Of Beast and Beauty (13 page)

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 …

For our children, if they are daughters, to go … Or for my second wife and
our
daughters to go …

“Bo, I have news from your father.” The boy soldier running down the path toward me is out of breath and sweating like it’s the dead of summer.

He’s a chubby new recruit, no more than fifteen or sixteen. Too young to shave, too green to know better than to call a superior by his first name, even if that superior is only a few years older. Under normal circumstances, I would discipline him, but I’m too grateful for the interruption. I don’t want to think of the future. I can’t, or I won’t enjoy a moment of being king.

“What news?” I ask, settling for a stern look down my nose rather than an official reprimand.

“There’s trouble,” he pants. “Captain Fai thinks he’s found a crack in the dome.”

A crack in the dome. The covenant keeps Yuan’s shelter strong. If the dome has a crack, it could be seen as a sign that the time for the queen’s sacrifice grows near.

“Show me,” I order through a tight jaw. “Now. Run. I’ll follow.”

I set off after the boy, sprinting hard across the green and up the path to the Hill Gate, past fields of stiff cornstalks browning in the winter

chill. I run, and try not to think about losing her before she’s even mine.

GEM

NIGHT falls early in winter. Sometimes, I light my lamp right after dinner and practice reading or writing with the paper and charcoal Isra gave me—I’m trusted with flint to light the lamp and can ask for extra oil if it burns out.

But most nights I still choose darkness and the moonlit view out my window.

I stand and watch the roses. They are the only flowers still blooming, as obscenely red as they were in autumn when I was captured. When I was first moved to my new quarters, I would watch the path through the garden late into the night, expecting to catch a glimpse of Isra, hoping to learn more of the roses’ secrets. But after the evening when I told her the story of the girl and the star, she never came again.

Her absence is disappointing, like so many things about Yuan’s ruler.

Now, as I do what exercises I can in my small sitting room, I watch the garden path for soldiers. I memorize the timing of their patrols. I find the weaknesses in their guard. I store away everything I learn and pray to the ancestors that I get the chance to use the information. Taking possession of a rosebush is essential, but getting it to my people is what matters most.

Not if you can’t work the magic. If you can’t, the roses will be no good
to anyone, and you will have failed the Desert People all over again
.

I grit my teeth and bend my knees more deeply, squatting up and down with the heaviest of my new books balanced on either shoulder, building the strength in my legs, though my muscles still tremble in protest.

I’ll learn the magic. I’ll get the truth from Isra. She already tells me more than she knows. More than she should ever tell an enemy.

I tell her nothing that matters. I tell her stories to earn her sympathy and lower her guard. I labor hard beside her and keep my temper in check, slowly winning her trust. I tease her into thinking we are friends. I play the damaged weakling, sighing and groaning and stumbling through my work in the field even though I’m getting stronger every day. By spring I will be completely healed.

If she lets me out to gather the bulbs in a week or two and I return, she will let me out again to gather herb shoots in the spring.
That
is when I

will return to my people. I will bring them the roses and hope and life. I will see my son.

I have to believe he’s still alive. Our chief knew these months would be hard. She will have had the women dry the cactus fruit harvest so it can be rationed throughout the winter. The men will find small game in burrows beneath the sand; the women will boil poison root until the poison is gone and only the mealy meat remains. The Desert People will live to see spring, and I will bring them hope and magic.

With a soft grunt, I shift the books from my shoulders to the floor, stacking one on top of the other. I stand on top of them, dipping my heels down and up, building the strength in my lower legs, the running muscles.

I will have to be fast. By the time I escape, every moment will be precious. Every moment is precious
now
, but there’s nothing I can do. Not yet. The best use of my time is to spend it getting stronger, and gaining the further trust of the queen.

I should have kept my mouth closed today. I don’t owe Isra the truth, and the Smooth Skins’ outcasts are nothing to me. Let them suffer. They have food and safety, two things my people would give a year of their lives for. And their queen cares for them. In her way. Enough to worry about whether they are soft and pleasing to the eye.

Phuh
. Her obsession with Smooth Skin beauty is disgusting. All this from a girl who can’t even
see
. She’s planting a garden of dreams to cure an imaginary disease she’ll never bear witness to, when with a word she could abolish the outcast camp and end the custom that displeases her.

“Queen of fools,” I mutter.

It’s days like these that remind me why I hate her. I’m grateful for every one of them. I can’t afford to forget. I can’t afford to enjoy the way she sighs with happiness when I finish a story. I can’t afford to admire how hard she works. I can’t let myself grow comfortable on the dirt beside her as we share bread and apples from the basket she brings. I can never take her muddy hand in mind and promise her that the winter will end and the pain and loss she feels will fade the way mine did after my mother’s death.

I can certainly never tell her that she is out of her mind, and all the rest of her people with her, if they don’t see the beauty in her. In her green, green eyes, in her smile big enough to light a room, in the way she walks like she’s dancing with the ground beneath her feet, each step careful and graceful and—

“Fool,” I whisper as I step off the books and move closer to the window.

I grit my teeth and direct my gaze toward the roses—reminding myself why I’m here—just in time to see a woman creep from the shadows of the orchard. I can’t see her face or what she’s wearing in the dim moonlight, but I know immediately who she is.

Isra
. I recognize her walk, the way her hips sway beneath her clothes, the careful reach of her toes as she moves across unseen terrain. I know her. I do. Even in the dark.

The knock on the door is soft, but it still makes me jump.

I feel like I’ve been caught doing something worse than staring out my window. Maybe I have. I can imagine what Gare would say about my knowing a Smooth Skin girl so well.

The knock comes again, and I turn slowly to face the door. My evening meal came hours ago. There shouldn’t be anyone near my room until morning. The Smooth Skins have great trust in their locks and keys.

The only time I’m guarded is when the soldiers escort me to the queen’s garden.

So who is here now?

The flap at the bottom of the door swoops open, and a small package slides along the floor. I tense on instinct, my claws shuddering in their beds.

I approach the bundle carefully, keeping an eye on the still-swinging flap of wood through which my meals are shoved. This is the first time something else has come through. I squat beside the package and unfold the linen holding it together. Inside is a piece of paper with simple words written in an even hand, and a thick coil of rope with a large hook on one end.

I begin to sound out the words on the paper, but haven’t gotten past “Gem, I need—” before the sound of a key turning in the lock makes my head snap up and my claws extend.

I lift my arms as the door swings open to reveal Needle, Isra’s maid, standing on the other side. Her large brown eyes get even bigger when she sees my claws, but she doesn’t scream or turn to run. She only blinks and swallows and points a thin finger to the package.

Having my claws out begins to feel … strange.

“Ridiculous.” That’s the word Isra uses for the hated dresses she’s forced to wear to the Smooth Skin eating rooms and the endless Smooth

Skin banquets. In some ways, Isra is a stranger here, too. I know that. I know that’s why Bo treats her like an invalid and her advisors treat her like a child. Still, I didn’t expect this note. There are some words I can’t work through, but I understand enough to decipher its meaning.

I finish, and I am … shaken.

If anyone finds out what she’s done, she really will be locked away in that tower of hers. Not even a queen can go against her city’s wishes like this and not be punished. At least, not a queen like Isra, a blind, broken queen without the love of her subjects or the trust of her council.

I have to stop her. And if I can’t stop her, I will have to help her. I may hate her, but I need her. She’s the only reason I’m allowed out of this room, my only chance to steal a future for my people.

I hand the paper to Needle, who wastes no time tearing it to pieces.

She’s loyal to Isra, then. That’s something. Maybe not enough to keep the soldiers from discovering mine and Isra’s absence, but it’s something. I take the rope with the hook and begin to move past her, but she stops me with a hand on my arm.

I look down and down
and down
at her. She is half a meter shorter than Isra and more fragile in every way, but the stubborn glint in her eyes reminds me of the queen.

Her lips move without sound. I watch her, and after a moment I think I understand her silent plea.

Keep her safe. Please. Keep her safe
.

Maybe Isra does have the love of at least one person.

“I would never hurt her,” I assure Needle in a hushed voice.

She stares up at me for a long moment before stepping back and pointing to the end of the corridor, where a window large enough for a Desert Man to crawl through opens out onto the royal garden. The guards passed down the path outside the barracks only a few moments ago. I should have just enough time to reach Isra, talk her out of leaving the city, and get back to my cell undiscovered.

I don’t waste my breath telling Needle more lies. I turn and run.

I step into the garden, shaking all over, but not from the cold. I’m barely aware of the cold. I’m racing inside. My pulse rushes like the river beneath the city, wild and reckless and angry.

And frightened. I’m frightened, too.