wore a Bear ranked badge, lower than Yuso’s stolen seventh-rank uniform.
Yuso grinned. “Come on, I’ve heard otherwise,” he said.
“Don’t disappoint the girls. We promised them.” He caught Vida by the waist and pulled her against him. She squealed and giggled. “Say please, Dara.”
“Please,” Vida said. “Let us go on. We could make it worth your while … afterward.”
Bear looked across at his younger partner badged with a Snake, the lowest rank.
“We get off in a quarter bell, sir,” Snake murmured. He eyed Vida and smiled.
“That one looks sick,” Bear said, jerking his head at me. I felt Ryko’s arm pull me closer.
Dela snorted. “Sela chases the dragon a bit hard, don’t you, sweetheart?”
I smiled dreamily and lolled my head against Ryko’s chest. With the courtyard pitching around me, it was not hard to emulate the boneless distraction of a dragon chaser.
Bear peered more closely at my face. “Is she a real Peony?” Suspicion colored his voice. “A real Peony costs a Tiger coin.”
“Of course she’s not,” Dela said quickly. “We can’t afford a real Peony.”
“What is she doing in Peony makeup, then?” Bear shifted his
I felt Ryko’s heart quicken through the padding of his vest. For all of our planning, we had not prepared a reason why a Peony would be with low-ranked soldiers.
With the dregs of my strength, I mustered a high-pitched giggle and raised my head. “It’s an extra half-coin for the make-up. I do Orchids, too. That’s a full coin, but it includes a dance.” Clumsily I circled my hips, glad of Ryko’s arm bracing me.
“A dance?” Young Snake said, his eyes lingering on my body.
I summoned another smile. “Not boring dances like the real Orchids. A
Bear cleared his throat, his eyes cutting to his subordinate. “We could never afford such attentions, even at that price.” He scratched his chin. “Not on our very, very low pay.” He made the statement a question.
Yuso smiled. “How much, then, to see the Dragoneye?”
“A sixth. Per person,” Bear said promptly.
“Outrageous,” Yuso countered. “A twelfth per person.”
“Done.” Bear licked his lips and exchanged a smug glance with Snake. “Keep it short, though. We’re relieved at the full bell.”
Yuso handed over the coins, the ringing clink of their fall like one of the small prayer chimes.
Bear opened the wooden door and peered into the dimly lit chamber. “Got five for you. They’ve paid.”
He stepped back, ushering us in with a broad smile. “Enjoy.”
Yuso entered first with Vida, her giggling thanks diverting the guards’ attention. As Ryko and I followed them over the raised threshold, Dela quickly stepped behind us and threw her arms over our shoulders; the embrace of a drunken friend, and a shield for my bloodied arm.
We were inside. As the wooden door shut, the rush of relief made me stumble. Dela caught my upper arm and pulled me into the support of her body. I remembered to giggle, but a freeze of fear locked in my gut. Ido was so close … and I could barely stand on my own. Did I have enough strength to help him? To even help myself?
“A few rules.” The harsh voice came from a squat, jowled man behind a desk in the corner of the small chamber. Every one of his features — lips, nose, even eyelids — was overly thick, as though swollen with water. “You can only look through the door bars. And only two at a time. Got it?”
With a grunt, he pushed himself out of his chair and reached for a lamp hanging from a hook in the wall behind him — one of two handsome bronze lanterns that cast good light over the desk’s orderly collection of scrolls, pens, and a deeply grooved ink block. Nearby, a small ceramic stove held glowing coals, the bitterness of burned rice and over-brewed tea barely covering another smell that made my stomach turn — the sour stink of suffering.
He held the lamp close to his face, the yellowed light sculpting the jut of his nose and rubbery lips. “Through the door bars. Two at time. Got it?”
“Got it,” Yuso said. “Are there any other interesting prisoners in there?”
“No, he’s got the whole place to himself,” the warden said. “Nothing too good for the Dragoneye Lord, eh?” He offered the lamp to Vida. “Hold this for me, my dear, while I let you in.”
With a pretty smile, she took the lamp and followed him to the sturdy inner door. Yuso stepped out of their way as the warden unhooked a set of heavy keys from his belt and held them up to the light, their polished brass tops glinting in his thick fingers.
“This one will get you into the cell itself,” he said. “Maybe if you play your cards right, you can have a closer look.”
Behind him, a duller gleam of metal caught my eye: Yuso’s blade sliding silently from its sheath.
“I’d like that,” Vida said. A tilt of the captain’s head edged her back a step.
The warden inserted the key into the lock. “Me, too.” He gave a low laugh as the lock clicked and the door swung open. “You just give me a call and—”
With savage speed, Yuso clamped his arm around the man’s chest and thrust the knife into the sacral point, low and hard. The warden arched back, the brutal flex of his throat stifling his cry. Yuso yanked out the bloodied blade, raised it again, and plunged it over the man’s shoulder, hard into his chest. The only sounds were the soft thud of hilt hitting home and a tiny wet gasp. The man’s weight sagged against Yuso.
I let out a long, ragged breath — I had not even realized I was holding it. Ryko had spun around to cover the entrance, knife ready. But the door did not open; neither guard had heard the muted sounds of death.
Yuso eased the warden’s body to the ground and dragged it out of the inner doorway. He looked around at us, the violence still raging in his eyes.
“Get going,” he ordered.
Vida ripped the ring of keys from the lock, then forged down the shallow set of steps, lamp held up to light the way. I started to follow, but my knees buckled, the fall stopped by Dela’s quick reflexes.
“I’ve got you,” she said. “Just lean on me.”
Together, we lurched down the steps into a stone corridor. Ahead, Vida’s lamp showed a narrow downward slope and low ceiling. The stench of human pain — sweat, vomit, blood— caught in my throat, some primal part of me fighting the descent toward it.
“Holy gods, that’s foul,” Ryko said behind us.
“Here! He’s in here,” Vida called from the far end of the corridor, the ring of keys jangling as she fitted one into a lock.
Dela hauled me past three empty cells, the dark maws of their open doorways waiting for new flesh. The stink seemed embedded in the stone around us, our movements stirring small currents of air like fetid breath. We reached Vida as she pushed Ido’s cell door open and held up the lamp.
The light found him against the back wall: naked, starved body curled side-on against the stone, his forehead pressed into the cradle of his shackled hands. The slow rise and fall of his chest rasped with effort, but he did not stir. His head had been shorn, the two sleek Dragoneye queues reduced to matted spikes. The one eye visible to us was swollen, the strong shape of cheekbone and jaw below it lost in a dark mess of blood and bruising. His nose, too, had been broken, its thin patrician length smashed and swollen. But the worst injuries were on his body: someone had taken a cane to his back and legs and the soles of his feet, and they had not stopped at shredding skin and muscle. The exposed bone and sinew across his shoulders caught the light like slivers of pearl.
“How could he survive that?” Vida whispered.
An image of the Rat Dragon — pale and agonized — leaped into my mind. Was the beast keeping him alive?
Vida pressed her hand over her nose and led us into the cell. A slops bucket, from the smell of it, sat in the far corner. In sharp contrast, an elegant table — its legs carved into four dragons — stood against the left wall. It held a porcelain bowl, the delicate gold edge encrusted with dark ooze, and a jumble of sharp metal objects that my eyes skipped across but my body registered with a shiver. A bamboo cane — half of its length stained with blood — lay on the floor beside a water bucket.
Vida put the lamp down next to Ido as Dela lowered me into a crouch beside him. I had not noted it before, but his beard was gone. Its absence, together with the close crop of his hair, made his face seem strangely young.
