The Secrets of Jin-Shei (66 page)

If I am to die, it might as well be here,
she thought, the words very clear and lucid in her mind but the thoughts accompanying them writhing and chaotic as though wrenched from a dream. And then the stars winked out in the cold black sky, and she knew no more.

When she woke, she was lying in a straw pallet by the blazing hearth, covered with sleeping furs. She lay still for a moment, trying to orient herself, but even as her breathing changed somebody stirred in the room behind her.

“Are you back?” a familiar voice asked quietly.

Tammary turned her head. “Raian?”

“Yes, it’s me.” He came over to where she lay, stepping over her pallet to crouch beside her, his lanky frame unchanged from what she remembered. But his face and his eyes were older, with even one or two very fine lines raying out from the corners of his eyes. “I would have wanted to see you return in better shape than a half-dead pile of frozen bones on my doorstep, but however it was that it happened, welcome home, Tammary. Do you think you could manage some hot broth? I’ve got some bubbling in the pot.”

“I … thank you.” She hadn’t realized that she was hungry, until her stomach twisted emptily at his words. “That would be wonderful.”

He turned away to reach for a bowl and a spoon.

“I want to help,” he said carefully, his back to her. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but it would be easier if you did explain. What did they do to you in the city? I thought you went away to seek better things.”

“I did,” Tammary said with a brittle laugh. “I sought them, and found them, and … and lost them.”

There were tears standing in her eyes again as he turned back to her and handed her the bowl of broth.

“Slowly, it’s hot and you don’t want to gobble it, anyway. When was it that you last ate?”

Tammary bowed her head over the bowl. “It’s been so long, a lifetime ago. I can hardly remember who I was anymore. Or who I
am
.” Tears streaked her cheeks when she looked up again, the bowl trembling dangerously
in her hands. “Oh, in the name of all the Gods that ever lived, Traveler and
chayan
both—when have I ever been real, when have I ever been worthy, when have I ever held happiness in my hands and knew to hold it?”

“In my love, in my hope, in my understanding,” Raian said gently, reaching to fold his long hands over hers. “I’ve always believed in you. Always. That doesn’t change now. I am Chronicler now, in my teacher’s stead—he is gone, has been this past year or so. I have some standing here now. I will shelter you and protect you until the spirit that was broken learns to fly again.”

Tammary stared at him with wide eyes. “Your
love?”

“Of course,” he said. “I could not always protect you—but I have always loved you. From the time I saw you running free in the mountains with your wild things, your hawks and your fox cubs; from the time I first saw you dance, still a child but with every promise of the woman you would become. You were all, wrapped in a single skin. You were all I ever wanted.”

“But…” Tammary’s eyes filled with tears again. Her hands gripped the broth bowl fiercely. She struggled with her words, visibly, and finally burst out, “But I don’t love you, Raian—not like that. I have been …”

“I know,” he said. “I put no price on anything. Beyond any hope of more exalted things, I have always been, and will always be, your friend. This house is your house, for as long you want it, as long as you need it. Then I will help in whatever way I can to smooth your path forward, wherever you may wish to go. And I will be more than happy to see you stay. Now eat your broth,” he added practically, “it’s cooling fast.”

Tammary wrote a short note in
jin-ashu
to let Tai know that she had reached sanctuary, and Raian made sure the letter made its way down the mountains and into the city. But aside from that small gesture, Tammary seemed unwilling to rejoin the outside world. The deep snows came and went, and it was well after the first shy spring flowers crept onto the high mountain meadows that she finally emerged from Raian’s house. Even then it was only to scurry past the village houses, wrapped in a nondescript shawl, and make her way up to where she used to spend her days when she was a child. She whistled for Lastreb, the hawk she had once tamed, but although she thought she could see the shape of a circling hawk high up in the sky Tammary could not get the bird to come to her. She avoided the ruins of the Summer Palace, led by an instinctive aversion to any reminder of her city years.

Her aunt had visited her at Raian’s house, and although she never quite uttered the words
I told you so
they were embedded so deeply in every look and every word that Tammary quickly shied away from her company Jessenia, to give her credit, had not meant to be a shrew—but the scars left from Jokhara’s grasp at greatness ran deep, and Jokhara’s sister was still torn between fury, sympathy, and a sense of utter humiliation, as though Jokhara’s transgressions left an indelible stamp on her entire family Tammary was just the last, the most potent, reminder of the fact that Jokhara’s story was not yet over, was playing itself out still, reaching for her siblings and her descendants and trapping them in its coils. Tammary had been the subject of some potent village gossip for a while after her return, especially in the light of her past reputation there, but she led a life so muffled in layers of seclusion that she quickly became dismissed as of no further interest, a quenched fire. She preferred it that way.

She told Raian the full story, in fits and starts, looping from Yuet’s still-room to the hills outside Linh-an with Tai and then to the markets of Linh-an, the teahouses, the promiscuity, Liudan’s fears, Qiaan’s abduction, Lihui, the turmoil and the wars, and finally returning to her kidnapping and the explanation of her chopped hair and her wasted body. Raian did what he could—he listened. He ached for her, and wished he could have been there to stand between her and danger—but he quickly realized that, although Tammary had convinced herself that Zhan was dead, the father of her unborn child still lived within her heart. Even if he had wanted to step into the vacant place Zhan had left behind in Tammary’s life, Raian knew better than to try and do it before Tammary was ready to consider the possibility.

Word from the border sometimes reached the village in the mountains, but the reports were few and often contradictory—some spoke of victory, others of defeat, and every one that prophesied a quick end to the war was immediately countered by another which proclaimed the exact opposite. Letters sometimes came for Tammary from the city, too—Tai, despite her misgivings, had not told anyone else where Tammary was but tried to keep in touch with her. Tammary barely glanced at these. The tidings were often ominous, and sometimes tragic—Tai wrote of Khailin’s work, of Yuet’s death, of Liudan’s increasing instability—but Tai spoke of things that were gone from Tammary’s life, as though they had never been. Sometimes a passage from one of Tai’s letters would catch Tammary’s attention, and she would read it over and over again, trying to shake the sense that she was
reading fiction, a silver tissue of lies and stories that had nothing to do with reality. But she did this rarely. The city could hardly be mentioned in her hearing without the memory of Zhan’s smile rising above it like a sunrise, and it simply hurt too much to think about it. Several of Tai’s letters remained unopened. Only once did Tammary send word, and that was a short note that reported no more than the fact of her continued well-being, and—between the lines—her unwavering refusal to face the legacy of her Linh-an years.

Until the day that a messenger inquired after Tammary in the village, and Raian, who met him at the door of his house, asked what message he bore.

“I am the message,” the stranger said, and inside the house, out of sight of the door but well within earshot, Tammary gasped at the sound of it.

“Who are you?” Raian asked, although he knew already, although his heart was telling him the truth and he felt the cold wind of loss blow through the empty place where Tammary used to be.

“My name,” said the young man on the doorstep, in a voice that trembled with emotion, “is Zhan.”

“I thought you were dead.” Tammary stood motionless in the middle of the room, her eyes on the apparition in the doorway.

“Liudan said … I believed that
you
were … that they had killed you.”

“Oh, Zhan. Why did you come here. How did you know where to find me?”

Raian placed a firm hand between the shoulder blades of the visitor and propelled him into the house, shutting the door firmly against several too-curious stares that the scene had attracted. When he turned back to Zhan and Tammary, he saw them standing barely a pace away from one another, not touching, devouring each other with hungry eyes.

He said nothing, dropping his own gaze, and retreated into the fastness of his workroom, leaving them alone in the hallway.

They couldn’t tell, after, who had started to talk first, and how their stories got told. Zhan found out about the loss of their child, about Tammary’s escape, about the harrowing journey across Syai, about the sanctuary she had found with Raian. She learned that he had not been the arrow-struck porcupine of the tale she had overheard in the village on her way out from Linh-an, but that he had in fact been wounded, and sent back to the city to recuperate.

“Tai sent me here,” he finally said huskily.

“She swore she would not tell anyone,” Tammary whispered, weeping.

“I am not anyone,” Zhan said. “She said … she said we needed each other. She’s right, Tammary. Why,
why
did you run from me? What did you think I would do?” He reached out and caressed her hair, brushing the back of her shoulders now. “When your braid came to me … when they sent me this, that I had loved, it was as if they had sent me your heart in a jeweled box. Something died in me that I had not known had lived. And until the moment it breathed again, when Tai spoke of you, it stayed dead. Part of me remains dead without the breath of life that you are to me.”

They held onto one another with the fierce strength of those who thought they were drowning and had found the spar necessary to survive an angry ocean. Zhan stood for a long time with his mouth resting lightly on Tammary’s forehead, his eyes closed, as though he was giving or receiving a blessing.

“They took our child,” Tammary said at last.

“I know,” Zhan said.

“I may never be able to give you …”

“I know,” he repeated. “The thought of our child was a joy to me, but having you in my life is a greater.”

And, finally, because she could not leave it unsaid, “Raian …”

“Your friend?” Zhan asked quietly. “Is there more?”

“He loves me,” Tammary whispered.

“And you?”

“No, not like that. He has been a tower of strength to me. He is one of the best friends I have ever had, possibly my only friend out here. But I … Oh, but I seem to be born to leave pain in my wake.” She buried her face against Zhan’s shoulder. “He took me in. I owe him my life. I cannot abandon him. And you … how is it that you are here? Is the war really over? Has the Empress released you?”

“Not exactly,” said Zhan with a crooked smile. “I am supposedly on recuperation leave from my command. But when I left the battlefields, we were pushing the Magalipt soldiers back over the mountains. There are no guarantees, of course, but I think we are very close to succeeding in that. And I don’t think they will be back. Not for a while. Besides, the second-in-command I left in charge there is a capable soldier. What there is left to be done, he can do without me.”

“Are you abandoning the army?” Tammary said, pulling away to look at him.

“I went to the war seeking death, thinking you were dead,” Zhan said. “That has changed.”

“What do you want to do?”

“My family,” Zhan said, “owns a small farm out in the hills near Ailanh, near the lake. It is a very pleasant place. We have tenants out there now, but it is mine, if I say the word. Ours. It’s as far away from the Magalipt and from Linh-an as it is possible to get in Syai. We can be together there. We can be left alone. We can live out the span of years that the Gods have seen fit to grant to us without any enemy knowing where you are, without any war reaching out to touch us. I can make a world for us, Tammary Come with me.”

Tammary weighed it all in her mind. She had once, long ago, a lifetime ago, wanted this—exactly this: a place where she could live according to
who
she was, and not
what
she was. She would not be Traveler, or
chayan,
or a problem with one foot in each culture and belonging in both. She would be Tammary. Just herself. Perhaps she could use the knowledge that Yuet had shared with her to help the local healer deal with sickness in the village houses—but they would never know who she was, who she had been, who she could still become.

And she would have Zhan with her—and it flooded back through her, the sense of contentment, of pure quiet joy, that she had thought lost forever in the wreckage that was Linh-an’s legacy to her.

She could not choose otherwise. This was the road she had been seeking in the wilderness for so long.

“I will,” she whispered. “But I have to … I have to tell Raian.”

“We will tell him together,” Zhan said. “I believe that he does care about you. That he loves you enough to let you go.”

“But what have I given him in return for all that he has been to me?”

“But who said you should stop loving a dear friend?” Zhan said. “He holds a part of you that I never shall. It is Raian whom you finally trusted enough to come home to. That is much. It is not just you who owe him, I owe him too. I owe him more than I can ever repay him.”

When they sought Raian, at last, they found him in his study, sitting at the window. He turned as they knocked on the door and came in, his mouth curving into a wry smile.

“I was remembering,” he said simply.

Tammary squeezed Zhan’s hand, and then dropped it, and came over to wrap her arms around Raian. His arm came up around her waist to hold her, briefly