Nhia and Qiaan struck up a strange relationship based on a mutual respect for the other’s willingness to get their hands dirty if that was necessary, and they shared a mutually admired knack for making large numbers of small children behave for extended periods of time. Nhia even found herself revisiting some teaching tales from the Temple, and telling them to an audience every bit as rapt as the ones she had left behind in the Temple Circles, together with her title. She had not set foot in the Temple since her return from Lihui’s ghostly mansions.
She was allowed to drift for a while, to find her own way back. The problem was that she was making drifting into a way of life, that she was choosing not to choose—Liudan’s offer was still before her, a place at the Empress’s side as Co-Chancellor of Syai—but Nhia shied from taking the final step of accepting it. It was well into Chuntan, late that autumn, that Nhia’s entire jin-shei circle seemed to rise, independently and then collectively, to the challenge of bringing her back to the real world.
“You know there is a place for you in my home for as long as you need it,” Yuet told Nhia, watching her pulverize a dried herb mix into a fine powder to be stored over the winter, “but you cannot hide out in my still-room for ever. You are not made for mixing poultices and potions. You are meant for greater things.”
The very next day Qiaan, watching from a doorway with her arms crossed, waited for Nhia while she shepherded together a small group of young children whom she had been keeping occupied for the better part of an hour. Qiaan, dressed in an elegant turquoise silk gown with the sleek shapes of fish embroidered on it in darker blue and silver, watched Nhia’s simple brown outer robe over an inner gown of pale cream silk, and shook her head. “You cannot bury yourself in here for ever, you know. And wearing dowdy clothes still fails to disguise you. You’re young, and you’re pretty, and you ought to be out there in the world. Making a difference. You are made for that, you know.”
Tai, who had broached the subject with Yuet in the meantime, had been given the go-ahead to try and find her own solution to Nhia’s complete withdrawal.
What she did, finally, was take Nhia back to the Temple.
As skittish as a deer in hunting season, Nhia was ready to bolt at the slightest pretext; she was only there out of loyalty to Tai, who had trumped up an excuse as to why she needed to go and why she needed a companion for it. And then, when they got there, she told Nhia that her business would not really take all that long, and practically bullied her into going into a ganshu reader’s booth and get a long-overdue reading while she waited.
This had all been set up with the reader in advance, and there were no queues to join, no excuses for Nhia to wander off and hide herself in the booth of some friendly craftsman like So-Xan and his son. She was in the reader’s booth, with the privacy curtain drawn and the pebbles being shaken in their cup, before she had time to protest.
“I would tell you to think on your problem while we do this,” the reader said, “but you have the haunted look of someone who has been thinking of nothing else for too long. I can see why your friends asked me to see you.”
“I don’t think that I need …” Nhia began, but the reader raised her left hand for silence, and rolled the six pebbles from the cup, one at a time, laying them out on her silk-covered table in triads. The triads came out in identical patterns—black/white/black, twice.
“Tan and Tan,” the reader murmured. “Treachery has been in your recent past. It has made you afraid.” She wrote the reading down on a scroll of silkpaper, and gathered up the pebbles, repeating the process several more times, calling the readings in what seemed to be random order to Nhia—the recent past followed by the distant past, the present, the distant future, the near future—two triads at a time, murmuring to herself, writing it all down on the scroll. She finally looked up at Nhia.
“This is what ganshu says,” she began. “I will tell you immediately, your far future is unclear; I’ve rolled it twice and it gave me ambiguous readings. So I won’t offer you guidance as to what happens ten, fifteen years from now. For some people it’s clear as mountain crystal, but you—no. There are many paths, and at least one of them is dark. But I can tell you this. You have traveled from a world where you were weak and powerless, and have conquered many obstacles to reach a place where you felt safe, and useful. There was treachery and betrayal in your recent past, something that hurt you deeply. But there was also redemption—you have found out things you did not know, and this is a prize you still do not fully realize that you hold. Your present is full of fear, and yes, there is great risk—but also great potential. You have at least one powerful friend, and a very powerful enemy, but you do not trust your friends and you are still fighting your enemy because you cannot let him go from your mind. As to the near future, the stones say ‘wisdom’ and ‘leadership.’ Also, ‘justice.’ You have to make some choices, but if you choose now you are going on a bright path, for now at least. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
Nhia gave a brittle laugh. “It sounds like they gave you my life history to wrap in pretty phrases and hand back to me.”
“The one who spoke to me told me nothing except that you were in need of guidance,” the reader said. “But you are not the first one who has charged me with speaking from ill-gotten knowledge because I gave a reading that is close to the bone. But believe me, what I tell you comes from the stones, and from no other source.” She rolled up the silkpaper scroll and tied it with a twist of red ribbon. “You may keep this.”
When Nhia came out of the booth, Tai was waiting for her a few steps away.
“You planned all this,” Nhia said accusingly.
“Brought you here to show you that you could come and that it wouldn’t turn on you, yes,” said Tai. “The ganshu thing was mostly Qiaan’s idea, and Yuet agreed that it might help, so I organized it. Yes, I planned it. What did she say?”
“She said exactly what she needed to say.”
“Yes, but was it true?” Tai persisted.
“I should make you go in there and then demand that she tell you when you are going to marry Kito,” Nhia said, with a slice of unaccustomed malice.
Tai blushed, casting her eyes down. Nhia was immediately contrite.
“I’m sorry, little jin-shei-bao. I am tired and afraid and out of sorts. Perhaps this was exactly what I needed.”
Nhia pondered on the reader’s words, reading over the notes on the scroll she had been given, for another brace of days—and then, finally, without telling anyone else, sent a note to Liudan in her spidery jin-ashu writing. It said simply, I am ready.
Liudan sent a liveried squad of Imperial Guards the very next day to accompany the sedan chair she had arranged to take Nhia to the Palace. Liudan herself waited for Nhia in the anteroom of the Palace entrance hall.
“You could have dressed to the occasion,” Liudan said, her tone gently teasing. Nhia wore only a moderately resplendent gown, with no jewels, and her hair was dressed as simply as Palace protocols permitted.
“I don’t own any grand garb,” Nhia said.
“We’ll have to remedy that—but for now it’s just as well. Simplicity is exactly what we want.”
They walked up the corridors, with their rows of expensive glass-paned windows, arm in arm, and only at the door to the Council chamber did Liudan squeeze Nhia’s arm and withdraw hers.
“They will announce you when I’m seated,” she said in a low voice. “And don’t look so tragic, this is going to be fascinating. Our friend Zibo is here today.”
“Whatever for?”
“He follows me, waiting for me to make some mistake so that he can point a finger and tell everyone he told them so,” Liudan said. “Fat old fool. Whatever brain he had to begin with must have been digested to form all those chins. I’ve invested your Co-Chancellor and partner some time ago, as placeholder, and he is in there now—possibly the best thing that could be said about him is that he is not and never has been Zibo’s creature, and that he has been
properly grateful for the increase in his fortunes.” Liudan smiled. “You belong here,” she said, unconsciously echoing the words of Yuet and Qiaan. “It’s time you came in and took your place. Remember that.”
She nodded at her herald to precede her and swept into the room, leaving Nhia waiting with another herald just outside the Council chamber door.
Nhia had not expected to be announced with a title, but she found herself entering the room to a cry of “Co-Chancellor Nhia of Linh-an!” Liudan, having been persuaded by Yuet of the wisdom of adopting her backup plan while Nhia vacillated, had appointed a distant princely cousin to the position of the other Co-Chancellor. Nhia’s partner-in-office, as Liudan had told her he would be, was sitting in the Council chamber as she entered, his own Chancellor’s chain on his shoulders. He greeted her with a regal inclination of his head, the expression on his face carefully schooled.
“Today I am confirming the appointment of my second Co-Chancellor to her office,” Liudan announced. “Herald, bring the chain and the seal!”
The herald obeyed and Liudan, glancing around, smiled maliciously as her gaze swept the small number of people seated to the side as spectators and observers, as she sometimes allowed for the more public of her Councils. “Emeritus-Chancellor Zibo, you know I have always been a great admirer of your powers and your abilities. Would you do me the honor of investing your successor with her chain of office?”
Zibo, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, waddled over to where Nhia stood awaiting the herald and his paraphernalia. “With the utmost of pleasure, my Empress,” he said. He placed the chain over Nhia’s head, none too gently, and hissed close to her ear as he did so, “You are her mistake! She has finally overreached herself!”
“You may,” Liudan said pointedly, “go back to your seat now, sei Zibo. Nhia, take your seat, we will begin as soon as the Imperial Sages arrive—they are very late this morning.”
As if on cue, the door herald knocked on the wooden floor with his staff and announced the Nine Sages of Syai. The men were all gray-haired to varying degrees and getting on in years, with the single exception of Ninth Sage Lihui. He had a spring in his step and a proud carriage that spoke of the prime of life, even of youth.
I gave him that, Nhia thought, her fingers at her throat where Khailin’s amulet burned with cold fire. Her other hand, quite involuntarily, crept to where a white streak now gleamed in her piled-up hair.
When he saw Nhia sitting at the table wearing the Chancellor’s chain, Lihui’s eyes turned a glittering black, but it was he who finally broke the gaze that locked their eyes on one another as Liudan spoke directly to him.
“You are looking well, Ninth Sage Khailin-Lihui. Marriage agrees with you.”
Three
The summer epidemic and then the events of the following autumn had effectively sidetracked Yuet, but she had not forgotten the Traveler child, the girl whom Tai had once called the snow dancer—now, incredibly, almost a year ago.
The Blackmail Books had yielded one other piece of pertinent information—the identity of Jokhara’s sister, a woman by the name of Jessenia, who had taken in Jokhara’s child after her death.
“What if she never told Tammary anything was amiss? What if Tammary believes herself to be her aunt’s natural daughter?” Tai had demanded, when the subject of Yuet’s traveling up to the mountains to find out the truth behind Szewan’s account had come up again in the spring.
Yuet shrugged. “Then the story dies there.”
“Yuet, if you don’t meddle in it now …”
“And what of your dream, then?” Yuet said. “You know there is more to this than just digging up the grave of a woman long dead and the scandal that was buried with her. This stretches into the future as well as the past. I want to make sure she is protected.”
“Liudan or your Tammary?” Tai asked with a small smile.
Yuet shot her a startled look. “Sometimes you ask disturbing questions, jin-shei-bao.”
“When we were all there in the village last year, with Liudan, I got the distinct feeling that our presence made every person in that place hold their breath until we went away. What were they all afraid of?”
“That they might be held responsible for sheltering Tammary, for making sure she survived? That they might be accused of a conspiracy against the Empire? It would not be hard for Liudan to see such a conspiracy. She’s never trusted anybody—except perhaps Nhia.”
“Conspiracy to do what?” Tai asked, perplexed. “Travelers have always seemed to me to be drifters on the wings of the wind. I didn’t know so many of them could ever settle down together in a permanent village, like that one up on the mountain.”
“You look almost disappointed to have found a Traveler community living in real houses, on solid ground,” Yuet said, smiling, allowing herself to be diverted from a contentious subject.
“Well, when I was little, my mother told me stories of them, and they were always on the road, in bright wagons pulled by those big horses with white socks.” Yuet had to laugh out loud at that, and Tai waved an impatient hand. “You know what I mean! The ones with the hairy feet. I thought the Travelers were so … free. They could go where they wanted, do what they pleased. It sounded wonderful to me.”
“I don’t think there’s a child in Syai who did not feel the same,” Yuet said. “Who wouldn’t want to grow up into a life of music, song, carnival, acrobats and trained animals, and cooking at a campfire every night?”
“Um, there were times, when it was raining hard outside …” Tai murmured.
Yuet laughed again. “You are an incurable romantic with a resolutely practical streak,” she said.
“So what are we going to do up there, then—just blunder in and start asking questions about things they would rather remain forgotten?” Tai asked.
“So you are coming with me?” Yuet said, smiling.
Tai scowled. “If I hadn’t started it …”
“Actually, I don’t know that you did start it—but you certainly made sure I finished it,” Yuet said.
“Yuet, I can’t stay away …”
“Don’t worry, I’ll organize someone to look after Rimshi while you’re not here,” Yuet said, guessing Tai’s concern before she had time to fully articulate it. “We won’t be away for long.”
The inn they took a room in was the same one they had stayed at with Liudan on her “retreat.” It was run by a round-faced, black-haired widow whose coloring and physiognomy, coupled with a reedy voice and a flat-lander’s accent, made it immediately obvious that her connection with the Traveler community in the village was confined to the fact that her warm common room was the favored gathering place for those locals still in the village when the winter snows cut them off from the rest of the world.
“She says that they come on different nights, the Travelers and the rest, the others in the village,” Tai told Yuet over dinner on their second night there, after trying to cajole their polite, reserved hostess into a conversation that did not directly involve matters of the inn’s hospitality “Apparently only the men come into the common room when it’s the turn of the locals. Their women don’t go out drinking around here—and they don’t like being here on the nights that the Travelers come because they do bring their women along, the married women. And the Traveler women flirt shamelessly with the local men, who appear to find it all quite unseemly.”
The corner of Yuet’s mouth quirked. “I see.”
“I also found out,” Tai said, “that there’s a fair in the next village in two days’ time, and that most of the Traveler clan will be going down—to sell their stuff, and, at least according to her, for the revelry,” Tai said. “I can’t decide if she disapproves of that or is jealous of it, and I’m not sure if the licentiousness stretches to the unmarried maidens, but the Traveler women definitely seem to live by different rules.”
“Did she mention any names?” Yuet said, entertained by Tai’s wholehearted embrace of the role of spy.
>
“Only in that the stuff to be sold includes woven cloth, and that one of the finest weavers around is a Traveler woman by the name of Jessy,” Tai said complacently.
Yuet laughed out loud. “Well done. We will go to this fair, and see if we can find out if this weaver is the one who took in our motherless child.”
The fair was a surprisingly large one, considering how early in the year it was and how far most of the participants had had to come in order to be there for the designated two days of the fair. For Tai it was a trip back to childhood, reviving echoes in her mind of the much larger and more sophisticated shows that the Travelers had once regularly brought to Linhan. This was no big city fair, and much as Tai had her heart set on it there didn’t seem to be anyone around who did anything at all with fire, a vivid memory of her childhood. There were, however, bolts of finely woven woolen cloth for sale, dyed in various vibrant colors, and Tai had practically burst into tears when she came across a stand selling long brilliantly colored ribbons which she associated so strongly with the gift her mother had made to her when she was a small child. Yuet bought her a bright red one, almost as long as she herself was tall, and Tai wove it into her hair immediately, letting the ends trail down her back and flutter in the breeze.
“They’ll know you for gentlefolk,” Yuet said, teasing. “You look good enough to attend Autumn Court.”
Tai flounced, setting her ribbons dancing. “I do not,” she retorted. “Look, are those cheeses?”
“Goat’s cheese, I think,” Yuet said. She was half-laughing and half-exasperated. “Tai, settle down! We’ll go back and get some goat’s cheese later, if you like. The weavers’booths are over there. Come on.”
The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 29