Lotus and Thorn (13 page)

I dried off and, while Marisol got a towel for my hair, I grabbed
a strawberry, greedy to stuff it into my mouth. But Marisol put her hand on mine, stopping me.

“Not like that.”

She stepped in close, so I could feel the heat of her body—her silk dress shivering across my bare skin. She smiled, teasing as she tugged the fruit out of my fingers.

Watch. Learn,
I commanded myself. The more convincing a Kisaeng I was, the better spy I would make.

Marisol closed her lips around the berry in one juicy bite, then shut her eyes as if overcome by the flavor. A smile played at the edge of her lips. It was tantalizing—a hunger rose up inside of me that had nothing to do with food—watching pleasure slowly fill her face. It was so very private, and yet, I was suddenly aware that I was watching a performance. A perfect, seductive dance. But a dance nonetheless.

She bit her bottom lip, sucking the last of the red juice from it, in an artful finale. Then her eyes popped wide and she laughed—that bubbling-up laugh that I remembered from childhood. A laugh that made you long to be part of whatever Marisol was doing.

“Now you.” She tossed me a strawberry and scrutinized me. I realized she wanted me to mimic her, so I took the fruit in my mouth, feeling ridiculous, my lips feeling clumsy and huge. But the moment I bit into the berry, juice exploded on my tongue. I
had
to shut my eyes, to hold it all—the tart and the sweet, and underneath, the memory of sunshine and damp dirt and rain. This was nothing like the scrawny desert berries in the Pleiades gardens.

When I opened my eyes again, Marisol had an odd look on her face. “I always thought Taschen was the pretty one. But I was wrong.”

Then she pushed away whatever was bothering her and grinned
again. “Forget the lip thing at the beginning, you looked like an Abuela without any teeth. But keep the rest. Whatever you did just then, do that tonight. You’ll drive all the Curadores mad!”

“Well, I’m not sure I want them
all
!” I grinned as I tried to mimic her flirty tone.
You can do this,
I told myself. But there was an undeniable twist in my gut. Because pretending would only take me so far tonight, and I was not about to admit to Marisol of all people how inexperienced I was.

It’s not like I’d never been with a boy before. Once, I borrowed one of Tasch’s dresses and worn it to the Seollal New Year’s Festival. The long sleeves trailed way past my fingertips—so I could play at being normal. I was curious. I wanted to see if everything Taschen said about boys was true.

As we all lined up to perform our
sebae
bows to the Abuelos and receive wisdom, I watched—singling out a quiet boy from one of the other buildings. Not too handsome. Or too needy. Or too anything.

Despite the cool night, I led him to the outskirts of the bonfire—letting flickering shadows hide my hands. Not that that’s where he was looking. He’d been sweet and it’d been fine. Almost nice, even. But it’d also been awkward and messy and not a
little
painful.

“Oh, you do want them,” Marisol said. And there was that laugh again. “Belieeeeeeve me. You do!”

And I couldn’t help thinking about Edison’s low voice reading me to sleep in the stairwell. Him and me, standing in a desert of red and orange flowers, our hands folding together. And the way he’d looked at me when he’d “rescued” me from the Indignos. Maybe . . . maybe things could be different from that clumsy night at the Festival.

“Now come on.” Marisol threw open a door opposite the bed.
It led to a huge closet filled with fabrics of every color. The variation was breathtaking—sheer, heavy, silky, bright, and luxurious. Scattered among the meters of cloth were dresses—short, long, of every style imaginable. And many I’d never imagined at all.

And in the middle of the lavish collection hung the most complicated dress I’d ever seen. “
This
will do nicely.”

She pulled it out and held it up in front of herself—it was mesmerizing. The dress itself was short in front, stopping well above Marisol’s knees. But the back of the skirt flared out in countless layers, draping all the way down to the floor in every color of green. The greens were echoed in the top, a patchwork bodice, pieced together in a nod to Pleiades’ dresses. But this was no simple Festival gown. And there was even something that looked like it might be a hood, but I wasn’t sure.

“I can’t wear that . . . I wouldn’t even know how to put it on.”

“You can and you will.” Marisol searched my face, as if trying to find some answer. “Leica, as of today, you are a Kisaeng. It doesn’t matter who you were before, or what you are now, or what you feel comfortable wearing. All that matters is the fantasy. From this point forward, you are only what a Curador wants you to be.”

She was right, I
was
here to create a fantasy, one strong enough to hide what I was really after. I closed my eyes and cleared my mind, picturing the girl I was to become. A girl who came to the Dome not to search for secrets, but to be a Kisaeng. And I realized that all those hours my sisters and I had spent reading fairy tales of princesses, knights, and dragons—making up our own tales about Earth—had prepared me for this. I was
good
at stories. I could be whatever I needed to be.

For the next hour, Marisol arranged the dress artfully on my
body, so the bodice hugged my hips and curved out with my breasts. The green skirt spread across the floor behind me like a delicate shadow made of sage and vines. The hood turned out to belong to a sheer cape that lay lightly across my shoulders but added no modesty to my obvious cleavage.

Marisol ruffled her hands through my shaggy hair, which had grown wild in my three months of isolation. “Not much I can do with this.”

But she fiddled with it anyway, doing something miraculous with the hood—clipping it to my hair so it rested right at the back of my head. It looked exquisitely careless, like it might slip off any moment.

Looking at myself in the sea of mirrors, I had to admit that the effect was gorgeous—but I couldn’t help feeling exposed. I started to wrap my arms around me, but remembered Marisol slapping me and dropped them to my side.

“The trick is imagining you’re someone else,” Marisol said, and I sensed she was talking about more than just wearing this dress.

I stared at the strange girl in front of me. The green tones of the dress warmed her brown skin to a rich bronze. The narrow waist balanced out her height—making her look small, rather than short. And with her cropped hair half hidden by the hood, her dark eyes stole all the attention.

“Being a Kisaeng is like playing a game. A daring, delicious game. Never take it too seriously, Leica. Or you’ll get hurt.”

“I’m done being hurt.” I made myself smile at Marisol in the mirror as I remembered a character from my fairy tale book—a servant who bolted iron bands around his heart to keep it from cracking open.

But Marisol just gave me that look again, like I was a puzzle she couldn’t figure out. Finally, she released my gaze and focused in on my hands. “Last, but not least.”

Marisol rummaged through her bag and brought out some kind of lotion. Sitting next to me on the bed, she cupped my hand in hers. She spread the lotion onto my backs of my hands, turning my skin a shimmery gold.

“What are you doing?” I tried to pull away, appalled. “Everyone will see them.”

“
That
is the point.” She gripped my hand tight. “The Curadores revere variation. Each of them spends their life hoping they have
something
—a trait different enough or special enough—that’s worthy of passing onto future generations. A tiny scrap of themselves, living on for posterity.” She rolled her eyes. “We Kisaengs, of course, are simply fashion accessories. But it never hurts to be a bit of a . . . singularity. This isn’t Pleiades, Leica. Above all, you must always remember that.”

So I let her spread the lotion over my too-many fingers, working it into my hands. By the time she was finished, the effect was stunning. Every time I moved my fingers, the eye was subtly drawn to them. I’d never hated my hands—my family had never let me—but I’d never thought of them as beautiful either.

As I stared at myself in the mirror, I silently repeated what Marisol had said.
This isn’t Pleiades.
I would be someone new here. Someone who discovered new worlds. Someone who fluttered her golden hands and made love to strawberries. Someone who kept secrets and found answers. I would be a Kisaeng.

DINNER WAS LIKE
nothing I’d ever experienced. Hundreds of people were crowded into a vast tent. Strings of twinkling lights draped from the ceiling like stars, and swarms of glittering black insects navigated through them.

Marisol and I had taken a silver magfly through the dark streets of the Dome. And though I’d been glued to the window during the short ride to the Promenade, trying to figure the layout, all I saw was a blur of lights rushing past.

“You’ll see it all tomorrow,” Marisol promised as we padded across the broad lawn to a bright pavilion beside a lake.

The place smelled of savory dishes and crushed grass. There were tables but no one was sitting down. And there was food everywhere but no one seemed very interested in it.

The place had the same feel as the Festivals in Pleiades. Bright clothes, loud music, plenty to drink, and a hundred things going on at once.

It was strange to see the Curadores without their isolation suits. All the men were large and well-built, even the smallest of them would’ve dwarfed my father. They laughed and chatted as we
entered the tent, an endless variety of handsome smiles and strong jaws. I tried not to stare at the unusual skin tones and hair colors from the almost-transparent white of shed snakeskin to the deepest brown of mesquite bark. But it was their eyes that claimed my attention, gleaming in bright hues. The intense blue of the desert sky. Fresh-picked basil. The rich reddish-brown of dried chiles. It was like walking among beautiful giants.

The Curadores wore simple clothes—loose shirts and pants—not so unlike the clothes of Pleiades. Except that none of the cloth was patched or faded. The shirts were all a clean, bright white with gleaming, decorative buttons. And the pants, though muted, came in all different shades.

But this was nothing compared to the women—each one a work of art. Some, like me, were draped in complicated layers of fabric; others wore gauzy dresses masterfully tailored to play a kind of hide-and-seek as they moved. All the women were young and beautiful. All of them had once been Citizens, and yet, they seemed completely foreign to me. Incandescent, decorated creatures.

Kisaengs.

I froze, feeling out of place and intimidated. Beside me Marisol whispered, “Relax, it’s just a party.” But she was smirking as she said it, knowing full well it was the
last
thing that would make me feel better.

Faced with this mob of strangers, I longed to shove my hands in pockets, but I didn’t have any. Marisol tried to get me to keep walking, but my feet wouldn’t move and the words slipped out of my mouth. “What the hell am I doing?”

Marisol looked at me sharply, and in a low tone only I could
hear, she said, “I’ve been asking myself that same question, but I was hoping at least
you
knew. The Dome is not an easy place, Leica . . . who a Kisaeng chooses to consort with is her identity. It affects where she lives, what kind of luxuries she has, the power she wields. So you’d better figure out what you want and who’s going to get that for you. And you’d better do it fast.” Then she smiled sweetly, threaded her arm through mine, and pulled me into the throng.

Marisol’s warning churned in my head as we walked through the mass of people, and strangely, her words solidified into courage. I reminded myself that
did
know what I was doing. And I knew very well what I wanted—answers. About the outbreaks in Pleiades. About Tasch’s strange death. No one else should have to lose their sister. Or parents. I let that purpose guide me through the crowd.

Though I didn’t catch anyone actually staring, I felt their eyes on me. I didn’t hide—I couldn’t have in
that
dress—but it made me uncomfortable. Whereas Marisol basked under the collective gaze.

She’d chosen a dress that was much quieter than mine. A rusty color that was one shade duller than her hair, and several shades darker than her skin, making her almost luminescent against the fabric. And though her dress was simple, it was exquisite—velvety with lines of brighter red outlining Marisol’s narrow curves. Like dunes forming and reforming across the desert.

She didn’t need sparkles and jewelry.
She
was the beauty, not the dress. All at once, I felt ridiculous, bedecked in that hooded, corseted thing. Marisol had the same effect on all the women she passed. Hands touched elaborate hairpins and chunky necklaces, suddenly unsure.

We strolled by a girl about my age who was singing. I untwined my arm from Marisol’s so I could stop and listen. The song was slow and seductive, nothing like the striding hymns sung at Pleiades’ Rememberings. The singer seemed lost inside the melancholy chords, swaying slightly—her eyes closed as she strummed her guitar. She was tall and slender, and her high, haunting voice perfectly matched the sheer, silvery dress she wore.

The people gathered around listening were almost as fascinating. One woman lounged on the lap of a young Curador, arm thrown easily around him, captivated by the music. Another couple danced impossibly close, mouths pressed together, hands roaming across the landscape of their bodies—as if they were in their own private room. But no one except me gave them a second glance.

In another corner, a serious-looking woman in her late twenties argued with a whole group of Curadores. Most of the men around her were older—silver sprinkling their hair—but their eyes were alight with the passion of debate.

One of the younger Curadores attempted to hold his own against her. “Surely in a time of plague or crisis, rules are bent and—”

“Bent. But not broken.” The Kisaeng cut him off, pounding her fist on the table. She was compact and tough-looking, despite her long black dress. Her hair sliced across her face at a sharp angle to tuck behind her ear—a complement to the line of her strong jaw. “You cannot just say ‘the end justifies the means,’ and be absolved. Through chance or skill, the Dome has resources that Pleiades does not—therefore you will always have a responsibility to them. Survival is no longer the goal.
Life
is the goal.”

The woman glanced up, hesitating for second as she saw us—a ripple in the flow of words. She raised a narrow eyebrow and a hint of a wry smile hovered on her otherwise stern face.

“Oksun.” Marisol nodded at the Kisaeng. “I see you’re boring our men again. Gentlemen, when you’re tired of her endless prattle, come and join us. One of our ladies can show you what
else
mouths can do.”

Under the gaze of Marisol’s disapproval, many of the men made excuses and wandered away. Marisol clearly held some sway in the Dome. When I was little, I’d often been at the receiving end of her cutting tongue and I knew the humiliation of it. I gave the Kisaeng—Oksun—a sympathetic look, and I was startled to see her loathing was directed straight at me.

I hurried after Marisol, but she’d disappeared into the crowd, and I was alone in the crush of laughing, drinking strangers. Above me, throngs of insects buzzed here and there in orderly formations. Their endless circling made me dizzy, but like the amorous couple, no one else was paying any attention to them.

A man with sandy hair and watery green eyes bumped into me and steadied himself on my arm.

“Oh! Who have we here?” He was drunk, a messy slur blending his words together.

I tried to slip past him without answering, but he grabbed me, holding my arm tight as he surveyed my body. “May I just say you have the loveliest pair of peaches I have ever seen. But no!” He elbowed the man next to him. “Not peaches are they? Oranges? Grapefruit? We’re going to have to dream up a whole new fruit for this one.”

Then he wrenched me closer, his wet mouth groping for mine.
His hand reaching for my breast. Instinct kicked in and I grabbed his wrist with my free hand. Wrenching it wrong-ways and up, I dropped him to the ground.

“Dream away. It’s a fruit
you’ll
never taste.” Then I spun back to the crowd, tensed and ready to take on anyone else.

But they were just staring at me—Kisaengs and Curadores, openmouthed and blinking. And my face burned as I remembered where I was and who I was supposed to be. So much for the fantasy. So much for blending in.

Then a couple of Curadores burst into applause and laughter. One of them boomed, “Finally! Someone to put Salk in his place!”

Another man said, “I can only hope someday she bothers to put
me
in my place!”

All around me Kisaengs tittered and the sudden noise made me realize that they’d been holding their breath too. Waiting to see what the Curadores’ reactions would be. The singer had stopped her song as well, but there was no smile on her face as she stared at me across the tent. I lost sight of her as one of the laughing Kisaengs jostled me, shoving a glass of mezcal into my hand. I tipped it back, letting it ease my jitters.

And then the crowd shifted and there he was—only a few meters away from me. Edison.

It was the first time I’d seen him without the isolation suit and I wasn’t prepared. He was so much
more
now. His head was shaved and the clean severity of it emphasized his sense of power. He dwarfed all the Curadores around him and it was more than just his height. It was like Edison was awake and everyone else was asleep. Like he had a light shining on him that picked up every subtle expression, every gesture, every agile movement he made.

And as he crossed the grass to meet me, he pulled me into his light too. Whether they knew it or not, everyone around us shifted their bodies, their focus, so that Edison—and now I—remained always at the center. The effect was dazzling and unnerving and when he finally reached out to take my hand, it burned, matching the fire of the mezcal in my throat.

“You look luminous.” Not pretty. Not beautiful.
Luminous.

Edison’s words were meant for me and yet his voice carried across the crowd and, hearing it, people fell quiet.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.” He leaned in and kissed my neck. It was such an intimate gesture, I suddenly felt naked in front all those people. But as Edison’s lips brushed against my skin, he whispered, “No one else will bother you now. I’m sorry that happened.”

Then he gave me a steadying smile—like we were in this together. We might be playing a game, but we were on the same team. He squeezed my hand. “Let me introduce you.”

There was a blur of names and faces as Edison ushered me around his immediate circle. I nodded my head in greeting a few times, before I realized that no one else followed that custom. After that, I just plastered on a smile. This was probably not what Lotus and the Indignos had imagined when they’d asked me to infiltrate the Dome and investigate the Citizens’ deaths—parties and formal introductions.

And I suddenly felt lost. What was I supposed to do now? Search for sinister glares? Vials of poison? The Curadores might be lustful and drunk—but none of them looked like killers.

The only two names I remembered out of the bunch were the Curadores I’d met at the Exchange with Edison: Planck and Sagan.
Like everyone else, they treated Edison with a kind of fawning respect.

Everyone except Jenner.

I knew who the man was even before Edison introduced me to him. Jenner was talking boisterously with a group of young Curadores, his wide jowls jiggling as he pontificated. But as we got closer, I could see that Jenner was talking
at
them, not with them. The men around him were full of nods and plastic smiles, but there was fear behind their eyes. And whenever Jenner stopped to take a swig from his glass—which was often—the conversation went silent.

Edison seemed to make himself smaller as he led me over to the much shorter man and, in a deferential voice, said, “Leica, this is Jenner. He keeps this whole place running smoothly.”

“Now, now.” Jenner beamed with false modesty, reaching up to thump Edison on the back. “I couldn’t do it without my protégé!”

Jenner was old—older than any person I’d ever met. Thick tufts of hair sprouted out of his ears and nose. On the other hand, the hair on his head was thin—his parchment skin shining through. I wanted to back away from him. Not because he was ugly, which he was, but because there was something off about his horrible cheerfulness.

But Jenner was the only lead I had—even the other Curadores were wary of him.
He
was my place to start. So I smiled sweetly and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” He took my hand in his pudgy one—raising my fingers to his sticky lips. “You’re much more lively now that you’re awake.”

It took every ounce of self-control not to rip my hand away. I
hated to think of this man being anywhere near me while I’d been unconscious in isolation.

Then Edison said, “And you know Marisol, of course.”

She’d practically materialized at Edison’s side and he touched her chin in a careless but familiar way that made me a little prickly. Marisol didn’t look very happy about it either.

Then, finally, Edison addressed the whole group, hundreds of faces turning toward us. “Thank you, friends, for coming out to welcome Leica. I, for one, am very grateful she chose to join us in the Dome.”

Faces beamed at me from all around the tent. The reception was so different from what I was used to in Pleiades. It was a heady experience. But not an unpleasant one.

Then Marisol wheedled her way into the moment. She handed me a tall, thin glass, then raised her own. “To Leica! May my old friend become yours!”

“To Leica!” People all over the tent raised their glasses and drank. I followed suit and took a swallow of the clear liquid, almost choking with surprise. It was bubbly, cool, and a little fruity, with the subtle warmth of alcohol under it. The effect swirled my head.

Edison bent slightly, pressing his mouth to my ear. “Sorry about all this. Custom demanded it.”

His voice was low and soft, and a shiver ran down my spine. Then more people started closing in around me—laughing and asking questions. Kisaengs touched my dress admiringly. Men kissed my hands. Everyone was too loud, speaking at once. I barely had room to breathe.

The panic must’ve shown on my face, because Edison drew me out of the crowd, saying, “We must give Leica a chance to eat.”