I echoed his words, but I didn’t have the heart to believe them.
* * *
• • •
Now that the storm was over, the streets outside Longhai’s shop came alive. Carriages scraped along the roads, and I heard Madam Su greeting customers in the front of the store. Not wanting to be seen, I ducked out of the workroom to find Ammi. I’d been trying to muster the courage to speak with her before I left.
I found her in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup.
“Some soup, Maia? Come, have a bowl before the other seamstresses drink everything up. Longhai’s regular cook has the day off, so it’s just me in the kitchen.”
She was prattling on more than usual, and despite how calm she sounded, I knew she was nervous about being around me. “Ammi, I…I’m sor—”
“You don’t have to lie,” she blurted. “I know it wasn’t you. It was the shadow inside you.”
The shadow inside me. That was one way to put it.
Ammi bit her lip to keep it from trembling. “What’s happening to you, Maia? You didn’t even know me.”
I didn’t even know myself, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud.
It was time I told her the truth.
I asked, “What do you know of demons?”
She hesitated, setting her spoon back in the pot. “I grew up with stories about demons. Our shaman said they used to roam free in the world, creating mischief and spreading misdeeds before the gods intervened. He said magic was wilder then.”
“I came across a powerful demon during my travels with the Lord Enchanter.” I inhaled. “When I sought the blood of stars, the demon who guarded the Isles of Lapzur marked me and claimed my soul as his own. Edan bargained with him to take my place, but because I made the dresses, the demon no longer wants Edan. Now it is I who must assume guardianship of the isles.”
Ammi drew back. “You’re becoming a demon?”
I wouldn’t lie to her. “Yes. Edan is waiting to go to Lapzur with me.”
I stopped there, waiting for Ammi’s reaction.
“Then we must leave as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning at first light.” She touched my shoulder, still hesitant, but when she faced me, some of the fear in her eyes had gone. “Thank you for telling me, Maia.”
I didn’t have until tomorrow morning. I’d leave tonight, as soon as the sun began to set.
“I’ll help you,” she was saying. “The Lord Enchanter will, too. If magic is what got you into this mess in the first place, then magic can save you.”
She truly believed it.
Edan can’t save you, disagreed the shadow inside me. No one can.
I ignored the voices and nodded to my friend. “I hope so. I hope so.”
I wouldn’t lie to Ammi, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to lie to myself.
* * *
• • •
I was upstairs in our room packing when something knocked at the window. I ignored it.
Another knock. “Strange,” I murmured, going to the window and opening it.
There! I spotted my cloth bird stuck in the latticework. Gently, I eased it through the wooden slats, and it burst inside, circling around me before it landed on the back of my hand, wings still flapping wildly.
“Did you find him?” I asked.
The cloth bird leapt off my hand and fluttered to the window.
“I’m coming. I’m ready.”
My belongings were few. Edan’s flute, my sketchbook, my scissors. My dagger.
There was no time to say goodbye to Ammi, and even if I left her a note, she wouldn’t have been able to read it. So I ripped a page from my sketchbook and folded it into a paper bird like the one I’d sewn to find Edan. At the last minute, I yanked a fiber from my carpet and sewed it into the bird’s wings, then I left the paper bird on my desk.
As I turned to leave, voices outside my window sharpened my ears.
“This is the tailor’s street?”
I glimpsed out the window. A band of men were rounding the corner. At first glance, they did not look so different from any other residents of Nissei, but my tailor’s eyes picked apart their clothes.
The styles were not of this province, and the clothes weren’t those of traders. Traders didn’t cover their belts with coats to hide their weapons, nor did they wear dirt-crusted boots that peeked out from the hems of their robes. Nissei was a clean city, and the streets were paved with stones, not dirt. These men had come from the woods.
The shansen’s spies.
Apprehension bristled in me. These men were clearly looking for Longhai’s shop.
Hurriedly, I threw my carpet into my pouch and went down the back stairs.
As Longhai had promised, a horse waited for me at the back of the shop, saddled and packed with a bag full of food.
The mare reared, frightened by the sight of me. She snorted and kicked when I approached.
“Shhh…,” I said, stroking her mane gently. “Please. It’s Maia. Just Maia.”
I started to hum to her, scratching behind her ears so she’d know I wasn’t dangerous.
That I wasn’t a demon.
Still humming, I pressed my forehead against her neck and waited for her pulse to slow. Once she was calm, I kissed her neck and mounted.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
As we edged onto the street, taking cover under the long shadows from the wall around Longhai’s shop, I heard the shansen’s men at the front door.
“There’s no one by that name here,” Madam Su was informing them. She lifted her head slightly, noticing me creep my way to the front of the shop.
“We know the imperial tailor is here,” one of the soldiers said gruffly, trying to push past the seamstress into the shop. “I warn you to stand aside, woman. I’ve killed for less.”
Madam Su held firm, even when the soldier unsheathed his dagger and held it threateningly at her. But I froze, pulling back on my horse’s reins.
“Looking for me?” I shouted. With a hard kick to my horse’s side, I charged toward the street.
“That’s the tailor!” they yelled, running after me. “Stop!”
Before they could reach their horses, Ammi ran out of the shop brandishing a large iron pan and whacked the back of one soldier’s head, and Madam Su knocked the other to his knees.