Though Aoki is small, she isn’t so light that Wren should be able to lift her this way. I follow her in silence, scared to get too close to this girl with the bloodstained hands.
The tunnel isn’t long. At its end, we open the trap door overhead. Rain greets our upturned faces. Wren helps me out first—I cringe at the smell of blood on her—and then together we lift out Aoki. With another easy movement, Wren picks Aoki back up and we hurry around the side of the building, keeping a safe distance from the flames.
A crowd has gathered. As we join them, my eyes alert for the other girls, a number of carriages pull up to the front of the theater. I recognize the black handprint symbol on the sides of their carriages as the same as those on the robes of the shamans who purified me before seeing the King—and the one who fixed my bruises after.
The royal shamans.
Wren sets Aoki down. I kneel beside her to check she’s breathing, shielding her face from the rain with my arm before turning my attention back to the carriages. Black-robed figures are filing out of them, orderly and calm. Even though their skin is hidden, I can picture the dark web of tattoos on their bodies, their skin a forest of ink, like some kind of dark map of sacrifice and pain. The shamans form a ring around the theater. In perfect synchrony, they raise their hands and begin to draw glowing characters in the air in front of them, chanting as they write.
The warm prickle of magic radiates from them, a growing thrum. When the air is so full of pressure it’s like being in the midst of a thunderstorm, the shamans whip their hands upward. A gust of wind bursts from their circle. It blasts in both directions, billowing into us—making our eyes water and clothes fly out—and rushing toward the theater, swelling and rising to tower over the domed building, solidifying into a roiling pewter cloud.
It hangs there, dark and growling. Then it drops from the air, transforming as it falls into a plunging torrent of water.
Water gushes over the theater, swallowing the flames. Hitting the ground, we’re soaked through in an instant as the wave barrels into us.
Aoki comes round with a gasp. I help her up, shoving the wet hair from her face. I’m gasping myself, numb from the chill night air on my wet skin, and we clutch each other, both shaking.
“What—what happened?” she cries, looking left and right. “Did you see them, Lei? I think someone followed us into the tunnel—” She cuts off, coughing.
I rub her back. “It was just something falling. A piece of wood. Don’t worry.”
“But—”
“You fainted, Aoki. Take it easy. I’m going to get you something warm to wear. Can you wait here?”
Still trembling, she nods. As I get to my feet, Wren puts a hand on my shoulder. “Lei—”
“Look after her. I won’t be long.” I take a sharp inhale, continuing in a low voice, “You knew the trap door was there, Wren. You knew how to fight. How to kill.”
The crowd is moving around us, and someone bumps into me, knocking me into Wren. She lifts her arms to steady me, but I jerk back, the image of her in the tunnel reentering my mind.
“I thought I knew you,” I say weakly.
She flinches. “You do know me.”
“I’m going to get some robes or a blanket for Aoki,” I go on, avoiding her eyes. “We can talk when you’re ready to tell me the truth about what the gods just happened.”
Wren catches me as I turn. “I haven’t lied to you, Lei,” she promises.
“Well, you haven’t exactly told me the truth, either.”
Her mouth parts, something pained pinching her face, and I force myself to walk away.
TWENTY-FIVE
WE SPEND A SLEEPLESS NIGHT BACK at Paper House, waiting in one of the parlors as a group of doctors and shamans check us over one by one. The hours slip by in shocked silence, all of us dazed. Madam Himura calls us to her suite early the next morning. We haven’t even had a chance to bathe or eat breakfast, and our hair and clothes still reek of smoke. “The royal messenger just left,” she tells us once we’ve all sat down. “Our guesses were right. The attack was an assassination attempt.”
Wren shifts forward, her back rod-straight. “Who by?” she asks.
“All we know is that they were a group of ten Paper caste men. Three were taken alive. The other seven were killed at the theater by guards.”
An image comes to me of Wren’s white eyes as she turned the man’s sword on himself. Not just guards. I sense her looking my way and stare ahead, my jaw set.
“But the King wasn’t even at the theater,” Chenna points out.
Madam Himura clacks her beak. “Thank the heavenly rulers! A messenger came to stop him just as he arrived. One of the royal fortune-tellers had a premonition of the attack. That’s how they got the shamans to the theater so quickly.”
Blue shifts forward, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. “Was anyone hurt?” she asks, and though her voice is steady, there’s an undercurrent of something nervous in it. The gray morning light picks out her cheekbones, carving dark hollows beneath them. “From the audience, I mean.”
“Two court officials were killed. Twelve more injured.”
“Because my father was there,” Blue goes on, “and I haven’t heard from him—”
Madam Himura holds up a hand to silence her. She looks around at us down the hook of her curved beak-nose, her yellow eyes unblinking. “The King has taken the assassins for questioning. For now, he has ordered your usual schedule to be on hold. You’re to stay in Paper House until further notice.”
As the rest of us go to leave, Blue makes a beeline for Madam Himura. “My father,” she starts again, but the eagle-woman waves her away.
“Not now, girl.”
“But—”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Madam Himura squawks. “Just because your father is a member of the court does not mean it affords you any special privileges! Open your mouth once more today, and I will not hesitate to throw you out.”
Blue’s lips flatten into a bloodless line. Glowering, she strides past us, Mariko hurrying after her.
Aoki and I are the last to leave. We walk slowly down the corridor. “Two people dead,” she mutters. She gives me a sideways glance. “Can you believe it? It could have been us, Lei. Thank the gods Wren found that trap door.”
I make a noncommittal murmur—because I saw the look on her face, and it wasn’t surprise. It was surety.
The two of us head to the bathing courtyard. I’m eager to get the stink of smoke out of my hair, the traces of darkened blood on my skin from where Wren lifted me out of the tunnel. We’re just passing through the corridor where our bedrooms are when there’s the sound of a door opening behind us. Zhen’s head pokes out of her room.
“Oh,” she says, looking relieved. “We thought it might be Mariko and Blue. Do you want to join us?”
I know what they’re doing, and talking about last night is the last thing I feel like. Not least because since I confronted her outside the theater, Wren hasn’t come to talk to me yet, and I’m starting to wonder whether maybe I was too hard on her. She was just protecting us, after all, like Aoki said. But Aoki nods, and I follow her into Zhen’s bedroom, not wanting to be alone right now, either.