Page 7 of Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame
CHAPTER SEVEN
THUS BEGAN THE masked guildknight’s long stay in Daqiao. Outside of Mithrandon’s walls, in absence of marching orders and the routines she had followed for so many years, Kunlin Yeva discovers the joy and burdens of freedom. The time to do what she wants and the impossibility of deciding what that should be. She can only carry out so many weapon drills. Made tender by nostalgia, she allows the delights offered by this new country to creep into her heart and unfurl like the white petals of a peony. Within the labyrinthine layout of the royal palace she discovers little pleasures: wisteria gardens dripping with spring blossoms, stately libraries whose heavy air lies still as the mountains, steam-clad hot-spring baths which she slips into when she finds herself alone. She accepts Captain Lu’s invitations to dinners, where she discovers the breadth and depth of local cuisine in the company of his rowdy lieutenants. She wanders into town not as a marauder but as a guest, bringing the royal seal with her as a mark of favor, allowing her to go wherever she pleases. The world looks, feels, tastes different in her new light garb. After years of wading through the world in armor, the robes seem gauzy despite their weight and thickness, as if she were wrapped in spider silk. In dress she seems not so different from the merchants and the children shrieking as they race around in courtyards, limbs flailing. Her half-mask allows her to feel the air on her lips, to taste soft floured snacks when they’re offered to her, to smile in gratitude when she feels it.
But a soldier taken from the barracks is still a soldier by habit, and Yeva struggles to feel complete without a duty to perform. Tasked to investigate if Quanbao might harbor secret dragons, she finds herself caught by the possibility of any clue wherever she goes—certain sounds or stories turning her head, a flash of cream-white like dragonbone prompting a question of— what’s that made of? Anything that is secret or legendary or hidden catches her interest.
Eventually, one of Captain Lu’s men—a loose-lipped hothead named Chuwan—lets slip that the massive cave system that hollows the mountains around them also runs deep in the bedrock under the palace. “Caves? No one’s mentioned any,” Yeva says, intrigued. “Tell me more.”
“Oh,” Chuwan says quickly, “it’s nothing at all. Just some old caves. You shouldn’t go anyway, it’s off-limits. There’s lava and whatnot in there.”
This only serves to make Yeva’s curiosity worse. She brings it up to Lady Sookhee that evening. “Tell me about the caves at the castle.”
The girl-king giggles and gently corrects: “You mean around the castle. Or underneath.” She’s been teaching Yeva her language, at Yeva’s request. Every evening they spend curled up in her lantern-draped chambers, speaking of infinitives and gerunds. Vocabulary comes easy to Yeva but grammar is hard. Prepositions the worst of all. Lady Sookhee asks: “Why are you interested in the caves?”
Yeva sieves through her meager pool of words to put a sentence together. “I want to study them. If there’s something interesting in them, I want to see.”
Her eyes crinkle in amusement at Yeva’s struggle. “You can speak Thrandish if it’s easier.”
It would be easier, but Yeva knows she won’t improve if she keeps taking the easy way out. She stubbornly continues in her new language. “I would like to see them. Even if it’s dangerous.”
“Hmm.” Lady Sookhee taps her chin. “I would not normally grant permission, and there are times when the caves are closed to everyone, even members of the royal family. Did you understand that? It would be forbidden—this word you know. But it isn’t right now, and if you’re so curious…” She leans forward, her hands on her knees. “Come. I will give you instructions. This should strengthen your understanding of directions. I’d like to see how you navigate those caves on your own.”
That’s how Yeva finds herself tiptoeing through the lower levels of the palace with Sage at her heels, carefully separating the words for left and right, repeating the girl-king’s words over and over until she finds the correct place in the correct library, the one filled with foreign books from the world over. One specific rosewood shelf with an indent whose shape she recognizes well, which accepts the royal seal of dragonscale. The whole bookshelf draws aside to reveal bedrock, rough-hewn stairs tumbling into the bones of the earth. Yeva, wielding a torch, descends into the cool dark, into vast chambers of glossy black rock echoing with the faint sound of water. For the first time since she had come to Daqiao, she has put her armor back on, and the weight settles back onto her bones with such ease she almost resents it. Resents the speed at which her gait adjusts to the stiffness of what she wears. Yet the familiarity is comforting, like an old bed well slept in. With the flickering torch held aloft she feels once again like a faceless soldier, as she has been for the bulk of her life. Sage lopes ahead of her, sniffing the ground for danger, pointing the way forward. She takes mental notes as a soldier would, charting the intestinal rope of the path she takes between these great hollows, as though planning for an invasion, as though seeking out spots an enemy could hide. She is on alert, scanning the environment with all her senses, even though she has no reason to suspect she might be in peril. It is an old, exhausting habit, this paranoia of hers.
An entire world seems to languish in this unknown dark. Yeva’s mind plays tricks on her, conjuring images of massive otherworldly shapes moving through the caves alongside her watching her passage with glittering red eyes. Still her sacred blood remains quiet under her skin, telling her that nothing draconic lives in these caves. If something dangerous were hiding in these passages, she would know.
Yeva keeps walking, one heavy foot in front of the next, until the air grows unbearably warm, until the bluish light from the lichen sticking to the walls is superseded by a hellish glow. She’s found the lava pools, red molten rock welling up from deep underground, so bright and hot in their excess that even Yeva, who makes her keep slaying beasts of nightmare, cannot bear to be around them. She makes a note in her mind: a dead end.
Later that evening Lady Sookhee asks: “Did you find anything in your journey through the caves?”
“They’re very big,” she says. “And hotter than I expected.”
She nods, seeming pleased by Yeva’s answer. “They’re not safe to explore; they’re sealed off for a reason. I have to protect my subjects; people often have more curiosity than they have sense. But since you are a knight, I let you go. If there was any trouble, I thought you could handle it.”
Yeva agrees. “They were no problem.”
Thus these halcyon days go on, so golden and even-keeled that they might go on forever. Yeva becomes a regular at the stalls of Daqiao’s market streets. She becomes proficient enough in the local tongue to make small talk, ask after children, laugh at jokes. They call her Soup Ladle and Bucket Head still, and she lets them—it’s funny. The palace guards, her dining companions, become comrades whose temperaments and dislikes she understands better than the guildknights’ she served with for years. Bit by bit she stops looking for clues of a dragon infestation. Bit by bit she forgets why she was sent here.
One day Aunty Anuya asks, “You’ve been here a few months, have you thought of going home for a visit?”
Yeva has come by for tea and snacks, a weekly affair she has worked into her schedule of work, learning, and leisure. The question catches her off guard: her first thought being Why? I don’t miss Mithrandon, until she understands what Aunty Anuya is really asking. Struck by sudden panic like a musket shot to the chest, she counters with a question of her own. “When was the last time you went home for a visit?” And as Aunty Anuya laughs and capitulates—“Choy, choy, who’s going to run the shop if I leave?”—she is spared from having to give a solid answer, spared from having to pry open the lid of her chest and look inside at the tangled, bloody mess that is her thoughts about home and mother. She has actively cut that section of her life away, and the resulting wound she does not want to think about.
Weeks pass. Months pass. It’s the longest stretch of time since Yeva has been on a hunt, and yet she doesn’t feel idle. She writes to Emory, sending falcons to and fro, bearing two documents each time: an official report, dry as old bone, and a personal letter full of the life and color on the streets of Daqiao. She continues to explore the caves beneath the royal palace, sketching out detailed maps of their intricate chambers and lava roadblocks. She’s not always allowed: for stretches of weeks at a time the caves are too dangerous to enter and guards are posted in front of its secret entrance. In those days, Yeva waits impatiently to be allowed passage again. Down in the dark, with nothing but air between her and the raging firmament, she feels shockingly small and blessedly mortal, both awed by the scale and enervated by a sense of discovery. It reminds her of a particular child a long time ago, creeping through a swamp and limestone cave with her little sister, hand in clammy hand, giggling at every strange fungus they discover, at every striped newt that scuttles away from them. A memory so long buried it has nearly decayed into the dirt. Freshly unearthed, parts of it still glisten.
Finally there’s Lady Sookhee. The girl-king of Quanbao treats her with such warmth and gentleness Yeva does not know what to do with herself. Some days a single smile from the monarch sets her heart racing, and such dizziness sweeps through her she has to remain absolutely still lest she lose her balance and fall. When they are in the same room, Yeva teeters between joy and anxiety, admiration and loathing, and she cannot explain the tides of emotion that swell and retreat within her. When they are apart, Yeva’s thoughts often stray to the girl-king: what would she say or do at this moment, what should Yeva do that might amuse her? And when she falls ill—as she does with alarming regularity, every month, like clockwork—Yeva finds herself pacing the walkways of the palace as she is denied access to its monarch. She is not used to attaching emotion to people she knows, and this novel experience is as uncomfortable as it is pleasurable.
The spring of the year brings new hopes, new promises, new experiences. Daqiao shrugs off the blanket of winter with an eruption of sounds and light and joy. In Yeva’s childhood, spring festivals were glazed with the steam of hotpot around a table, the light of a fire in the garden, windows decorated with paper cutouts. In the royal palace, servants festoon branches with red ribbons and put up strings of paper lanterns. The corridors bustle as they rush to and fro with their arms full of sweets, baskets of fruit, bundles of cloth, decorative scrolls, lacquered boxes, cooking supplies, cleaning supplies, bamboo baskets, gardening tools. In town, the buildings blossom into explosions of color. Paper lanterns hang in strings, bright as songbirds, and every window trails streamers and wind-catchers. Activity builds up to a crescendo as the Festival of Return approaches, the apex of the spring festival in Quanbao. The same festival which Lady Sookhee spoke of, attended by Yeva’s mother years ago.
The girl-king summons Yeva to her chambers on the eve of the festival. One of her lounge chairs holds a matching set of elaborate blue robes trimmed in gold. Upon the indigo folds of one sits another painted dragon half-mask, this one in shades of green and black. The girl-king smiles as understanding dawns on Yeva. “It’s the Festival of Return tonight. And as is tradition, as my mother did before me, I will don a mask and walk among the people, and they will be none the wiser. There’s a market, music, performances. Yeva, will you accompany me? So that I need not walk alone.”
“Do you always go alone?”
“No. I’ll usually have one of my girls with me, of course. Or a few. But this year, since you’re here—I’d like it to be you.”
“People already recognize me by my mask,” Yeva says. “They’ll know it’s me, and then they’ll realize it’s you.”
Lady Sookhee smiles, brilliant and pale as a pearl. “That’s fine. Will you?”
How could she refuse? It’s how the pair of them, fluid in their disguises, leap into a world bursting with song and flavor. Down through the market they go, speeding over the shining cobblestones, Yeva tugged along by Lady Sookhee. The girl-king seems entirely at ease in her masked anonymity, much like Yeva herself. This fact brings Yeva an unusual happiness, a kind of relief. Warmth spreads from her chest into her limbs, and she feels so light that gravity might lose its grip on her and allow her to fly into the endless winds of the night.
The two slip between exuberant bodies, elbowing their way to the front of stalls, finding pockets of air to grin at each other, tucking themselves into small spaces of calm under the eaves of buildings to wolf down the snacks they bought. Lady Sookhee tries a bit of everything: roasted nuts in cones of paper, bags of every fruit preserve, grilled meats on sticks, balls of fried dough, sticky rice cake filled with lotus paste or bean paste or groundnuts. There are stalls which sell lanterns, and little wooden toys for children, and inflatable balls made of colored paper; stalls which offer bushels of flowers and beautifully sculpted hairpins and chrysanthemums the size of a child’s head. She buys a sandalwood fan with legends of dragons carved through the thin slats, each panel no bigger than a thumbnail, and slips it into Yeva’s sleeve pocket.
The clamor increases. It’s time for the dragon dance. Bodies pack the main thoroughfare so densely it’s impassable. Wedged in the crowd, they might not get to see anything. “Come,” Yeva says. She leads Lady Sookhee away from the crowd and slips into Aunty Anuya’s teahouse. “Let us use your second-floor balcony,” she entreats.
On the mezzanine the air is finally cool again. Lady Sookhee leans over the parapet as down below the troupe begins their performance. The dragon, propped on metal rods, made of yards of shimmering fabric lined with the black fur of goats, undulates over the heads of twenty dancers in bright red outfits. Cymbals clash and trumpets blare as the dancers twirl the dragon’s ropy body into flowing shapes like a river. Lady Sookhee watches the dance with a soft joy that almost looks like melancholy. “Has anyone told you the meaning behind this dance? Behind the Festival of Return?”
“Tell me.”
A smile, a fond look at the dancing below. As the thunder and song of performance clangs around them, she spins her tale. “The Spring Festival celebrates the return of the children of Chuan-pu, the ancestral dragon. It is said that our forebears first came to Quanbao when it was but a wild land, hostile mountains that bore no trees and shook with the anger of the gods. They had fled a terrible war and were hungry and weak. The eldest daughter of their leader was a girl of twenty named Suma, and she was tougher than the mountains and prettier than the meadows in spring. As Chuan-pu circled the heavens, he saw her hunting in the river to feed her family, and his heart was instantly captured by her beauty, her resilience. He came down to the mortal world in the shape of a man to court her, to woo her. At first, she was not interested in something so banal as a human boy. But when he revealed his godly nature, her heart was swayed. They fell in love. Suma kept him company at night, and he used his magic to help the refugees settle into this harsh land. He married Suma, and she bore him many children, half-human and half-dragon.
“But still they suffered. The mountains were not kind to our forebears. Harvests were meager and winters harsh. Children starved and infants died in their cribs. Seeing the pain suffered by Suma’s people, Chuan-pu was so moved by sorrow that he decided to offer up the thing most precious to him: his life. He sacrificed himself and became part of the land, his flesh nourishing the soil and his bones calming the tremors of the earth. His divine essence turned a wasteland into a blessed paradise, and from then on Quanbao flourished.”
They’ve slipped back to Thrandish without Yeva even noticing. “So this dance is to honor Chuan-pu’s sacrifice?”
“Mm. Partly. The dance is also known as The Dragon’s Return . According to legend, the children of Chuan-pu, who themselves are half-draconic, would assume their sacred forms and wander the world and spirit realms for half a year, during which the kingdom of Quanbao would grow cold and its ground hard.”
“Ah. So an allegory for winter, then.”
“Precisely. The return of the dragons signifies the return of warm weather, the return of the sun and the return of shoots budding through tender loam.”
“How poetic of you,” Yeva murmurs, earning her an elbow in the ribs. Below them, the dance reaches its climax, the silk dragon spinning in huge spirals as the music grows joyous and frenetic. How little these spiritual beasts of legend resemble the reptilian creatures of blood and bone Yeva has hunted all her life. The Sun Emperor is a fool to think that they are anything alike.
Lady Sookhee complains of exhaustion after the festivities. They retire to the palace, where the sound of firecrackers and celebration becomes a soft, hazy backdrop. “I shall take a bath,” the girl-king declares. “Will you join me?”
Blood rushes through Yeva’s body; exposed to the air, her cheeks and ears burn. Two warring versions of her appear at that moment: one that cleaves to sanity and propriety, to whom the obvious answer is to refuse as a knight and envoy should. The other wants to give in, to say yes, to see where this will lead. She’s sure she knows where it will lead, but she’s too afraid to admit it.
“Come,” Lady Sookhee says, a gentle entreaty, and she takes Yeva’s scarred hand with such tenderness that whatever objections she had collapse, folding under the weight of Yeva’s desires.
The girl-king leads her into the fragrant quiet of her private garden, which Yeva has not yet been within. It’s larger than she knew: a courtyard of raked stone, a trellis knotted with herbs, slim benches for moon-gazing. At its furthest end, citrus bushes and rock sculptures surround a hot spring from which rosettes of steam billow. They undress and slide into the warm fog. Beneath the rilling water and a thin layer of steam, the pale shape of Lady Sookhee’s body is so long and narrow she appears to be half-serpent, smooth and limbless, all muscle that could coil around a waist or a throat, snapping bone as it went. An old scar runs down the side of her ribs, and Yeva, out of curiosity, reaches to touch it, to run her finger down its crooked line, only pulling back at the last second.
Sookhee laughs. “Are you shy, guildknight?”
“I’m not,” Yeva says, acutely defensive. Still, she stumbles over her words. “It’s just…”
Sookhee takes Yeva’s unmasked face in her hands and studies it, thumbs sliding across her cheekbones. Yeva finds her mind going blank, thoughts of duty and the world outside slipping away like rainwater. The girl-king has finally broken through the last of the barriers she had built around herself. At this moment, at this twilight, she is allowed to take on new form—not just the valiant guildknight of the Sun Empire, not the faithful servant whose only purpose is to wield a blade, not the faceless, nameless creature who exists only as terror and whispered legend. She never lets herself be so exposed, yet she does not feel vulnerable. She leans into the girl-king as the young woman pulls around her. She sheds her reservations. Later, when they retire to her bedchambers, she allows herself to sigh, to linger in sensations, to wrap her fingers in the damp ribbons of Lady Sookhee’s hair. Her lover licks the salt from her navel, travels with her fingers between Yeva’s legs, and when she moans yes, please, yes, the words that slide from her lips emerge in the language of home, sounds and syllables she has been divorced from for so long.
In the clear, quiet aftermath, Lady Sookhee says, “I’m glad you came to us,” as she drums fingers against Yeva’s clavicle. The bones of her ankle rest against Yeva’s foot, and Yeva can feel the pulse in their bellies pressed together. “Selfish as it is, I wish you’d stay longer with us. Perhaps for good, even.”
Yeva’s stomach lurches as if rolling off a great cliff at the thought of abandoning Mithrandon and the life she has known thus far. She can’t conceptualize it; she would never have thought of such a thing herself. She has no answer to that, nothing to say to such a crazy fantasy. She shuts her eyes and buries her face in the crook of Sookhee’s arm, as though it might substitute for putting her armor on again.