling. All of this”—he sweeps out an arm at the bustle of the party—“and more, the whole of Ikhara mine to look after. To protect. I try my best to be fair, but it’s impossible. There will always be those who lose out.” He rolls his shoulders, neck cording. “Ruling is like shaman’s magic. You can only give when you have taken.”
“Perhaps,” I reply in a level voice, “it’s about balancing who you take from.”
The King looks down his slender bovine nose at me, light from the party embellishing his outline and picking out the elaborate patterns of his gilded horns. “A fair point, I suppose, if rather naive. Not everyone can have everything. And not everyone has the same needs, or rights.”
I grit back a glower at this.
“And not everyone,” he continues, “has the same to give in the first place.” The King’s face tightens. “Take my brothers, for example. They were one, two years older than me. But at the age of seven I already understood more than they about what makes a strong ruler. I knew that if I took their lives, it would prove to the heavenly rulers and the court that I was infinitely more capable of taking over my dying father’s rule than either of them. They were put on this earth to give, while I was destined to take.” A dark current threads his words, and I hold down the instinct to squeeze my arms around my chest, to back away. “I demonstrated my worth. And still no one has acknowledged the sacrifices I made. Everything I have given for this kingdom. I am not even allowed a name. It is only Heavenly Master this, Heavenly Master that, all the godsdamn time, as though I’m just that, some heavenly ruler everyone expects to grant their prayers.”
I lick my lips, then say carefully, “Of course I’m no expert, my King, but… isn’t that sort of what a King’s job is?”
He regards me in silence from under full lashes, his face frozen in a rigid mask. For a second, it seems almost like he’s going to strike me. “People do not ask of the gods without offering them things in return,” he says stiffly.
Then he loosens. He offers me a smile, though it’s a shadow of his usual lazy grin, and I notice then the heaviness in his expression, fatigue in the dark circles under his eyes. And underneath it all, a touch of something a little delirious. “Have you heard of the Sickness, Lei-zhi?”
“The Sickness?” The phrase nudges a distant memory, though I can’t recall where I’ve heard it before.
“Something is making our land ill: forest fires in the mountains, earthquakes, crippling droughts in the southern provinces.… More than three times last year, River Zebe burst its banks. Two of my battalions are still in Marazi to aid reconstruction efforts. The reports have been coming in too fast for me to keep track. On the trip I just returned from, I saw countless villages and farmlands affected. There was even a Steel clan forced to seek refuge with a neighboring Paper clan.” He snorts. “The indignity of it. And with the increasing rebel activity, I’ve not had the time or resources to address it properly.”