Of Beast and Beauty (29 page)

“Baba had mentioned something about a strange smell in my bedroom earlier, but neither of us knew what it was until my mother threw the lamp at the curtains. Apparently she’d soaked them with oil earlier in the day. They went up with a rush that sucked all the air from the room. I can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I remember seeing her silhouetted against the flames, how white her nightgown looked next to all that red and orange.”

“Why?” Gem asks, his voice breaking.

“She had decided the royal family had to die. Together,” I say, piecing together what little I remember with what Baba told me of that night. “As soon as she lit the curtains, she ran from the bedroom. She locked me and Father inside, and went to set another fire in the sitting room. Father slammed his fists against the door and begged her to let us out, but she wouldn’t. She … She said she loved us, but that fire was the only way.”

My brow wrinkles as the unfamiliar piece of the puzzle fits into place.

I don’t know if it’s seeing my bedroom that’s helping my memory, or the

fact that I’m telling the story aloud for the first time, but I can suddenly hear my mother speak, as plainly as if she were in the room right now. I can hear the tears in her voice, the genuine grief over what she felt, for some mad reason, she had to do.

“I didn’t remember that last part before,” I continue, “but I’m sure I heard her. It was right before my nightgown caught fire.”

I press my fingers to my lips, concentrating until I swear I catch a whiff of smoke. “I screamed for Baba, and he ran back to the bed and threw me to the ground before the fire could touch my skin.” I point to the spot on the floor, only a few feet from where I now sit.

“My head hit the stones beneath the carpet and … everything went blurry. I don’t remember much after that, but I know soldiers arrived and broke down the bedroom door. Father gave me to one of them and went to find my mother. She was in the music room, but she ran out onto the balcony when she saw Father and the guards. Baba said she refused to come back inside. When she realized her plan had failed, she leapt over the parapet, down onto the top of the first roof, and threw herself from the edge. I heard her scream as she fell.

“My father and Junjie took her body to the rose garden the next morning.” I glance at Gem, who stands frozen on the other side of the room, as horrified by the story as the people were in the days after my mother’s suicide. Suicide was always expected of her, but not like that, not anywhere but in the garden.

“They slit her throat and spilled her blood on the soil.” I drop my hand to my lap. “According to the terms of the covenant, the queen should do that herself—make the first, fatal cut before the royal executioner finishes the job—so it wasn’t the way things were traditionally done, but it was a suicide, and the covenant was satisfied. The city had been running low on water for months, but that very day, the water came surging back into the underground river at full force. For the next three years, the harvests were so abundant, Father had to have additional granaries built to contain the bounty. He named one of them after my mother. Not the greatest honor for a queen, but it was all he felt proper for a woman who’d tried to burn her family alive.”

Gem curses. It’s a Desert People word, but there’s no doubt that it’s a curse.

“She was mad,” I say, defending Mama out of habit. “My father and

mother were married for almost twenty years before she became pregnant.

I was a complete surprise. Mama was forty years old when I was born.

Needle tells me the gossips say she was strange before my birth, but afterward …”

I sigh. “She started to talk about leaving the city. She even took me outside the gates once when I was four. It’s one of my earliest memories.

We were spotted by the guards and brought back inside almost immediately, but … My father couldn’t trust her after that. He moved us both to the tower. Father said Mother didn’t mind. Court life had always been a misery for her, and going out into the city center gave her fits. She’d get so upset, she’d forget to breathe, and faint dead away on the street.”

“Was she sick?” Gem asks.

“Not in body,” I say. “Father said the illness was in her mind but that she seemed happy in the tower. He never thought she’d … do what she did.

I didn’t, either.” I lean back, resting against the mattress. “I don’t remember much about her, almost nothing, really, but I remember feeling loved. I’m sure, in some part of her mind, she did what she did out of love.”

Gem crosses the room, his steps soundless on the thick carpet. He’s learned to be as silent in his boots as he is in bare feet. He has adapted well to my world. If only I could have the chance to see if I would adapt as well to his. I already miss the desert, the wind, the moaning of the dead trees.

I’d never be alone in my sorrow out there. There would always be the wind to commiserate with.

“I’m sure she did,” he says as he stops in front of me. “It’s not hard to believe.”

I look up, up,
up
at him in surprise. “It’s hard for most people. It was hard for me when I was little.”

“She was trying to spare you a life spent preparing to die.”

“We’re all preparing to die.”

“Not like this.” He squats down, resting his hands on my knees. “You know it’s not the same.”

“I know,” I whisper, running my fingers over the ridges on the backs of his hands, down the top of each finger, tracing the places where his claws go to hide. They’re solid, sturdy chambers, like a second set of bones on top of the first, barely contained by his thick skin. I’ve felt them before, but I never expected them to look like this, so … natural. Not scary at all, really.

I lift his hand, studying the tiny puckers above his fingernails that must open in order to let his claws out. “I would like to see your claws.”

“No.”

“Please. Show them to me,” I say. “I want to see what gave me the scar on my shoulder.”

Gem fists his hand before pulling it from my grasp. “I wish I’d never touched you,” he says, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I wish I’d never come here.”

“I’m glad you came, and I’m glad you touched me. I wish you would …” My words trail off. I’m still too shy to state it plainly, but surely … I reach out, my hand trembling only slightly as I slip my fingers into his open shirt, resting them over his heart. “Can’t we stop talking?”

Gem’s eyes flick to mine. There’s no doubt he understands my meaning—it’s clear in the way his lips part, in the way he braces his hands on either side of my hips, fingers digging into the rose upholstery—but instead of kissing me, he says, “There has to be another way.”

“There is no other way.” My lips prickle with disappointment as I withdraw my hand from his warmth. “The covenant is a binding contract, signed in blood by the founding families of Yuan. Its terms are nonnegotiable.”

“It’s the covenant that’s the source of the magic, not the roses?”

I nod. “The roses grew after the first sacrifice. They’re a symbol. Part of the magic, but not the source of it.”

“A symbol of what?” Gem’s expression is so intense, it makes my head start to hurt again just looking at him. “From what?”

I close my eyes, and rub the space above them with my knuckles.

“What do you mean?”

“What has entered into this contract with your people?” Gem asks.

“The magic of the planet has been quiet for hundreds of years. So, what magic is this?”

“I don’t know.” I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly colder. And tired. “It’s just … magic.”

“But whose magic?” he asks. “Who or what accepts the offering of a queen’s blood and grants Yuan vitality in return?”

I start to argue, but the words I need won’t come. What he’s saying makes sense. Magic has to come from someone. Or something. I know the roses grew after the first sacrifice—it’s the most written about and sung

about event in our city’s history—but as far as who or what made them grow … what inspires the flowers’ hunger for blood …

“I don’t know,” I say in a small voice.

“You don’t know,” he repeats, as if I’ve confessed that I don’t know how to feed myself or put on my own shoes.

“No, I don’t know,” I say, defensive and anxious at the same time. “I know the legend, but I— The stories say the noble families arrived in one of the fifteen great ships. They were in charge of supervising the building of Yuan, making sure the dome would protect the colonists until they knew if it was safe for humans to live outside. Everything went well until the eleventh year of building. That’s when the workers constructing the dome—the ones who spent the most time outside the ship—began to change.”

“To mutate,” Gem says, as if he’s heard the story before, making me wonder how much history we share.

“Yes.” I worry my earlobe between two fingers. “But they mutated more quickly than people ever had on our home planet. Massive changes within a month or two, instead of gradually over thousands and thousands of years. Even the scientists had no explanation for it except magic.”

For the first time, it strikes me how strange that must have been for my ancestors, for people from a planet with no magic to suddenly be trapped on a world ruled by it.

“The mutated people turned violent,” I say, keeping my eyes on Gem’s chest. “They attacked the ship where the colonists had been living, and tore it apart, killing the people who hadn’t been transformed, destroying all the books and the machines that stored the ancient knowledge, and scattering them across the desert.”

I glance at Gem’s eyes. His expression is neutral, patient, waiting for the rest. “The noble families escaped with a few dozen others whose mutations were still minor,” I continue. “Together, they ran into the city, and locked the gates behind them. They were safe inside—the dome was finished and the central buildings constructed—but the city wasn’t ready to support life. The animals they’d brought from their home planet were still very young, the seeds hadn’t sprouted, and most of their medicines and supplies had been left aboard the ship. They had water, but not much food, and they were too terrified to venture outside the walls. The people were starving to death when, one night, the woman who would become our first

queen had a vision.”

“A vision of what?” Gem asks, the intensity returning to his voice.

“I don’t know.” I lift my shoulders and let them fall, before tucking my feet beneath my skirt. “Just … a vision. Of how to save her people. Of the covenant,” I say, ignoring the prickle at the back of my neck I’ve always associated with telling a lie. I’m not lying—not as far as I know, anyway.

So why does it feel like I’m telling Gem a fairy tale?

“All right,” he says, clearly unsatisfied. “What happened after the vision?”

“The queen woke her husband and representatives from the other noble families. They walked to the center of the city, where the king transcribed the sacred words of the covenant from the queen’s dream onto parchment. They all signed the covenant in blood and spoke the words aloud. Then, as the sun rose beyond the dome, the queen …

“As soon as her blood hit the soil, the first bed of roses sprang up from the ground. By the end of the day, crops that should have taken months to grow were ready to be harvested. Yuan was saved,” I say, though with less enthusiasm than my father used when telling this story.

“The king remarried that evening, and since then the city has never been without a queen, or a daughter in line to be queen, for more than a single night. There are similar stories about the other domed cities. Each one felt the call and formed covenants of their own.”

Gem grunts his dubious grunt.

“That’s the story as I know it.” I turn my palms over to stare at the lines creasing the skin, embarrassed without really knowing why. “The covenant came to the queen in a vision, and the king wrote it down. No mention of who or what made the roses grow. I suppose I’ve always thought …”

“Thought what?”

“I don’t know. It seemed to me …” I peek at him through my lashes.

“Maybe it was the power of her sacrifice that created the magic.”

“I’ve seen sacrifice,” Gem says. “I’ve seen old men wander into the desert to die to give their hut one less mouth to feed. I’ve seen mothers choose between two babies when there isn’t enough milk for them both.

No magic roses sprang up when their blood was shed. There’s something darker here.”

“What do you mean?”

He studies me a moment before saying, “My people have legends, too.”

“I know that,” I say with a tired smile.

“I don’t mean legends like the girl who loved the star. I mean history.

Stories from when our tribe was young and some still remembered—”