The Secrets of Jin-Shei (71 page)

“Yes, but somehow I’ve always been able to understand,” Nhia said. “Now I’m not only second-guessing her, I’m doing it to myself.” Her breath caught on a sob again. “He said they would rescue her, Tai. And just before he told me that, I … Oh, Cahan, Tai, I thought the choice was
between watching her being hideously butchered in the public square in two days or giving her a chance to die a dignified death, a death without pain—but what if I had been wrong? What if Weylin was right? What if they would have come for her? What if the choice had been between life and death, and I … I, her own
jin-shei-bao,
took that choice away from her? Xaforn died for her, and what I did may have betrayed them both.”

“Nhia …” Tai began.

“If she is guilty of anything, it is of falling under Lihui’s spell—and I have been there myself, I know how powerful that voice of his can be, how compelling the need to obey his wishes. If she was guilty, so was I—of the same sin. I could not sit and watch her pay the price for my own mistakes. I gave her a way out, tonight, Tai.” Nhia swallowed hard. “I took a vial of poison to her cell tonight. A death with dignity, I thought, and not a spectacle for the crowds, or a way for Liudan to indulge her paranoia. As if cruelty and violence have ever stood in the way of rebellions—if anything, they feed them.”

Tai’s eyes brimmed with tears, spilled.

Bare branch trembling in the sunshine. Pau-kala.

Nhia’s hands clutched at Tai’s, her grip surprisingly strong. “What if I was wrong?” she whispered with a savage intensity. “Have I killed what Xaforn died to save? Would the Imperial Guard have put a stop to Liudan’s plans, if the rebels did not? What if I was wrong, Tai? I thought I was doing the right thing, the only thing I could do, but what if there had been a chance, what if I could have saved her instead? I am Chancellor—why didn’t I go to Liudan and demand that she not go through with this? I could have asked her, in the name of
jin-shei …
”

“And she would have found a way to deny you,” Tai said quietly. “She has locked herself in a virtual tower, isolating herself from all, even from us, her
jin-shei-bao,
except when she turned to the sisterhood to wring what she needed out of one or another of us. But it isn’t just us these days, although those of us who are gone may be good examples of what Liudan is doing. She demands absolute loyalty—but she alone is to be the judge of what that loyalty is or how it is expressed. And in a way it is understandable—she is Empress, and loyalty to the throne has always been important. But Nhia, she has set loyalty against wisdom, loyalty against honor, loyalty against happiness, and with us it has always been in the name of
jin-shei.
She demanded immortality, and continued demanding it even when it was beyond doubt that it would be unwise to pursue it further—but she
wanted what she wanted, and asked too much of Khailin. She used the Guard to back her when she took the throne as Dragon Empress, and loyalty has been bred into those people for generations, over the reign of many, many Emperors—but she asked too much of Xaforn. And she seemed to truly believe that both Tammary and Qiaan should somehow shrug off their inconvenient ancestry, just so that the Dragon Empress could sit more securely on her throne. She broke the laws of
jin-shei
even as she invoked it, every time. Antian asked me to take care of her, but I honestly don’t know how to do that anymore.”

“Have you seen her recently?”

“She does not see me often,” Tai said. “And when she does she seems to be in a different sphere from me. It’s like trying to talk to an alien creature which lives on fire alone and thrives on blood and fear and conflict as long as they all take place beyond the serene, elegant silence of her drawing room.”

The servant had brought the tea and had left the tray on a low table by the door of the sitting room. Tai crossed to the tea things and brought back two steaming cups, passing one to Nhia.

“Well, I had better go and see her tomorrow,” Nhia said wearily.

“If you think pouring your heart out to Liudan in a confession will help,” Tai began, but Nhia, accepting the cup with one hand, raised the other to stop her.

“No, it’s that loyalty thing,” she said, with a small smile. “You see, Qiaan’s impending rescue is not the only thing that Weylin told me about tonight.”

Tai, suddenly shivering, put down her tea cup. “What else?”

“The same people who would have set Qiaan free had laid far deeper plans,” Nhia said. “Weylin did not know when or how—or perhaps he just wouldn’t tell me—but they are plotting Liudan’s death. Somehow, somewhere, someone is going to bring poison to the Empress—and Weylin seemed to think that it would be within days.” Nhia drained her tea as though she was drinking white spirits, and turned an ironic, twisted smile on Tai. “I gave poison to Qiaan myself, and now I have to go and make sure that I keep it from Liudan’s lips. Oh, what a creature I have turned into, Tai. I give death with one hand, and life with the other.”

F
or the second time in less than twenty four hours, at mid-morning the next day, Nhia found herself knocking on the door of one of her
jn-shei
sisters. But this door was guarded by a servant who appeared less inclined to grant her admittance.

The Empress is indisposed,
Liudan’s deaf-mute servant signed to her.

“Indisposed? How?” Nhia demanded sharply.
In the name of Cahan, can I be too late already?

The servant girl repeated that the Empress was not seeing anyone. Perhaps she offered more but the sign language, so honed between servant and Empress that it had sometimes seemed to Nhia that Liudan read her servant’s mind rather than her dancing hands, was not something that Nhia herself was proficient in. On any other day, she might have left an urgent message for Liudan and returned later. But a vivid fear burned in her, and “indisposed” could mean anything at all right now. A sudden echo of Xaforn’s voice rang in her mind:
Well, if Liudan won’t give me leave, I’ll have to do it without.
On the day she asked Nhia to stand sentry for her as she set out on the ghost road to get Qiaan. On the day she died.

Nhia’s eyes were suddenly very bright.

If Xaforn had had the courage to do it …

“Sorry,” she murmured to the servant girl, “but I have to see her. Right now. It’s urgent. She will see
me,
I am the Chancellor of her realm.”

The servant made further motions of denying entry, but Nhia swept past her and into the antechamber to Liudan’s rooms. To her eye it looked untidy, things piled on a low table by the door as though the servant had been caught in the middle of preparing something, or even packing. Under ordinary circumstances, Nhia might have paid closer attention, but she passed by the table casting only a cursory glance on its jumbled contents and opened the door to the inner chambers.

Liudan, dressed only in a silk morning robe loosely tied around her waist and her hair escaping messily from a hastily pinned-up attempt at a court style, stood in the midst of the room, and she looked like the absolute incarnation of towering rage.

“What?” she demanded, her head turned away from the door. “I told you to stay out! What do you want?”

“She can’t keep all of us out forever,” Nhia said.

Liudan’s head snapped around. Her mouth was white with fury, her eyes blazing black fire. “You!” she said sharply. “It’s just as well—I have a job for you—I will know who is responsible for this, and I will have their heads! I’ve already told the Guard to remove the man on duty last night. Permanently. Poison! How could she have had access to poison? The only people who went in to see her were the old hag of a healer, and that guard. Maybe the healer … she had access to things like that.”

“And JeuJeu of the Guard,” Nhia said. “And Tai. And myself. And you.”

“The Guard? You think the Guard would dare to do this?”

“No,” Nhia said. She was suddenly very calm. Facing the madness that racked Liudan, she found herself remembering—not without a pang—the sky she once flew in with the wings of an eagle. Once, a long time ago, in an age of innocence.

Liudan glared at her. “Someone got to her,” she snarled. “And when I find out who, I’ll …”

“I did it, Liudan. I did it in the name of …”

“You? You gave her the poison? Have you taken leave of your senses? Now I have nothing that I can use to …”

“I did it in the name of
jin-shei
,” Nhia said, completing her sentence as though Liudan’s outburst had never interrupted her.

Liudan shut her mouth with a snap.

“I came here to warn you, Liudan,” Nhia continued, moving smoothly from the subject under discussion as if she’d been talking about the inclement weather and not just handed Liudan the verbal equivalent of a lit firework. “It has come to my attention that you are in danger of your life, that an attempt may be expected within days. Maybe within hours.”

“You gave Qiaan poison?” Liudan repeated once again, her features slack with shock. And then they gathered again, into rage, loftier still than the one Nhia had walked in on. “She was to be an example, something to show that no further risings against the Dragon Empress would be tolerated
—an example, to show other would-be pretenders the fate that awaited them if they tried to steal my Empire!”

“Liudan,” Nhia said, with infinite patience, “creating martyrs usually has the opposite effect. You would have been sowing dragon teeth into all too fertile a soil. There is still discontent out there, just looking for a peg to hang itself on. You can still make a point, if you will. Qiaan died. She died because she was used to front someone else’s ambition—and you
know
this, Liudan, you have to understand this! I have been under Lihui’s spell myself. What he tells you, you believe. What he told Qiaan was what she needed to believe. All she wanted to do was make a better world.”

“And being Empress would make everything just perfect,” Liudan sneered. “Lihui himself is dead too, anyway, so there is conveniently no way to prove those charges, no way to hold anyone but Qiaan herself accountable. If she hadn’t wanted to sweep me aside, she never would have …”

“Before Lihui came and filled her head with those visions, Qiaan never thought of claiming an Empire,” Nhia said. “All she wanted was to make a difference, to stand between catastrophe and those too weak or too ignorant to face it. She never even knew who her real mother had been, and as for the ‘twice royal’ story that Lihui fed her, that was palpable nonsense.”

“Which she took with both hands, and ran with,” Liudan raged. “Nhia, you’ve wrecked everything!”

“Are you going to send me up in Qiaan’s place, then? Is
everything
treason these days?”

Liudan’s fury was at white heat. “I could break you for this—I could …”

“Poison,” Nhia said.

Distracted, Liudan tossed her head. “What? I know, they just told me. They found the body early this morning. And the vial. Damn you, Nhia, why did you interfere?”

“Not Qiaan. You,” Nhia said. “They mean to poison you. I don’t know how or where or precisely when—but within the next two or three days.”

“They can’t poison me,” Liudan said. “All my food is tasted. You know that.”

“So do they. If they are aware of it, and they have to be if their plan has any chance of success, then they will include that aspect into their scheme.”

“They can’t kill me!” Liudan cried, slammed her fist against the window frame. She missed. Her arm smashed the glassed-in window of her
chambers, shattering it. Glass splinters went flying, and blood flowed thickly from several cuts on Liudan’s arm, a few of them deep. She stared at her limb as though she hadn’t been aware that it belonged to her. “They can’t hurt me,” she whispered, her voice a little girl’s lost, frightened, full of a pathetic bravado of someone defending herself against impossible odds, against innumerable foes. “They can’t. They can’t. I’ll make sure they can’t touch me. Nobody can touch me. Nobody! I am Liudan, I am Third Princess. I am … I am the Dragon Empress! I am immortal!” Her voice rose into a scream.
“Immortal!”

Nhia had leapt forward at Liudan’s action, but had been too late to prevent it; now she helped Liudan out from amid a shatter-zone of broken glass, wrapping the sleeve of her morning robe tightly around the slashed arm. The bell pull that summoned Liudan’s servant was within arm’s reach; Nhia yanked on it hard with her free hand. The deaf mute servant girl padded into the room in the space of a few moments and stood staring.

“Call a healer!” Nhia barked. “And water! Bring me water to clean this up with in the meantime! And clean bandages! Hurry!”

The girl snapped her mouth shut, whirled, and disappeared into the anteroom.

Liudan was crying, softly, almost soundlessly. Large tears brimmed in her eyes and then rolled down her cheeks, one after another.

“Shh, quiet, it’ll be okay,” Nhia said, rocking her like a child. “Let me see that. If you got glass in it we need to get it out.”

Liudan’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Nhia bent closer.

“What?”

She heard disjointed phrases, soft mutters, almost entirely inaudible.

“Qiaan … and it isn’t fair … poison … nobody ever tried to … all dead, all gone … take
care
of me … Mother … where are the other sisters …
love
me …”

“We all loved you,” Nhia said, examining the gouges in Liudan’s arm. “I think there
is
a piece of glass in this one. It’s going to hurt, hold still.”

Nhia tried to extract the thin sliver of glass from one of the deeper cuts, as gently as she could, but the cut was bleeding copiously and Nhia’s fingers fumbled at her task. Liudan whimpered; her sleeve was soaked with blood, the rest of her robe spattered with it. Nhia hesitated, her gorge rising.

“I always hated the sight of blood,” she muttered. “Cahan, where is that healer? Where did that silly girl get to?”

The servant hurried back into the room even as Nhia looked up in anxious impatience. She bore a large lacquered tray; on it was a bowl of water, a pile of clean cloths, a length of lint bandage and a tall goblet brimming with a liquid that smelled of lemon and honey. Nhia was reaching for the cloths even before the tray had been put down, dipping one into the bowl of water, turning back to Liudan.