Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(84)

Sandrin turns his attention to Hoa, but before he can say anything, another voice breaks through.

“Ojo,” a man says, his voice all breath. He’s Gorakian, with black hair so short it’s patchy in places. His face is gaunt and his eyes a rich deep brown. “Ojo Hoa.”

Hoa stares at him, bewildered, as he falls to the ground at her feet. It’s only when he lifts his head to say her name again that I realize he’s crying. For a moment, Hoa is at a loss, but after looking around the room she drops to the ground beside him and places a hand on his cheek before speaking softly in Gorakian, the words slipping together as seamlessly as drops of water in a stream. The man nods fervently, his eyes boring into hers. After a moment, Hoa rises, taking the man’s hand and bringing him up with her. Her eyes have turned to steel.

“It is not enough,” she tells me in Kalovaxian. I don’t understand what she means until she clears her throat and tries again. “It is not enough to bring food here. We must also bring them hope.”



* * *



—

Hoa insists on seeing the camp in its entirety, and all I can do is trail after her. I don’t know how she does it—how she can look at so much ugliness and pain without flinching from it. How she can ask to still see more. I don’t want to see more—I want to turn and leave and bring more food in a few days if I can, but I don’t want to understand this place the way she does. I can’t take it.

I follow her anyway as we go from house to house, walk down every street, and I try to mimic her grace, how she holds herself together in the face of so much misery.

“We must also bring them hope,” she said, as if it were a physical thing we could deliver in a basket tied with ribbon. As if it were easy to share with others when it’s hard enough to keep my own hope from dying.

When I say as much to Artemisia, she shakes her head. “Hope is contagious,” she says. “When you have enough, it spreads naturally.”





BACK AT THE HOUSE OF the Elders, I find Sandrin with his book again. Though he glances up at me when I approach, he goes back to reading immediately after. I almost think him rude, but I try not to take it personally. If the book’s well-worn condition is any indication, it must be an engrossing story. I gingerly sit down next to him on the mattress and wait for him to finish. When he does, he marks his place with a scrap of paper and sets the book aside.

“Can you read?” he asks me.

I blink. “Of course,” I say before biting my lip. “I mean, I can read Kalovaxian perfectly well. I can read some Astrean—my teacher told me I was advanced for a six-year-old, but now…well, I wouldn’t say I’m even average for sixteen. Astrean was forbidden in the palace. I was forbidden to speak, to write, to read.”

His mouth purses. “We will have to teach you, when there is time.”

I can’t imagine when there will ever be time for that, but I don’t say as much. It’s a kind offer, and I accept it with a smile.

“Your friend is quite popular,” he tells me. “Where is she now?”

“Hoa is helping with the food distribution,” I say. “The Elders were concerned it would cause a mob, but she’s keeping the crowd calm and organized.”

He nods. “She has a gift with people,” he says. “In Astrea, we would have said that she was a storaka.”

“A child of the sun?” I ask, picking apart the roots of the word.

“Who doesn’t love the sun, after all? Some people have that same energy about them—they draw others in, make friends out of strangers with a single smile,” he says. “You are not a storaka,” he adds.

I should feel slighted, but I can’t deny he’s right. I don’t have the gift that Hoa has. I am not an easy person to love.

He looks at me with appraising eyes. “There was a story in Astrea that you might remember hearing as a child, about the rabbit and the fox?”

Bits and pieces of it come back to me—there was a rabbit who wanted to please everyone, so she rolled in mud for a pig, stuck feathers to herself to please a chicken, painted spots onto her fur to impress a cow. Then she came to a fox.

“The fox said it would like the rabbit best in a pot of boiling water,” I say. “The rabbit hopped right in and the fox cooked her alive and ate her for supper.”

Sandrin smiles grimly. “There is no pleasing everyone without losing yourself,” he says. “And you are surrounded by foxes. What will make you happy?”

“It isn’t that simple,” I say, frustration leaking into my voice. “It isn’t just about me, it’s about them”—I gesture to the door, to all the hungry refugees in the camp—“and it’s about the people in Astrea wearing chains. My happiness is irrelevant if it comes at the cost of theirs.”

He considers this.

“And what does saving them cost you?” he asks.

“The cost is…,” I start before trailing off. “The cost is marrying a stranger with strong enough armies to take on the Kaiser.”

I wait for his admonishment, for him to tell me again that queens don’t marry, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pats my hand. “That is a difficult decision,” he says.

“It is,” I say, my throat tightening. I blink back tears, focusing on my reason for coming to speak with him. “Sandrin, do you know anyone who knows about Guardians?”