The Secrets of Jin-Shei (26 page)

A servant knocked on the door of the room. “If it please you, ladies, the Empress wishes you to attend her for supper.”

“How long are we going to stay here?” Tai asked Yuet in a low voice as the three obeyed this summons and started down the stairs to where Liudan waited.

“As long as she says,” Yuet said. “I hope it isn’t too long, but I don’t know, and I have no idea what she expects us to do.”

At least part of what Liudan expected them to do, apparently, was simply keep her company—at least one of the three had to be in attendance to the Empress at all times during the day.

The ghost of Antian may not have been present in the winter ruins of the Summer Palace, but she made her gentle presence known after all.

“I’m told you write poetry,” Liudan said to Tai on the third day, as they sat by the fire in the common room.

Tai looked up with some consternation. “I … yes, I do.”

“I would like to hear it,” Liudan said, her soft words nevertheless a command.

“It is hardly good enough to be read in public,” Tai protested.

“Reading them to me is hardly reading them to the public,” Liudan said. So Tai brought down her red journal and read some of her verses, the ones she could bear to lay open to scrutiny. Liudan heard them with the ear of an unexpected connoisseur.

“Those are good,” she said when Tai’s voice faded away at the end of a stanza. “You remind me of Qiu-Lin.”

“The Cloud Emperor’s Empress?” Tai said, flushing.

“She was also one of our greatest poets,” Liudan said. “All Emperors need advisers, wise men, generals, soldiers, courtiers, people who flatter them and obey them and tell them what they want to hear. But sometimes there are things they
need
to hear, and for that every Emperor needs a poet. They see the things that other people close their eyes to, and tell about it.”

“And live in fear,” Tai said.

Liudan raised an eyebrow. “What are you afraid of?”

“Laughter,” said Tai softly.

“I am not laughing,” said Liudan. “Some day, perhaps you’ll be
my
poet.
As Qiu-Lin was the Cloud Emperor’s, and defined his reign and his time through her words.”

“I don’t write in
hacha-ashu
,” Tai said. “I don’t know how.”

“Neither did she,” Liudan said shortly. “I will see to it that it is transcribed.”

Somehow it had jumped from the general to the specific. “I am not good enough yet,” Tai said, her eyes lowered, tracing the edge of her journal with a trembling finger.

“I know,” said Liudan, and Tai’s eyes flew up—but the Empress was not mocking. “However, I think that one day you will be. You have an eye, a way of seeing things.”

“That,” said Tai, “is what Antian used to say to me.”

“Well,” said Liudan after a diamond-edged silence. “Perhaps she knew it, too.”

Released from their shift with Liudan, later that day, Tai and Yuet walked into the village. Tai watched the people scurrying in the street with interest. Fair-skinned and blond, in the manner of the mountain tribes, they were exotic and beautiful to Tai. She had had few real chances to observe them before; she knew that they used to travel the plains frequently, but their kind was rarely seen near Linh-an now.

“The last time I remember seeing them, I was very young, I was only a baby, really,” Tai said, turning with interest after yet another blonde girl, bareheaded in the pale winter sunshine. “These people
are
the Travelers, aren’t they?”

“Some of them, yes,” Yuet said. “They are nomads by nature; villages like this one are rare. I think this one has the kind of permanence that it had simply because it was so close to the Palace, and there was work to be had there.”

“I remember, there used to be a fair in Linh-an in the summer. There were acrobats, and trained animals, and people who juggled flaming brands. Once Mother bought me a bright set of ribbons from the Travelers. But the fair hasn’t been to the city for a while. It’s been years.”

“You’re right,” Yuet said. “There used to be a show every year, two, one for the city, one for the Emperor. They really were that good. But then they started coming more and more rarely, and it’s been, oh, five years or more now since I’ve seen any Traveler caravans in the city. And there’s certainly been no shows at the Palace for a while. They just vanished.”

Tai looked up. “Like the spirit. Up at the Summer Palace ruins.”

“The spirit? Whatever do you mean?”

Tai had not told Yuet of her climb up to the Palace on the day after they had arrived in the village; she did so now, describing the girl she had glimpsed, the shadow in the snow.

“She had the most astonishing hair,” Tai said. “A reddish gold, like a coppery lion’s mane. Like … like
that
girl.”

A muffled female form had just crossed the village street ahead of them, muffled in a shawl but with enough bright hair showing for Tai’s eye to be drawn.

“That’s her, Yuet,” she said now, with an edge of excitement, pausing to turn and stare after the hurrying girl.

“Are you sure?” Yuet said skeptically. “In the depths of that shawl, she could be somebody’s grandmother.”

“Not with that hair,” Tai said. “And the way she moves. I’d know her anywhere after that first time I saw her. The snow dancer. She moved like her feet never touched the snow. She hardly left any tracks at all. Let’s follow her!”

“For the love of Cahan, why?” Yuet asked, perplexed, turning to stare at the younger girl.

“Well, for one thing, I’ve never seen hair that color in my life,” Tai said, laughing, and then succumbed to a sneezing fit that left her eyes watering and her ears ringing.

Yuet was shaking her head. “You are strange, little
jin-shei-bao.
We cannot just follow a free woman to her house like she was an escaped bondservant. Besides, I’m getting cold, and as for you I should probably never have let you talk me into this walk in the first place. You should be tucked up in bed, by rights, with a hot cup of tea. Let’s go back to the inn. I’ve had my exercise for the day, and Nhia will need rescuing.”

“I suppose,” said Tai after a pause, sounding vaguely mutinous and wholly unconvinced. But when Yuet turned back toward the inn, she followed, trying to sniffle quietly enough for Yuet not to hear.

They found Nhia in suspiciously little need of rescuing. Autumn Court was traditionally a time when the people—from the city and from far afield in the countryside—could present their petitions for judgment at the Emperor’s hands. Nhia and Liudan had been discussing some of the more vexing cases which had been presented at that year’s Autumn Court, and the judgments that had been given as advised by the Council and the
Nine Sages. Liudan looked up as Yuet and Tai entered the room, divesting themselves of scarves and outer cloaks, and her eyes were sparkling with fierce amusement and admiration.

“I should have appointed Nhia as overseer of the Nine Sages as soon as I had anything to say on the matter,” Liudan said. “She
understands
things the others merely know.”

Nhia flushed at the praise, and changed the subject. “Where have you two been?”

“Walking,” Yuet said. “Thinking. Why is it, do you think, that the Travelers have abandoned the city? I remember them coming every year; even Tai remembers them coming often enough to have made an impression on her. But I cannot remember seeing any of them in Linh-an in the last six or seven years. Maybe longer.”

“Perhaps they didn’t like the company,” Liudan said.

Yuet raised an eyebrow. “In Linh-an?”

“In the Palace,” Liudan said. “The bored Princelings have always liked Traveler women. There are plenty of old grievances which are still brought out in women’s quarrels—I never paid much attention to them when I was very little, but when I was old enough to start understanding the things that were being said around me, I recall hearing one Princess Consort screeching at another that at least her husband had properly established concubines in his household and didn’t need to lower himself to a Traveler slut.”

“At least the Traveler woman would be gone in a few weeks,” Nhia murmured. “Would your shrieking Princess prefer to have a rival safely and permanently ensconced in some house in the city?”

“A few do,” Liudan said complacently. “Ones they don’t know about.”

“How in the name of Cahan do you know that?” Nhia said, startled.

“My little deaf servant girl learns much that she is never meant to know, because people assume that if she cannot speak, she cannot think,” Liudan said. “She may not be able to hear but I sometimes think she can read lips even without watching someone’s face, and she has a great knack for discovering secret and revealing little scribbles which are thoughtlessly thrown away. I find that useful.”

“Marriage is so complicated,” Tai said.

“But you have your sweetheart already contracted,” Nhia said, grinning.

Yuet, who had been frowning at this exchange as if it reminded her of something that was buried just deeply enough in her memory to be
maddeningly out of reach, looked up at this. “Oh?” she said, with a sudden answering grin of her own.

“Who?” Liudan asked.

Tai blushed and scowled blackly at Nhia. “Nobody. I mean, he is just a friend. He has always been kind to me.”

“Right,” said Liudan promptly, “I’ll have them start preparing the banns as soon as we get back to Linh-an.”

Tai’s eyes were wide with panic, and even Nhia sat up, startled, at that announcement—Liudan was Empress, and what she said she would do could easily be done. But Yuet could see the usual playful malice shimmering beneath Liudan’s straight-faced Court mask, and moved in to deflect the barb.

“Have you given any further thought to your own, Liudan?” Yuet said.

The liquid amusement dimmed a little in Liudan’s face. “Mine?” she asked silkily.

“That’s ostensibly why you are here, to pick an Emperor,” Yuet said. “They’ll want something from you when we get back.”

“Well, we aren’t going back just yet,” Liudan said. “And I have a surprise for you tonight.”

“What?” Tai said, willing and eager to be diverted.

“You’ll see. At dinner. It’s odd that you should mention Travelers today, though.”

“You’ve got a juggler?” Tai asked, her eyes sparking.

“The ones that juggle fire? Hardly, that’s not a safe pursuit for indoors, especially not in these small rooms in wooden houses,” Liudan said. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

The subject of marriage seemed to be closed.

The surprise turned out to be quite a different one than Tai had been anticipating.

After the evening meal was done, a large part of the inn’s common room was cleared of benches and trestle tables and the floorboards swept clean. The glow of the fire and dozens of candles bathed the room in a rich golden light as a trio of Traveler men came in and took up position in the far corner. One of them carried a flute, one a stringed instrument similar to a southern guitarra, and the third a small drum with an animal hide
stretched tight across a tubby wooden barrel. Their faces were carefully expressionless, but they gave the distinct impression that they would rather have been wrestling bears in the wilderness than sitting in the Empress’s makeshift drawing room this evening. Liudan seemed oblivious of it. One of the men glanced up, caught her eye, received a regal nod from her, and said something in a low voice to his companions.

The flute player started alone, drawing out a wistful, thin tune that suddenly reminded Tai of the lost balcony on the ruined mountainside of the Summer Palace. But the first phrase was quickly overlaid by first a counter-melody by the guitarra, and then by a heartbeat rhythm by the drum.

Three other men, wearing the kilted dress of the mountain tribesmen and ankle-high deerskin boots, entered as the music began speeding up and flowing into an infectious and driving beat. They launched into a vigorous dance, full of tightly leashed male power, holding their shoulders and backs straight and stiff while their feet wove a complicated pattern of beats on the bare wooden floorboards.

When they were done, Yuet let her admiring eyes follow them out of the room. “If their women look like that too, no wonder the Princes cast covetous glances at them,” she whispered to Liudan. “Are you sure that no
Princess
ever tried to keep one?”

Liudan grinned.

One of the dancers, walking with an almost feline grace, returned to the room bearing a long sword. Nhia sensed a tensing in the Guards standing at attention behind the four girls, but the dancer with the blade paid them absolutely no attention whatsoever. He laid his weapon on the floor, balancing it edge upward. The music swelled again and the dancer wove a pattern of precision and danger as he pirouetted around the naked sword, his deerskin-booted feet touching the floor lightly a hair’s-breadth away from the blade.

Liudan was smiling. “They are good,” she murmured.

“They are reputed to be as good with it in their hands as at their feet,” Yuet said.

“I know,” said Liudan. “I’ve seen them dance both kinds of dance. They’re as good as any of my Guardsmen. Better, perhaps.”

“Not Xaforn,” Yuet said, with a small smile, remembering her feisty little
jin-shei-bao
in the Guard compound.

Liudan turned her head slightly. “Who is Xaforn?”

“One of your Guard,” Yuet said. “One with a reputation. She beats up other trainees regularly, and sometimes, when she’s in particularly fine fettle, she even takes on full Guards in the training court. She’s a fierce little thing who doesn’t quit. And she’ll be all of thirteen years old this coming year.”

“Someone to keep an eye on?” Liudan said, with a raised eyebrow.

“It might prove useful,” Yuet said. “She has spirit and a quick intelligence.”

“That is a solid character reference. How did you come to know her well enough to know this? Was she a patient?”

“Of a sort. She got a couple of ribs cracked by a senior trainee with greater strength and a greater reach, and I patched her up. She was not happy to be ordered to bed for a month after that accident—and the first thing she did when I allowed her to start training again was get back into good enough shape to call out the same opponent who had put her out of action in the first place and make him beg for mercy!”