Shadow Magic (20 page)

They must have been actors.

“In a manner of speaking, that is a theatre,” Lord Temur said. “But it is a common one; much too common for our esteemed guests.”

One of the actors cast a glance in our direction, indolent and slow. If he was surprised to see a nobleman guiding two foreigners down the street, it didn’t register on his face. He wore his makeup like a mask, and merely shifted his weight from one side to another. I realized then that he was deciding which one of us to rest his gaze on, and it was only then that I understood what, exactly, they were looking for.

“Oh, I
see
,” I said, taking Alcibiades by the arm. “Come along.”

“What?” Alcibiades asked. He still carried his stick with one lonely dumpling on it and seemed more concerned that my sudden attentions might make him drop it. “I thought you
wanted
to see the theatre.”

“Yes, well,” I said. He really was an infuriating man, making me explain it to him. I could tell from the way Lord Temur held his head, looking straight down the road, that he wasn’t the sort of man who required such explanations. “Another time, perhaps.”

“It’d be something to write in a letter,” Alcibiades said, like he was granting me a favor in being this interested and wasn’t instead being hideously obtuse. “Maybe I could get an autograph.”

“Hurry
along
, General Alcibiades,” I said, for one of the men had taken notice of him, and was smiling in an overly familiar way. He looked like a young lion stalking its prey.

“Look,” Alcibiades said, his attention drawn by irritation, as I had known it would be. “I told you not to call me General, either. What’s with this sudden relapse?”

“I’ll tell you once we have reached less… outgoing climes,” I said, and hauled determinedly on his arm until we’d passed not only the theatre, but the building that stood next to it, and the narrow, winding road that separated
that
from an archway hung with colorful banners.

“This is the artists’ district,” Lord Temur said. He paused, in order to give us a chance at catching up with him. His expression, as usual, betrayed nothing. I was starting to wish that my Talent was in mind reading and not visions after all, since it seemed the only way to figure out what the lords of the Ke-Han were thinking, but
velikaia
of such Talent were never allowed at talks such as these, for obvious reasons.
My particular Talent would have come in very handy if these talks were less diplomatic—or if they needed to be coaxed along some—but until then I was compelled to keep things under wraps. A pity, since it tended to make my head a very complicated place. “Perhaps another day, I might take you to a more fitting theatre.”

“That one didn’t seem so bad,” Alcibiades said.

I made a note to take him aside later and point out that not everything was a slight at commoners, and therefore at him. I had no idea what provoked him to be so contrary all the time, but I felt certain that if I didn’t come to the root of it, it would poison
all
our fun in the capital. And I couldn’t have that.

“I thought we might begin at one end of the alley and work our way back along the other,” Lord Temur continued thoughtfully. “There is a great deal to see, and I would not like to think I’d neglected any small detail.”

The artists’ district was arranged much like a market in Volstov, with wooden stalls crowding in on one another and lining either side of the street. Some had the same colorful banners that I’d deduced doubled for shop signs, but others were simply bare, with nothing but wind charms and little mascots of folded paper nailed to the supports.

We stopped first at a booth that featured no signs, only a wind charm made of glass, which tinkled merrily in the breeze that whispered down the street. I thought that I recognized the shapes in it from the patterned robes worn by one of the warlords attending our diplomatic talks, but I wasn’t certain. We hadn’t brought up the topic of the Ke-Han wind magic yet, if only because it would surely bring all minds around to the broken outline of the dome, still a gaping wound in the perfectly crafted city. I’d learned in our intensive course predating our arrival that the Ke-Han did not specialize in wind but rather all four elements. They took their magic from the land itself, and perhaps the only reason we were so familiar with the wind aspect of their skills was because it had been the one we were confronted with most often. Perhaps there was something particularly easy about that one element to harness. Or, perhaps because of the dragons, they’d had enough of fire to last a lifetime, and earth was too dangerous an element to toy with high in the mountains.

Then again, I reflected, that had rarely stopped our soldiers, or so the stories had told me.

It was doubtless still a wound in the hearts of the people, as well. As it was more a symbol for the people than anything else, it was something best left out of negotiations completely, though it was the subject first and foremost on everyone’s mind.

A man dressed in short robes and leggings hurried up to the front of his stall, as if drawn by the fall of our shadows over his beloved artwork. The artist’s fingertips were stained with ink, as though he’d just been working on a new piece when we interrupted him. He wore a thick white cloth wrapped around his forehead, to keep the hair out of his eyes, and when he saw his customers were two foreigners and a lord from the palace, he stopped short, jerked to a halt by an invisible chain.

“Welcome,” the artist murmured, eyeing us warily. “Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with.”

“What did he say?” Alcibiades had the decency to lower his voice when he nudged me about it.

“He said, don’t lick the drawings, they’re made with lead paint.”

I saw Lord Temur give me a puzzled look out of the corner of his eye, and I offered him my most winning smile. It would never do to be the only man with a sense of humor in all of Xi’an. I would have to work much harder at being winning.

This particular artist’s specialty seemed to be women in teahouses, for each picture featured a beauty with porcelain skin and ruby lips, her delicate fingers curled around a cup of green tea. Their robes were as varied as the flowers in a garden, of all different colors and textures, the patterns sometimes overpowering the women beneath them so that the subject resembled nothing so much as a ghost dressed in the most extravagant finery.

Alcibiades picked one up and examined it as though he really was trying to decide whether or not to lick it, specifically because he’d been told not to. The artist watched him with keen eyes, not altogether liking his delicate prints in the hands of such a large and foreign bear. From his perspective, I couldn’t precisely blame him, since Alcibiades had the sort of hands that were clearly meant for destruction and not the careful handling of art.

“Does it remind you of dear Yana?” I asked.

He rounded on me with such sudden ferocity that for a moment I was certain the picture
would
be destroyed. The artist cried out plaintively, and Lord Temur cleared his throat.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it would be best to move on to another stall.”

“Fine by me,” Alcibiades muttered. He put the picture down and stuck his hands into his pockets like a child who’d been scolded.

I clucked my tongue in disapproval and threaded my arm through his in order to keep a closer eye on him. It was rather like having a large and angry pet, one whom you needed to keep on a leash at all times.

“If you will,” Lord Temur said, and he wore his peculiar version of a smile. “There is much to see yet, not to mention my own personal favorite.”

“Oh
really?”
I couldn’t imagine what sort of pictures would be Lord Temur’s favorite. He’d said that his family had originated in the countryside, so perhaps his inclinations favored natural landscapes? Or perhaps he would surprise us both by enjoying something more risqué. One could never tell with these Ke-Han warlords, for they kept everything hidden beneath the sash.

We stopped at countless booths, some of which did indeed seem to specialize in natural landscapes. There were drawings of the Cobalts, done all in inky blues, with the Ke-Han name for them written in their fascinating script underneath it. There were drawings of the Xi’an coastline, with trees that grew bent-backed in the wind, and fishermen who grew bent-backed from years of hauling up their nets.

My very favorite was a picture of the lapis city at springtime, every street seeming to blush with the pink of cherry blossoms, and two women standing gossiping under a parasol to ward off the sudden rain of petals.

I was horribly disappointed that we hadn’t come to Xi’an in the spring.

I glanced at Lord Temur as if to question him, but he merely shook his head. The natural landscapes were not his favorite.

Next, we came to a section of stalls that seemed entirely devoted to the supernatural. There were women with the tails of foxes, and small imps that crouched in a merchant’s carriage wheels, waiting for the perfect opportunity to send him and his wares sprawling. One booth had another ocean scene, but this one showed that the cause of the fearsome wind was a creature with golden scales that blew the fishermen round in their boats until they were forced to return to shore. I saw the picture that Alcibiades had in his room, of a water goddess with fish spilling from her dark hair.

It seemed to me that Lord Temur was much too stolid to appreciate tales of the fantastic, but since I was curious, I glanced at him again. Once more, he merely shook his head, though this time he was smiling, and I felt tremendously pleased with myself.

“This is rather like a game,” I murmured happily to Alcibiades, who was looking increasingly like one of the bored husbands you saw in the Volstov shopping district, dragged by their wives from hat shop to dress shop to hat shop again. He’d even given up trying to shake me off his arm.

“Wonder if we’ll be able to have another stop at that dumpling stand on the way back,” he said, looking suddenly hopeful at the prospect of more fried food that didn’t contain any fish whatsoever.

“Oh honestly,” I said, pouting only slightly. “You aren’t even
trying
to guess.”

Alcibiades sighed like a dying man. “Maybe it’s that one,” he said, indicating a stall at the very back. While most of the artists seemed to jostle for a good position, declaring their whereabouts to passersby on the streets by whatever means necessary, this stall seemed almost to cower behind the rest, hiding its wares away from potential customers. It stood half-obscured behind a booth that featured pictures of men in furs riding over a mountain range that wasn’t the Cobalts, and it featured no distinctive markings whatsoever. It was utterly plain, without even so much as a wind charm to alert one to its presence.

In fact, I was rather under the impression that if one didn’t know it was there to begin with, one wouldn’t be able to see it. Perhaps Alcibiades’ instincts weren’t to be dismissed entirely, after all.

Lord Temur turned halfway around once he’d reached it, as though beckoning us over. I felt at once that we were about to be privy to some magnificent secret, so that I was almost disappointed to see that the drawings looked very similar to the others we’d already seen. These were of people, true, and not natural landscapes or sea monsters, but I had been hoping for something more.

“That one looks like the Emperor,” said Alcibiades.

Lord Temur glanced around the street once, his eyes keen as a tiger’s, then nodded once, like a confidence among the three of us. He seemed almost pleased.

My eyes widened in delight. “You mean these
are
of the Emperor?”

“Some of them,” Lord Temur admitted. “It is not technically illegal, but the portraits are rather… frowned upon, in any case.”

“This one’s of that lord who’s always shouting,” said Alcibiades, pointing out an exact likeness of one of the diplomats privy to our talks, but with an exaggerated coloring—his face was painted a bright red.

There was another of Lord Ochir, who had particular skill for lisping his words, and whose head was painted onto the body of a snake. Another was of a man I recognized as Lord Kencho with a
much
younger woman, both subjects smiling foolishly for an unseen artist.

“Where’re you?” Alcibiades asked, looking at Lord Temur.

“Ah,” he said, in a tone that was very nearly intimate. I thought he almost sounded amused. Perhaps it was the palace itself that made the men and women in it so quiet and expressionless, and one needed only to remove them from it in order to witness a metamorphosis. “I believe there is one just there.”

I plucked it from the rest before Alcibiades could get his hands on it. The picture showed Lord Temur dressed as a country peasant, standing in the middle of a rice paddy. I thought that it was fairly mild, as far as satire went, though perhaps Lord Temur was relatively well liked among the people, and anything crueler wouldn’t have been as popular. Of the caricatures we’d seen, it was only Lord Temur and the red-faced lord who had managed to keep their dignity more or less intact.

“I think I shall buy this one,” I said. “How much is it?”

But Lord Temur was no longer paying very much attention to me. His entire focus had been caught by another sheaf of porous rice paper, freshly painted and framed in the center of the artist’s display by all the other caricatures. It was of two men, both of whom were incredibly familiar, although I had to admit it took me a few moments to recognize them: the young prince and his overzealous retainer.

Even Alcibiades didn’t have the presence of mind amidst his shock to say anything inappropriate that would spoil the glorious wonder of our discovery.

The scene depicted was a dashing one—if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought the young prince was a hero of the people, and not a traitor who’d turned on his brother, then fled. But perhaps this artist knew something we did not. He had painted—with loving,
haunting colors—the image of the young prince on a small, sleek boat, helmed by his retainer, cutting through a dark sea in the midst of an even darker night. All around them, the only splash of color was the white foam of the waves, which looked more like apparitions and ghosts than the roiling of a common ocean storm. The closer I examined the print, the better able I was to see that in the swirls of foam were sharp, accusatory features—they were, dare I even say it, almost
imperial
—but the expression the retainer wore was fierce and determined, and the prince, the focus of the piece, seemed to draw strength from his posture. Ultimately, I was given the unshakable feeling that the two men, though caught in the midst of a deadly maelstrom, would reach their destination—an opposite shore, which the artist had chosen, quite wisely, not to include at all.