The Secrets of Jin-shei

by Alma Alexander

  Her voice had taken on the Traveler cadences of someone telling a tale to commit to the clan memory, and Tai realized that Tammary was offering a gift that was no less than herself. She reached for Kito’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. Just that. But Tammary’s eyes kindled at the wealth of understanding in Tai’s voice, and she ducked her head, suddenly overcome with a rush of affection.

  “There is no music,” Tammary said apologetically, “there wasn’t much I could do about that. There should be drums, and guitarras.”

  “I have heard the music of your people,” Kito said.

  “So have I,” said Tai, squeezing his fingers in grateful understanding. “We will hear your music in our hearts.”

  Tammary had worn the colorful wide skirts and the gathered white blouse of her people; now she kicked off the slippers she wore and walked to the middle of the room on graceful bare feet, narrow and aristocratic, one ankle flashing a glimmer of gold chains as she moved. She brought her feet into position and raised her hands above her head, letting her head fall back, closing her eyes, listening for the music—as she had so often done before, while dancing on her own in the ruins of the Summer Palace in the mountains. It ran through her blood, like a slow fire, and she swayed into motion, her feet beating a tattoo on the floor, her fiery hair swinging, her hands bent at the wrists at angles of delicate grace. There was a sense of giving in her dance, and a sense of freedom, but also of belonging, of two halves coming together to make a whole. She danced a world of bright happiness, made all the more poignant by a fierce and unconcealed longing for it that permeated her every movement, and that Tai, who knew her, knew she had never really known. But she was drawing on all that she had and all that she had heard and seen, in order to give Tai the seed of perfect happiness.

  Yuet, who had been alerted by one of the children and had come to discreetly watch from the doorway, had been transfixed by the dance for quite other reasons. When she had told Tai later, much later, that she had observed the whole thing, Tai had spoken of the sense of sacrifice that she had got from Tammary, a sort of offering of her own potential happiness on the altar of Tai’s own. But Yuet had shaken her head.

  “All I could think of,” she had said, “watching her dance that way, was that this must have been the dance her mother once danced for an Emperor. She was a celestial spirit in that moment. There would not have been a man who could have resisted her.”

  “Kito did,” Tai had said, laughing.

  “Oh, quiet,” Yuet had retorted. “Don’t sound so smug. You did, after all, have an advantage—you had just been married.”

  Indeed, Kito had proved that although he had been deeply appreciative of Tammary’s dance, it had been his new wife who had been on his mind. When the guests had all finally said their farewells and the door closed behind the last of them, it was Kito who had taken the pins from her hair and taken down the piled mass of it from the elaborate coiffure that Nhia and Qiaan had spent an hour laboriously putting together, and Kito who peeled away the layers of ceremonial clothes with which Tai’s body had been shrouded.

  “You are so beautiful,” he had said to her when she stood before him clad only in that last whisper-thin silk shift, her dark hair falling around her shoulders like a silk cloak. “Just like I always knew you would be.”

  “So are you,” she said, running her hands against the smooth bare skin of his chest with a motion at once shy and fiercely possessive, and he had laughed out loud then, for sheer joy, and had lifted her onto the bridal bed and laid her among all the rose petals and removed the last fragile silk shield that stood between them—and had whispered against her skin that she was his love, his joy, the star of his heaven, while he kissed the valley between her small breasts and the pulse that beat wildly in the hollow of her throat. He had caught her small gasps with his kisses as she arched her hips against him. There had been only the two of them in that small world that night; whatever Yuet had said, whatever Yuet had seen, Tammary’s gift had been no more than perhaps a deeper understanding of the emotions that bound them together. It had been that night that Tai had taken on the identity of the poet that she would become; everyone she knew, even Kito himself, continued calling her Tai in everyday interactions, but she had changed into Kito-Tai, the one-that-was-two, in Kito’s arms on the first night of her married life.

  When, late the next afternoon, the newlywed pair had presented themselves to Liudan as they had been commanded to do, Liudan had offered them her congratulations, and her regrets that she had not been able to make the nuptials, and also one final gift.

  A ricepaper scroll, on which a poem was inscribed.

  “I received that yesterday, and would have brought it to the wedding if I had been able to come,” Liudan said, “but I didn’t want to give it to someone else to hand it to you.”

  “What is it?” Tai said blankly. “I cannot read this, it’s hacha-ashu”

  “Into which,” Liudan interrupted, “I once promised you that your poetry would be transcribed. This goes out in the market today.”

  Tai gasped, her cheeks turning a bright scarlet. Kito offered the Empress a low bow.

  “May I?” he murmured.

  Liudan gave him the scroll. “Read it for us,” she ordered, a command to the only person in the room who could in fact read what was written on the paper. Kito accepted the scroll with another bow, and obeyed; he was not a practiced reader, and his voice lacked the proper intonation for reading poetry out loud, but Liudan smiled, nodding, when he was done.

  “It will do, as the beginning. It will do very well,” she said.

  “How is it signed, Liudan?” Tai murmured.

  “With your name, of course,” Liudan said, frowning. “What do you mean?”

  “‘Tai,”’ Kito said, glancing at the scroll. “It’s signed ‘Tai,’ and with the date—the Third Year of the Dragon Empress.”

  Tai kept her eyes downcast. “If it isn’t too late, may I make a change?”

  “This is the first copy, and it is being copied as we speak,” Liudan said. “But I will make the change, if you wish. What do you want done?”

  “Sign it ‘Kito-Tai,”’ Tai whispered. “It was that name that inspired this.”

  Liudan smiled. “It is done.”

  It is done.

  “What are you doing in here?” Kito said from the doorway to the bedroom, bouncing Xanshi in his arms. “I thought you were going to make a notation of that in your journal and I was waiting for you out there. I said I had news.”

  Tai turned to him, startled.

  “I thought you meant this,” she said, lifting the scroll she still held in her hand.

  “That’s hardly news,” he said, teasing gently “You’re a famous poet; another published poem is not something you get excited about any more.” He ducked as she aimed a smack at him with the coiled scroll.

  “Very well,” she said, laying the poem down on her desk and reaching for her daughter. “What is it?”

  “It’s all over the Temple,” Kito said, handing the child over and subsiding on the edge of the bed. “Tai, Lihui has disappeared. He hasn’t been seen for some time, but everyone assumed that he had retired to some deep meditation state or something like that—these Sages, they do that sort of thing. But last night, apparently, the other eight Sages went to Liudan and told her that he was gone, and that he had been gone for nearly three weeks, and that they knew nothing about his whereabouts.”

  Tai clutched hard at the child she held, so hard that Xanshi let out a protesting whimper. “Nhia,” Tai wispered. “I must go to Nhia right now.”

  Nine

  They had all immediately rushed to Nhia, all of the jin-shei circle—even Liudan, who had brought the news to Nhia herself almost as soon as she learned of the matter. Xaforn was already there, hovering in the room at Nhia’s side like a shadow, watchful and alert; Yuet and her own shadow, Tammary, had arrived not long after and were closely followed by Qiaan, who spiced up the
already wild rumors with the tales circulating in the streets, and finally Tai herself

  “Stay out of sight today,” Liudan told Nhia. “He’s known that his every move was being watched for some time now. I just want to make sure that this isn’t some deliberate stalking trick.”

  “So do you finally believe that Lihui is bad news?” Tai said.

  “Sweet child,” Liudan snapped, annoyed, “I knew he was bad news a long time ago.”

  “You said that if anyone other than Nhia or Yuet told you he practiced sorcery, you wouldn’t believe it,” Tai said.

  “That is indeed what I said. But thinking Lihui is bad news and believing he is a black sorcerer are two rather different things.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?” Nhia asked, the memory of her encounter with Lihui standing out in her white face like a scar.

  “There is no way of knowing that,” Yuet said.

  “But if he is, and if Khailin is still locked away in his fortress, then she is dead too,” Nhia whispered. “As much as I hated him, as long as he was alive and around there was still a chance that she …”

  “Maybe, if he’s gone, she stands a better chance,” Yuet said thoughtfully. “Without him in her way.”

  “But the house was him,” Nhia said. “That’s what Khailin told me, the last time I saw her. And if he is dead, then the house …”

  “There is no need to torture yourself with that now,” said Liudan practically. “In all the time that I’ve had Lihui watched, with every barb I aimed at him concerning Khailin, there has been nothing. Nothing. There is no way to trace anything now that Lihui, our only link, is gone too.”

  “The Sages really don’t know anything about it?” Yuet said, a trace of skepticism in her voice.

  “They looked afraid when they came to see me,” Liudan said slowly, “and I don’t remember ever seeing the Imperials Sages afraid before. They’ve always had all the answers.”

  Answers.

  Nhia had pondered the mysterious message sent to her by Brother Number One of the Beggars’ Guild at Tai’s wedding, a year ago now, for some time after it had been delivered—but she had not thought about it for a while. Now, suddenly, with one word, Liudan had brought it all back to her. The storm is nearly upon us. You will know when to come for answers. Brother Number One will be waiting for you.

  “Stay put,” Liudan said again, as though Nhia’s half-formed instinct to go out and seek the beggar king had jumped from her mind into the Empress’s own. “I’ll leave a double Guard detail outside your door, just in case.”

  “They don’t carry the talisman,” Tai said. “You could leave an entire army out there and they would not see Lihui walk by.”

  “They would see anyone he might send,” Liudan said. “Can one of you stay with Nhia for a while? I need to borrow Xaforn.”

  “I can leave my talisman here, for whoever is with her,” Xaforn said, offering up the necklace she wore, twin to Nhia’s own. “It will serve better here; it is not me Lihui will be after, and I don’t need the protection—but whoever wears it will know him if he comes. That way you can’t be caught by surprise.”

  “What makes you think he’d go for Nhia again, anyway?” Tammary asked suddenly. “Here, in the middle of the city? In the midst of so many people?”

  “You don’t know everything,” Yuet said quickly, turning to hush her.

  But Liudan was staring at her. “So why would he just vanish?”

  “He is a Sage, is he not?” Tammary said, holding Liudan’s eye. “Where I come from we have our shamans too. We never pretend to understand how they think or what they will do next.”

  “Our ‘shamans’ cultivate purity of mind and spirit, disciplined in the Way,” Nhia said. “It is usually possible to follow a logical path. If you know what their goals are.”

  “Well, yes, but you have no idea what this Lihui’s real goals are,” Tammary said. “They may have nothing further to do with you at all.”

  “Amri,” said Yuet, using Tammary’s child-name, “hush up. Now’s not the time.”

  Liudan turned away with a snap. “I’ll return later,” she said. “Xaforn, with me, please. Nhia …” Liudan whipped a sharp glance over at Tammary, standing with her arms crossed, dark eyes glinting under the fox-colored hair she had never consented to have dressed in Court fashion. “Nhia, stay safe.”

  Yuet glared at Tammary but said nothing further. She and the Traveler girl stayed for almost an hour and then Yuet excused herself and left to deal with her healer responsibilities, taking Tammary with her.

  Qiaan left soon after, promising to keep an ear out for the rumors on the streets. She was proving to be startlingly well connected, having channeled her organizational abilities into a number of groups working at the most basic levels of support for the less affluent of the city. She had organized charity kitchens for the poor, established trade schools where children were taught salable skills like woodworking or needlework, had a hand in evicting the inevitable swindlers and cheats who siphoned hard-earned coppers off honest but often gullible citizens. She had even had dealings with the Beggars’ Guild at some point—something that Nhia knew, but remembered only after Qiaan had left, and shook her head in frustration at the missed opportunity of perhaps asking her what she might know about the cryptic words of the beggar at the wedding.

  Tai stayed until Xaforn returned, some four hours later, tight-lipped about her recent activities, and received back the talisman she had left with Tai as she had departed from Nhia’s quarters.

  “No further news,” she said. “Go home, Tai. Your family probably thinks you did a Lihui and disappeared on them.”

  Tai left, reluctantly.

  After satisfying herself that Nhia’s immediate surroundings were secure, Xaforn said, “I know we’re all probably overreacting, and that you’re probably ready to hit the next person who insists on not leaving your side, but I’ll be right outside, should anything happen. And Liudan said she would send word if anything changed.”

  Nhia shot her a grateful look. “And Qiaan says you have no tact.”

  Xaforn shrugged, but her mouth quirked. “If you listen to Qiaan, I’m a young barbarian.”

  “You are,” Nhia said affectionately. “You’re right, I’d appreciate a bit of time on my own. I have some work I could be catching up on, anyway.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time for that,” Xaforn said with a bluntness apparently geared to displaying the very lack of tact she had just accused Qiaan of exaggerating. “I don’t think that Liudan will let you go about your usual business until she is sure you’re not going to be ambushed.”

  Xaforn nodded and departed, and Nhia was left in sole possession of her room. The shutters had been tightly closed, as though they had been armor against some attack coming in through the window, but the air in the room now felt close and suffocating, and Nhia unbolted the heavy shutters and flung them wide to the late summer afternoon, stepping out onto the balcony and staring out over the tiled courtyards and steep rooftops of the city.

  The light was low and golden, gilding the city with an almost mythical glow. Stone which had absorbed sunshine all day now radiated it out, a subtle warmth against the palms which Nhia rested on the white stone ballustrade of the balcony. Against the sun, a distant black silhouette, the Tower of the Great Temple rose like a pointing finger into the sky. The Temple where she had first met him. Lihui. Her teacher. Her enemy.

  What dark sorcery was he hatching now? Where was he?

  “He is dead,” a soft female voice spoke, close behind Nhia.

  It was so apt an answer to the next question that had hovered on the edge of Nhia’s mind—I wonder if he is alive or dead—that she did not even think about it for a moment, simply taking it for granted, a response to an unspoken question.

  And then the significance of those words, that voice, broke through the somnolence of the quiet, somnolent summer day, and Nhia’s fragile peace shattered like glass.

  She w
hirled, clutching at the ballustrade with both hands, her face chalk-white.

  “Khailin?”

  The figure standing in the doorway to the balcony bore very little resemblance, on the surface, to the Khailin whom Nhia had known. The once-raven hair was liberally streaked with silver, and there were lines etched into her face that had no place on a girl still half a year shy of her twenty-first birthday. But the carriage was the same, the proud, almost defiant tilt to her head, and the glittering dark eyes.

  She wore an outer robe the color of smoke, whose wide sleeves fell past her wrists and left only the fingers of her hands visible, and the silver-gray hair was confined in a simple silk net, bound by a filet with a single yellow stone on Khailin’s forehead. Nhia stared at her for a long moment and then one of her hands flew to her throat, and the amulet there.

  Seeing that, the apparition that was Khailin smiled.

  “No, I am not him. I gave you a true talisman. If Lihui had taken this shape, of all shapes, you would have known it instantly.” She stretched out a hand. “I am real. I am not an illusion.” And then, after a pause, as Nhia hesitantly stepped forward and reached out for that offered hand, “I am free. And so are you, my jin-shei-bao. Free of him. You can stop shying at shadows, for he won’t hurt you anymore. Not ever again.”

  As her fingers touched Khailin’s, Nhia’s knees gave way, and she collapsed in a small heap at Khailin’s feet, her face suddenly streaked with tears. Khailin helped her up and supported her as she limped back into the room.

  “How did you get here? How did you get past Xaforn? I was beginning to fear you were dead. When Liudan once asked him outright about where you were he said you were gone, Khailin, and I took that to mean … but they said to me, if you were dead he would have said you are dead. Perhaps ‘gone’ merely meant safe and beyond his reach and waiting for a chance to … for the love of Cahan, Khailin, I’m babbling.”

  “Sit,” Khailin said. “Do you have any wine in here? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make my entrance quite so dramatic, but I needed to make sure I saw you first—I need you to validate my identity. There is nobody out there except you who will swear to who I am.”