The Secrets of Jin-Shei (51 page)

It was pure coincidence that, on her way home from this particular house, Qiaan passed by one of the “water teahouses” of worse repute than most, and looked up to find Tammary leaning on the doorjamb, wrapped in a warm woolen cloak dyed a rich dark green to set off the color of her hair, laughing up at a young man who had an arm tucked inside the cloak and was obviously doing things in there that were pleasing to her.

For all her other virtues, Qiaan had a broad prudish streak in her. The warnings she had channeled toward Nhia and Yuet about Tammary were partly based on a feeling of
jin-shei
obligation to protect a sister of the circle—and partly on a growing personal distaste for Tammary’s lifestyle. And now here it was, being flaunted in her face, and she was already full of that rage which made her aides scatter before her like chickens before a fox. Qiaan’s eyes narrowed and she marched across the street toward the couple, who were still oblivious to her presence. It was cold out in the street, and their breath came out in white gasping clouds as they laughed together; for some reason this only served to enrage Qiaan even further. Tammary was not only flouting Qiaan’s own personal code of behavior, she was going out of her way to do it in public, where she could flaunt it, where she could be sure that other people would see it, could hear the liquid laughter of seduction, could catch a scent of sex.

“You’re a scandal, you know that?” Qiaan hissed as she came up on the two lovers.

The young man whipped his head around, his mouth a round O of surprise, snatching his arm out from underneath Tammary’s cloak. Tammary herself, her eyes clouded by wine, merely pulled the cloak tighter about her and smiled languidly.

“It’s a bit late for you to be out, isn’t it?” she asked. “You’re usually in bed planning good deeds by now.”

“I’m taking
you
to bed,” Qiaan snapped.

Tammary laughed. “I prefer men,” she said.

But the man in question had seen the daggers in Qiaan’s eyes and the seduction scene out in the sharp winter air had been quite ruined for him. He muttered something to Tammary about “tomorrow,” and fled. The two women faced each other across the shallow steps leading up to the teahouse, a murmur of voices and laughter and faint music coming from inside.

“You’re a fanatic, Qiaan,” Tammary said. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

“You’re coming with me,” Qiaan said. “I told Yuet about this, but she has obviously said nothing to you. Don’t you know that the whole city is talking about you? Don’t you care? They are all just waiting their turn, those men. They don’t want you, they just want a chance at you—and you’re giving it away. You’re
jin-shei
to the Empress herself, for the love of Cahan. This isn’t the way that someone like you should behave.”

“You think the Empress sleeps alone?” Tammary said, her smile broadening a little. “There’s a plant which you can grow quite happily in a pretty pot in a corner of your room, Qiaan, and it even blooms with these dainty red flowers, and it’s a nice thing to look at in a room and nobody knows any different—but chew a leaf from that plant once a week, and you don’t have to worry about pregnancy any more. Liudan has four of them in her room. I gave them to her. And I’m sure that before that she had put pressure on Yuet to provide something else—or, if not Yuet, then some other healer willing to curry favor with the Empress by letting her taste the pleasure without the pain. We are not celibates by nature, we are made to be part of something that is not solitude.”

“At least she doesn’t flaunt it. If she has her flings, she is discreet about them,” Qiaan said sharply after a pause, outflanked. “She is an Emperor’s daughter, and she knows how to behave like one.”

“You think being an Emperor’s daughter makes you immune to the
need to be loved?” Tammary asked, after a beat of silence. “Trust me, it doesn’t. I ought to know.”

She held Qiaan’s eyes for a moment, and then whirled, somewhat unsteadily, and vanished into the shadows of the street.

Qiaan had been too furious to register the remark at the time. While she stood where Tammary had left her, fighting to regain control of her ragged breathing and unclench her fists, she was also oblivious of the young man who had been dallying with Tammary on the steps—who had not gone too far, who had certainly been in earshot, and who, as soon as Qiaan had turned her back on the teahouse door and stamped away homeward, had slipped back into the crowded teahouse sharing his own interpretation of Tammary’s parting remark with an avid crowd.

When Yuet had finally confronted Tammary with her secret life, only a few days after that incident, it was already far too late. There were four different versions of the story in the bazaars, to be sure, but it was out, in the open. Tammary’s mother changed with every telling, but her father remained the same—the Ivory Emperor. Liudan’s father.

And, through him, Tammary was suddenly a single step away from a claim to the Empire.

“Do you have any idea what this could lead to?” Yuet said vehemently. “You may have endangered all of us. You may have endangered yourself. Liudan could …”

“Liudan won’t do anything to
you
,” Tammary said. “The whole mess predates you by a long way; it’s hardly your fault.”

“It’s partly my doing that you’re here in the city,” Yuet snapped.

“No, it’s mine,” Tai said. “It was I who told you to come with us.”

“Tai, I would have come anyway. Sooner or later.” Tammary’s voice had softened.

“But you wouldn’t have been under our protection then,” Tai said.

“I am not under your protection now,” Tammary said.

“Of course you are,” Yuet snapped. “You are
jin-shei
to both of us. We have a responsibility. We have a duty to each other. I had hoped that, knowing who you were …”

“Yuet, I have never known who I was,” Tammary said. “I have been searching for myself all my life. When I dance I think I touch it, a little—there is a memory there. As though my mother speaks to me through that. And men like it, and I like it that men like it—and for a while, at least, I
think I can see a glimpse of who I might be in a lover’s eyes. But not for long. Never for long. It all comes full circle again, and the man is the wrong man, and I dance again to ask my questions, and a new man comes with pretty shining new answers in his hand.”

“I had hoped you could learn to be happy,” Tai said.

“Like you?” Tammary questioned gently. “Who would marry me, Tai? Even not knowing who I really am, let alone if the secret was told?”

“The secret has already been told,” Yuet said grimly.

“No it hasn’t!” said Tammary impatiently. “It’s marketplace rumor and hearsay. Are you telling me that there has never been any gossip about the bastard children of kings in a city like Linh-an before? I don’t believe that for a minute!”

“If there was,” Tai said, “it was never tied to a specific and identifiable individual. I am afraid you do rather stand out, Amri. There could be no doubt about the identity of this particular bastard child.”

“I have a really bad feeling about this,” Yuet said.

“Why? Does Liudan think I would go after her empire?” Tammary laughed. “I watched her, these last few years. She’s painted herself into a corner. I wouldn’t be in her shoes for anything. She is trapped, so trapped, perhaps the most trapped of us all.”

Tai had a sudden flashback to Antian’s poise and acceptance of her position and its responsibilities. Antian would have been a quiet force, acceding to tradition, marrying the best candidate she could find in order to make a gift of a good Emperor to her people, and then doing what all great Empresses did—rule the Empire at his side with advice, with empathy, with compassion, dealing with the big issues and leaving her mate and partner to cope with the day-to-day realities of government, as Syai’s traditions demanded. Liudan had chosen to take it all, and while she had always stood tall under the burden, Tai had not failed to notice that sometimes the smile on the young Empress’s face was no more than a grimace of pain as the load grew too heavy for a moment and she staggered under the weight of it. But Antian had been born of the Empress, and sired by the anointed Emperor—twice royal. Liudan was Liudan—her position handed to her by fate, a concubine’s child, her position a fluke, an unexpected twist of fate.

She was a good ruler, but she was an autocrat. She could not help it. She ruled with a fist of iron because otherwise she could not rule at all.

The fact that someone else with a claim to her position might reject it
out of hand, as Tammary was now doing, would be almost incomprehensible to her. Liudan had wanted to be somebody, to be important, all of her life—she had ached for that as a little girl, and schemed and fought for it when she grew old enough to fight. Now that she had it in her hand she would do almost anything to keep it. Perhaps they had been wrong, perhaps they had all been wrong, in not going to Liudan with their knowledge in the first place.

Tai bit her lip. She had been the one to advise that, in a way. Had it been her mistake?

“We should go to Liudan,” Tai said unexpectedly. “We have left it late, perhaps too late, but it is better that she hears of this from us before she hears it from someone else.” She glanced up at Yuet. “I know you wanted things to be different, Yuet. But …”

“She may never even hear about it,” Tammary said, dismissing it.

“You underestimate her abilities,” Tai said. “She will know soon, if she does not know already. We’d better go and confess everything. I’ll do the talking, Yuet. It was for Antian’s sake, after all, that I went back to the mountains. She said to take care of her sisters and I’ll try to do that, as long as I can, as well as I can.”

“How did all this get started anyway?” Yuet said desperately. “Even with you carrying on like the worst sort of hoyden, it had still been under wraps—it had been under wraps for so long. How did it get out?”

“I’m afraid,” said Tammary after a moment, looking down, “that it was probably my fault.”

“I know,” snapped Yuet. “If you had been content to keep your head down and lead a quiet life, none of this would have happened.”

“Possibly,” Tammary said, “but not in the way you think. You see, I think I may have told Qiaan myself.” She looked up briefly, met Yuet’s shocked gaze, and looked down again. “She came out of nowhere and flew at me like a mother hen, clucking at me to go home, to behave, to remember who I was, so I said … I’d had a few cups of rice wine that night, and she irritated me … and I said …”

“What did you tell her, in the name of Cahan?”

“She brought up Liudan, and Liudan’s virtues,” said Tammary mutinously, “so I told her a few home truths about Liudan’s own life. And then she said that an Emperor’s daughter at least ought to keep it discreet, or something, and I just lost it. I told her that I knew all about how an Emperor’s daughter would feel.”

“I don’t believe Qiaan would spread a story on something that thin!” Tai gasped.

“We were right outside a teahouse at the time,” Tammary said. “It is entirely possible that Qiaan said nothing at all. Anyone could have heard me say it.”

“It’s still thin,” Yuet said. “We can …”

“It’s too late for that, Yuet,” Tai said. “As weak as the initial assumption was, somebody made it, and the story is out—and it’s the true one. Szewan can’t have been the only one in all of Linh-an to know about Jokhara and what happened in the Emperor’s quarters that night. There will be other people who will piece it together, and may remember.”

Yuet sat down rather heavily in the nearest chair. “Not Qiaan,” she said. “Oh, please, not Qiaan. I wasn’t ready for this one.”

“What are you talking about?” Tai said.

“You were born, Tammary. The circumstances were tragic, but you were wanted—by at least one of your parents—for whatever reason.”

“By which one?” Tammary said bitterly. “My mother was forced …”

“Ah, but not before she initially came to the Emperor of her own free will,” Yuet said. “You are forgetting your own story. When it became clear that you were on the way, it was made very clear to your mother that it would be best if you were never born—but she wanted you, by then. She wanted you to live. Qiaan …”

“Yuet, you’re scaring me,” Tai said.

“Qiaan was
made,
and made because of you, Tammary. The entire reason for Qiaan’s existence is that she was a tool.”

“Whose tool? A tool for what?”

“Qiaan was Szewan’s revenge, Tammary. For
you.
If your story comes out, it will all come out. And it could destroy both of you.” She looked up, met Tammary’s puzzled gaze. “You and Liudan share a father, Amri. Whatever your mother’s motives may have been, in the end she was taken against her will and you were got upon her against her will. And she was of Szewan’s clan. Before you were even born Szewan had thrown Liudan’s mother, Cai, to the wolves—I have it all in her journal. They took Liudan away when she was born, as they always do. Cai was beautiful, and lonely, and abandoned by the Emperor after she had delivered her daughter. And so Szewan nurtured a hopeless love of a captain of the Imperial Guard for a royal lady far out of his reach, and made sure that Cai knew that she was
loved, and … oh, for the love of Cahan, Tammary, you are always talking about how we all need to be loved, and she needed it then. So they already had the motivation, and Szewan made sure they had the opportunity Have you never looked at Qiaan and seen Liudan in her face?”

Tai’s eyes were filled with tears. “Qiaan always said her mother never liked her, her father’s
wife
never liked her. She has no idea, does she, Yuet?”

“Her aunt tried to tell her,” Yuet said. “Kept throwing it in her face—that she was taken in, that Rochanaa was good to her for having taken her in, for having forgiven her father in the first place, so she has an inkling that she may not have been her mother’s natural child, yes. But not even the aunt told her the rest, if she even knew anything over and above the damning fact that Qiaan was the offspring of an adulterous affair who had been brought back for the lawful wife to raise.”

“What happened to Cai?” Tammary asked carefully.