Hidden Cities (38 page)

She could do that.

She could.

S
HE COULD
open her eyes, just that, and see—

S
EE A
figure bent over the empress’s chair, and prop herself up on one elbow with a scowl forming.

S
EE BROAD
shoulders and a shaved head, dark clothes. One of the old woman’s eunuchs, then, and no surprise that he went to her—but
no, that wasn’t right. Even in the dim shadows under the rain-roof she could see that he wore trousers rather than the proper robe, which no eunuch ever did or would.

S
EE THE
old woman’s feet kick suddenly beneath her coverlet, kick and kick.

S
EE IT
all very differently, all in a moment.

N
OT A
servant bringing news, no. The man was a stranger. His dark clothes said that he came skulking, that he sought to hide in shadows; his wet clothes said that he came from the rain, from the hillslope, over the balcony’s edge.

His silence named him an assassin. His choice of victim—of
first
victim—named his master, perhaps. The empress had done what she could to slay Ping Wen, had failed and failed. This was surely the price of failure.

Mei Feng had done better, sending him into exile. She would be next, no question: she and her baby too, two in one, and that would be the death of empire right here, laid out in their generations in the soft fall of rain. Mother and lover and child, all together. Chien Hua could not survive this.

The old woman was kicking less strongly already. There was a cushion, Mei Feng thought, held over her head and pressed down, soft and perfumed and relentless. She hadn’t even managed to free her hands. She would hate that, to go to her tomb with her nails unbloodied of her killer.

Mei Feng had nothing to throw but cushions of her own, and crying an alarm would only bring servants to the slaughter.

N
EVERTHELESS
.

Mei Feng screamed, and hurled cushions.

Noises in the house behind, too late, too slow, just as she was
herself. The killer turned from the old woman’s sprawled body, and now Mei Feng was just another victim in waiting, next in line.

He was between her and the door, and her legs were tangled in the covers and she was weak yet, not fit for vaulting balcony rails and running from assassins.

All she could do was tumble out of her long chair into the corner here, with the awkward angularity of the chair itself to shield her just a little.

She was a woman, that much he knew. Pregnant, sick, he might know those things too.

If he carried a blade, he didn’t trouble to draw it. His hands were weapons enough, even in a hurry, even with footsteps pounding through the other noises of the house.

The sprawl of the chair didn’t delay him long. No need to be quiet now, only quick: he kicked it aside and came at her, where she cringed back in the corner. His fingers were reaching already. One good grip of her neck, one swift snap and away. The way he had come, the way she wasn’t fit to go, over the rail and drop down the hill. There were guards, of course, or there should be—but they should have met him coming up the hill.

Perhaps they did.

He might live, he might not. It didn’t seem to matter to him yet, so long as she did not.

He reached down to seize her—

—
JUST AS
she came thrusting up, swinging her arm around from behind her back.

This was the corner where she kept the tea-things.

He couldn’t see that for the spread of the light sleeping-robe she wore; he couldn’t have imagined that she would find a weapon here, or be fit to use it.

He could never have anticipated the kettle.

It was a brutal heavy thing, bronze and ornate, that took a good hour over a charcoal bed to come anywhere near a boil. Mei Feng used it for the empress’s sake, because the old woman treasured it enough to have brought it all the way from the Hidden City; and for her own sake, because once it was heated it would keep its water hot for hours.

Even now there was a warmth in it, after it had sat half the night half-full and disregarded while they dozed.

Mei Feng rose up swinging it like a club.

She might be pregnant, she might still be sick, she might not be fit to leap and run—but she had the strength of emperors in her bones and blood, and perhaps the lingering memory of the tiger’s strength, borrowed from its skin.

And she had her baby to defend and the old woman to avenge, all her own unborrowed passion to draw on; and if she was screaming again as she surged upward, that was all for herself and her sheer fury that he would dare to do this, to bring cold death to women—and to babies, her baby!—after such a night, after such lives lived or waiting to be lived, such an empress so casually smothered.

Herself, she had a lifetime of practice, clubbing fish.

He was quick, just not as quick as she was. Strong too, he was strong; just … Well. Not as strong.

He flung his arm out to block hers as it swung.

She felt the impact, felt his bones shatter.

He might have screamed then, that might have been his turn to scream, but he didn’t have the time.

Her arm swung on its arc, barely delayed, with the ponderous weight of the kettle in her grip.

The great thick bronze rim of it caught his skull and he fell all in a sudden, as a cliff might, undercut. And lay like a rockfall at her feet, utterly still, his crushed head blessedly lost in the shadows.

·  ·  ·

S
HE HEARD
the scream die out of her slowly, losing itself in a whistling kind of gasp.

S
HE HEARD
the kettle fall at her side, felt a splash of warmth across her feet.

V
AGUELY, VAGUELY
hoped that that was water.

A
ND THEN
there were people: women and eunuchs rushing from the house, too late; soldiers from the hill, from all around the hill, too late and far too late.

T
HEN SHE
wanted to sit down, and there was no chair.

T
HEN PERHAPS
she broke, for a little bit.

I
T WAS
later, surely, some time later that she pushed her women away and made herself walk—in fresh slippers, she noticed, and this was not the robe she had been wearing, and when had she come inside the house?—back out onto the balcony, to where the empress still lay on her bed-chair, under a light coverlet.

T
HEY HAD
taken her cushions away, except for one beneath her head.

S
HE LOOKED
terrible, wax-pale and cruelly gaunt and …

A
ND NOT
dead.

B
REATHING
.

B
ARELY SO
, a hoarse dry rattle in her throat, hardly enough to stir the coverlet across her chest, but breathing none the less.

·  ·  ·

M
EI
F
ENG
dropped to her knees beside her, gripped the old woman’s bone-cold bone-bare fingers and said, “Fetch Master Biao. With his tiger-skin. Now!”

“Lady,” they said, “we have sent men already. You told us to, before.”

She did? She didn’t remember.

“The emperor too,” she said. “Someone should go to tell the emperor …”

“That too, lady. You ordered it. Of course a message has gone to the emperor.” Of course. Not a summons—one did not summon the Son of Heaven!—but he would come regardless. His mother, his lover, his child-to-be: he would come.

Till then …

“Where is the, the, the …?”
The body
, but a gesture stood in for the word of it, a waft of her hand toward the wet scrubbed boards where the assassin had died. At her hand, at her feet. All over her feet.

“In the cess-pit, lady. Where you had us throw him.”

She seemed to have been … most efficient. Ahead of herself. It was just so strange, not to remember any of it. Or to remember only those parts she didn’t want to keep. The old woman’s legs kicking at nothing, the assassin’s face as he came for Mei Feng. The splash of warm wet across her feet.

Her hand was back at her belly where it belonged, but here was one of the women offering her a cup, a steaming cup. Some description of tea: pale gold and clear as sunlight, a scatter of dark twisted leaves settling in the bottom like a dashed character she couldn’t read. She ought to learn to read. The emperor ought to teach her. Then he’d have one cause fewer to be ashamed of her, she’d have one cause fewer to be embarrassed before their child as it grew.

She reached for the tea, and hesitated just as her fingers touched the cup.

Oh.

She lifted her eyes to the woman’s, wishing she had Dandan back. Dandan would have known, wouldn’t need the question.

“How did you,” no, try again, “where did you make this?”

“In our kitchen, lady.”

Of course, in their kitchen. Not out here. Even so …

“What, what with?”

Now, at last, the woman understood. Understood and smiled. Mei Feng could hate her for that smile. Could send her back to the city, just for smiling.

“With our own kettle, lady. Not the empress’s.”

Of course, not the empress’s, or they would still be waiting for the water to boil. Even so …

“Where is …?”
Not here
was not enough of an answer.

“In our kitchen, lady.”

Of course, in their kitchen. Not out here and not used for this, but scrubbed and standing ready, like any dutiful servant that has come a long long way with their mistress.

Mei Feng shuddered. She ought to be grateful to the thing, but, “Throw it in the pit, with …”
With the man it killed. The man I killed
.

“Lady, the empress …”

The empress loved that kettle, yes. Or valued it, or clung to it past reason for reasons that seemed good enough to her. It didn’t really matter which way you said it. The kettle had its own truth, and so did the empress now when Mei Feng turned to look at her. Pointedly.

“The empress … will not be worrying for a while, how her tea is made.” Or ever again, perhaps. Unless Master Biao came soon, unless his tiger-skin could work its miracle one more time, to fetch one more woman back from the land of ghosts.

Meantime, the empress had no voice and no will, and Mei Feng could usurp her utterly. “Throw it in the cess-pit,” she said again. Otherwise it would be kept, she knew, and find its way back into use here or in the workmen’s camp or somewhere. She did not
want that. In her head it was crushed, broken, spilling, like a skull. She wanted it gone.

And this at least was an order she had not given already, something not dealt with yet. That was a relief. The world did move on, seemingly; she could still make it move.

“Yes, lady.”

Perhaps she should watch the woman all the way, see the thing done. See the body in the pit, that too, just to know it. Not to see it everlastingly at her feet, and spilling.

Perhaps she should, but she seemed to be sitting down, on her righted chair, just here. Cup in hand, a waft of scented steam, leaves settling into new patterns, still unreadable.

Perhaps she only didn’t want to leave the empress. Someone ought to sit with her, she thought. Till the emperor came.

She wished he would hurry. Master Biao too, him perhaps especially. The old woman was not too strong to fail. Mei Feng could hear her breathing, the fine thin thread of it like silk unreeling. Sometime there must come an end. Hearts beat and beat, and then they stop beating. Even infused with jade, like this water infused with tea: left to stand, it would cool, it would spill eventually or just dry up in the cup. Not even tea was eternal. Not even bitter old women.

Mei Feng sat and wished, sat and waited, sat and watched.

The balcony looked south, toward the mountains; the road from Taishu-port lay northerly, around the hill.

It was Master Biao she watched for, rather than the emperor.

T
HE SUN
lay on the hills like a gift, like tea in a cup. The rain-shadow moved across them like a scrawl of darkness, ink from a brush, leaves in the bottom of a cup.

She saw movement, figures coming out of the trees there.

Too many of them. For a moment she was disappointed,
not Master Biao
.

She couldn’t hope to see from this distance, but she looked regardless.
There was a man, a tubby man with something heavy in his hands: something like the fall of forest shadow, dark and greenly. Master Biao always insisted on carrying the tiger-skin himself. It lent him strength, she thought.

Who were all these other people, then? So many of them, a parade. She was still too far away, or they were—but that tall one leading, the one that almost made her think of the emperor, that had to be Yu Shan. She was surprised that he would come, that he would leave Siew Ren even for this—

—
UNTIL SHE
had watched for a little while longer, and seen how the figure who walked beside him was bent and awkward, how her walk betrayed her.

That was Siew Ren herself, and walking. Not even with the skin around her shoulders. Mei Feng had not known that she could walk again. Perhaps she had not known it herself. Watching them come in file over open ground, Mei Feng saw that not only Siew Ren was hurt. Little things, really too small to be seen from here: the set of a young man’s shoulders, the swing of a woman’s leg. There was stiffness and the memory of pain, a lingering distrust of the physical world that was echoed all along the line.

Slowly they came, too slowly for her although they were obviously hurrying. Slowly she understood. These were Master Biao’s patients, all those clansfolk he had been treating with the tiger-skin. They were the emperor’s own, all volunteers, his personal bodyguard; that was how they came to be hurt. They might be following the tiger-skin, but they were coming to her. Reporting for duty. They would need her to believe that.