The Secrets of Jin-Shei (29 page)

“Hello?” she called, standing on the threshold, her hand on the handle.

A low groan answered her, and, healer’s privilege, she stepped in, leaving the door ajar behind her. In an adjoining room, a bedchamber, a woman lay on a thin straw-tick mattress in a slatted wooden bed, the sheets twisted about her legs. She appeared to be in a fitful sleep. Yuet wasn’t sure if it had been she who had made the noise or not. But as she hesitated she was addressed from behind by a youthful voice.

“Hello. Are you the healer?”

Yuet turned, and suppressed a gasp of surprise.

The girl that stood before her may have been a little shorter than Empress Liudan of Syai, and her body was still the coltish shape of childhood, without the sweet curves that Liudan was beginning to show—but in all other respects she resembled Liudan strongly enough to be her twin.

“I am Qiaan,” this Imperial double said. The voice was different, slightly higher pitched than Liudan’s.

Yuet blinked, mentally shaking herself.
Just because I dug around in the Blackmail Book and came up with Liudan’s half-sister, now I see them everywhere,
she chided herself sharply. “Yes, I am the healer. And I’ve been looking for you.”

“Yes, Min said someone had asked after me.” Qiaan stood looking at Yuet with a quizzical tilt to her head. “Is there some way I can be of assistance?”

“Are you sick with this disease?”

“No,” Qiaan said, “but my mother and my aunt both are, and I’ve been taking care of a dozen children in the compound who are ill themselves and whose mothers have been sick enough not to be able to cope with it.”

“An organizer,” Yuet said, with a quick grin. “You are most emphatically what I need right now. Xaforn told me your name,” she added, when a look of confusion started to creep into Qiaan’s eyes.

Qiaan’s mouth quirked. “You are Yuet, aren’t you? The one who fixed her ribs, and made her sit out the training for a month? She has spoken to me of you, too.” Her tone left no doubt that Xaforn may have done so in trenchant terms.

The woman on the bed groaned in her sleep. Yuet crossed over to the bed, and laid a hand on her temple. “No fever, but she looks exhausted,” Yuet said in a low voice.

“This is the first sleep she’s had in almost forty-eight hours,” Qiaan said. “She was among the first who got sick. And she was not well before, even. It’s taken a lot out of her.”

“Right,” Yuet said. “We can talk outside.”

They left the bedside, closing the door of the sickroom behind them. “Your mother?” Yuet said, indicating the room they had just left.

“Yes. My aunt is in the second room. She’s been sick too but she hasn’t been as bad.”

“Tell me when all this started.”

Qiaan gave a succinct and cogent summary of the previous few days, describing how the debilitating disease had taken hold in the inner compound. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it might have something to do with the wells—one of the wells started to smell bad right after the first people started coming down with this flux. Once it did, people stopped using that well for drinking water—but by that time …”

“Qiaan!” A feeble voice that still managed to sound peremptory came from a back bedroom, its door pulled nearly to but not quite closed. “I want water!” the querulous voice demanded. “Where have you been? And who are you talking to?”

“My Aunt Selvaa,” Qiaan said, her voice resigned.

“Has she been drinking this tainted water you speak of?” Yuet said.

“I tried not to bring that water here after I had my suspicions about it,” Qiaan said. “But the kitchen might have it. Things could have been cooked in it or washed in it.”

“Qiaan!”

“Coming, Aunt!” Qiaan started toward the second sickroom, grimacing at Yuet.

The healer followed a few paces behind. Qiaan was pouring water from a pottery jar into a shallow cup and offering it to the hatchet-faced woman lying on the pallet in this back room. The patient’s eyes, raised to the girl with the water cup and full in the sight of Yuet as she approached the open door, were snapping with active dislike.

“You just abandon us here, we could die, and you go off.”

“Actually, there
have
been a few that died, Aunt,” Qiaan said with an edge of irritation. “And I am not ill, and others could do with some help. There are children who …”

“You should care more about the woman who took you in,” Selvaa spat out. She was weak from dehydration, her voice was soft, but it carried, and the disease had stripped off whatever sheath of tact had been covering her dislike of Qiaan until now. “My sister helped
you.
Cahan knew what would have happened if she had not forgiven …”

Qiaan stared at her in incomprehension, then reached out for her aunt’s fingers. “The others do not have fever, but you sound …”

Selvaa snatched her hand away. “Water. Give me water. You owe me that, owe
us
that. We took care of you.”

“Let me,” Yuet interceded, stepping between the two. “Your name is Selvaa? I am the healer, Yuet. How long have you been ill?”

“A week,” Selvaa said weakly.

“She took ill yesterday,” Qiaan said quietly.

Selvaa shot her a poisonous look. Yuet ignored both of them for the time being, turning Selvaa over on her back and palpating her abdomen. “Does it hurt when I …”

Selvaa grimaced. “Yes. No. I am not sure. I need water.”

“Yes,” Yuet agreed. She looked up and caught Qiaan’s eye. “And sleep. I will make you a herbal to help you get some rest. Qiaan, show me where I may make an infusion.”

They went back to the front room to pick up Yuet’s satchel and Qiaan led the way to the empty kitchen area. Yuet sniffed at the water in a barrel that stood by the door, and Qiaan said, “That one came from the clean well.”

“You will have to show me this other well,” Yuet said. “In the meantime, put a pannikin of this on to heat for me.” She rummaged in her satchel and came up with a twist of silk, secured with a ribbon tie. Unfolding this on a clean section of the kitchen table, she measured out a quantity of the pungent ground herb it had contained and poured it into the
container Qiaan had swung out over the hearth. They waited until the water with the powder in it boiled, releasing a rich green aroma in the kitchen, and then Yuet set the brewed potion aside to cool a little.

“When it’s cool enough to drink, but still warm, give her a cupful of it—and to your mother as well, when she wakes. I will leave the rest of this packet with you; boil it all up, no more than a pinch or two per pan, and let the children have it—it will help them sleep, and help prevent the dehydration. I need to go back to my workroom and get some more of this, and I will be back with that. In the meantime, if you will find me at least one person who is strong enough to wield tools, we will seal this tainted well before it spreads any more contagion,” Yuet said.

“Is it the water?”

“Probably. I’ve seen this before, it’s sparked by tainted food or water, and then it spreads fast,” Yuet said. “Are there any others who are not ill? We may need a few people to nurse the worst-off through this. And we must make sure that there is clean water enough for washing. Wash your hands after you clean up after someone who is afflicted, and before you allow yourself to go near food or drink. The outer compound draws water from a different well, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, several.”

“I will have to check those too. And I’ll pass the word to other healers, lest this jump the water somewhere and spread into the city. It’s hot, and people will drink tainted water if they aren’t aware that it carries disease. And, Qiaan …”

Qiaan jumped, as though the sound of her name had interrupted some internal train of thought. “Yes?”

“Through Xaforn, who is
jin-shei
to us both, we too are
jin-shei-bao
of a second circle,” Yuet said, smiling. “You’ve done well here.”

Qiaan flushed. “I am not sick,” she said. “I did what I could.” She hesitated. “My mother … should I have called someone … she is so weak. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Make sure she has some of this when she wakes, too,” Yuet said, laying the back of her hand against the cup holding the herbal infusion to test the temperature. “I’ll be back with more presently.” She paused, looking at the faint scowl that had etched itself into Qiaan’s forehead. “Don’t let your aunt upset you,” Yuet said gently. “She is ill. People say strange things when they are not themselves.”

“You said yourself she had no fever,” Qiaan said. “She is hardly delirious.”

“No, but she is suffering, and hurting, and full of self-pity—and you are what is there to pour it all out on. It means nothing.” Yuet reached out and squeezed the other girl’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry. If we can isolate the taint, we can prevent it from spreading—and if we can stop those who are already sick from getting too dehydrated, we have a good chance of stopping this. Luckily it’s isolated and contained here, and it isn’t in the city. And it’s going to get cooler soon, so the heat will not help spread it. Go, take in the infusion. I will be back as soon as I can.”

Qiaan lowered her eyes, took up the potion and went back to her querulous aunt.

Yuet, departing the inner court, went straight to her stillroom by way of a short visit to the Guard Commander on duty in the main compound to request a full short-term quarantine for the patients in the family quarters and immediate attention to the delivery of clean drinking water until the problem of the tainted well could be dealt with. She washed her hands with lye soap to make sure they were free of whatever agent was causing the infection in the inner court and raided her stocks of dried herbs, grinding a mixture of roots and leaves into quantities of fine powder and pouring it into stoppered earthenware flasks. She stowed each batch of the preparation in her satchel as she finished it, to take back to the compound.

As she worked, she heard a diffident knock on the thick oaken door of the stillroom, and left her mortar and pestle, wiping her hands on her still-room smock as she did so, to answer it.

“I beg your pardon, mistress,” said the servant, “I would not disturb you at your work, but there is a messenger from the Palace, and I thought …”

“Ask him to wait,” said Yuet. “I will be right up, as soon as I’ve finished this particular batch. I will only be a few moments.”

“Yes, mistress.” The servant bobbed her head and turned to go back up the winding stone stairs leading down from the main house.

The messenger who was waiting in the anteroom wore the colors of Third Prince Zhu, Liudan’s older half-brother. Yuet, distracted by too many things on her mind, cast about for a reason why that name should have been so meaningful to her right at that time, but could find nothing to attach it to and simply offered the messenger a professionally detached smile instead.

“Is there a problem in the Prince’s household?” she asked politely.

The messenger bowed. “The Royal Prince Aya-Zhu asks that you attend his bride at your convenience,” he said. “She is somewhat indisposed after their return from their travels.”

Yuet’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Prince
Aya
-Zhu? When was His Highness wed?”

“In the third week of Siantain, in the spring,” the messenger said.

“Ah. I was away from Linh-an then.” Yuet paused, as something suddenly struck her. The reason the name was familiar was because … because the Prince had been betrothed to …

She frowned.

Nhia had said something to her, back before they had left for Liudan’s retreat. About the betrothal of Khailin, Chronicler Cheleh’s daughter.

To Third Prince Zhu.

According to ancient custom, the bride and groom twinned their names at their wedding, the partner’s name coming first in the new, hyphenated version. If Prince Zhu had married the woman to whom he had been betrothed, he should have been Khailin-Zhu, and his wife would have become Zhu-Khailin. Sometimes longer names were abbreviated, for the sake of ease of pronunciation, but “Aya” did not sound like something that could easily have been extracted from a name like Khailin. If anything, Yuet would have expected a Khai-Zhu, or even a Lin-Zhu—but Aya?

“The Prince,” she said carefully, “I thought he was betrothed to another lady, Khailin, daughter of the Court Chronicler Cheleh?”

“The Princess Consort Zhu-Aya was of the house of the merchant An-Nhuy before her marriage,” said the messenger, and Yuet saw his lips purse in disapproval. But he was not saying any more, and Yuet, frowning slightly, turned back to professional mode.

“Is the Princess’s indisposition of a serious nature?” she asked. “I will come at once, if so—but if not, I would beg leave to make a detour first in order to deliver some urgently needed medicine.”

“The Princess is not in immediate danger,” the messenger said grudgingly after a moment.

Yuet nodded. “I will be at Prince Zhu’s quarters within the hour, then.”

She was a healer. She had responsibilities. The mysteries that were piling up around her had to wait their turn.

After delivering the first batch of medicine to the inner court and leaving instructions with Qiaan and the batch of able-bodied “nurses” she had
rounded up from among the stricken quarter, now quarantined against casual visitors, Yuet washed her hands with lye once again to make sure she was not carrying the infection out of the area and paid a visit to Princess Zhu-Aya. The Princess turned out to be suffering from nothing more serious than the first pangs of morning sickness. She was a plain little thing, sallow-skinned and so small-boned that Yuet, casting a glance on the narrow bony hips of the pregnant woman, had a twinge of misgiving as to how she was ever going to deliver a healthy child without succumbing to it. But she had no time to worry about that now. She had a far more immediate problem on her hands.

“I need an apprentice,” she muttered to herself when she left the Palace. It was barely noon, and she was already exhausted.

She stopped off at her house for just long enough to pick up another batch of her herbs, and leave word that she would be away for the rest of the day, suggesting alternative healers for those patients who came in with emergencies. Then she returned to the beleaguered inner court, where Qiaan was gamely holding the fort, and rolled up her sleeves.