The Secrets of Jin-Shei (36 page)

“I have heard nothing,” Nhia said. “I have been … away. I don’t know where I have been, but I don’t think it was in the city. Or so Khailin seemed to believe.”

Tai sat up straighter. “Khailin? You found Khailin? Where is she?”

Nhia raised her free hand to her temple. “My head aches.”

“I’m not surprised. Yuet said all of you aches. She said you were …” Tai looked hunted, suddenly, falling silent.

“I was what?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you about it, until she can be here. I was told to keep you warm if you woke up, and make sure you had that tea—drink it, Nhia, or else I’ll be blamed for it—and to feed you. And then it would probably be best, Yuet said, if you slept more. She said that she knew no real heal—” She snapped her mouth shut. “Have another biscuit.”

“No real healing for what she thought had happened?” Nhia questioned with a sad smile. “She’s right, in a way. Tell me about Liudan.”

“I embroidered her gown for the Court,” Tai said. “It was amazing—bright reds and golds, all these dragons worked in silk and jewels. She was supposed to be getting married in the spring, after all, and I thought nothing of it—I knew that she was supposed to pick her Emperor at the Closing Court, and she just wanted to look splendid, perhaps in the gown she was going to wear for her wedding,” Tai said. “There was no mourning white in that, and it was silk, and I knew she was breaking tradition for it—but if she was to marry, I thought she just wanted to do the thing right. But she not only broke the small traditions, NhiNhi, she shattered everything and left the Court picking up the pieces. I am told Zibo practically had a heart attack. It’s unheard of, you know—the Empress ruling alone.”

“Ruling
alone?
” Nhia repeated. “Just what did Liudan do, Tai?”

Tai gave her a strange look. “You really haven’t heard? How odd—the whole city was buzzing with it. She declared herself the Dragon Empress, and that this would be the new reign—that she would not marry, that she would not take an Emperor, that she would rule in her own right.”

“For the love of Cahan!” Nhia gasped, astonished. “And they let her?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of their letting her do anything anymore.
She’s a force in her own right. Remember what you said at the Temple, just before we left for the mountains, back in the spring? That Liudan was a wild thing, unlikely to be ruled by anyone but herself? Well, you were right. When you make the kind of announcement that makes everyone else faint dead away, you’re the only one that’s left standing.”

“What about the suitors? Aren’t they angry?”

“She gave them generous compensation,” said Tai, grinning despite herself, “and sent them on their way with the advice to do exactly what their friend had done already.”

“What was that?”

“The one that got married to his own sweetheart, in secret, before Liudan could put the leash on him.” But the words had circled Tai’s thoughts back to a previous topic. “You said you found Khailin? That is good news! She is all right? Where is she?”

“I don’t know.
She
doesn’t know,” said Nhia, her eyes darkening at the memory. “She is a prisoner, at the end of the road of mist and shadows. She said … she said he did nothing to her she did not ask him to do when she married him.”

“Married who, Nhia?” Tai said carefully, aware of a pang of fear at the sight of the expresion on Nhia’s face.

“Ninth Sage Lihui,” Nhia said, very softly.

T
he Young Teacher from the Temple told us your name. She needs you.

There had been an insistent knock on Yuet’s door in the predawn darkness, and when the sleepy servant roused herself to answer it, that message, scrawled in untidy
jin-ashu
letters, was all that she found on the doorstep. But there was a cart parked in the street right in front of Yuet’s house, and the servant fled upstairs to fetch her mistress. Yuet’s first glimpse of Nhia in the back of the cart, her chest barely stirring with shallow, labored breaths, had sent a stab of real fear into her. Yuet sent the servant scurrying into the kitchen with a twist of pungent herbs, a packet of poppy, and orders to make an infusion and be quick about it. Then she stripped Nhia of first the damp and soiled cloak and then the slightly ill-fitting gown underneath, inspecting the shivering body she had exposed for wounds or lacerations; she could see no obvious damage except for the weals around Nhia’s wrists, but that alone was enough to set off all sorts of alarms. And when Yuet reached for the odd amulet hanging from the silken cord around Nhia’s neck, something she could not remember ever having seen her wear before, Nhia had come awake and screamed and clawed at her until she had withdrawn her hand. Nhia had been delirious; she had not known Yuet, and kept muttering something about familiar places. When the cook brought the sleeping draft, Nhia reacted violently, again, as the cup of warm liquid was gently brought to her lips, but Yuet had sat beside her on the bed, and held her, and talked softly and soothingly as though she was a fractious child, as she had done with many such a child in the Guard compound only a few short days ago. Finally Nhia took a few swallows of the infusion, and drifted off into a restless, disturbed sleep, curled into a tight defensive ball under the coverlet Yuet had laid over her.

Yuet had told Nhia all this when she returned from Court, late in the afternoon of the day on which Nhia had woken in her house.

“I know what must have happened, Nhia,” Yuet said, dark eyes brimming with impotent sympathy. “But Tai said you spoke of Lihui. How does he fit into all this?”

“Or Khailin?” said Tai.

Yuet had asked Nhia, in a moment they had shared alone and Tai had been sent on some errand, whether she wished Tai to stay away, whether she had things to say that she might not want Tai to hear. But Nhia had hesitated, and Tai had come back before she had had a chance to reply, and had come to sit on the edge of Nhia’s bed, taking Nhia’s cold hands into her own and rubbing warmth back into them. There was such physical comfort in having her there, a friend she had known from childhood, that Nhia had said nothing. And now Tai was sitting on a stool beside Nhia’s bed, supporting the food tray as Nhia spooned up the vegetables mixed with thin slices of pork which the cook had prepared for her dinner.

“It has all been a lie,” Nhia whispered, eyes suddenly filling with tears, pushing away her bowl.

Tai reached for her hand. “What has,
jin-shei-bao?
What have they done to you?”

Nhia wiped the brimming tears away with the back of her free hand. A part of her wanted to deny that anything had happened at all, to merely pick up the threads of a familiar life she had grown to love, to pretend that nothing had changed and that she was the same person she had been before the Autumn Court—and another part knew that she could not return to the Temple, not soon, maybe not ever. Not after what had happened, with all the reminders that the place now held for her.

“I found out,” she began, “that all of my teachers at the Temple had been one man. Lihui. He took different form, so I would not know him.”

“Took different form?” Tai repeated blankly. “How do you mean, Nhia?”

“His face, his voice, his gait, his shape, his hair. He changed them all, turned into different people, and taught me, oh yes, taught me much. And then, what is it now—three days ago? Four?—I learned the greatest secret I had ever known. He freed my spirit, Yuet. He allowed me to shed this broken body, and fly in a sky full of stars. And it was then, at last that I knew him.”

She told the story, haltingly, her account full of breaks and pauses; she had lived through this pain, but she had no idea that retelling it would hurt just as much. Tai was white and shivering by the time Nhia was done,
and it would have been hard to tell who was hanging onto whose hand harder by the end of her story.

There was a tense silence when Nhia had brought her narrative up to the last thing she remembered, which was emerging onto the night street.

“I cannot go back to the Temple,” Nhia whispered. “Not to teach; not to study. I would never trust another teacher again—how would I know it was not him?”

“You said Khailin gave you protection,” Tai said.

“I was wondering what that was,” said Yuet. “I swear, you nearly killed me when I tried to remove it.”

“And it worked for you on the road,” Tai chipped in again, in reference to Nhia’s mention of the garden she had seen, and the tiger that had morphed into Lihui, and the way the amulet had given warning. “You would be safe. Once people knew that you had been …”

She broke off as Nhia quickly looked at her and as quickly looked away. Tai glanced at Yuet, who was shaking her head.

“What?” Tai demanded. “You
are
going to denounce him, aren’t you?”

“With my word against his? With what proof?” Nhia said. “And it would be my name people would remember. And I know what they would say. Why would a man like the Ninth Sage of the Imperial Court go after a crippled nobody from the outer Temple circles?”

“You are not!” Tai said hotly. “Everyone knew that you were special. People came to listen to you talk.”

“And it can all be used against me,” said Nhia. “And then …”

“There’s Khailin,” Yuet finished.

Nhia looked up at her. “I don’t know what he will do to her when he finds that I am gone and that she had something to do with it.”

“Is what he does part of the Way?” Yuet asked.

“No,” Nhia said after a moment’s thought. “Or, if it is, it’s so twisted and warped that it is black beyond belief. It was the way he got to me, because I believed in it, because I studied it and used it to transcend my spirit to a level where I wanted to be—ah, he knew exactly what to teach me so that I would be coming back for more.”

Yuet reached over and covered her hands with her own. “There is no shame in this, Nhia. You have done nothing wrong.”

“But he is a monster,” said Tai obstinately. “We have to get Khailin out. We have to stop him from hurting you again.”

“Stop who from doing what?” said a new voice from the doorway, and all except Nhia leapt to their feet.

“Liudan!” Yuet said, as the visitor pushed back the concealing hood of a voluminous cloak. “What in the name of Cahan are you doing here?”

“I come to see Nhia,” said Liudan. “What has happened to you, my wise
jin-shei-bao,
and how may I make it go away?”

“You must dismiss Lihui,” said Tai abruptly, before any of the others had a chance to hush her.

Liudan’s eyebrow rose a fraction. “
Must
I?” she questioned softly, her voice silky with sheathed danger. “Even if I wished to do so, however, in point of fact I cannot. The Council, yes. If anyone on the Council transgresses Syai’s laws, or my own, then I can do something about it. The Sages, however, are a different matter. They advise me, yes, but they are not appointed by me or elected by anyone else other than themselves. The Sages would have to censure Lihui if he had done something against their rules, and he is the highest one in that circle.”

“Eight Sages, each to a sign, and the ninth sage to rule them all,” Nhia whispered.

“Indeed,” Liudan said. “Lihui is the youngest of them, but he is the Ninth Sage. That, I will admit, has always struck me as strange because it is far more often the eldest of the circle who is named to the exalted rank, not the youngest and the newest. But they do their own choosing, and I have no knowledge of the criteria they use, nor can I interfere in such matters. There are some things that are not the business of the secular Empire. But why, sweet Tai, should he be dismissed?”

“Because he …” Tai said, and subsided at a glance from Yuet.

“Because he practices sorcery,” Yuet said.

“I have never heard him accused of this,” Liudan said slowly. “He is young to hold his position, it is true. I have to tell you, Yuet, if anyone else but you or Nhia came to me with a story that he holds it by sorcery I’d dismiss it for nonsense. If it were true it would have leaked out, surely, by now? Since the death of his Master, the Sage Maxao, when Lihui inherited his mantle, his behavior has been exemplary—granted, it hasn’t been that long, but even so, a dark sorcerer at the Palace would have had to be
extremely
careful not to make a misstep.”

“That’s probably why he has his pagoda beyond the ghost road,” Nhia said faintly.

“What is this ghost road?”

“A place of mist and shadows, that leads to all places, and none. Liudan, I don’t know how I got to his house. I have no idea how I got back. Lihui does not make his home in this city.”

“Do
you
know where he lives?” Tai challenged Liudan.

“Of course—he has a house in the city, close to where the other Sages make their home. It’s a beautiful garden setting, and they have their own exquisite Temple. I have made offerings there myself.”

“And been to Lihui’s house?”

“No,” Liudan said, with some asperity. “I have not been to his house or to the house of any of my Sages. I do not need to go there. If I need to see them they come to me.”

“So you don’t know if he does live there,” Tai persisted.

“You don’t think the matter of his being the only one of the Nine who does not would have filtered back to me?” Liudan snapped.

“
I
have been to his house,” Nhia said. “He called me and somehow I got there. And if he had had a chance he would have stopped me from ever coming back. Khailin said …”

“Khailin?” Liudan said sharply. “At Lihui’s house? What has she to do with this?”

Nhia threw a helpless glance at Yuet, and Yuet opened her mouth to speak, but Liudan raised an imperious hand. “What has she to do with any of this?”

“She says that his house burns her when she tries to leave it, that it knows what she does and somehow keeps him apprised of it when he is not there. This is not the kind of home that exists in Linh-an that I know.” Nhia fumbled at her throat. “And there is this.”

“What is that?”

“A defense, a charm made from his essences—his blood, his sweat, his spit …” She swallowed hard. “His seed. Things that make him what he is. It allowed me to know him on the ghost road. It kept me safe. In his arrogance he did not lay the same ban on me as on Khailin—perhaps he did not expect me to live long enough to leave his house.”