“It’s better than the cat drawing,” Xaforn said, with a grin.
Qiaan obviously remembered, too, because she turned with a mock scowl and flicked the black ink off the top of her brush in Xaforn’s direction. Xaforn ducked, laughing.
“Still conceited,” she got out, between giggles.
“Still malicious,” Qiaan responded, in an echo of their early battles, without looking up again, apparently immersed in her work.
One of Szewan’s early patients had paid her with a quantity of dark-gray pearls, which had then languished in a safe box at the back of the stillroom until Yuet had quite accidentally found them almost two decades later. Now she had two of the smaller matched pearls fashioned into a pair of delicate earrings for Tai.
Even Antian, the Little Empress, seemed to reach out from Cahan and bless the wedding. She had never rescinded the order she had put in with a Linh-an paper bindery, and Tai’s red-leather journals had been arriving faithfully, one a year, at the end of Kannaian. Quite by accident, in this particular year the red journal arrived almost two weeks early—as though Antian had urged a special delivery for the special occasion. Tai had shed a few fond tears of remembrance when the new red book was delivered to her, and the first thing she wrote in it, jumping the last blank pages of the previous year’s book, was a delicate poem, full of the shape and color of the dawns which Antian had loved to greet on a small balcony in the Summer Palace. Tai had copied it out, when it was finished, on a fresh scroll of paper and sent the copy to Liudan, partly because of the interest that Liudan continued to take in Tai’s poetry, partly in response to Liudan’s own wedding gift of the poetry book. She heard nothing back, at least not immediately, but she had no time to think about it as the last few days before the wedding swept by.
Only Tammary, watching all these preparations, hung back.
“What on earth can I give her?” she asked Yuet. “I’ll be the only one there without a gift.”
“It is not required,” Yuet said. “At least, it doesn’t have to be something material. A gift of a simple white lotus flower is a blessing on the marriage, for example.”
Tammary thought on it, and held her peace.
The day of the wedding, in the last week of Kannaian, was full of liquid sunshine and fierce heat. Nhia and Qiaan, helping Tai get ready, were both complaining vocally on Tai’s behalf as they layered her with the traditional wedding garb. The thin inner shift of silk so fragile that it was practically see-through was lovely and cool against Tai’s skin, but it was followed by the inner robe made from Liudan’s heavy scarlet silk and overlaid again with an outer gown, stiff with embroidery, and a wide-sleeved coat with sleeves that hung to well below her wrists. Her hair was coiled up into a crown on top of her head, and the heavy headdress, with its double layer of red and gold silk veils which completely hid her face, was fixed onto this with thick pearl-ended hairpins the length of Tai’s forearm.
“Nobody should marry in summer,” Qiaan said. “I declare, she’ll be dead of heat exhaustion before they put the rings on her thumbs!”
“Ow,” said Tai mildly as a hairpin went astray and grazed her scalp.
“Sorry,” said Nhia, the culprit. “One more … there. That should hold it. Shake your head—no, not that hard—it’ll do. Where are you going?”
“I want to see if people …”
“Come back here, you goose, you aren’t supposed to let them see you until you are ready to come out!”
“But …”
“He hasn’t got here yet,” Qiaan said, laughing. “I think there’s an elderly gentleman who might be an uncle of his, though. Yuet and Tammary are here, too, and so are the Temple people. We’re just waiting for the groom.”
“My mother?” Tai said anxiously.
“Yuet is with her. She’s awake,” Nhia said. “I think that would be them now. Ah, but he looks good today, too, does your groom!”
“So are we ready?”
“The Empress,” Nhia reminded Qiaan gently.
“Ah,” Qiaan said, “of course.”
“While we’re waiting,” Nhia said, “I have a duty to attend to. Keep her in here, Qiaan, and for the love of Cahan don’t let her be seen before her time!”
Qiaan nodded, grinning, and Nhia slipped out of the room and hurried through the main chamber, smiling and nodding at the assembled guests, on her way into the outer courtyard and the gates where the banners announcing the wedding had been hung.
There was a delegation from the Beggars’ Guild waiting there, as was the tradition, for their wedding alms. Nhia pulled out a small silk purse full of silver coins and, folding her hands around it, gave a slight bow to the group.
“In celebration of the wedding,” she said formally, “the bride and groom give you these alms.”
“Thank you,” one of the men said, returning the bow and accepting the purse. He signaled and another man stepped forward with a paper sign on which, in ragged hacha-ashu writing, it was stated that the household was having a celebration and that the Guild, in return for their largesse, wished them every blessing. They all murmured their thanks to Nhia and bowed to her, backing away; she smiled and bowed in turn. She would do everything right, Tai’s wedding would be wonderful in every way, she would honor every tradition in order to ensure her little jin-shei-bao’ perfect happiness. The man with the sign had finished attaching it to the front door of the house, and had turned away and Nhia suddenly realized she knew him—he was the blind man whom she had once seen standing in the beggar king’s house.
“I know you by your voice. You are the Young Teacher,” the blind beggar said softly. “It is well; Brother Number One has a message he wished conveyed to you.”
Nhia looked around instinctively for danger. “Message? What message?”
“He instructed me to tell you that the storm is nearly upon us,” the blind man said. “That you will know when to come for answers. He will be waiting for you.”
He bowed, and was gone.
“Wait,” Nhia said helplessly. “Wait …”
But they were gone, only the sign on the door showing that they had ever been there. Nhia cast a glance up and down the street, but there was nothing further to see, and after a while, trying not to show how disturbed the message had made her feel, she returned to the bride’s room.
“Are we still waiting?”
“No, but … I think she might on her way,” Qiaan said, “Xaforn just came in.”
Xaforn had crossed the room and exchanged a few soft words with the waiting priests, and then came over to the door of the inner chamber and knocked. Nhia edged the door open.
“Tai, she’s sorry, but she can’t make it,” Xaforn said. “She sent you her best wishes, though, and she says that you and Kito are commanded to wait on her in the Palace tomorrow so she can offer you congratulations in person. She …”
But the priest was speaking. “The Empress Liudan, who was to have been a guest, sends regrets. All other guests are here. We will begin.” He cleared his throat. “Bring out the bride.”
Tai, who was wearing shoes raised on precarious ceremonial wooden platforms, emerged from the outer room at that command, supported on either side by Nhia and Qiaan. She walked slowly, carefully, balancing with each step, her head demurely bowed. They took her first to So-Xan so that she could make a deep bow to him as his daughter-in-law-to-be, and then on to Kito’s uncle and elderly aunt to offer them honor as well. At the same time Kito was being conducted on his own tour of the room, over to Rimshi’s bed where he bowed deeply to the ailing woman. Rimshi actually managed to raise a hand in blessing; Nhia, nudging Tai gently, made sure she saw it. Tai squeezed Nhia’s fingers in gratitude.
And then she was in front of the Temple priest. Kito was already standing there, a crimson silk tunic fitting tightly over his broad shoulders, his feet in the red boots of the bridegroom.
“In the name of Cahan and the Lord of Heaven, we are here to witness two people joining their lives into o
ne. Let Kito and Tai journey together now and seek the paths of enlightenment. May the Three Pure Ones bless them as they enter into a covenant with the blessing of Cahan; may the light of the Way shine upon their spirit, and may the Lord of Heaven always hold them in the palm of his hand.” He paused, and Nhia produced the box which held the rings that had been Liudan’s gift. The priest opened the box and took out one set of rings.
“Kito.”
“I will always be with you,” Kito said, slipping the thumb rings onto Tai’s small hands.
Tai held on to him for a moment, and then cupped her hands together for the priest to lay the other set of rings down.
“Tai.”
“I will … always be with you.” Tai whispered, her voice breaking very slightly, placing the rings on Kito’s thumbs.
“Where once there was a man called Kito and a woman named Tai, there now stands a new being—both man and woman, she who is now Kito-Tai, he who is now Tai-Kito. In the light of Cahan, in the name of the Lord of Heaven, you are wed.”
Kito reached over and drew aside the heavy veils; there were tiny jeweled hooks on the headdress provided for this moment, but Kito’s hand was shaking so hard that he could not seem to attach the veil to its mooring and Nhia had to reach over and help anchor the wayward silk. She and Qiaan were standing next to Tai on either side, still ready to help her move if she should want to; Xaforn had come up to stand beside Qiaan, and they were grinning broadly at each other and then at Tai, taking turns; Yuet had hurried over to give the bride, teetering unsteadily on her stilt shoes, a careful hug, mindful of the need to keep her upright by main force; even Tammary had drifted over and stood on one side, a little self-conscious, nodding at Tai with a smile on her face.
There were the absent ones—Antian, the first one, who was gone; Khailin, who was still missing; and Liudan, the glittering one, swallowed by the corridors of power.
But they were all here, in their way, if only in Tai’s thoughts or deep in her heart where she still kept the love she had borne Antian. The jin-shei circle that was hers. The world was a safer, less frightening place all of a sudden, with her new husband beside her and her jin-shei sisters around her.
Tai started to turn to tell them all so, and her shoes tangled, caught, and pitched her forward into what would have been a less than dignified heap at Kito’s feet—had half a dozen hands not shot out at once to hold her. Nhia and Qiaan at her elbows, Xaforn at her back, Yuet stepping forward to right her if she overbalanced any further, even Tammary’s hand out to help support her. And Kito’s arm around her waist.
“We tried to put together a small feast that would still be fit for an Empress and for a bride on her wedding day,” Yuet said. “Come and break the bridal bread, Kito-Tai.”
Eight
“J’m home!” Kito called out as he slipped out of his street shoes at his threshold and padded into his house. “Where are you? I have news!”
“Hush!” Tai’s quiet voice drifted out from the porch room, the one where the late summer sunshine pooled most generously in the afternoons. “I just managed to get Xanshi to go to sleep. Don’t wake her.”
Kito poked his head around the circular arch that was the doorway into the porch room. Tai sat on a wicker chair, a small embroidery hoop in her lap, one foot curled up under her and the other gently rocking the cradle in which a small child slept. Smiling at the picture, Kito walked quietly up and bent to kiss his wife, who reached out a graceful hand to the nape of his neck to fold his head down toward her.
“It’s hard to believe,” Kito said, smiling, “that it’s been over a year, already.”
“It’s been forever,” Tai whispered. “It’s always been this way. Don’t wake the baby. What’s the news? And what’s that you’ve got there?”
Kito handed her a ricepaper scroll. “You have another one out. You’re getting famous.”
“Which one?” Tai said eagerly, unrolling the paper. Her rocking rhythm faltered a little and the baby stirred.
“I’ll rock her,” Kito said. “Look all you want.”
“Which one is it?” Tai asked, unrolling the hacha-ashu scroll.
“As it happens, it’s the one about Xanshi,” Kito said, rocking his child’s cradle tenderly.
“Liudan sure picks some strange ones,” Tai said, scanning the neat calligraphic script she could not understand. “I would have thought that particular one would be way too personal for general interest.”
“She obviously didn’t think so, and I think that you will find that others agree. This is the kind of thing that men will buy to give to their wives after their children are born. I think it will sell well. But why do you still let her choose all the poems to get published? Shouldn’t you have some say?”
“She was the one who started it,” Tai said. “That poem I wrote when the wedding journal arrived from Antian, the one I copied out and sent to Liudan, that was the first one she had published. After that, I just pass them on and she has them copied out into hacha-ashu and published—without that, nobody could read them except the women.”
“I could transcribe them for you,” Kito said, sounding faintly rebellious.
“I am not supposed to teach you jin-ashu,” Tai said reprovingly. “It’s the women’s tongue. We’ve been through this before, Kito.”
“Doesn’t seem fair that women can have both the languages and men just the one,” Kito muttered.
“Most women only have the one, my stubborn darling—I cannot read or write hacha-ashu, or we would not be having this conversation,” said Tai. “Oh, now look what you’ve done.”
The baby gurgled in the crib, exquisitely carved and lovingly made by Kito’s own hand while Tai had been expecting their daughter, and both parents now bent over the child. She was knuckling her eyes, but she didn’t seem bad tempered or weepy, and even beamed at her father, showing toothless gums.
“That’s it.” Tai said, “Your turn to play with her. I need to go and make a record of this.”
Kito hoisted his daughter into his arms, and she squealed happily. “Mama will be back very soon,” he said, his hands under the baby’s armpits as he balanced her chubby feet on his knees and bounced her up and down. “Mama going in to be a writer now.”
Tai took the image with her as she slipped out of the room, a smile of pure gratitude on her face. Xanshi had been born more than three weeks before her time, in the same month that both Tai’s mother and Kito’s father had died. Rimshi had simply fallen asleep at last and never woke; but So-Xan’s end came suddenly and unexpectedly, and quite ironically—he clutched at his heart in the midst of carving a memorial sculpture for the one-year anniversary of a Princess Consort’s death, and all Kito could do was catch him as he fell from his workbench. Xanshi’s premature birth had been precipitated, perhaps, by Tai’s grief, and Yuet had had a battle on her hands to make sure both mother and child survived it without any lasting consequences. But it had taken Kito a long time to get over his daughter’s fragility and tiny form. Mere weeks ago this robust bouncing would have been unthinkable. Kito would have been too afraid that he would break the child.
A corner of their bedroom had been set up as a writing desk for Tai, with all the implements of her trade laid neatly out on it—a blotter, a selection of quills and brushes, a small portable leather inkwell and several quartz ones lined up along the top edge of the desk. An inlaid wooden box with a shallow drawer, with a knob in the shape of a dragon’s head, housed her current journal; others, those of past years, were stored in a shelf above the desk where a number of scrolls tied up with colored ribbons were also stowed in tidy pigeonholes—her poetry, which Liudan had seen to getting published. The name of Kito-Tai, with which she signed her poems, was starting to get recognition, and there was even some money starting to come in.
Tai, subsiding onto her backless desk chair with the newest scroll still in her hand, stared at a beautifully calligraphed copy of her first published poem which Kito had hung on the wall of their
bedroom—it was hachaashu script, and she could not read it, but she knew the delicate lines of it by heart. The poem had been so many things to her—a remembrance of Antian, a trembling anticipation of her wedding day that was to come, a gratitude for the presence in her life of the people who had loved her. She had sent it to Liudan in the busy, sometimes chaotic, days just before her wedding, and had then forgotten it as she plunged into the fears and the expectations of the day on which she was to marry Kito. It had not been on her mind at the time of her wedding, but somehow it always recalled that day to Tai’s mind, and today, with her first wedding anniversary only a week or so behind her, was no exception.
Tai and Kito had been taken from the room in which they had made their vows into the banquet hall to break the bridal bread, as was traditional, and had poured each other their first cup of green tea into the special wedding cups. Then they had been escorted into the back room, where the bridal bed had been prepared, and sat perched on the high, rose-petal strewn bedstead, side by side, for endless hours while friends and relatives popped in and out with ribald comments and bearing offerings of cups of wine, nut cakes, fried chicken, rice, almond marzipan sculptures of legendary beasts and dragons whose heads the newlyweds were supposed to bite off to the endless delight of some of the smaller children, and other sundry delicacies.
It was there that Tammary had come to deliver her wedding present—she had taken Yuet’s words to heart and had offered Kito and Tai nothing solid or substantial.
“I was wondering whether I could do this,” she said, “but Liudan did not come and in her presence I don’t know if I would have.” Kito stole a puzzled glance at Tai; he was still trying to figure out some of his new wife’s jin-shei connections, but she caught his eyes and shook her head minutely: Later. “But she is not here,” Tammary said, “and I want to dance for you. The way my people dance at weddings, in remembrance of all the joys of all the weddings that have gone before, and in promise of the ones to come.”
The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 35