Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 20

stories of the temperamental princess hidden away in the tower. She’s

nothing like any other girl I’ve ever met. She is strange and stubborn and

graceless. Rough in speech and rougher of skin, and strangely resistant to

my attempts to win her affection.

I should find her frustrating. I should pity her. Most everyone else

does. The gentle members of court feel sorry for the mad queen’s blind,

itchy, awkward daughter, and even sorrier for me. My bed has been

warmer than usual these past two months. It seems there’s always a

sympathetic woman—or two-lingering outside the door to my chamber

when I quit the great hall for the night.

There’s been no official announcement, but every member of the

court knows it’s only a matter of time. As soon as Isra’s mourning is over,

she will take a husband. A childless queen cannot be allowed to remain

unmarried. If something were to happen to Isra now, with no daughter to

take her place and no husband to remarry and continue the royal line, the

covenant would be broken. Yuan would have no royal blood to sustain the

magic that keeps our land green and fruitful, and our city would fall like so

many of the others.

Isra will marry, and soon, and there is little doubt who the man will

be.

Junjie is the most powerful man in the city, and I am his son. It is only

right that I should be king. It’s understood that Isra will take me as her

husband and I will put aside any distaste I might feel for her peeling skin

and odd ways, in the name of service to my city.

No one suspects that the distaste I feel isn’t for the girl.

As Isra disappears over the gentle swell of the hill with her guards

close behind, a familiar tightness clutches at my throat. I set off toward my

father’s quarters with a heavy feeling in my legs.

How have the other kings done it? How have they lived with a

woman, even loved her—I’ve read the poems the fourth king wrote to his

first wife, have sung the ballads King Deshi composed in praise of his

queen—knowing that her life would be cut short? That her throat would be

opened and her blood spilled in the royal garden, often before she reached

her thirtieth birthday?

Isra’s mother died thirteen years ago. The roses can go unfed for

another ten years, maybe fifteen, but no more. They will have their royal

blood. Isra will never see her thirty-fifth year. If the crops begin to fail or

other evidence is found that the covenant is weakening, she might not see

her twenty-fifth.

She has so little time. It isn’t right that she should live it in darkness.

I don’t care what my baba said, I don’t care what the king made him

promise before he died, I will not see my queen suffer any more than she

must by virtue of her birth. I will see her eyes light up with wonder. I will

see her smile as she looks at me and knows I am the one who restored her.

I will taste her gratitude in her kiss on our wedding night.

It won’t be long. Only two months until her mourning is over. We will

be married when the spring flowers poke their green shoots above the

earth, long before her garden can bear fruit.

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.