Many people might notice when Nothing vanished, but only Whisper would miss her.
At first Nothing went between the walls and through smoke ways, but eventually she had to step into the open corridor alongside the bright embroidery hall, her slippers silent on the wooden floor, her robe a hiss against the painted screen door. Latticed windows composed the entirety of the southern wall, open to the air and sun now, though they could be closed with thin fibrous screens or heavy wooden shutters. Whisper sat at the end of a row of six tailors, each of them working on a different elaborate flower along the same hemline. This wide train would be for the empress herself, it seemed, a silk so black it swallowed light, with white and fire-pink rhododendron along the hem and black starbursts nearly invisible. The spread was so beautiful Nothing paused to stare, wondering what such glory would feel like draped over her shoulders, sweeping behind her in a way none could ignore or miss.
A tailor gasped, his mouth open and staring straight back at Nothing. Vivid green colored his lips and streaked up in swirls like clouds to cup his dark-brown eyes. “Nothing!”
Another tailor squeaked and put her finger in her mouth to lick away blood.
A third said, “We might rename you, for the action you have taken today.”
Nothing exaggerated a grimace, as if her face were a mask.
“Little Hero,” suggested the first, and “Prince Killer,” another, then “Brave but Extremely Strange and Quiet.”
How terrible it was to be noticed.
Whisper kept quiet, but she set down her embroidery and put a bare arm around Nothing. Most tailors wore sleeveless robes wrapped tight to their bodies to keep low any chance of entanglement. She led Nothing to a low table in the resting corner set with cool tea and sweet cheese soft enough to eat with a spoon. “Are you well?” Whisper asked, kneeling upon a flat pillow the crystal color of a noontime sky. It clashed perfectly with Whisper’s rust-red robe.
Nothing knelt. “Yes,” she said quietly, “but I am leaving the palace, and you may not see me for some time.”
Whisper handed Nothing a small cup of tea and Nothing sipped it, though she did not much like this mix unless it was steaming hot. She let Whisper sprinkle fennel seed onto a spoonful of cheese and feed it to her, then herself.
“Why?” Whisper asked, folding her hands in her lap.
Nothing resisted a glance over her shoulder to see that the tailors continued their work and did not strain to hear every word. “I am going to find Kirin.”
“Alone?”
“With The Day the Sky Opened.” She held her face blank, not wanting to accidentally express something she was unsure of: she did not know how to feel, except anxious, but she knew she wanted to say goodbye without creating a burden of worry for her friend.
“I am sure he will be a fine companion,” Whisper said softly.
For a few sips of tea, they remained silent.
Whisper said, “Do you know where he is?”
“Sky believes he does.” Nothing said no more, because she could not hint at the truth. The truth would ruin Kirin. It was not that Sky loved the prince or that the prince loved him in return; such was to be expected. But they were not allowed to touch before Kirin’s investiture. As the Heir to the Moon he was required to remain pure—he could not have anything inside him before the Moon was inside him. Not finger nor tongue nor unblessed spoon. Kirin and Sky had certainly broken that purity—Nothing had seen so with her own eyes—and if any priests suspected the truth of their relationship, the entire line of inheritance would be destroyed.
Worse, by taking up the identity of a woman, Kirin had slipped into an unhallowed space: just as there was night and day, left and right, up and down, there was man and woman, and anything in between was the realm of spirits, demons, and the Queens of Heaven. That was what made dawn and dusk the holiest of times, made blending colors and shape-shifting the space of sorcerers, not humans. Decent people had to be one or the other. Anything else was too frightening.
Kirin had risked everything to spend his summer with Sky, to live as he wished. And he hadn’t told Nothing his intentions.
She’d have argued ferociously against endangering himself. Kirin always told her to avoid attention if she wished to be safe, but he’d not taken even a sliver of his own advice. Now the Sorceress Who Eats Girls had him. Nothing felt he was alive, but for how long? And how could they keep this a secret? Everyone would want to know why he’d been taken by the sorceress.
But Whisper asked no more. It was part of why they were friends. Nothing said, “I will not return without our prince. You may say that if you are asked.”
“I will.” Whisper took the tea from Nothing and clasped her hand. “You ought to adopt a facade to venture out into the world. At least some face paint to be The Day the Sky Opened’s servant.”
Nothing leaned in and kissed Whisper. Then she quickly rose and left, sparing no glance for the other tailors. Her chest felt tight as she walked down the corridor and out of the second circle of the palace. She made her way back to the fifth circle, clambered up into a stale smoke way, then down into the old abandoned bath she used as her secret home. The tiles burst red and white, blood purple and orange, in elaborate star patterns. The plumbing had failed several years ago, and the great demon kept it broken for her, but the heating mechanisms worked, warming her when she slept tucked among scavenged old pillows and threadbare blankets. She’d strung threads between thin pillars from which to hang curtains in a variety of sheer colors, giving the bathhouse a rainbow blur of light at different times of the day.
Inside a wicker basket full of broken pottery, tiles, and toys, Nothing kept the pale-green silk cloth embroidered with the many-petaled flower she’d been swaddled in as a baby, and she withdrew it to wrap around her throat like a scarf. She stuffed her feet, still slippered, into walking boots and hooked them closed around her ankles, then put her hands on her hips, wondering what to wear. Layers, Sky had said. She had nothing weatherproof at all.
Twisting her lips in dissatisfaction, Nothing removed her robe and undergarments, then tied on a new loincloth and baggy trousers that laced just over her boots. She put on a long shirt and purple tunic, then a threadbare red wool jacket. Around it all she tied a wide sash of eye-piercing green. She clubbed her hair high at the back of her head, wrapping that, too, with scraps of silk ribbons, until she looked more like an actor than like Nothing. The vivid colors very likely washed out her face into a wan mask, but Nothing did not even own paint. She’d have to rely on whatever Sky carried.
Before she departed, Nothing pressed herself against the wall, hands flat until her palms tingled against the red-wash, her cheek brushing it too, so that when she closed her eyes and whispered, “I am leaving, great demon,” it would hear her. Having once been spirits, living pieces of aether, demons craved life and magic and possessed to survive, draining powerful life from people, animals, and places until they were dead too. There was debate among the priests as to what made a demon great—either it was as simple as a great spirit dying, becoming a great demon quickly enough to maintain connections to the aether, or a demon managed to find a permanent home, somehow rooting itself deeply enough to reconnect with aether, so that it could again be its own source of power.
This great demon of the palace was one of only two known in the world. The other lived in the Fifth Mountain. It was the Fifth Mountain, some said.