The Secrets of Jin-Shei (15 page)

“It’s …” she began, but her voice was still thick with the tears. She swallowed, hard, fighting back a new wave of weeping. “The Ivory Emperor’s beads. You were …”

Kito glanced back at his abandoned task. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was oddly gentle. “I am making the mourning beads. And after that I will have to make the regency beads. For the Empress-Heir is still too young to be raised to the throne, and we do not know yet what the next reign’s bead is going to be.”

Liudan.
In all the time since she had nursed her grief for her lost
jin-shei
sister, Tai had given little thought to the promise she had given as Antian lay dying. Take care of my sister, she had said. Liudan. The angry one.

The Empress-Heir. The Empress to be.

“But how can I do that?” she gasped, out loud, answering her own thoughts. How was she to fulfill her last vow to Antian? Liudan had never given Tai the time of day. She was three years older, proud, wounded by too many things Tai could not heal—and yet Tai had promised to take care of her.

“Pardon?” Kito said, startled.

Tai finally raised her eyes, and there was gratitude in them, and a warmth of what was almost affection. She got to her feet; Kito unfolded his long adolescent frame and rose also, accepting the tea bowl she handed back to him.

“Thank you,” she said, and even managed the shadow of a smile. “You have helped.”

She is beautiful,
Kito thought, irrationally, the thought having just swum into his mind from the Gods alone knew where. A part of him scoffed at it, because there was nothing of beauty in Tai’s flushed cheeks and eyes that were red and swollen from first the unshed tears and then the ones that had come out in a torrent of released grief. But there was something in that half-smile that was luminous.

She bowed to him, formally, her palms together and her fingers laced, and stepped away, about to leave the booth.

“Wait,” Kito said suddenly, instinctively.

He reached into the bin of the carved beads he had been working on, took out a whole one as yet unmarred by his ministrations, and folded Tai’s hand around it.

“They will not,” he said quietly, “all be destroyed.”

The smile on her face lit up her eyes, just for a moment; her fingers closed tightly around the bead. Tai nodded her thanks, backed away, escaped through the outer gate into the streets of Linh-an, leaving Kito staring after her with an expression of astonishment.

T
ai was not part of the funeral procession which wound its way through Linh-an’s streets when the Emperor and his family were taken to their resting place. She could have been, if she had asked—for a
jin-shei-bao
had every right to follow a sister to her funeral. But this was too raw still, much too private and too deep a grief to expose it to the crowds in the streets. Tai had thought she could pay her respects her own way, just by being in the throngs on the pavements when the procession passed, but she had been resigned to being unable to see much of Antian’s last journey from within the crowd which would gather in the streets. All of Linh-an would be there, the throng would undoubtedly be five or six deep on the pavements—she would have to bid farewell to the sister of her heart from behind a wall of humanity. But the Gods, who had given her so much and then capriciously took it all away again, seemed to have repented of their whim and now showered Tai with many small gifts as if to make amends.

One was an unexpected friendship begun in the bead-carver’s booth. It had been Nhia, Tai’s neighbor and friend, who had finally formally introduced the two—she had been acquainted with Kito and his father, among the many craftsmen and merchants in the Temple’s First Circle, for most of her young life. Nhia had accompanied Tai on one of her Temple visits during the weeks prior to the Emperor’s funeral, and Kito had chanced to notice them, and called out a greeting.

“We are kept busy,” he had said, in response to Nhia’s polite inquiry as to his well-being. But his eyes had been smiling at Tai, and hers were downcast, although her mouth curved upward a little at its corners. Nhia’s eyebrow rose a fraction, and she said smoothly, as though she had noticed nothing at all,

“I do not know if you have met my friend. Tai, this is Kito, son of So-Xan, the bead-carver. Kito, this is Tai, daughter of Rimshi, the seamstress.”

They bowed to each other.

“Perhaps you will share another bowl of green tea with me some time,” Kito said. He had been addressing, in theory, both girls—but since Nhia, for all the length of her acquaintance with him, had never partaken of green tea in the bead-carver’s booth she assumed there was a story behind this tea party which excluded her.

Tai had blushed. “I would enjoy that,” she said, and once more Nhia was excluded.

Nhia passed over the mystery with studied innocent ignorance. “Perhaps later,” she murmured, and was rewarded by both her companions throwing startled glances first at her and then, very briefly, at each other. They had made their farewells, and the girls had passed on into the Temple while Kito pretended to turn back to his work—although both Nhia and Tai were sharply aware of the weight of his eyes on their backs.

“He gave me the last Ivory Emperor bead,” Tai had said to Nhia by way of an explanation as they walked away. “I saw him polishing the carvings smooth, making the mourning beads, and he gave me a whole one, one he had not yet marred. He gave me my memory back.”

“And a bowl of green tea,” Nhia murmured.

Tai blushed again, uncharacteristically. “I was crying,” she said softly. “That was … the first time I cried for her.”

Nhia knew that there had been some connection to the Court, over and above Rimshi’s usual Summer Court duties, but she had not known what—and this sentence was cryptic, to say the least. But she was Nhia, and people trusted her—and Tai, after all, was her friend, perhaps her only friend. And now that Antian was gone, there was no secret anymore. Tai raised her head and met Nhia’s eyes.

“She and I were
jin-shei
,” Tai said. “This was the third summer that I shared with my heart-sister. And there was so much in those three years, Nhia, so much! I have already lived a lifetime with her. And now she is gone.”

She had still not named a name, but since this was connected to the Imperial Family it had to be one of the two girls lying dead in the Temple at this very moment.

“Jin-shei?”
Nhia echoed. “With Second Princess Oylian?”

“With Antian,” Tai said. “With the Little Empress.”

Nhia’s step faltered a little. “You were
jin-shei-bao
—to the Little Empress? How in Cahan did that happen?”

So Tai told the tale again, as they sat side by side on one of the benches by the pools of the Third Circle gardens. The tears ran free now, leaving trails on her cheeks as she spoke, and Nhia’s eyes filled in sympathy She hugged Tai at the end, unsure of what to say to lay balm on the hurt—but she was Nhia, and she was overflowing with the stories and the parables and the wisdom that she had picked up during her years within the Temple’s walls, and now she pulled one from her memory.

“When Han-fei crossed the Great River and entered the realm of the Gods,” she began, smoothing away Tai’s hair from her eyes with a motion as tender as a mother’s, “he walked far without meeting anyone, and keeping his eyes on the ground, so that he would not offend any being he met by looking at them without their permission. By and by he came upon a beach, and the beach opened onto a great lake, and the lake was dark and still, like a mirror, and beautiful. More beautiful still was the thing which he saw in the lake—glorious mountain peaks, rank upon rank of them, rising majestic and capped with snow, so high that the sky above them was eternally sprinkled with stars. ‘O, beautiful!’ he said, and fell to his knees in worship of it. And a voice said to him, “This is the image, Han-fei, now look up and behold the truth.” And Han-fei looked up, and the mountains were real and stood around the lake in all their majesty and were not offended that he looked upon them, and knew them, and loved them.” She paused. “It may be,” she said gently, “that the thing which you shared with the Little Empress is just a reflection of something greater and truer that will come to you, that she came to you to show you the way. That she was the image on which you must now build your truth.”

Tai suddenly turned and gave Nhia a fierce hug. “You’ve always been my friend,” she said.

“Sometimes I think you’ve been my only friend,” Nhia said with a trace of bitterness.

Tai sat back and gave Nhia a long look. “That’s not true,” she said. “Everybody likes you. People are always asking you what you think. People trust you.”

“People have never
liked
me, Tai,” Nhia said.

“But you’ve solved all sorts of problems back in SoChi Street.”

Nhia dismissed that accomplishment with a wave of her arm. “That’s not the same. People trust me, yes. Sometimes I think people tell me more than they think I ought to know. But that leads away from affection, not toward it! If they know I know all those things about them, yes, they trust
me—but they will never like me. Folks never like those who know too much about them.”

“You’re one of the wisest people I know,” Tai said sturdily, loyally.

Nhia smiled. “That’s because you haven’t met many people yet.”

“I have,” Tai said rebelliously “In the Summer Palace …”

The words sank into a pool of silence that was sorrow. Nhia reached over and squeezed Tai’s cold fingers.

“I know you have lost something wonderful,” she said. “But you’ve always been a little sister to me, Tai. Sometimes you really were the only person I could talk to. Whatever else happens in either of our lives, I wanted you to know that. It doesn’t make up for the Little Empress, but …”

“But I’ve had a real, live
jin-shei-bao
living next door to me all my life and I never knew it,” Tai said.

Nhia gave her a startled look. “That’s not what I meant,” she began, but Tai turned her hand and laced her fingers through the older girl’s.

“But I mean it,” she said, “if you wish it.”

For a moment, Nhia could not find the voice to speak at all, and then, when the words did come, they were raw with emotion.

“I can hardly take the place of the first heart’s-sister, of the one who would have been Empress,” she said, “but I’ll be your sister if you want me to be. I would be proud to have you call me that.”

That had been the second gift, another
jin-shei,
another place for the love that had been Antian’s legacy to be bestowed.

The third gift of the Gods had been even more unexpected.

A
lthough she’d been coming to the Temple since she was a babe in arms, it had been only in the last year or so that Nhia’s presence had begun making a real impact there. She had barely turned fourteen when she and a young acolyte she had been in conversation with had been approached by a politely deferential older woman who posed the question—to the acolyte—as to which deity she should approach with her problem. “Help me, blessed one, for I am not certain which of the Gods would be best to approach—I am not worthy of what is being asked of me, I need to know …”

It had been Nhia, aged only fourteen and not bound to the Temple hierarchy at all, who had responded to this plea, with a story of Han-fei, the hapless adventurer whose encounters with Gods and Immortals were such a fertile ground to harvest good advice from.

“When Han-fei met with an Immortal beyond the river Inderyn where the Heavens are,” Nhia had spoken into the expectant silence, while the Temple acolyte was still pondering the question, “he threw himself at the feet of the Blessed Sage and would not raise his eyes from the hem of the robe that the Immortal Sage wore. ‘I am not worthy, O Blessed One, I am not worthy!’ The Sage said, ‘What do you see when you look into the mirror, Han-fei?’ And Han-fei said, ‘I see a man with no beauty in his face and no wisdom in his mind and no humility in his spirit.’ And the Sage bade Han-fei take a mirror from his hand and said, ‘Then look again, for what I see is a man with the beauty of face which is a reflection of the modesty of his soul, with the wisdom of mind to know what he does not know, and with the humility of spirit to spend his life in trying to learn and understand the things he is ignorant of. Rise, Han-fei, for you are worthy.’”

The woman had taken Nhia’s hand and kissed it, in silence, and backed away, bowing. The acolyte had stood and stared at Nhia for a long moment.

“Where did you learn that tale?” he had asked.

“I hear many of them, in these halls,” Nhia had said. “I see the teaching monks with the children in the courtyards sometimes. I listen, and I remember them.”

“That is good,” the acolyte had said carefully, “except that the one you just told has never been one of the teaching tales. For all I know, it has never been recorded as having happened to Han-fei.”

“I didn’t just make it up!” Nhia had protested, her heart lurching into her heels. “I must have heard it.”

“You invented it, Nhia, and it was perfect,” the acolyte had said.

Nhia’s first reaction was a rising panic. “Don’t tell anyone,” she pleaded. “I won’t do it again. I just meant to …”

“But why ever not?” the acolyte had asked. “You’re a natural teacher. Perhaps one day you will even be a real part of this Temple; you already know more than some who have been pledged to it for years.”

Whether or not the acolyte told anyone about the incident, Nhia never found out—but only because events overtook her. Even if the acolyte had held his tongue, the woman to whom Nhia had told her Han-fei tale obviously had not.

Haggling over a fish at the marketplace, perhaps a week or so after the encounter at the Temple, Nhia turned to a gentle tugging on her sleeve and was surprised to recognize the seeker from the Temple. The woman was accompanied by a brace of small children, one of them only a few years younger than Nhia herself, all of whom stared at Nhia inscrutably. Nhia stared back, nonplussed.