Somewhere upstairs, a gong rang out. The songgirls straightened; costumes shook into place and silk slippers skidded over wooden floors as the girls lined up at the door.
Lan cast one last glance at her reflection. As always, she was in her white silk qípáo, plain and flat compared to theother girls’ luxurious dresses, and just as she liked it. Better to stay hidden as a plain dove than stand out as a peacock in these times. She was the lead—and only—singer for the Teahouse shows, eternally playing the part of the Teller of Tales. The Madam had taken one look at her scrawny appearance ten cycles ago and declared that she wouldn’t be wasting any fine cloth on “a curbside fox.”
But there was something Lan had that the other girls didn’t, and that was a voice purer than the finest jade. Even when, as a child, she sang from behind screens, her song seemed to mesmerize patrons; soon the performances at the Rose Pavilion Teahouse caught the attention of Elantian generals, and business began to boom. And when Lan’s lips and chest filled out, the Madam noticed that she’d grown up not half-bad: a slim waif with looks more sharp than beautiful, but one more doll to add to the Teahouse’s collection nevertheless.
Lan scurried to the back of the line of songgirls as they trailed upstairs at the second sound of the gong. Beyond the cherrywood screen that led to the kitchens and the dormitories, she could already hear the hubbub of voices in the Teahouse. A packed show, then—fitting for the eve of the Twelfth Cycle of Elantian rule.
A third gong sounded, and Madam Meng’s high-pitched voice rang out: “My noble patrons, I thank you for choosing the Rose Pavilion Teahouse on this very special night. I can promise you it is one you will not forget. Tonight, to honor the Twelfth Cycle of Elantian enlightenment, I introduce to you the ‘Ballad of the Last Kingdom.’ Please welcome our beloved songgirls!”
In the cracks between the folding screen, Lan watched as the girls twirled onstage in a whirl of gossamer and gauze, each outfit representing a different Hin folklore creature tailored toElantian tastes. There were the Four Demon Gods, the green serpent in shimmering emeralds and jade, the colorful qí’lín with its headband of stag horns, the moonrabbit in a soft fall of fur, and so on. Ying was, as always, dressed as the magical lotus flower in a beautiful blush of pinks and fuchsias.
“The Teller of Tales!”
Lan took her cue and glided onstage as she had been trained to do. She wove through to center stage, scanning the patrons here tonight. A blur of pale faces with hair ranging from wheat to copper to sand-brown, dressed in the white winter livery of the Elantian military, flashing with silver collars and cuffs.
Lan dipped into a curtsy, hands on her hips, head bobbing. As she did so, she caught sight of a patron sitting alone at a table in the very first row.
At first she felt a flash of surprise, for no other reason than that the man was Hin. The first row held the most expensive tables, as it offered the closest view of the stage and was typically reserved for high-ranking Elantian generals. This man leaned back against the rosewood chair, chin posed jauntily on one black-gloved hand with the air of someone accustomed to exceptional treatment—someone with authority.
He was the most startlingly beautiful man Lan had ever set eyes on. A tangle of midnight hair, cropped short in the Elantian style, spilled over a slim, chiseled face like ink on porcelain. Eyes the gray of smoke, framed by straight black brows, tilted with the slightest edge of insolence—a portrait completed by an insouciant curve of a mouth, corners currently sloping downward in boredom. He was dressed like an Elantian merchant, perhaps even a plainclothes court official: smooth white shirt and black trench coat and pants, not a spot of color on him.
A Hin courtdog,Lan thought; a Hin who had turned traitorto work for the Elantian government. Her stomach did a small flip.
He was looking straight at her.
She forced her heart to still as she rose from her curtsy and went to her spot at the edge of the stage. With each step, she could feel his gaze trailing her. Yet his eyes…they weren’t hungry or sleazy, like those of the Elantian soldiers who watched the songgirls as if they were prey. Instead, there was something…assessing about them.
Lan shifted her attention to the other girls, already gathered at the edge: Wen, her bamboo pipe raised to her lips; Ning, her five-stringed zither perched on her lap; and Rui, pear-shaped pipa lute leaning against her shoulder.
As the first note of the song struck, though, the rest of the world—the smells of tea, the bright pops of peonies on the tables, the shimmering gold-and-bamboo screens on the walls, the waiting patrons squirming in their seats—faded.
Lan began to sing.
The melody was warm on her lips, flowing smoothly from her as though in a dream. An image found her, bright and sharp, as the room around her fell away. Tonight she saw a dusk sky, the tangerine sun lingering at the edge of the world, its light gilding a forest of golden larches beyond eggshell-white walls. A woman leaned against a moon gate arch, fingers dancing over the strings of her woodlute and spilling song into the world.
Mama.
Each time Lan sang, it felt as though her mother were alive again, an echo of her spirit stirring inside Lan’s heart, guiding her.
The “Ballad of the Last Kingdom” told the tale of the Four Demon Gods who had fallen from the sky into the world of mortals. There they governed with their great and terriblepowers, worshiped and feared by the Hin…and once in a dynasty, it was said they lent their power to great warriors to change the tides of fate.
Then, nearly a hundred cycles ago, they had disappeared.
The ballad itself had been written thousands of cycles ago, some said by the ancient shaman poets. The scattered verse, a traditional prose style, was beautiful in Hin; even translated to Elantian, Lan found it palatable.
Long ago, the Heavens split
Like teardrops, its fragments fell to the ground
A piece of the sun bloomed into the Crimson Phoenix
A slice of the moon turned into the Silver Dragon
A shard of the stars gathered into the Azure Tiger
A splinter of the night became the Black Tortoise
And so the tale went, a sorrowful folktale of a fallen land forsaken by its gods. It was a tale the Elantians were familiar with—a beautiful reminder, in their eyes, that the fate of the Last Kingdom belonged to them.
