The White Mirror (38 page)

Wind muttered through the ashes. A pebble gleamed at the edge of the embers. He reached down and picked it up. It was obsidian black. On its round surface the reflected flame twisted like a creature caught inside the stone. He pocketed it and returned to his contemplations.

Rinzen had reiterated his proposition during each period Li Du was assigned to watch over him. With level, watchful eyes Rinzen waited for Li Du's response, and rebuffed any attempt to glean more information from him. Their whispered exchanges were brief, and ended in silence.

During the days, Li Du had several times caught Rinzen directing a speculating, assessing look at him. He knew that Rinzen was waiting for an answer. But he had no answer to offer. He could not allow a murderer to go free. Neither could he bring himself to dismiss what Rinzen had offered.

Li Du stood up, rubbed his neck, and searched the shadows for the pale shape of his tent. When he found it, he hurried across the frozen ground and ducked inside. Fatigue claimed him as soon as he had wrapped himself in his blankets, and he fell into a deep sleep.

It seemed only a moment before he blinked awake, but the dawn had come. It was a shout that had woken him. Disoriented and cold, he struggled out of his tent and stumbled, half asleep, toward the noise, almost tripping over the embers that had crumbled and collapsed on themselves during the night. The cry had come from Norbu, who was now gesturing to the others and pointing.

Li Du had not yet reached the tent when he comprehended the words being shouted around him and stopped. He did not need to join the cluster of people gathering to look inside. He did not need to see.

He turned around and scanned the camp. The place that had contained Andruk's tent and saddlebags was empty. Andruk was gone. Justice, a swifter justice than Rinzen would otherwise have faced, had been done. The secrets of a man who had deceived two kings were forever silenced.

 

Chapter 30

“Andruk could not allow Rinzen to be taken back to Lhasa,” Li Du said. “The secrets he carried held too much power.”

It was evening. Li Du and Hamza sat together in the courtyard of the Markham inn. The sounds of the town drifted over the low wall. An herb seller passed the gate, trailing fragrances of angelica and snow tea from the baskets on either side of her mule's saddle. They were drinking cups of a plum wine purchased that day.

Hamza took a sip of wine. “And the vanished Andruk? Where has he gone?”

“To make his report. Rinzen damaged the Emperor's web, but he did not destroy it. I am sure Andruk has means available to him.” Li Du recalled Rinzen's words when they had stood together outside the manor door in the gusting wind, and wondered how many windows of communication existed between the Potala Palace and the Forbidden City, hidden within palaces, mountains, and monasteries.

Hamza directed his attention to the sky, where stars were beginning to appear. “So Rinzen promised you information about the death of Shu in exchange for your assistance. Now I know why you have looked so preoccupied. You should have discussed it with me earlier—I would have told you what to do.”

“What would you have said?”

“I would have advised you not to escort a murderer across a freezing plateau to a camp full of enemies of your Emperor.” Hamza picked up the bottle of wine and refilled their cups. “And I would add that if this conclusion was not obvious to you, then you will not be making any decisions in future that relate to our safety.”

Li Du started to speak, but Hamza was not finished. “Rinzen may have known nothing beyond what he needed to get your attention. And even if he did have information, his promise would not have stopped him from killing you at the earliest opportunity. Are you so unfamiliar with the minds of villains?”

Li Du raised his eyebrows. “Are you so well acquainted with them?”

Hamza gave a self-satisfied smile. “I have said it before. I'm as old as the oldest in my stories, as young as the youngest, as benevolent as the kindest and as cruel as the most wicked.”

Li Du's expression became serious. “I did not want Rinzen to escape punishment. But neither did I relish sending him to Beijing or to Lhasa, where there would have been more interest in torturing secrets from him than in meting out justice. I have no wish to assist the Emperor or the Khan in their plots against one another. That is one thing Rinzen and I had in common.”

He sighed and picked up his cup. “I wonder if Rinzen's loyalty to the Dzungars was genuine. I believe the reason he gave us for going to Litang was true, but perhaps it was his own desire for power that drew him there. Finding the seventh incarnation of the Dalai Lama would allow him to manipulate all three contenders for Tibet. Of course, he might have found nothing. The incarnation might not be there. The Sixth may not have died on the road to China.”

Hamza traced a constellation with a fingertip. “There will always be a story that he lived,” he said. “And there will always be a story that he died. Both stories will be repeated, and there will be many others.”

Li Du looked up at the stars spread across the sky like pebbles in the Game of Many Eyes. Reminded of it, Li Du drew the pebble from his pocket and set it on the table.

“The tale you told,” he said. “The tale of children and the dune.”

“Ah,” said Hamza, with a gratified expression. “You can read a book and listen to a story at the same time.”

Aware that his mind was beginning to float on stars and plum wine, Li Du continued, slowly. “Each day, one child was endowed with the powers of a king, but it was a fleeting majesty, no sooner acquired than lost.”

“That is true,” replied Hamza. “But there was one child who went on to have other adventures. Her brother insulted a hearth spirit, and to protect him she was obliged to challenge the spirit to a contest of wits—”

“That was not my point,” Li Du said. “I meant that—”

Hamza pointed a finger up at the sky, as he often did when asserting imagined authority. “One day we will journey together to the libraries in the far west, where the monks decorate their books with tangled snakes and acanthus leaves and wheels of flame, and bind them in silver instead of silk. We will travel to the ancient city ruled by statues of white marble and polished bronze. We will see the golden doors that are called the gates of paradise.”

Li Du turned to Hamza. “These places you describe. There are times when I think you cannot have lived enough years to have seen them all before.”

Hamza studied the clear surface of his wine. “I have not seen them all,” he admitted. “But I have met travelers who know the way.”

Li Du studied the man across from him. He saw again the contradictions written across his features, the suggestion that he had lived not one, but several lives. After a long moment, Li Du settled in his chair and pushed his hat back on his head. “I would like to see these illustrated tomes and statues and golden doors,” he said. “But before we go west, I must return to the Forbidden City. It is time for me to resolve the questions I had thought to leave unanswered.”

Hamza looked dubious. “The Forbidden City,” he said. “There will be dangers for you there. I will accompany you.”

Li Du smiled. “This is a task I will face alone. We have arrived in Markham, where the paths of the Tea Horse Road divide. You will go west with the caravan. Paolo Campo is without a guide, and I believe that with your help, he will find his way home. You will have good company.”

Hamza gave an incredulous sniff. “Good company in Campo?”

Li Du shook his head and gestured to the door of the inn, from which Sera was approaching. She held her patched and embroidered bag in one hand and a silver bowl of wine in the other. “So you plan to go east,” she said to Li Du, “to the Forbidden City, where the drum towers ring the hours through the night and every breeze that stirs a silk curtain whispers a secret.”

“You see,” Hamza said, “why I enjoy her company so much.”

Sera smiled. She sat down, leaned forward over the table, and picked up the pebble. “Thank you,” she said. “I won so many from the storyteller last night that I lost count of the pieces.”

Hamza's expression soured. “I begin to agree with Paolo Campo. She charms the pieces to change color.” He addressed Sera. “What have you found in Markham?”

Sera shifted her shoulders inside her voluminous coat. “I have discovered this plum wine,” she said. “And I have spoken to several travelers with news to share from the east and west and north. But I have spent most of my afternoon helping your friend Kalden Dorjee.”

“Helping Kalden?” Li Du and Hamza both waited for her to explain.

She leaned her elbows on the table. “I am too competent in my former duties to give Kalden those papers that the unfortunate thief brought to sell him. They are in the possession of the city's lord now, who promises to take action against the corrupt official Fang. But I am not unsympathetic to your caravan leader. I have negotiated a good deal for him on his taxes. He and the others are celebrating their fortune.”

Hamza smiled. “They will still be drunk in the morning.”

Li Du turned to Sera. “What is the news from the north?”

She raised her bowl, sipped, and set it down with a faint tap of metal on stone. “The Dzungars are regaining strength after Galdan's defeat. Some are saying that they have recognized a Seventh Dalai Lama and will no longer obey the false Sixth who sits in Lhasa.”

“And in the east?”

“The Emperor of China has sent a delegate to the court of Lhazang Khan, but they say he has come in secret to make a map for armies.”

“And the west?”

“The foreigners are leaving Lhasa. They have declared its conversion impossible, and will go home.”

The three of them were silent. A path of stars had appeared across the sky.

“I meant to visit the Forbidden City once,” said Hamza. “But I became distracted when I met a beggar who told me that he knew of a city with a princess who had vowed to marry the next man who could answer three riddles, and pose one to her that she could not answer.”

*   *   *

Li Du woke to a clear morning. After receiving a final round of advice and instructions from the Khampa, he packed his saddlebags and settled them onto his mule. As he considered the road ahead, his mind took him back to a day thirteen years in the past.

It was summer in Beijing and time to sun the books. Li Du had just sat for a round of examinations, and was still silently reciting the
Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
As he went in and out of the library carrying neat piles of books, he felt his mind begin to relax.

Outside, books and poem slips were clipped like clothes to a clothesline and the courtyard was filled with the rippling melody of fluttering pages and buzzing cicadas. The books that were too fragile to hang were spread on long wooden planks.

Shu was setting a jade paperweight on a curling corner of parchment. It was carved in the shape of a lion. He bent to look at it and clicked his tongue. “This warrior has defended many books in his time. See how he has lost an ear?”

Li Du leaned forward and saw the chip amid the jade waves of the lion's mane. “I remember when he lost that ear. It was when Duan was preparing for his final exams and had not slept in three days. The day before the exam, the Emperor requested that all of the books on mapmaking be pulled out and indexed for his immediate perusal. Poor Duan was responsible for that section. He fell asleep in the middle of his work and knocked the lion from the table.”

“And,” said Shu, joining Li Du in the memory with a faraway look, “Duan failed his exam because his hand was shaking so badly that the examiner could not read his writing. You students must take time to rest. Look at you. You have finished your exam and you still look as though you are standing in the dark instead of the sunlight. Go fetch one more set of volumes, and when you return we will drink tea. We did a good job last year. No bookworm tunnels through the pages.”

Li Du returned to the cool stone interior of the library and made his way through its polished and painted corridors. He knew the paintings so well that each was like a window opening to a place that he had visited. When he emerged with the final stack of silk-boxed volumes, Shu was lying on a wooden chair covered in pillows. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he raised a hand and beckoned Li Du over to sit in the other chair. On the table between them, tea steeped in its pot.

“As I was saying,” Shu said, as he lifted himself up slowly and filled their cups, “it is important not to spend too much time worrying when you are young. I am very content, you see. I have read all these books. Because I have read them, you might say that I have consumed them. And because I have consumed them, they are in my belly. And with a belly full of books, I too need to be sunned.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes again, and smiled at his own logic.

Li Du settled into his own chair and looked up through the canopy of pages illuminated by sunlight. He could distantly picture the book that Shu had borrowed the joke from, but decided not raise the matter.

Shu was beginning to lecture Li Du on the importance of allowing the books to cool before returning them to their places when suddenly they both heard a light patter of footsteps outside the courtyard wall. Shu's two grandchildren came running in, their cheeks bright red.

Shu put up a hand and raised an eyebrow in mock censure. The children stopped their headlong rush and stood like soldiers at attention. “Loyal scouts,” he said, “what do you have to report?”

The little girl spoke with grave authority. “Grandfather, you told us to play on the highest hill there and to tell you if we saw any clouds. I have seen—” She opened her little hand one finger at a time and held it up to him. “—four gray clouds.”