Gateway

by Sharon Shinn

  “And that’s why you’re confused?”

  Still leaning against the stone, she turned her head to look at him. “I’m confused because I don’t know how he could make it sound right in the first place. How he could make me believe him when I know he’s wrong.”

  “A lot of people believe him,” Kalen said. “It’s hardly surprising that you did too.”

  “Aurora says that evil is seductive,” Daiyu said, her voice troubled. Aurora also said that Chenglei was evil. Daiyu was far from sure Aurora was right on either count.

  Kalengrinned.“Doesshe?I’ve always found evil to be flat-out ugly. But maybe she knows a higher class of villain than I do.”

  Daiyu gave him an absent smile. Her voice, she could tell, was anxious. “But what if Chenglei is not actually a villain? What if he’s just mistaken? What if he truly believes that Shenglang is endangered? I might not agree with his conclusions, but that doesn’t make him a bad man, just a misguided one.”

  Kalen didn’t answer, just watched her with his calm brown eyes. When she went on, her voice had dropped to a murmur. “What if Aurora and Ombri are wrong? Worse, what if they’re lying? What if Chenglei doesn’t deserve to be sent away after all?”

  She half expected him to berate her for her loss of faith, to state with conviction that Aurora and Ombri were pure-hearted as angels sent from the most benevolent of the gods. But he didn’t. “I have come to believe in them, but I can only speak for myself,” he said slowly. “And maybe I would have believed in anyone who gave me a place to live and food to eat. Maybe I would believe in Chenglei if he was the one who offered me shelter. Maybe I’m just a simple man.”

  “Kalen,” she whispered, “that doesn’t help at all.”

  He laid his free hand along the side of her face, drawing her toward him until their noses almost touched. “You have to act on whatever it is you believe,” he said, his voice very low. “No one can tell you what that is. Not me, not your father, not Aurora or Ombri. Only you.”

  “I wish you would tell me,” she replied, still whispering. “You’re the only one who makes sense to me.”

  He closed the distance between them, placing a gentle kiss upon her mouth. Instantly, she was flooded with a sense of well- being, a conviction that everything would be fine. She dropped his hand so she could twine both arms around his neck, ands he scooted closer so she could kiss him back. His other arm came up to encircle her waist and his kiss grew a little harder; he shifted positions to draw her deeper into his embrace.

  And then abruptly he released her with a muffled exclamation of annoyance. At first she was shocked, and then she started laughing. He had accidentally swept his feet through the waterfall and now he was wet up to his knees.

  “I hope nobody was walking by just now and happened to see your feet poking through the water!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, that’ll teach me to be places I shouldn’t be, doing things I shouldn’t do,” he remarked. He seemed cheerful but a little unsure, as if utterly unable to predict what she might say now.

  She laughed a little shakily. She was fully aware of all the reasons it was a bad idea to be kissing Kalen, from Xiang’s horror at his unsuitability to the fact that she would be leaving him behind forever in a matter of days. Even so, she felt decidedly pleased with herself; she knew the heat in her cheeks was part embarrassment and part delight. “Then it seems unfair that you’re the only one who got drenched, since I shouldn’t have been here doing that either,” she said.

  “I don’t think I’ll be mentioning it to Ombri,” he said.

  “I don’t think I’ll be telling Xiang.”

  He smiled, but quickly turned serious. She wished he would take her hand again, but he didn’t. “I wonder if it might do you good to hear Feng talk about Chenglei.”

  “Who’s—oh, the dissident you told me about? I’d like that.”

  “I’ll see if he’s got anything planned. It’s been a while since I’ve heard him, so maybe he’s still in hiding. They say that Chenglei hates him.”

  “Every political party needs the righteous anger of the loyal opposition to keep it honest,” Daiyu said.

  Kalen laughed at her. “Is that your father talking again?”

  “No, that’s Isabel. My boss.” Daiyu paused, for she hadn’t thought about Isabel in days. “If you let Aurora know where he’ll be, I’ll try to get free to go hear him.”

  He hesitated. “Sometimes Feng speaks at fairly disreputable places. Will you be afraid or uncomfortable?”

  “Not if you’re with me,” she said honestly.

  He nodded. “We’ll meet here and then slip away.”

  “Aurora won’t like it,” Daiyu said. “She doesn’t want me to do anything to risk Xiang’s displeasure.”

  “I’ll find a way to give Aurora a message so that she won’t realize what we’re planning,” Kalen said.

  They smiled at each other in perfect complicity. For the most part Daiyu was a docile and obedient daughter, but she had learned years ago that there were times the adults in her life didn’t need to be apprised of all her plans.

  “I suppose I’d better go,” she said. “But it was so good to finally see you again! And to talk face-to-face without having to pretend!”

  His smile deepened. “Itwas good,” he said meaningfully, and she blushed again. She scrambled to her feet and shook out his shirt, which was now both wrinkled and a little mudstained, before handing it back.

  “I hope your shoes and pants dry,” she said. “Sorry you got wet.”

  He shrugged and pushed her gently toward the opening where they had squeezed in. But right before she flattened herself against the stone, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. When she looked up, he gave her one more brief kiss.

  “In case I never have another chance,” he said.

  She looked up at him for a moment. “I hope you do,” she said.

  Out from behind the tumbling water, back on the formal pathways that led through the aviary, Daiyu opened her parasol and strolled toward the gate. She moved as if she was in no great hurry, pausing every once in a while to admire one of the streaks of bright red that painted the humid air. She glanced back only once, to see Kalen on his knees, scrubbing a stone bench. He did not even look up as she stepped through the gate and back to the car where the driver sat waiting.

  FOURTEEN

  THE FOLLOWING DAYS were devoted entirely to getting ready for the Presentation Ball, which was only four days away. How could it be so soon? Daiyu thought, as something like dread washed over her. She knew that the minute she snapped the bracelet on Chenglei’s wrist, her time in Shenglang was effectively over. Oh, she might be able to stay another day or two, curious to see how the city changed once Chenglei was gone, but there was no reason for her to linger.

  One reason, of course.

  Every time she thought about leaving Kalen behind, she had a moment when she actually could not breathe. It was bad enough knowing she would never see him again—never have a chance to watch his face light up when he caught sight of her—never tuck her hand in his and feel, for as long as she held on to him, that she was safe and the world was good. But knowing that once she left Jia, she would leave behind all memories of Kalen, made her absolutely frantic. She could not forget his shy smile and his easy way of speaking. She could not forget those magical kisses behind the shimmering wall of translucent water. Surely Kalen’s face had been imprinted on her heart, a shape and a memory that she would carry with her no matter what dimension she called home.

  To distract herself from her constant anxiety over Kalen, she tried to throw herself wholeheartedly into preparations for the ball. She submitted uncomplainingly to the final round of dress fittings; she sniffed dozens of perfumes as she and Xiang worked together to find Daiyu’s perfect scent. She exclaimed in unfeigned wonder as Xiang spread the contents of her jewelry box on a table in her ornate parlor.

  “Aunt! What beautiful gems you have! I’ve never seen anyth
ing like these!”

  “No, and you never will again, though Mei thinks her own jewels are worth as much as mine,” Xiang replied, preening a little. With her long lacquered nails, she picked through the necklaces,theearrings,thepins,therings,thebracelets.“When we chose the fabric for your dress, I had thought it might look best with pearls and sapphires, but now I am wondering. I believe qiji stones would go with it even better. What do you think?”

  And she picked up a short strand of exquisite pink gems thickly clustered on a slim gold chain.

  Daiyu could only stare.

  There had to be a hundred qiji stones on this necklace, so many it would take a stonepicker months to mine them from the river. That was shocking enough all by itself, but Daiyu also was amazed to finally see what a polished qiji looked like—and to realize that she recognized it. It was a qiji that the old woman had handed her back at Fair Saint Louis; it was a qiji that had pulled her through the Arch into this iteration. She had been enthralled with the very first one she had seen, and she’d had no idea what it was.

  “My dress is—is blue,” she stammered.

  “Yes, but the accents are not,” Xiang said. Very true; the neckline and the last quarter of the sleeves were heavily embroidered in pink and rose and coral. “Just think how this color would draw out those shades!”

  “I would love to wear something as beautiful as this necklace,” Daiyu said honestly. Xiang still held it out in her extended hand, so Daiyu gently touched the glowing pink gems. An electric tingle ran up her fingertips, magnified by the number of stones.

  “And the earrings,” Xiang said. “And the bracelet. Here. Try them on.”

  It was like wearing a collar that hummed and buzze daround her throat; the earrings jangled against her cheeks, and her wrist was alive with sparkles. Even against the ordinary dull beige of Daiyu’s shirt, the gems glowed with a scarcely banked fire. She gazed at herself in the chrome mirror, astonished that the qiji gems weren’t throwing out visible flares.

  “Oh, if I could take something like this home with me,” Daiyu said with a sigh. “Even one qiji. I would remember my days in Shenglang for the rest of my life.”

  Xiang didn’t seem offended by the covetous note in Daiyu’s voice; she actually seemed pleased at Daiyu’s reaction. “Well, as to that, who knows how long it will be before you go home,” she said in her usual calculating way. “You might choose tostay. You might choose to marry. You never know what could happen.”

  Daiyu nodded silently and continued to watch herself in the chrome, turning this way and that to see how the pink of the shimmering stones threw a subtle color into her cheeks. Xiang, of course, was imagining Daiyu married to Quan instead of returning to her dreary parental home in the disease-stricken northwest; but Daiyu was wondering what it would be like to live with Kalen in Shenglang instead of returning to St. Louis where she belonged.

  Two days before the Presentation Ball, Aurora brought her a note from Kalen. “He drew this for you because he thought you might want to remember the stonepickers once you’d gone home,” Aurora said, smiling a little. “But he’s not much of an artist.”

  Daiyu took the picture from her and laughed out loud. It was obvious he had tried to sketch in the dam, the bell tower, the red gate, a pedestrian bridge, and the stonepickers themselves, bent double over the muddy riverbed as they dropped items into their shoulder bags. But the perspectives were sadly off and a number of erasures had worn the paper through in spots.

  “I don’t suppose I would have done any better,” Daiyu said. She gave Aurora a straight look, somewhat challenging. “Can I see him before I go to the ball?”

  Aurora assumed the speculative and tense expression she usually wore these days when Daiyu mentioned Kalen, as if she was always wondering how Daiyu’s fondness for the cangbai boy could bring this whole delicate mission crashing down. “Unless Xiang permits you to visit the aviary again, I am not sure how.”

  “Then afterward?” Daiyu said. “Once the ball is over? And Chenglei is—is gone? Can I see him then?”

  “Before you return to your home?” Aurora said. “Yes, I’m sure we can arrange that.”

  Daiyu nodded, as if that satisfied her. “Good. Make sure you thank him for sending me this picture.”

  “I will.”

  The minute Aurora left, Daiyu examined the paper intently, looking for a hidden message. Not until she turned it over did she see the careless words scrawled on the back and crossed out, as if this page had been used as scrap paper before it had been turned into an artist’s canvas. There was a column of numbers added up, a list that might have been a reminder about groceries, and then two words: TOMORROW AFTERNOON.

  Daiyu carefully folded the paper and tucked it inside the red silk pouch that held the rose quartz stone. She never went anywhere without the quartz in her pocket; if she suddenly had to depart for her home iteration, she didn’t want to risk leaving this precious memento behind.

  Xiang was not enthusiastic about Daiyu’s plan to visit the aviary one more time, but Daiyu allowed herself to show a little agitation over breakfast. “I keep thinking about how important tomorrow is—and what I must say and must not say—and it makes me very nervous,” she said, casting her eyes down and biting her lip. “I find the birds and the garden very soothing.”

  Xiang hunched an impatient shoulder. “Fine. You would do better to lie in your room and sleep, but go let birds dump their excrement on your head, I don’t mind. But I need Aurora’s help. You must go alone.”

  “Thank you, Aunt. You are very good to me.”

  Xiang made an annoyed sound and turned away.

  Kalen was hovering just inside the front gate at the aviary. She could not run to him and fling her arms around his neck, as shewantedtodo;instead, she nodded at him coolly and walked on by, and he fell in step behind her. The driver had told Daiyu he would wait out front with the car until she was ready to go home again, so she and Kalen had to exit by the back entrance. Even once they were outside, she could not take his hand as they negotiated the crowded streets. She had worn the plainest of the clothes that Xiang had given her, but even so, Daiyu was dressed like the daughter of a wealthy family. Beside her, Kalen looked more than ordinarily unkempt. It would be bad enough if someone saw them together, but she could always claim she was paying a cangbai laborer to perform some task for her. Less easy to use that excuse if she was clinging to his hand, smiling in a wide and foolish manner, appearing to be half in love with the boy.

  Or wholly in love.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said when they were far enough from the aviary that it seemed safe to talk. “I thought about you a couple of nights ago when I heard the river bell. Did you find any qiji stones when you went out?”

  “Two,” he said. “Small ones, though.”

  He sounded indifferent, but she was instantly concerned. “Are you worried about running out of money?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ll be all right.”

  “But—”

  He looked down at her with an odd, sweet smile. “There are other things that worry me more right now.”

  He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. “I know,” she said softly. “Sometimes I can’t think about anything else but what happens when I go back to St. Louis.”

  “Well,” he said, “you haven’t left yet.”

  They were some distance from the aviary before Kalen finally hailed a trolley, having let at least three others pass by. This one was more battered than most, its wooden seats worn and stained, its motor loud and doleful. The clientele was exceptionally grungy. Daiyu was even more conscious of her expensive, finely embroidered shirt, her silk trousers. Most of the other riders ignored her, but one older heiren woman watched her for the next ten minutes with a look of sullen resentment.

  “This is our stop,” Kalen said, and they hopped off in a truly disreputable part of town. Daiyu couldn’t even guess where it might correspond to any part of St. Louis. It was worse than Kal
en’s neighborhood, where the residents at least tried to maintain- what amenities were still in place. Here, there were almost no whole buildings standing; the shells of wood and brick structures made an erratic skyline against the glaring sun. In some spots, weeds and shrubbery partially obscured the rubble of fallen houses. Other lots were completely barren, littered with trash and glittering piles of glass.

  Yet children ran playing through the streets, and women paused in their endless tasks to share news and heartache. Campsites set up among the shattered foundations and fabric hanging from the ruined windows proved that vagrants and squatters called even this desperate vicinity home.

  “Are you afraid?” Kalen asked her.

  She shook her head. “I wish I was wearing something else,” she said. “A shirt like this just mocks their lives.”

  “Turn it inside out,” he suggested. They ducked behind the half wall of a fallen house and he stood with his back to her to offer added protection from curious eyes. The embroidery was scratchy against her skin but she felt a little less conspicuous as they moved forward again. Casually Kalen took her hand, and casually she allowed him to keep it.

  Another five minutes’ walking took them to an intersection where four large buildings apparently had once stood; even their hulking ruins were impressive, gray and heavy and throwing long silhouettes of welcome shade. A small crowd had started to congregate in those patches of shadow. Daiyu could hear a voice proclaiming excited, angry sentences before she got close enough to see the speaker or make out the words. She noticed that the crowd was made up of more men than women, more cangbai and heiren than Han, but it was still a pretty broad mix.

  She edged around the back of the crowd, Kalen a reassuring shape beside her, until she could get a good look at the speaker. He was standing on a chair, and his head and shoulders were visible above the mob. His face was long and a little narrow, framed by neglected shoulder-length black hair. He had the build of a muscular man, but the gauntness of someone who had missed a lot of meals for a long time. While they watched, he raised his hand above his head in a hard fist and spoke with passion.