The Secrets of Jin-Shei (24 page)

“We call the two litigants who presented their case to Her Imperial Highness in recent days concerning the ownership of a peach tree orchard. Come forth and receive judgment!”

The two men stepped forward, falling to their knees at the foot of the dais. Liudan stared at them with an implacability that made them both squirm.

“I have thought upon your problem,” she said, “and taken advice from one who may be the youngest sage in my Empire.” She turned that smile back on Nhia for a moment, and Nhia, in this moment, found the strength to raise her head and meet the Empress’s eyes squarely. Liudan’s gaze sharpened a little, and her smile quirked at the corners; courage she had always appreciated. She inclined her head graciously at Nhia in acknowledgment of what the gesture had cost her, and then turned those fierce eyes back on the two combatants. “I therefore give judgment. I find you quarrelsome and selfish. Let it be done thus: let the grove be cut down to the last tree, let the land be ploughed with salt, and let it remain between you as a warning ever more.”

One of the men glanced at the other. “If that is your command, my Empress, so let it be done.”

“No …” said the other weakly.

“No?” Liudan said, her voice silky and dangerous. “You refuse the judgment you came here to find?”

“No, my Empress. I do not. If that is your will, then let it be done. But if I may turn your hand, then I will beg for the life of those trees. My father planted them, and I have tended them, and they bear no guilt in this that they should pay the price of my pride in them. If it be a choice I would rather hand them over to my neighbor myself and never more lay claim to them except that I may watch them grow old in their bounty.”

Liudan sat very still, and the other man had turned to stare at his companion in utter stupefaction. Then Liudan rose to her feet. Behind her, Nhia also rose; it was her gaze that the one who had resigned his claim to the grove managed to meet, and what he found there made him stare back at her, his mouth open.

“The man who would save the grove,” Liudan said, “has greater claim to it than the man who would destroy it in order to claim a hollow victory. You have won yourself your father’s trees. And you, O destroyer, will there need to be a fence made between you and the trees high enough so that you cannot get over it to harm them? Or will you give your word here, now,” Liudan turned, grasped Nhia’s hand and pulled her forward firmly, “to the woman whose wisdom made the judgment here today?”

“I … I give my word,” the man stammered. “The trees will not be harmed by me or mine so long as the grove stands.”

“Let it be so,” Liudan said. Still holding Nhia’s hand, she started down the steps of the podium. “Ladies,” Liudan said over her shoulder, to Yuet and Tai who were standing rooted to the spot with surprise, “attend me in my chambers.”

She said nothing more until the four of them were safely ensconced behind the closed doors of her inner chambers. Then she let out a whoop of pure delight.

“That was one court they will not forget in a hurry,” Liudan said, delighted. “Well. I have decided what I will do about my other problem. They wish me to choose the Emperor? Very well. I shall. But at the very least they will have to provide me with a different set of suitors than those tailored to my predecessor. It stands to reason that the stars and the compatibilities will need to be worked out anew, doesn’t it?” She laughed again, a laugh of release, of a joyous spirit. “And when they do I will go into retreat and think on it. And I want you to come with me.”

“Who, Princess?” Yuet said, caught by surprise.

“All of you. I will take you and an attendant or two and nobody else. I will seek wisdom and advice in the highest places that I can—I go to ask my heart’s sisters and the beloved spirit of my ancestors for counsel. Be ready; we may leave at a moment’s notice.”

“Where are we going?” Tai asked, suddenly breathless with an oppressive foreboding.

Liudan looked at her with an almost playful malice, like a kitten playing with a grasshopper unaware of its ultimate fate. “To the place of all Imperial retreats, of course,” she said. “To the mountains.”

T
he Imperial astrologers took longer than Liudan might have liked for their deliberations, and it was almost mid-Tannuan before they were finished, full into winter. It was a wretched winter, too, wracked with storms and early snow flurries even as far south as Linh-an itself Yuet, mindful of Tai’s painful associations with the mountains where the Summer Palace had once stood and not entirely certain that she herself could handle a return to that place so soon, suggested to Liudan that a winter retreat might be rescheduled for warmer climes—a long sail down the river, to Sei-lin or even as far down to Chirinaa and the sea—but Liudan did not seem very happy with the idea. The retreat into the mountains was merely postponed until such time as more clement weather allowed for the trip to take place.

The young Empress waited out the winter in the Linh-an Palace with ill-concealed impatience. On the last day of Sinan she announced to her
jin-shei
companions that the small caravan would be leaving for the mountain retreat on the next day.

Yuet looked pointedly at the window, lashed by a cold and persistent rain. “It’s still winter, Empress.”

“Tomorrow,” said Liudan obstinately, “it is spring. I want this done.”

“I can make this trip,” Yuet said. “But neither Nhia nor Tai is wealthy. They do not have the furs and the warm cloaks. We will freeze up in the mountains, Liudan.”

Liudan laughed. “Cloaks, I can give them.”

And she produced two for Yuet to take with her when she left the Palace and convey to their intended recipients.

Yuet found Tai sitting alone in the outer room of her chambers, bent over her journal. So intent was she that she had obviously not heard Yuet’s knock on the door and started violently at the sound of her name being
spoken. Her brush smudged a neat letter as her hand jerked. She scowled at it.

“Now I’ve made a mess,” she said, reaching for the blotting sand.

“Never mind that now,” Yuet said. “You have to pack.”

“What?”

“She’s finally decided on a date,” Yuet said.

Tai blanched. “Why does she want me up there with her, Yuet? I never wanted to see that place again.”

“I know. Neither did I. Not this soon, anyway.”

“The weather …”

“I know,” Yuet said again. She shook out one of the cloaks she’d brought in draped over her arm, held it out to Tai. “I tried to bring that up. Her response is that you will at least be dressed for it. She sends you this, and another for Nhia. I have to go home and pack; we leave tomorrow. Will you go get Nhia? Both of you, come to my house with your luggage tonight. We will leave from there in the morning.”

“Why is she so stubborn?” Tai said, taking the cloak with unwilling hands.

“She is a Dragon,” Yuet said philosophically. “The Dragon-born are the most bull-headed, obstinate, downright intractable people of all. And this Dragon is Empress. She has waited in the shadow of others for too long, doing their bidding—and now that she can, she does what she wants. I’ll see you tonight.”

Yuet departed, leaving the other cloak folded across the back of a chair. Tai stared at the two cloaks for a moment, and then turned back to the red journal. It was the same one that she had clutched while the Summer Palace had crumbled around her, the same one in which she once wrote of the stillness of a summer night just before the world was shattered.

Now she was going back. Tai picked up her brush again, and sketched a neat line of
new jin-ashu
characters on a new page.

She paused, her brush poised over the page, aware that her eyes were stinging with tears, and then dipped the point of the brush into the ink again. Often these days her thoughts came out in poetry

Tai contemplated the verse for a moment, sighed, blotted the latest writings, and closed the book carefully so as not to smudge the pages. Leaving the smaller of the two cloaks Yuet had brought in an untidy pile on the chair on which she had been sitting, she took up the other one and went in search of Nhia.

Nhia wasn’t at home, and Tai, who could not afford to let the Imperial edict languish in a message which might get delivered too late, left the gift cloak at Nhia’s rooms to await her return there and bent her steps toward the Great Temple. The day was perfectly miserable; she arrived at the Temple soaked, her hair wet and clinging to her face in long damp tendrils, the bones of her shoulder blades outlined precisely beneath a cloak wringing wet and adhering to every line of her body. She dashed into the shelter of the Temple’s gate and paused to shake herself off like a damp puppy. A massive sneeze took her entirely by surprise, closely followed by a second; her eyes watered, and she sniffed experimentally.

“Oh, wonderful,” she muttered. “All I need is a cold.”

“Tai?” said a familiar voice.

She looked up and saw Kito the bead-carver’s son, his mouth twisted into a rueful grin. Tai sniffed again, rubbing at the tickle in her nose with the back of her hand.

“You always seem to be around when I’m at my worst,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Tea?” he suggested. “It might serve to ward off pneumonia.”

She nodded, distracted from her Nhia search, and he escorted her back to the booth where, now, an elderly man with a flowing white beard sat carving a
so ji
sculpture.

“Father,” Kito said respectfully, “I bring you Tai, my friend, in need of sustenance. I have invited her to accept a bowl of green tea. May I be excused for a few minutes?”

The old carver looked up, his eyes glittering dark coals. When he smiled, his entire face disappeared into a sea of wrinkles, and the eyes glimmered from the depths like twin bright sea creatures.

“Indeed,” he said, and his voice was kind. “It is pleasant to make your acquaintance at last, young Tai. I have been hearing about you.”

“Sir,” Tai said, bending over the old man’s hand in a gesture of respect. She felt another sneeze rising to tickle her throat, and held her breath to try and stifle it. A sideways glance showed her that Kito had turned a fine shade of pink, but he said nothing, merely bowed to his father in thanks before he escorted her out of the booth.

The sneeze took her with an explosive force just a couple of steps away, so violent that a couple of people in nearby booths looked up, startled, to see what had just blown up.

“You’re going to catch your death of a cold,” Kito said. “What was so important that you had to come rushing here today of all days? Look around you, the place is practically deserted—people know better than to …”

But his words had been ill-advised, if concerned, because they suddenly brought to mind her errand. She stopped dead, sneezed again, and looked up at him in consternation.

“Nhia! I have to find Nhia! The Empress wants us to leave tomorrow and I have to get her to … to …” Her eyes watered as she fought another sneeze.

Kito’s eyes were wide with incomprehension, but his expression was firm. “You will do no good to yourself, to Nhia, or to the Empress’s commands if you fall sick. Hot tea. Over here. And I will send a boy to look for Nhia for you.”

“Thank you,” Tai got out before exploding again.

The bowl of hot tea Kito thrust into her hands was a welcome warmth, for she had started shivering violently. Kito had removed her outer mantle and replaced it with his own dry one. It was three sizes too large for Tai and all-enveloping, but blessedly warm. After he had collared a passing boy, thrust a copper into his hand and given him instructions, Kito came back to Tai’s side.

She looked up, smiling. “The Young Teacher?” she said quizzically, having overheard his command to the boy.

“That’s what they call her around here,” Kito said. “She was ‘The Little Teacher,’ but that was before the Empress laid her hand upon her. Now they are more respectful.”

“You know about that?”

“Who doesn’t?” Kito said. “That judgment made the marketplace almost as soon as it was uttered in court. It was a teaching tale, all by itself. When you are done with that, let us return to my father’s booth—that is where I told the boy to tell Nhia to look for you.”

So-Xan, the bead carver, was not in his seat when they returned, but his tools had not been put away, only laid aside neatly on the bench indicating that the master craftsman would return very shortly. The carving he had been working with was not in evidence.

“Whose
so ji
was he working on?” Tai asked, curious.

“The daughter of the Fourth Prince,” Kito said. “Her kin are planning on offering it to a merchant’s family here in Linh-an later this spring. I am told that the match is a done deal already, that this is just a tradition which needs to be followed in order that the Gods may smile upon them.”

“It was beautiful,” Tai said. “Have you ever done a
so ji
yourself?”

“Twice,” said Kito proudly. “In fact, I am carving one now, for a young woman on XoSau Street. Do you wish to see it?”

“Please,” Tai said.

He ducked into the booth and unlocked an inlaid wooden chest at the back, extracting something carefully wrapped in several layers of rough silk. “It is not the pale jade, not the expensive kind,” he said, peeling the wrappings away, “but I love the deeper color of this stone, it’s almost blue in places. See?”