Chapter Text
People often say that love arrives without warning. Well, “people” are inspired by the Bridgerton Family from the neighbouring country England.
It is an absurd thing to say, in Lingling Sirilak Kwong’s opinion. “Love,” like anything else that threatens to disrupt a well-ordered life, can be anticipated if one is observant enough. It has signs and patterns, which Lingling is an expert in.
Love can announce itself in foolish choices, in reckless compromise, in the sort of delusion that makes people place sentiment above reason.
Ling is born into one of the empire’s most powerful families, the Kwong Family, raised beneath carved ceilings and silk canopies. She spends most of her life thinking it will be okay at first, since her situation can be saved.
She is the Duchess of the Kwong Family. She learns how to expose masked crusaders and handle the wrath of corrupted nobles. A Duchess who cannot be loved is feared. A Duchess who cannot be feared is devoured.
So she learns a lot about how to survive in her dark world.
To her people, she is generous. To children, she is very patient. To widows, merciful. To farmers who petition for relief after bad harvests, she is a fair ruler. She remembers names and rules when others forget or use them as leverage to feed their selfish egos.
Lingling listens when others dismiss their citizens. She gives with an open hand and lets the city call her kind.
However, to corrupt men who dress greed in noble titles, she is something else entirely.
That, too, the city knows. Everyone knows.
It is perhaps why no one dares to meet her gaze for too long when she enters the council chamber that morning.
“They have once again seen fit to postpone the official audit,” says Minister Dek, bowing as he places a stack of papers on the lacquered table.
“House Viruas claims flood damage in the southern warehouses.”
Ling sits at the head of the table, one elbow resting lightly against the carved arm of her chair. Morning light spills through the high windows and strikes gold against the embroidery at her cuffs. She does not touch the documents immediately. Across from her, three councilmen stand with stiff expressions, already sensing the direction of her mood and not liking it, since they are also in danger if Ling loses her patience with them.
They know that the only reason they are alive right now is that their family is deeply tied with the Royal Family, which can still be stripped away if Lingling ever chooses to, because Lingling is the most trusted by the King himself.
“Flood damage,” Ling repeats slowly.
Her voice is calm. Ling is always calm, and that is what everyone in the council is afraid of. Have you ever heard the quote “calm before a storm”? Yes, this council is about to witness a storm.
Dek clears his throat. “That is their explanation, Your Grace.”
Ling finally reaches for the papers. The room remains still as she turns one page, then another, then another. The sound of paper grows sharper with each turn.
Inventories, Invoices , Statements of accounts, Purchases, Repairs, Labour wages. Expense reports, and most importantly; the noble family asking for more funds. Numbers that foolishly disguise theft as misfortune.
A mistake, really!? the audacity to think that she does not notice.
Her mouth curves; not warmly.
“The river does not compel them to falsify ledgers. Do they think I am incapable of reading?”
No one answers.
“Well then, what is the meaning of this?”
“EXPLAIN”
“DAY AFTER DAY, I AM PLAGUED BY PETTY NOBLES WHOSE SOLE AMBITION APPEARS TO BE THE SIPHONING OF THE NATION’S COFFERS INTO THEIR OWN PURSES.”
“THEY LEAVE THE PEOPLE TO LANGUISH IN HUNGER, WITH NO REGARD FOR THEIR STATION NOR THEIR SUFFERING.”
“I DEMAND AN ACCOUNT OF THIS MISCONDUCT AT ONCE.”
The council is still silent, some does not even dare to lift their heads.
“DO THEY TAKE ME FOR A FOOL, FOR SOME UNLEARNED BRUTE, THAT THEY POSSESS THE AUDACITY TO FALSIFY OFFICIAL REPORTS AND POSTPONE A FORMAL AUDIT OF THE CROWN’S AFFAIRS?”
“SPEAK, I SAY!”
“OR HAVE YOU ALL SUDDENLY LOST THE FACULTY OF SPEECH?”
The council is silent, all afraid to speak and having no idea how to help their fellow noble friend, as they can see the copies of the report, which are poorly written, and the frauds are very clearly visible.
Ling sets the papers down with neat precision.
“Dispatch a formal notice at once; the empire lays claim to their warehouses, and all movement of goods bearing the seal of House Viruas is halted immediately. Nothing is to pass without express sanction.”
“And see to it that the grain shipments are diverted to the western districts, to arrive before the week’s end. I will not have the people suffer for their insolence.”
One of the councilmen hesitates. “Your Grace… without a formal warrant secured beforehand, the family may raise their objections.”
At that, Ling looks up and stares straight into the man’s eyes.
It is never wise to remind a Kwong that lesser noble families believe themselves entitled to object.
“Then let them do so. With evidence so plainly set before us, I cannot imagine they refuse without betraying the empire’s order.”
“Mark my words well, Marquess Keith, the people laid low by the floods remain in desperate need of our aid, and yet that wretched family’s first inclination is to line their own pockets with the nation’s funds.”
Silence settles over the chamber.
The councilman lowers his eyes at once. “Yes, Your Grace, my deepest apologies.”
Ling rises. Her attendants move only after she does, because that is how the world works around her. The morning meeting takes less than an hour. Lingling’s life is full of responsibilities.
By noon, she receives a delegation from the northern quarter. By evening, she reviews military expenditures and three marriage proposals, which she has no intention of entertaining.
A duchess’s life is not leisurely, no matter what idle men at court like to imagine.
Her life is merely well-served.
‘Privileged’
Far side, in a part of the city where the streets are narrower and the buildings lean close enough to block the morning sun, Norawan wakes to the ache in her back and the sting of cold in her fingers.
For a few breathless seconds, she does not move.
The ceiling above her is low and smoke-stained, crossed with thin cracks that seem to deepen every day. Somewhere beyond the thin wall to her left, someone coughs. Down the hall, a child begins crying and is hushed at once.
The sounds are common enough that they should be comforting by now. Instead, they only remind her how different this place is from the life she once knows.
Not that she permits herself to think of that life often.
Thinking is dangerous. Missing it is worse, because now it becomes a delusion.
She rolls onto her side and sits up on the narrow pallet, wincing as yesterday’s exhaustion settles heavily into her bones. The room she rents is barely large enough for the pallet, a chipped basin, and the crate that holds all her things, which is to say, hardly anything at all.
A shirt. Two spare pairs of stockings. A wool coat gone thin at the elbows. A strip of cloth for binding her chest. A tin cup. A small packet of coins wrapped in old paper and hidden beneath the loose board under her bed.
And there is one more thing she does not touch unless absolutely necessary.
That remains buried beneath the clothes at the bottom of the crate, wrapped carefully against dust and eyes and memory.
Orm looks away from it first.
She stands up, then walks to the corner of her room, which is not even far. She splashes her face with cold water and begins the work of becoming someone else.
The binding comes first, wound tight enough to flatten but not so tight she cannot breathe. Then the shirt, loose and rough.
Then the vest. Trousers. Boots with worn soles. She catches sight of herself in the warped bit of mirror propped against the wall and reaches for the small knife she uses for trimming paper string.
Her hair has grown enough to annoy her again.
She hacks at the strands around her nape with efficient, graceless snips. Dark pieces fall to the floorboards. When she is done, she shoves the knife away and studies the result. Being Not neat nor pretty.
Being pretty draws attention.
Norawan lowers her chin, squares her shoulders, then deliberately un-squares them. Boys in the street move differently from girls raised to be watched. They sprawl, spit whenever necessary. They slouch. They take up space carelessly, making people beside them uncomfortable.
Norawan names it manspreading. It takes her weeks to learn that. It takes longer to learn how to lower her voice without sounding like she is performing a play.
She learns everything about how to be a man because she has to.
When she finally leaves the room, a girl who once has a dream to be a painter stays behind.
Norawan steps into the corridor. “Norawan,” a simple man who is a refugee from a neighbouring country living in the slums, just trying to survive.
The landlady barely glances at “him” while collecting rent from a seamstress downstairs. That, at least, is reassuring. Being overlooked becomes its own form of safety.
As the girl disguises herself as a man goes outside, the street has already begun to fill.
Vendors arrange baskets of greens beneath patched awnings. Men haul crates from wagons together with Women bartering over fish with the sharp focus of those who cannot afford sentiment. Laundry hangs between windows like flags of surrender no one intends to honour.
The air smells of broth, coal, wet stone, horse dung, and the stale sweetness of overripe fruit.
As Norawan pulls her coat tighter and starts walking, the only reason why people don’t suspect of her identity is because of her height. She is far tall as a commoner woman which is a blessing in disguise.
The newspaper office is three streets over, wedged between a printing shop and a pawnbroker with missing front teeth. It is not much of an office; more a room with stacks of folded papers, two boys ink-stained to the wrists, and an owner who always looks as though a strong wind might personally offend him.
“You’re late,” he snaps the moment she enters.
“I’m not.”
He looks up at the clock, frowns, and decides not to argue. “Take these. Don’t loiter at the eastern market again unless you want your stack stolen.”
Norawan takes the bundle he thrusts at her. Fresh ink smudges against her fingers. Todays headlines are written about of tariffs, grain shortages, a fire in the warehouse district, then a flood at the southern area and an upcoming procession from the ducal estate.
People like bad news, and noble news is the best gossip. She supposes that makes sense. Misery and spectacle are often the cheapest entertainments available.
It is quite common in England where she was born in, Lady Whistledown publishes gossip columns but in this country, things are more serious. They have newspapers that write about everything. No gossip columns.
“Any extra copies if I sell out?”
“If you sell out before noon.”
She nods and turns away.
“Boy.”
Norawan pauses.
The owner narrows his eyes. “Speak up and yell more. Nobody buys papers from a ghost.”
The ‘paper boy’ gives the owner a curt nod and leaves before he can say anything else.
By the time she reaches the market district, the city has fully awakened.
“Morning paper! Morning paper!”
Her voice still feels strange every time she calls it out, but she has long since accepted that discomfort is preferable to discovery.
Norawan threads between carts and pedestrians, offering papers to merchants, laborers, shopwives, bored clerks, and anyone whose expression suggests a willingness to part with a coin. Some ignore her. Some wave her away. Some buy one without looking directly at her face.
Before the last part once wounds her pride when she arrived to this part of the city.
But now she welcomes it fully because it means her disguise is perfect and it is most likely an unintentional compliment.
By midmorning, she sells a little over half her stack.
*sigh* this is Not terrible.
She pauses near a tea stall to count coins beneath the shelter of its faded awning. The old woman who runs the stall snorts.
“You count like someone waiting to be robbed.”
“I count like someone who has been robbed.”
“That,” the woman says, pouring hot water into a dented kettle, “is fair.”
“You remind me of my own son who is now at the front lines. Take care of yourself, child. You look so thin. As a man, you need to build up some muscles. But you have the height yourself, so try to eat a lot, okay? Come to my meat stall sometimes, I will give you extra meat.”
Norawan almost smiles.
The woman has never asked too many questions, but she always tells her to take care and gives her meat to eat when she goes to buy from her stall. The old woman always talks about her son, sometimes saying her characteristics are similar. That alone makes her easier to trust than most.
Norawan sometimes buys the thinnest cup of tea there and buys meat when she can spare the coin, mostly for the heat.
Today, she cannot.
The old woman glances at her face, and clicks her tongue.“You look pale today.”
“I look fine.”
“You also looks like you are hungry.”
Norawan tucks the coins away. “I’m always hungry, lady.”
“Then you ought to fix that.”
With what? she nearly asks, but there is no use voicing the obvious.
Instead, she adjusts the newspapers beneath her arm and returns to the street.
A carriage thunders past, spraying muddy water close enough to spot the hem of her trousers. The lacquered door bears a family crest she recognizes but does not dwell on. Once, symbols like that mean something to her beyond caution.
Once, they are part of the air she breathes, unavoidable as weather.
Now they are best treated like a plague. Best to avoid at all cost.
She moves farther toward the main thoroughfare, where better-dressed citizens buy papers for the sake of appearing informed. There, the buildings widen and the roads are cleaner. Bakers display sugared buns beneath glass.
Jewellers polish their windows even though everyone already knows who can afford to step inside. Ladies pass in carriages with curtains drawn against the dust. Gentlemen ride on horseback with polished boots and nowhere urgent to be.
The city changes by street and coin and names.
In some parts, children run barefoot, quick enough to snatch dropped food before dogs get to it. In others, imported flowers bloom in ceramic pots outside townhouses with guards at the gate.
Norawan has walked through all of it.
She learns the shape of inequality with the stubborn intimacy of someone trapped beneath it.
‘Poverty’
At nearly the same hour, Ling steps into a bath scented with orange blossom while a maid recites the afternoon schedule.
“The delegation from the north quarter arrives at one,” the maid says from behind the folding screen.
“Lord Anurak has also sent another request for a private audience.”
“Deny him.”
“Yes, Your Grace. And Lady Suda’s sister has written again…”
“Burn it.”
There is the slightest pause. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Ling closes her eyes and leans back, letting the heat ease the stiffness from her shoulders. The bathwater shimmers with oil. Beyond the screen, attendants move quietly, practiced enough to be nearly silent. She has been served by households her entire life.
It no longer feels strange to have someone waiting with fresh towels, a maid choosing her jewellery, and more maids and servants arranging her gloves according to weather and destination.
It does, however, feel exhausting to have her day arranged by people who assume every hour of it belongs to somebody else.
When Ling emerges and dresses, the riding ensemble selected for her is practical by her standards and opulent by anyone else’s: a deep purple fitted coat, dark gloves, boots softened by good leather, and a hat pinned with understated elegance. Nothing seems careless or screams loudly.
Kwong family wealth announces itself more elegantly, where it does not need to shout, because everyone knows who Lingling is.
The Duchess, the most influential person in the Kwong family, the King’s trustee.
In the country of Shondaland, women are treated as equal to men. Unlike other countries, King Galahar V releases a decree where women are to be seen as equal. There are still some misogyny rooted in certain men, as the decree was only released by the current king’s father not long ago.
Since it is recent, women are still looked down upon in society, but since the rules and laws protect them, it is still a good thing, as women receive government support.
Ling stands before the mirror while a maid fastens the last clasp at her collar.
“Is it too tight, Your Grace?” the head maid asks.
Ling looks at her own reflection, her being entirely composed.
“Not tight enough for those stubborn councilmen to obey simple rules,” she says.
The head maid hides a smile.
Before leaving, Ling crosses through the east wing to inspect the newly restored schoolroom funded by the estate. Children from several working districts within the Kwong family lands are invited to study there, and though the program is not yet large enough to change the city, it is a beginning.
A little girl curtsies so earnestly she nearly tips over.
Ling steadies her with one hand. “What are you reading, child?”
“History, Your Grace.” The girl holds up a primer with both hands, eyes wide.
“Do you like it?”
“No,” the girl says honestly, lowering her head.
Ling laughs.
Meanwhile the teacher looks horrified at the child’s answer.
Ling crouches enough to meet her eye level. “That is sensible. It is okay. Most history is written by men who wish they had been more impressive.”
The child blinks, then gives Ling her brightest smile. Ling loves children; they are the only reason she tries this hard for the country.
When the Duchess straightens, the teacher seems torn between gratitude and panic. Ling spares him by saying only, “Make sure the children are fed before lessons in the morning. They learn poorly on empty stomachs.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
As she makes her way back toward the front courtyard, one of her guards approaches with a bowed head. “The carriage is ready, Your Grace.”
Ling nods once.
She prefers riding when time allows, but the city visit requires documents, guards, and two stops she has no desire to make on horseback. A carriage is more enclosed which gives her privacy. All things she tolerates, because power, unfortunately, is a theater as much as it is a responsibility.
By noon, Norawan’s stomach feels hollow enough to fold in on itself.
She has sold nearly all her papers, which is a good thing. The coins in her pocket are light, but at least they exist. She goes off to buy a heel of bread from a bakery’s side window for half price because it has gone stale at the edges, then takes herself to the shade between a shuttered tailor shop and a cooper’s yard.
Then the tall petite girl eats in small bites, slow enough to make it last.
Across the street, two noblewomen emerge from a draper’s shop beneath a servant’s umbrella, though the day is clear.
Their skirts are embroidered with the sort of detail that requires eyestrain and leisure. As they are escorted, a footman helps them into a carriage, and one complains about the heat as though the sun has chosen to inconvenience her personally.
Norawan looks away.
It is not envy. Not anymore. For her, envy is no longer needed in opposition to survival.
She swallows the last of the bread and brushes crumbs from her hands.
Then after a few minutes, a boy she sometimes sees near the docks drops down beside her uninvited. “You hear?”
“Hear what?”
“The duchess is passing through the main road today.”
Norawan shrugs. “And?”
“And people always buy more papers when nobles go by. They want to know where they are headed and why.” He grins, missing one front tooth. “You should go where the crowd is.”
“Crowds are where pickpockets enjoy themselves.”
“Crowds are where the coins are.” The boy made a shrug pose as if he is stating an obvious.
Which unfortunately, is true.
The boy springs up again and darts off before she can answer, vanishing into the stream of people with the easy speed of someone born to the street rather than exiled to it.
Norawan pushes herself to her feet.
The Duchess.
She knows of Lingling Sirilak Kwong, of course. Everyone does. Even in districts where people curse noble taxes and spit after carriages, Ling’s name is spoken with something more complicated than resentment, admiration, and sometimes wariness.
The poor praise her relief programs, while merchants respect her efficiency. Lesser nobles, if rumor is to be trusted, fear her in a way they disguise as polite criticism.
Kind, people say.
Merciless, say others.
Both, say the wise.
Norawan has never seen her up close. Of course, she’s a commoner. Not even a normal commoner, she is a commoner who lives in slums.
She does not particularly care to start now.
Still, the boy is right about one thing: crowds mean sales.
By early afternoon, the main thoroughfare is lined with activity. Shopkeepers step outside to watch the road. Children squirm at the front edges of the gathering until mothers haul them back. Men with enough time to be curious linger in clusters, pretending to be nonchalant.
Norawan takes up a spot near the edge of the road where she can shout headlines without being shoved directly beneath a horse’s feet.
“Paper! Afternoon edition!”
A few coins change hands and are quickly traded with Norawan. A clerk in a brown coat buys one for his employer. An elderly man purchases one and then spends several long moments complaining about the editorials.
The crowd starts to thicken more because at the far end of the road, the first riders appear.
Household guards in dark livery. Then two outriders. Then the carriage itself, lacquered black with the Kwong crest picked out in gold so fine it catches the sunlight like flame.
Even among other noble conveyances, The Kwong Family Crest commands attention.
A murmur passes through the street as Norawan shifts slightly back from the curb, more from habit than awe. Carriages do not stop for people like her, so it is better for her to remember that before the horses draw close.
The wheels roll steadily over the packed road. Behind the glass window of the carriage, there is movement, perhaps a gloved hand, or perhaps only a trick of light.
The people bow or curtsy as it passes.
Norawan does neither.
Norawan, the paper boy, has no reason to. He is busy working.
“Paper!” she calls again, lifting the last few copies. “Latest news!”
One of the horses tosses its head.
Somewhere farther up, a cart lurches. Voices rise, sharp and overlapping. Norawan turns toward the sound instinctively, just as the crowd presses inward, then breaks apart.
For one suspended instant, the world seems to hold its breath.
The carriage does not obviously stop.
But something shifts.
A ripple of wrongness runs through the street, quick and invisible as a crack in ice.
Norawan tightens her grip on the papers and looks up.
At the carriage window, behind the gleam of glass and sunlight, a woman’s silhouette turns slightly as if she, too, feels it.
And though the distance between them is still too great for either to see the other clearly, that day. Which begins in two separate worlds, is already moving toward collision.