Of Beast and Beauty

  “It isn’t fair, I know,” I say. “But—”

  “And why are these people cast out?” he asks. “Because they have scaled skin or are bigger than the other children?”

  “I don’t know. It was all decided before I was born. But I do know this …” I drop my voice again. “Because of me … my … Some of the nobles worry that mutations might be catching, beginning to infect those who have always been immune. But if I can show them there’s a cure … or at least a way to slow the process …” I clear my throat.

  It’s difficult to talk about this with Gem. He doesn’t realize how repulsive the Monstrous are to my people. He doesn’t think it odd that the Monstrous grow plants to impede mutation but use them only for babies born with scales covering their eyes, or in other rare cases where health is threatened. He seems to think his people are beautiful.

  “That’s why I need this garden,” I say, tugging another chunk of grass from the earth and stuffing it into my pocket. “Why the city needs this garden.”

  “They don’t need a garden. They need a queen.”

  I blink in the direction of his voice. “What does that mean?”

  “You have more power than you think. You could put a stop to this with a word.”

  “I couldn’t.” I shiver at the thought. I can’t even convince Junjie to change the seating arrangement in the great hall so that I don’t have to eat on a pedestal at the center of all the gossip.

  “Division makes a people weak,” he says. “My chief would never allow this.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m queen, but I’m not—”

  “Excuses.” He grunts as he struggles to stand.

  “It’s not an excuse,” I say, not sure whether to be offended or hurt. “I’m tainted. Not as badly as those who are banished, but the whole people still won’t listen to me. They’ll think—”

  “It doesn’t matter what they think.” The sound of his hoe being flung onto the dirt makes me flinch. “It only matters that they do what—”

  “Move away from the queen!” The shout comes from the edge of the field, making me flinch again. Bo. I didn’t know he was here. He wasn’t with the other soldiers when they arrived with Gem.

  But he’s been doing this lately, materializing wherever I happen to be. He says it’s because his father asked him to keep a “special eye” on me. A special eye. I don’t like the sound of it.

  “It’s all right!” I call. “We’re only talking.”

  “We’re finished talking.” Gem is already shuffling away. The rattle of the chains hobbling his feet makes the skin at the back of my neck bunch. I hate that sound. I hate that I’ve never had the courage to ask for the chains to be removed. “Tell the guards I’m ready to go back to my cell.”

  “Are you all right?” Bo squats beside me, his swift breath ruffling the hair above my ear. I want to swat it away like an insect, but I don’t. Bo hasn’t done anything inappropriate. Not really.

  “I’m fine,” I say, forcing a smile.

  It’s not Bo’s fault that I’m having a difficult time embracing our impending betrothal. Junjie hasn’t said anything outright, but his machinations aren’t as subtle as he believes. Bo is always seated next to me at dinner, always the one chosen to deliver messages to my rooms, and the only guard allowed to be alone with me. As soon as my mourning is over, Junjie will be at the tower door with official betrothal documents in hand, asking me to sign away what little freedom I’ve enjoyed since Baba’s death.

  Bo is a good man, a good boy—only nineteen, the same age as Gem—but even good men can make cruel jailors. My father locked my mother in the tower for months before she made her fatal escape, and he held me prisoner for years. What if Bo proves to be a king who prefers his wife kept under lock and key?

  I know it’s my duty to marry as soon as custom allows, but I can’t help wishing I had more time to adjust to the idea, to adjust to Bo. He’s attentive and flattering, but aside from his opinions on wine and music, I don’t know much about him. I can’t seem to scratch the surface to find out what—if anything—lies beneath.

  Winter, as miserable as it is, can’t pass slowly enough this year.

  “Are you sure?” Bo asks.

  “I’m sure.” I brush the dirt from my hands, moving a degree away from him in the process. “Gem’s only tired. His legs hurt. He needs an escort back to his rooms.”

  “Right away.” Bo calls to the other soldiers, clearly relieved to be rid of our prisoner. He’s spoken to Gem a few times, but never more than a word or two. Gem obviously makes him uncomfortable. I know Bo would welcome an excuse to tell his father I shouldn’t be allowed to work with the Monstrous anymore.

  That knowledge makes me careful to remain calm as I call—

  “Gem?”

  “Yes, my lady?” The words are crisp, cutting in their politeness. I’m the one who told him he must call me “my lady” when other people are around, but at the moment I hate the sound of the words.

  “Will you come to work tomorrow?”

  “You’re the queen, my lady,” he says. “You don’t have to ask.”

  “I want to ask.” I mimic his sugary tone exactly, down to the hint of a snarl hiding beneath. “Wouldn’t your chief ask?”

  “I don’t know, my lady. My chief doesn’t keep slaves.” He shuffles away, the rattle of his chains banishing any whisper of protest.

  He’s right. He is a slave. But what can I do to change that, when I’m not much more than a slave myself? I can work on this healing garden and do what I can to help my people, but I will never fundamentally change Yuan. In a city bought with blood, certain things will never change. Can never change. If they did, the city and her bickering people and hungry roses would cease to exist.

  I fold my arms around myself, cold despite the layers I put on before leaving the tower. I’m always cold, lately. There never seems to be enough fire or hot tea or ginger soup to thaw the things frozen inside.

  “What’s wrong?” Bo’s hand warms my knee. He’s settled down to sit on the ground beside me, a strange thing for a soldier to do, but I’m grateful. I’m not ready to stand. “Are you really all right?”

  “I told you, I’m fine.” I smile to soften the frustration in my voice. “Gem and I had a disagreement. Nothing to worry about.”

  “A monster shouldn’t quarrel with a queen.”

  “Why not?” I laugh my new bitter laugh. My parsnip laugh—sour and gritty. “Everyone else does. Even Needle, and she can’t speak.”

  “Do you want a new maid?” he asks, making my heart skip a beat. “I know a wonderful girl, a noble, who mentioned she’d be honored to—”

  “No, no,” I hurry to say. “I love Needle. She’s devoted to me. It’s nothing like that. It’s …” I brush the hair from my face with an angry whip of my fingers. “Forget I said anything. Please. I’m not myself.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “No, I …” My stone-filled pockets suddenly feel heavier. “I’m just … tired.”

  “And dirty.” Bo cups my chin in his hand. “I’ve never seen a lady of the court who enjoys dirt as much as you.”

  “I’m not a lady of the court. I’m a lady of the tower.”

  “Not anymore,” he says.

  “Always.” I turn my head, breaking contact. His touch still makes me nervous, and his hands feel even softer than usual.

  “Isra …” His sigh blasts my neck like a wave of heat from the fire. I curl away, brushing my ear with my shoulder. “I need to tell you something. I think … I wanted to ask …”

  My pulse picks up. Have I been wrong about Junjie and Bo waiting until my mourning is over? What if Bo asks me to marry him right here, right now? What will I do? What will I say?

  I will say yes, of course, but how? Should I say I hope we’ll be friends? That I hope our marriage will be a happy one? That I look forward to our wedding day—but not our wedding night, because I’ve heard he has a reputation with the ladies at court, and
that petrifies me, because how will a girl whose entire experience consists of one wet kiss ever compare to all the girls, and women, he’s already been with?

  No. I can’t say that. Of course I can’t.

  I lick my lips, preparing to give him his answer and hoping it comes out right.

  And then he asks, “Does your maid take breakfast with you?” and I feel like a fool.

  “Excuse me?” My forehead wrinkles.

  “Does Needle take food or drink from your tray?”

  “No. Needle has her own tray.” I don’t understand what he’s getting at, but I don’t see any harm in telling the truth. “It’s brought before mine. She wakes early.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he says in his stone-plunking voice.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t drink your morning tea.”

  Plunkier still. “What?”

  “Stop drinking your morning tea. Get rid of it,” he whispers, leaning close enough for me to smell the cabbage on his breath. “Pour it into the plants on your balcony or into your bed pot or someplace no one will think to look.”

  The casual mention of my bed pot makes me cough awkwardly into the crook of my arm. I’m far from shy, but I’ve never discussed my bed pot with anyone. Ever. “And why should I do that?”

  “So that no one will realize you’re not drinking it.”

  My skin crawls beneath my shawl, but I refuse to scratch it. “Are you …” I swallow, shaking my head as I understand what he’s implying. “No. No one would try to poison me. I’m the queen. I have no husband, no children. If I die now, the city—”

  “Not all poisons kill, Isra.” He takes my hand, his thicker, fatter fingers cushioning my longer, thinner ones like ten little pillows. “I may be wrong, but please, indulge me. Pour out the tea for a week, maybe two. That should be enough to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I think you’ll see,” he says, a smile in his voice. “I hope so, anyway. I hope many things for you.”

  “What kind of things?” I ask, a little breathless.

  “You’ll see,” he repeats in that same cryptic tone.

  “Bo, I …” I pull my hand from his. I want to believe Bo has my best interests at heart, but the idea that someone has been poisoning me … it’s too strange. I feel fine, the same as I always have. Mostly.

  Except for the exhaustion. And the creeping certainty that winter will never end. And the troubling stretching of my bones, and the dresses with popped seams.

  Could that be it? Could someone be slipping something into my tea to accelerate my mutation? Is that why I grew nearly three centimeters and put on ten catties in the past two months? Gem and I are planning to grow herbs and roots that will impede mutation. It makes sense that plants exist that would amplify the process.

  I want to ask Bo if that’s what he believes is happening, and why someone might do such a thing, but I can’t. I can’t discuss my defects with any whole citizen of Yuan. I am the empress without clothes, and no one can speak of my nakedness, not even me.

  “All right. I’ll do it,” I say, rising to my feet. “I’ll dispose of the tea.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I should be thanking you.” I try to smile but can’t. I’ve gone too sour. I’m past parsnip, bittering to a turnip inside. “I should change for dinner,” I say, backing away.

  “Let me escort you.”

  “Thank you, but I can find my way. I’d rather go alone.” Or as alone as I ever am, considering that the guards at the edge of the field will be shadowing my every move. Since the night I slipped away from them at the coronation banquet, they’ve been careful not to lose track of me. “I’ll find you later. In the hall,” I say.

  I turn and walk away, counting my steps to the edge of the field. I wouldn’t really rather go alone. I just don’t want to go with Bo. Or any other member of court, or any of the soft, silky, whole citizens of Yuan.

  I’m filled with a sudden longing for Gem. Only with him is it safe to be the ugly thing I am. He’s the only one I can talk to, the only one who tells me anything close to the truth. And now I’ve made him hate me all over again.

  But perhaps I can do something to make amends. Perhaps …

  He craves a walk beyond the walls. Maybe I can give that to him. The state of the Banished camp isn’t the only thing I’ve learned from Bo. I’ve also learned the location of a hidden gate, the King’s Gate, created to provide an escape route for the royal family if the city were ever compromised.

  Long ago, there were other domed cities close enough to be reached on horseback. There was a chance a refugee from Yuan might find sanctuary before falling prey to sun damage. With a little help from Needle, I might be able to sneak Gem through the King’s Gate, or perhaps … if I’m careful … and if Needle agrees to help …

  I walk faster, eager to talk to my maid. She’s as excited about the healing garden as I am. Surely, if I explain my plan and beg and wheedle for an hour or two, she’ll see that what I propose is the only way.

  I have to escape the tower and offer Gem a bargain he can’t refuse, one that will ensure his return from the desert and keep my Monstrous in Yuan, where I, for one, feel he belongs.

  EIGHT

  BO

  I stand and watch her go, though I would rather be by her side. I like the feel of her hand looped through my arm, the rich tone of her voice when she speaks. Her voice is like music from a faraway city, unfamiliar, but seductive in its strangeness.

  Isra is nothing like I imagined she’d be from listening to my baba’s stories of the temperamental princess hidden away in the tower. She’s nothing like any other girl I’ve ever met. She is strange and stubborn and graceless. Rough in speech and rougher of skin, and strangely resistant to my attempts to win her affection.

  I should find her frustrating. I should pity her. Most everyone else does. The gentle members of court feel sorry for the mad queen’s blind, itchy, awkward daughter, and even sorrier for me. My bed has been warmer than usual these past two months. It seems there’s always a sympathetic woman—or two-lingering outside the door to my chamber when I quit the great hall for the night.

  There’s been no official announcement, but every member of the court knows it’s only a matter of time. As soon as Isra’s mourning is over, she will take a husband. A childless queen cannot be allowed to remain unmarried. If something were to happen to Isra now, with no daughter to take her place and no husband to remarry and continue the royal line, the covenant would be broken. Yuan would have no royal blood to sustain the magic that keeps our land green and fruitful, and our city would fall like so many of the others.

  Isra will marry, and soon, and there is little doubt who the man will be.

  Junjie is the most powerful man in the city, and I am his son. It is only right that I should be king. It’s understood that Isra will take me as her husband and I will put aside any distaste I might feel for her peeling skin and odd ways, in the name of service to my city.

  No one suspects that the distaste I feel isn’t for the girl.

  As Isra disappears over the gentle swell of the hill with her guards close behind, a familiar tightness clutches at my throat. I set off toward my father’s quarters with a heavy feeling in my legs.

  How have the other kings done it? How have they lived with a woman, even loved her—I’ve read the poems the fourth king wrote to his first wife, have sung the ballads King Deshi composed in praise of his queen—knowing that her life would be cut short? That her throat would be opened and her blood spilled in the royal garden, often before she reached her thirtieth birthday?

  Isra’s mother died thirteen years ago. The roses can go unfed for another ten years, maybe fifteen, but no more. They will have their royal blood. Isra will never see her thirty-fifth year. If the crops begin to fail or other evidence is found that the covenant is weakening, she might not see her twenty-fifth.

  She has so little time. It isn’t right that she sho
uld live it in darkness.

  I don’t care what my baba said, I don’t care what the king made him promise before he died, I will not see my queen suffer any more than she must by virtue of her birth. I will see her eyes light up with wonder. I will see her smile as she looks at me and knows I am the one who restored her. I will taste her gratitude in her kiss on our wedding night.

  It won’t be long. Only two months until her mourning is over. We will be married when the spring flowers poke their green shoots above the earth, long before her garden can bear fruit.

  I will put a stop to her playing in the dirt as soon as she is my wife. It isn’t safe for the queen to spend time with a Monstrous. The nobles already worry that she’s out of her mind to allow the beast out of his cage, let alone work closely with it. The creature has behaved himself, thus far, but I see the way he watches Isra, taking in every movement of her hands, every flutter of her throat. He’s a predator waiting for a moment to strike.

  He will not have it. I will have my queen, and the monster will be returned to his cage. A proper cage, not the tidy quarters in the barracks that Isra has given him, but a hole deep underground, with stone floors and thick bars.

  A place suitable for a beast.

  Isra seems to have a soft place in her heart for the creature, but she will forget him soon enough. She will be distracted by my gift, then overwhelmed by my attention, and then, someday soon, big with my child. A baby will be a far more fitting outlet for her feminine affections than a Monstrous pet.

  She would know better than to treat beasts as human if she’d spent more time among civilized people. When we’re married, we will move into her father’s great house near the other high-ranking members of court. We will attend dances and feasts and spend long weekends watching the horse-and-stick matches on the king’s green. And when the time comes for her to go …