The Secrets of Jin-Shei (17 page)

“Your parents …” Nhia began, but Khailin cut her off with a sharp motion of her hand.

“Nobody,” she said with conviction.

“I would be sorry,” Nhia said after a pause.

“As you are my friend?”

“Yes, as I am that.”

“Would you be my sister if I asked you?”

“Are you asking for
jin-shei
?” Nhia said, suddenly sitting very still.

It had not been quite what Khailin had intended. Her emotions were still high, though, and even as they washed over her and made the blood rush into her cheeks she was also thinking, with a rational part of her mind, that this was what she had wanted,
exactly
what she had wanted, when she had set out to draw Nhia into her circle. For
jin-shei
sisters, it
would be easy to twine lives and fortunes together—and Nhia could be the only thing left to Khailin, the only source of knowledge, of that power that she needed to keep within reach if she were to remain herself and whole. It would not be the first
jin-shei
bond which had been born out of a more prosaic need rather than of a purity of heart—but even those, according to Khailin’s mother’s stash of
jin-ashu
literature, were overcome by the power of the vow. However it began, it always ended as a powerful binding. Someone would care. Someone would
be required
to care.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Nhia reached out hesitantly and took her hand. “If you wish it.”

Khailin felt a weight she had not known she was carrying slip off her heart, and she sat up a little straighter, leaving her hand in Nhia’s for a moment.

“Tell Tai,” she said abruptly, “that she is welcome to watch the procession from the balcony in my family’s house. They will pass along our street.”

That had been the third gift.

Instead of trying to find a way to see past the shoulders and the elbows of the crowds in the street, Tai and Nhia had ascended the spiral staircase in Khailin’s home and had stood on high, Linh-an’s crowded, mourning streets below them, and the three of them had watched the Imperial funeral procession from Khailin’s balcony.

First came the drummers, their instruments fluttering with white ribbons, beating a slow marching pace. They were followed by the carts piled high with the offerings for the dead. The first few carts carried the intricate copies manufactured in paper and papier-mâché of the items the dead would require in the afterlife—there were three life-size sedan chairs, draped in cloth-of-gold; an intricately painted and folded miniature paper carriage complete with figures of horses, intended to transport the spirits to Cahan; a number of full-sized human figures with folded hands and painted faces, servants to take care of their needs; cups, fans, musical instruments, writing tablets, a paper replica of the Imperial Diadem, all meticulously crafted, created, painted, ready to be set to the flame as the bodies of the dead were given to the fire, the ashes of all these necessities mixing with the ashes of the dead, taking form in Cahan where they would have need of them. These carts—and there were a number of them, each carefully compiled for each one of the four dead—were followed by others, bearing ingots of gold and silver, draped with white banners inscribed
with prayers and blessings and others extolling the virtues of the departed, and then still more, glowing with shimmering white candles, bearing plates and bowls laden with stacks of ceremonial honey cakes, pomegranates and peaches, and flasks of rice wine.

It took a long time for this all to pass by, but finally a long sigh out in the crowded street heralded the arrival of the first of the four bodies in the procession.

Grief had set Tai’s shoulders as she watched the four caskets pass by, each placed on a cart drawn by a single white horse and piled high with white flowers—some real, some artificial silken creations. The horses paced slowly, each led on a rein by an Imperial Guardsman cloaked in white, each cart surrounded by an honor guard—twelve Guardsmen for the Emperor and for the Empress, six for the Little Empress Antian, four for Second Princess Oylian. Behind the last cart, Oylian’s, walked the remnants of the Imperial Court.

They were led by Empress-Heir Liudan, walking alone, her feet in simple rope-soled sandals, robed in a plain white cotton gown. Her hair was dressed in two long looped braids, and banded with white ribbons; she wore no makeup, her eyes untouched by kohl, staring fiercely in front of her as she paced behind her sister’s cart. She looked neither right nor left, seeming to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of another, her head held high. She had never looked more regal.

“She always wore formal dress, even in the Summer Palace,” Tai murmured. “She was always so—so
royal.
Now she looks …”

All three girls looked closely at Liudan as she walked in Linh-an’s streets to lay her family to rest, and each of them saw a different thing.

Khailin saw the future Empress, the high royal pride of the small tilted chin, the nobility of carriage and posture. Nhia saw past all that, looking deeper, and saw flickers of fear beneath the haughtiness. Tai saw her through a beloved ghost, and saw the loneliness, and the pain, and that same sense of loss with which she had once looked at Tai herself when she had first believed that Antian was turning away from her.

And Liudan saw nothing, heard nothing, walked in white silence behind her dead, her spirit a fierce emptiness, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with her life’s destiny.

Y
uet, the healer’s apprentice, had watched the procession of the dead from the window of her room, on the top floor of the home she shared with her mistress, the healer Szewan. Her view was not quite as good as Tai’s but she too had been watching Liudan walk behind the biers, and she was remembering the conversation she had had with Tai in the stables of the shattered Summer Palace.
I will help you keep your promise.

Liudan walked alone, isolated even in this tragic procession, her eyes bright and burning in her pale face. Watching the girl, Yuet was painfully aware how prescient Antian, the dead Little Empress, had been. Yuet’s path had crossed with Liudan’s several times in the halls of the women’s quarters, on the occasions that Szewan the healer had had to visit the Third Princess or her sisters during some childhood complaint. Yuet and Liudan had never spoken directly; Yuet had always been in Liudan’s presence as Szewan’s assistant and helpmeet and had been expected to be at hand to help Szewan with whatever she required, with her head bowed and her eyes downcast. But even under those circumstances Yuet had formed a clear impression of the girl. Liudan had always had the knack of appearing to be proud and strong and self-sufficient, but she was still vulnerable and dependent on others, more so now, in fact, than she had ever been before. She was an Empress in waiting, but she was still a child.

Officially so, in fact. Many of Liudan’s contemporaries had already had their Xat-Wau rites by the time they reached her age, but Yuet knew that Liudan herself had still not started her monthly cycles, and had therefore still not reached an age at which girls were ceremonially taken across the threshold from childhood to womanhood. Yuet herself had been fourteen years old when her own Xat-Wau ceremony had taken place, so it wasn’t unheard of—but Yuet was unimportant, a healer’s apprentice, and her passage into adulthood had not been something upon which the world had
turned. In Liudan’s case, her status as a minor child meant a formal Regency until such time as the Empress-Heir could be properly taken through her Xat-Wau rites.

Yuet had not had time to watch Liudan in the procession for long before someone came knocking on the door of the healer’s house with a screaming child who had fallen and fractured her wrist while perched on a high windowsill trying to see the carts and the mourners. It had been Yuet who had had to deal with the patient. Szewan was getting old, arthritic, and half-blind. These days she preferred to act in an advisory capacity, and leave the actual work of administering treatment and medicines to her young apprentice. Many patients had stopped asking for Szewan altogether, and simply called for Yuet’s services. Szewan had been talking for some time about officially retiring and passing her practice over to Yuet completely, but there were still some clients—the older people, who had spent their entire lives under Szewan’s ministrations, and a large portion of the clannish Imperial Court families—who still insisted on at least having her present while Yuet swabbed, bandaged, and concocted poultices and draughts. By the time Yuet had set the child’s broken wrist, immobilized it with a splint, and sent the patient and her mother on their way, the procession was past and all that was there to be seen was over.

The crowds were thinning, some streaming to the place of the burning where all the paper offerings would be displayed on and around the four pyres before the whole thing was set alight; that spectacle would draw many witnesses. But for the city the show was over, and the mourning was about to begin.

Liudan and the rest of the Imperial Court would return to the Linh-an Palace in sedan chairs, via a less circuitous route, out of the crowd’s eye, once the immolation ceremonies were over; and once they did so the business of governing Syai would become an issue that would occupy the high-ranking ones in the Palace for some time to come.

I will help you keep your promise,
Yuet had told Tai. But, as she cleaned up after her patient, Yuet found herself wondering how she could have possibly made such a rash statement. Tai had been
jin-shei-bao
to the Little Empress—but that was where the connection to the Court began and ended, and Yuet was certainly in no position to further that connection. She herself was still officially a healer’s apprentice—a journeyman, to be sure, and more and more independent, but nonetheless still coasting on Szewan’s own reputation where the Court was concerned. She certainly
had, and would have in the future unless things changed rather quickly, no intimate access to Liudan herself except in Szewan’s presence, and certainly no means to procure such access to someone like Tai. Perhaps Tai could have used the
jin-shei
connection to gain entry into the Court itself, but Liudan would be very careful with her favors and allegiances right now, especially during the Regency period, and the fulfillment of Tai’s promise, a promise doubly binding because it had been asked by a dying woman and in the name of
jin-shei,
seemed bleakly improbable.

Szewan had come to the window briefly to peer at the procession but had not stayed long.

“My hands are hurting me terribly,” she said, rubbing her swollen, arthritic knuckles. “I’ll take a poppy draught and retire to bed for a few hours. You can handle anything that comes up.”

“I’ll make the draught,” Yuet said.

Szewan grunted in assent, reaching out to draw the shutters closed, trying to keep the worst of the heat out of the room.

She had already divested herself of her outer robe and had slipped in under the thin sheets in her shift when Yuet came up with the cup of poppy. Her nose twitched at the draught as Yuet proffered the cup.

“It smells strong,” Szewan said.

“I made it strong,” Yuet said. “If you are in enough pain to retire to bed in the middle of the day, you may as well try and sleep through the worst of it. As you say—I will handle anything that comes up.”

“One of these days,” Szewan said, taking a delicate sip of the sleeping draught, “I will have to draw up the papers properly, and make you a partner. You are no longer an apprentice, Yuet-
mai
.”

Yuet blushed. “I’ll never know all you know,” she said.

“You already know more than you think you know,” said Szewan shrewdly, “and, I think, more than
I
think you know. Sometimes I believe you keep secret notes on everything I say and don’t say. When I am gone and you go through my papers, there is little that you will learn that you have not already found out.”

“I listen, Szewan-
lama
.”

“I know,” said Szewan. “Sometimes you hear far too much.” She yawned, showing a mouth with many teeth either missing or yellow with age and decay, and handed the cup back to Yuet. “I will sleep now. Leave me.”

Yuet bowed her head in acknowledgment and withdrew as Szewan closed her eyes and pillowed her withered cheek on her arm.

“I will sleep now,” she murmured again, as Yuet closed the door gently behind her.

There were no further emergencies that morning, and only one house call she had to make on an ailing patient too ill to come to her, so Yuet spent the morning in her stillroom, making up the supplies of the herbal remedies she used to ease the more common aches and pains of Linh-an and checking up on the stocks of the more rare medicines whose existence was written down in secret books and only in
jin-ashu
script where a woman might read of them. She looked in on Szewan just before she left to see her patient, but the old healer still slept peacefully, snoring gently through her parted lips. Yuet’s patient appeared to be on the mend—still weak but definitely improving, sitting up and taking solid food for the first time in many days—and Yuet returned home feeling pleased with herself.

She was met by first disaster, and then potentially deepening catastrophe.

The first person she saw as she stepped into the entrance hallway of the chambers she shared with Szewan was the woman who served the healer’s household as cook and maid-of-all-work. She stood in the hall, wringing her hands, her expression equal parts panic, fear and grief. Yuet’s heart stopped for a moment. She instinctively knew what must have happened—but stood frozen, her hand still on the door handle, staring at the servant in silence.

There was a dose of guilt in the servant’s demeanor, too.

“I heard her breathing funny, mistress—I swear I didn’t know what to do, and you weren’t here, and I went in and I saw—she was breathing funny, mistress, and she was lying on her side with her face into the pillow so I came in to look and I just tried to turn her head, just a little, so that she could get air, and she just … she just …”