'Lady Dela,' Ryko's voice was muffled through the curtain, 'please do not barge ahead like that. I need to check your quarters before you enter.'
She pulled the curtain closer to the doorframe.
'I am all right,' she called through the heavy cloth. 'I am here with Lord Eon. Leave us be.'
She turned back to me, her face drawn.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I just…'
I stopped, not knowing what to say
She shook her head and waved my apology aside. 'I am the last person who needs an explanation.' She glanced back at the doorway, lowering her voice. 'But promise me you will be more careful. I wish you could wear these things and be safe, but there are people around here who will not tolerate this kind of difference, even in a Moon Shadow. And they do not care about rank. They will hurt you. Like they have hurt me.'
She pulled down the scalloped neck of her robe. A series of raw gashes, only half healed, marred the smooth flat skin over her heart. For a moment all I saw were deep, ugly cuts. Then I saw that it was a character carved into her flesh: demon.
She looked down at the mutilation. 'See? You must be very careful.'
I nodded, caught between horror at the wound and relief that she had not guessed the truth.
But even though she had leaped to the wrong conclusion, I knew she was right. If anyone found out what I really was, they would do more than brand me with their hate. They would kill me. A female Dragoneye was a travesty of
everything natural in the world.
I placed the earrings back onto the table, leaning on it for support. The desire to tell Lady Dela who I was — what I was — surged through me. I closed my eyes, riding out the impulse. It was not only my life at stake.
I felt for the pin in my hair and pulled. It was snagged in a braid. Only a tiny pain, but I still cried out.
'Here, let me help,' Lady Dela said.
She stepped up behind me and I felt her fingers working through my caught hair. It brought the memory of another long-ago touch: my mother combing out snags and knots.
'Why do you wear women's clothes? There is no power in being a woman, and you are suffering for your choice,' I said. 'You could wear men's tunics and they'd leave you alone.'
The pin came free and she stepped away from me. I heard it clink onto the crowded table.
'When I was seven or so, my sister caught me wearing her skirt,' Lady Dela said softly. 'But even before that, I knew I was different from the other boys in our tribe. Nothing boyish came naturally to me. I hated hunting, fishing, even the ball games. I had to work at it, all the time.'
I turned around. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body.
'Then one day I found the beaded skirt my sister had laboured over for months, tucked away in our family's tent,' she continued. 'When I put it on, I felt complete. I remember thinking that it was just the thing to wear to the mudhoie while I pretended to make the special bread our mother baked for Midwinter Feast.' She smiled ruefully As you can imagine, beautiful beaded skirts and mud do not mix. My sister found me and dragged me back to our mother for a beating. Of course, my sister's righteous indignation was lost in the excitement when my mother and the other women saw me dressed in a skirt.'
'What did they do?'
'Instead of a beating, my mother sat me down beside her and slowed me how to mill the rice.
She always suspected I was a twin soul. She was just waiting for me to come to it myself. A wise woman, my mother. But I did not take on the life of a Contraire until much later. Until I was sure. It is an honoured position in my tribe.' She gave a small, bitter laugh. 'Not so honoured here.'
She moved in front of the mirror, surveying herself. 'I do not wear men's clothing because I am a woman in here,' she touched her head, 'and here,' she touched her heart. 'You are wrong when you say there is no power in being a woman. When I think of my mother and the women in my tribe, and even the hidden women in the harem, I know there are many types of power in this world.' She turned around to face me. 'I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life? I don't think I could do it.'
I twisted the bracelets around my arm, avoiding her level gaze. I could tell her what it was like, in every fearful detail. But I could not see any power in womanhood. Only suffering.
'Why don't you…' I paused, wondering how to phrase it. How would a Moon Shadow phrase it? 'Why don't you get rid of the male parts?'
She looked away 'I don't need to be cut to know I am a woman. And the Emperor prizes me because I am both Sun and Moon. If I go to the cutters, then I will lose the very thing he values…' She hesitated then met my gaze. 'In truth, I am also afraid of the pain. I am afraid of dying.'
I nodded. I had heard that three in ten eunuchs died in terrible agony after the cutting, some lasting for over a week before the inability to piss or the swelling fever led them to their ancestors. Good odds if you were starving in a village and wanted work at the palace for the rest of your life. But I agreed with Lady Dela; they did not seem very good odds to me.
I pushed the bracelets back over my hands, the smooth metal dragging painfully at my skin.
Carefully, I placed each one back onto the table.
'I am sorry about all of this.' I motioned towards the jewellery. 'I did not come to go through your belongings. I came to ask you a favour.'
She straightened. 'What is it?'
'Do you know someone who can pick a lock?'
She didn't even blink. 'Of course.'
'You were a thief?' I asked, trying to absorb Ryko's words.
He nodded and paced across the private tearoom at the back of Lady Dela's house, his bulk making the small space seem even more cramped.
'It wasn't only thieving.' He cast a strained look at Lady Dela who was kneeling across from me at the low tea table. 'I did anything if the money was good enough.' He looked away.
Anything.'
The word fell flatly between us. Lady Dela shifted, biting her lower lip. It seemed she had not heard this before.
'Then how did you get from the islands to the palace?' I asked. A sudden intuition made me gasp. 'You're a Trang cattle-man!'
'No!' The denial was explosive.
'Lord Eon!' Lady Dela admonished at the same time. 'That is none of your business.'
Ryko held up his hand. 'It is all right.' He let out a long hissing breath. 'No, I was spared that dishonour. I was placed in the palace a year before that happened.'
Lady Dela tilted her head, a small frown creasing her painted forehead.
'Placed?' she asked and her soft tone was suddenly edged. 'What do you mean?'
Ryko stepped over to the door and pushed it slightly open, peering through the crack. 'Are we definitely alone, my lady?'
She nodded. 'I sent my maid to deliver a message.'
Me snapped the door shut and turned to us, his long islander eyes unblinking.
'Up until a few years ago, my life was thieving, fighting and drinking. Then one night, I met my match in a dock alley' He stared through us, remembering. 'There were two of them. One of them knifed me in the shoulder, the other in my belly. I could see the grey of my own guts.'
He laid his hand across the flat of his stomach and focused back on me, his smile wry 'It's never a good moment when you see your own innards. I thought it was the end.'
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lady Dela's fingers brush the cloth over her wound. She, too, must have thought it was the end when that knife had sliced across her heart.
'But it wasn't,' I said. To both of them.
Ryko nodded. 'My luck was with me that night. A fisherman took me into his house and nursed me back to health. He saved my life.' He paused, his face solemn. 'Such a thing creates a bond. A debt. So when I found out my fisherman friend was also leading a group resisting Sethon's control of the islands, I joined his cause. And when he
