Hidden Cities (46 page)

“Jiao will tell him.”

“Perhaps. He will be busy with the dragon, and perhaps not interested in runaway children. He may not need the children, when he is done with the dragon. Or he may not have time to spare, or men to send in chase. I don’t know; but if you go—and I want you gone—tonight is the time. If I stay, perhaps pursuit will be delayed, or less whole-hearted. Besides which, I am very curious to know what business he has with the dragon, and why he wants me there, and the doctor, and her crippled men.”

S
O TOO
was Pao curious, but not enough to keep him here. Not if he had a chance to get the girls away.

While Old Yen talked to Jiao in the last of the sunlight, Pao had crumbled poppy into her pepper noodles. He had no idea how much was needed. “Just a little,” Old Yen had said; he didn’t know either, he had never done this either. Pao wanted to be generous, but there was always the fact of the tiger lurking in his mind. However much he needed to be sure Jiao was sleeping, he’d need far more to be sure of the tiger.

So:
that
much went into Jiao’s supper, and then a little bit more; and all the remainder was for the tiger, rubbed into the skinned haunch of deer that he tossed out onto the balcony. The tiger had a tongue like a rasp. It lay for a while with the meat clamped beneath one tremendous paw, licking: stripping flesh away, shredding it just with that tongue, soaking in—Pao hoped—that poppy. Then it slunk off to its hidden place below the balcony, with what remained of its supper clenched in its jaws.

Pao was concerned that the drug would act too soon, that the tiger wouldn’t reappear for night-duty, that Jiao would grow suspicious at its absence. Acting normally was so hard, spending time with the girls, making sure they both ate while his attention was all on that empty doorway.
Come on, drag yourself up, sleep on the boards as you always do, only deeper …

And then Shola had an accident, she tipped her soup across the floor; and instead of being upset at the mess of it big Jin reached out with her chopsticks and set the spilled prawns all in line along a floorboard amid a puddle of steaming broth and said “Ducks on a lake, in mist,” while Shola giggled, while Pao stared incredulous. It was so wonderful that he forgot all about the tiger until he was glancing around to find if Old Yen had heard her too, or even Jiao—and there was the great barred flank of the beast blocking the doorway as it ought to be, and the relief was almost as tremendous as the terror.

P
AO WAS
, entirely, terrified. They were not prisoners, any more than Ping Wen was emperor; and yet he and the children were in imperial custody here. The governor stood for someone higher, which made it something close to treason even to think about slipping away.

He wanted to be gone, though, he wanted to go home. He was afraid that Ping Wen meant to use the girls in some treacherous invasion of Taishu. With or without Tunghai Wang. Something had shifted; everyone felt it. The governor had the measure of the generalissimo,
he had defended the indefensible. He would not stop there. Not here, the wrong side of the strait. He and Tunghai Wang would meet tomorrow, and what came of that meeting would bode no good for the emperor.

Pao wanted to sweep the girls up and go. Leave Ping Wen stranded without a vessel that could safely leave port, but that was a side-blow. Mostly, he wanted to see the girls safe.

It was Old Yen’s plan, but Pao’s to do. He had to make it happen.

Well. He had been a kitchen boy, a soldier and a deckhand, all in a year; he could be an adventurer, no doubt, a daredevil hero leading children out of danger, finding a way to take them home.

No doubt.

No doubt at all.

S
O, THIS
.

Jiao snoring in the back room. The girls awake and dressed, a little confused, a little excited, Shola importantly explaining to Jin how very quiet they would need to be, how very brave.

The fisherman awake and watching from his corner, saying nothing, moving not at all.

The tiger …

Well.

The tiger was a shadow that glowed greenly dark where it lay like a wall of flesh and fur between them and freedom.

Pao had gathered up what few things he was taking against need, though he didn’t really need even those. No weapons, they couldn’t fight their way to safety. It was the fisherman’s plan; Pao only had to trust it, and to make it happen.

Well. He could do that.

F
IRST, HE
had to do something more demanding.

He had to step over the tiger.

·  ·  ·

E
VEN IN
darkness it had weight, it had warmth. Did it move, did it breathe? Pao wasn’t sure.

He stood there with the girls one on either side and waited for his courage to find him, to lift his leg and stretch it far, far over that great slump of flesh and bone and belly, the farthest step of his life.

He waited, and the courage didn’t come.

Waited longer. Nothing still.

At last, it was little Shola who moved. Far too small to manage that step, too small even to leap across the tiger without touching it, she lifted up her arms imperiously,
me first
.

She gifted Pao his courage. He lifted the little girl by the wrists, swung her back and forth through the air as if they were playing monkey-in-the-tree, swung her right over the broad striped expanse of tiger and into the fall of moonlight beyond.

And had to make that step, to go with her, to give her a quiet landing on the other side.

Having once stepped, it was easy. The tiger didn’t stir. Pao set Shola on her feet, steadied her, smiled at her—and stepped back again.

Took Jin’s hand and swung it vigorously, much as he had swung her sister.
Once, twice, and over we go
—and they stepped in unison, long legs matching, bare feet coming lightly down together on bare boards a heel’s-width from the long green fringe of the tiger’s belly-fur.

No looking back now. Pao kept hold of Jin’s hand, reached for Shola’s, tugged his girls away—

—
AND THEN
looked back after all, because he felt a movement, a shift of weight and purpose at his back. Perhaps he heard the faint scrape of iron on iron, one link against another.

The tiger lifted its head, its eyes glowing jade-green at him, fierce and aware and not asleep at all.

·  ·  ·

B
REATH WAS
somewhere else, perhaps. Not here.

T
HE TIGER
stared, he stared, he couldn’t help it; he couldn’t look away.

A
FTER A
long, long moment, the tiger lowered its head again. Lay watching, unengaged, much as the fisherman had. This was still Pao’s, apparently, to do.

A
T LAST
he managed to move again, in response to two imperious tugs. Perhaps it was the girls’ to do after all, perhaps they were rescuing him.

H
E FELT
the cold burn of the tiger’s eyes, all the way down the balcony steps and along the margin of the pond. When he looked back one last time, he could still see them shine like wet stone in moonlight, two pure glints of green.

T
HEN HE
was alone with two girls in the palace gardens, and even this seemed very big, never mind the world beyond the wall. Now it really was all his to do: no old man watching in the corner of his eye, no snoring of an enemy defeated, no vast mystical beast seeming suddenly to collude with him. Only the vast and ordinary world, full of people who would stop him if he was momentarily careless or foolish, ambitious or betrayed or just unlucky.

Best not to be any of those, then.

Here was a path that would bring them to a gate. It would be locked and guarded both; that didn’t matter. He had no notion of the gate.

Here the garden was an artifice of forest, trees and rocks and hidden pools all crowded close, a wild mountain in miniature. Just before the path would have led them out of those concealing shadows, it bent around a sudden high upthrust, a pillar of rock made by man to mirror what the gods had made before him.

What man has built up, he has also climbed down again. What he can climb down, he can climb up again.

That at least was Pao’s theory, and Old Yen’s before him.

Where a man can climb, so can a boy. And two girls.

Shola didn’t want to go first, but someone had to. The back face of the pillar was cut for climbing; still, someone had to show Jin what was possible, and it couldn’t be him. He needed to stay below in case of trouble, discovery, any kind of change in the quiet of the garden.

Up the little girl went, then, climbing as though she still played monkey but peering down constantly, moonface in the moonlight, as good as a guiding lamp almost. Pao could point to her—
see what she does, see how easy?
—and urge Jin to the rock face, set her hands on the first grips and let her go. She was a natural, or else she was recovering something of the girl she used to be. Pao watched for a little and thought he could almost, almost stop worrying.

Once she was high enough that he really couldn’t help her if she fell, then he started up himself.

Perhaps darkness made the climb easier. In daylight, from below, they might have been daunted. Climbing largely by touch, they found that the rock was cut almost in steps, almost perilously safe. Shola at least was not troubling much with handholds, gripping the climbing creepers more than the stone beneath; she was small enough, light enough to get away with that, but if big Jin had copied her …

Jin copied her little sister in many things, but not in this. She hadn’t seen, or else she was too wise inside. Her body knew her own heft. Slowly and steadily she climbed, nothing at all like a monkey, rock-solid and rock-sure.

Here was the top of the pillar, and the three of them safely gathered in that narrow space. Here was a tree atop all, rooted in the rock they stood on; and Old Yen was right, the branches of the tree reached out as far as the palace wall.

The wall was a declaration, as much as a barrier:
power dwells within
. A fence, a stream, a line of trees would have served as well. A string would have been enough, if people understood it. The wall was meant to keep people out, not in. The palace was not a prison. Who would ever need to escape from the governor’s own private garden?

These did, and it proved almost easy, much closer to easy than Pao had dared to hope. Shola led the way again, once he had boosted her into the tree’s lower branches. She squirmed out along a stout bough, hung from her hands and dropped down astraddle the tiled ridge of the wall. Waved cheerfully at her sister, who waved back before she set herself to the same task, stretching up to grip that branch, hauling herself onto it with little help from Pao.

His heart was in his mouth as he watched her; that branch seemed not so stout beneath her weight. Indeed it was bending already, and he weighed more …

Still, fine branch, beloved branch, it wouldn’t break, it didn’t; and that bending made it simple for Jin to transfer from branch to wall. No drop at all, her legs were astride the tiles before she had to let go.

His turn: and if it had bent for Jin, it bent more for him. Bent and whipped back and bent again, up and down, springy and determined. It might almost have tossed him over the wall altogether, if he’d let go at the right time. But he held on, and clambered from branch to wall, and let it snatch itself away.

Then it was his turn to lead. He hung from his hands and slithered as far as he could down the wall, kicked a little away from it and let go.

It wasn’t a long drop to ground, but the wall was built above a steep ditch. His feet hit the slope, his body toppled backward and there was nothing to do but fall and roll. At least the bottom of the ditch was dry, after days and days with no rain. Just for a moment he lay still, dizzy mind in a dizzy body; then he picked himself up
and scrambled back to the foot of the wall. Held his arms up at full stretch, waited for Jin: who took Shola’s wrists and lowered the little girl wholesale, down securely into his grip.

Jin followed, while he was still setting Shola on her feet. Hanging as he had, she let go before he could hope to reach her. And hit ground as he had, and tumbled as he had, and rolled down into the ditch.

Pao held his breath, fearing shrieks of pain or shrieks of glee, either one disaster. But Jin only lay in the bottom of the ditch, gasping quietly. When he plunged down to her side, she lifted her head and he saw silent laughter. She lifted one hand to her mouth to gag herself in mum-show, to let him know she understood the need. Then she held the hand up to him and he hauled her to her feet and she beamed in the moonlight as though she wanted to do it all again.

Perhaps she did. Shola too: a gesture brought her wildly running down the too-steep slope of the ditch, arms waving, on the very edge of falling all the way, with only his body to be her brake, to save her from calamity at the bottom.

They were enjoying themselves too much, these girls. He had to be frightened for all three of them.

Well, he could do that. It was easy. They trusted him to see them safe away. He had no one to trust but himself, whom he did not trust.

With the palace behind them and no one chasing, they were just three children abroad in the city, in the night. They might have been anyone, going anywhere. They had good and obvious reasons to shun noise and lamplight, to sidle into alleys and avoid company. No one who saw them would think twice, except to wonder if they could be caught and kept, or caught and sold.

Perhaps no one saw them at all, or else no one who saw them could be troubled to chase. They climbed the high valley side, and here might have been harder than escaping the palace; there was
no wall but here the soldiers were watching for an enemy army, they had reasons to be alert. All their attention was bent on the horizon, though, they weren’t looking for anyone slipping out of the city. Or if they were, they weren’t interested in children. Perhaps they thought it made sense for children to be leaving. The edge of the city was like unhemmed silk: houses fraying into gardens, gardens into paddy. It wasn’t hard to slip between one house and another, to walk the paddy paths in moonlight.