The Secrets of Jin-Shei (54 page)

“What of Qiaan?” Tai whispered.

Liudan’s eyes hardened. “That …” she began, but was interrupted by the little deaf girl who was still her favored servant scurrying into the room with every appearance of consternation and signing something frantic at Liudan. The Empress’s eyebrows rose.

“Nhia? And
who?
” The sign language was obviously inadequate, because Liudan suddenly stopped the servant with a wave of her hand. “Send them in.”

“We should go,” Yuet said. “If there is something …”

“No,” said a new voice, a man’s voice, from the door. “Stay, because this concerns you all.”

Every head snapped in that direction.

The man who had spoken was tall, powerfully built, his shoulders broad and his forearms, showing beneath wide sleeves of a shabby but once magnificent robe, were pure corded muscle. But he moved with the aid of a stout staff and had one hand on the shoulder of Nhia who, standing beside him, was dwarfed by his presence. His face, between its crisscrossed scars, was the pallid shade of one who had not seen the sun for some time, and the eyes which showed in that ruin were white with cataracts and the veil of blindness. He looked frayed, scruffy, a down-on-his-luck beggar, and yet his gray hair was held back with a filet which had a yellow gem in its center, and his bearing was that of a king.

The Beggar King.

Liudan drew herself up to her full Imperial majesty.

“You,” she said. She was in absolutely no doubt as to the identity of her visitor. Then her eyes shifted, glittering with hauteur, to Nhia. “Why do you bring him here?”

“He said it was time,” Nhia said.

Liudan’s eyebrow rose, her head inclining into a position which was a regal question.

“You obviously recognize me,” said the Beggar King, “but you don’t
recognize
me. How could you, in the wreck of this body? It has been years now that I have been waiting to come out of the darkness, waiting for this moment. You know me now as Brother Number One of the Beggars’ Guild of Linh-an—but that was the place I took when he who was your Ninth Sage ripped my rightful identity from me, and burned a body which he swore was me with all the rites necessary to send into Cahan … a soul which was still very much on this world.” He lifted his hand from Nhia’s shoulder, rose to his full height, fixed on Liudan the uncanny gaze of those blind eyes. “Empress of Syai, I am Maxao, once Ninth Sage to the Court of your father, whom the usurper whom you know as Lihui declared dead, so that he could take my place. I have returned.”

“To claim it?” Liudan questioned softly. “They have yet to name Lihui’s successor. As you probably know. You seem to know so many other things.”

“I am not here to fence with you,” Maxao said, refusing to rise to her bait. “And no, I am not here to resurrect myself to the point of claiming the position that was stolen from me by my erstwhile student and acolyte. He knows I am not dead—oh, yes, he knows that!—but he does not know where to search for me, or if I am still a threat to him. But now he is vulnerable, he is in the same position that he put me into all those years ago.”

“Someone took his position?” Liudan inquired. “The Sages appointed a successor?”

“They might have liked to, more than you know,” Maxao said. “He has instilled fear into them, and they dare not move as long as they know he still lives—and they know. But he, like I in my time, has found himself outflanked and then blinded by a disciple. Now there are certain things he can’t do without the assistance of another, someone with a functioning pair of eyes.”

“I knew I should have waited,” said yet another voice from the door, “until I could cut his head off myself.”

Maxao inclined his head, without changing the direction of his blind gaze. “Khailin,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

It was Tai who looked around and made the connection.

“That’s all of us,” she said, “all except Xaforn who is away from the city and Qiaan, who is … who is …”

“Who is with Lihui right now,” Maxao said. “Who is his eyes. Who is his ticket to the position he has always wanted. Once he knew who she was, what she could be made into, he has spared no effort to exploit her strengths and her vulnerabilities. He has made it possible for her to do what she wants to do with her life, and in return she is his path to power, and to the Empire. Qiaan … your Qiaan is an annoying woman,” Maxao said musingly. “There is that in her which insists on helping people who sometimes need no help whatsoever. She has repeatedly tried to better the lives of not a few members of my Guild—people who, even with the tithes they pay to the Guild, make a living out on the streets the extent of which would stagger a few of you in this room. But because a man is lame or a woman old and toothless or a child dirty and barefoot in the streets, they must be taken into shelters and forcibly fed and clothed and remade into what Qiaan saw as useful members of society. It vexed her no end that so many of those she thus saved escaped at the first opportunity to
return to their own lives. Nonetheless, she must return to Linh-an at once—even if it does mean that she continues her exasperating activities.”

“Return to Linh-an?” For the first time, Liudan’s voice betrayed a genuine interest. “Return from where?”

“You have not tried looking for her already?” Maxao said. “And have you not found that she has disappeared completely? She is no longer in Linh-an, Empress. She hasn’t been for some time. And now we have the problem that someone must go and snatch her from Lihui’s side—for with her as his willing guide he has suddenly become powerful and dangerous again.”

“How did he get to her?” Khailin demanded. “How, if he wasn’t able to use the ghost road himself, could he get to Linh-an and take Qiaan?”

“Because he found a temporary pair of eyes somewhere on the road as he wandered, because he must have lingered in some place where some poor kind soul stopped to find out what the matter was and if this wreck of a wounded man could be helped in some way. That compassionate being is long gone, of course—useful only for long enough to be Lihui’s eyes on the ghost road, and then killed, discarded, abandoned while he stalked Qiaan and finally found occasion to get close to her, and to tell her the secret none of you would tell her. That she might be royal. That she could do by decree and by fiat what she had been doing with her own two hands for years. He lied to her, of course—he always lies—and told her that she was far more royal than she is. But his lies are always the more dangerous when built upon a kernel of truth, and this was a powerful kernel indeed—and he retains the power of cloaking his lies with beauty. To her, he is not scarred or blind or someone who needs her in order to survive—to her, I have no doubt, he seems a very prince of power. And the longer she stays with him, the more potent the illusion becomes.”

“What must we do?” said Tai.

“Someone must go to where Qiaan is, and bring her back,” Khailin said.

“And she must come willingly,” Maxao added. “Taking her by force means that the illusion holds, and she will return to him as soon as she is left alone for long enough for him to regain control over her mind. No, she must understand why she must come, and agree to it. No force, no weapons, no coercion. She must listen to somebody she trusts, and believe in what she hears, and come of her own free will.
She must renounce him
” His voice had become a thing of power, the words he was saying almost a spell of enchantment. “And because of that, it is one of you who must go to her. One of her own
jin-shei.
”

Nhia blanched, recoiling. “I cannot go back. Not to that …”

Maxao turned his head again, leaning forward heavily on his staff. “Nor would I ask it of you, my dear. Your fear makes you a target. It makes you immune to Lihui’s voice, to be sure, because you already know the truth about him—but your fear would make you his prisoner before you begin, and then we would have lost two of you. No, not you.”

“The only other one who knows how to walk this road, Sage Maxao, is I,” said Khailin. “Is this why you have summoned me?”

“No. Not you either. You do not fear him, but you hate him. Your hate would blind you to too much, and you cannot yet face him alone—and it is alone that the one who goes must enter his stronghold.”

“I will go,” said Tai in a small voice, “if someone would tell me how.”

“No!” The word was torn from three throats at once—Nhia’s, Tammary’s and, surprisingly, Liudan’s.

“No,” Maxao agreed in a voice as tranquil as if he were refusing a glass of water. “Not you. Not the one who holds it together.”

“I don’t …” Tai began, astonished, but Tammary took hold of her hand and Tai saw that tears were standing in the Traveler girl’s eyes.

“No, not you,” Tammary said. “You with your quiet and joyous life where we all come to seek comfort. You have always been the one who showed me that happiness was possible. I would not risk that for anything. I will go in your place, even though I never knew Qiaan well.”

“That is why you are not the one, either,” Maxao said. “She will not come for the wrong person, or to the wrong call.”

“She would come to me,” Yuet said softly. “I think she would. I think I grew to love her and respect her and even try to begin understanding her during the time of the illness. She deserves the chance. I will go.”

“You cannot use the ghost road, healer,” Maxao said implacably. “You are simply not compatible with it. You have the compassion, but you don’t have the imagination.” Yuet flinched, as though she had been physically struck. Ignoring her reaction, Maxao continued talking without missing a beat. “You would see nothing that you would recognize, and too much that would attract you to turn aside from the path, and you would be lost.”

“I don’t understand,” Yuet said.

“Precisely,” said Maxao, nodding. “And before you, too, volunteer, dear Empress, I would think it obvious that you yourself cannot go, for reasons that do not require further elaborating, and should not go, because Qiaan
is standing in opposition to you and would hardly return to Linh-an on your say-so, knowing that you would probably bring her back to try her for treason.”

“But that leaves nobody,” Tai whispered.

“It leaves one. The one whom she trusts, and who has already been trained to follow her to wherever Lihui is hiding her.” Maxao turned back to where Liudan was still standing, not having moved since he entered the room. “Bring Xaforn back from the border. Now.”

“What do you mean, trained?” Liudan said.

“Call it precognition,” Maxao said. “Call it luck. Call it the will of the Lord of Heaven, if you want to. But when Xaforn came into the Guards she shone out like a diamond among the glass chips of the others of her level. She proved again and again that she was more gifted, more focused, more dedicated,
better.
She had nothing but the Guard, and the Guard was everything to her. She was perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“There is a Guard in the ranks, a veteran, whose name I don’t think I should divulge here,” Maxao said, with a wolfish grin. “He was a disciple of the Way, in his time, before he chose the path of the warrior, not the sage. He took on the training of the young ones, always having been a teacher by nature. When he chanced upon the young Xaforn, so hungry, so eager to learn … so talented in ways that few are talented … he taught her things the rest of her class never learned. How to center into a white light inside herself when she gathers her energies for a kill. How to make herself faster, deadlier, how to become an extension of her weapon, how to
become
her weapon. Lihui encountered her once, in that power, and was turned by it—and knows she is dangerous. She, in turn, has encountered Lihui at least once, and knows that he backed off from the fight at that time. And she has one other qualification for this job, one that none of the rest of you possess.”

“And what is that?” Liudan said, her face grim. She had lost control of this situation the moment the Beggar King walked into the room, and she was not happy about it.

“She grew up in the Guard, and so did Qiaan. She knew her when they were both little children. She and Qiaan made a connection long before either of them met any of the rest of this circle. If Qiaan will trust anybody, it will be Xaforn. And Xaforn knows how to go to her. And, more important, knows how to get back.”

“And how to die defending them both if the situation turns deadly,” Tai said.

“She is a warrior, yes,” Maxao said sternly “That is her calling. That is who she is.”

“What of that war on the borders?”

“It will probably come,” Maxao said. “It would be precisely the kind of thing that Lihui would want—something to distract you, to keep your attention elsewhere, far from the city, while he brings Qiaan back here and strikes at the heart of it all. He doubtless already has something in place with the riders of Magalipt. They might get the pass, or even Sei-lin. It depends on how hard a bargain they drove with him to be his decoys. It will come, but it will not come this spring.”

“But the letter that the scribe was copying in the office …” Nhia began.

“Did you stop to wonder why they did such copying in your office, Chancellor of Syai? Right underneath your nose where anyone could have tripped on it?”

“Because the best place to hide something is in plain sight?” Khailin said, grinning a small feral smile.

“There is that, too,” Maxao said, nodding. “But in this instance, probably because he wanted you to find out, because he needed you to go and hit Liudan with it, because he knew that you would, because he needed attention focused over there. He all but sent you a copy of that letter.”

“He couldn’t know that Khailin would be there, and that she can …”

“That she can read
hacha-ashu?
” Maxao said. “I know you can, my dear. You would have to be able to, to have learned what you did at Lihui’s house. He did not teach you what you know willingly or directly—you would have had to read it all, in his library. Which once was mine. The loss of which I do mourn.” He sighed. “Could you not have found another way out than to burn that house?”

“But if you could use someone else’s eyes and go to his house,” Khailin said, clenching her jaw, “why could you not have come there, and destroyed him?”