Chapter 4:
“What are you drawing?”
Mayah tried to poke her head under Sukren’s arm to see. He was tracing something onto the step, using rain from a puddle as ink. It looked like a rectangle, but it was kind of hard to tell.
“I’m trying to figure out how to get from the serf staircase entrance to the lift bay. See, we’re coming in here, and we want to go there.” Sukren touched the bottom left corner of the rectangle then put his finger on the catty-corner at the top right.
Mayah glanced at the entrance door. It had a wheel on it, too, just like the last one, just like all the ones they’d passed on their way up. Or maybe not all of them. She didn’t know for sure because she hadn’t seen all of them. Mayah had tried really hard to stay awake but she had been so tired! They’d climbed and climbed and climbed and when they’d reached another canopy-stop she had sat down for just a moment. Next thing she knew, she was on Sukren’s back again.
“Why can’t we open the door and look in?” Mayah asked.
“I guess we can,” Sukren replied slowly. “I’m a little nervous about opening it and running into someone. We have to keep hidden until we get our papers. But you’re right, we need more information.” He frowned, then shrugged. “I guess we don’t have much of a choice.”
Mayah heard the music before the door was even fully open. It was loud. Sukren grimaced. “Don’t tell me those are Rajas.” She watched as he poked his head inside. “Yes, those are Rajas. Holding a Houseparty.”
He didn’t say anything more. Mayah felt a little funny. There were Rajas on the other side of that door. She’d heard so much about them. Every villager had at least one story about the princesses and princes who lived in the castles. And here she was, now, about to see them for the first time. Well, not them. Because… she was a Rajas too. Sukren had called her a princess, even. Could it be true? Was she really a princess? Just like the Rajas inside?
If she stepped forward, she could see past Sukren through the door. Oh rock-god, those arches! It was like another rectangle was inside the rectangle Sukren had drawn of the room, only the rectangle was made up of arch after arch after arch. Walls of arches! And inside them, music like Mayah had never heard before, and laughter, too, and warmth, and even – wait, was that one of them?
She couldn’t help it. She pulled off her hood so she could see better, and stepped forward. Sukren grabbed her. “We can’t go in there, not now.”
“But I want to see,” she whispered.
“It’s too dangerous.”
Mayah pointed at the walls. “Can’t we hide behind the arches?”
“No. We’ll have to climb up to Zone 6 on the staircase. Somehow.”
She could hear the weariness in Sukren’s voice. He didn’t want to go up the serf staircase. He wanted to take a shortcut. And that was what Mayah wanted too! So why didn’t they go for it? The Rajas wouldn’t see them if they hugged the walls. She pulled against Sukren’s grasp and felt him release her. Oh! Mayah could see them now, the Rajas, the golden ones, oh, that one was a girl, there, with hair as blue as a leaf vein, and tattoos running all over her face, oh rock-god, oh rock-god –
“Sukren?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Am I really a Rajas?” she whispered.
Sukren’s hands on her shoulders were gentle. “Yes. Yes, you are.”
Mayah felt hot and cold all over. It was like she was trying to swallow something tight in her throat that just wouldn’t go down. She took one step forward, then another. Sukren didn’t stop her. And when he began following her, she didn’t stop either
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The shortest distance between two points is a line, but when that line cuts through a Houseparty, it’s better not to take it. Sukren knew that. Ten years of village life hadn’t erased all his castle-bred instincts. He was happy to remain hidden inside the arcade, taking only the merest glances through the arches to his right at the Rajas inside the nave. Hug the walls, that’s it, it’s like you need to get to the end of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle but the only way to get there is by clinging to the triangle’s legs. Good, you’re at its angle now, its 90° corner. Turn right, and there it is, you can see it, only one leg left to go –
“What are you doing up so late?”
A Rajas voice. Sukren closed his eyes. He wanted to bang his head against something hard and unyielding. Stupid, stupid, how could he have been so stupid as to let Mayah walk by the wall-shafts to his right, without her hood up, stupid, stupid, no matter how tired he was how could he have been so stupid!
It was too late now. The prince and princess whose attention they’d captured were peering through the arch at Mayah with an interest that Sukren could tell wasn’t going to go away.
“She was feeling sick and had to go to a clinic. I’m escorting her back to her dorm,” Sukren told them in Rajim. It was a bad lie. A sick princess would stay the night at a clinic; she wouldn’t be creeping back to her dorm at such a late hour. Thankfully, Rajas were generally pretty oblivious. Coddled as they were since birth, they had to be. Sukren was fairly sure they wouldn’t question his account.
Of course, Rajas also tended to completely ignore anything serfs said. “So cute!” the princess cooed. “You’re still a junior princess, aren’t you? So little!”
Mayah was staring at them open-mouthed. She glanced at Sukren. He nodded, just the tiniest bit to tell her to respond. She looked back at the Rajas. “Yes,” she whispered, also in Rajim. “I am a junior princess.”
“So shy, too,” the princess said, smiling. “Come on, come with us, we’ll give you a fun night, you’ll be able to tell all your friends about it.”
“She has to go back to her dorm,” Sukren said loudly. “She’s sick, she’s tired.”
The prince reached out and grabbed Mayah’s hand. He pulled her through the arch into the nave. “What are you wearing?” he laughed. “Is it some kind of costume? Come on, let’s show it off, show you off. It’s not every day a junior princess gets to attend a Houseparty.”
Sukren watched, his fists clenched, as Mayah was tugged along into the nave by the two Rajas. What could he do? Mayah was being led further and further away. She was looking back at Sukren, her eyes wide, but then the prince pulled her into a cluster of Rajas and Sukren lost sight of her. Sukren involuntarily took a step forward, then stopped. All his castle training was screaming at him to stand still, to let the Rajas do as they pleased. Don’t you know the purity laws? Don’t you know your place?
Yes, but didn’t he also know Mayah? She was in his sight again, but the princess was leading her to a servie with a beaker of breathflower rum on his tray. She was barely ten, by the rock-god, did these Rajas have no sense of propriety? No, of course not, of course they don’t, that’s why I hated castle life so much, that’s why I jumped at the chance to raise Mayah in a village, but now I’m back and I’m about to watch as she’s made more vulnerable than ever and then I know one of these bastards is going to take her and –
Sukren took another step forward. “I can’t let it happen,” he whispered to himself. “I can’t, I can’t.”
That’s right, a voice deep inside him said. It’s true, you can’t. But you don’t have to be stupid about it.
Something inside Sukren came unstuck. He was able to breathe. Don’t be stupid, don’t be stupid anymore, yes, okay, that means while the Rajas are distracted, go to the lift bay guarded by Lady Nari’s soldiers, it’s right down the arcade, and tell them Feiana sent you. Now go!
Sukren moved as quickly as he could without drawing attention. He was at the northwest lift bay at once. The two Eenta soldiers guarding it turned to face him, their faces alarmed. “Feiana sent me,” he gasped. “I need your help.”
To his immense and utter relief, both soldiers immediately drew closer to him so that all three of them were hidden behind a pier. “What is it? Do you need to get off this level?” one of them asked.
“No,” Sukren said. “I need to extract the junior Rajas out there in the nave and get her off this level, and up to Zone 6.”
“Junior Rajas…” The soldier to Sukren’s left put her hand to her mouth. “Is she… she’s…”
“Yes,” Sukren replied. “She is. I’m her handler.”
“Tell us what to do!”
Sukren took a deep breath. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to go out there. You two follow me, weapons out...”