Chapter Six: Journey to the Magnificent City

The next two days seemed to pass at fluctuating speeds – slow when Yuzhen lay awake at night, listening for the sound of Mother's footfalls heading for Anzu's room, and fast when a servant struck the dawn bells, reminding her how few mornings she had left before she made her first move in the most dangerous game she'd ever play.

She said nothing to Anzu until the time came. Until, having packed the warmest clothing she owned in the most suitable bag she could find, having watched from her window as Mother and Father's airship vanished amid moon-silvered clouds, having waited until the corridors were dark and the palace slept, she crept out of her bedroom and into her youngest sister's, waking her with a whisper in her ear.

"Anzu." Yuzhen lit the lantern on the bedside table. "Anzu, wake up. It's me."

Anzu's small body stirred beneath the bedclothes, her fist rising to rub an eye. "Yuzhen?" Her face in the lanternlight was sleep-fogged, bewildered. "It's still night."

Yuzhen took a deep breath. "Anzu, listen to me. Some scary stuff is about to happen, and I can't tell you why now, but I need you to do two really important things for me, okay?" Anzu nodded, wide-eyed. "Keep quiet, and do everything I tell you. No matter what."

Anzu nodded again, and Yuzhen took her face in her hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Everything's going to be all right. I promise."

Yuzhen helped Anzu get dressed and packed, then hoisted her onto her hip, knowing they would steal through the palace more quickly if she didn't have to wait for Anzu's shorter strides. They headed for the lowest story, where food was stored in thick-walled rooms lined with ice and straw. There, too, was the entrance where deliveries were made, outside of which they'd find the cart that would carry them away.

Yuzhen snuck through the doors – across the few feet of open stone terrace between the palace and the cart, catching a glimpse of the lava, feeling its hot breath on her face – while the deliverymen were hauling in the last few barrels. By the time they returned to shut and latch the back doors of the cart, she and Anzu were inside, tucked behind two wooden cartons stacked on top of each other.

The stone beneath the cart's wheels rumbled as Jiyi bade it form a bridge across the pit. Then came the snorts of the ostrich-horses hitched to the cart, the thump of their footfalls and the clack of the wheels on the bridge. All the while, Yuzhen held her breath, scarcely able to believe that they were simply riding over the vermilion maw of the beast that had guarded the palace all her life. Beside her, Anzu trembled.

Once they had rattled down the sloping border of the pit, starting down the road that snaked away from the palace, Yuzhen relaxed a little. She pulled Anzu closer to her and stroked her hair. The servant's amber ring, threaded through a silver chain and hung around Yuzhen's neck, rested like a promising hand on her heart.

After awhile, Anzu's breathing grew slow and deep, and Yuzhen figured she had fallen asleep. She allowed herself no such luxury. Having studied the maps in the library before they left, she knew they would need to reach a seaport to obtain passage to The Magnificent City – the former Northern Water Tribe, now named as all New Era cities were named, with an exultant adjective that seemed designed to convince the rest of the world that the Great Empire was, in fact, great. What she didn't know was when or how that would happen.

So she stayed alert, ready to act as soon as action was necessary. When, many hours later, the deliverymen parked and left the cart, Yuzhen didn't wait to find out if or when they'd return. She gathered Anzu and their belongings and together they boarded another cart, this one with cargo marked for overseas transport. Not until they were safely stowed did she realize that, for the first time, her feet had just touched ground outside the palace.

The seaport was the first city she had seen outside of drawings, and the sheer volume of humanity there overwhelmed her. She'd never been around so many people, heard so many voices, inhaled so many smells. She and Anzu both wore cloaks with hoods that cast their faces in shadow, but still Yuzhen passed through the crowds in constant fear of being recognized. Perhaps it was only natural to feel noticeable, she thought bitterly, when one was raised to regard herself and her family as the center of the universe.

They found a ship bound for The Magnificent City and a spot in the hold to hide, and there, for a few hours, Yuzhen did sleep. She woke with no sense of what time it was, and too keen a sense of the ship's motion over water. To distract herself from her seasickness, she thought about The Magnificent City, about seeking and meeting the rebels there.

Yuzhen had never really met anyone – only visiting dignitaries, to whom she was not allowed to speak directly, when they joined her family for dinner, and new siblings, who were, of course, babies. Just getting accustomed to unfamiliar faces would be strange for her and Anzu. She supposed she would have felt nervous about it, if she hadn't had so much else to feel nervous about.

It seemed like a very long time before Yuzhen felt the ship come to a stop and heard the sounds of passengers disembarking on the deck above, but she didn't know how long. When she and Anzu slipped out onto the dock, wearing their cloaks and the heavy clothing they'd packed, they saw that it was day. How many had passed since their escape from the palace, Yuzhen couldn't guess.

The Magnificent City was an incongruous sprawl, buildings and watchtowers flying the flag of the Great Empire surrounded by smoke-blackened snow and ice. First-class citizens, soldiers and civilians who had been Fire Nationals in the Old Era, roamed the packed-mud streets dressed in red. Water Tribe natives, dressed in blue, moved aside to let them pass.

"Yuzhen," Anzu spoke up, for the first time since they'd left her bedroom, "I'm hungry."

Yuzhen hadn't let herself acknowledge it, but she too heard the bereft wail of her stomach. "Me too. Let's find some food."

She wove through the city carrying Anzu, searching for someplace small, out of the way, with a largely native patronage; the further they stayed from soldiers, she figured, the better. Soon she was shouldering through the tattered curtain in the doorway of just such a place. Inside, her mouth watered at the sight and scent of skewered meat and steaming dumplings at the tables around her.

"We need food," she blurted out to the man behind the counter – the first words she'd ever spoken to someone not family or palace staff, and they were blunt and fumbled.

The man, a grey-bearded native, snorted. "I need money."

Yuzhen set her bag on the counter to dig through it one-handed, her other arm still holding Anzu on her hip. Having never so much as seen money, she had brought with her a few articles of jewelry to barter, and now produced the first thing her fingers brushed: her golden insignia hairpin.

The grey-bearded man's eyes widened at the sight of it. "That's––" He looked up from the hairpin to peer more closely into Yuzhen's face. "I knew you looked familiar! You're one of those phoenix nestlings, aren't you?"

It was funny, being called such a thing – funnily apt, Yuzhen thought – but the man wasn't laughing. With a sinking feeling in her empty stomach, she noticed the portrait of the royal family hung prominently on one wall of the restaurant, herself and her parents and siblings all staring deadpan at the diners, and knew from the sneer curling the man's lips that it hadn't been his first choice of décor.

"What is this, some kind of joke?" he spat. "Or have you come to harass my customers like your soldiers do? Get out of my restaurant!"

"Please, I––"

"Go on, there are plenty of ritzier places where you won't be bothered by our kind." Heads were starting to turn, diners to rise from their seats. It was gutsy treating royalty this way, but less of a risk than they knew; Yuzhen couldn't exactly flag down a soldier to have them arrested, even if she'd wanted to. "Go and order one of our tribesmen to his hands and knees so you can use him as a stool."

Yuzhen backed away from the counter, Anzu clinging to her tightly. The grey-bearded man just glared at them, but from the other natives came shoves, jerks at their cloaks. When Yuzhen hastened back through the curtain, she was aware of some of them giving chase, their jeers ringing through the cramped, tunnellike corridors between buildings.

She could fight, but not with Anzu to look out for, and not while keeping a low profile. So she ran.