“For the view.” He planted himself on a stool beside my hearth and regarded the mountain outside. Pride rippled in his voice. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Snow painted the peaks of Rabbit Mountain, even whiter than the scrolls of clouds hanging in the sky. It looked less like a rabbit and more like an egg with two ears, to be honest. Then again, maybe I was still hungry.
“It’s most beautiful when the moon appears between the two peaks,” Takkan said, pointing. “If you’re lucky, you’ll catch the moonlight shining down on the Baiyun River. It lights up the entire valley. We say that’s when Imurinya is watching.”
Imurinya, the lady of the moon. She was said to have spent her childhood on Rabbit Mountain. There used to be paintings of her in the palace, but Raikama had them taken away.
“Legends contain vestiges of magic,” my stepmother would say. “Best forgotten.”
Now I understood why she detested fairy tales. With all her snakes and wicked power, she could have stepped out of one herself.
“No one seems to think very highly of Iro,” Takkan went on, “especially in the winter: ‘The people are too harsh, the weather is too cold, the food is too bland.’ Maybe all that is true, but this place grows on you…if you give it a chance.”
I smiled politely. Everyone thought their hometown was the most beautiful. And while my view was a magnificent one, it did not move or impress me. All I saw was snow. Never-ending snow that dusted the tiny city below and blanketed even the forest beyond.
“Not convinced?” Takkan said. “For a girl from Tianyi Village, you’re a tough one to please. That’s not where you’re really from, though, is it?” He paused. “If you tell me, I could help you find your way home.”
I stared at the floor and gave a half shake of my head. This was my home, for now.
“Stay as long as you wish, then. But I would feel better if I returned this to you.” Takkan held out his dagger. The familiar blue emblem—newly cleaned and scrubbed—dangled from its hilt. His voice tensed. “I was told Hasege thought you stole it.”
His mouth became a hard line, a trace of fury ticking in his jaw. “It was unforgivable, what he did. He’s been sent away.”
I shrugged to show him that I wasn’t afraid of Hasege. The only person I truly feared was Raikama.
While I set the dagger on my desk, Takkan lingered. “One last thing,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He held out a side-stitched book, newer and finer than the sketchbook I’d found in his knapsack. “It’s one of mine. I like to draw…as you so keenly noticed while breaking into my room.” A small smile. “I thought you might find it useful.”
I took the book with both hands. All the pages inside were blank, and rolled along the spine was a drawstring pouch, large enough to hold a bottle of ink and a brush. At Takkan’s thoughtfulness, I let down my guard. Just a little.
Thank you.
“I remembered how you tried to write me your name at Sparrow Inn. Will you write it now? Your real name?”
My shoulders tightened, and Takkan quickly withdrew his request.
If there was disappointment, he hid it well. “Your past is your secret to keep. I won’t ask you again. But I do hope you will at least share some of your thoughts.”
It was my turn to hesitate. No inky serpents would leak from my brush as long as I didn’t allude to my past—that, I understood about my stepmother’s curse. Everything else was fair game.
Wait.I did have one request.
I wrote slowly, my characters coming out splotchy and almost illegible. I’d never had beautiful handwriting, no matter how my tutors forced me to practice and my brothers made fun of it, but with my swollen fingers, it was even worse.
Want work in kitchen.
“You’d like to keep working in the kitchen?”
I gave a vigorous nod.
“Who am I to stop you?” he said, amused. “I’ve a feeling, Lina, even if I commanded you to eat with us every day and night, you’d find a way to do what you wished instead.”
It was true.
With a flare of my old mischief, I replied,
Cook radishes. Lots.
As the sound of his laughter filled my new little room, for a moment I was glad I had stayed in Iro.
