Tammary desperately tried to free her hands, but succeeded only in chafing her wrists raw against the cord with which she had been bound. “Liudan won’t believe it. Zhan will come looking for me,” she whispered to herself, trying to keep despair at bay. “Oh, Cahan, he is going to take my baby, he will hurt my child …”
She was left alone for what seemed like hours, during which time, between the dry nausea which still racked her and the creeping despair of her captivity, she cried herself into near oblivion. She was also increasingly thirsty, her mouth dry and her lips cracking a little where she ran her tongue over them. When she heard the door open she turned her head sharply, afraid that it was Eleo back again to torment her, but it was an old woman, wrapped in a dark shawl, carrying a basin and a washcloth.
“There, there, my sweet bird,” the old woman said in a voice brittle with age. “I know it’s hard. It’ll all be over soon. Don’t worry.”
“Water …” Tammary whispered.
“In a moment, sweet thing. I’ve come to take care of you.”
She dampened the washcloth in her basin, stowed somewhere just out of Tammary’s line of sight, and then her gnarled old claw of a hand came down over Tammary’s face, wiping her cheeks and closed eyelids with the damp cloth, her touch unexpectedly gentle. It felt refreshing, but the very tenderness of it made tears well up in Tammary’s eyes again.
“I have to get out of here,” she gasped, her eyes flying open against the cloth. “Help me. You have to help me. He’s holding me against my will.”
“It will all be all right,” the old woman said, in the same soothing tone of voice. She finished her ministrations and backed out of sight again. Tammary heard her pouring something, and then she was back, lifting Tammary up very gently and propping a pillow behind her back, offering her a cup. “Something to drink,” she said. “Here, something to drink, you must be thirsty.”
But the liquid in the cup wasn’t water. It was something herb-bitter, biting, and Tammary took one swallow and choked on it, gasping, turning her head away.
“No! What is that?” Her years of working in Yuet’s stillroom kicked in, her mind running down the lists of herbs. Why would they be giving her potions? Why would they …
The identity of the herb exploded in her mind at the same time as her chain of reasoning brought her to the same place. The herb was called sochuan, and it was given for women’s problems. And in high doses it induced …
Tammary twisted, screamed, but the old woman was remarkably strong. Constantly repeating a gentle refrain of, “It’s all right, it will all be over soon,” she expertly whipped the pillow out from behind Tammary’s back, held her nose closed with one hand, and held the cup to her mouth with the other. Much of the contents of the cup spilled over Tammary’s closed lips, down her chin, soaking the cropped ends of her now jawline-length hair. But the instinct to breathe was too strong, and as she finally opened her mouth to gasp for air the bitter herbal infusion flooded in and down to the back of her throat and she swallowed convulsively.
“That’s a good girl,” the old woman said complacently, letting Tammary’s head loll back onto the bed. “Here, you may have some water now. I’ll be here later, when you need me. I’ll be here.”
Tammary moaned, turning her head away.
When the pain came, another few hours later, the old woman was not there. Alone, tied down to a slatted wooden bed with a thin, hard mattress, Tammary screamed and writhed in agony as a clawed hand reached into her and scoured her clean. She felt the rush of warm blood when it gushed down her legs, soaking her dress, going straight through the thin straw-filled pallet beneath her and starting to drip and pool just in her line of sight. Terrified, in pain and in desperate, tearing grief, Tammary became aware of another emotion crystallizing out of the whole potent cocktail. Fury. Cold, bitter fury. He cannot keep me tied up the rest of my life. And when he lets me go I will kill him.
Tammary’s jin-shei circle threw themselves into searching for her. Unlike Qiaan, who was beyond their reach on the ghost road somewhere, Tammary had to be somewhere in the city. But Maxao, somewhat unexpectedly, took the position that Tammary’s disappearance could be just the goad that Lihui needed to come out of his lair. Although he did finally promise that he would help search for her, it was with every appearance of doing so against his better judgment. The beggars, however, turned up nothing—although Tai muttered darkly to Nhia that she was far from sure whether that was from a genuine ignorance or from deferring to their leader’s fiat to say nothing until such time as he allowed it.
“She could be dead by then,” Tai said, stabbing her needle into the silk stretched over her embroidery hoop with a savage little motion. “Where could they have put her? The beggars swear that she is not in the underbelly, because they would have heard about that—unless they are lying. Xaforn says that she isn’t anywhere that a Guard could have access to. And Yuet has been scouring every place she knows, every hole she had ever been dragged to as a healer, asking questions of anyone she meets. How hard can it be to find her—anyone seeing her, seeing that hair, would remember.”
“They won’t kill her,” Nhia said. “Remember the note? She is the key to power. They wouldn’t destroy that.”
Tai’s eyes filled with tears. “I feel so helpless.”
“I know,” Nhia said. “I feel like it’s all coming apart, and I cannot hold it together anymore. Oh, Cahan, I should have just stayed a little insignificant children’s teacher at the Temple. Or took over my mother’s laundering business. Anything. Anything but this.”
“Even after getting that pitiful amputated braid, a declaration of power-lessness if ever I saw one, Liudan believes that Amri willingly turned her hand to this,” Tai said. “It nearly killed Zhan, because he understood what it meant—that Amri is totally in their power. And yet Liudan … I just don’t understand it.”
“I know,” said Nhia softly. “Liudan has already condemned her. And Tammary will know, wherever she is; she understands Liudan far too well. And Zhan knows, too. Whatever happens, there is no going back for them.”
Summer dragged on into autumn, and that year’s Autumn Court opened with a blaze of glory that few Autumn Courts had ever had. Liudan glowed with jewels, as though every one she managed to put upon her person was another seal on her identity as the Empress of Syai. Her layered robes, encrusted with gold and silk and gems, looked as though their weight would have crushed a lesser person. But Liudan wore them with a fierce dignity, her spine straight, her shoulders back, her head high under the Imperial Tiara.
The Court was uneasy this year, with a lot of whispering behind fans and gracefully concealing, well-manicured courtiers’ hands. It was as though an expectation weighed heavily on the occasion, as though too many things were hanging, as though all of it could come crashing down, one way or another.
It was one of Nhia’s people who started to break the back of the crisis. The man came to her, hesitating, choosing his words carefully.
“It could be nothing, nothing at all, but all things have significance in the Way,” he said piously, wringing his hands in Nhia’s private chambers where he had asked to be taken to deliver his news, far from any eavesdroppers.
“What do you know?” Nhia said.
“I was in the audience chamber,” he said, “standing right behind Emeritus-Chancellor Zibo and a companion whom I did not know, a young man of small build, dressed very well in gold brocade and gem …”
“I don’t require a description, unless you saw his face,” Nhia said. “What did you hear?”
“The Emeritus-Chancellor whispered to his companion—and this is why I started listening, Nhia-lama, because it was a strange remark—that it would not be long before they would have all those jewels off the Empress. And the young man said, also in a whisper, ‘If I ever tame our little wild fox. She’s dangerous. I cannot leave her loose when I am in the room.’ The Emeritus-Chancellor then looked around, as though he was trying to make sure
that they hadn’t been heard, and I made sure I was looking in another direction, and I don’t think they know that I heard, and it may be nothing, I mean, it’s the Emeritus-Chancellor, and after all …”
“After all, he has been sidelined by Liudan,” Nhia said. “Thank you. This could mean everything.”
She did not know the identity of the man who had been with Zibo at the Court, but he was enough, for now. Nhia sent Xaforn and a detachment of Guards to bring the ex-Chancellor to a cell in the Guard compound, and sent a message to Khailin to come there as soon as she could. Nhia herself was there to meet an outraged Zibo when he was brought in, spluttering indignantly and demanding to know who was responsible for this outrage.
“I am,” Nhia said in reply to his complaints as he was walked smartly in through the door of the lockup room by two burly Guards, followed by Xaforn. “I know everything, Zibo.”
“Everything,” he smirked. “Everything. You can’t use that on me, young lady I used that self-incriminating statement with hundreds of miscreants in my time. And if I really knew anything at all they were usually in chains and in the dungeons, or under the headsman’s ax, not interrogated by some administrator in a low-level jail.”
“All we are waiting for,” Nhia said tranquilly, folding her arms, “is word that Tammary is safe. Then you will be taken to the Empress in those chains you so covet. Together with your accomplice. If Tammary hasn’t got to him first. And we might just let her.”
Zibo’s expression faltered for a moment, but then he had himself under control again. “Safe? Tammary? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” Khailin, who had come in right behind Xaforn, said very softly.
Zibo jumped, tried to back away. “You keep that witch away from me,” he said. “You have no right to …”
“We have every right,” Nhia said. “You are involved in an activity the purpose of which is nothing less than the deposition of the Empress. That is high treason. You have used an innocent woman, a jin-shei sister to the Empress herself and to all of us, as your pawn. And from what I already know about this plot, you have not used her kindly. Oh, you will die for this, Zibo. The chains and the headsman’s ax. What was in it for you? Regaining the Chancellor’s chain? What, if you had succeeded, would have been my fate, Zibo?”
“This is ridiculous. I have no idea what you are talking about. You have no right …”
Khailin reached out to touch him, and he tried shying away, but the two Guards who still held his arms made sure that he could not avoid the brush of her fingers.
“Oh, he’s in it up to his ears,” Khailin said. “I can taste the fear on him.”
Zibo drew himself up to the full extent his bulk would allow. His chins wobbled with affronted dignity. “How dare you speak to me like that! I am an Imperial officer of high rank, and I demand that I receive the treatment that my position demands!”
A Guard at the door ducked into the interrogation room, whispered something into Xaforn’s ear, stared at Zibo for a moment, and then left again.
“They got Tammary,” Xaforn said. “But the other guy wasn’t there, his friend. Tammary’s jailor.”
“Jailor,” spluttered Zibo. “You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. I insist that you let me go at once.”
He spluttered to a halt as Xaforn drew out her sword with one smooth, economical movement and its tip suddenly trembled at that point in Zibo’s cascade of chins which might be expected to house the vulnerable spot on the throat of any other man.
“You may think yourself well protected, in theory and in practice,” Xaforn said calmly, “but my blade has sliced through harder stuff than your blubber, and you really are in no position to bargain with a woman whom you would have swept away ruthlessly if you ever got to within shouting distance of a Chancellor’s chain again. So I’ll ask you, one more time …”
“He’s her husband!” Zibo spluttered. “There is nothing you can do now to undo that! He married her under every law of Syai, and she wears his rings on her thumbs! That’s more than your precious Zhan ever did for her!”
“Zhan married her in his heart, and she him,” Nhia said. “I was there. Under every law of Syai, as you choose to invoke them, the travesty you forced Tammary to go through was performed on an unwilling woman taken by force. It will not stand. You lost, Zibo. You can still save yourself, maybe, if you tell us where to find him, this … husband.”
“He’s at the teahouse now. That’s where he always is. Eleo. He goes back to the teahouses after Court, then he’ll be back to my quarters.”
Xaforn slipped out before he had finished speaking, and he trailed off, looking from one to the other. “You didn’t know any of this, did you? You didn’t know it, not until I spoke out.” He staggered backward, and the two Guards at his sides allowed his huge bulk to subside onto the single bare bench in the room.
“Keep him here,” Nhia said. “I’m going to get Yuet. I have a feeling we may need her after Tammary’s been in the tender care of this crew for all these weeks.”
“And Tai. Get Tai.” Khailin stood staring at the ex-Chancellor, her eyes implacable. “I’ll get the rest of it out of this one.”
But it seemed as though they had got the information too late. When they all converged onto the grounds of Zibo’s plush residence not far away from the Palace, it was to see black smoke pouring out of the second-storey windows. Xaforn sent in her Guards at all the side entrances, and she, with Yuet and Nhia at her heels, charged in through the front. Tai alone hung back, and it was Tai, therefore, who saw the bedraggled figure hunched in the shelter of some ornamental flowering bushes not far from the main building. Glancing at where the others had gone, Tai turned away deliberately and approached what she initially thought was a young man, soot-stained and somehow, perhaps, wounded, with blood smeared on his hands. But then the “young man” lifted his head, and a bright curl of hair escaped from underneath a large flat cap that had been shoved haphazardly on the figure’s head, and Tai’s heart stopped for a moment.
“Amri?” she whispered, quickening her step. “Amri? Is that you? Is that really you? Are you all right?”
“Go, don’t linger here,” Tammary said in a low voice. “Don’t ever tell them you found me. Let them think I died in that fire. Let them rather believe …”
“What have they done to you?” Tai gasped. “I can’t leave you out here. I can’t just …”
“There will be others,” Tammary said. “I’m better dead.”
“But Zhan …”
“Maybe. In time. But no, how could I go back?” Her eyes swam with tears. “They gave me sochuan, Tai. Ask Yuet what that means. I will probably never quicken with child again. And he doesn’t need the Empress watching him all the time, waiting for him to make his move. And they married me to Eleo.”
“I know,” said Tai, reaching for her. But Tammary recoiled.
“I killed him,” she whispered. “I swore I would, and I did.”
“They told me what happened to you,” Tai said. “Nobody will blame you.”
“Help me,” Tammary whispered, reaching out and clutching Tai’s skirts, her eyes full of tears, bright in her soot-black face. “In the name of jin-shei, help me. Help me get out of Linh-an.”
For a moment Tai was far away, a little girl weeping over the dying body of her first beloved jin-shei-bao. Antian had asked, too—she had asked, in the name of the bond that lay between them. And Tai had spent her life in the service of that vow.
Now, here, in this dark hour, Tammary was asking her for something—in the name of the same bright, holy name.
Jin-shei, the promise that could not be broken, could not be refused.
“But you are …” Tai began, after a beat of silence.
“I have to get out of here,” Tammary said, her voice breaking on a sob.
“And go where?” Tai said, looking around desperately for the others. “Come, let Yuet look at …”
Tammary shook her head. “I don’t want that,” she said. “I don’t want to be stared at and prodded and poked and pitied. I need to go. I need to find … I can go home, to the mountains, to the high skies, to where nobody cares.”
“You ran away from there once,” Tai said.
“And perhaps there is no going back, but I need to get out of here,” Tammary said.
“Then Nhia can …”
“No. Nobody knows about this. Nobody but you. Help me.”
“May I at least tell Zhan?”
Tammary hesitated. “Maybe. In time. I’ll let you know.”
“They are coming out,” Tai said.
“Tai …”
“All right. All right! Stay there.”
She crossed the expanse of lawn back to the house at a run, seeing Yuet emerge, shaking her head.
“Have you found anything?”
“We think we have found this Eleo,” Yuet said. “With a knife in his kidney. And another brace of people, mostly old, mostly servants.”
“No Tammary?”
“No body,” Yuet said.
“We’ll search the grounds,” said Xaforn. “She might be hiding somewhere in the park. What’s the matter with you, Tai? You are looking sick to the stomach.”
“I am,” Tai whispered.
Yuet stared at her beadily “Are you pregnant again? If you are, what are you doing out here?”
“I don’t know,” Tai said, seizing on the excuse. “I don’t think so.”
“We can look for her,” Xaforn said. “You go home. Get some rest. You’ve been fretting about this.”
“So have all of us,” Tai said.
“Yes, but you’ve taken it personally,” said Xaforn. “Yuet, take her home!”
“No!” Tai said. They both turned to look at her with some surprise at the vehemence of that reaction. She grimaced. “I mean, if you find Tammary, she needs Yuet more than I do.”
The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 46