The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(32)
Min nodded and turned away.
Lu watched the darkness swallow her up. The flesh of her arms prickled. The air was far from cold, but it carried something of the autumn; an underlying bite, a hint of frost and leaf mold. Golden and eerie and sad. Lu shook her head. She couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Not today.
“Shall I go fetch the others, Princess?” Hyacinth asked.
“Yes,” Lu told her. She stretched her arms overhead and tossed a smirk over her shoulder at the other girl. “And get ready to call me empress.”
The sun rose as the gates of the Immaculate City opened, creating a path from the palace Heart to the beginnings of Kangmun Boulevard within the First Ring. Lu guided Yaksun along it. She gave the elk an affectionate pat on his neck. He snorted and shook his head, the mantle of beveled jewels and copper bells decking his antlers jingling merrily.
Set was farther back in the line, surrounded by his fawning retinue and draped in blue Hana finery. She bristled and looked adamantly forward. It had been nearly a week since she had last seen her cousin. The day after the Betrothal Ceremony, her mother had cajoled her and Min into a private dinner with him. The evening had ended in a shouting match when Set began talking of expelling the Ellandaise from the city once he was emperor. Min had burst into tears when Lu shattered his plate against the wall.
The whole of the Rings had come to see them off, merchants staring from the doorways of their shops, and little children waving colorful silks out the windows of sky manses while their parents looked on. Everywhere there was laughter and excited chatter.
Everywhere but where her mother stood like a streak of gloom just inside the palace gate. She’d huffed in impatience when Lu passed by, as though the whole affair were a childish charade she could hardly stand to partake in. At her side, Min had looked slight and sleepy; Lu hadn’t been able to catch her eye, so anxiously transfixed had her sister been on their mother.
Lu felt a tug of discomfort in her gut. Her father should be there with her. She recalled the last time she’d seen him—how he had sought her eyes during the Betrothal Ceremony. How she had looked away, the picture of contempt and spite. Who knew how long he had left? Not long enough for her to waste. Shame welled up in her. She resolved to see him the moment she returned.
Set rode up alongside her, waving graciously toward a group of Second Ring children gawking at them from a shaved-ice stand. When he turned back to her, though, his gray eyes were angry little chips of flint. “You’ve managed to rile the people up with this competition of yours, I’ll give you that much,” he bit out.
“You’re welcome to end it at any time,” she responded, her face a cheery rictus. “Just go back home.”
They were approaching the Northern Gatehead separating the Second Ring from the sprawling country beyond. Built of wood and iron, the gate was as high as twenty men, and inscribed with auspicious tidings and protective runes. The captain at the lead of their party gave a shout to the posted guards. With a deep creaking of gears, it began to rise.
“A diversion,” Set sneered, barely audible above the sound. “That’s all this is, in the end. Isn’t it?”
Lu bristled. “For me, perhaps. For you, it will be the end of your career.”
The gate reached the peak of its ascent with a final screech, then let off a deep, metallic shudder as the guards locked it into place. The captain shouted once more to the guards who confirmed it was safe to pass.
Lu looked her cousin in his gray Hana eyes, narrowed with contempt and suspicion.
“Once this betrothal nonsense is over, I would write to your mother in Bei Province and tell her to prepare the household for your return,” she told him lightly. “They’ll want to restock the poppy resin, no doubt.”
It was a cruel jab, but then beneath all his gentility and elegant silks, her cousin was a cruel man.
He stiffened visibly, then reined up. His stallion threw its head and gave a blustery snort. “We shall see soon enough, cousin, whose end comes first.” Then he surged ahead.
Beyond the city walls the soft rolling land was blanketed in the greenery of late summer, flecked intermittently with tiny farmhouses of wood and stone. As their party maneuvered down Kangmun Boulevard, Lu noted distant men and women in the fields, hunkered down over low-growing bean shrubs and wading through rice paddies. To her right, a plowman drove a pair of yoked oxen through a newly fallow field.
Before them lay the northern forest, where the hunt would commence. Rising up from behind the trees, the harsh, snow-buffeted peaks of the northern Ruvai Mountains stabbed the sky. Miles of unknown wilderness.
She cast a sidelong glare at Set. Her cousin sat upon his white stallion with lazy elegance, joking with one of his Hana entourage. The other man laughed deferentially. Lu gritted her teeth.
A quartet of adolescent Hu boys upon elk fell in beside her, followed by a group of their Hana peers riding young stallions they seemed scarcely able to control. Royal hunts always meant the debut of a new crop of well-bred boys eager to prove themselves.
She recognized one of the Hu, Wonin—Hyacinth’s younger brother. He met her eyes and gave a deferential nod of his head. She winked in response, watching as he made his elk prance delicate as a pony for the amusement of the other boys.
As the party reached the edge of the Northwood, the captain of the guard signaled toward his subordinates with a stiff gesture of his arm. Wordlessly, the men moved their elk into two meticulous lines around the party, one toward the front, and one toward the rear.