The Secrets of Jin-Shei (42 page)

“What?”

“You do realize,” Tai said, “that once you learn this script you can no longer tell Yuet that you cannot differentiate between willow bark and peppermint leaves?”

Tammary flushed, and then laughed. “I already know where every herb in Yuet’s stillroom is stored,” she said. “I have my clan’s memory; I remember the things that I see and hear. I can do all the recipes she has ever shown me. Blindfolded, and in the dark.” She ducked her head, half in triumph and half in embarrassment. “I just made sure,” she said, “that Yuet never knew that.”

O
ne week before her fifteenth birthday, Xaforn took her place in the ranks as a full-fledged Imperial Guard, the youngest ever to do so.

The incident with Qiaan and the cat might have held Xaforn back in her rapid advancement through the trainee ranks, but that was now history Ink the cat was now a full-grown queen who had, in the fullness of time, produced several litters of gorgeous kittens. As for Qiaan, she and Xaforn had managed to develop a mutually valued friendship from their initial prickly initiation into
jin-shei.
Xaforn had learned to appreciate the subtlety of the older girl, and Xaforn’s brash honesty and often tactless candor raised a mixed reaction in Qiaan, ranging from exasperation to frank envy of Xaforn’s ability to reduce situations to their most basic components and then act on them. If questions had to be asked, Xaforn asked them, and then did not waste an eternity pondering the answers before acting on them.

Not only by far the youngest cadet to graduate into the rank-and-file in her year, Xaforn had also been picked to perform the martial arts demonstration for the graduation ceremony of her intake. This was an annual affair, glittering and formal, which the Syai Emperors always traditionally attended—for this was their own Guard, the cream of the Syai army, the men and women whose most fundamental duty was the care and preservation of the Imperial family.

Nhia and Yuet had both accompanied Liudan on this particular occasion, sitting with her on the balcony decked out as her observation platform. It had banners fluttering on either side of it, yellow silk painted with scarlet dragons which boasted yellow topaz eyes and a glimmer of scales on their writhing forms picked out in real gold. The day was the first day of autumn, auspicious for several reasons—not only the graduation ceremony
of the Imperial Guard, but also Liudan’s birthday and the opening day of her third Autumn Court.

The Dragon Empress, who had made sure that her Guard would stand behind her before she had claimed that title a year before, was resplendent in her glittering regalia. The Imperial Tiara of Syai, heavy with gems and gold, rested on her head with every appearance of having been meant for nobody but her. Even Yuet, who had known the Little Empress Antian during her years at Court at Szewan’s heels and who had never thought at the time that anybody else could ever be in Antian’s place, now found it hard to imagine that crown above any other face.

“Xaforn?” Liudan was saying now, that regal head turned toward Yuet at a quizzical tilt. “Why is it that I remember you mentioning that name to me?”

“I met her in my capacity as healer to the the Imperial Guard before we became
jin-shei
,” Yuet said. “I was telling you, I believe, of her reputation in the Guard, even then, even as a raw young trainee. Some of the most senior of the Imperial Guard have noticed this one—she is fierce and implacable and has a sometimes stiff-necked sense of honor that is all her own but which she also, sometimes inconveniently, expects all others around her to aspire to. She won’t even be fifteen until next week—that’s young to gather such a reputation, most especially in this outfit, among the best of the best.”

“What is it that she is supposed to do here today, then? I remember attending a few of these things when I was a child, with my family, but not many. It was always Antian who came, or Oylian.” There was still a bitterness here, a thorn that had worked its way deep into Liudan’s spirit and rested there, a permanent wound. “The one I attended here last year was … unremarkable. I don’t think I recall much of it. Did they have a demonstration then?”

“I wasn’t here last year,” Yuet said, “but you’d better not tell them that you don’t even remember last year’s top cadet. Part of the reason for this demonstration is to offer up the best of the new Guard for the personal attention of the one wearing the Tiara. I wonder what happened to last year’s top cadet. You probably have one very frustrated young man or woman in the Guard, Liudan, waiting a year for you to notice them.”

“I will not make the same mistake again,” said Liudan, with a touch of acid.

“No,” Yuet murmured, taking the words at face value, “I don’t believe you’ll forget this one.”

“She is that extraordinary?” Liudan said.

“You’ll see for yourself. Here she comes now.”

In the training grounds, now set up as the demonstration arena, several groups of trainees had already performed their highly choreographed routines for the Empress’s pleasure, to martial music being played by a small group of musicians on another balcony across from Liudan’s own, but they had cleared the area and the musicians had fallen silent. Xaforn, apparently, would perform her own routine in silence.

For this, the most martial of honors, Xaforn had been assisted in her preparations not by her Guard peers but by Qiaan, whom she had asked to be her companion. Captain Aric, Qiaan’s father, had been a little put out that she had agreed to Xaforn’s request.

“You never showed any interest in the Guard when
I
tried to get you involved,” he said to his daughter when she told him that Xaforn had come to her.

“Ah, but you had ulterior motives,” Qiaan had said.

“What motives?” Aric had demanded.

“You wanted me to be part of the Guard,” Qiaan had said. “You didn’t want me there as family, or by choice—you wanted me there by vow and by training. If I said yes to you I said yes to all that. And I never wanted to say yes to the Guard.”

“Your mother …” he began, but then fell silent, and would not be drawn further.

So Qiaan had been the one to help Xaforn into her dress armor, black with the yellow sun of Syai on her breastplate, and strapping on the matt black segmented leg plates.

Xaforn winced when Qiaan accidentally banged into her armored shoulder. Her new tattoo, the Red Dragon for the Dragon Empress, had been in place for only a few days and was still tender, cushioned by a pad of gauze under the armor.

“Wimp,” said Qiaan. “You’re supposed to be able to fight when you’re bleeding to death, or something like that. My father always said so, anyway. There are supposed to be legends about Guards who held off armies while wounded unto death and with one arm cut off.”

“For a Guard brat, you’re remarkably down on us,” Xaforn said conversationally,
coiling up her braid to tuck it under the black winged helmet that Qiaan held ready to fasten onto the shoulder armor.

“I don’t believe in the patina of glory,” Qiaan said. “That’s probably why I keep on getting told I’m adopted. I just don’t buy into the Guard mystique. The Empress was born to her station, perhaps; I don’t think that a Guard is.”

“
I
was,” Xaforn said, her voice muffled by the helmet.

“Oh, you,” Qiaan said. “You’ve always had delusions of grandeur.”

“And you’ve always been humble?” Xaforn shot back. “Besides, I
am
good at what I do. Thanks, Qiaan. See you after the show!”

For once, she flounced out leaving Qiaan without her customary last word.

Emerging into her arena, alone, Xaforn felt the weight of the expectant silence descend on her. She walked to the middle of the square, bowed to the Imperial box, and then stood for a moment, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, focusing on an inner light she always carried, something that showed her a center of balance from which she could leap outward. Her sense of time shifted in that strange way to which she had become accustomed, allowing her to see her opponent’s fastest moves in a sort of dreamy slow motion and let her respond in kind—to her senses. In the real world her every motion translated into movements almost too fast to be seen.

It’s a dance
, she heard her instructor’s voice echoing in her head.
Learn to control it. Learn to become it.

Xaforn started out with the simple things, the baby exercises, her movements really slow motion and exaggerating every step and gesture in the way that the instructors made the youngest cadets do them when they were still learning the routines. It was too simple, of course. People murmured, watching, when the movements began to flow into something ever faster, ever more graceful, ever more deadly, the dancelike weave in the air of a pair of delicate hands that could kill, until Xaforn was a black blur on the training ground, never faltering for a single step outside the tiny circle she had set for herself on the ground. When she stopped, very suddenly, facing the Imperial balcony and subsiding into absolute stillness again, Liudan nodded, fascinated.

“Impressive,” she said, raising her hands to applaud.

“Wait,” Yuet said hastily. “Don’t break her concentration. She isn’t finished yet.”

Liudan raised her eyebrow, but let her hands fall back into her lap.

Assistants brought an assortment of things into the ring now—a wall of woven rushes supported by a bamboo frame, a folding trestle table on which they set a large basket of fruit and vegetables ranging in size from apricots to a watermelon.

Xaforn waited until they withdrew, and then drew her sword into the silence with a single singing motion, holding the glittering blade high for a moment in a salute to the Imperial banners. Then she turned to the rush wall. Her blade moved so fast that people could not see it at all except for a pale blur; and when she stepped back, moments later, the rushes had been carved into the profile of a Guard helmet. This time there was a scattering of spontaneous applause from the spectators. Xaforn ignored it, turning to the fruit basket. She lifted out the watermelon, balanced a pumpkin marrow on top of it, an apple on that, an apricot on the apple, and stepped back. The sword sang, and the apricot split in two precise vertical halves, with the apple remaining untouched, then the apple was cubed with two slices, horizontal and vertical, without the marrow being touched, then the marrow was diced without the blade touching the watermelon. The sword paused for a moment and then blurred into motion around the watermelon itself. When Xaforn was done the watermelon looked intact, still untouched—until she tapped one end of it with the flat of her sword and it keeled over, cut into a hundred neat slices. It was an exercise in precise control, and the crowd loved it, erupting in applause. This time Xaforn looked up and nodded. The assistants came back in to collect the debris.

Liudan was applauding with the rest. “
Very
impressive,” she said. “No wonder I don’t remember last year. I don’t recall this kind of show.”

“No, I don’t think there was one. What you just saw was hardly cadet level,” Yuet said, smiling. “Our Xaforn was always ahead in her studies. In this last year I believe that they had her learning one-to-one, that she had already outsripped the rest of her group.”

“What is she waiting for?” Liudan interrupted.

“Maybe there’s something else … look, a quarterstaff. She may do an exhibition match with somebody.”

“Three somebodies,” Nhia said, watching three helmeted, armored Guards stride into the arena bearing their own quarterstaffs. “She’s mad.”

Liudan leaned forward, her chin in her hands, rapt.

Xaforn’s three opponents, all a head taller than herself and twice as broad,
bore sturdy quarterstaves of raw undyed wood; Xaforn’s was dyed black. The four bowed to one another, Xaforn to the three of them and they to her, and the three stepped back, ranging themselves in attack formation.

“I’d better get down there,” Yuet said.

“Do you think they’ll hurt her?” Liudan said.

“I think she might kill one of them,” Yuet said calmly. “I’m serious, Liudan. I’m going down. It’s entirely possible we might see real blood today. That’s Xaforn down there.”

“When it’s over, come back here,” Liudan said. “And bring her.”

It was the Empress speaking. Yuet bowed slightly. “I will.”

Down in the arena, the three fighters were circling Xaforn warily while she stood motionless in the middle of the ring. When one of them lunged, she whirled on the ball of her foot, her staff ready, and met his attack with a counterattack of her own. At the same time she spun and kicked at the second man, her foot slamming into his wrist, and completed her motion by ducking under and past the first man’s swinging staff so that it continued its arc and hit the ground where she had been standing, hard. People heard the man grunt as the force of the blow shook his entire frame.

In the meantime Xaforn had danced her way in between two of the other opponents, and had maneuvered herself out of the way just in time for one of them to hit his partner a glancing blow on the shoulder. It would have been a solid blow, but the fighter had realized at the last moment what had happened and tried to turn it aside. In the time it took him to recover his footing the first fighter had come back at Xaforn, whirling his staff before him in a deadly wheel. The third one was still attacking her from the other side. Xaforn spun and danced like a wind spirit, solid in one spot one moment, evanescent like a ghost the next, her staff spinning and whirling out of impossible angles to counter attacks or deliver devastating blows of her own.

One of the men caught a solid crack to the side of the head from one his own mates, and went down like he had been poleaxed. The other two simply stepped over him and took the fight away from the body; Yuet came hurrying out into the arena, motioning to assistants to carry the fallen man to relative safety at the side of the arena and remove his helmet. In the meantime the deadly dance went on, until Xaforn spun her staff in a blur of double feints and caught one of the other men across the ribs, hard. He grunted, doubled over, fell to his hands and knees, wheezing for breath.