Hidden Cities (44 page)

He was the one who knew the goddess most intimately, more so even than her own priestesses; she was of the sea and so was he.

Also, he was the one who had negotiated with the dragon.

Of course he was a guest in Ping Wen’s palace.

Guest or prisoner, and who could ever know the difference? He slept in comfort, he was brought fresh clothes every morning, there was always more food than he could eat; and he was always watched, and he could wander wherever he cared to through the palace grounds but the gates were somehow closed to him in the most polite manner imaginable.

Sometimes a captive will deliberately place himself under a stricter watch. Perhaps in protest, perhaps to punish himself for his own situation; perhaps for other reasons, darker or more hopeful, more obscure.

Once Old Yen had found the boy Pao and the children in their pavilion, of course he chose to stay with them.

That this set him too under Jiao’s eye, under the tiger’s—that was not quite coincidence, and not quite immaterial. Jiao had stolen his boat, his boy and the children of his goddess; she had handed them over to Ping Wen, whom both he and she knew to be a traitor; she had led him also into that dreadful confrontation on the water, himself and the goddess and the dragon.

Twice now he had betrayed the goddess. A third time would be
unimaginable, which was why—one reason why—he would not be leading any men of Ping Wen’s across the strait. If he had said or implied otherwise, he was lying for the sake of his head, his friends and his future. And his boat.

For all the same reasons, he would say nothing to Jiao, when all he had was accusation, truth laid bare. He’d rather talk to the tiger. That was at least an honest beast. It didn’t wrap itself in a cloak of kindness, or pretend to an allegiance not its own. Jiao could only keep it by keeping it on a chain.

He had lamented, he still lamented, he was appalled by the dragon’s being free of her chains. The tiger, sometimes he thought he ought to free it quietly in the night, let it run. He knew nothing of tigers, mountain creatures, forest creatures, tree and stone; still something in him thought it should be free. Even here, the wrong side of the water, far from jade.

But he was a practical man, Old Yen. He thought the tiger would rip his old frail bones apart, if he ventured to set it loose. And then he thought it would destroy the children, before it turned to Jiao and at last perhaps to its own freedom: leaping from a window, running like storm through the tame wilderness of the palace garden, taking the guarded wall at a bound and seeking the shortest road out of the city, already sniffing for mountains, for distance, for height and solitude.

Unless the call of its home would be the stronger, unless it turned to the sea and tried swimming to Taishu.

Old Yen wondered vaguely, self-mockingly, if the dragon would let the tiger by. Did power call to power, was there sympathy between one mystical creature and another?

If so, perhaps the goddess would drown the tiger, because she could not drown the dragon. Petty again, but he had seen her in his boat, he had felt her in his body, felt the weak stubborn fury of her grip.

Shrugged her off, denied her, betrayed her.

He wasn’t quite sure—what weighs a lifetime of service, against a sudden betrayal?—but he thought she might be petty enough to drown him, next time he put to sea.

He thought she might try, at least.

If he took the children, would that risk their lives, or save his own? He wasn’t sure, he couldn’t tell. Nothing was clear anymore, in a world where his goddess was a paltry thing, a ragged twist of water on a stick, ineffectual and sour.

Not sure if he could do it, he could plan for it, at least.

He could talk to Pao while the girls were at their games, drowsy in the grass in this late-season heat:

“My boat, boy. What did you do with my boat?”

“Master, I … I misread the tide, and by myself I couldn’t change the sails in time enough to catch her …”

“Yes, yes. No blame to you for that; no one can sail her single-handed. She won’t yield to it, she needs a strong hand on the tiller and swift feet across the deck.” Nothing about that day had been the boy’s fault. He’d done well to bring the boat whole across the strait. A week ago, Old Yen would have told him to be grateful to the goddess.

Now? Well, now he was not so sure. Now he might almost tell the boy to be grateful to the boat. Stubborn determined bastard boat, beaten and broken and never sunk yet …

Again, “What did you do with her?”

“Beached her, master. Not,” as this was confession, staring down at his big bare feet, “not by intent. The tide had us and she was too heavy for the wind, the sand was gripping almost before I had the sails set for it. We came in abeam, and …”

And that was the worst news so far, because she would topple for sure and might be irrecoverable without a team of men and oxen, ropes, supervision. Permission.

He said, “Just sand, though? Sand, not rocks?” only to encourage the boy; and then, “You left her there, like that?”

“She turned bow-on before we struck,” good old boat, self-reliant and wise. “I think the tide would lift her. I had no choice, though, Jiao would never let me stay …”

“No, I am sure not. Will the boat still be there, do you know, have you heard?”

A shake of the head, a shrug; and then a lift of that head, a boy seeking comfort where he could, which was not here and not from Old Yen. Pao looked down to the pond’s margin, where the girls were weaving flower-heads into chaplets of grass. The little girl was laughing, high and shrill. It was hard to tell from here, but Old Yen thought perhaps he heard a second voice, lower and more tentative, older and more damaged, coming back.

“Master, I don’t know. I am not allowed to know, perhaps. I am not the one to ask. I am sorry …”

I
T OCCURRED
to Old Yen that he too might be not allowed to know, as he was so clearly not allowed to go and see for himself.

Still. He was most certainly allowed to ask, because what else was Ping Wen keeping him for, if not for his evident ability to cross the strait with or without the dragon’s consent?

He asked to speak to Ping Wen.

He asked a servant, one of those attentive men who trailed him through the palace, who watched him on his walks and at his meals, who fetched him this and that and the other thing and somehow slitheringly denied him anything that might matter, those things he was too wise to ask for, his freedom or his boat.

He asked for a minute of Ping Wen’s time, when the governor might be at liberty.

The servant looked first toward Jiao, who sprawled at her perennial ease barely out of earshot. She could certainly take Old Yen directly to Ping Wen if the fisherman only asked it. But if they had learned one thing in all their spying, these wary watchful men, it would surely be that Old Yen did not speak to Jiao.

The servant took his query to a sergeant. Ping Wen might pretend to a civilian rank now—with his eyes perhaps on another, a higher, the highest that could be, above all soldiers ever—but the structure of his mind, the hierarchy of his service was all military. Even inside the palace, soldiers watched the servants, soldiers made a wall between the governor and his people.

If Old Yen expected anything, it was to be interviewed through a chink of that wall by some high official allowed to pay court higher yet. More likely, he thought, it would be a brick of the wall itself, an officer of the army who fetched him a refusal.

He was astonished, then, twice astonished not to be refused and not to be summoned either: to look up an hour later and see a little procession coming to him. Soldiers and functionaries, yes, but the man himself among them, Ping Wen come at a fisherman’s request.

What else should a fisherman do, then, but ask about his boat?

“My lord governor,” Old Yen said after no more than a bow, just to underline that he had manners but no courtesies, that he no longer kowtowed even to the emperor, “do you have any news of my vessel?”

Ping Wen should have been furious at this interrogation, by someone so lowly. His face showed nothing, though, beyond a polite confusion. “Your … vessel?”

“My boat, excellence. That Jiao took to bring the children to you.”

“Quite so. Your boat, yes. I regret that I do not have news of it. Perhaps I should. Every vessel in the harbor is important to me, but your own … Well. Let us inquire.”

Inquiry involved no more than the crook of a finger, to draw one man out of his entourage.

“Master Yen’s boat. What news?”

The functionary bowed—a little smugly, Old Yen thought, unless what he read as self-content was actually relief,
this I know
—and
said, “Master Yen’s boat is still on the beach where it was set. It has been put to rights, and will be ready whenever you wish him to depart.”

“Still on the beach? Why so,” frowning, “why has it not been brought to the harbor here, to be convenient?”

“Men were sent, excellence, to do that. They were … they found themselves unable to bring the boat away from shore. It was felt, perhaps, that Master Yen’s own hand on the tiller, his own eye on the sails, perhaps his own voice raised in prayer …”

Absurdly, he was proud of his boat, his bastard boat. She had brought the boy Pao in on sufferance, alive and unhurt with his companions; she would not take strangers out at all. For Old Yen, he was sure, she would lift on the tide and seize the wind and ride out where he would.

And no, next time he would not be praying. His voice would stick in his throat. If the boat did lift, if she did find the wind, she would do it by his skill and her own temper. And he would fly the green banner at his masthead, for all that he hoped to have the girls aboard. Let the goddess and the dragon fight it out between themselves, which one objected and which one let him pass.

He said only, “Thank you, excellence. When you send me, I will know where to find her.”

Or anytime before then, but, “You will find her well cared for,” the official said, “and well watched.”

That he had been afraid of. Or anticipated, at least. Of course they would set a watch on her. There were rebels abroad, and simple runaways too, and every craft was precious.

He was himself, he thought, a runaway, though nothing simple now.

Also—apparently—he was an object of interest now. To the great, and in and of himself.

Ping Wen was not done with him. Indeed, Ping Wen seemed to have small interest in his boat, which was strange in someone who
had welcomed him exactly because he could cross and cross the strait.

Ping Wen said, “Master Yen, tell me about your goddess, and her power in your waters.”

It was the last thing he wanted to do, speak about the goddess who had let him down so badly, whom he had betrayed so well. Also, they were not his waters. He had spent a lifetime believing they were hers. Now, he thought not; he thought the dragon had the better claim.

He said, “I am no priest, excellence.”

“Something to be grateful for. I have spoken to priests. Priestesses. They know nothing of the sea, or of the dragon.”

He had not mentioned the dragon till now. Except that any mention of the goddess now was a mention of the sea, which made it a mention of the dragon too, in the way that any mention of the moon was a mention of the stars she swam among and the sun she could not outface. The one brought the other to mind as irresistibly as the tide brings in the seawrack and the ruin of men, broken wood and bodies in the weed.

Well, Old Yen knew the sea, and something of the dragon—but it was the goddess that Ping Wen asked about.

He could talk about her, of course, he had been doing it all his life. Never easily, he was not a man of words, but she had mattered intensely and he had learned to say so. And he had already betrayed the goddess to the dragon, twice. What difference could it make if he did after all betray her for a third time now? Betrayal was the spirit of the time. He stood with traitors on every hand, Jiao and Ping Wen and Tunghai Wang somewhere beyond, close by …

He said, “The Li-goddess can shift the sea, but only in a small way,” to lift a boat across the rocks, to make a frail banner body for herself and wind it about a pole. “Nothing like the dragon’s storms and tsunamis.”

“And yet she could hold the dragon prisoner all that time?”

“Yes, excellence. If she has a strength, it is perhaps in holding on. The dragon was delivered by the hand of man, I think, already chained; the goddess was her jailer, not her captor. All she had to do was keep hold. It was … necessary, but not arduous. Native to her, I think. The sea endures, and does not let go.”

“And yet she can keep the dragon from attacking ships, a whole fleet of ships, two fleets …?”

Again, “Yes, excellence. If she has someone in the fleet she can possess.”
Not me
. “She needs … solidity, I think, to turn the dragon aside. She needs to work through people. In herself she is immaterial,” where the dragon was so very opposite, so very immediate, so physical.

“Well. This is interesting to me. Can you say more?”

W
HEN HE
had said all he could, when it was obvious to both of them that he had run high onto dry sand with the tide ebbing at his back, the governor left him. With expressions of thanks and instructions to hold himself available, as though there were anything else he might find to do instead, anywhere else he might be permitted to go.

Well, he could learn a lesson from Ping Wen. Where he could not go himself, he could draw someone to him.

H
E BECKONED
one of those ever-present guards. And stood his ground, waited, beckoned again.

When the man came, he said, “I need to speak to the young woman doctor, Tien. She will be somewhere in the city here. Can she be fetched?” It would be complicated, sure, a hierarchy of soldiers and officials and messengers, but he was in hopes that at the last someone would go, and the girl would come.

The guard blinked. “Tien? She is here now.”

“Yes. I said so.”

“No, I mean, she is
here
. In the palace.”