The Secrets of Jin-Shei (20 page)

Liudan actually managed to offer a thin smile in return. “Your Tai … I will think on it.”

Yuet inclined her head, dropped her eyes, bowed deeply, and went out of the room closing the door after her. The Guard who had brought her here waited outside in the corridor when the little servant girl had let her out.

“Take me to the Council Chamber,” Yuet said serenely.

T
here had been hostility in the Council Chamber. Regencies meant revenues, and, as Liudan had observed, at least one of the Council Princes had scowled rather too openly when Yuet informed the Council that, instead of planning a regency government, they should all start concerning themselves with preparing Liudan’s Xat-Wau ceremonies. They would have their troubles with that, given the tradition that a girl’s grandmother traditionally placed the red pin of Xat-Wau into her hair—Liudan’s grandmother, the Dowager Empress, had not been at the Summer Palace and had thus survived the earthquake, but she had been in Linh-an for the simple reason that she was bedridden, practically crippled and nine-tenths senile. Getting her involved in any kind of ritual would be impractical if not impossible, but all Liudan’s other senior female relatives were dead or missing in the earthquake. Thankfully, Yuet thought as she had left the sulky Council, that was not her problem.

Her problem was Szewan, and whether Liudan would keep her word.

She spent another few hours, after her return home, in Szewan’s office, sorting things out, refiling documents according to her own system, making sure that she was indispensable for making sense of the treasure trove that was Szewan’s store of records. Yuet did discover a deed to the house, which Szewan
did
get around to annotating properly before she died, and discovered that she had been made the sole heiress of Szewan’s home and her possessions. There really
was
no other family, it seemed. Yuet felt of a pang of pity for the old woman who had taught her her trade, who had apparently outlived everyone she knew, but a part of her simply smiled and filed away the document in a safe place. It would help with her claim to full partnership. Szewan had already, in a technical sense, designated Yuet her heir.

Liudan did keep her word.

Yuet had cleared the decks in preparation for the notary’s visit. She had asked the cook, couching the question in terms which implied that any
answer other than yes could harm the servant’s own prospects as the household in which she worked disintegrated around her, if she had overheard Szewan’s words about making Yuet a full partner. The cook’s memory was suddenly full of instances where she had heard Szewan say just that.

A notary from the Imperial Court had presented himself at Yuet’s door that evening, with full instructions. The healer’s cook and servant had been summoned and her statement that she had witnessed Szewan’s intent to raise Yuet into partnership taken down and sealed by the notary, who then drew up two copies of the articles of partnership. The task took him most of the night, and Yuet herself stayed up with him until he was done. The document was written up in formal
hacha-ashu,
which neither of the women could read but which both signed in fine
jin-ashu
hand and which was then countersigned by the notary himself as formal witness and as an agent of the government. In the morning, having given the cook a small bag of silver and a promise of perpetual employment in her household for as long as Yuet was head of it, Yuet presented herself and her “credentials,” the ink barely dry on them, to the office of the High Chancellor of Syai.

She was still a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday, but Yuet was officially the Healer of the Imperial Court of Syai. She had done it.

The formalities involved with laying Szewan’s body to rest occupied Yuet’s next few days to the exclusion of everything else. She arranged for the appropriate prayers and offerings in the Temple, for the cremation of the body, for the disposal of the ashes. Her patients—Szewan’s patients—had to be informed, and those not in need of urgent attention stayed away in deference to these arrangements, sending in messages of condolence and offerings of ceremonial honey cakes or white banners with inscriptions extolling Szewan’s virtues which Yuet hung from the windows of the house of mourning.

She did take on the emergencies, though, especially ones associated with the Imperial circles. When an Imperial Guard came to her house at a late hour one afternoon to summon her to the Guard Compound to look at an injury, Yuet gathered up her things and followed him back to the practice yard.

At first Yuet took the figure slumped against the far wall of the practice yard as some child who had snuck in to watch and had fallen asleep against the wall. A closer look revealed that the “child” wore the sparring garb of a trainee Guard, and that the arm lying across her ribcage was not laid there in a casual way but rather as a support enabling the hurt girl to breathe without too much pain. Yuet dropped into a crouch beside the patient.

“What did you do to yourself?” she asked. “Let me look.”

“I didn’t … do anything … to myself,” she was informed roundly, if breathlessly, by her patient, whose obsidian dark eyes glittered with both pain and annoyance. “
He
did it to me.”

Another Guard trainee, head and shoulders taller than the young patient and maybe three or four years older, shrugged sheepishly. “I really didn’t mean it,” he said. “She was too damned good, and I first lost my temper and then forgot who I was fighting and fought as if I had one of my own classmates as a partner. I should have given her some leeway, she has hardly begun with the quarterstaff, and she doesn’t have the strength yet. But she’s too good, I say.”

“Flattery … will not get you … off,” panted his erstwhile partner. “I’ll … get you … back …
aaaah!
”

The last was a yowl of pain as Yuet’s fingers probed the girl’s side.

“Not for a while, you won’t,” Yuet said. “I think he’s cracked a couple of ribs. I need to bind you up, pretty tight, and there will be no sudden movements for at least a month.” The flat rebellion in those dark eyes as they flashed up and met Yuet’s made her mouth quirk in a smile. “Well, I could say a few days, and you would go out and do things, and then you would come to me in three weeks and complain that you couldn’t lift up a kitten with that arm, and you’d be right. You want it to heal clean, don’t you? What’s your name, firecracker?”

“Xaforn,” said the firecracker in question. “I’ll be out of commission for … a
month?
”

“At least,” Yuet said.

Xaforn shot her sparring partner a black look. “You wait,” she panted, “until I am … myself again … and don’t you dare tell me … you won’t fight me again.”

“You’d better not,” Yuet said, amused, addressing the older Guard. “Or I have a feeling that she’d crack your staff over your head.”

“Rematch later, then,” said the older boy, laughing. “I should have known better than to take you on, Xaforn. You don’t give
up
!”

“Damn right I don’t.”

He saluted, still laughing, and withdrew. Yuet helped Xaforn hobble back to her quarters, and taped up her bruised ribs as she sat on the edge of her bed.

“Xaforn,” Yuet said as she worked. “I have heard of you. You’re the fierce one.”

Xaforn shrugged her shoulders, winced.

“Don’t do that,” Yuet instructed. “In fact, don’t do that for a while. Find some other way of letting people know how tough you are.”

“Are you sure about the month?” Xaforn said, scowling.

“Why? Do you plan on giving me a hiding, too, when you can move again?” Yuet asked, laughing.

After a moment, Xaforn laughed along with her. “I have no idea what to do with myself all that time,” she said.

“Learn a craft,” suggested Yuet.

“Will you teach me healing?”

“You need to sit still,” Yuet said, startled but amused. “Not run around taking care of patients. Besides, you’re already taught field medicine as a Guard, aren’t you?”

“Some,” said Xaforn. “I wasn’t … serious.”

“I know,” Yuet said. “Is there anyone who can spend some time with you? A companion?”

Xaforn hesitated for a moment. “I suppose I could always visit the cat.”

“Pardon?”

“I rescued a cat,” Xaforn said cryptically. “And now Qiaan wants to teach me
jin-ashu.
”

Yuet regarded her, a little startled. “You don’t know
jin-ashu
?”

“I was foundling,” Xaforn said. “Guard raised me.”

“Ah.” There had been no mother to teach this little wildcat the niceties of her heritage. “And who’s Qiaan?”

“She wants to be
jin-shei
,” Xaforn said. “I still haven’t told her yes or no.”

“Well,” said Yuet gently, “now would be as good a time as any to learn
jin-ashu.
And a
jin-shei-bao
is a good thing to have when you are hurting and need help. I would accept your Qiaan’s pledge.”

“Have you got one?” Xaforn asked bluntly.

“Yes,” Yuet said.

“What do you
do
?” Xaforn asked, perplexed. The concept was both familiar and alien to her—she knew about the basic principles of
jin-shei,
but she had never quite got down to the bottom of this mystery. It all sounded very emotional and impractical, and she wasn’t convinced that any of it was useful to her in the life she had chosen.

Yuet found herself telling the story of the Little Empress, for the second time in a handful of days, and in considerably more detail. Xaforn was listening intently.

“I don’t think Qiaan has had one before, either,” Xaforn said, when Yuet had finished her story. “I wonder if she even knows what she has asked. You know a lot about it.”

“No,” Yuet said, “only what I have seen, and experienced. That is not much.”

“You have just one?”

“I had another,” said Yuet, “a long time ago, but she died from the pox when she was fifteen and I was fourteen. After that, no, I didn’t have any more—until recently.”

“Would you be mine?” Xaforn said.

The question was so thoroughly unexpected that Yuet was momentarily left speechless in the face of the request. Xaforn saw her expression, and misinterpreted it. Her face started closing.

“I only thought …” she began, but Yuet raised a hand to stop her.

“I am sorry. You startled me. If you think Qiaan is not quite sure what she was offering you, do you know what
you
are doing?”

Xaforn nodded mulishly She wasn’t going to speak again.

Yuet blinked a few times, still astonished. “I have no idea why you wish it,” she said, “but I guess a Guard would find a healer
jin-shei-bao
useful, at that. So, little sister, if you really wish this …”

Xaforn nodded again. “I do. You can teach me things, and then Qiaan won’t think I am stupid.”

Yuet laughed. “So you have decided to accept Qiaan, too?”

“Yes, I think so. There’s the cat.”

“You’ll have to tell me about this cat some day,” Yuet said, entertained. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow. No fighting. I’ll know, remember? Send for the cat, if you have to, but stay
still.
Understood?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

When she left, Yuet was still smiling, shaking her head in amusement. Xaforn was left lying on her bunk, flat on her back, her head turned toward the doorway through which Yuet had left, the expression on her own face inscrutable.

W
hen another summons came from the Palace, less than two weeks after her initial encounter with Liudan, Yuet was a little startled. Her initial surprise, however, quickly spiraled into outright astonishment.

In a brocaded parcel tied with silk tasseled cord, addressed to her in elegant
jin-ashu
script, Yuet found three separate messages. The first message was a formal invitation to the Empress-Heir Liudan’s Xat-Wau ceremonies, to take place the following day at sunset. Yuet had almost expected that one—after her statement to the Council it was a matter of time, and she was sure that Liudan would have pressed for the ceremony to take place as soon as it could be arranged.

The second message, a letter in Liudan’s own hand, took Yuet’s breath away.

The third message was a slip of fine silk paper tucked into the fold of this letter. It bore just the two words:
jin-shei.

A little Guard girl, and the Empress of Syai, all in the same week. And Yuet had thought that becoming
jin-shei-bao
to Tai, who had once been the Little Empress Antian’s, was reaching high.