by Alice Major
“Ssu-kung is still agitating for a campaign against the White Ti.”
“He is trying to flatter the king, to play up to him,” Ssu-tu said soothingly. “It is not wise with such a restless young man. But it will come to nothing.”
“No, friend. I don’t think you are right. Ssu-kung is flattering all right, but he knows what levers he is pushing. He wants to be first minister, Director of Horses. He thinks he can do so by playing up to this appetite of the king’s for glory and adventure.”
Ssu-tu made a distressed tut-tutting sound. “He doesn’t know anything about military strategy.”
“He doesn’t think he has to,” Ssu-kung said grimly. “He thinks the White Ti are a harmless enemy—a primitive people a long way away. A few skirmishes, he thinks, and he’d come home a winning general. You notice he’s not agitating for another campaign against the Chou.” He sighed heavily. “I wish that young man would simply accept that he’s supposed to play his part in these ceremonies and do it with more grace even if he doesn’t believe in them.”
Ssu-tu was mildly shocked. “Not believe in them? The most important ceremonies of the Middle Kingdom! Surely he does, as we do.”
“We each believe in our own way. I do not believe that the target we shot at yesterday is truly the heart of some immortal bird. But I still believe they are the most important ceremonies and should be taken seriously. It is one way of organizing the kingdom.”
“Speaking of organizing the kingdom . . . what do you think of what these strangers say about how their governments are organized?” From Ssu-tu’s voice, the listeners could tell that the speakers were finally moving away.
“Intriguing. Quite intriguing. But these elections sound most unwieldy ...”
Ariel kept her finger against her lips until everything was absolutely silent again. “I don’t think anyone should know we overheard that,” she said. “And you’d better watch out for that girl, Chuan.” As they made their way out of the garden, she told them what she had seen on the steps of the women’s quarters.
The vast courtyard was filling up again with butterfly colours. As inconspicuously as possible, they joined a group of people who were watching preparations at the centre of the court. After an unexplained wait for things to get going, the ceremonies dragged their solemn way through the slow, slight brightening of the light node. A procession of tawny-robed officials followed the king around the square, stopping at each pavilion to shout long, chanting prayers. At the east pavilion, the girl in green came out, bowed to the ground and gave the king a leafy branch. Ariel was too far away to see her expression for sure, but it looked as though the girl had schooled her face into an expression of bland humility.
Finally, the ceremonies came to an end and the nobles began to drift away through the Pheasant Gate. “Now what?” Joss asked as their small group stood alone in the emptying courtyard. She did not have to wonder for long. A servant came up and touched her on the sleeve.
“The king commands that you all attend him,” he murmured.
“Back to the grill,” Joss sighed.
“It’s time we asked him some questions,” said Ariel with unexpected firmness.
“What questions?”
“What he means to do about the garden and helping us.”
When they arrived at the audience hall, the king seemed to have thrown off any sullenness from the episode in the pleasure garden, even though the girl in green had joined him and the three dukes. She sat some distance away, apparently removed and uninterested in their arrival. Another woman had also joined them. Ariel recognized the tall, regal woman who had looked her in the eye as the nobles left after the music ceremony.
The questions came again. Ssu-ma wanted to know more about the government of their world. Ssu-tu asked again about wheat. The tall woman asked no questions of her own but listened attentively.
Finally, the girl in green spoke from her distant seat. “And what colour do you wear when you marry?” She looked at Chuan’s scarlet robe.
It was so odd and irrelevant a question that no-one could answer for a moment, until she repeated, “What colour?”
“White. Usually the bride wears a long white dress,” Joss said at last.
“White? You wear so unlucky a colour?” the king asked, surprised.
There was a slight pause. “A very unlucky colour indeed,” said the girl in green, looking straight at Chuan and placing her fingers tip to tip under her chin. Silence spread out from those fingers. In that silence they heard the pattering feet of someone approaching at a run.
It was the Count of Religious Affairs. His purse-string mouth was slack with dismay and his complexion had gone so pale that the thin straggle of beard on his chin looked startling in comparison.
“Robbery,” he blurted out. “The treasury ...” And he stopped as though the purse-string had been pulled tight, blocking his tongue. The king looked blank. It was Ssu-ma who asked, “What has been stolen?”
“The sacred treasures. The six ritual jades. All gone.”
There was a clamour of voices. How? When? Ariel, watching Ssu-kung thought that his flat face seemed less surprised than the others. Even faintly satisfied.
Panting, paler than ever, the Count explained the loss had been discovered only now, when he went to get the jades for the final ceremonies to be held on the following pulse. How long they had been missing, no-one could say. That chest had not been opened since the autumn ceremony. All were gone—the blue pi, the red chang, the yellow ts’ung . . .
Joss and the others exchanged glances. Joss looked a question at Chuan, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to indicate their journey across the prairie. The older girl nodded. Joss took a deep breath and stepped forward.
“Excuse me,” she said, hesitantly at first and then again louder to make herself heard over the Count’s lamentations. “Excuse me, but I think we know where one of them is.”
Her words commanded instant attention. Ssu-kung looked at her narrowly. The Count whirled around. “You are the robbers,” he said, his voice rising to a squeak.
“Don’t be silly,” Joss shot back. “Why would we tell you we had it if we had stolen it?” Rapidly she outlined the story of the fugitives they had encountered on their journey to the capital. Then she and Chuan went hastily to fetch the piece of jade from Joss’s pack, where it had lain almost forgotten since she had tucked it away there. The king took the ts’ung in his hand, examined it gently and passed it on to Ssu-ma. Then he paced the width of the audience hall, restlessly punching his right fist into the palm of his other hand.
“And these were the people of the White Ti,” he asked.
“I believe so,” said Chuan. “I have heard the accent of the White Ti in the market place and they sounded the same.”
“So these barbarians have stolen our most sacred treasures. Why?” He kept pacing and did not seem to hear Ariel’s protest. She had been watching Ssu-kung’s face, and seen an expression, first of surprise and then—she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it—of glee.
“I don’t think they had the other pieces,” she said.
“Why not?” the tall, quiet woman asked.
Ariel frowned, trying to explain why she had such a strong impression that the fugitives were not the thieves. She forced herself to think back to the sight of the boy and the man running across the prairie.
“They hardly had anything on—just rags. They weren’t carrying anything. They had no place to put anything else that size.” She pointed to the jade that Ssu-ma was stroking gently. “Besides, they seemed too poor and frightened to be stealing such important things. We don’t even know for sure that it was them who left it there. It just happened that we found it after they had gone. That doesn’t mean they left it.”
Joss snorted. “So who else would have? It’s not exactly a high-traffic area.”
“Oh, shut up, Joss,” said Ariel. “What’s the point of getting people into trouble like that?”
But the king paid no heed to her. “The White Ti have always been jealous of the Middle Kingdom. They seek to steal our strength. We must get it back.” He was excited and the stiff robes hardly hampered his movements at all as he whirled on Ssu-ma.
“A campaign. A campaign against them.”
The Director of Horses looked somber. “It is a long way to go into wild country. I would have no supply lines there and their God of the Soil would be thirsty for blood. I would lose too many lives.”
“No, no,” protested the king. “This is the beginning of summer. Plenty of crops, plenty of animals to raid. We would defeat them and return before the hard weather.”
Ssu-kung took the opportunity to snipe. “A director of horses can be too cautious,” he said. “Or is this more than caution. Are you perhaps afraid?”
Ssu-ma shrugged impatiently and did not condescend to reply. The king continued his wild pacing. “We could be off as soon as the omens are right. How quickly can you muster the horses?”
“Your Highness, I urge against it,” said Ssu-ma. “And why do you say, ‘we’? Your place is now in the palace. You are no longer the heir to the Pheasant Seat—you occupy it.”
A gleam brightened the king’s eyes and he challenged his dukes with an out-thrust chin. “In times when the fate of the Middle Kingdom is in the balance, the king’s place is with the army. The enemy have our most sacred things and we must get them back.”
Ssu-ma began to speak again, but was silenced by an upheld hand. “We are going to war against the people of the White Ti,” the king commanded. His gaze travelled from face to face, daring them to defy him, until he came to Joss and the others.
“And you will go with me,” he said exultantly.
Chapter Sixteen
Joss looked directly into the king’s eyes as he spoke and felt a twisting sensation that was both new and oddly familiar. He was brave; he was vital; he was happy. She felt as though he filled her with those qualities too, as if he poured sweet wine into an open jar. She had a crazy impulse to throw back her head and laugh. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and said gruffly. “Okay by us.”
Ariel was horrified. “No it’s not,” she said. “That’s not what we’re here for.” But no-one heard her in a sudden flurry of robes and commands as the king hurried away, followed by the rest of his attendants. And none of her companions seemed to want to hear either, in the silence that followed.
“You must be crazy,” she told her sister. “We didn’t come all this way to go marching off with an army to somewhere else again. What about Mark? What about Molly?”
Joss looked uneasy for a moment, then defiant. “What about those jades? They’re supposed to be powerful. Maybe it will help if we get them back.” It was a stupid argument, she knew, but she stuck with it.
Ariel was used to her sister being stubborn, but this seemed to be something new. Desperately, she appealed to the other two but got no support there either.
“I do not wish to go back,” Chuan said slowly. “This is a chance for me...” but she trailed off into silence and did not say what the chance was.
Alasdair was apologetic. “But I don’t want to talk her out of it,” he said at last, in response to Ariel’s badgering. “Maybe Joss is right. Maybe the jades would be useful.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself not to cry in front of these three people who suddenly seemed like strangers. “All right,” she said bitterly and walked down the stairs and across the courtyard to the women’s quarters. Joss felt a pang of guilt as she watched her, but it soon disappeared. They talked of the king, of the adventures ahead, and Joss hugged a strange exultation near her heart. Now and again she had the impression that Chuan felt the same.
The rituals for the third and final pulse of the spring ceremonies took place in the temple of the God of the Soil, in the second courtyard of the palace. Here, the simpler clothing of artisans and merchants mingled with the gaudy silk of the nobles. When it came time for the six ritual jades to be used in the ceremony, the king rose from his tall, square chair at the top of the temple stairs and announced the theft. Then he silenced the ripple of shock and lamentation with a wave of his hand.
“We have sworn to get them back,” he announced. “The treasures of the Middle Kingdom shall not be left to be pawed over by barbarians.”
A hum of approval broke from the crowd and lapped at his feet. Joss felt again that twisting sensation under her breastbone. She felt angry with the sturdy merchant to her right, who grumbled to his companion, “Another war! The court hasn’t paid me yet for all the goods it bought last time.” She and Chuan exchanged glances and moved a few steps away from the grumbler.
Preparations for the campaign north began immediately. Ssu-ma went about his tasks of assembling the men and supplies with grim competence—sending runners to notify each country village to send its levy of two men, checking long lists of millet, oil and other essentials with the Master of Agriculture, holding long consultations with the king on routes and strategy. As the soon-to-be soldiers began arriving from the countryside, he set his captains to training them in the arts and discipline of battle.
Alasdair accompanied the Director of Horses several times to the stables that occupied the whole southeast corner of the capital. Here, hundreds of grooms tended to a thousand horses as though the animals themselves came from noble blood. They were short, sturdy beasts to Alasdair’s eye, not at all like fine-boned thoroughbreds. Instead the were like overgrown ponies with thick necks and wide haunches that the grooms brushed to a glowing brown.
Ssu-kung had also insisted on being part of the campaign, although his normal duties were to oversee the network of dykes and roads that spanned the Middle Kingdom. Unwillingly, Ssu-ma put him in charge of transporting the king’s personal household.
“He can’t do us much harm with that,” he growled to Ssu-tu one day in Alasdair’s hearing.
However, the flat-faced duke proceeded to aggravate even the calm chamberlain—who normally ran all the details of palace life—with his officiousness, until finally Joss overheard Ssu-ma explode.
“You need how many carts? That’s more than I need to move a whole company of soldiers. You’re transporting only one young man.”
“One young man who is the king,” said Ssu-kung. “He must travel as befits his status.”
“His status does not require that we move the whole palace. You may have a cart for his clothing, two carts for his field tent and a cart for his weapons and ceremonial objects. And a cart for his kitchen materials. That’s all.”
“What about his servants?”
“His servants will ride or march like other soldiers.”
“Musicians? His personal augurer? The masseur?”
Ssu-ma snorted in exasperation. “Six carts. Eight carts. No more.”
Joss was standing in the walkway outside Ssu-ma’s office in the palace while this conversation took place. A few moments later, Ssu-kung came out of the residence, his face pinched with anger. He looked malevolently at her as he passed.
Joss and Alasdair went frequently to watch the levies training in the open field beyond the city walls, and the artisans feverishly working on leather armour and sharp stone weapons. Alasdair had already noticed that the people of the Middle Kingdom had a few metal objects that they prized highly, but seemed to have no supplies of new metal or skill in working it. They watched the merchants coming in from the countryside with supplies for the army. The preparations for war had turned every day into market day, and the gates of the city were constantly choked with people coming and going.
Ariel refused to go with them. She had been relieved for a little while when she realized they would not be marching off right away. She was even hopeful for a little while—it
was clear many people didn’t want them along on the campaign, including all three dukes. But the hope faded. The king wouldn’t give up his impulsive idea that the foreigners would bring them luck. Nor would Alasdair and Joss pay any attention to her. In fact, she thought, they were beginning to avoid her.
She was caught in a fog of misery, angry with the others for refusing to see her unhappiness and desperately worried what might happen to them all. She kept to her room or hid in the winding paths of the pleasure gardens, especially during the slight dimming of the light node that could be called “evening.”
On one such occasion, she made her way to the stone bench near the statue of horse and rider. She sat with her knees drawn up against her forehead and let the tears rise, hot and stinging, into her eyes. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do,” she muttered into the embroidered hem of her tunic.
“A question we must all ponder.” The voice was cool, distant, but not unkind. Ariel looked up quickly to see the tall woman who had attended their audience with the king. The woman seated herself on a second bench facing her. “But why does this eternal question pain you so much at this particular time?”
It was the first acknowledgment Ariel had received that she was in pain. After only a moment’s hesitation, the story spilled out of her.
“And now we’re scattered all over,” she concluded. “Mark and Molly back in the garden. Everyone at home worried sick or thinking we’re dead. And now the king taking us all off to war. Joss says maybe the jades will help us get back to our own world, but that’s just because she wants to go. It won’t work. I don’t believe it will work. It feels all wrong. I don’t believe these White Ti took the jades at all—I’m sure Ssu-kung had something to do with it. I saw his face. But no one will listen to me. No one.”
“When no one else listens, we have to listen to ourselves. What do you feel would be right for you to do?”
“I have to look after my sister,” Ariel replied bitterly. But the woman raised her hand.