As they argued, Nothing darted her eyes everywhere for a path through the colorful labyrinth of people. If she could slip behind one of the screens, from there she could climb into the smoke ways in the ceiling and disappear. She needed to be alone before she began to tremble.
But there were eyes upon her. Eyes painted fuchsia and eyes painted peacock green and blue, the bright paint of the palace servers who usually avoided Nothing, or otherwise pretended to cough when she darted past. They would see her vanish and spread the tale that Nothing was a coward. She couldn’t have that. Coward or hero: either came with too much attention. Kirin—the real Kirin—had told her once, “If you do not wish to be taken from me, you can’t remind people you’re with me at all.”
She leaned her shoulder into Sky’s chest, and the warrior stiffened but did not remove her. It was the closest he’d allowed her to be since she fell down from the rafters upon him and Kirin alone together last year. (It wouldn’t have mattered that they were alone but for how they’d been occupying themselves. Sky had suggested they kill her to keep their secret, and Kirin had laughed, promising he trusted Nothing’s discretion even more than he trusted Sky’s. That perhaps hadn’t been the wisest way to put it, but Kirin disliked allowing wisdom to hold him back from what he wanted.)
Too late it occurred to Nothing that taking comfort from Sky’s present strength was the wrong move. They surely were the two people most in danger at that moment. She for stabbing the prince, even though it’d been an imposter, and Sky because he’d been with Kirin on his summer journey and was therefore the only person who might’ve witnessed the change from true heir to imposter. If Nothing correctly read the frequent glances of Lord All-in-the-Water and his brother, Lord of Narrow, they’d be coming for Sky soon, to demand answers. And she’d be in their way, reminding the world again that she existed.
She pulled slowly away from Sky, eager to slip behind him, when someone hidden within the crowd called out wondering if Sky, too, was an imposter.
Nothing shook her head, believing Sky was Sky, though only one of the frightening witches seemed to acknowledge the gesture. As the First Consort swept in ahead of his retinue, Sky stepped forward and plucked up Nothing’s fallen knife.
He turned his back to the empress and scoured the room with his hard demon-kissed gaze.
Sky put the knife blade to the copper skin at the back of his wrist and sliced deep enough for bright-purple blood to spill immediately over, splatting vividly against the polished red-and-black floor.
A wave of shocked cries rippled through the court at the offense of bleeding before the empress, but they swiftly transformed into sighs of relief, and the First Consort called majestically, “Bring them to our rooms.”
Nothing chose to misinterpret, as was her frequent habit, and pretended “them” could not include “Nothing.” As the palace guard herded Sky, avoiding the drops of his blood, she slipped between a lady in harsh pink and two painted servants, into the corridor, and scrambled up a lattice into the ceiling. Between the ceiling plaster and the steep slant of the roof were tiny pocket-rooms all over the palace compound. Fans run by water wheels circulated the air, sucking smoke away from the lacquered walls and decorative ceilings of the palace through many small shafts and peepholes.
Once perched on a crossbeam in the dark palace cavity, Nothing closed her eyes and felt the panic and terror she’d not allowed herself before plunging the dagger into the imposter.
With trembling hands she unwound the volume of her hair until it hung around her shoulders in ragged layers. Only Kirin had touched her hair in four years, since she’d sliced it all off. She grabbed fistfuls of it, pressing it into her eyelids, against her mouth, while her very bones shook. Kirin was gone, but where? He lived. He had to live—she felt it in her heart and stomach just as she’d felt the imposter—but what could be done? What could she do? Her breath stuttered in tiny little gasps. For her entire life she’d truly cared about only one thing, and she’d lost him.
Smoke tinged with spicy perfume swirled around her, soaking into her hair and the robe she wore. To calm down, she tried to think of regular things: that she needed a bath, but would wait until late in the night to slide into the Second Consort’s bathhouse and avail herself of the cold water. If she traded a chit of information about one lady’s new lover to the imperial steward of the second circle, she might win an hour in the steam room, too. The heat would relax her, and she could interrogate the little flashy fire spirits about what might have done this to Kirin. Once she was composed, she could ask the great demon of the palace, too. It was supposed to protect the scions of the empire but had not noticed a simulacrum within its own walls!
Nothing reminded herself to be fierce. She stood and balanced along the rafter to the corner of the cavity and tucked her slippered feet down into the wall. She lowered herself smoothly and walked sideways along the narrow corridor, making little enough noise anyone passing would say, “It’s only a mouse in the wall; nothing to be worried about.”
Nothing at all.
Sometimes she played a game with herself guessing which of the palace residents knew the truth of what they said. “Remember that you may be nothing to them but are everything to me,” Kirin had whispered to her when she was twelve and he fourteen.
This afternoon there was little chance of her whispered footsteps being detected, for the corridor on the other side of the thin wall rushed with servants. Once she heard the telltale clatter of armor moving opposite her, and she was glad not to be heading in that direction.
Nothing slipped out of the wall behind a narrow banner painted with rainy skies, just outside the gate to the Lily Garden.
A croaking cry erupted beside her, and Nothing squeaked, darting back. Straight into the hands of Aya the witch.
“Hello, little Nothing,” the witch said as Nothing twisted free.
Aya’s sister-witch, Leaf, boxed Nothing in.
It had been years since she’d had to worry about being ambushed by witches.
They were twice her age, with tan skin and shaved heads, their scalps marked with aether-sigils. Gray robes hung from their bony shoulders and each carried a staff of King-Tree wood hooked at the top into a perch for their raven spirit familiars. The ravens stared at Nothing just as their mistresses did: both birds had one black eye and one eye of glowing aether-blue. A sacrifice from their binding, when they’d agreed to become familiars.
Nothing avoided them harder than she avoided witches.
Aya spoke again. “We traced you through the aether, little Nothing. You cannot hide from us.”
“Not unless we allow it,” Leaf added.
That was not true: the great demon of the palace sometimes hid Nothing from their aether-eyes. But Nothing pressed her lips tightly closed.
“How did you know?” Leaf asked. Her raven croaked again, a low, bizarre sound like a summons.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Nothing said.
Both witches pressed nearer. “The prince—as you so ferociously proved—is not here to command us away from you.”
“But you are not released from his previous commands,” Nothing said, desperate to remain calm. Her voice was too tight; they had to know she was afraid.
“No,” Aya said conversationally. “We cannot compel you, but what harm is there in telling us what you know? In helping us?”