“That’s a very handsome horse,” he said.
Ping would have quite happily given the man the horse, but she didn’t want to attract any more attention. She bowed politely.
“It belongs to my master, Sir,” she said. “He asked me to fetch it from the stables, but it got away from me. My brother and I had to chase it.”
“Perhaps you could take me to your master,” the minister said. “So that I can check that he has a permit to import a horse from outside the Empire.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does, Sir,” Ping said. “He’s very particular about such things.”
“Not so particular about the way he dresses his servants,” the stallholder observed.
Ping smoothed down her jacket. A cloud of dust rose from it. The minister signalled the guards on the wall. They started down the steps.
“Time to leave the horse,” Kai said.
The boy next to Ping let out a roar that sounded like someone banging a gong. People looked around to see where the noise was coming from. The horse reared up, beating the air with its hard hooves. It backed into a vegetable stall, sending melons and onions rolling in all directions. Ping grabbed the saddlebag and then flicked the horse’s rump with the leather thong. People shrank away from the rearing horse, giving it a clear path down the street. The horse galloped off. Ping and Kai ran in the opposite direction.
Ping couldn’t move fast because she was carrying the heavy bag. Kai led the way. He turned into an alleyway, even narrower than the street. People watched from their doorways, as Ping and Kai ran past, dodging people and dogs and rubbish.
“Kai,” Ping said. “I keep getting this feeling that someone is following us.”
Kai turned. “Someone is following—imperial guards.”
“Not them. Can you see anyone else?”
Kai dodged around a stray dog and then peered over his shoulder again. “No.”
“Actually, now my second sight is telling me that whoever was behind us is now in front of us.”
“How can someone follow if they are in front?” Kai asked.
“I don’t know.”
The guards were gaining on them. They were keen to impress the visiting minister with their efficiency.
There was a crowd of people ahead, gathered around a dumpling stall. Pushing past the crowd slowed them down. Ping scanned the roofs. The buildings were low. She was considering climbing up and escaping that way when she collided with someone. It wasn’t an imperial guard. It was a man dressed in clothes as dusty as hers. He grabbed her. She tried to fight him off, but she was weary. She didn’t think she had the strength to summon a qi bolt, so she kicked him in the shin and flicked his face with the leather thong which was still in her hand. He yelped with pain and let go of her.
She turned to face the guards. Two of them already had Kai backed against a wall, their iron spear tips trained on him. She could hear the tearing metal sound of a dragon in pain. His boy-shape was shimmering. Ping knew he couldn’t stay shape-changed for long in the presence of iron. The man grabbed her again from behind. Anger focused her qi without her even having to think about it. She turned and hit the man with a qi bolt, sending him flying into the pile of bricks. The guards turned away from Kai.
Before Ping could refocus her qi, more guards had surrounded her with their crossbows loaded and pointed in her direction. The dusty man got up.
“Don’t harm them,” he said. “They’re my slaves.”
“I am no one’s slave!” Ping shouted.
The crossbows moved closer.
“You should ask for your money back,” one of the guards said. “No point in paying good money for a troublesome slave.”
“I’ll calm her down, don’t worry. And you don’t have to poke your spears at the boy,” the man continued, “You won’t do anything silly, will you, Kai?”
The little boy shook his head solemnly.
Ping looked at the man again. How did he know Kai’s name?
“You’d better catch that horse of yours,” the guard said, “before someone steals it.”
“I’ll give you a reward, if you can catch it for me,” the man said, pulling a gold coin from his sleeve.
The guards lowered their spears and turned to pursue the horse.
“Are you sure you can handle this one?” a guard asked, jerking his head towards Ping. “She’s a savage. You can’t trust a barbarian.”
Ping let the insult pass. She’d met more savages on this side of the wall than the other. The guards hurried back down the alley, keen to earn the reward. The crowd that had gathered went back to their business. Ping examined the man. He was young, no more than 16 years old.
“Why did you say I was your slave?” she asked. “I wanted to get rid of the guards.” He was smiling. Ping heard a sound like small bells jingling. It was Kai laughing.
“Don’t you recognise me, Ping?” As he said this, the young man looked down shyly as if he didn’t really want her to look at him at all.
Ping stared at him again. He held something out in his hand.
“You said I should keep this as a souvenir, but I think it holds better memories for you than it does for me.”
In his hand was the Imperial Dragonkeeper’s seal. He glanced at her.
“Jun?”
He nodded.
Ping moved closer. The young man looked nothing like the boy who had tried to steal her job as Imperial Dragonkeeper the previous year. He no longer had a fringe to hide behind.
“Your hair’s grown,” Ping blurted out.
Jun smiled. “You’d expect it to in a year or more.”
The rest of him had grown as well. He was more than a head taller than Ping. His face was fuller, his arms stronger, his voice deeper.
“What are you doing here?” Ping asked.
Jun took her arm. “I’ll explain later, but right now I think we need to get away from Shabian Pass. You’ve already drawn enough attention to yourself.”
• chapter eleven •
TRUST
No one spoke until Shabian Pass was
far behind, and they were sure that no one
was following them.
Ping was exhausted and Kai was weak from being near iron, but neither of them argued with Jun. They walked as fast as they could away from the Great Wall and the dusty town. Ping was glad to be travelling on her own two feet again.
She still found it hard to believe that the young man striding ahead of her was the skinny boy who had pretended to be a Dragonkeeper. Ping and the Imperial Magician, Dong Fang Suo, had found him living in poverty with his family on an unsuccessful silkworm farm. Although Jun’s grandfather had been a Dragonkeeper, neither Jun nor his father had the characteristics. But that hadn’t stopped his parents trying to end their poverty by passing their son off as one.
No one spoke until Shabian Pass was far behind, and they were sure that no one was following them. Jun slackened his pace and Ping caught up with him.
“Tell me what has happened to you since I saw you last,” she said.
Jun didn’t answer straightaway. Their time together was not something either of them took pleasure in remembering. The Emperor had believed that Jun was a true Dragonkeeper and blamed all his failures on Ping. He had imprisoned her and made Jun the Imperial Dragonkeeper. She had thought that all her friends had deserted her, but they hadn’t. Jun had already decided that he couldn’t go on pretending to be a Dragonkeeper. So he had helped Ping and the Imperial Magician defeat the necromancer who wanted to use Kai’s blood in his spells to give the Emperor eternal life. During that confrontation, Dong Fang Suo had been killed and Jun had volunteered to take his body back to the Emperor.
“The Emperor was very angry,” Jun said. “Not about Dong’s death, but about the defeat of the necromancer.”
“Did he punish you?” Ping asked.
“He locked me below decks on the imperial barge, but he was soon obsessed with sending an expedition to the Kun-lun Mountains to find
the fungus of immortality that’s supposed to grow there. He sailed back to Chang’an, leaving behind anyone who’d had anything to do with his failed plan to make an elixir of eternal life. There was me and the kitchen boy who mixed the potions, and the remaining members of the Longevity Council. Do you remember them, Ping?”
“Those three strange men?”
Jun nodded.
“I told them I was going back home and that the silkworms weren’t producing silk. The Longevity Council members knew exactly what was wrong. It wasn’t the worms that were sick, it was the mulberry leaves that they fed on. They knew how to cure the sickness.”
The council members told Jun that the fallen leaves had to be burnt during winter and the new buds painted with a copper solution in spring. They made the solution from melted copper bowls that they found in the charred remains of Ming Yang Lodge.
“I walked home,” Jun continued, “and arrived just in time to burn the leaves before the spring growth emerged. Then I painted the buds with the copper solution. The silk crop was the best we’ve had for years. This year’s crop promises to be even better. My parents are convinced this change in our fortunes was because of the dragon’s luck.”
Ping was pleased to hear that Jun’s family was experiencing better times, but there was another question she wanted to ask.
“So it wasn’t just chance that made our paths cross again?”
Jun shook his head.
“For weeks, I’ve had a feeling that someone was behind us, always just out of sight.” Ping looked at Jun. “Was it you?”
Jun lowered his eyes and nodded.
“I couldn’t understand it,” Ping said. “I’ve only ever been followed by people who wanted to harm Kai. I had no foreboding, because you didn’t want to hurt Kai. I thought my second sight wasn’t working, but it hasn’t let me down.”
“It wasn’t working very well this morning,” Jun said. “Why did you go wandering off to look at jewellery when the town was bristling with guards trying to impress the minister?”
“I think it was my second sight that drew me to the stall,” Ping said.
“Your second sight told you that you needed earrings?”
Ping smiled. “No, it told me that I would learn something important there.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
Jun waited for Ping to tell him what she’d learned, but she was silent.
“I only want to help you, Ping. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve wandered across the Empire without knowing where you’re going?”
Ping nodded. “I know where I’m going next, but not my final destination.” She looked around. “Where’s Kai?” She couldn’t see the dragon anywhere.
“Has he shape-changed into something else?” Jun asked.
Ping peered at a nearby bush, and poked at a rock.
“Kai, where are you?”
There was no answer.
“It’s because we’ve been ignoring him. He’s gone off in a huff. He could get lost.”
“He can’t be far away. We were dawdling. Are you sure he hasn’t gone ahead?”
“I don’t know.”
They hurried along the road. Suddenly something jumped out from behind a rock.
“Boo!” said a voice in Ping’s head. To Jun it sounded like someone crashing a gong.
“Kai,” Ping said sternly. “That wasn’t very funny.”
Kai was making a sound like small bells ringing. “Yes it was!”
They walked on in silence. They had left the dusty yellow plain behind at last. To the south were the first thriving fields Ping had seen all spring. Farmers had channelled water from the Yellow River to irrigate their fields. The sight of green leaves was a balm for the eyes after so many days in the desert. Ping picked some berries from a bush near the road.
“I’d like to continue to help you,” Jun said.
“We don’t need an escort,” Ping said. “We can look after ourselves.”
“If Jun hadn’t been there to rescue us,” Kai pointed out, “Ping would be in prison in Shabian Pass.”
Ping didn’t tell Jun what Kai had said.
They stopped before it got dark, next to an irrigation stream. Ping had drunk nothing but sour milk for a long time. The water tasted fresh and sweet. Jun and Kai went hunting while Ping lit a fire. They returned with a partridge. While they waited for it to cook, Jun continued his story.
“I was selling silk,” Jun replied. “The women in my village wove many chang of silk cloth last season. Most villages in our area sell their cloth straight to the imperial stores. I didn’t want to risk reminding the Emperor of my existence, in case he decided that I needed punishment after all. We’d heard that some silk growers in the north sold their cloth to the barbarians, who have developed a taste for silk, so we decided to give it a try. I wanted to reach the Xiong Nu before the other growers so I left in spring. It was too early. I found myself in a snow storm. I almost froze to death, but some of Hou-yi’s men found me.”
“Hou-yi! He rescued us as well,” Ping said.
“They saved my life, and I sold them my silk,” Jun continued. “Hou-yi also helped me meet other tribal chiefs who wanted silk. He thought I would get myself killed if I continued to wander around by myself! I liked him straightaway.”
“The bird is ready,” the dragon interrupted. “Kai is hungry.”
They shared the partridge between them as well as some tubers that Ping had dug up and roasted in the coals. It was the tastiest meal Ping had eaten for some time. From the speed that Kai ate his, he also appreciated the food. He didn’t stop when he’d eaten all the meat. He crunched up the bones and ate them too.
They shared the berries that Ping had picked that afternoon and drank hot water flavoured with ginger.
“It was brave of you to wander around the lands of the Ma Ren by yourself,” Ping said.
“That’s a good name for Hou-yi’s people.” Jun smiled. “Hou-yi didn’t trust me to get home safely, so he sent one of his men with me as a guide. The guide picked up news of what was happening elsewhere. He heard of the Emperor’s defeat and of the departure of the lucky dragon from Yan. I thought that with Danzi and Dong Fang Suo gone, someone should be keeping an eye on you. I picked up your trail when you started travelling along the wall.”
“You don’t think I can look after myself?”
“I didn’t know why you’d set off to cross the country. I thought you might have new enemies who were after Kai. Or perhaps the Emperor was pursuing you again.”
“The Emperor was badly wounded in the battle with the Ma Ren. I found him. I don’t think he’ll try to harm me again.”
“I didn’t know that. I wasn’t sure if you would welcome my assistance, so I bribed two guards to give me their uniforms. My guide and I posed as imperial messengers. We followed from a distance helping whenever we could.”
“What sort of help?”
“When you were captured by the imperial guards at Ji Liao Garrison I knew there were too many for us to take on. I sent my guide back to Hou-yi for help, while I lit the beacons at the next garrison to throw the guards into a panic.”
Ping looked at Jun in amazement.
“It was you who asked Hou-yi to help us! And then you stopped the guards at Shabian Pass from arresting me.”
He smiled shyly.
“I wasn’t always successful in protecting you. I lost you in the dust storm. You could have become disorientated and died out there.”
Ping turned to Kai. “How come you didn’t see him, Kai? You’re supposed to be able to see for many li.”
“Kai did see Jun.”
“So why didn’t you tell me he was following us?”
“Ping needed another protector besides Kai.” The dragon looked guilty. “Ping can be as stubborn as a horse. Kai thought Ping might send Jun away.”
Because he had been so small and skinny when she’d first met him
, Ping had always assumed that Jun was younger than she was, just a child. But now that he had eaten well for a year or more, he had grown to the right size for a young man of 16 years.
Kai ate the last of the partridge bones, then he dug a hole, made a nest and went to sleep.
“He’s very tired,” Ping said.
“He walked all the way from the Ma Ren camp to Shabian Pass,” Jun said. “He has every reason to be tired.”
Though she said nothing, Ping had to admit to herself that she did feel more secure with Jun there.
“Ping, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?” Jun broke into her thoughts. “There must be many places where you and Kai can live peacefully without having to trek to the other side of the Empire.”
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s what Danzi wanted. If you’d known him, you wouldn’t question his wisdom. He might have been an old dragon but he was wise. At first I thought Kai needed more people, other Dragonkeepers to take over when I die. That’s the reason we came to your village. But I was wrong. He doesn’t need other people, just the opposite. He needs to find a home that’s as far away from people as possible.”
“But you don’t even know where you’re going. You’re just wandering around hoping you’ll come across this wondrous safe place.”
“You’re wasting your time if you think you can talk me out of it. I know I’m doing the right thing.”
“I can see that Kai needs a safe place to live,” Jun persisted. “But I don’t understand why it has to be on the very edge of the Empire. You and Kai could live in my village. You could have your own house. Lu-lin is a prosperous place now and the villagers are so grateful that I restored the mulberry trees to health, they would do anything I asked. They will keep Kai’s presence a secret.”
Ping sighed. “For how long? A year? Ten years? A hundred years?” She was tired of explaining it to people. “Kai has to be safe not only while he’s young, but through his whole life, long after you and I are dead.”
Jun was silent for a moment.
“So you’re taking Kai to a place, but you don’t know where it is. And when you find it, he’s going to be safe but living in solitude for most of his life.”
Dragon Moon Page 11