The Secrets of Jin-shei

by Alma Alexander

  “And now you find that it is all only just beginning?” Yuet said. “It shouldn’t surprise you. There are plenty of people who are waiting for the smallest chance to find a place of power.”

  “What do they want?” Tai said.

  “You are such an innocent, jin-shei-bao,” Liudan laughed.

  Yuet turned her head, looking at Tai. “They want her to marry, of course. They want her to choose the Emperor.”

  Liudan, pacing the floors of her chambers like a caged lioness, grimaced.

  “But there is the mourning,” Tai said.

  “Yes, and thank Cahan for that—it has some uses. I cannot, under law, contemplate marriage or any such ceremony before my period of mourning is up—or, in any case, that would be the case if I were some peasant’s child mourning for my parents—if I were my mother before she came here.” Liudan laughed, a little grimly. “Sometimes it’s a blessing not to be royal, little sister. But they could not even let her rest in her ashes for a month before they threw her suitors at me.”

  “Whose suitors?” Tai said, honestly confused.

  It was Yuet who put it all together again. “They want you to choose an Emperor from among Antian’s suitors?”

  “Even there,” Liudan said savagely, “it’s no more than a question of what Antian would have done. They want me to choose the way she would have chosen.”

  “That’s not fair,” Tai protested.

  “No,” said Liudan, pausing in her pacing to stare at her. “So what would you have me do?”

  “Me? I can hardly advise you.”

  “You can when I ask you for it. You have to when I ask for it.” Liudan grinned. “You took that on with jin-shei, Tai. That’s what a jin-shei-bao is for—wise advice.”

  “Then you should not ask me,” Tai said. “I am not as wise as Nhia is, and she is your jin-shei too, if you will pledge with her.”

  “Nhia? Who is this Nhia?”

  “They speak of her highly,” Yuet said. “She has wisdom and grace, for all that she is so young. She even teaches at the Great Temple, and she is not yet sixteen years old.”

  Liudan settled on some cushions by the fire, gesturing imperially for a goblet of wine to be brought to her. The little deaf servant girl, who was still Liudan’s primary attendant despite the jockeying of a number of Court ladies to become intimates of her chamber, hurried over with a goblet, and then withdrew again into the shadows. “Tell me about her.”

  “You know that case that was brought before the Court at the open audience just the other day?” Yuet said. “The land dispute over the peach orchard?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Liudan said. “The two men who both claimed it as theirs. One of them, as I recall, said that the other unlawfully harvested the peaches from the trees before they were fully ripe and sold them in the markets for his own profit, although the grove belonged to the one who had spoken. And the second man swore that the land was his, and that the peach trees were planted on stolen property by the other man’s father. I remember. What of it?”

  “I was there,” Yuet said, “and I told Tai of it, and she spoke of it to Nhia. And Nhia came up with the perfect solution to the problem.”

  “What was it that she proposed to do?” Liudan asked, and Tai reported on what Nhia had had to say on the vexing case. By the time she was done Liudan’s eyes were sparkling with interest. “Indeed. Why did you not come and tell me of this at once? So young, and so wise. How is it that I did not know of this jewel in my city before?”

  “She had been moving freely in the city and the Temple,” Yuet said. “But she has a way of keeping herself unobtrusive. She is crippled, and she does not like the limelight.”

  “Crippled how?”

  “Her foot has been withered and clubbed since birth,” Tai said. “She walks with a cane, and cannot stand for long.”

  Liudan tapped her teeth with her fingernail, thinking. “There was someone … I noticed someone in an audience, not that long ago.” She gestured again and the servant girl approached. Liudan signed something at her in their own secret sign language, and after a pause the girl signed back, ducked her head, and disappeared out of the chamber.

  “She will find out,” Liudan said. “What are you smiling at?”

  “You didn’t need to send the poor thing away from the fire,” Tai said. “If you want to know who she would have come to the Court with, I can probably tell you that—it must have been Khailin, Chronicler Cheleh’s daughter.”

  “And how do they know one another?” Liudan asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  “They are both interested in the Way,” Tai said. “Nhia tells me they talk a lot about that. They are also …”

  Liudan shook her head, laughing. “More sisters I did not know about? I am inclined to give her judgment. In public court. Tomorrow. Make sure she is there.”

  “You weren’t meant to tell Liudan what I said!” Nhia cried when Tai presented her with this Imperial ultimatum.

  “Why not? It was a good solution!”

  “Yes, but she has the Council and the Sages for all that, and if she now trots me out they will all be looking at me.”

  “Yes,” Tai said, gazing at her with the fond, proud gaze of a true sister, “they will. And they will be seeing a beautiful spirit. Nhia, forget about what you once were. You are a new person, and you are wise, and you are my beloved friend and sister whom I will send in there looking like a queen of Cahan. Trust me. Now come, we must go to Khailin.”

  “Khailin? Is that necessary?” Nhia said, so oddly that Tai turned to stare at her sharply as she spoke.

  “What’s the matter? Have you two had a falling out?”

  “No. Well, not exactly,” Nhia said. “It’s just that I have a few things to think about where Khailin is concerned.”

  “Fine,” Tai said. “I was going to ask for the loan of another dress. You two are of a size and it would be so much easier if I could only tuck and pin a few seams rather than do the whole thing from scratch, but I guess it’s time you had your own finery, at that. Come here.”

  “What are you up to? Tai, you cannot make me an entire Court gown in one night!”

  “Oh, yes I can.” Tai flung open a closet in her room and rummaged at the back where a stack of robes lay folded neatly with silkpaper layering in between fabric folds. “I have a lot of those. Many of them Mother has never had a chance to rearrange for me, and I will certainly never need them. So you might as well have one. Try this one on. I think it will fit you.”

  “Whose was this?” Nhia gasped, the fine silk of the undertunic flowing through her hands as she shrugged into it, running her fingers over the stiff embroidery on the outside robe.

  “Antian’s,” Tai said abruptly, keeping her eyes downcast and dropping down to one knee to inspect the hemline of the robe.

  “Antian’s?” Nhia said. “But won’t Liudan recognize this? Won’t there be an insult if I wear …”

  “They often wear the Court robes only once before they are discarded,” Tai said quietly “It would take a prodigious memory to recall the details of all these gowns. Nobody will know.”

  “But Tai,” Nhia’s eyes were bright and soft as they rested on Tai, “I cannot take this. It was Antian’s, it is something that you need to …”

  “She was your jin-shei too” Tai said. “And I cannot think of a better use for it. Stand still, would you? And hand me those pins on the table? It’s a good fit, if I can only get the hem taken up a little. And I can add a white ribbon or two on the sleeves. The Court is tomorrow noon. You’ll be all set.”

  “I cannot stand for six hours!” Nhia wailed.

  But she was there with Tai and Yuet the next morning, as Liudan had wished. Yuet had a phial of mild poppy juice in her pocket, in case Nhia’s foot became a problem and needed immediate attention.

  In the gown that had been Antian’s, her hair swept up with a set of Yuet’s ivory combs and a tiny pair of jeweled pins that Antian had once given Tai, Nhi
a looked remarkably poised and grown-up, Tai, at her side with her hair dressed very simply and her own gown cut with the plainness of a robe that a child might wear to a grand occasion, suddenly looking very young.

  Liudan swept into the Audience Chamber late, keeping everyone waiting at least half an hour. Even in deepest mourning she managed to remain spectacular, her hair glossy and adorned with strings of tiny crystal beads which (in deference to mourning) were not jewels but which so trembled and shivered in the light that they may as well have been. Her face, bare of makeup, was graced only by her brilliant dark eyes, and that was more than enough.

  The three by the Imperial dais sank into obeisance as she came up.

  “Empress,” Tai said, formal here in the Audience Chamber before the people, “may I present Nhia of Linh-an, one who is both teacher and student at the Great Temple.”

  Liudan extended a hand. Nhia took it, and Liudan’s grip tightened slightly as she helped Nhia rise from her obeisance with some semblance of grace. “Your reputation precedes you,” she said. “I am pleased that you came to my Court. I know of your … infirmity, and I do not wish to make this occasion a trial for you. I therefore give you permission to sit.” She clapped her hands and a servant came hurrying over with a small carved chair and set it below and to the side of the throne. Liudan mounted the dais, settled herself on her own seat, and gestured at the chair. “Please,” she said courteously, “be seated.”

  Crimson, aware of every eye in the room upon her as the only one singled out to sit in the Empress’s presence, Nhia sensed waves of hostility, curiosity, even fear, coming from the gathered throng of people. She dared not look up.

  “Thank you, Highness,” she said, her voice very low. Tai helped her get settled on the chair. Liudan was smiling.

  “The Court is now open!” a herald declared. “My Empress, the first petitioner is Second Prince Wei-Hun.”

  The procession of people coming up to present their credentials, state a case, or ask a boon seemed to go on for hours. Tai was beginning to think that Liudan had forgotten all about the case of the peach orchard, or that Nhia’s presence had been merely a whim on Liudan’s part—but she should have known better, she told herself when the herald announced the last case to be presented at the audience.

  “We call the two litigants who presented their case to Her Imperial Highness in recent days concerning the ownership of a peach tree orchard. Come forth and receive judgment!”

  The two men stepped forward, falling to their knees at the foot of the dais. Liudan stared at them with an implacability that made them both squirm.

  “I have thought upon your problem,” she said, “and taken advice from one who may be the youngest sage in my Empire.” She turned that smile back on Nhia for a moment, and Nhia, in this moment, found the strength to raise her head and meet the Empress’s eyes squarely. Liudan’s gaze sharpened a little, and her smile quirked at the corners; courage she had always appreciated. She inclined her head graciously at Nhia in acknowledgment of what the gesture had cost her, and then turned those fierce eyes back on the two combatants. “I therefore give judgment. I find you quarrelsome and selfish. Let it be done thus: let the grove be cut down to the last tree, let the land be ploughed with salt, and let it remain between you as a warning ever more.”

  One of the men glanced at the other. “If that is your command, my Empress, so let it be done.”

  “No …” said the other weakly.

  “No?” Liudan said, her voice silky and dangerous. “You refuse the judgment you came here to find?”

  “No, my Empress. I do not. If that is your will, then let it be done. But if I may turn your hand, then I will beg for the life of those trees. My father planted them, and I have tended them, and they bear no guilt in this that they should pay the price of my pride in them. If it be a choice I would rather hand them over to my neighbor myself and never more lay claim to them except that I may watch them grow old in their bounty.”

  Liudan sat very still, and the other man had turned to stare at his companion in utter stupefaction. Then Liudan rose to her feet. Behind her, Nhia also rose; it was her gaze that the one who had resigned his claim to the grove managed to meet, and what he found there made him stare back at her, his mouth open.

  “The man who would save the grove,” Liudan said, “has greater claim to it than the man who would destroy it in order to claim a hollow victory. You have won yourself your father’s trees. And you, O destroyer, will there need to be a fence made between you and the trees high enough so that you cannot get over it to harm them? Or will you give your word here, now,” Liudan turned, grasped Nhia’s hand and pulled her forward firmly, “to the woman whose wisdom made the judgment here today?”

  “I … I give my word,” the man stammered. “The trees will not be harmed by me or mine so long as the grove stands.”

  “Let it be so,” Liudan said. Still holding Nhia’s hand, she started down the steps of the podium. “Ladies,” Liudan said over her shoulder, to Yuet and Tai who were standing rooted to the spot with surprise, “attend me in my chambers.”

  She said nothing more until the four of them were safely ensconced behind the closed doors of her inner chambers. Then she let out a whoop of pure delight.

  “That was one court they will not forget in a hurry,” Liudan said, delighted. “Well. I have decided what I will do about my other problem. They wish me to choose the Emperor? Very well. I shall. But at the very least they will have to provide me with a different set of suitors than those tailored to my predecessor. It stands to reason that the stars and the compatibilities will need to be worked out anew, doesn’t it?” She laughed again, a laugh of release, of a joyous spirit. “And when they do I will go into retreat and think on it. And I want you to come with me.”

  “Who, Princess?” Yuet said, caught by surprise.

  “All of you. I will take you and an attendant or two and nobody else. I will seek wisdom and advice in the highest places that I can—I go to ask my heart’s sisters and the beloved spirit of my ancestors for counsel. Be ready; we may leave at a moment’s notice.”

  “Where are we going?” Tai asked, suddenly breathless with an oppressive foreboding.

  Liudan looked at her with an almost playful malice, like a kitten playing with a grasshopper unaware of its ultimate fate. “To the place of all Imperial retreats, of course,” she said. “To the mountains.”

  Three

  The Imperial astrologers took longer than Liudan might have liked for their deliberations, and it was almost mid-Tannuan before they were finished, full into winter. It was a wretched winter, too, wracked with storms and early snow flurries even as far south as Linh-an itself Yuet, mindful of Tai’s painful associations with the mountains where the Summer Palace had once stood and not entirely certain that she herself could handle a return to that place so soon, suggested to Liudan that a winter retreat might be rescheduled for warmer climes—a long sail down the river, to Sei-lin or even as far down to Chirinaa and the sea—but Liudan did not seem very happy with the idea. The retreat into the mountains was merely postponed until such time as more clement weather allowed for the trip to take place.

  The young Empress waited out the winter in the Linh-an Palace with ill-concealed impatience. On the last day of Sinan she announced to her jin-shei companions that the small caravan would be leaving for the mountain retreat on the next day.

  Yuet looked pointedly at the window, lashed by a cold and persistent rain. “It’s still winter, Empress.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Liudan obstinately, “it is spring. I want this done.”

  “I can make this trip,” Yuet said. “But neither Nhia nor Tai is wealthy. They do not have the furs and the warm cloaks. We will freeze up in the mountains, Liudan.”

  Liudan laughed. “Cloaks, I can give them.”

  And she produced two for Yuet to take with her when she left the Palace and convey to their intended recipients.

  Yuet found Tai sitting
alone in the outer room of her chambers, bent over her journal. So intent was she that she had obviously not heard Yuet’s knock on the door and started violently at the sound of her name being spoken. Her brush smudged a neat letter as her hand jerked. She scowled at it.

  “Now I’ve made a mess,” she said, reaching for the blotting sand.

  “Never mind that now,” Yuet said. “You have to pack.”

  “What?”

  “She’s finally decided on a date,” Yuet said.

  Tai blanched. “Why does she want me up there with her, Yuet? I never wanted to see that place again.”

  “I know. Neither did I. Not this soon, anyway.”

  “The weather …”

  “I know,” Yuet said again. She shook out one of the cloaks she’d brought in draped over her arm, held it out to Tai. “I tried to bring that up. Her response is that you will at least be dressed for it. She sends you this, and another for Nhia. I have to go home and pack; we leave tomorrow. Will you go get Nhia? Both of you, come to my house with your luggage tonight. We will leave from there in the morning.”

  “Why is she so stubborn?” Tai said, taking the cloak with unwilling hands.

  “She is a Dragon,” Yuet said philosophically. “The Dragon-born are the most bull-headed, obstinate, downright intractable people of all. And this Dragon is Empress. She has waited in the shadow of others for too long, doing their bidding—and now that she can, she does what she wants. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Yuet departed, leaving the other cloak folded across the back of a chair. Tai stared at the two cloaks for a moment, and then turned back to the red journal. It was the same one that she had clutched while the Summer Palace had crumbled around her, the same one in which she once wrote of the stillness of a summer night just before the world was shattered.