The Secrets of Jin-Shei (61 page)

But Liudan had no Emperor, no mate to take in with her, and what rituals she was led in by the Temple priests remained her own mystery, although there were those who had muttered that it obviously wasn’t working because bad harvest after bad harvest was edging some remote communities into starvation. Liudan’s procession to the Temple in the year of Tai’s forebodings was watched only by scattered crowds on the streets, but there was little cheering and there seemed to be rather more Guards about than were usually required.

The rites took most of the day, and as twilight started to gather Liudan finally emerged from the Temple, through one of the Three Gates, unbarred again and thrown open to the people. She had done everything that had been required, had bowed before every God, had lit incense before every shrine and then burned sweet oils in bowls of lapis and jade at the innermost altar of the Great Temple of Syai, and her prayers had been fervent and genuine—
Help my land, for it is troubled.
She walked back
to the Palace in the hour of gathering shadows, surrounded by torches and lanterns, a vision of Empire, the anointed one who had just communed with Cahan itself and bought a year of peace and prosperity for the realm. Glittering with gems in the darkening street.

A perfect target.

One of the Guards heard the whistle of the black arrow that came winging out of the dark, and shouted out a warning as he threw himself in front of the Empress. The arrow nicked his shoulder armor, and slid off the sleek metal shell. It lost momentum—enough to keep it from being deadly. But it was still moving. It struck a faceted gem on Liudan’s shoulder, glanced off, and embedded itself in a padded fold on her heavily embroidered outer robe.

Liudan’s face did not change, and she continued walking at the same stately pace as she had been doing up until that moment. But her Guards coalesced into a tight circle around her, and two of them held a pair of shields over her head from behind. It cast a shadow on her, quenching her glitter. She was unharmed, but only by the sheerest fluke—and the point had been made more than adequately by the rest of that tense march back to the relative safety of the Palace walls, a walk that seemed to take a year out of the lives of every one of the people in that street who were charged with protecting the Empress. It was only after she was safely delivered into her own rooms that Liudan started weeping, from fear and from fury, and would let nobody in to see her, not even Yuet, who came hurrying to the Palace as soon as she heard what had happened.

“She will do herself a worse injury if she doesn’t let me at least give her some sort of a calming infusion,” Yuet said to Xaforn. “But she wasn’t even hurt you said. Just frightened.”

Xaforn tossed her head. “Sometimes fright is worse. She is afraid of everything these days, of her own shadow. I’ve seen her shying at
my
presence sometimes. I think she is desperately lonely right now, fighting a war on three fronts, and I don’t know how she stays sane in all this.”

“Three fronts?” Yuet said, frowning.

“Maybe even four,” Xaforn said. “Lihui, the Magalipt thing, and then the treachery of people like Zibo when the whole Tammary situation exploded. She never really trusted Zibo, but she was appalled that she could have let him plot as deeply as he did without her having got wind of it sooner. This was a poison in her own Court.”

“But you said four,” Yuet said. “That’s three.”

Xaforn gave her a strange look. “Herself,” she said. “Really, Yuet, you’re the healer. You can see that she’s tearing herself apart. She is all there is—there’s no mate, no heir, nothing and nobody to take the pressure off her. She didn’t bargain for this when she wanted to be Empress.”

“How did you get to be so wise?” Yuet murmured.

“You and Tai,” Xaforn said, with a sad smile. “And the times we live in.”

When Liudan finally admitted one of her
jin-shei
circle into her presence, it was neither Yuet nor Xaforn but Nhia—who had had to pull both the strings she had available,
jin-shei
and the duties and needs of her Chancellor’s office, in order to achieve this.

“You look a wreck, Liudan,” Nhia said when she was ushered into Liudan’s rooms, almost two days after the attack. “Have you slept in the last forty-eight hours? Have you eaten anything? You look half dead.”

Liudan’s head came up sharply at that word. “I could have been wholly dead,” she said.

“Now you’re wallowing,” Nhia said gently. “Talk to us. All of us.
Any
of us. You know Tai would spend every waking hour with you if you ask her. Liudan, if you go on like this you’ll be doing their work for them. You’ll kill yourself far faster and probably with far more suffering than they could ever hope to inflict on you.”

“Don’t lecture,” said Liudan.

“I’m not,” Nhia said. “None of us is immortal.”

“You said Lihui was,” said Liudan unexpectedly.

“Perhaps,” Nhia said carefully, but her voice had gone tight at the mention of Lihui’s name. “But I think it is given to us, in the end, to choose how we live and how we die. And I would not want the responsibility of living Lihui’s life. The price he will eventually pay will be very great. And even the Immortals … well, but Khailin is probably far more knowledgeable on that subject than me, these days. You read her paper on the ages of the world.”

“I meant to,” Liudan said. “I have a copy of it in my chambers somewhere. But I hardly even read the poems that Tai sends me these days. There is too much in my head, and I don’t have the time anymore to think of other things, and of what is to come if I should … Nhia, what would happen to Syai if I had taken that arrow? I have left nothing settled, I had thought I would have years.”

“You do have years,” Nhia said. “Liudan, get some food into you. Get some rest.”

Liudan gave her a curious sidelong glance. “So what does Khailin say on the subject?”

“Of food? She takes it occasionally,” Nhia said. “On the whole, I think she approves of the concept.”

Liudan made a sharp little movement with her hand. “Don’t mock me,” she snapped. “I meant on immortality, of course. She is doing work on that?”

“She does a lot of things,” Nhia said. She was beginning to catch a dangerous drift, and tried to steer the conversation into other channels. “She and Maxao, forever fluttering around that laboratory of hers. Half the time I don’t know what she is brewing in there. However, I have other things here that need your attention, Empress, from your Chancellor’s office. You order some breakfast in, and we can discuss them at our leisure over some tea.”

Liudan emerged from her isolation after Nhia’s visit, but her mood was dark and brittle. She was brooding on something, something that she wouldn’t talk to any of her
jin-shei
sisters about. No further attempts on her life occurred, and for some weeks things appeared to go on as normal until one day, on the eve of Khailin’s twenty-fifth birthday, she gathered an entourage of Guards and made her way to Khailin’s house in the city.

The visit was unexpected and Khailin, informed by a flustered servant that the Empress was waiting in the drawing room, stripped off her working smock and hurried out to greet her.

“Happy birthday,” Liudan said, by way of greeting.

Khailin blinked. “Believe it or not, I had actually forgotten,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I have a present for you,” Liudan said, and gestured to one of her retainers, waiting by the door of the room. He bowed, signaled somebody outside, and a small cedarwood chest was brought into the room.

“What is that?” Khailin said, eyeing the curiously carved box.

“Open it,” Liudan said.

The hinges creaked as the lid was lifted. “This hasn’t been opened in some time,” Khailin said.

“Probably not,” Liudan said. “It’s doing no good where it was. I thought you could use it.”

The box was full of neat scrolls which, when Khailin experimentally unfurled one, proved to be closely written with tiny
hacha-ashu
script. Khailin peered at it, squinting.

“I need glasses,” she said, “or this thing was written under a magnifying lens. What
is
this, Liudan?”

“Records,” Liudan said, “from the Imperial astronomers. I think some of them date back maybe two hundred years.”

Khailin looked up. “This is a royal treasure, Liudan. Why are you giving this to me?”

“You use it,” Liudan said. “Nhia said you were working on a lot of things.”

“Yes,” Khailin said slowly. “I am.”

Their eyes met, held; many things were said without speaking. Then Liudan laughed. “You’re right, it’s also a bribe of sorts. There is something I want you to do for me.”

“And it is not something I will be happy doing, is it, Liudan?”

“I don’t know,” Liudan said.

Khailin rolled up the ancient scroll again and put it back in its box. “So, what is your wish?”

“I nearly died last autumn,” Liudan said.

“I know.”

“I would have left the Empire adrift, unprovided for.”

Khailin waited, in silence.

“I need
time
,” Liudan said, a tinge of urgency in her voice now, even of desperation. “I cannot do what I have to do if I am waiting for the arrow in my heart every moment. I cannot plan if I don’t have the time to see it all come to harvest.”

“I’ve already made such protective amulets as I may,” Khailin said quietly. “Some of them guard the gates of your Palace as we speak. But what else may I do that …”

“Nhia said you were working on it,” Liudan interrupted. “And I want it. I want that from you. I want …”

“Want
what,
Liudan?”

“Immortality,” said Liudan, and her eyes glinted with naked need. “In the name of
jin-shei,
I want you to give me immortality.”

T
he servant had barely had the chance to open the door before Khailin swept through and into Yuet’s sitting room. Her expression appeared to be made up in equal parts of frustration, fury, exasperation, and fear.

Tai, sitting curled on the window seat and sipping a cup of Yuet’s herbal tea, uncoiled like a whip at the sight of her.

“You look like you want to kill somebody,” she said.

“On the contrary,” Khailin retorted. “I’ve been presented with an ultimatum to keep someone alive.”

“To keep someone
alive?
” Tai echoed in puzzlement.

“Isn’t that my job?” Yuet said ironically.

“Yes,” Khailin snapped, “and not in the way that you are thinking of, Yuet. I mean indefinitely. Liudan has woken up to the concept of immortality.”

“You’d better sit down, and have some tea, and tell us everything from the beginning,” Yuet said, already pouring into a porcelain cup.

Khailin could clearly remember the conversation in her parlor that had started the ball rolling, nearly two weeks before.

“Immortality,” Liudan had said, “in the name of
jin-shei
.”

“You’ve had a scare,” Khailin said after a heartbeat of silence. “Immortality will not protect you from stray arrows, Liudan. And there are several kinds of immortality anyway. And besides, it’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Liudan said, “and anything asked in the name of
jin-shei
is a sacred trust.”

“So you aren’t ordering me to do it,” Khailin said, her mouth quirking. “You’re just demanding the impossible in the name of the unrefusable bond. What if I cannot?”

“Nhia seems to think you can,” Liudan said.

“Nhia?”
Khailin said, astonished. “What has Nhia to do with this?”

“She said you had been working on something like this.”

“Only because I want to know how to destroy it,” Khailin snapped. “With Lihui still on the loose …”

“What did you mean about different kinds of immortality?” Liudan said. “What kind does Lihui possess?”

“No,
Liudan. Not that,” Khailin said, frowning. “You do not want to be Lihui. Trust me on this. What he is, is unnatural, and evil. What he has is only sustainable because he drinks other people’s souls, I guess, if I were to put it simply. He is old, immensely old, unnaturally old. And very powerful. When he gets tired, he simply slakes his physical thirsts in some nubile young thing’s body, and he makes no distinction between male and female when choosing his victims, and then drinks their vitality until there’s just a shell left. Just as he did to Nhia.”

“But she’s alive and well,” Liudan said stubbornly.

“Only because I was there,” Khailin whispered. “He left the job half-done that night. He would have been back to finish it. And you know, you
know,
how long it took her to come back to us.”

“How is it that he didn’t so use you in this manner, then?” Liudan said.