“Listen here, girl. I don’t need to know your name. I don’t want to know your name. So many girls flutter in and out of this house, running away and getting married and dying and leaving us in the red. You will begin work here as one of our maids. If you last long enough to begin your formal lessons, then I will finance your training to be asha. Until then, you will work at the scullery and clean the rooms and do everything I say if you know what’s good for you.”
This was how Mistress Parmina welcomed me into House Valerian. This was how she welcomed every asha they took in, but I felt that the old woman was more abrupt with me than she might have been with the others. Lady Mykaela had brought half a dozen other girls to Kion before she found me. The old woman refused to accept any of them, certain they would fail their test with the oracle, and was smug when proven right. That I was the exception annoyed her.
It took me several days to get used to the Valerian, and I was amazed at how big it truly was. The asha-ka was three houses joined together by a strip of corridor, with only the main house visible from the outside. The largest room was where Mistress Parmina received visitors, and the smaller rooms along the back were used for sleeping. Mistress Parmina had her own room, and Lady Mykaela and Lady Shadi had theirs as well, despite the long periods of time my mentor spent outside of Kion. A separate path led to the dining area and the scullery, where I and the two maids the asha-ka employed slept. Lady Mykaela also gave me permission to make use of her library whenever she was away, and what little personal time I had was spent reading my way through her impressive collection of books, returning frequently for second and third and seventeenth helpings.
The next was a guesthouse where visitors could spend the night, and that was composed of one large room with multiple screen partitions that could be added to or removed according to the resident’s fancy. The smallest was a bathhouse made of wood. I learned much later that the water piped into the baths did so through a series of underground springs that traveled through the heart of the Willows and that supplied many of the asha-ka in this manner.
There was a courtyard garden within the house’s walls, which contained a vegetable and herb garden. There was even a tiny pond filled with guppies and a few large turtles.
As the newest member of House Valerian, I was given many chores to do. I was one of the first to wake and spent most of my mornings watering the plants and tending to the vegetable garden, sweeping the floors and the street outside of the house, and cleaning the rooms. I was also given the task of cleaning the outhouses, which I hated most of all, though fortunately the maids and I took turns. Their names were Kana and Farhi, and both were seventeen years old.
Kana was amiable with a blushing, demure prettiness. Her family came from the small village of Belaryu in Southeast Kion, where her grandfather’s ancestors had lived since Empress Undra’s reign over a century ago. Her father sold pomegranates at the city market, and her mother looked after Kana’s siblings, all three younger than she was. She was fond of pretty things and hoped to one day purchase a sivar, like those asha wore, from one of the many hairdressing establishments in the Willows. Mistress Parmina frowned on the maids wearing anything elaborate but allowed her a plain hairpin with a tiny faux ruby set on it, which she wore at all times.
Farhi came from different stock altogether. Her family moved to Kion from Adra-al when she was seven years old, but they continued to cling to their Drychta roots, wearing their traditional dress and veil, though her face was uncovered. To work in the Willows had not been her choice, but the job paid well. She looked on the asha’s fancy hua and its ornaments with disapproval but otherwise kept to herself.
Both girls’ families lived near Ankyo’s market district, and whenever I heard them talk about visiting their parents or buying small toys from nearby shops to bring home to their siblings, I could not help feeling a small pang of homesickness. I would have to travel a longer way to see my family.
One other woman worked at the Valerian, named Ula. She served as Mistress Parmina’s assistant and made an account of every transaction that went on inside the asha-ka—the household expenses, tabs incurred from shops, and all the fees asha earned from their parties and contracts. She also booked new engagements for them and kept track of all money changing hands, including any gifts and tips patrons may have presented to the asha.
I was surprised to learn that Lady Mykaela still went to the parties and dinner gatherings Ula arranged for her. I assumed that she had earned her independence and was free of such petty details. The asha herself explained to me that while she could take time off if she desired, these social meetings were her means of keeping track of the local politics of the day and to cement her influence with the powerful nobles who frequented such celebrations.
It took me awhile to learn more about the rest of the members of our little household, and they were fewer than I imagined. Mistress Parmina ran the asha-ka. Lady Mykaela was her adopted daughter and also her successor. Lady Shadi was the only apprentice asha, having arrived two years before I did, and was about to make her debut. She was nice, but she was always rushing out to attend lessons. With my chores taking up most of my days, we never had much time to talk. Like Mistress Parmina, she could not draw the Dark. While House Valerian was known for taking in Dark asha, it was not a requirement.
Lady Shadi was not expected to contribute to the household chores because she was busy enough with attending classes during the day and going out to entertain at night. These parties were the bread and butter of many Houses, where nobles and others who could afford it pay asha to bring life to what might otherwise be boring functions. Apprentices make their debut as young as fourteen or fifteen years old, and these parties were integral to their development as asha. While problems did come up—an asha apprentice had caused a scandal the year before when she ran away with a nobleman’s son—most asha knew better than to jeopardize their chances of a good life.
I had always thought hua were made the same way: long, trailing sleeves, a waist wrap as thick as one’s torso, a tunic-like front to display the detailed under robe underneath. That wasn’t always the case. I saw asha wearing different variations of this wardrobe to mimic the fashion style popular in the kingdom they were born in or to put their own personal spin to the design. But asha policy required that they all wear the traditional hua when attending functions at an official capacity, including entertaining guests within Ankyo.
Lady Shadi often departed from the Valerian when I was waiting on Mistress Parmina, so I rarely saw her leave. But I caught a glimpse of her as she was stepping out of the house one evening. She wore a beautiful hua of a deep coral that made an elegant contrast against her dark skin. Blue-green bamboo swayed against swirling, silver cloud patterns on the rich cloth, and she had on a gray waist wrap with embroidered sparrows set in gold. Heads turned to look at her as she made her way leisurely down the street, but Shadi must have been used to those admiring stares, for she never turned her head.
There were three other asha under Mistress Parmina, but they were contracted out to several nobles in other kingdoms at the time. Two of them were serving as bodyguards in the kingdoms of Istera and Arhen-Kosho, while one was at the Yadosha city-states. I must confess that despite the books I had about asha, I knew very little about the workings of the Willows until Lady Mykaela took me aside one day to explain it all to me.
The first asha-ka to come into existence was the House Imperial. It was founded by the legendary asha Vernasha of the Roses, also known as one of the Five Great Heroes, who made her home in Ankyo, in the then-newly-established kingdom of Kion. She was a noblewoman of the Tresean court and taught her novices the arts of dancing, singing, and etiquette. The most skilled of these she sent to work as entertainers at royal assemblies and by keeping an ear out for court intrigues was able to extend her influence into the other kingdoms.
Only a few asha proved to be skilled at the fighting arts. Of these, she offered the best to kings and nobles to serve as personal bodyguards. Once in these positions of power, they were able to affect kingdom policy, helping to cement a longer-lasting peace among the rulers. She was quite adamant, however, that all who wished to be asha be strong in the Runic magic, a law still enforced today.
“But why must I have to learn how to sing and dance?” I asked her, bewildered. “Isn’t being a Dark asha enough?” It was true that the asha in many books I’d read were skilled musicians and dancers, but I had not known this was required of them.
“Being the most powerful asha there does not always mean you are the most influential or the most popular,” Lady Mykaela explained. “In war, asha influence outcomes with their prowess in fighting, with their skills. But sometimes a beautiful voice can change a kingdom better than a sword ever could. Asha gifted in the arts are highly sought after in royal courts; quite a few go on to marry royalty. Defeat them in war and beguile them in peacetime—Vernasha believed both to be the way to stability.”
She shrugged and added drily. “Over the years, however, asha-ka themselves have become quite political, more concerned with bringing prestige to their houses. Nevertheless, most follow the letter of the law that Vernasha has laid down, even if not always in spirit.”
Word of the Willows spread, and women not just from Kion but from all over the lands flocked to Ankyo, wanting to be trained. Many did not possess the innate sense of magic Vernasha demanded in order to become asha, so she gave them other jobs—banquet masters and tearoom owners to cater to an asha-ka and their wealthy guests, ateliers to create the hua, hairdressers to fashion the hair ornaments important to an asha’s wardrobe, and instructors to specialize in singing, in dancing, and in other softer arts.
The Willows attracted women from all kingdoms. There were dark-haired and dark-eyed Kion asha; blond-haired, blue-eyed asha from Tresea; and golden-skinned, angular-eyed asha from Daanoris. There were even asha as far away as the Drycht bluffs, fleeing from that kingdom to avoid persecution and finding refuge in Ankyo. A few still veiled themselves, though many forsook their traditions and embraced the customary Kion hua.
The thorn of my life was Mistress Parmina. The old woman frequently sent me out with a list of errands for special items—her medicines or the red bean cakes she was fond of or two dozen heavy hua to be laundered all at once—and punished me with double duty at the outhouses if I did not return within the hour. Because I had trouble finding my way around the city and because she wouldn’t allow any of the other maids to accompany me, I was almost always saddled with these unwanted duties upon my return.
The old woman loved to bathe and insisted that I attend to her in the bathhouses in place of either Kana or Farhi. I spent many a night crouched on the cold, earthen floor, my knees numb and my hands gnarled from the moisture in the air, washing and soaping the old woman’s back. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of this for me was the mistress’s naked body. It was hard for me to imagine her as having been a beautiful asha in her youth like Lady Mykaela claimed, because while she was as thin as a broomstick, her skin sagged and folded in the worst of ways, like yards of ungainly, sickly-yellow cloth that moved and breathed when she did.
She belched and passed gas whenever she felt like it, which was often. She demanded that I massage her feet every day, which were caked in old sores and pockmarks. I was commanded to prepare many of her favorite dishes, only for her to claim she had ordered no such thing when brought before her and then demand that the cost of these meals be deducted from the Valerian’s investment of me. Because she was the head, everyone obeyed her, no matter how ridiculous or irrational her orders were.
I felt that Mistress Parmina acted like an overindulgent brat, as if her advanced age had regressed her to a spoiled child. Once, she ordered me to sit down on a chair propped up in one corner of the room. I obeyed, only to leap to my feet with a loud shriek that sent Lady Shadi and Kana running into the room. Mistress Parmina, on the other hand, was cackling. Half-hidden underneath the cushions was a small cactus.
I was not ashamed that I spent many a night coming up with different ways to kill that woman.
You would think that Lady Mykaela would rush to my defense, but she was strangely silent on the matter, content to look the other way every time the old woman would abuse her authority. Lady Shadi was kind but did the same. Kana and Farhi were powerless to do anything—the former was sympathetic, and since the latter looked at magic as a kind of sin, the mistress’s actions were redundant. I felt like I had no one looking out for me at the Valerian, and I even began to resent Lady Mykaela for it.
Fox remained the one bright spot of my days. He would stand patiently in front of the Valerian for hours, if only to let me know he was close by. Sometimes he would explore the city, preferring this over staying at the lodgings Lady Mykaela had arranged for him. Whenever I was sent on another one of Mistress Parmina’s errands, he would accompany me without anyone else knowing. He learned the lay of the city quicker than I had, taking time to roam the streets and commit many of the shops’ locations to memory, so that we were never lost on our way to the same shop twice. After my initial frustration over the old asha’s demands had faded, I realized I actually began looking forward to each trip. It was the only time I could spend with Fox.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked after one such errand to the sweetshop to pick up sugar cake. Sometimes when the list of things to do was overwhelming, Fox and I would divide up the tasks so we could return to the asha-ka with more than enough time to spare. Mistress Parmina had taken to falling asleep while she waited, and I knew from experience that to wake her was tantamount to suicide. I loitered outside the house with my brother instead, watching passersby. At this time of the afternoon, there were always people around, and I learned to distinguish between the maids doing errands for their own houses and the apprentice asha that bustled back and forth between lessons.
“Why would I be angry, Tea?” Fox sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Because I was afraid of you for a little bit.” His death had always felt like a barrier between us, like it prevented the closeness we had once shared.
“I think that, given our situation, that’s rather understandable, don’t you think?”
“Not if this was all my fault to start with.”
“I don’t want you saying that ever again.” Fox was firm. “You are not to blame here. And if you’re staying in Kion solely for my sake—”
“No!” I said it more forcefully than I wanted to, and he looked startled. “No, I don’t want to leave Ankyo. I…I want to do this. I really do.”
Fox eyed the entrance leading into the Valerian. “Even with the old prune inside?”
“Fox!”
“Isn’t she? She looks like an old fruit left to dry out in the sun for so long that it grew hungry and tried eating its own face.”
“Fox!” I was giggling. A novice hurrying past paused long enough to shoot us dirty looks, and I reeled in my laughter. “It’s you I’m worried about, Fox. It must be so tiresome for you, having to follow me around—”
“I don’t mind. I haven’t been as idle as you think. If you want to stay, then I’ll stay with you for as long as you want. And I’m sorry for making you afraid. This is new to me too.”
“Are you trying to apologize for my apology?” I demanded. It was Fox’s turn to laugh, and it was infectious. We stood there giggling until Mistress Parmina stuck her head out a window and yelled down at us to shut up.