Yuet had told Nhia all this when she returned from Court, late in the afternoon of the day on which Nhia had woken in her house.
“I know what must have happened, Nhia,” Yuet said, dark eyes brimming with impotent sympathy. “But Tai said you spoke of Lihui. How does he fit into all this?”
“Or Khailin?” said Tai.
Yuet had asked Nhia, in a moment they had shared alone and Tai had been sent on some errand, whether she wished Tai to stay away, whether she had things to say that she might not want Tai to hear. But Nhia had hesitated, and Tai had come back before she had had a chance to reply, and had come to sit on the edge of Nhia’s bed, taking Nhia’s cold hands into her own and rubbing warmth back into them. There was such physical comfort in having her there, a friend she had known from childhood, that Nhia had said nothing. And now Tai was sitting on a stool beside Nhia’s bed, supporting the food tray as Nhia spooned up the vegetables mixed with thin slices of pork which the cook had prepared for her dinner.
“It has all been a lie,” Nhia whispered, eyes suddenly filling with tears, pushing away her bowl.
Tai reached for her hand. “What has, jin-shei-bao? What have they done to you?”
Nhia wiped the brimming tears away with the back of her free hand. A part of her wanted to deny that anything had happened at all, to merely pick up the threads of a familiar life she had grown to love, to pretend that nothing had changed and that she was the same person she had been before the Autumn Court—and another part knew that she could not return to the Temple, not soon, maybe not ever. Not after what had happened, with all the reminders that the place now held for her.
“I found out,” she began, “that all of my teachers at the Temple had been one man. Lihui. He took different form, so I would not know him.”
“Took different form?” Tai repeated blankly. “How do you mean, Nhia?”
“His face, his voice, his gait, his shape, his hair. He changed them all, turned into different people, and taught me, oh yes, taught me much. And then, what is it now—three days ago? Four?—I learned the greatest secret I had ever known. He freed my spirit, Yuet. He allowed me to shed this broken body, and fly in a sky full of stars. And it was then, at last that I knew him.”
She told the story, haltingly, her account full of breaks and pauses; she had lived through this pain, but she had no idea that retelling it would hurt just as much. Tai was white and shivering by the time Nhia was done, and it would have been hard to tell who was hanging onto whose hand harder by the end of her story.
There was a tense silence when Nhia had brought her narrative up to the last thing she remembered, which was emerging onto the night street.
“I cannot go back to the Temple,” Nhia whispered. “Not to teach; not to study. I would never trust another teacher again—how would I know it was not him?”
“You said Khailin gave you protection,” Tai said.
“I was wondering what that was,” said Yuet. “I swear, you nearly killed me when I tried to remove it.”
“And it worked for you on the road,” Tai chipped in again, in reference to Nhia’s mention of the garden she had seen, and the tiger that had morphed into Lihui, and the way the amulet had given warning. “You would be safe. Once people knew that you had been …”
She broke off as Nhia quickly looked at her and as quickly looked away. Tai glanced at Yuet, who was shaking her head.
“What?” Tai demanded. “You are going to denounce him, aren’t you?”
“With my word against his? With what proof?” Nhia said. “And it would be my name people would remember. And I know what they would say. Why would a man like the Ninth Sage of the Imperial Court go after a crippled nobody from the outer Temple circles?”
“You are not!” Tai said hotly. “Everyone knew that you were special. People came to listen to you talk.”
“And it can all be used against me,” said Nhia. “And then …”
“There’s Khailin,” Yuet finished.
Nhia looked up at her. “I don’t know what he will do to her when he finds that I am gone and that she had something to do with it.”
“Is what he does part of the Way?” Yuet asked.
“No,” Nhia said after a moment’s thought. “Or, if it is, it’s so twisted and warped that it is black beyond belief. It was the way he got to me, because I believed in it, because I studied it and used it to transcend my spirit to a level where I wanted to be—ah, he knew exactly what to teach me so that I would be coming back for more.”
Yuet reached over and covered her hands with her own. “There is no shame in this, Nhia. You have done nothing wrong.”
“But he is a monster,” said Tai obstinately. “We have to get Khailin out. We have to stop him from hurting you again.”
“Stop who from doing what?” said a new voice from the doorway, and all except Nhia leapt to their feet.
“Liudan!” Yuet said, as the visitor pushed back the concealing hood of a voluminous cloak. “What in the name of Cahan are you doing here?”
“I come to see Nhia,” said Liudan. “What has happened to you, my wise jin-shei-bao, and how may I make it go away?”
“You must dismiss Lihui,” said Tai abruptly, before any of the others had a chance to hush her.
Liudan’s eyebrow rose a fraction. “Must I?” she questioned softly, her voice silky with sheathed danger. “Even if I wished to do so, however, in point of fact I cannot. The Council, yes. If anyone on the Council transgresses Syai’s laws, or my own, then I can do something about it. The Sages, however, are a different matter. They advise me, yes, but they are not appointed by me or elected by anyone else other than themselves. The Sages would have to censure Lihui if he had done something against their rules, and he is the highest one in that circle.”
“Eight Sages, each to a sign, and the ninth sage to rule them all,” Nhia whispered.
“Indeed,” Liudan said. “Lihui is the youngest of them, but he is the Ninth Sage. That, I will admit, has always struck me as strange because it is far more often the eldest of the circle who is named to the exalted rank, not the youngest and the newest. But they do their own choosing, and I have no knowledge of the criteria they use, nor can I interfere in such matters. There are some things that are not the business of the secular Empire. But why, sweet Tai, should he be dismissed?”
“Because he …” Tai said, and subsided at a glance from Yuet.
“Because he practices sorcery,” Yuet said.
“I have never heard him accused of this,” Liudan said slowly. “He is young to hold his position, it is true. I have to tell you, Yuet, if anyone else but you or Nhia came to me with a story that he holds it by sorcery I’d dismiss it for nonsense. If it were true it would have leaked out, surely, by now? Since the death of his Master, the Sage Maxao, when Lihui inherited his mantle, his behavior has been exemplary—granted, it hasn’t been that long, but even so, a dark sorcerer at the Palace would have had to be extremely careful not to make a misstep.”
“That’s probably why he has his pagoda beyond the ghost road,” Nhia said faintly.
“What is this ghost road?”
“A place of mist and shadows, that leads to all places, and none. Liudan, I don’t know how I got to his house. I have no idea how I got back. Lihui does not make his home in this city.”
“Do you know where he lives?” Tai challenged Liudan.
“Of course—he has a house in the city, close to where the other Sages make their home. It’s a beautiful garden setting, and they have their own exquisite Temple. I have made offerings there myself.”
“And been to Lihui’s house?”
“No,” Liudan said, with some asperity. “I have not been to his house or to the house of any of my Sages. I do not need to go there. If I need to see them they come to me.”
“So you don’t know if he does live there,” Tai persisted.
“You don’t think the matter of his being the only one of the Nine who does not would hav
e filtered back to me?” Liudan snapped.
“I have been to his house,” Nhia said. “He called me and somehow I got there. And if he had had a chance he would have stopped me from ever coming back. Khailin said …”
“Khailin?” Liudan said sharply. “At Lihui’s house? What has she to do with this?”
Nhia threw a helpless glance at Yuet, and Yuet opened her mouth to speak, but Liudan raised an imperious hand. “What has she to do with any of this?”
“She says that his house burns her when she tries to leave it, that it knows what she does and somehow keeps him apprised of it when he is not there. This is not the kind of home that exists in Linh-an that I know.” Nhia fumbled at her throat. “And there is this.”
“What is that?”
“A defense, a charm made from his essences—his blood, his sweat, his spit …” She swallowed hard. “His seed. Things that make him what he is. It allowed me to know him on the ghost road. It kept me safe. In his arrogance he did not lay the same ban on me as on Khailin—perhaps he did not expect me to live long enough to leave his house.”
“He actually tried to kill you?” Liudan said.
“He almost succeeded,” Nhia whispered.
“I have heard complaints about his arrogance, but he has good reason to be proud,” said Liudan. “There is always jealousy for the stars of any heaven, and he is the brightest gleam in the circle of the Sages. But sorcery?”
“It was by sorcery he ensnared Nhia.”
Tai still looked mutinous and warlike in her small, furious way, but held her peace. Nhia, another whole ocean of pointless tears just waiting for a chance to spill from her brimming eyes, also kept silent.
“Well,” Liudan said after a pause, “I cannot do anything about dismissing Lihui, even if I wanted to meddle in the affairs of Sages. But, as it happens, there have been other developments. Nhia …” She crossed over and perched casually on the edge of the bed, the glittering Dragon Empress of Syai herself, and smiled. “How do you feel about joining the Imperial Council?”
Nhia’s jaw dropped open, and Yuet, all healer in this instant, roused up like a mother hen protecting her young. “She is convalescing, Liudan!”
Liudan threw her a reproachful look. “I do not mean instantly,” she said. “I will make sure that you have every care, and that you take all the time that you need to recover. But when you do choose what to do next, I have need of a Chancellor.”
Yuet gasped, in unison with Nhia herself. “They will never accept that!” Yuet said. “Not even you, Liudan! And just what have you done with poor Zibo?”
“I? Nothing,” Liudan said with utter sweetness. “He has done it all to himself. He says it is his heart, and his ulcer, and any number of other things. But he wishes to resign, and I have accepted the resignation. And I am not a fool, Yuet,” she added, a trace more sharply. “I know that this is not going to be easy. But I have named myself Empress, and they will put that Tiara on my head this summer and make that official. And I will have people I trust beside me. Nhia?”
“But …” Yuet began again, and was this time interrupted by Nhia herself.
“But Lihui took most of me,” she whispered. “Everything that had the potential for greatness or for wisdom.”
“You know that is not true,” Liudan said, with a gentleness that was rarely heard in her voice.
Unexpectedly, Tai now came to Liudan’s aid. “She’s right, Nhia. You were reckoned wise by the people of the Temple long before the priests took a hand in teaching you the esoterica of the Way. If you never learn another method of meditation, you will not be the worse for it. But nobody can take away the core of you, who you are.”
“As I said before, you understand things everyone else merely knows,” Liudan said. “I want that on my side. If you don’t feel up to taking the office on your own, I would happily appoint a token Princeling as your co-Chancellor—but all of us would know whose advice I really valued.”
Despite herself, and through her tears, Nhia laughed. “I’d like to fall down at your feet right now, as I am supposed to do anyway.”
Yuet snorted. “Healer’s orders. You’ll stay in that bed for at least one more day. You were transparent when they brought you here, Nhia. You gave me a proper scare.”
“Well?” said Liudan inexorably.
“But …”
“What, Tai?” Liudan asked patiently, turning to face her.
“She will be in Council. In the Palace. All the time.”
“Yes?”
“So will he.”
Nhia flinched, but Liudan smiled, a thin, wolfish smile which made Yuet, shivering at the sight of it, swear to herself never to do something so abhorrent to Liudan as to have that smile turned onto herself.
“As to that,” she said, “there I can help. Trust me.” She rose, in a rustle of dark red silks that should have reminded Nhia forcefully of Lihui’s red silk robe but somehow had the opposite effect, erasing the power of the other from her mind, attaching the color to Liudan instead. “Good, then,” Liudan said. “Yuet, it’s your call—and Nhia’s, of course. But when she is ready to come and take her place, let me know. I will make sure that she is safe. Now—back to Khailin. What, exactly, has happened to her?”
“She seems to be Lihui’s wife,” Yuet murmured, “although nobody in Linh-an has heard anything about this marriage. And Nhia says that she is kept a prisoner in whatever estate he calls home.”
“The Khailin who vanished mysteriously just before she should have married the Princeling who is now Aya-Zhu?” Liudan said.
Yuet nodded.
“Complex,” Liudan murmured, tapping her lip with her index finger while she considered the matter. “Marriage is still beyond my power to meddle in,” she said at length, with real regret. “I may not intervene in a man’s private life—unless, perhaps, I catch him mistreating his wife before my very eyes, but most men who would do such a thing are careful not to do so in public. I can make inquiries, though, and I will do that. And maybe the very fact that Lihui knows that I am making such inquiries, and I will make sure that he knows, might make him think twice about doing anything irrevocable.”
“You won’t find anything,” Nhia said faintly. “He has her beyond our help. The only way out is if she learns how to counter his spells.”
Liudan’s interest sparked briefly. “She is a student of the dark arts, too?”
“Not unless yang-cha is the dark arts, and it’s been practiced by countless adepts in the Way,” Nhia said. “I have never really practiced that side of it myself, nor has it been one of my interests—I have always sought to reach my goals through meditation and prayer, the internal alchemy, the zhao-cha. All I wanted to do was find out about the ethereal realms, the fields of Cahan, the spiritual world. That is what I thought my teachers were guiding me in—but Lihui … Lihui transcended that. What he does goes beyond the concept of external alchemy, as we know it in the Temple. I have seen the remnants of his experiments, in the beggar king’s house.”
“The beggar king?” Liudan said sharply.
“The head of the Beggars’ Guild,” Nhia said
“You met the head of the Beggars’ Guild?” Liudan asked. “Interesting. I am told that not many know his identity.”
“I don’t know his name,” Nhia said. “They called him Brother Number One. He warned me against Lihui. I should have listened.”
This time Liudan’s glance was genuinely startled. “What has the head of the Beggars’ Guild to do with an Imperial Sage?”
“I have no idea, Liudan. But he spoke of alchemy in a way that made me think he knows it from the inside. Not the words he said, even, just the way he said them. And somehow, I don’t know how, he knows Lihui. Or at least knows things of him. He knew about the sorceries.”
Liudan stood in silence for a moment, contemplating this, and then smiled once more and reached out to lay a delicate white hand on Nhia’s shoulder.
“Rest, now, jin-shei-bao, my Chancel
lor. I will await your coming with great pleasure. Ah, the winds of change that we can make blow through that stuffy Palace, you and I!”
She turned the luminous smile on Tai, gave Yuet a friendly nod that was both a farewell greeting and a command to take good care of Nhia, and swept out of the room.
“Now there’s an honor for you,” Yuet murmured. “She does not make house calls for just anyone, Nhia.”
Nhia’s stay at Yuet’s house extended from days into weeks. Unable to face going back to her studies, going stir crazy waiting in Yuet’s sitting room while the autumn rains lashed Linh-an, Nhia took to helping out with Yuet’s work, working in the stillroom under Yuet’s supervision and preparing the simpler medicines. She even accompanied Yuet on her visits to the inner court at the Guard compound, where the healer was still keeping an eye on the aftermath of the summer epidemic, and pitching in with whatever needed to be done there.
The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 28