The touch itself, lips against lips, was something small enough to be imaginary. It was a butterfly landing on me. I shivered, and something deep inside me, something that had been frozen and solid, turned into honey.
The words I had wanted to say came out, almost like a sob: “It’s too much—”
“It’s not,” she whispered. Then she came closer and tucked herself under my chin. How could she be so strong when she was so small? She was warm inside my arms. And suddenly neither one of us was shaking. I could feel her ribs move under my hands. My breathing slowed to match. And for that moment, who we were and where we were, the future and the past, fell away.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I said. “He tried to frighten me.”
“The others are coming,” said Xie, and we pulled away from the sheltering tree. Xie hooked a hand round my elbow and drew me out to meet our cohort—and their proctor guards—who were pouring down the garden terraces.
“But I’m not frightened.” I was . . . something different than frightened.
Da-Xia lifted a regal hand to wave to everyone, to show we were all right.
“I’m not,” I said, more firmly. “If a queen is quiet, it is not because she is frightened.”
Da-Xia kept her eyes on the others and answered me softly, a grin in her voice. “Oh,” she said. “That I know.”
12
PRESSURE VALVE
It had been such a long day. It had been so strange, so full of doors and hinges. But there were still goats to be milked, water to be pumped and poured into the drip irrigators, green beans to be plucked and put into a basket that bit into the crook of my arm. My lips felt . . . raw. Ripe. Ready to be touched. As if even the air that moved past them were new.
But I said nothing about it. The queen was quiet.
We worked into the long orange evening, and went back to our cells.
Still quiet, I sat on my cot and started to pull the pins out of my hair. Xie took off her samue and put on her alb. I tipped my head down so I would not see her changing. My braids tumbled around my face. My head felt different. My whole life felt different. I had defied the Precepture. I had seen the grey room.
And Xie—Xie had kissed me.
I glanced at her sitting on her cot. She was dressed now, wearing a spotless sleeping alb—or at least, she had it pulled over her body. Her bare legs were folded against her bare chest, the alb draped over them. She had her knees pulled up under her chin, and the tops of them peeked out through the loose neckline, dusty gold against the white fabric. The dip between them fell away into grey-gold shadow.
I closed my eyes.
My hands kept undoing braids until my loose hair spilled around me. I suspected I looked less like Guinevere now than some mad thing—Ophelia, maybe, or the Lady of Shalott.
Did all the mythical long-haired princesses meet bad ends? It seemed unfair.
Ends: The grey room. The high and narrow table. The crown and the dangling straps.
My hair was entirely loose now. I had an urge to cut it all off. Why not? Instead I twisted a bit of rag around, tying it into a very un-royal and sloppy ponytail, and got up to scrub my samue. It was spattered with a couple of days of gardening, and badly stained about the knees from my crash through the alfalfa.
I had my back to Xie. The silence between us was like an electric charge.
“They assigned Elián a cell,” said Da-Xia. “They put him with Atta.”
Elián had not had the best evening. I’d watched him over the green beans. His eyes had been feverishly bright, and he had twitched like a cat that—well, like a cat that had been tortured. But he had done a Precepture-worthy job of pretending nothing was wrong.
“Good news,” I said.
“I’m glad you think so,” said Xie. “My guess is the Abbot is trying to keep you happy.”
There was nothing safe to say to that, but I still felt myself beginning to smile. It was a powerful feeling.
Now, if I could only use that power to lift grass stains . . . “Honestly,” I muttered. “Who makes work clothes white?”
“The same person who puts executioners in angel’s wings.”
Talis, with his Swan Riders, and his endless taste for ritual.
“Also,” said Xie, getting up, “they’re based on the work clothes of Zen monks.”
I didn’t feel particularly monkish.
Xie glanced skyward. It was the last of twilight, nearly full dark. Beyond the glass roof, the stars were prickling on, one by one.
A bell rang, the seventh bell, to command us to sleep.
“Will you sleep?” Xie asked.
“The Abbot said I should come to him, if I didn’t.”
Da-Xia smiled for the Panopticon, but her eyes were black. They said, Don’t.
They use dreamlock. They use drugs.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m not tired.”
“Will you be all right?” If she left, she meant. If she went to play coyotes. She’d stepped close enough to the door to trigger its silent slide. Xie had kissed me, but Xie kissed everyone. She stood there on the edge of leaving, her alb like a sail in the moonlight, the rest of her a dark sea.