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“Everything,” they said without turning around. “The world starts with a story. So do dynasties and eras and wars. So does love, and so does revenge. Everything starts with a story.”
Worthy is wealthy, cleric, wealthy enough to keep my precious daughter comfortable all her days.”
It seemed to them like a poor guarantee for a young woman’s happiness, but then what in life gave guarantees?
No one liked to see a foal yoked to a worn-out old cart horse, as the saying went, and only a noble family would do something so foolish.
Chih was startled to look over and find Nhung’s eyes on them. When she saw she had Chih’s attention, she lifted the cloth napkin to her face as if she was blotting her lips and quickly crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, long and red and shocking against the white of her face paint. It was so unexpected that Chih almost choked on their food, and then Nhung set down the napkin, so much the proper prospective bride that it was impossible to imagine her making a face like she just had.
It could be respect, I suppose, but fear’s heavier and this feels like fear.
Instinctively, Chih looked up, following his gaze, but all they found was sky itself, the revolution of the stars interrupted only by the flight of bats. “Oh, he’s beautiful,” Nhung said in a way that meant no good, or at least, no peace. “Chih, don’t you think he’s beautiful?”
“Nhung!” “Shh,” Nhung said, not looking back. “He’ll belong to me when I am lady here, won’t he? I’ll be his mother.” “You do not sound very motherly right now,” Chih said urgently, because a girlish urge to explore her new home was one thing—being caught in her sleeping clothes with her new husband’s son was another. “Of course I do. I sound very motherly and concerned. He might catch his death.” She sounded so certain that Chih nearly believed her, but she was watching the young lord with such wide and fascinated eyes that the only person Nhung was fooling was herself, and that probably only
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“They used to call sleepwalking being fox-led,” Chih murmured, closing the chest and coming to sit next to Nhung. “They used to say that a fox would lead someone out of bed and confuse them so badly they would never find their way home.”
The crowd broke into applause, and Chih’s heart sank to see Nhung, dressed only in a white sleeping robe, a faint bruise shadowing the right side of her face and her bare toes bloody.
She yelped with glee as Lord Guo deposited her on the table, her sleeping robe falling open to show off her flat breasts and her belly. She didn’t bother covering herself, instead only looking up to allow Lord Guo to drop slices of fish into her mouth.
“What a clever man you are, and what a fine husband you will make my sweet cousin’s sweet girl!” she said, shoving him back from the table and leaping it to land on top of him. Somewhere between her seat and his chest, she lost her face, left it behind her like a cast-off scarf, and so she took his instead, snapping it off with two fast bites of her jaws, which were long and jagged like broken scissors. Giggling deliriously, she stood on his chest, dabbing at her teeth with her sleeve.
The teapot shattered on the ground, a high shrill whistle cut through the sounds of men dying and monsters laughing, and Almost Brilliant rose out of the shards in an explosion of fury. Oh, that’s where she was, Chih thought with blank panic. She’s been right here all along, just like Nhung was. It was a mad thing to think; a teapot that was really a bird had little to do with a monster hiding as a girl, but in both cases, it had taken Chih far too long to catch on. They could only hope it was not too late now as Almost Brilliant vented her fury on the beast. “You mangy curd-gutted plague
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“The lady and Lord Guo came in last night,” Five said on the trek to the library. “They broke open the casks of pickles, stabbed the bags of rice, ruined all the good food. I guess they took the little ward when they did it.” “Lord Guo took it down,” Chih said, a bitter taste on their tongue. “She can’t. She needs someone else to do it for her.”
They were a strange pair on the steps, Guo Zhihao sitting up straight and proper, and Nhung lounging back on her elbows, her white sleeping robe open to reveal her chest, her long thighs and the mat of dark hair between her legs. She looked up lazily when Chih arrived, and somehow it was more the immodesty that convinced Chih of how deeply they had been fooled than the blood that edged her robe.
“You cannot be angry that I no longer like you!” “Of course I can! You helped. You’re nice. You’re handsome, and you brushed my hair. Of course I want you to like me.” She tilted her head speculatively. “But you want stories, don’t you? Let me tell you a story, cleric of Singing Hills—” Almost Brilliant screamed offense, throwing herself off Chih’s shoulder, and Nhung retreated, waving frantically to drive Almost Brilliant off.
“Aren’t stories what got you into this mess?” “And stories got us out of it,” Almost Brilliant said crisply. “And they will help the survivors understand it, and they will warn others and comfort those who could not be warned in time.”
