“It’s to keep you safe. I wanted to make sure the beast couldn’t enter your rooms,” he says. “And Father was worried. I didn’t tell him about last night, but after what happened today, and with your mother …”
“No,” I whisper, breath coming faster, feeling more trapped than I have in my entire life. It’s been years since I was truly a captive in the tower, and I’ve never had so many reasons to gain my freedom.
“It’s not forever,” Bo says. “Once we’re married, and you start feeling better …”
No. No, no,
I’ll never feel better. I’ll never feel the wind in my hair again. I’ll never race through a damp field in bare feet. I’ll never sneak away to the King’s Gate or the desert beyond. Even if Gem sets a fire burning by the gathering of stones, I’ll never see it. I’ll never see Gem again.
I’ll never leave this tower, not until the day they lead me to the garden to die.
My knees give way and I crumple to the floor, but I don’t cry out. I don’t sob or scream. There’s no point in it. Bo is here by my side, three strong men occupy my balcony, and guards with spears and sleeping darts wait at the bottom of the stairs. There is no way out. There is nowhere to run. It’s over. Everything is over. I am over.
The world goes soft around the edges, my mind softer.
I don’t remember rising from the floor. I don’t remember Needle tending my wounds or mixing a sleeping draft or tucking me into bed—though she must have, because when I come back to myself hours later, I am bandaged, and the bitter taste of valerian root is strong in my mouth.
I don’t remember throwing off my sheets or dragging the chair in the corner across the room. I don’t remember ordering Needle to help me lift it on top of my bed, or threatening her with dismissal if she refused to assist me. I don’t even remember climbing up to stand on top of the tower of furniture and nearly falling in the process.
Later, when Needle asks me how I knew the diary was there, I tell her it must have come to me in a dream, but the first thing I recall between my falling to the ground at Bo’s feet and the slender volume dropping into my hand is reaching for the beam above my bed, fingers prickling as I released the secret latch I was certain I’d find on one side.
I tell Needle it must have been an ancestor dream, like Gem said. My father was always proud that we could trace our ancestry all the way back to King Sato and his third queen.
I don’t know what he’d feel if he were alive to read our ancestor’s words now. It takes more time for Needle to read and sign each word than it would if I could read the diary myself, but still it doesn’t take long to learn that the volume belonged to that very queen. Or that everything I’ve been raised to believe is a lie.
24
GEM
I hear the heavy footfalls and turn to see soldiers rushing around the granaries, but the men scrambling through the tall grass inspire more relief than fear. I’m already at the King’s Gate with the pack of food and supplies strapped to my back, and they’re coming from the direction of the royal garden. They must have found Isra and freed her from the roses. I know these people have no issue with killing a queen, but only after she’s married, and that day is still months away. Isra should be safe until I return.
With one last glance back at the tower, the peak of its highest roof barely visible over the rise, I step through the door and walk away from Yuan.
I walk. There’s no need to hurry. It’s too dark for their arrows to find me, and the soldiers won’t dare follow me into the desert.
I walk until the dome is a faintly glowing speck on the horizon, on through the darkest part of the night, and into the next morning. I walk until the sun bakes my head, and the straps of my pack rub blisters on the scale-free flesh on the undersides of my arms, on through another night and the pale blush of a second morning, before exhaustion hits like a rock slide crushing me into the ground. I collapse into a hollow between two cactus plants, but I don’t sleep for long. I don’t know which is stronger, the need to reach my people, or the need to return to Isra, but both drive me like nothing has before.
I walk until my good leg throbs and my bad leg screams for mercy. I walk until both legs go numb and my joints begin to creak like the wheel of an overloaded cart. I walk until my entire body is a collection of aches and pains and my mind exists outside it all, lulled by the endless rhythm of my footfalls, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the misery of my flesh. I drink little; I eat even less, determined to save as much food for the others as I possibly can. The pack is brimming with dried fruit and nuts and salted meat, enough to keep the hundred souls still remaining in my tribe from starvation for a month if the food is rationed carefully.
I think of how wonderful it will be to see my father’s face, my son’s smile as he gums a piece of dried fruit, the relief in my people’s eyes as they eat well for the first time in months. I think of Isra, of her lips on mine that night in her tower.
I can’t be without her. Seeing her held captive by the roses settled any question about that. I can’t accept her death as a necessary evil. I won’t have her blood spilled. Not for Yuan, not for the Desert People, or anyone else.
Gare will never understand. Father, maybe, if I explain myself well, but Gare … never. He’ll never forgive me for caring for a Smooth Skin. He’ll hate me until the day he dies, and he’ll go to his funeral pyre with a curse for me lingering in his soul.
I’m sure most of my people will feel the same way. The Smooth Skins are the enemy. Our rage against them has been building for centuries, a bonfire stoked and fanned by every loved one lost too soon, every night spent listening to a child cry out in hunger, every morning a mother rolls over to find her baby starved to death on the pallet beside her.
I know now that most of the Smooth Skins have no idea how their actions have affected my people, but I still have hate for them in my heart. I hate Bo and his father and the soldiers who damaged my legs, but I care for Isra more than I loathe them. I … I love her. And love is stronger than hate. I believe that. I believe Isra and I can change our worlds. Together. If we are brave.
I finally feel brave. I won’t ask Father to cut my warrior’s braid. I’m not a coward. I’m a different kind of warrior, one who will fight with my heart instead of my hands, and I’ll start by telling my people the truth. It would be easier to lie, but lies will never change the way they see the Smooth Skins, and we’ve all told too many lies. I’m sick of them.
Sick …
I’m nearly half a day’s walk from my tribe’s winter camp when I smell it. Smoke. Funeral smoke. In the middle of the day. My people burn our dead at night, but there’s no mistaking the smell—charred and oily, bittersweet, musky … terrible. The smell of burned hair and melting flesh and all the dreams the dead will never dream going up in flames.
I start to run. My leg buckles and bends the wrong way, and my bones knock together with a sick crunch. Pain and heat explode behind my kneecap, but I don’t stop. I run toward the smoke billowing on the horizon, with my leg burning like fire. I run until my ankle turns and my run becomes a hobble. I hobble until my good leg fails me and I fall to the ground and crawl.
I come into the midst of the fires on my hands and knees, and I’m glad. This isn’t something to see standing up. It isn’t one fire or three or even five. There are a
Where are they? Where are the families? The mates? The friends?
My breath comes faster. Pain and fear and dread swell so big inside me that it feels like my cracked skin will have to tear wide open to let it all out.
I look up. I force myself to look to the top of each pyre, guessing at the identity of each burning corpse. Any one of the adult-sized bodies could be my father or my brother. My friends. Meer.
And that one, that tiny one on the right …
