The Secrets of Jin-shei

by Alma Alexander

  The healer shifted her weight very gradually, very carefully, aware that a single false move she made could send both her and the Little Empress tumbling all the way down to the bottom of the chasm below.

  “I come, Princess. I am coming.”

  “It’s too late,” Antian whispered, her voice a breath.

  Yuet bit her lip, looking at the broken body at her feet. The fingers of Antian’s hand, lying over the spreading black stain on her robe, were slick with the blood that had seeped through. The cut on her forehead was starting to clot but was still seeping, and a thin stream of it had flowed past the corner of her eye and down her temple, soaking the glossy black hair. Yuet could read the signs, and the signs were all over the Little Empress—the pallor of her skin, the white shadow around her lips, the shallow breath that moved the thin ribcage beneath the blood-soaked robe. This was just one more face of the death that Yuet had found at every turn in the Palace that grim morning.

  “Oh, no,” Yuet found herself whispering. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Do something,” Tai said desperately from the edge of the balcony, just above them.

  Yuet took another careful step, which brought her right up to Antian’s body, and went down gingerly on one knee. “Let me see, Your Highness.”

  Antian allowed her hand to be removed from her bloodied side, her eyes closing. Her lips were parted, and she breathed so shallowly that Tai, staring at her from her perch on the edge, could not swear that she breathed at all. The breath came a little more sharply as Yuet’s gentle fingers probed the wound in Antian’s side and came away bloody. Yuet kept her eyes lowered, looked down the line of Antian’s hip and onto the unnaturally bent leg, allowed her fingers to linger there as well, drawing another sharp gasp of pain.

  “That’s just a broken leg, we can mend that,” Yuet said soothingly. “I will make a splint, just as soon as we get you up.”

  Antian’s eyes opened, cloudy but alert. “What … happened to …”

  Yuet tried to look away but a sudden rush of tears she could not hold back betrayed everything, and Antian bit her lip.

  “They are dead, aren’t … they? All of them?”

  “I … I don’t know, Your Highness, but … we have not found Second Princess Oylian yet.”

  “So she won’t … be Empress,” Antian said, and glanced up to catch Tai’s eye. It cost her something, because she could not help a soft moan as she tried to turn her head. “And neither … will I.”

  “It’s just a broken leg,” said Yuet stubbornly.

  “And this?” Antian whispered, only her eyes flickering down to her side. It seemed that her eyes were all that she had the strength to move.

  “Where is that man with the rope?” Yuet snapped, fretting.

  “I can help you,” Tai said suddenly. “I can help you bring her up here.”

  “You can’t hold her weight,” said Yuet skeptically, glancing up at the slightly built eleven-year-old on the ledge above her.

  “She is not heavy. And if you will hold her from below, I can catch her up here.”

  “We should not move her at all!” Yuet said with an edge of despair in her voice. “Let alone a push-me-pull-you method like that! Her ribs …”

  Tai’s breath caught on a sob as she turned around and scanned the gardens behind her for any sign of the returning manservant with the rope and the reinforcements. “She’ll die.”

  She is dying anyway. She will be dead by the time the man gets back here. The thought was as clear in Yuet’s mind as though Szewan, her mentor and the master-healer woman to whom she was apprenticed, had spoken them while standing right beside her.

  She glanced up again, to where Tai had risen into a crouch, tense, weeping. Then down, at the fragile broken body at her feet. Then at the ledge where she stood, precarious, unstable. If she moved too fast, too carelessly, if she turned an ankle on a loose piece of rubble …

  “All right,” she said abruptly. “Wait there until I say.”

  There was a long tear in Antian’s robe; she must have caught it on something as she was pitched over the edge and fell. Yuet took hold of the fabric and ripped it all the way, leaving herself with a ragged strip of silk in her hands. She folded this up into a thick wad, tucked it underneath the robe over the wound in Antian’s side, took off her own belt, and tied the pad into place.

  “Can you hold on to that, Princess? Just so that it doesn’t move?” She lifted Antian’s almost lifeless hand and placed it over the makeshift pressure pad. It was not going to help. Nothing was going to help, but she might as well try.

  Antian’s hand landed with her usual grace. “I’ll try,” she said weakly.

  Yuet looked up.

  Tai straightened. “I’m here. What do I have to do?”

  “I will try and lift her. Can you reach down for her shoulders? Oh, what are we doing?” Yuet said, aghast. “We’ll all be down there in pieces in a minute!”

  “I can do it,” Tai said. “I can do it!”

  “We’ll kill her,” Yuet whispered despairingly, looking down at the girl at her feet.

  Antian’s eyes opened again, and there was a shadow of a smile in them. “You cannot do that,” she whispered. “It is out of your hands.”

  Yuet was seventeen years old. She had had her Xat-Wau ceremony nearly three years before; she had been first apprentice and now assistant to Court healer Szewan since she was seven years old. She was good. She saved lives. And right now all she wanted to do was bury her face in her hands and weep for the pity of it.

  All her choices were doomed here. Antian was right. Yuet could not kill her—because, except for these last few breaths of pain, she was already dead.

  “Help me,” Yuet said to Tai, waiting on the ledge. She checked the tie on the pad, made sure it was as secure as it could be, lifted Antian’s slender body as gently as she could. Antian let out a soft sob of pain and Yuet winced; she could feel the blood from Antian’s side seep warm and wet into her own robe as she held Antian against her body; she cradled the princess for a moment, shifting her grip, and then slid an arm along her back, laying Antian’s spine against the long bones of her own forearm, straightening the Princess’s body as much as she was able. “Just keep your hand there, Princess,” she said, anything, just to keep talking, for Antian to hear voices. “Stay with us. You … what is your name?”

  “Tai. I’m Tai.”

  “Tai—catch her under the shoulders—gently, gently—slowly. Have you got her?”

  Antian’s shoulders were on the edge of the broken balcony, her head lolling sideways. Tai had both hands under her shoulders, trying not to pull on the wounded side, using her arm and shoulder to keep Antian’s head from lolling down onto the stone. “I have her,” she gasped, straining. Antian was a small-boned girl with a fragile build, but she was a dead weight in their arms right now, her eyes tightly squeezed, her face a mask of pain, her breath coming in short sharp gasps.

  For a ghastly moment Tai thought her grip was slipping, that Antian’s silk-clad shoulders would slide from her fingers and that she’d have to watch her fall, all the way down, all the way into that river she had once watched flowing into the sunset and thought golden. But something gave her the strength and she managed to get Antian anchored on the edge of the solid remnant of the balcony. Then, miraculously, other hands arrived and somebody took up the slack, supported Antian’s body where Tai could not reach, helped lift the princess up and lay her gently down against the wall of the balcony. Someone reached over and helped Yuet scramble back up; Tai, all of whose attention was on Antian now, heard something break and go tumbling down, crashing and crumbling against the mountainside, and a part of her shuddered at the sound, but that was all in the background.

  Antian’s lips were white with pain; the pad against her side was soaked with her blood. Yuet herself looked like she had been stabbed in the heart, a dark red stain spreading across her robe, as she came to kneel on Antian’s other side.

  “They b
rought a stretcher, Highness, if we can just get you …”

  “You have done,” Antian whispered, “what can be … done. Tai …”

  She tried to lift a hand, but it barely cleared her abdomen before falling back weakly. Tai reached for it, weeping openly

  “What is it, Antian?”

  “Do … something for me … jin-shei-bao.”

  “Anything,” Tai said. “You know it.”

  Antian’s eyes closed. She squeezed Tai’s hand, once.

  “Take care of her,” Antian said, almost too softly for Tai to hear. “Take care … of my sister.”

  Three

  Arush of white noise roared in Tai’s ears as Antian’s lifeless head rested on the arm which she had slipped underneath the nape of Antian’s neck as support. For a moment she could not move at all. She felt like the entire Palace was coming down in ruins all over again, only this time she was inside it, deep inside it, and it was all falling on her and around her and burying her with the pain. It took Yuet several tries before she could get a reaction from her, but Tai eventually became aware that the older girl had her by the shoulder and was speaking to her in a gentle voice.

  “Tai. Tai. Listen to me. Look at me. Look at me. Good.” Tai had raised her eyes, her pupils dilated with shock, her face stark. “I have to go back to … they will take care …” Yuet’s voice faltered for a moment, and then she seemed to change her mind, come to a different decision. “No. You go with them. Take the Little Empress back to the summer house in the garden. Make sure she is tended with honor.”

  Tai stared at her, swallowed what tasted like bitter aloes. “I will.”

  “I will look for you, after. I have to go and take care of … of whoever is left up there. I will come for you. I am relying on you.”

  “I will do it,” Tai said, getting to her feet.

  Yuet could see that she was not entirely steady as she stood beside Antian’s body, and did not feel happy at leaving her alone—her healer’s instincts told her that what Tai needed right then was someone to cling to, a warm blanket, something hot to drink, all the things needed to stave off shock. But all this was the healing of the mind. She was not physically hurt, and there were others out there who would need Yuet, who might be pulled out of the rubble half-alive, whose lives Yuet could save.

  Yuet looked up at the waiting servants. “Take the Little Empress to the summer house.” She hesitated; all hands would be needed, but she could not just leave Tai alone. “One of you,” she said, “stay with her and with Tai. And somebody find Tai an outer robe.”

  “Yes, sai’an.” The man who had gone for help bent down and gathered Antian’s body into his arms, very gently, as though she was a precious porcelain doll, and waited for Tai to lead the way. Tai turned away from the edge of the ruined balcony without looking out to her river again. She walked past Yuet without a word, almost without any sign that she was aware that the healer stood there.

  “I shouldn’t leave her alone,” Yuet murmured to herself as the servant bearing Antian followed the younger girl into the garden.

  But already she could hear the screams and wails, the pain and the terror that was waiting for her in the rubble of the Summer Palace. The voices drew her; for a moment she forgot about Tai, she forgot about Antian whose life’s blood she wore on her own robe. There were other lives.

  The morning had fled quickly. They put out two of the smaller fires but the biggest one, the one that had started deepest in the ruins, quickly spread out of control. Thick columns of black smoke rose into the innocent blue of a flawless summer sky, and orange tongues of flame added to the day’s gathering heat. There were survivors—but few, so few, and the lines of bodies covered with sackcloth grew.

  Yuet was perched precariously on the edge of a hole she and a few other able-bodied survivors had been excavating into the rubble, chasing down an elusive sobbing cry they had thought might indicate someone alive down there, when the first aftershock hit the mountain. The pile of debris that Yuet had been standing on tilted, nearly throwing her into the hole, and then settled at a different angle, a different slope. When the panicked shouts had settled down, they could no longer hear the voice they had been following in their attempts at rescue, and Yuet had called her team of aides off.

  “It’s useless, look, it’s all fallen in down there.” She looked up and out across the debris, wiping sweat and dust and drifting ashes out of her eyes, and straightened up as she met the eyes of Antian’s little jin-shei-bao. “You? What are you doing here? Are you all right?”

  “I want to help,” Tai said, her voice trembling just a little. She wore a borrowed gown, at least two sizes too large for her, and looked pitifully small and young and fragile.

  “Wait there a moment.” Yuet scrambled down from her pile of rubble and came to stand next to Tai, lifting her chin with one hand, peering into her eyes. “You should be lying down somewhere and …”

  “Please,” said Tai, “I cannot. Let me help.”

  Yuet hesitated. “There is little that you can do.”

  Someone shouted out, a shout that held gladness; Yuet looked up. A senior servant of the women’s quarters, his tunic torn and his face and arms scratched and sooty, came scrambling over at a trot, carrying something in his arms.

  “It’s a miracle, but he is still alive,” the servant said, offering Yuet a bawling baby swaddled in a torn silk wrap. “I don’t think he is hurt, even; the crying is just fear and hunger.”

  Tai intercepted the child, cradled him in her arms, and he stopped crying, blinking up at Tai’s face with a puzzled expression and teardrops caught on his long dark lashes. “Shhhh,” Tai said, rocking him gently against her. “Shhh, it will be all right. It will be all right.”

  The ground trembled again under their feet, and Tai could not suppress a cry, clutching at the child, who whimpered but did not resume his desperate wailing.

  “Where did you find him? Are there …?”

  “No,” said the servant, dropping his eyes. “Only that one. His mother is dead.”

  “Are there other children?” Tai asked.

  Yuet nodded. “Maybe half a dozen or so. From swaddling babes like this one to six- or seven-year-olds. They’re in the outer wing.”

  “I know it,” Tai said. It was the wing where she and Rimshi had always stayed when they were at the Summer Palace. “I will take care of the children.”

  “You need …” Yuet began, but Tai lifted glittering dark eyes and Yuet stopped, biting back what she had been about to say.

  “I need to do it,” Tai said, very softly. “For her.”

  “Go,” Yuet said, after a pause. “Go, take care of the children.”

  “You are still wearing …” Tai began, but then her eyes filled with unexpected tears again, and she turned away quickly, gathering the child to her, and was gone. Yuet glanced down at her robe, and smoothed down the part where Antian’s bright blood had now dried into a stiff brownish stain. Yes, she was still wearing … she was still wearing Antian’s own blood.

  She almost forgot about Tai and the children in the next few hours, taken up with trying to cope with the aftermath of the disaster. She set broken limbs, tended burns, cuts, grazes, gashes, and bruises. She cleaned and bandaged and gave out some sedative herbs to the worst-off She took control of the servants, sent a clutch of them to set up a makeshift kitchen, brew copious quantities of soothing green tea, prepared a meal for the shocked survivors. In the Imperial Palace, decimated of its royalty, Yuet, the healer, reigned as queen for the day, and none questioned her or disobeyed her.

  When she finally circled back to the children, they were no longer in the place where she had told Tai they would be, and after some searching she finally found the whole small group in the stables. There were more there than she realized; the survivors from the villages close to the shattered mountain had crept to the Palace in pitiful groups of two or three at a time, seeking help, and Tai had shunted all the children into her group. There wer
e now maybe two dozen youngsters there. Tai had herself commandeered a single servant, and between them they had cleaned out several mangers and made them into makeshift cribs for the youngest babies. Some of them were wailing from hunger, but they were all clean and freshly swaddled and many of them were blissfully asleep. Tai had discovered a litter of eight-week-old puppies in the kennels, and had brought them out to the stable yard where the older children played with them happily, squealing with delight at puppy antics.

  Yuet stopped dead, watching the scene; it was the first sight she had had all day of innocence and contentment. She felt the weariness fall from her shoulders, a little, at the sound of children’s laughter.

  She found Tai huddled inside the stables themselves, sitting on a bale of hay with her chin resting on the knees drawn up against her chest into the circle of her arms. White-faced, with dark circles under her eyes, she looked as though she had aged ten years in the space of the last few hours.

  “You have wrought miracles,” Yuet said, coming up beside her.

  Tai looked up, without releasing her legs from the circle of her arms. “You have had the harder task.”

  “May I?” Yuet said, indicating the bale, and Tai shifted sideways, giving Yuet space to subside beside her with a sigh. The healer knuckled her eyes, kneaded her temples with weary fingertips. Her head ached abominably. Her heart ached worse.

  “I am glad you were here,” Tai said suddenly.

  Yuet looked up, startled. “What?”

  “You care,” Tai said.

  “I care about life,” Yuet said.

  She could not remember a time that she hadn’t had a calling to heal. Her very earliest patients had been the handful of animals on the tiny homestead where she had been fostered when she had been orphaned at barely four years of age. And then, aged only six, Yuet had stood beside her foster mother as she spoke to a passing dignitary, no less than a healer to the Imperial Court of Syai. Yuet’s foster mother had made some respectful remark about the health of the royal women, and somehow it had come out that she herself was suffering from a blistering headache at the time.