Page 88 of All the Wandering Light

“May I?” He extended his hand.

It took me a moment to realize that he was asking me to dance. “I don’t—”

“I don’t either,” he said, with a sheepish smile. “But you are so lovely that I thought I might make an attempt.”

I hesitated. I was about to make some excuse and turn away, but then my thoughts flashed to River’s retreating back, and something made me give the young man a smile. Everything about the emperor’s court made me uncomfortable, from the richly clad courtiers—more people than I had ever encountered in one place—to the din of music and conversation. It was a feeling I hated, and I was going to fight it, and win.

I splashed my fingers in the bowl offered to me by a servant. Then I took the man’s hand and let him lead me into the crowd. As I did, one of the dragons nipped at my heel. I started.

“They’re not very well trained, are they?” I said.

The courtier, who hadn’t seen, gave me a puzzled look. We stepped onto the balcony, and I grew cold in my silk dress. I didn’t shiver for long, however, for the young man immediately pulled me into the whirl of dancers, and it was all I could do to keep my breath.

Below the palace, the city lights shone like fireflies. Surely they could hear the music down there, see the palace on the hilltop glittering with torches and dragonlight. It would look like a beacon hovering in the sky. I gazed out over the shadowy landscape and shivered.

“Everything all right?” the courtier said. He drew back to look at me. He really was handsome, his slenderness emphasizing the sharp lines of his cheekbones. I forced a smile, which grew into a real one as he spun me in a circle.

“Do you live in the Three Cities?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded with a question in his voice, as if uncertain where else someone could live.

“It’s lovely here,” I murmured. For a moment, I seemed to step outside my body, to watch myself dancing in the arms of a wealthy courtier on the balcony of the emperor’s palace. There came a familiar stirring in my chest, as I had felt setting out from Azmiri, and gazing up at the peak of Raksha. I was standing where no one in Azmiri had stood, except perhaps my father, who made rare visits to the Three Cities to pay his respects to the emperor. In spite of everything, my heart sped up, and excitement kindled inside me. My grip on the courtier’s arm tightened.

He caught my changed expression and smiled. “You’ve never been to the palace before, have you? Where are you from?”

An image of Azmiri, which would now be quiet and slumberous, tucked into the mountainside below the stars, floated through my mind. Like Tem, I had never belonged there. If I didn’t belong in the place where I had spent my life, where did I belong?

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning my face away. “Nowhere.”

He smiled again. “Well, nowhere has some charming inhabitants, I must say.”

I smiled back, and he spun me. As he did, something caught my eye. It was River, the obsidian beads glittering on his black chuba. I couldn’t not stare—everyone else was. Couples stood back when River and his partner, who wore a dress of shimmering azure, drew near. She was beautiful, of course, with generous curves and the sort of features artists gave to long-dead empresses in paintings. I felt a stab of something that was not quite annoyance, but closer to mischievousness. I recalled the dance in Jangsa—that had been wilder, less formal, but River had moved just as gracefully as he did now. His expression was animated as he talked to his partner, who seemed to be laughing, her kohled eyes bright. I maneuvered myself and the courtier close to them.

The dance required partners to swap briefly before returning to each other. As River’s hands left the girl’s, I drew the courtier into the path of another couple. His hands lifted to those of the girl in the blue dress, and I stepped neatly into River’s arms.

He started, and I grinned at the rare look of surprise that flitted across his face.

“Where did you come from?” He began to smile.

“I thought you could use a break from being fawned over,” I said.

He laughed at that, and spun me away from the main crowd. The music faded farther along the balcony, where there were only a few dancing couples, and several more seated close together on low benches. There were fewer dragons here too, and the shadows deepened.

“I don’t think I ever asked how you like the palace,” River said into my ear. I couldn’t see his face.

“It’s . . . a nice place to visit,” I said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“It was the company I was enjoying—that’s all, I promise you.”

“Would you rather be in the Nightwood?” I pulled back far enough to see his face. “What’s so terrible about banquets and gilded fireplaces, and pretty courtiers hanging on your every word?”

“You tell me.” He motioned with his chin toward the crowd we’d left behind. “You may have broken that boy’s heart.”

I made a dismissive noise. My heart was pounding. I could feel the warmth of his hands, gloved in the softest silk, against my bare skin. “Don’t change the subject.”