I raise my eyes, knowing my moment of admiration has exposed me as one who has never before tread so near the Garden Palace, to find a girl standing over me. And for a moment, I do not breathe.
Her eyes are a golden honey brown, barely darker than the sun-warmed tan of her skin. Her round cheeks perch above lips pressed into a lopsided smile. Only her top lip has been painted in a dark berry purple to signify she is unpaired, and I don’t think I have ever been so grateful to see an unpainted lower lip. It is full and pale peach, and I immediately wonder what it would taste like between my teeth.
She is dressed like me, to boast the obvious strength of her body, as is traditional for those who follow the way of the sword. A bodice fits against her breasts and her belly, tight enough to cling to the muscles there, but not enough to restrict her movements. Ochre bands tied around her bare upper arms highlight the dip and valley of her biceps, and a skirt of flawless purple damask splits over each of her thighs, where four matching ochre bands sit above and below her knees.
With her standing over me, I forget my entire reason for being here.
“Are you lost?” she’s asking, and I realize at once that she has been speaking to me for, well, I don’t know how long.
“I am not lost,” I say, feeling as though for the first time in my life I have found my way. “At least, not yet.”
I rise slowly to my feet, noting the way my head spins. Whether it’s from spending so long crouched on the ground with my hand pressed to the deceptive layers of silk or from my proximity to her, I cannot tell. Now that I’m standing, it’s I who looks down and she who looks up with a squint of her golden-honey eyes that makes my mouth go dry.
“This must be your first time. Most people don’t stop to bless the bridge.” She says it all with an amused twist to her mouth. “Though I suppose they really should. It is a marvel. Perhaps even more so than the Winged Bridge or the Bridge of Whispers.”
But not more marvelous than you.
I want to say something she’ll remember. I want to make myself a landmark in her mind, but don’t know how, and I settle on a request. “I think neither would compare to you. May I have your name, lady?”
Her lips part in surprise as she extends her hands to mine. “Arabeth Caswell. Rabi, if you like, lady.”
My heart begins to pound in my ears. I know that name, and I wish to all the heavenly gardens that I did not. That name along with two others is written across the top of the invitation I hold: CHARLISH BLUETHORN, ARABETH CASWELL & WILLADOR MAYHEW. The names of the three warriors here to compete for the hand of the Bloom.
The reason for my visit smothers me in tight bands of vicious silk. “Willador Mayhew.”
Understanding siphons the smile from her lips. Her eyes drift down my body, surely taking in the dull fabric of my own bodice, the ragged state of the hem of my skirt. I feel a familiar wash of fitful, stubborn pride as she studies me in a new light.
If she is like the others, she will take my dress as a reason to underestimate me. Usually, I encourage it, shifting my feet in a practiced gesture that makes me look smaller than I feel. Right now, I don’t know that anything could make me look smaller than I feel.
I see her take in my body and my performance, in the space of a few seconds. Then she drops my hands and says, “See you in the ring, Willador.”
* * *
It doesn’t matter that we were both crossing the Silk Bridge at the same moment; we are greeted and led to separate chambers, where we are to wait until the Bloom is ready to receive us.
I walk the halls in a quiet haze, all my earlier confidence drizzling from me like a sudden, unstoppable rain. My guide weaves through the corridors with the ease of someone who was raised inside them, but my eyes follow Rabi, who travels a few yards ahead, her steps measured and sure.
My chamber is the finest space I have ever inhabited, and I feel in sharp contrast to its dressings. The floors of marbled cream and icy white are smoothly polished, the furniture is carved so organically it bends around the room like thin blades of grass, and the ornamental filigree curling over the doors like tiny metallic flowers is so finely crafted I do not dare to touch it. At one end of the room, my ceremonial garments are displayed on a rack of polished obsidian. I stand in the center of all of it, a great dull stone, too unsure of myself to relax.
“Would you like a glass of water?” The question comes from the boy who led me here. He is too young to paint his lips, but old enough to have chosen the way of the flower. His dress is tied around his neck and shoulders, exposing the moon-pale skin there and falling down his slender figure like a layered waterfall. He perches atop shoes that elevate him from the ground by several inches, his toes peeking over the edge with a shimmery paint glazed over each nail.
“Yes, thank you,” I say, because I at least know what to do with a glass of water.
The boy brings me a glass that is shaped like a hollow reed and contains not more than a sip of liquid, but the water is sweet and leaves my mouth with the lingering perfume of mint. I want more, but don’t feel as though I should ask, so I pull in a deep breath, letting the mint open my lungs, and change into the clothing laid out for me. When I’m ready, I begin a familiar routine of stretches and strengthening poses to still my mind and prepare my body.
I have come here to win the Bloom. That is the only thought that should occupy my mind. Not the curve of a thigh between the slits of a skirt, not the pale peach of a bottom lip, certainly not the caress of an enthralling voice. I have not come here to feel these things; I have not come to pursue them. I have come in pursuit of balance.
My meditation slowly returns me to that place of ensured calm. I breathe in and out until time releases me, until I am the boulder at the bottom of a swift-running river, constant and unmoving as the world travels around me.
“Lady Mayhew.” The boy’s voice is tentative. “Lady Mayhew, it’s time.”
He gestures across the room to a door layered in delicate metalwork.
“Thank you,” I say, rising from a deep squat that burns through my thighs and lower back.
I move to stand before the door, pushing my shoulders back, keeping my stance wide. And when it opens, the world before me is one I have only dreamed of.
The wide bowl of the Perennial Court is scooped from walls that are the perfect green of sepal leaves cupped around the base of a flower, while the glass ceiling is chiseled to allow light through in shattered rainbow prisms that flutter around the room like birds. At one end, the stairs of the dais unfold toward the main floor, the edges of each step curling into the next, fanning out at the bottom in a graceful semicircle. On the highest platform of the dais sits the throne blossom and upon it, the Bloom. But I am not ready to look upon him, and instead I let my gaze carry across the floor, which is covered in shimmering courtiers as colorful as any garden.