Nothing had never cared much for the details of why or how the great demon of the palace existed. She liked the comforting rumble of its presence as it took little strands of life and power from everything, so subtly nobody much noticed except for her. Besides, the great demon gave trickles of power back, too, as if the empress and her court were all its masters.
“Did you hear me?” she whispered again. “I must leave.”
A sigh trembled through the foundations, gentle enough only someone similarly pressed would notice.
why? have I not warmed you little one?
“Oh very much, great demon. I need to find another friend. The prince is missing—Kirin Dark-Smile.”
My prince he has not returned from his investiture summer when he returns he will be Mine forever.
Nothing frowned. She did not understand the connection between the investiture ritual and the great demon. “We thought Kirin had returned, great demon. Did you not hear the celebrations these two days? We gathered for the investiture, but I—it was not him. It was an imposter.”
The wall beneath her palms shivered with a growl so deep it could not be heard.
“I am going to find our Kirin,” Nothing said. “I swear.”
bring him to Me.
The command rumbled loudly, and Nothing closed her eyes. Everyone must have heard it.
She brushed her hands against the plaster. “Shh, shh. I promise, great demon,” she murmured.
It purred, liking her touch, as always. Nothing kept up her soothing and felt the tingle of other prayers as priests knelt at shrines throughout the palace, making promises too, to calm it down.
your leaving will change My walls, the demon grumbled eventually.
“You will miss me,” she said, pleased.
who will tickle Me in the afternoons with her little feet? who will scratch at the itchy crack in the fourth circle roof ?
Nothing kissed the rough red-wash. “When I return, for my reward I will ask the prince to have the itch repaired.”
Its answer was a satisfied sigh.
With that, Nothing left the only home she’d ever known. She crawled and snuck through the smoke ways, still—especially dressed in these bright colors—concerned about being stopped. All the way to the lowest seventh circle she went before emerging to walk across a sand garden striped in red and black, with pink granite and sparkling white marble boulders disrupting the pattern. Her boots sank into the sand unexpectedly, and Nothing paused, startled. How odd it would be to leave marks wherever she passed.
Nothing had never been outside the seven circles of the palace. She rarely thought beyond its borders, as if she were a spirit or demon herself and this palace her house to inhabit. Demons never leave their house.
She had to remind herself that she was a human, and humans are their own house—if a human died badly they did not become a demon, but a ghost, lost and homeless and angry, and only a priest could bind it with a naming amulet and send it to the Queens of Heaven.
Nothing was a human. She carried her house with her.
Shivering, though it was the end of summer and quite warm, Nothing dashed across the remaining garden and into the shadows of the gatehouse where Sky waited.
Gardeners lifted their heads as she passed, and she ducked between warriors serving as gatehouse guards, ignoring their gossip and questions. Sky stood with a bag over his wide shoulder and another dangling from a strong hand. He wore his sword sheathed at his hip. He’d clubbed his hair back too, and put a streak of blue paint over his eyes. His clothing was black and sapphire blue. It did not contrast, but rather matched. I do not care if I am beautiful, it said.
“Nothing,” he murmured.
“I don’t know how to paint myself for the outside world,” she said.
Sky smeared his thumb across the wide band of blue paint on his cheek. He pressed it to her forehead and drew an arc there. It was like claiming her, for she was not demon-kissed. “That will do,” he said.
“I’m too young to be a wife,” she muttered.
For once the bodyguard smiled. “It will be a good excuse for traveling quickly and without fanfare, if we’ve gone to elope.”
“You would make Kirin your First Consort and me your Second?” she snapped. He was the only person in the world who made her sharp.
“Better than you his First.”
With that Sky started off, moving as if he belonged, as if he’d been commanded to go. Nothing scurried to catch up, stepping purposefully upon the edges of his shadow cast by the setting sun.
SEVEN
DEEP IN THE HEART of the Fifth Mountain, a sorceress walked along a black corridor. Her silk slippers shredded against the rough pumice floor, and she dragged her fingernails along the walls, sharpening them into claws. Above her head tiny blue lights bobbed, as if pieces of the afternoon sky had been torn free and tethered to her crown of delicate bat-wing bones.
She hummed to herself as she went, a hollow melody intended to fill the space before her, which had been empty since the mountain itself had stopped breathing. The sorceress was beautiful, and monstrous, for she was both woman and spirit, and her flesh shaped into smooth pale-copper limbs draped with layers of black and white and heart-pink silk. Her hair looped in a layered cascade, pinned with crystal forks and cloisonné combs that dripped with seed pearls and amethyst unicorn tears. She smiled with ruby-red lips, and her cheeks spread prettily, but her teeth were as sharp and jagged as a shark’s, her eyes evergreen and death white, bisected each by a long red snake pupil. Perhaps her fingers were too long, which made the claws tipping them seem just right; perhaps her silken slippers hid the cloven hooves of a unicorn or the gripping talons of an eagle balled into a fist the better to walk upon. Perhaps her feet were perfect, delicate woman’s feet. Her pace was smooth as a snake, and her voice whispered like a lovely moon sprite’s cry as she sang a gentle dirge.
Her shadow drifted behind her reluctantly, bound in the shape of flared wings. The darkness drew in her wake like caressing hands, pulling sound with her, until every echo was swallowed up and stitched with magic into the trailing hems of her robes.
The sorceress turned a curve in the deep corridor, into a low-hung cavern that dripped with glittering diamond and ruby veins and thick black obsidian eyes that once had glowed with the presence of the Fifth Mountain’s great demon.
Far in the corner the sorceress had bade rocks heat and flow into the shape of teeth from both the floor and the ceiling, until they joined into thin bars. It had become the grinning, sharp mouth of a prison cell. Within: an oil lamp, dimly lit; a gilt-edged ceramic bowl too pretty for the use to which it had been put; a nest of woolen quilts; a maiden in a tattered gown.
“O Prince Who Is Also a Maiden,” said the sorceress, “good afternoon.”
Kirin raised his face, and a beautiful face it was, despite soot-streaked tears and chewed away lipstick, despite the tangle of impossibly black hair framing his ashy-white cheeks, spilling in knots still half-braided with silver threads and sky-blue threads, despite the necklace of white and green pearls looped again and again around his long neck, despite the torn peacock-green gown and black-gold-red embroidered flowers. Despite the blood at his fingers from scraping against the bars of his cage.
He did not reply, only studied her with eyes the chipped-brown color of ancient amber.