City of a Thousand Dolls (11 page)

Nisha’s mind rebelled at Josei’s assumption. “I can’t imagine Jina wanting to die. She was too absorbed. I don’t mean selfish,” she added, remembering the other girl’s smile as she handed Nisha her overrobe. “Just … preoccupied. Even finding Atiy’s body yesterday didn’t seem to sadden her. She was too busy taking notes.”

Josei seemed to consider this for a moment; then she went into the armory. She emerged with two long
lati
sticks and tossed one to Nisha.

“Come on,” she said, making the formal salute that Nisha recognized as both compliment and challenge. “I think better when I’m moving. Besides, I’ve been watching you practice. I’d like to test your skills.”

Nisha made the ritual bow of acceptance. Her hands shook, and she gripped the bamboo staff firmly to make them stop. “This seems like an odd way to question someone,” she muttered to herself.

Josei pretended not to hear her, but a wisp of a smile, like mist, passed across her face.

They ran through the forms of the fight, the sticks swirling around them like a dance.

“So Jina was there when Atiy’s body was found?” Josei asked, moving into an attack form, both hands on the staff and her right foot forward. “Did she say what she was doing at the House of Pleasure?”

One end of Josei’s polished staff whipped down and Nisha pivoted, twisting her wrist to bring the low end of her stick up in a block. Their sticks had barely touched before Josei was moving into a defense position, with her knees bent and hands spread apart.

“She said she was researching love poems,” Nisha answered. “I think it was part of her Redeeming presentation.” She brought her stick up, and Josei blocked it.

“Good,” the House Mistress said, showing her teeth in a smile. “Now let’s really fight.”

Nisha’s stick made a blur around her as she tried to get around Josei’s defenses. She whirled, aiming for the House Mistress’s knee, but Josei leaped away. She avoided the strike completely, and then swept her staff toward Nisha’s feet. “Did she say anything else?”

Nisha stumbled out of the way, raising her staff to absorb the next blow. “She thought Atiy might have been killed by Shadow-walkers,” she said, then froze in horror.

Josei aimed a blow at her head, and Nisha ducked too late. The metal-tipped staff struck her on the shoulder. Pain shot through her arm.

“Don’t ever let down your guard while in the middle of a fight,” Josei scolded. Then, “Did you believe her? About the Shadow-walkers?”

Nisha shook her head. “I told her they didn’t exist. If there was a House like that on the estate, I would know.” Nisha shifted into an attack stance and flung herself at the Combat Mistress, causing Josei to step back.

“Would you?” Josei asked, blocking Nisha’s strikes as quickly as Nisha could make them.

A thin trickle of sweat ran down Nisha’s temple, and she felt her respect for Josei increase. By keeping Nisha focused on the fight and distracted from Jina’s death, Josei was getting more honest answers than she might have if Nisha had had time to think about what she was saying.

“Do you think Jina was poisoned because she found out something dangerous about the City?” she asked the Combat Mistress.

“I think nothing,” Josei said calmly, pivoting gracefully. Her stick turned so fast that Nisha couldn’t follow its line of movement. “I’m gathering information. Why haven’t you tried to run away again?”

The abrupt shift from questions about Jina to her own story caught Nisha completely off guard. She almost dropped her staff. “What?”

Josei stepped into the gap Nisha had opened up, planted her front foot in the ground behind Nisha’s left foot, and shoved.

Nisha fell, slamming into the dirt, and Josei flicked the tip of her staff to rest against Nisha’s throat.

“I asked you, why haven’t you tried to leave the city? You’re getting restless, there’s no place for you here in the eyes of the new Council Head, and you have no bond to pay off. Yet.”

All the energy drained out of Nisha, as if the hard ground she lay on had sucked it up. Her cheeks felt sticky and hot. “You know about that?”

Josei pulled the staff away and sat cross-legged on the red dirt across from Nisha. Not a hair was out of place on her head. She wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Matron told me,” she said. “She’s worried about you. She hinted to me that it might be better for you to leave now than to wait until after the Council meeting.”

“She didn’t tell me that,” Nisha said. “Is that why you’ve been following me? Does Matron think I’m in danger?”

Josei shrugged. “Matron doesn’t like to do things directly, especially when it’s something that could put her at odds with the Council. She prefers more … subtle ways of working. But I think she might be right this time.”

The thought of running away brought a panic back into Nisha’s throat. There were wolves in the woods, wolves and bandits and slave merchants. Even the Kildi man she’d seen in the trees would be a danger.

“I can’t,” Nisha said. “I know what’s out there. I saw it the first time I tried.” She closed her eyes against the memory: the sight of the man’s tattered flesh and torn tunic and the dark blood staining everything. “There’s nothing out there for me but death.”

Josei gave her a curious look. “You might be surprised. The woods are dangerous for children, but you’re not a child anymore.”

Nisha rubbed her shoulder, still stinging from where Josei had whacked her.
Maybe I’m not a child
.
But that doesn’t mean I can survive out there on my own, either
, she thought.

She stood up. “Thank you for the practice, House Mistress. Is there anything else you wanted to ask?”

Josei gave Nisha a piercing look, and Nisha shifted her feet. She wanted to trust this woman, wanted to tell her the fears and worries that swarmed in her chest, but she couldn’t. If Matron couldn’t protect her, then Josei couldn’t either. Nisha was on her own.

“I’ll do it,” Josei said, rising to her feet. “I’ll endorse you. You’re a good staff fighter, you pay attention to what is around you, and you have a nose for when something’s crooked or off. I think you’d make a very good guard.”

Nisha was struck dumb. She followed Josei as the woman returned the
lati
sticks to the armory. Through the open door of the building, she saw a young man repairing a bronze hand-shield. The youth’s hair was a few shades darker than the shield he was working on, and it fell over his forehead, almost to his eyes. He wasn’t anyone Nisha had seen before. Josei must have a new assistant.

Sometimes outsiders came to train with Josei; they helped her for a few months, learned from her, then moved on. Nisha didn’t usually pay much attention to them. She wasn’t interested in building a friendship with someone who was only going to leave.

As if he sensed her gaze, the young man lifted his head and looked through the doorway. When he saw Nisha staring at him, he winked.

Nisha felt her face grow warm. It was impolite for this stranger to make direct eye contact with a girl he didn’t know. And it was certainly impolite to wink. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him smile, and her face got hotter. She was only too glad to follow Josei down the flat stone path leading to the House of Jade.

This part of the City was devoted to lotus ponds. The calm water seemed to rebuke Nisha for her worry. Tiny green-and-black frogs hopped from glossy leaf to glossy leaf, croaking to one another.

After a few minutes of walking silently, Nisha couldn’t contain her questions anymore.

“Why?” she demanded, not caring if it was rude. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

Josei stopped on the path and held up one brown hand for Nisha to see. “Because I am also an outsider,” she said. Her hand began to shimmer like a rock when seen through river water. It wavered and blurred into a paw with brown fur and dull black claws.

Nisha breath caught with awe. Carefully she reached out and touched the paw. The dark pads were dry and rough under her fingers.

Josei’s eyes shone gold for a moment, and a fierce, wild pride crossed her face. Then her eyes darkened to gold-flecked brown, and her paw became a calloused hand again.

It was a moment before Nisha’s tongue could form words. “You’re Sune?”

In those days—before the Ending, before the Barrier—magic was everywhere. It was in the land, making it fertile. It was in the water, keeping it clear and full of fish. And it was in the people. Most people had some form of magic, even if it was only an awareness of the power that flowed through the world. But only a few people were powerful enough and driven enough to actually use it. The old magicians said controlling the magic was like trying to change the course of a cascading waterfall. One slip and the magic would break loose and spray everywhere.

From the scrolls of Naveen ka’Lyer, Jade caste historian

“HALF SUNE,” JOSEI said, starting to walk again. “My mother belonged to the Shrilah-Sune, the fox clans. My father was a scout for the Imperial soldiers. They met in the forests of the south, on the slopes of the Mountains of the Dead. They might have stayed together, but he was killed when he stumbled on a nest of bandits.”

The path turned to a wooden bridge over the largest of the lotus ponds. Josei stopped and leaned on the railing, looking out over the flower-spotted water.

Nisha copied her, studying Josei out of the corner of her eye. Now that she was looking for it, she noticed the Combat Mistress’s’s faint musky scent that lay under her normal smells of dirt and sweat.

“Well,” she said finally. “No wonder you’re so fast.”

Josei threw her head back and laughed. “Sune are faster and stronger than humans, it is true. The magic makes our senses sharper and we heal more quickly. But I have trained hard as well. And I do know what it is like to be on the outskirts of every place you go, to have to choose your own future because no one else will choose it for you. Half Sune don’t develop the power to change to animal form until they’re fully grown. My mother was one of the wild Sune, and she didn’t know what to do with a human child. When I was old enough to care for myself, she left.”

There was no sadness in Josei’s words, just acceptance. For a moment, she looked very animal.

Nisha thought about her own parents leaving her in the City. She hadn’t been old enough to care for herself, so why had they abandoned her? And why couldn’t she remember more about them?

“I wish I were Sune,” Nisha said, looking down at the pond below. The lotuses’ sweet scent rose up to the bridge. “Then I could turn into a fox and get away from here.”

“It is a curse and a gift, just like anything,” Josei said. She paused. “How much do you know about how the Sune were made?”

“Just what everyone knows, I suppose,” Nisha said. She gestured at the unchanging gray sky. “The songs say that the Sune were formed five hundred years ago, when the Empire was cut off. The magic that made the Barrier splashed onto some of the animals.”

“Is that what they’re teaching these days?” Josei shook her head. “Interesting. You at least know how the Barrier appeared, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Nisha said, preparing to recite the old story from memory. “The magicians of the Old Empire worked a spell to see the future, and what they saw was destruction. They saw the river flood its banks, saw the earth shake and an invading army so vast that no one would be able to stand in its way. The magicians of the royal court—which included the Emperor and his sons—found a spell that would protect the Empire. But the spell was so large that it would take the life of everyone who cast it and would remove magic from the land forever. So they sacrificed themselves and died raising the Barrier. But with no magic and no leaders, the people fell into chaos until the First Lotus Emperor took power and restored order.”

Josei burst out laughing, startling Nisha.

“Nisha, that’s a wonderful tale,” she said. “But it’s not at all what happened.”

“It’s not?” Nisha frowned. She’d heard the story-singers in the House of Music sing the history of the Empire many times. She was sure she’d remembered it correctly. “What do you mean?”

Josei sighed. “Nisha, the Sune sing this tale too. According to them, the magicians of the Old Empire were careless and arrogant. They found a spell they thought would work and cast it without proper care. The Emperor wanted big magic, something that would make him memorable in history. The Emperor’s councilors protested, but he didn’t listen. The spell was cast, but it was far too big and burned out of control. When the dust settled, the Empire was cut off from the rest of the world and every magician was dead.”

“So the magicians did die, like the songs say.”

“But it wasn’t just the magicians,” Josei said. “What your songs don’t tell you is that the spell also killed every man, woman, and child with a breath of magic in them and stripped the land of its own power. The Empire went from being a country where magic was everywhere and in everything to a barren place. Fewer than one in ten people survived. And in the mountains on the edge of the Empire, where the Barrier touches the ground and the magical backlash was strongest, all those who did not die were twisted into animal forms.”

“Is that why no one goes into the mountains anymore?” Nisha asked. “They say there are monsters there.”

Josei pulled away from the railing, her footsteps creating a dull echo on the wooden planks of the bridge. “I don’t know about that.” Nisha followed her, and Josei continued, “But I do know that it took that first generation a long time to learn to change from one form to the other without getting stuck. And some of them couldn’t survive the change. But those who did became the Sune, doomed to live as both animal and human. The full Sune cannot hide their true nature, because when they are sick or injured, they revert to animal form. That’s why most Sune keep to the wild places, preferring their animal bodies to their human ones. They want nothing to do with humans, because the arrogance of humans made them what they are.”

The story Josei was telling was so far from what Nisha had been told her whole life that she found herself at a loss for words. How terrified the people must have been, after losing so much. Especially the first generation of Sune, struggling to survive in their new forms.