IN THE NURSERY on the top floor, Ji wove between rocking horses and toy chests. He tucked away his bitterness and headed for the door to the governess’s room.
Governesses weren’t quite servants, because they always came from wellborn families. But they weren’t quite guests, because they came from wellborn poor families. Which meant they didn’t fit in anywhere. They were the loneliest people Ji had ever seen.
And Roz wasn’t even a governess. She was only a little older than Ji, the younger sister of the previous governess, who’d left for a new position when Nosey and Pickle had outgrown the nursery. Roz had wanted to go with her sister, but the new employer said no, so she’d had to stay at Primstone Manor.
“The baron and baroness are extremely kind to let me stay,” she’d once told Ji, with a brittle smile.
“I thought you hated when they . . .” He’d trailed off.
“Trot me out during fancy dinners,” Roz asked, “and tell their guests that I’m a charity case? To make themselves feel generous?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I do,” Roz admitted. “But it’s true. I am a charity case.”
“You look after the little cousins when they visit,” he’d said. “And anyway, what else are they going to do? Throw you out on the street?”
“Exactly,” Roz had said, with a flash of fear in her eyes.
In some ways, the life of a girl like Roz was just as hard as Ji and Sally’s. Sure, she didn’t have to work that hard, but what would happen if they did throw her onto the street? She’d probably starve.
Ji stepped past a toy model of the Royal Menagerie—which was a fancy word for “zoo”—and tapped at the door.
“One moment!” Roz called from inside. “I’m just setting down a cup of hibiscus tea! Who is it, please?”
“It’s Ji,” he said. “And I’m just wondering why you told me what kind of tea you’re drinking!”
Roz opened the door and smiled at him, and he felt himself smile back. Roz was pretty and kind and big for her age. The chambermaids called her “husky,” and Pickle and Nosey called her “fat.” She wasn’t skinny like Nosey, but she was ten times cleverer and a hundred times sweeter and a thousand times better, and anyway, what was so good about being skinny? Everyone except nobles knew that being skinny just meant you didn’t eat enough.
Stupid nobles.
“An evening visit!” Roz declared, stepping aside to let Ji enter. “Is this house party running you ragged? What brings you visiting so late?”
“What do you think?” Ji asked. “Boots, the same as every night.”
“I don’t own any boots.”
“You don’t own boots yet.” Ji slouched into her brightly lit sitting room. “Maybe I’ll sell you some.”
“You’re a scoundrel,” she said, closing the door. “And a reprobate, but even you aren’t going to sell me boots that you snaffled from downstairs.”
“What’s a reprobate?” Ji asked. At least he knew that “snaffled” meant “stole.”
“A troublemaker.”
“I never make trouble.”
Roz lowered her voice. “Sally mentioned that you’re fixing boots.”
“Well, that’s part of my job! I also untangle laces and daydream about drowning Butler in a vat of shoe polish.”
“By ‘fixing,’ I mean stealing bangles and baubles.” Roz made a snipping motion with two fingers. “Cutting off ribbons? Replacing pearls with pebbles?”
Ji felt a twinge of worry at Roz’s reaction to his thieving. “Oh, er . . .”
“And you’re planning to sell your ill-gotten gains in the city?”
“Well,” Ji said, rubbing a twinge in his forearm. “Yeah?”
“That is very wrong of you,” Roz said primly. “What are you thinking? Aren’t you afraid? What if they catch you? . . . I’m so very glad you’re doing it.”
He blinked. “Wait, what?”
“You can’t simply leave Chibo with the tapestry weavers,” Roz told him, sitting at her tea table. “He won’t survive long in those conditions. You’re a good friend to him, Ji. And to Sally, too.”
“Nah,” he said. “I just need to do something, you know?”
“I do know.” Roz patted the chair beside her. “But of all the possible somethings, you chose one that helps your friends. You think that buying Chibo’s freedom is worth the risk.”
Ji plopped onto the chair. “I know Chibo’s a pest and all, but sure . . . freedom’s worth anything.”
“Even getting hanged?”
Ji felt his cheeks heating. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“You could do nothing,” she said. “Like everyone else.”
“Sounds boring. Like hibiscus tea.”
“Hibiscus tea is delicious! And you’re a good friend to me, too. You . . . retrieved another book, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did!” he said, relieved by the change of topic. “I just snaffled it a few minutes ago, like a proper reprobate.”
He’d started bringing Roz books three months earlier. Before that, she’d been allowed into the library; then the baron realized that she knew more than Nosey and Pickle, and banned her, because “A governess’s sister knowing more than my own children makes my skin crawl.”
“You shouldn’t sneak into the library,” Roz told Ji, with mock severity. “What if someone sees you? What if you knock over a vase? What if there’s a guest napping on a couch? What if you knock a vase onto a guest napping on a couch?”
“How else am I supposed to get books?”
“That’s easy for you to say! What happens if they whip you? Imagine how bad I’d feel!” Her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Especially if you bled on a book. Do you ever think of all the tears I’d cry if you ruined a page? It would ruin my whole entire day.”
He snorted a laugh. “Not your whole entire day!”
“Possibly a full week! I really should get my own books, though.” She smoothed her dress over her lap. “Except I’m not particularly well suited for sneaking.”
“You just need a good pair of sneaking boots.”
“I don’t think my problem is footwear,” she said.
“All my problems are footwear,” he told her. “I like your slippers, though.”
She wiggled her feet at him. She was wearing pointy-toed slippers with ribbons that looped around her ankles. “My sister sent them.”
“You miss her, huh?”
“I do,” Roz admitted.
A thought occurred to Ji. “You’re kind of trapped here too, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. Still, if this is a trap, at least it’s a comfortable one.”
Ji wasn’t sure how much that mattered, but he just looked at her slippers and said, “I like the stitch work.”
“They’re too small for me.” Roz sighed. “Everything is too small for me.”
“Is not,” he muttered, and shoved the leopard book at her. “Here.”
“Ha!” She beamed at the cover. “Now this fits me perfectly!”
Her smile reminded him of the sun coming out from behind clouds. Roz loved reading. Half the time, when he came to her door, she was curled in the chair beside a lantern, lost in the pages. She’d read him the story, or recite poems or recipes or riddles. And even though his life usually felt cramped and small, listening to Roz made it feel big and roomy and free.
“What’s a Deedledum Rite?” he asked.
“The opposite of a deedledum left.” She opened the book. “Or a tweedledum wrong?”
“I’m serious, Roz!”
She giggled. “Sorry. Where’d you hear it?”
“That visiting Proctor said—” Ji stopped at the look on Roz’s face. “What?”
“Proctor’s scary,” she said with a shiver. “His eyes are like black ice.”
“He’s not that bad,” Ji said. “His boots are made by An-Hank Cordwainer.”
“You can’t judge a man by his boots.”
Ji snorted. “You and your rules about judging. Anyway, I heard him talking to the baroness about training Brace.”
“A proctor for Brace? That doesn’t make sense. Unless . . .” Roz gazed at her bookshelf. “What kind of rite, did you say?”
“Deedledum.”
“Diadem!” she said. “The Diadem Rite!”
“That’s what I said!”
“Die-uh-dem,” she repeated, more slowly.
“What’s that?”
“A crown that looks like a metal headband.”
“Weird. Crowns are supposed to be big and golden with jewels and stuff.”
Roz tapped the book with a fingertip. “What do you know about the Summer Queen?”
“The same as everyone,” Ji told her. “She’s been around forever. She’s the only thing that keeps the ogres and trolls and goblins from attacking.”
“She hasn’t been around forever. Her reign started less than two hundred years ago.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“I mean, there were other kings and queens before her. Royals live for hundreds of years, so she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. The Diadem Rite is how the crown finds an heir.”
Ji frowned. “So this rite chooses the next queen?”
“Or king, yes.”
“Wait,” Ji said. “Brace could become king? He can’t even keep the twins from locking him on the roof.”
“Well, the rite tests many candidates, so he probably won’t be chosen.” Roz frowned faintly. “This is unsettling news, Ji. A queen only calls a rite when she feels her power ebbing.”
“What do you mean, ‘ebbing’?”
“I mean, toward the end of her life. She summons noble children to the Diadem Rite every year until an heir is chosen. Then she trains her heir until . . .”
“Until she dies?”
Roz nodded. “At which point the heir takes the throne, wields the royal magic, and lives for hundreds of years.”
“A servant’s lucky to reach sixty,” Ji said. “So the Summer Queen’s reign is ending? That’s kind of scary.”
“We won’t notice any changes. The new king or queen will take the crown and everything will stay exactly the same.”
“Oh, that’s good. I guess.” He rubbed his neck. “Well, I hope Brace is chosen, but all I really care about is getting to the city.”
“To sell your baubles to a ‘fence’?” Roz said. “A loot merchant? A receiver of stolen goods?”
“Once I find one,” he said. “Yeah.”
“I would dearly love to visit the city. Ti-Lin-Su once lived there.” She gestured to the books on the bedside table. “She’s my favorite scholar. She’s the leading authority on zozology.”
“Zozology?”
“The study of nonhuman creatures.”
“That’s thrilling,” Ji said, pretending to yawn. “The thing is, I made a deal with Brace. If I kill the desert lotus flower, he’ll take me to the city.”
Roz gaped at him. “You’re going into the mausoleum?”
“Yeah.”
“Past the goblins?”
“Yeah.”
“When do we go?”
“What?” Ji gaped at her. “We what? What? We?”
Roz’s eyes brightened. “I’ve always wanted to see a goblin crypt.”
“Why?”
“The tunnels must be fascinating.”
“They’re holes in the ground!”
“Built by goblins.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s not a good thing.”
“Goblins are fascinating, too.”
Ji scoffed. “Have you seen them?”
“I didn’t say they were pretty,” Roz said. “Just fascinating.”
“No,” Ji said.
“‘No’ what?”
“No, you can’t come.”
Roz shot him a governess-y look. “The crypts are a maze of dark, twisting tunnels. Once you get past the goblin pen and inside the crypts, how will you find the mausoleum?”
“Um, you’ll tell me where to look,” Ji said. “That doesn’t mean you need to come with me.”
“Well, I do know a thing or two about goblins—”
Ji exhaled in relief. “Perfect!”
“However,” she continued, “if I don’t join you, I can’t help you. There’s no map, Ji. Still, I’m halfway certain that I might possibly find the lotus vines if I come along.”
“So you’re halfway certain that it’s almost possible?”
“Precisely,” she said, and fixed him with her clever gaze. “And Ji? You’re not the only one whose life is empty. You’re not the only one who dreams of better things.”
“Better things?” Ji swallowed the knot in his throat. “You mean like hibiscus tea with honey?”
“You know precisely what I mean,” she said.
And he did. She wanted more than her cramped, airless life. She wanted more than meek obedience. Roz was coming to the crypts.