Page 6 of Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame

CHAPTER SIX

YEVA HAS TO wait a further two days before she’s allowed to see Lady Sookhee. It’s two days too long spent holed up in the orbit of her carriage, soothing Sage’s anxiety, keeping her gryphons calm, suppressing bad dreams and unwanted memories that have been stirred by up her encounter with Anuya. Now’s not the time to think of her family and its peculiarities, of all the secrets that her mother might have whispered to her as a child that she has forgotten, cut away as she shaped herself into the perfect weapon in service of the Sun Emperor. But she still thinks of her father as she rubs the wyrmhound behind the ears. Sage was his gift to her when she became a full-fledged knight, a pup from the best breeders in Mithrandon, big-pawed and floppy when she arrived. Her father was living elsewhere in another southern city by then. Sending Yeva to Mithrandon had destroyed her parents’ union. Neither told this directly in their letters to her, but Yeva put it together from what was left unsaid. The events of that fateful afternoon when she slew that dragonling swept through all their lives like a wildfire and left only ashes behind.

On the third day, the rude handmaid Sujin returns to summon Yeva. She rakes Yeva with her gaze, tutting slightly at the sight of her metal vambraces, her heavy boots. “Still wearing that? Such an overwrought getup,” she says. “Well, follow me, then. Our lady is waiting.”

Yeva follows her guide toward the upper palace, climbing so many steps that even her splendid calves start to ache. What follows is a long, long walk through the incomprehensible twists of the royal compound, past rooms with screen doors muffling the hum of lively conversation; past ponds teeming with miniature terrapins and giant goldfish; past neatly raked courtyards home to swaying willows. Yeva starts off lost and gets increasingly so with every corner turned. If the handmaiden is leading her into a trap, if at the end of this twisting path she finds the slavering jaws of a dragon waiting for her, she has no means of escape. She wouldn’t know the way back to her carriage, where her sacred weapon lies locked in a chest.

Lady Sookhee, the girl-king of Quentona, receives visitors in the Great Phoenix Hall, a space twice as long as it is wide, large enough to be a battlefield. Bolts of translucent cloth drape from above, rippling as the air sighs, giving the hall the fluid, ethereal appearance of an underwater palace. The steepled roof is held up by columns of wooden pillars, each taken from a single tree and paneled with intricate scenes from local legend. The craftsmanship is breathtaking. As Yeva passes by, her heart is captured by the verve in each carving, how the tiny human figures burst with motion and life, how the coiled dragons and swift deer and cloud-wreathed swallows look like they might spring from their wooden prisons at any moment.

At the end of the hall sits the throne, a heavy dais of wood and stone and brass, around which a massive serpent chiseled from the same materials rests. The dragon depicted is the southern kind, long and ropy with small, powerful limbs tipped with raptor talons, head crowned with spreading antlers. Precious gems have been pushed into each crafted scale, with rubies in the eye sockets, and their facets catch the sharp glow of the teardrop lamps purposefully hung above them. As Yeva approaches the dais, the dragon glitters and flashes as if alive.

There she is, the girl-king of Quentona—Lady Sookhee. Of similar age to Yeva, but pale and breakable as a willow branch. Not yet fully recovered from her illness, she slants upon the embroidered red cushions, knees folded and feet tucked in, head resting like a lover’s against the sculpted dragon’s head that peers over the seat. Around her, on raised seats only marginally less ostentatious than the throne, sit seven young women in the same peach-and-green robes as her guide. A governing council, Yeva thinks. The girl to her right has black hair so long that even the braid of it extends past her waist.

Robes of blue and pink conceal the girl-king’s slender form, interrupted midway by a sash of rich indigo. The colors of a slow sunrise. The colors of the royal seal given to Yeva. Lady Sookhee’s elaborately looped hair winds round a headpiece crusted with jewels and pearls, and gold bangles jingle at her wrists. She watches Yeva’s approach with a hunter’s intensity, a lupine intellect lurking within her fragility. Under the pressure of her attention Yeva’s blood grows warm, and she’s glad for the layers of metal and linen that separate her from the sight of the young monarch. She walks down the aisle as a suggestion of a human figure, an anonymous walking suit of armor, harsh and heavy in the elegance of the receiving hall.

As Sujin announces her as a knight of the Sun Empire, Yeva sinks stiffly to one knee, gaze fixed to the base of the dais. Beyond her sight, the girl-king swivels, bare feet touching ground in one fluid motion. Her toes are painted a lavender which complements the soft colors of her robes. “Thank you, Sujin,” says the girl-king. “You may take your place.”

“Your Majesty.” Footsteps sound as Sujin joins the other women, slotting in, Yeva imagines, like a tooth.

Despite her illness, Lady Sookhee’s voice is light and clear, like rain falling upon Yeva’s plumed helm. “Forgive us for leaving it so long before we were able to welcome you to our humble kingdom. It was not our intention to cause offense, but an artifact of our ill health. We do hope you have found our hospitality to be adequate in the days since your arrival.”

Her Thrandish is unaccented and better articulated than Yeva’s own. Yeva finally lifts her gaze and fixes it upon the girl-king. “No offense is taken. I do hope Your Majesty’s health has sufficiently recovered from your illness.”

“Your courtesy is appreciated.” The girl-king smiles down at Yeva like a winter sun. “What a strange state of affairs this is. When the seat of the Sun Empire sends visitors, we might expect one of two things: diplomats, or an army. Yet you are neither. A single knight from the Empire’s fabled guild of monster-slayers.”

Yeva remains quiet. She wishes the Emperor—and Emory—had in fact sent a diplomat or an army, anyone better to carry out these fraught conversations. What does she know of speaking to kings? She is a weapon, and before that she was a peasant. Whatever skills her mother had did not transfer.

Lady Sookhee leans back in her throne, pensive. “Still, you are no ordinary knight. Your reputation precedes you. A living legend, one who songs and poems are written about—the masked guildknight of Mithrandon.”

“I’m surprised such gossip has reached these borders. Your Majesty is indeed well-informed.”

“Hardly.” Her bright gaze seems fevered—what with, Yeva isn’t sure. “Your existence has long fascinated us, even without the poetry. Your mother was a friend to the kingdom. How does the daughter of Kunlin Douma become dragonsbane, a renowned hunter of the Empire?”

Yeva is deeply glad of her conversation with Anuya days before. Through it, the revelations of her family’s past and her mother’s history in Quanbao have had time to settle and become architecture in her mind. Calmly and flatly she says, “It was my fate.”

“A strange fate indeed. Even stranger that you should be sent to these parts years later. Tell me, daughter of Kunlin—have you, by your own will, come to find something in particular?”

Yeva ducks her head again. “I am here on the orders of my Emperor.”

“Hmm.” She senses the girl-king shifting in her seat, her curiosity unabated. “We cannot imagine this occurrence to simply be coincidence. Whether intended on the part of your Emperor or not.”

Someone on the dais speaks to the girl-king in the language that sounds so familiar to Yeva, yet so impenetrable. It’s not Sujin—this speaker sounds much younger, yet no less firm. The girl-king converses back and forth with her in terlocutor while Yeva remains kneeling, feeling humiliated despite her best efforts.

“In any case, we are pleased to have an observer from the Empire in our court. We will do all we can to make your time here comfortable. And we are certain you will find suitable pursuits to occupy yourself with. We hear that you are sleeping in your carriage still. Is that so?”

“Indeed. It is my preference. My carriage is built to live in; it is where I stay when I leave Mithrandon. Within it I have devices that help me dress.”

“It’s no wonder, with an outfit like that. This simply will not do. You may be with us for many months—surely you cannot stay in that little carriage the whole time. You shall have a room, and some of the girls will come to move your devices in. It’s fine if you wish not to have any attendants, but you must at least have a proper bed to sleep in.”

She speaks as though she expects no resistance, and she shouldn’t, as monarch. Yeva cannot find it in herself to refuse her orders; to do so would be to cause diplomatic offense, the one thing Emory very clearly did not want.

But the next thing she says pushes a great cold into Yeva’s veins.

“Of course, we shall send you something to wear as well. You cannot be walking around in that armor all this time. Perhaps that garb might be acceptable in Mithrandon, but you are in our country now, and you should dress according to our custom. I will not have it otherwise.” Her tone is more firm than it has been. The sight of the guildknight, in all that metal and leather, is offensive to her. She will not permit such things in her court.

AND SO, RELUCTANTLY, but with little recourse, Yeva is moved into the palace as the girl-king wills it. A modest room with a raised bed behind a silk screen, empty shelves, ample storage space. A view of a garden shared with neighbors. Although the room is objectively larger than Yeva’s stone abode in the guildknights’ fortress, it feels more oppressive somehow. One of the women from the girl-king’s coterie directs servants as they move in the contents of Yeva’s carriage. Yeva can only shadow them watchfully, muttering hand of the goddess, be careful in hopes that her tone transcends the opacity of language.

Sujin turns up to inspect their handiwork once the dust has settled. Her expression stays dour as ever, but she seems satisfied. She points down the corridor linking the rooms. “You’ll find the bathhouse that way.” When Yeva simply stares through her visor, she says, “Oh, yes, I forgot. You can’t take off your armor around people. Well, good luck with that. The well is on the ground floor. There’s a washbasin in your room for your use.”

A finicky problem like this, with a single simple solution, Yeva can deal with. She fetches a basin of water, marking the path between her room and the well by decorations in courtyards and notable trees in gardens: turn here at the cherry blossom, go straight until that rock thrust up like a closed fist. She undresses, cleans herself, and gets ready to dress again.

As a matter of courtesy, the girl-king has sent her several sets of clothing of the style worn in Quanbao. Wraparound trousers and a simple inner tunic to be pulled over the head, long-sleeved liner robes and outer robes all tied closed with sashes, and something like a surcoat to go over it, but tied in front. All in plain and hard-wearing materials, something like a servant might don. Yeva cannot decide if this is a courtesy or an insult—she cannot put on the elaborate getups of the palace ladies without aid, but should she want to? She runs her hands over the coarse weave of the fabric and thinks, what would I be wearing now if I hadn’t gone to Mithrandon? The trappings of her knight’s outfit feel too cumbersome for her delicate environs: the dragonscale, the steel boots.

Hesitant, Yeva picks out a set in shades of gray and deep blue. She’s not sure if she’ll like it, if the color will suit her. Since she went to Mithrandon, she has not had to choose what to wear, and all understanding of fashion has fled from her mind. The experience is excruciatingly novel. But the robes provided go on easily, even with her maimed hand. They sit light on her shoulders, so gentle she feels like she might float into the air, untethered by the pull of the earth. The sleeves go to her wrist, loose enough she can tuck her hands in them if needed, but really they are no protection at all, showing brown skin untouched by the sun, the clawlike appendage riven with scars. The monarch has even provided Yeva with matching socks and soft-soled slippers. This is no soldier’s outfit; no article will bear the touch of a dagger or the violent pull of a claw.

Now all that’s missing is a head covering, and of course, one is not provided. Yeva may concede a lot to the girl-king’s wishes, but this is the only thing she cannot be persuaded from. The thought of walking about with her face open to the elements is unbearable; the one incident in the congee restaurant has taught her never to do it again. Yeva completes her outfit by donning her plumed helm of shining metal—and feels an instant wave of shame. The incongruity of the Empire’s heavyweight handiwork made even more obtrusive. Is she to spend all her days in Daqiao looking like this, feeling like this?

Someone at the door: Sujin, returning to tell her that the girl-king seeks a private audience. Yeva cannot refuse and there’s no time to change back into her usual garb. Dressed like a fool, she sheepishly trails after Sujin. Even with the weight of her helm pressing upon her head, she still feels like she might trip over her feet and fall into the sky. The handmaiden says nothing of Yeva’s mismatched outfit.

A long climb: the girl-king’s private quarters are tucked within the highest floors of the palace. Behind doors screened with paper so thick it seems like cotton, a vast room of ebony and rosewood sprawls in decadence. Sandalwood and cedar burn in incense dishes. Intricate tasseled lanterns hang from the rafters by the hundreds, some the size of a human child, some small enough to fit her palm. A beautiful writing desk sits at one end, appointed with paper and ink, surrounded by shelves of bound volumes. On the other, bedchambers obscured by more paper screens painted with emblems of the royal seal, dragons, and lotuses.

The room’s beating heart is a long, low tea table with attendant lounging chairs, upon which the monarch of Quanbao stretches. Her coterie orbits her, making her comfortable, chattering in their shared language. One of them—the girl with long braided hair—kneels at the table and crumbles herbs into a glass pot bubbling over a tea light. When Yeva enters, amusement titters through the pack of them. Lady Sookhee covers her mouth as she smiles. “I’m glad my gift appears to your liking,” she says. “Although your choice of headgear leaves much to be desired, as usual.”

The long-haired girl, eyes bright and sharp, makes an observation. Yeva thinks she catches a syllable like the word for “broth” in her home language.

Lady Sookhee laughs; for someone so frail, her laughter bursts like a firework, thunderous and golden. “Kima says you look like a soup ladle. All skinny, with a big round metal head.”

Amusement sweeps the room. Yeva catches sight of herself in a bronze mirror; the handmaiden isn’t wrong. She does look like a kitchen implement. More importantly, she understood the word soup . There’s bleed between their languages. Hope soars within her: with time and directed effort, she might be able to understand it.

“Sujin,” the girl-king begins, then continues in her tantalizing language, a series of instructions. The grumpy maid vanishes briefly and returns with an elaborately lacquered black box. On its lid, painted in golds and reds, a sinuous dragon wraps a cloud-wreathed moon.

Lady Sookhee gently places it beside her and nods to dismiss her servants. The others leave without a fuss, but Sujin has parting advice for Yeva: “You’d better behave yourself, Soup Ladle.”

Alone now, Lady Sookhee laughs. “Please pardon my council. They’re usually fairly well-behaved, decorous as could be, but sometimes they can’t help a little mischief. They mean nothing by it.”

“I don’t mind.”

A broad gesture to the other lounge chair. “Please, have a seat.”

She does, perching on the edge of the sleek fabric in her new robes to study the creature before her in close quarters. Lady Sookhee seems to have shed the coat of ice she wore earlier, less monarch and more young woman, not all that different from Yeva. Only that Yeva is busy being a soup ladle, apparently. The golden brew in the pot draws her gaze: she recognizes its color and aroma. “Is that five-leaf warming tea?”

“Your senses are sharp. It is indeed. It helps with my blood disease. But you know what it does, of course. After all, it was your mother who taught mine about the effects of this tea. She was very knowledgeable about afflictions of the body.”

“She made this tea for you?”

“For my mother, mostly. I inherited her condition; it runs in our bloodline. Unfortunate, but it is what it is. I have learned to accept the limitations of my body.”

Yeva nods. With her maimed hand she carefully works at the bubbling teapot, turning the metal stick in looped circles the way her mother taught her, managing the delicate movements by stirring from the wrist.

She says: “I’ve not seen my mother since I went to Mithrandon a dozen years ago. You probably know her better than I.”

Lady Sookhee laughs. “I hardly knew her! She was my mother’s friend, not mine. They would find excuses to be alone and away from me. And she hasn’t come to Quanbao in a dozen years. Not even for my mother’s wake. They had some kind of quarrel around the time of my royal father’s death; she stopped visiting not too long after.”

“Your father’s death?” Now this is new to Yeva. There are no tales of the men who married the kings of Quanbao, none that she knows of, neither story nor fact. Their glaring absence has long been part of the kingdom’s mysteries.

“Ah. Matters of a time long past. Let’s not speak of them.” Lady Sookhee smiles coyly, as if she has said too much. Her gentle hands stop Yeva’s stirring so she can pour the brew into a clear glass cup. That brief instance of contact, cool skin against skin, startles the thoughts out of Yeva’s mind.

Lady Sookhee sips her tea with deerlike grace. “Forgive me for how coldly I spoke earlier. I wasn’t sure about you, given your reputation. The Sun Emperor wraps his ambition in beautiful wreaths of friendship, and when the envoy sent to us is not a man of letters but an armed and dangerous knight, one has to be cautious. But you don’t seem like a strident planter of banners, someone come to brand the Empire’s marks upon our flanks.” She puts the cup down. “I asked if you had come to Quanbao looking for something. That was my personal curiosity. I wondered if perhaps you were looking for traces of what your mother learned in this country.”

Beneath her helm, Yeva licks her dry lips and swallows. The truth is easiest to let out: “I never chose to come. That was my guildmaster’s decision—the Emperor did not order this either. He wanted to send a whole company of men instead. With their servants all told, it would have been a party of nearly a hundred.”

“I see.” Lady Sookhee looks thoughtful. “So truly no one wished you here. And yet you have come. It’s almost like there are greater forces at work.…”

Yeva holds her breath for two counts, steadying herself. A question burns the back of her throat and she must let it out. “The royal seal you gave me,” she begins. “It’s dragonscale. Is it not?”

“An observation as sharp as expected of a guildknight of Mithrandon. It is indeed. Dragonscale is an extremely rare material, as you well know. What you have is a precious relic of our nation, only given to dignitaries and those we want to honor. Please take good care of it.”

Yeva entwines her hands in her lap to keep them still. “What I have to ask next will be awkward. But I must ask it. His Radiance believes that Quentona—that Quanbao is home to a dragon that eluded our grasp years ago. Is that true? Do you harbor such creatures?”

The girl-king laughs her firework laugh until a cough takes hold of her. On some unknown instinct Yeva jumps up to attend to her, kneeling by her side, reaching out to rub her back.

Lady Sookhee pushes her hand away. “Forgive me. My health is not…” The moment of vulnerability passes and she straightens up, once more the unflappable monarch. She smiles. “I understand your question and why you ask it. Dragons are sacred to us, they form the basis of our culture. But if you’re asking about the sort of beasts you hunt, then—no. They do not live here. Not anymore.”

For a brief moment sadness envelops her like a flash of ice. But before Yeva can latch on to it, Lady Sookhee puts it aside and returns a small smile to her face. But this gesture of reticence only endears her to Yeva, who has spent a lifetime putting her own emotions into neat boxes where they won’t bother others.

Lady Sookhee picks up the lacquered box beside her. “I have a gift for you. Consider it an apology for my behavior earlier.”

Still kneeling, Yeva accepts the box and hinges it open. Within it, a wooden half-mask sits upon a cushion of velvety fabric. A dragon mask, painted in red and gold, its workmanship exquisite, jewels set into the ends of its faux horns. Yeva gingerly lifts it into the light. Her pulse quickens for reasons she cannot articulate.

Lady Sookhee says: “This mask used to be your mother’s.”

Words fail her. She glances at the girl-king with a trembling gaze the other can’t see.

She continues: “Once, many years ago—before either of us were born—your mother spent the spring festival in Daqiao. She took part in the Festival of Return, where we all don masks for a night and mingle, everyone from every walk of life. This was the one she chose. My mother kept it in her room, it was precious to her. I thought it might suit you. After all, it must be difficult to eat and drink in that metal bucket of yours.”

Yeva runs her thumbs over the polished, painted wood. The mask smells of sandalwood, of the box it was kept in. Still, its paint shines, unsullied and wax-fresh. Worn once and kept in the dark, a precious jewel. She imagines her mother with this mask over her face, draped in golden robes and locked arm-in-arm with the young girl-king of a bygone age, pretending to be a pair of commoners eating sweets at a festival market. A beautiful, romantic image that fills her head with foolish light. Abstract figures that capture her heart nonetheless.

“You can try it on to see if you like it,” Lady Sookhee says. “I’ll turn around. I promise I won’t look.”

How can Yeva refuse? Each step into Quanbao has seen the breaking of one taboo after another. She removed her helm for Anuya. She has shed the vestments of the guild for a stranger’s robes. What does it matter, swapping her cumbersome metal helm for this sleek, fearless mask? She turns her body away from Lady Sookhee to make the switch, but part of her wants to do it without decorum, to expose the lines of her face to the girl-king and absorb all the consequences.

The sandalwood scent of the mask enfolds her like a pair of gentle arms, warm and inviting. The world feels much lighter, its colors sharper. Open air breathes softly upon the nape of her neck. Almost shyly, Yeva meets Lady Sookhee’s gaze again, and finds herself graced by a tiny half-moon of a smile. “You look wonderful.”

She ducks her head in a nod. The mask hides her eyes but not her mouth; if she frowns it will be seen, if she struggles to find her way around a word it will be witnessed. It feels like part of her has cracked, but in the way frost cracks in the spring.

“Thank you,” she says, softly, in the language of home.

Lady Sookhee straightens up, attentive. “ Thank you, ” she says, but in her own native tongue, and Yeva understands it. The syllables are all different, but she recognizes each one in the language she already knows. All of a sudden the wall of understanding between them seems not so insurmountable. All of a sudden the woman in front of her is not the monarch of an unfriendly nation, but someone she could be friends with. Someone she could let into the chambers of her heart.

The girl-king says, “We don’t know how long you will be with us. But while you’re here, let us make the most of it. Perhaps you will find something worthy of your time during your stay.”