The Secrets of Jin-Shei (53 page)

“Are you sure you recognized his hand? Absolutely certain?” Liudan asked Khailin.

“Liudan, you said once before that you had no real evidence against him, and it turned out that everything we had told you about him was true,” Nhia said.

“Now you sound like Tai, all young and militant,” Liudan said. “You say it said that this would happen in spring?”

“I think so. I cannot be sure. I only have a fragment,” Khailin said.

“Some day you can tell me why you kept from me that you could read
hacha-ashu
,” Liudan said pointedly. “That’s a valuable skill.”

“And useless if widely known,” Khailin said.

“Also true. Spring. Magalipt. What if I had the army at the passes to meet them?”

“They would come through somewhere else if you moved any great force now,” Nhia said. “They would know that you know that they are coming, and they would not blindly march into a waiting army.”

“Whereas if they think I don’t have that information—and if your young spy went straight back to his master and reported that he had destroyed the evidence, they might—they could leave their plans unchanged, you mean?” Liudan said. “But I
do
know now, and I can’t just sit in Linh-an and do nothing.”

“Send a small “inspection” force of the garrison at Sei-lin,” Khailin suggested.

“No, right now even that would be a signal,” Liudan said thoughtfully.

“One group west to Sei-lin and another east to Ail-anh?” Khailin said. “Both border cities, and you wouldn’t be singling either one of them out.”

“It’s winter,” Nhia said.

“So?”

“You ought to know—it’s pure alchemy,” Nhia said. “There is a season for everything. If you move troops out of season, anywhere, you’re sending a signal.”

“You don’t have to send the whole army!” Khailin protested.

“If your news is true, yes, I do,” Liudan said. “But Nhia is right, it’s premature. I need to know more. But as it happens …” She smiled, her eyes glittering. “As it happens, I do have an army I can send, and nobody will ever know it.”

“What do you mean?” Nhia asked.

“Xaforn,” Liudan said.

“
The wings of the storm,
he called it,” Nhia whispered, her eyes suddenly wide. “
Black clouds outside, smoke within:
I wonder which storm he really meant.”

Liudan’s eyebrow had arched with a quizzical haughtiness, and Nhia flushed.

“I have been back to see the Beggar King,” she said.

“The Beggar King? You mean the leader of the Beggars’ Guild? What has he got to do with any of this?”

“A lot, it would seem. He told me once that I would know when to go to him for answers. And now that I think back on what he said to me when I went to him, it seems to me that he knew that this was coming.”

“The incursion at the border?”

“Nothing that specific. I meant all of it. The things that have been happening in the city, in the countryside. There have been a handful of years now with the land itself seeming to turn against those that worked it. And someone who wanted to use that could have easily built the discontent and the fear into something focused and dangerous.”

“You mean Lihui?”

“All he needs right now is someone to stand at the head of the movement. Liudan … you may need Xaforn here, before this is all over. One of these things is the real danger, the other is a smokescreen to distract you. But I don’t know which—and if the real thrust is aimed at you, it will be here, in the city. If Lihui is orchestrating this …”

“The Beggar
King
told you all that?” Liudan said a little acidly, with a touch of emphasis on the “king.” “He seems to be better informed than I am. Just how much have you told
him?
” She whirled away, without waiting for an answer, to stand at the window with her back to them. “I’ve been hearing reports of the things that have been going on in the city,” she said. “It might have helped me understand it if you had shared your concerns with me instead with that underworld goblin with delusions of grandeur.”

“He has wisdom,” Khailin said, “and there is a knowledge there, yes. They go deeper than one would expect, I think. He is an ally, Liudan, not a rival—don’t dismiss his advice lightly.”

Liudan’s hand came down in a sharp chopping movement.

“He cannot tell me if there are armies marching toward my borders,” Liudan said decisively. “I will send Xaforn as soon as may be—her and one other, perhaps. All she needs to do right now is scout it out, and I trust
her
judgment.” There was a slight edge to that remark, as though Liudan was calling the judgment of the other two into question. “She doesn’t need to stay there very long, and if you friend is right she will be back in plenty of time to help me deal with any problems in the city.”

“She doesn’t believe it is Lihui,” Khailin said to Nhia when they left Liudan’s chambers. “But I know, I
know
… Perhaps he was right, your Beggar King, when he said that he never sensed that death. Perhaps I believed that he was dead because I wanted to believe it so badly.”

“But where has he been all this time, then?” Nhia said. Her hand, without conscious volition, had gone to clutch at the amulet that she still wore around her neck. She had tried putting it away after Khailin had returned with her news that Lihui was gone, but she had felt utterly exposed and vulnerable without it. Hating the fact that she had come to depend on that amulet as the ultimate talisman against evil, Nhia had put it on again. Without it, she found herself staring at every strange face and wondering whether Lihui hid behind it. And now he was out there again. Khailin had been utterly certain about that, and Nhia believed her instincts.

“The acid was real,” Khailin said. “He may not have died in that fire, but he did not escape from it whole. You need eyes to use the ghost road—it may have been just that, a simple waiting in the mists until he could enslave a pair of eyes to serve as his own. I maimed his sight, not his powers—it seems that it was beyond me to do that. I have no idea what he is still capable of doing, if he has found a way to return.”

The ties of
jin-shei
were strong, but the rhythms of life were not dependent on those alone. Tai’s
jin-shei
circle, driven by their diverging priorities, had splintered into different orbits during the same crucial few days.

This was the moment that Tammary’s identity had exploded onto the Linh-an streets—and then, following on from this and far more insidiously, Qiaan’s own. This was the moment that Yuet and Tai were agonizing about how to tell Liudan of Tammary’s secret, which had been kept from her for so long. Those three had no idea about the gathering war, or about Lihui’s return.

Both Khailin and Nhia had good reason to be wary of Lihui’s reappearance, and they were wrapped up in what that would mean for them. They did not yet know that Tammary’s true identity had been revealed.

Liudan herself was preoccupied with a number of things—the restlessness and fear in the countryside over year after year of bad harvests, the unrest in the city, the possible invasion of her kingdom in the spring, Nhia’s unexpected relationship with the Beggar King and the city’s underbelly.

Xaforn, who might have been the first to raise an alarm, had been dispatched to the border town of Sei-lin, with detailed instructions.

By the time the rest of them had looked around for Qiaan, she was gone.

And when the uneasily slumbering unrest across Syai finally shook itself awake in Linh-an and it was proclaimed that Liudan had broken the laws of nature and tradition and that the Gods themselves had spoken against her, those who had raised that banner had a leader whom they proposed to put in Liudan’s place.

Qiaan.

F
aced with the Tammary situation alone, or with the Qiaan situation on its own, Liudan might have reacted with more equanimity. However, the news of Tammary’s identity coming straight on the heels of what she saw as Qiaan’s betrayal sent the Empress into a fit of almost hysterical paranoia.

When Yuet and Tai had brought Tammary in to her to explain everything, Liudan’s first reaction was to declare that she would order Tammary locked away immediately.

“Why?” Tammary demanded.

“I’ll not have another Qiaan, not when I can stop you from casting an eye on my Empire!”

“Of all the things you could do to prevent me from doing that,” Tammary said, unable to control her own caustic side, “locking me up is the one thing that would make me thirst for it.”

It was Tai who finally stepped between them, standing between the Empress and the Traveler woman, suddenly looking much taller than her fragile, small-boned self, her eyes dark with fury.

“I know now what Antian meant,” she snapped. “Her sisters do need taking care of, and that’s a fact! With all the trouble that’s brewing out there, all you two are focused on is making more of it where none exists. Liudan, for the love of Cahan! She already said she didn’t want anything to do with the Empire. And Tammary, you are not helping!”

“I would never …” Tammary began, and then, glancing at Tai, sighed and actually went down on one knee before Liudan. “I
will
never,” she said, correcting herself, “willingly take any action intended to harm Syai, or you, Liudan. I swear that to you right now. I will swear by whatever holy vow you hold most binding. I will swear it in the name of
jin-shei
”

“You are who you are,” Liudan said. “You can’t help that.”

“I can help the fact that this body and this mind will not be used against you,” Tammary said, bounding back to her feet again, her eyes smoldering with the anger she was keeping in check. “I cannot help my parentage, any more than you can help yours. Are you responsible for who begat you?”

Liudan, taken a little by surprise at the line of attack, was betrayed into a slight shake of her head, her lips even lifting into the shadow of a smile.

“How, then, can you demand that of me?” Tammary demanded.

“Why did you come to the city, then?” Liudan said.

“Not to storm the Palace,” Tammary said. “I came to find out who I really am, who that other half of me is, to find out why I found it so hard to fit into my world back there, with the Travelers.”

“I am told that you were doing extensive research to find that out,” Liudan said sardonically.

“Liudan!” Yuet said. “You were born to silk and to power. Do not mock another’s need. You have never had to search for your own answers, only demand them. There are many out there who are not so lucky.”

“Like my mother had to, you mean,” Liudan said. “Like my mother, who paid the price of a betrayal she had no hand in. I can hold others responsible for that, at least. My mother was the price for Szewan’s revenge, then. You are here as Szewan’s heir, Yuet. What should I hold
you
responsible for?”

“Stop it,” Tai said, tears in her eyes. “I was the one who said yes when Tammary chose to come to the city. I was the one who knew that she wanted nothing to do with the crown, only seeking a lost part of her spirit. I was the one who spoke for keeping it a secret, because that way there would be the least possible number of people who would be hurt by the truth. None of us knew about Qiaan, not then.”

“You did, Yuet,” Liudan said. “Didn’t you?”

“I had my suspicions. I had no proof of anything, not until recently.”

“And when you got it, that proof, you still chose to keep your silence,” Liudan said. “I could count that as betrayal, too.”

“Then call us all traitors and be done with it,” Tai said, swinging back into a stab of anger and letting it get the better of her. “Everything everybody has done here has been done because of reasons that were either deeply personal and had nothing to do with you or else in order to protect you, Liudan. You know that we are all subjects to the crown that you wear, but you ought to remember, also, that here you are speaking to your own
jin-shei
circle. Who are sworn to be on your side.”

“Nobody has ever been completely on my side,” Liudan said defiantly

“Well, I am!” Tai blazed. “I swore to Antian that I would do whatever it takes to stand between you and harm. We are
jin-shei;
you are Antian’s legacy to me, and I am on your side. I just won’t stand by and say nothing and let you do something irrevocable or unwise, just in order to satisfy a momentary urge to pour balm on your wounds!”

Liudan turned, the expression on her face pure rage, but then, unexpectedly, laughed. “You are the most unlikely guardian spirit from the Three Heavens,” she said, “but I suppose I deserved that.”

“So what are you going to do?” Tammary asked. Yuet flashed her a warning look, but Liudan had herself in hand. Now she was cold, glittering, all icy Empress.

“With you?” she asked, and there was still a trace of acid in her voice. “Nothing. For now. I’ll keep an eye on you, and see that you remember that. Go home. Stay out of trouble. With you, Yuet? I’ll think on it. The law of Syai is that you cannot hold an apprentice responsible for the crimes of the master, and you weren’t even old enough to have been her apprentice, in a proper sense of that word, when she undertook to weave a weapon of revenge against my family. So go home, too, Yuet. For now. Tai?”

Tai looked up at the sound of her name, her eyes calm, utterly fearless. Liudan stared at her for a long moment, and then laughed again, a little bitterly.

“I remember there was a time that I resented you, so desperately,” she said. “I wish I could remember why, sometimes. There are times when you annoy me or cross me or even call me stupid to my face, but only when you know you are right. And that annoys me even further. I am exceedingly annoyed at you right now. But I think I’ve read too much of your poetry and I begin to see—you are just cursed with a way of seeing things that not many other people can own to. It may frustrate me, it may make me angry, but I cannot deny that I envy it sometimes. I begin to realize why Antian chose you to be the soul of the
jin-shei
circle she would leave behind as her legacy on this earth.”