READING SOUNDTRACK

Sanctuary (Ending) by Utada

Aeon (feat. Juliet Lyons) by Nick Murray & Juliet Lyons

Dynasty by MIIA

I Found by Amber Run

In the Name of Love by Martin Garrix & Bebe Rexha

Fire on Fire by The Nor’easters

Spectrum by The Nor’easters

Overcome by Samuel Bohn

Hurricane by Tommee Profitt & Fleurie

Scarborough Fair by Tamaru Yamada

Love Exists by Amy Lee

Be Here for You by Sam Tinnesz

Anew by Amistat

Walk Through the Fire by Zayde Wolf & Ruelle

Can You Hold Me by NF & Britt Nicole

CHAPTER ONE

She stood naked. Fifty other women stood with her, also stripped. This was the third and final round of consideration. Those who passed would be employed within the Cloistered City.

She had come in well under the maximum height allocation. If that worked against her, her hair was glossy and long. She had all ten toes and fingers. Her eyes were far enough apart, and her nose was not offensive nor ignorantly slanted. Already she had proved she could speak without stuttering and knew enough of her words to read simple sentences and write her name.

Her breasts were small but alike. Even though she had worked in the fields in her small village with her mother, Petra did not wield a scythe or hoe. Her hands were not like burlap, nor did she have one arm longer than the other. Her teeth were straight. A birthmark did stain her backside, but her mother had always said it was a blessing the discoloration was in the shape of a star.

When she was little, her mother joked she could sit with royalty because of such a mark, denoting her for greatness.

This last round was the Innocence Test. The inspector, with long, bony fingers, came up to each woman and forced legs apart while two other women, with hands like clubs, held the prospect by the shoulders.

Some of the girls struggled. Some swore and wept that it was not their fault when she pronounced them indecent. Many declared it would not affect how they served the emperor.

Not one protestation was heeded.

Petra had never held a man between her legs. However, a belligerent insect had once made its way into the folds of her body, attracted by her first entrance into womanhood. A doctor was called in. The pain was excruciating; the doctor’s hands were clumsy. He got the crawling creature but punctured the physical evidence of her virginity.

Many women came to this annual consideration knowing they would not pass this round without trickery and believed themselves clever. Petra did not consider herself clever. However, she did know her own determination.

Since news of Aldney’s death six months ago, she had waited for this day. His death in the palace brought unending grief to her heart and robbed their mother of a son and provider. His death was a crime, and now she stood proudly naked, honored to learn the truth of how her brother was taken and provide for her mother in the meantime.

The inspector’s breath was hot and sour. Are you innocent?

She crouched down like a frog and looked up, prying fine hairs aside and shoving her first two fingers into her body.

I am destined to serve in the Cloistered City. My red moon cycle began this morning.

Petra shrieked and pinched her knees.

The inspector tumbled over. Stupid girl! Hold still!

No need, Petra answered, forcing her eyes wide, remembering the words on the delivered note stating her brother had died. You have the answer on your hand!

Heads turned.

Other girls wept and begged. It alarmed no one. But Petra had screamed and now dozens of eyes saw a humiliated girl, legs crossed, head hung, with her perpetrator on the ground, fingertips colored with blood.

Whispers raced like serpents through the crowd. Astonishment and confusion twisted the face of the inspector.

You...you...

You see your proof and I can no longer say I have proof of my innocence.

Like a long-legged spider, the inspector recoiled and sprung to her feet, hurling a slap across Petra’s cheek.

You expect me to believe, in all my years of affirming virgins, that I have penetrated your innocence?

It is as it seems.

I’ll find your truth, Aldney. I won’t let your death be lost to the secrets of the emperor’s city!

Trapped by the apparent visible evidence, the inspector crouched back.

What is this racket? a voice demanded from the furthest portion of the crowd.

Bodies parted as if pushed by a giant, unseen hand. A tall woman, dressed in the dark gray of elder palace servants, came forward. Stitched yellow lines up the sleeves of her robe further attested to her status.

The Innocence Inspector had no such lines.

She snapped her lanky body into a bow. It’s nothing, ma’am.

It’s nearly nightfall. Written code demands new servants be within the walls before moonrise.

The inspector bobbed her head. So it will be. This girl was one of the last.

If she is a virgin, she should stand with the others. Be done with this.

The inspector opened her mouth to protest, but the woman waved Petra towards the other virgins, now clad in loose, pale, yellow robes.

THE WOMEN AMONGST WHOM she stood all looked like they could be second and third cousins.

Whether the directive came from the emperor, which she doubted, or from the Mother-of-State, this year’s selection consisted of women with flat chests and small hands. All the faces, like hers, were round. All the eyes, like hers, were dark and downturned. Hair colors varied slightly, but all shades were deep brown and black.

It was strange to stand in such company. Each of them had led different lives, boasted different personalities. Yet all were now dressed in yellow and hurried towards the bathhouse.

Here, on the outskirts of the city, refuse was hauled, and chamber pots scrubbed. If she, or any of the other young women were inept or considered too dumb for the positions they had been selected to fill, they would end up here, grinding charcoal to absorb the smell of urine and excrement. Their hands would tend manure piles, dump filled barrels, and reek of the vinegar portioned to scrub their own bodies free of filth.

Aldney had written to her about this place. He described the smell as meaty and festering with rotten milk.

Aldney had not stayed here. A high-ranking eunuch said he was far too androgenous to remain out of sight. Both men and women would derive pleasure looking at him; he must be seen. A position was found for him as a courier.

There were letters in his satchel when they found him.

Petra was convinced the same odd beauty that had pulled him from the men in his first days was his undoing. He had been a Spadone. Only part of his genitalia had been removed. He was still capable of coitus.

He had been killed by a jealous man for being the lover of a lady-in-waiting.

He had rejected a woman or a man’s love and been killed for his modesty and purity.

Aldney had not ended his life like they said. He was not a coward. His letters to home were honest but happy. Her entrance to the royal city was proof that his end was a crime. Now she had the chance to bring truth to his name.

Like a flock of yellow birds soon to be plucked, Petra and the other women were told to disrobe and get into the large, main tub. Small hand towels were distributed, and the women washed each other’s backs, then fronts, and so on, until all of them glowed with the stark pink of vigorously scrubbed skin. Water, laced with vinegar, was sprayed over them via large, dense feather fans to disinfect whatever the squares of rough fabric had not.

In that time, the yellow robes were steamed in the hot rock room, where clothes for those who worked on the outskirts were cleaned.

Brought out again, the women were instructed to tie the gowns in a new way, the official style of their current rank. Not around the waist but above the breasts and secured between the shoulder blades. The long sleeves were left down because colder months approached.

You will sleep here, declared the head maid of the bathhouse. Tomorrow you will eat and be placed where you are useful.

Assigned to follow in rows of four, Petra and the other women were led into a long hall, devoid of anything except cots. At the foot of each was a coarse elk hair blanket and in the middle was a bonnet of cotton, to be worn every night so their hair would not frizz.

After all, even though their current ranks were low, Petra was among women who would be seen by ladies and gentlemen of the royal hub. Expectations for their hygiene were astringent.

Without needing instruction, the women filed down the long space and stood beside the beds.

The head maid spoke again. There is much for you here. Pay, clothes, food, and medicine. Mayhap, there are many stories you have heard of the Cloistered City. Men with the strength of lions. Women who drink the blood of kit rabbits to stay young. Cats who trill like songbirds and birds of a thousand colors. I tell you there are both truths and myths in this city and neither of them are for you to learn. Sloth and flout will not be tolerated. Many have stood where you are now and spurned it in the name of curiosity. Own docility. Busy hands and still lips will provide for you.

She exited.

In her wake, maids of the hall scurried to douse beef tallow lanterns that lined the walls, leaving Petra and the others in darkness.

Leaning forward, she took off her shoes and slid them under the narrow space between the floor and the worn wooden frame of the bed. The old bed moaned at the weight of her body, an oddly soothing sound of nighttime. Tired beds ready to support tired bodies as dark skies hushed the country of Vale.

There were no pillows on these beds. Aldney had complained how strange it was to sleep without something under his head. At home, their pillows had been stitched from yarn and reeds, filled with either beans or rice hulls, depending on the rotation of the soil.

Petra folded her hands under her head.

From her brother’s letters, she knew that the food, like the accommodation for the beds, would gradually improve, depending on where she was placed. Washing, sewing, beading, fabric dyeing, and garden tending would all be tests to see where each woman served best.

It had been similar for the men.

Petra hoped her knowledge of soil would bring her to one of the many gardens within the city. She must be seen to become a courier, and she had no talent for needle and thread.

Eyes closed, she listened to hushed conversations around her. Each woman had hopes about what serving in the palace could bring.

Already, Petra felt sure that some looked to form alliances; less for others, more for them. And it was tempting to sit up, find the dim shales of moonlight seeping in through high, narrow windows, and discover who might drift to her side.

Leaving home had been terrible. Though both she and her mother knew it was the right thing, Petra felt like part of her insides had rebelled and remained in the tiny farm home.

Everything here was different. The air did not smell of grass and tilled soil. Rotund crows did not hop with their stilted gait, cawing with indignation. Mornings would not bring the egg woman, bartering for rice, beans, and milk.

She would not hear her mother snore at night. She would not hear the cow bellow. She would not glimpse the bed her brother had slept in.

Against the wet heat of tears, Petra closed her eyes and tuned in to the hushed conversations around her. A few talked about how they hoped to serve one of the ladies-in-waiting most likely to become empress.

Petra turned her head in the other direction. A cluster barely kept their voices to a whisper, exchanging all the myths they had heard lived within the walls of the royal city.

For centuries the city had stood averse to the outside world. Who was to say that birds with feathers of gold, red, and green were not bred over time ‘til their feathers rivaled silk and their songs were composed of heavenly sounds?

One girlish voice said she didn’t care a thing about birds. She wanted to meet the captains of Shivalry.

Although the emperor’s black army was feared, among those men others were chosen to become Shivs. Their strength of mind and body had to be beyond average. Their aspirations had to be only those of the city. Their blood belonged to Vale. Their life would end in service to the emperor. These men never married.

And to prove they could be Shivalry, they were subjected to a terrible test.

Another of the rumors lurking in the royal city was the presence of a garden, the exact whereabouts known only to the emperor, guarded sunrise to sunset. It was said that in this garden, the soil, the trees, and the rocks themselves thrummed with light and voices from the ancients at the beginning of the world.

Prospective men of Shivalry ate the dirt and rubbed their arms against the rocks until they bled. Ancient forces infiltrated their bodies and turned them into something more than human. Radical strength, enchanted touch, and vision that could penetrate mountains. Those whose bodies could not tolerate such gifts perished in the process.

The girl with the childish voice said she wanted to feel Shivalry strength and wondered if they ever took mistresses.

Petra rolled over.

Aldney never mentioned Shivalry in his letters. Doubtless, he saw them. Their existence was not a myth. However she wondered how many of the fabled rumors he had seen. Did one of the mysteries he encountered lead to his death?

She wondered. Somehow that seemed more probable than her gentle sibling being the object of an unhappy love affair. His life was for his mother and sister. It brought him purpose and joy. Peace and resilience.

I miss you. You were innocent. They have lied to cover their shame. I will clear your name. I will find the truth and set your memory free. 

CHAPTER TWO

In the next few days , she and the other women were separated. Some went to the kitchens. Others, with more delicate hands, were sent to the Coloring House where dyes for fabrics were created and used. Petra proved she was more capable than the women who went to the kitchens, but she lacked the touch for knowing when to pull fabric from the soaking tubs.

She, and others like her, were moved to the Washing House. Located behind the Palace of Embroidery, the women who washed were not the respected maids who sewed fine robes for the house of the emperor, his mother, or the ladies-in-waiting.

Petra’s new home was a branch of the Embroidery Palace, situated far enough that the women who lived among spools of colored threads would not be bothered by sounds of scrubbing and splashing.

It wasn’t inauspicious to be a washing maid. If she proved herself, she might be promoted to delivering fabric bundles to the Palace of Embroidery and have the opportunity to be seen.

That was the chance Petra needed. Of shorter stature and with childlike features, she was comely and not intimidating. Her presence would not offend nor demand attention and couriers were meant to move like the wind, a presence quickly fleeting.

The Washing House, the kitchens, and the Coloring House worked around the clock. Maids moved in shifts to keep up with the demand of all the palaces and halls in the Cloistered City. The Hall of Noble Palace Guards, the Hall of Respected Servants, the Palace of the Prime Minister, the Royal Garden Keepers Longhouse, the Hall of Renowned Scribes, the three palaces of the high captains of Shivalry, the halls of captains four and five, the network of palaces of the emperor’s ladies-in-waiting, the Hall of Couriers, the Palace of the Benign Mother-of-State, the Hall of Healing, the Longhouse of the Road Guards, and, of course, the Grand Palace of the Emperor.

Clothes from all came to the Washing House.

It was dizzying. Bodies and hands in constant motion with little patience for those who were learning. Petra and several of the girls were reprimanded like shocks of lightning when they moved the wrong way or obstructed another’s path. One of the washing nannies kept a supple willow switch up her long sleeves and its bite left a mean welt across the backs of thighs.

Like a great mechanical clock in constant motion, sacks of clothes were delivered with sewn labels indicating the owner. At the first cleaning station, elk-hair brushes were used to whisk and thrush dust, skin flakes, dirt, and hair. It was an attentive process and the nanny who oversaw learning knew what fifty short, quick strokes sounded like and would libel the girls if they miscounted.

From there, fabrics were carried to soaking bins. Maids used large paddles to slowly turn the items five times to the right and five to the left for an hour. Those who stirred ensured their motion was so gentle that it did not incur bubbles.

The women who wrung and scrubbed took the sodden bundles to their large, shallow basins. Here, propped on knee pillows, Petra, and those like her, squeezed, rubbed, and twisted, constantly draining the basins until the washing water ran clear.

This might take minutes; it might take hours. The maids who scrubbed were afforded vials of smoothing cream for their hands. Dry skin split and could catch on fabric.

When at last clean, the items were taken to rows of fine cordage where they were draped and dried. Then maids bundled the clothes and set them to be picked up by the servant from the respective hall or palace. 

All these tasks moved in relative quiet, like the path of a river—constant, constant, constant.

In his early letters, Aldney made mention of the persistent hum of the city. Unnoticed by those of rank, he wrote that he often found it difficult to relax his body or still his mind. Seated in the familiar surroundings of home, Petra wondered how such constant commotion would not be unlike the winds of a storm, persistent enough to become expected and, therefore, soothing.

She understood now.

Hopefully, the tightness in her stomach would lessen before she took on habits other maids used to calm themselves. The pebbles of soap made for long chewing and vinegar, if heated and inhaled, was powerfully head-clearing, akin to stupefaction. 

Those first days were difficult. Petra had grown up working. Her own clothing she mended, and cooked meals for herself and her mother. Every night she went to bed grateful for nighttime. Life here, however, was as different as boiling water is from still. Bruises mottled and colored her knees and shins. Her elbows and wrists ached like rheumatism of the elderly. It seemed as if her fingers might stay permanently curled, her knuckles locking and solidifying like claws. Getting up and down at the end and beginning of every shift made her legs quiver. Her shoulders shook and she felt as though her arms might dislocate.

It was hard.

Seasoned maids told her to cover her hands in the allocated salve and wrap them in cloth bandaging overnight to help the skin remain soft. Others quietly told her to sleep on her back so the pressure points she worked so tirelessly on all day would be free of weight in the night.

Petra was grateful her shift fell in the mid-morning. With meals served at the change of shifts, she was able to work, eat, and then go to bed with a full stomach.

During her free hours she was able to enjoy the sunrise and go to the Coloring House where she watched sure hands muddle and temper coloring powders.

Only women who had decided to live their lives within the city were given this job. At the end of six years, each maid was offered the choice to leave. With added benefits and indulgences, an increase in pay was given to those who chose to stay.

Six years was too far to make decisions.

For now, learning how pigments were created gave her a better understanding of what was required for dyeing. The older women at the Coloring House were patient with her questions and curiosity. One of them, named Clothilde, Petra grew fond of and always hoped their shifts aligned.

You are a good girl, Clothilde would say. I can feel your mother’s pride.

Each day was not so ideal, though. Expectations and the regimented schedule still left room for the errors of human nature. The work was hard for everyone, but there were women who bemoaned their tasks during sleeping hours.

In pitched, nasally voices, they would talk of former days when overseeing eyes did not watch every movement. Many flailing hands and indulgent snorts of mucus from petulant noses on the verge of self-pitying tears loomed.

Petra shushed them.

Your skin was brown when you came here, the measly ones would say. You were born for work.

Only once did Petra’s temper get the better of her. Only once did she fling her shoe at an ingratiating voice. Skin kissed by the sun under hard work was an honor. If her mother hadn’t said as much, Aldney had.

In his letters, he would say that if there was not such money to be made working in the royal city, he should be proud to have rough hands and a sunburnt neck. Often, in his letters, she read how he did not like the smoothness of his hands, the manicured nails; he did not think it was the look of a provider.

In the morning, at the bathing wall, a long trough filled with water that had been hot when it left the kitchens, Petra listened to the ones who spoke too loudly of their escapades during the overnight. Meeting men. Sneaking into the kitchens and stealing confections. A few had met ladies-in-waiting on the long, main road of the city and were given scent satchels, or tasked, at the risk of an elegant reward, with finding out when one of the eunuchs’ shifts ended.

Punishment for being caught was between lashings and expelling. Yet the thrill was worth the risk, and they encouraged others to try it.

These women bothered Petra but not more than she was sure her silence and habits bothered them. Her and a woman named Winfred. 

They were on the same shift and most mornings Petra saw Winfred in prayer, mumbling words of thanksgiving. Reverence bothers the irreverent and three women who moved in a pod from almost the first hour, always snickered when they passed her.

It grew, however. At the dish containing a rice husk mixture used to wash faces and arms on days when full body baths were not mandated—Petra noticed the pod hover around the dish, making it hard for Winfred to get any. The pod also did not like that Petra had little interest in growing companionships or alliances, and a suspicious number of accidental legs were stretched across her path.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE Late Harvest Moon approached. All servants of the Cloistered City would receive a serving of orange curd clotted cream. Most nights of the celebration would burst with fireworks dispatched from five different locations along the main road.

Every year Aldney wrote about the festival and tried to describe what fireworks looked like. He said that even if he could paint the colors for Petra, he could not communicate the explosive, crackling sound.

Over the following days, everyone’s hands needed to move faster. Uniforms from the kitchens must be cleaned. Uniforms of guards, as well. Servants of scribes brought dusty cloaks of the men who rarely stepped outside. Shifts were lengthened to accommodate the fine gowns of the ladies-in-waiting.

Petra was moved to brushing because her hands were not large enough to keep up with the washing demands. It was furious work that could not be done quickly. However, the willow swatch whip cracked over heads every hour. There must be no stopping for wiping errant hair from the face or doing anything so self-indulgent as scratch.

Water closet breaks came with six strikes across the thighs. Petra heard