Where had she gotten them?
Inside, a serving girl greeted me with a cheery face despite what I looked like, despite the blood I tracked into the house. Ren led me upstairs. The fact that she had an upstairs at all spoke well of her status. There are Ikhthian nobles who dream of having furnishings as beautiful as the ones I saw that day. Fine silk divans, gauzy curtains swaying gently in the nighttime air; plums of incense smoke imparting intoxicating scents. This was the sort of home even you would take pride in.
So the oil had to be around here somewhere. She had lanterns, after all, and if she could keep lanterns burning, certainly she could keep me burning.
She led us to her bedroom, and I saw no lanterns there. Only candles shining with dim orange light. What if she wasn’t going to give it to me? What if I had to find it somewhere else? What if I had to break into someone’s home and steal it? Was I capable of such a thing?
The whole room smelled of flowers. They almost drowned out the scent of sex, the scent of burning.
I was in a singing girl’s bedchamber at Second Bell while you ran through the woods, trying to find me.
“Take a seat anywhere you would like,” she said.
I did not sit. I stood and crossed my arms. Ren was fiddling with something in the corner of her room, something on a shelf. When she finally turned, I realized what it was: a small portable shrine, similar to the one you had. Two little statues—one of the Grandmother and one of the Daughter—held unburnt prayer tags. The foxhead sat between them. Grandmother and Daughter—Ren had to have been born in either a first year or an eighth year, then. Eight years older than me, or eight years older than you.
Was that why I liked her so much? I did not think much of Hokkaran astrology, but the coincidence stuck out like a bone in thin stew. One of those idols was her birth year, and one was her chosen patron.
Which was which?
“This mask belonged to my father,” she said. “He fought in the Qorin war against Sur-Shar, and when that was done, he went to the Wall to help send the blackbloods back.”
She touched the edges of the mask as if she were touching her father’s face. When she looked to me, she wiped away another tear.
“That was why, when Kato told me what you had done, I was so impressed,” she said.
A knock at the door. The serving girl came in just long enough to set a tray down on a nightstand. On it, a bottle of plum wine and two small cups. Ren sniffled, but that did not stop her reaching for the wine. She held her billowing sleeve back as she poured into the cups. Her bare wrist was pale as her namesake, small and delicate and—
Like yours. Like your small hands beating at my face, trying to get me to stop hurting you and—
“Barsalai?” Ren was speaking to me.
I’d closed my eyes to shut out the image of you. Now I opened them and found that she, too, looked wounded.
She slid over the cup of wine. “Drink,” she said. “You look like a woman who needs it.”
I was a woman who needed oil. Not alcohol. But I did not have much to counter that with. It’d been some time since I last had plum wine, at any rate. I sighed and tipped the cup to my lips. It tasted like dirt, which didn’t much surprise me. Foolish of me to hope it’d be any different.
“Barsalai,” she said, tutting softly. “Something wears on you.”
She reached for me; I drew away. No. No one could touch me. I did not deserve such sympathy, nor the wine that I continued to drink. This entire situation was preposterous.
Ren must’ve realized her doting was getting her nowhere. She finished her cup and set it down. Then she held up the mask again. “Do you know how many years my father wore this?”
I studied it. Whoever cast it did a fine job—the fox’s whiskers stood out now after at least a century—but nicks and scratches betrayed its age.
“Many,” I said.
Ren nodded. “Twenty years,” she said. “He stopped only when he lost his left eye.”
My head hurt when she said that—a sudden, sharp pain, like an arrow in my skull. I rubbed my eyes to deal with it, but it was gone within a few seconds.
“I was ten, I think, when that happened. Kato was five. All of us moved back to Imakane, where my father was born. With the money the Son of Heaven provided him, he bought a plot of land.” A fond smile crossed her face. “Would you believe I was a country girl?”
I shook my head. This village was not Fujino, but Ren made it seem bigger just by being in it.
“I was,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go to the capital, but back then it was just an idle dream. My father thought he had two sons in those days. Perhaps he sought to marry me off to some other farmer’s daughter.”
*
I LET OUT a soft sound as it all fell into place. So that was why she kept so many horses! Like the healers of my people, she was a sanvaartain. With the proper medicines, she could change her body into one that suited her. Now her Qorin mentors made sense.
“I think I would have gone already, if the Yellow Scarves hadn’t attacked us. But they did. They were hungry, they claimed, and ours was the only farm that bore crop that season. So they took everything, torched the land, and killed my parents.”
She said it softly, quieter than a whisper. I fought the urge to touch her shoulder. I wanted to comfort her somehow. I know what it is like to lose family. I know what it is like to be alone.
But my hands were no longer meant for comforting. The moment I reached out, I caught sight of my talons and drew back. No.
“I’ve been here, trying to earn enough so that Kato and I can move to Fujino together,” she said.
Silence followed. Oil. Ask her for the oil. A great pyre I’d light, and she’d see it here from her balcony and know that I was free. Oil.
But Ren stood from the bed. Without her wooden sandals, she was smaller than I thought. I could see her pulse as she came closer. One, two, one two—I could see it. I bit my lip and resolved to look at her hands, and only her hands.
Except I saw her pulse there, too.
Urges. Half of me screamed to pin her against the wall and tear out her throat. The other half still wanted to pin her to the wall, still wanted to press my teeth to her neck—but that was different. Singing girl. I could make her do more than sing, if she wanted me.
But neither of those things were me, neither of those were my thoughts, so why was it that I kept thinking them? Why did I keep hearing them over and over when all I wanted to do was die?
I pressed myself flat against the wall.
“Barsalai,” she said. “Did something happen at the cave?”
Did something happen at the cave? she asked, as if I wanted to speak about this at all with someone I barely knew. Yes, something happened at the cave. I proved I’m a worthless human being.
Save that I was no longer human.
I massaged my temples. Biting my lip, I nodded.