Of Beast and Beauty (32 page)

the fire. “If it had been the other one …” He shrugs and slips his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Not many would have listened to the ravings of a monster, but there are always those who pause to consider the absurd. If they’d paused long enough, they might have found reason to believe it.”

Isra might have paused. Isra might have listened to the monster.

Tonight she called it her “friend.” If she ever learns the truth …

“She’ll have you killed,” I whisper. “She’s not as fragile as you believe.

If she finds out, she’ll—”

“She’ll never find out,” Father says, his strong hand coming to rest on my shoulder. “Not unless you tell her.”

I turn to him so quickly I lose my footing and knock my shin on the marble step of the fireplace. “I would never.
Never
.”

“I have your loyalty, then?” he asks, uncertainty lurking in his eyes.

“Yes,” I say. “Of course. I’m your son.”

He nods stiffly. “I spent my entire life serving another family. I wanted you to rule your own life, to be your own man,” he says, mouth weak around the edges, the muscle in his cheek leaping. I’ve never seen him out of control. He has never appeared vulnerable in any way. I’ve imagined Father weak, and thought I’d find the sight thrilling—but this isn’t thrilling. It’s terrifying, a god falling from the sky, his wings on fire. “I did this for you, Bo.”

“I know, Father.” I take him by the shoulders and give a firm squeeze, willing strength into both of us. “I won’t fail you. We’ll manage Isra.

Together. I’ll be king by springtime, and I will never forget that I owe everything I am to you.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, before whispering, “Thank you, Son.”

Then he smiles. Really smiles, a proud smile, a grateful smile. Proud of
me
.

Grateful
to me
. The sight firms up every trembling, doubting bone in my body.

Great men aren’t afraid to do dangerous things to tip the hand of fate in their favor. My father is a great man and he did a brave, dangerous thing to give me a chance at a future I couldn’t have had without him. I would never have asked him to kill the king, but … it’s done now. There’s no going back. We can only go forward, and make certain we prove that the end justifies the means.

I will be a great king. I will do great things for this city, and I won’t let a girl who’d rather play in the dirt with a monster than devote herself to

her people get in the way.

“Let me do it,” I say, giving my father’s shoulders one final squeeze before dropping my arms to my sides and standing tall, determined to show him I’m man enough to handle the queen. “Let me show Isra the truth about the city tomorrow. I’ll find a way to make her love me for it. I swear I will.”

Or hate me less. I will be the only one who’s ever told her the truth.

She’ll have to respect me for that, at least enough to honor the promise she made tonight.

“All right,” Father says, with a slow nod. “You’ll be her husband.

You’ll have to learn how to manage her sooner or later.”

“Thank you,” I say, the rush of being treated as my father’s equal for the first time making me certain I could climb the tallest mountain in the desert if it were safe to leave the city. “I’ll make you proud.”

He cups my cheek in his hand, his touch gentle for the first time in longer than I can remember. “I’m already proud.”

My throat grows so tight I can do nothing but nod in response.

“Until tomorrow.” Father bows. I bow lower, keeping my head tucked to my chest until he has left to join Mother in their bedroom.

Even when he’s gone, I can feel his faith in me lingering in the air, warming me to the core, making me certain there is nothing I can’t do.

Nothing I won’t do to ensure our family’s success.

TWENTY-ONE

ONE, two … five, six …

Seventy-five … one

hundred

and

twelve … eighty-eight … eighty-nine … ten … two …

I can see, but I find myself counting my steps all the same. Counting to stay calm, to retain control, counting until numbers lose their meaning and my mind is a jumble of circles and curves and slashes. The hourglass of an eight. The dangerous corner of a seven. The soft belly of a six. I trace their shapes in the air as I walk, my fingers busy at my sides, frantically trying to bring order to the world.

But even numbers are powerless against chaos. Disorder. Madness.

I’m beside myself, outside myself. I watch my long body glide down streets filled with the twisted and the wrong, and everything is … upside down. Inside out. I look down, expecting to see the sky beneath my feet and my heart settled on the skin outside my chest, but there is only the shimmering green of my dress, tight at my bust, tighter still at my waist, but loose enough near the ground.

Loose enough for hands with missing fingers to reach out to brush the fabric as Bo and I pass by.

This particular hand belongs to a child, a girl with only three fingers, a wee thing with silky black hair that hangs over her face, partially concealing the fact that her nose is missing … pieces. Pieces of skin. Maybe bone. Skin and bone. I don’t know. I can’t look too closely. Not at her, or her parents,

or all the others gathered by the side of the street to kneel as I walk by. I just can’t.

I lift my eyes and find a tiny rectangle of blue sky high above the laundry lines zigzagging between the intimidating buildings of the city center. These towers make mine look like a child’s toy. They are breathlessly tall, and each one overflowing with people. The people must live three or four to a room, at least, if the amount of laundry is anything to judge by. Hundreds of pants and shirts and dresses and overalls and underthings hang like uninspired flags, blocking most of the sun’s light, drooping limply toward the street, where their owners were ordered to assemble this morning to meet their queen and let her look upon them with her new eyes.

I demanded that the royal gong be rung and messengers be sent throughout the city. I insisted on walking through the city center, the better to see my people. I would not be swayed.

Now it’s all I can do not to turn and run back to my tower. I long for the comfort of my darkness, my ignorance. I want to go back and undo it all. I want to be the Isra my father worked so hard to create. If only I’d known how easy I had it in my cage, with my velvet blinders always in place …

My scrap of blue sky vanishes, and my gaze drifts down to the street ahead, where a woman without arms or legs sits propped in a chair beside several little boys. A mother who can never hug her sons or hold her babies. How did this happen?
How …

A choked sound escapes my lips, bursting free before I can contain it.

“Are you all right?” Bo asks from his place beside me.

“No,” I whisper. “Of course not. Of course, of
course
not.” I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, stopping the stream of babble. I can’t lose control in front of my people. I can’t show them how unprepared I am. I can’t be like my mother.

“The tower. My mother.” I pull in a labored breath. “That’s …
This
is why.”

“Yes,” Bo says. “In her home city, the nobles lived within a second wall at one edge of their dome, kept entirely separate from the common people. She had never seen a human who was not of noble blood before she came to Yuan.” Bo’s hand is firm at the center of my back, guiding me relentlessly onward, through the city center to what lies ahead, to what I’ve

demanded to see.

I want to twist away, to order him to keep his hands off me, but I can’t. His touch is the only thing keeping me going. If he withdraws, I’ll stop walking and be stranded in the middle of the nightmare.

Nightmares upon nightmares. I had the fire nightmare again this morning, saw the woman’s mouth opening and closing in the burning wood. But this time I listened harder, the way Gem told me to, and I would have sworn I heard her speak. She was saying something about the truth … about hope … something important.…

When I woke, I couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said, but I was bursting with happiness anyway. I could see the golden miracle of the sunrise shining through my window, the brilliant bleeding red of my quilt, and Needle’s tightly curled smile as she brought my breakfast tray. My life and my dreams were changing, and I was certain my city wasn’t going to be far behind. This morning, Yuan was a riddle I was confident I could solve.

But this is … a disaster. A tragedy. Hopeless.

“Now you see why your father felt he had to take such extreme measures,” Bo continues, increasing his pace until I have trouble keeping up. My dress is wider at the bottom than my other dresses, but it’s tight at the thighs. Still, I don’t complain. I don’t care if I have to wiggle and wobble down the street like a fool. The sooner we leave the city center and all the damage behind, the better. “He was only trying to protect you. He thought if you remained unaware of certain truths that you would be spared your mother’s madness. It was only after she came here that she became … strange. She grew even worse after you were born. At first the healers dismissed it as the sadness that sometimes comes over new mothers, but then she began talking of going into the wilderness to speak to the Monstrous. Father says she set the fire not long after.”

I don’t say a word, though I want to ask Bo if he knows
why
my mother wanted to speak to the Monstrous. I’ve always known Mother was Father’s second wife and foreign—a noble from far away who married my father to escape a city on the verge of collapse—but I’ve never heard anyone speak of her expressing the desire to make contact with the Monstrous.
Why would she want to do that?
I want to ask, but I don’t trust myself to speak without breaking down.

When Bo first told me it was my father who had ordered the poisoning of my tea, I nearly slapped him. I was certain he was lying. I

refused to believe that my father would steal the sight from his own daughter, even when Junjie showed me the signed order bearing the king’s seal. I just couldn’t believe Baba hated me that much.

Now I understand. My father didn’t hate me. He was trying to spare me from the heartbreaking truth.

“I wanted to protect you, too,” Bo says, louder now that we’ve reached the edge of the city center and only a few citizens kneel at the sides of the street. “I planned for you to remain in the nobles’ village, where the people are whole. There was no reason for you to see this particular truth.” His hand slides around my waist, his familiar touch becoming openly intimate, making my breakfast gurgle angrily in my stomach.

I swallow hard and step away. “Yes, there is. I needed to know.

I … had … to …” My words dribble away as we pass by the final knot of people.

Beyond them, the world opens up, the wide dirt road continuing on through the fields. I want to rush ahead into that open space, but instead I force myself to nod and smile a brittle smile at the subjects kneeling in the grass at the edge of an orchard of bare-limbed pear trees. There are three men and five women, all wearing orchard workers’ overalls, all with missing parts. They are ripped pieces of a dozen different puzzles that will never fit together, and I don’t understand it.

I don’t. I can’t … I thought …

“The Banished camp is … worse?” I whisper when we’ve finally passed the last woman. I find little comfort in the even rows of fruit trees on one side of the road and the perfectly ordered grape trellises on the other. Beyond these tidy fields, at the end of this road, lies the place where the Banished—the people deemed too grotesque to inhabit the city center—live out their abbreviated lives.

“Far worse,” Bo confirms, hesitating at my side. “We can go back to the great hall if you like. I can—”