The Secrets of Jin-Shei (30 page)

She did not leave the inner court again for over a week, except to go back for more medicine.

Yuet had never balked at the messier aspects of the healer’s craft. She had cleaned up blood, pus, and excreta before. But there were very few helping hands here, and so many who needed help. With Qiaan’s assistance they had moved the worst-off—patients which included Qiaan’s own mother, who had lapsed into semiconsciousness despite everything that could be done for her—into a single space, a large communal hall where the populace usually gathered to hold dances or watch the occasional theater troupe which came touring into Linh-an. Yuet had organized a number of low sickbed pallets, and the patients were lined up in rows, the smallest children separated in their own section where someone was on constant supervisory duty. Supplies of water and food were carefully vetted by Yuet herself, and, as she trained their eye and judgment for what they were looking for, by a number of understudies including Qiaan herself. A constant bubble of broth and herbal teas was kept going on the kitchen hearths by a number of other volunteers.

The sickness appeared to be contained; it did not spread outside the compound, and several of the city’s other healers came in to offer their aid after word of the outbreak reached them. When the first of these arrived, Yuet finally allowed herself to go home and take a shift off, scrubbing
herself clean and then falling into bed to catch up on a week’s lost sleep. She stayed home for a day, letting her cook cluck and coo over her, feeling grateful for the luxury of being cared
for
instead of propping weak women up to take a mouthful of nourishment or making fractious, seriously dehydrated children drink foul-tasting herbals which would make them better.

There were several messages from her regular patients regarding chronic complaints, a number of them from the pregnant Princess who was not having a good first trimester—but Yuet contented herself with sending messages of instruction to all of them as to how to proceed in the interim period, and as soon as she felt rested enough to think straight again she took herself straight back to where the battle was being fought for children’s lives.

They buried a number of those children, the smallest ones, the weakest ones, the ones who had no strength to endure the racking vomiting and acute diarrhea that accompanied the sickness. In the deep night, by candlelight, there would be women and girls—healers or volunteers who had not fallen ill or had recovered enough to lend a hand—passing by the pallets of the fitfully sleeping patients, checking on their breathing, supporting children as they retched painfully over basins. It was a constant vigil, and it was made worse by the knowledge that outside the perimeter of this closed circle were the mothers and fathers of some of the children in this compound, Guards who had been out of the family area and were now banned from it until the sickness could be contained, who watched and waited helplessly while the healers and their helpers tried to snatch as many as they could back from the brink.

There were no new cases of the disease after the end of that first week, after Yuet had sealed the tainted well and all the drinking water was being fetched from other, clean sources until a new well could be dug for the compound. By the end of the second week those who would recover were out of danger—utterly broken, weak as newborn kittens, having lost a lot of weight, but alive and on the road to recovery.

Only then did Yuet order a massive cleaning of the compound, scrubbing floors with strong-smelling bleach and lye solutions, throwing new whitewash over walls. They burned the sickroom pallets as they became vacated.

The new-look compound, aside from its crop of recovering convalescents with straggling, unwashed hair and hollow cheeks, looked spruced up and almost brand new by the time they were done. When the quarantine was lifted, a little over two and a half weeks after Yuet had imposed it,
the epidemic had been averted. There was mourning in the Guard circles for their losses, especially among the young and the elderly—but there was also great joy as the sundered families were allowed to come together once again.

One of the casualties had been Rochanaa, Qiaan’s mother, who had slipped away very quietly one night. Qiaan had been with her, and it was in the circle of her daughter’s arms that she had passed to Cahan, but she never knew it—at the very end she had lapsed into deep unconsciousness and had simply never woken up again. Qiaan had sat there for some time, her dead mother’s head on her lap, quiet tears on her cheeks. But then she had arranged Rochanaa’s limbs in a seemly position, kissed her on the forehead one last time, and appeared to wish to drown her mourning in the hard work of caring for other patients who needed her.

Selvaa had recovered, but had not offered her help as a volunteer—had, in fact, tried twice to leave the compound despite explicit instructions to the contrary. It had been Qiaan who had stopped her the second time;Yuet had seen the confrontation, but from a distance, and had not known what it was that Selvaa had said but she had seen Qiaan recoil from her as though she had been slapped. Then she had firmly gripped her struggling and protesting aunt’s arm and marched her back to her quarters. Her face had been one thunderous scowl when she had returned to the makeshift hospital hall.

“I threatened that I would lock her in if I had to,” she muttered to Yuet.

“What did she say to you?” Yuet asked.

“What?”

“Just now, when you brought her back. I saw it. She said something to you again, something hurtful.”

“She said that I didn’t have to feel guilty for having my mother die in my arms,” Qiaan said after a painful moment, “because she wasn’t my mother. Because … I was … adopted.”

Yuet shot her a startled look. “Some people,” she said, “make hurting a pleasure.”

“She may be right,” Qiaan said in a strange voice. “I never really thought about it, not so as to try and figure out why or anything like that, but my mother always found it curiously difficult to like me.”

Yuet laid a comforting hand on the younger girl’s arm. “Whatever else is true, this is: she was your mother, she brought you up, and nothing Selvaa tells you is enough to deprive you of the chance to mourn her properly.”

Qiaan lifted her dark eyes, Liudan’s eyes, to Yuet in a grateful look. “You have been a miracle to us,” she said.

“I am a healer,” Yuet said, smiling a little sadly. “I try to snatch the sick from the jaws of Cahan every day of my life.”

Qiaan suddenly reached out and hugged Yuet, hard, with tears standing in her eyes. “Cahan cannot have everything it desires,” she whispered fiercely. “Thank you. For everything you have done here.”

“Anytime you want a job, I’ll take you on as an apprentice,” Yuet said. She was joking, trying to turn the emotional moment, but she found, to her surprise, that she was more than half serious. Qiaan had the patience, the understanding and, most important of all, a good dose of that gently bullying quality so essential in every good healer.

But she had smiled and shook her head. “I am not sure what I want to do with my life as yet,” she said, “but I could not do what you do.”

“You did it here,” Yuet pointed out.

“Yes, but these were my people,” Qiaan said. “People I knew, and cared about.”

“When you are a healer,” Yuet said, “all people are your people.”

But she had not pressed it.

She went back home feeling as though she had just herself weathered a bad bout of the disease she had spent a fortnight nursing others through, and dealt with only the most pressing of emergencies before taking a few days off to recuperate.

Tai came in to see her with a batch of nut biscuits she had baked herself and a bunch of late-blooming chrysanthemums which she arranged in one of Yuet’s vases. To Yuet, whose life in the past couple of weeks had been confined to the bare essentials, the biscuits were a touch of pure luxury. She munched on them, watching Tai fuss with the flowers, and pronounced them delicious.

“And how has the rest of the world been while I was out of it?” she asked, when the first hunger had been sated.

“Well, Prince Aya-Zhu and his unexpected bride were the sensation of the Autumn Court,” Tai said. “Nhia is particularly upset—she has been so much part of the Court recently, and she had no inkling. She and Khailin had some sort of silly quarrel the last time they really saw each other and then Khailin disappeared from sight—and Nhia has no idea where Khailin is or what she is doing. Her mother would only tell Nhia that Khailin no
longer lives there, and hinted that she is, in point of fact, married—but obviously not to her Prince, and the family apparently will not say to whom.”

“I’ll get to the bottom of that,” Yuet said. “The Princess is a patient. Pregnant and miserable. I’ll find out what happened. Miserable patients will tell a lot as a sign of gratitude to a healer who eases their discomforts.”

Tai giggled. “You
are
terrible.”

“What about you? How is your mother? I haven’t had a chance to look in on her.”

“She sleeps a lot, but she is holding her own,” Tai said. “The neighbors look in on her regularly if I am not there, so she is not alone.”

Yuet, about to say something, blinked suddenly as a thought occurred to her. “Autumn Court,” she said. “That is begun. Liudan’s birthday was a week ago. She said that she would make an announcement then, choose an Emperor. I completely forgot about it, I was so immersed in the whole situation in the Guard compound. What happened, Tai?”

“She postponed it, to the end of the Autumn Court,” Tai said, keeping her face inscrutable.

“
Postponed
it? Again? And they let her?”

“They had little choice. One of the suitors on her list just wed someone else—just like Prince Zhu. It must be something in the water!” Tai stopped at Yuet’s wince. “Sorry. Liudan declared she wanted to give it further thought. They demanded, but she stood firm, and High Chancellor Zibo backed down but said that they would have a decision at the end of Autumn Court, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“He didn’t specify, but according to Liudan the expression on his face indicated that it would be something long and painful,” Tai said.

“So she has … what?”

“Another week.”

Yuet was shaking her head. “Stubborn and stubborn and stubborn. She will make a wrong step yet she cannot back out of. What did she make of the epidemic?”

“She sent food, and asked about you,” Tai said.

Yuet felt oddly disappointed. “I would have thought …” she began.

“You didn’t expect her to pay that much more attention to it, did you?” Tai said. “With this Autumn Court hanging over her head like a blade, and
scandals rocking the royal house, and Cheleh walking around like he had swallowed a sour pickle?”

“Did anyone ask
him
?” Yuet said.

“Nobody’s
talked
to him for a month without getting either silence or snaps,” Tai said. “One person who got a snap says that it’s because he doesn’t himself know where his older daughter is.”

“I need a holiday,” Yuet said suddenly.

“Yes,” Tai said, casting her a startled look, “I think you quite legitimately do.”

“Your friend,” Yuet said suddenly. “The mountain girl.”

“Yes?” Tai said, her attention suddenly sharpened.

“I think she is Liudan’s half-sister. That the Emperor fathered that child on a Traveler girl, shortly before the Travelers stopped coming to Linh-an.”

Tai nodded slowly.
I don’t talk to Court people.
That would fit.

“But you said that there would be danger?”

“If Liudan found out. She could be a rival for her. She has the blood.”

“But it goes through the female line,” Tai said, confused. “How could that girl ever claim anything on Liudan?”

“Tammary Her name is Tammary And she is senior to Liudan—not much older, but enough. And she does not have to claim a thing—all that would be needed is for someone to claim it in her name. I don’t know if she is married or promised yet—they have different customs up in the mountains—but she and her partner, and their issue, could be used to undermine Liudan—and although it scares me to think so, I believe that Liudan might be quite capable of leaping to the conclusion that they
will
be so used. What’s the matter now?”

Tai had gone white. “The dream.”

“What dream?”

“I dreamt of Antian in the mountains. She
changed,
in the dream, and turned into Liudan, and then into … into … what did you say her name was? Tammary? Into Tammary. And she said to me in the dream,
Take care of my sister.
And I said I would, again, just like that first time she had asked it of me. But which sister? Yuet, what am I supposed to do?”

Yuet was staring at her. “Perhaps,” she said, “we need to go back and pay another visit to the village. Just you and me this time. There are things here I think we need to know.”

N
hia was a fractious and unsatisfactory student at the Temple in the weeks that Yuet vanished into the Guard compound to hold the epidemic at bay, and Khailin persisted in her mysterious absence. Tai was her usual sweet self, and always available to supply a willing ear to Nhia’s self-reproachful discourses on how she should have dealt with the Khailin situation better, or provide a cup of calming tea and a soft cushion for the aching foot when Nhia came back from some Court occasion and needed to vent her frustration. But even that had not been quite enough. Nhia had wanted to go into the compound and offer Yuet her own assistance as nurse, chief potion brewer, teller of tales to sick children—whatever it would take to ease Yuet’s burdens and to drown her own keyed-up energies.

Instead, she got a new teacher at the Temple.

The new priest who was assigned to supervise her studies was a boulder in the stream of Nhia’s impotent furies. He allowed it all to flow around him, but was not moved an inch by it, and by his very stillness and immobility he forced Nhia to focus on her inner meditations.