The Secrets of Jin-shei

by Alma Alexander

  “Go home,” said Yuet. “I swear, if you of all people fall apart on me right now, I’ll go mad. I’ll come by your house as soon as I can, and tell you what happened.”

  Tai stole a glance at the shrubbery, but the figure of Tammary was no longer visible.

  “But I don’t want to …” she began.

  Yuet scowled at her. “Go, and leave me to try and do some good here,” she said.

  Tai left, slowly, reluctantly, aware of being followed by both Yuet’s and Xaforn’s eyes until she had reached the outer gate of the courtyard. Then they turned away, and as Tai stepped into the gate Tammary’s fragile voice, like the sound of dry autumn leaves whispering against each other on the ground in late Chuntan, spoke from the shadows.

  “Are they still watching?”

  “No. But how am I going to get you back to my house undetected?”

  “Why back to your house?”

  “Tammary, you can’t go anywhere as you are right now.”

  “You promised not to tell anyone,” Tammary whispered.

  “I didn’t, but I won’t, much against my better judgment,” Tai said, slipping off her own cloak as she spoke. “You asked me to help you get out of this place, and I will do my best to do that. But we’ll still talk about who gets to know about it. Here. Wrap this around you. And follow me.”

  Tai had every intention of settling Tammary down, getting her cleaned up and providing her with a change of clothes, and then at the very least having another talk to her about the wisdom of her course of action. She also intended to let Zhan at least know that Tammary was alive, if nothing else. She had seen his face when the hope died in him. It would be heartless to let him go on believing Tammary was gone for good.

  But the best-laid plans could go awry, and it was simply unfortunate that, when Xaforn and Nhia brought Zibo before the Empress with a full description of the plot, Zhan happened to arrive at the Palace at just the right time for Liudan to inform him that Tammary was dead.

  Liudan herself was distracted by quite a different piece of news that had just broken—and that was that, against all rules of civilized warfare, the Magalipt riders had launched their long-awaited invasion at last from the passes on Syai’s western borders. To her, Tammary’s death—although Nhia had specifically said that they had found no body—was the conclusion that she had jumped to as the one which offered the most convenient closure to the situation. Her announcement to Zhan was thus less tactful than even she might have been expected to deliver.

  “Well,” she had said, “at least that problem is solved. Now I can clear the slate for doing something useful on the border.”

  It wasn’t deliberate cruelty. But to Zhan it was shattering. He found the idea of returning alone to the quiet rooms he had shared with Tammary for such a short, idyllic time almost unbearable; she would be everywhere for him, a lingering, bright-haired ghost who would remind him that he had lost both of them, Tammary and the child which she had carried. There was, as it happened, an alternative. He asked Liudan for a chance to lead her troops into the battle against the Magalipt.

  Liudan knew Zhan as indolent, and she may have thought of his gentleness as weakness—but she also knew him as intelligent, not without courage, and, she believed, loyal enough despite his unfortunate taste in women. She gave him a command on the spot.

  By the time Tai got a chance to send for him to tell him that Tammary was safe and at her house, Zhan had gone to war.

  And before the sun rose too high on the following day, Tammary, her shorn hair swept up in a young man’s woolen cap and her bosom bound to give her a more boyish silhouette, slipped out of the Northern Gate and began the long journey back to the mountains from which she had fled so long ago looking for a better world.

  Nine

  Everything suddenly seemed to be deeper, more serious, more brooding in Linh-an that autumn. Every moment had a curious intensity, a breathless sense of portent.

  Tai’s poetry reflected the mood. But much of what she wrote she kept in her journal, instinctively holding it back from Liudan. She knew that the Empress would be disturbed by it.

  Leaves have always fallen from autumn branches.

  But never before

  has it filled me with so much nameless fear.

  Why am I so terribly afraid

  that the leaves will not return

  when the spring comes?

  “Why are you so frightened?” Kito would murmur into her hair, late at night, when Tai could not sleep.

  “I wish I knew,” Tai would whisper back, her throat tight. “A long time ago, when I was just a child, when Antian had first called me jin-shei, my mother told me that I was in the liu-kala of my jin-shei days, that everything had its season. I have a terrible feeling that somehow I am in the twilight of that season, that my sisters are in danger, that what happened to Qiaan, to Tammary … that it’s the beginning of an end, somehow. That we are in ryu-kala, the age before dying.”

  “We are all still young,” Kito said, his arms around her. “Don’t let these dark thoughts in. I know we are living in troubling times, but things will get better. Things always do. That is the way of the world—whenever things get really bad, then they can only get better.”

  But his words, however much Tai clung to them, failed to lift her sense of foreboding.

  If Autumn Court had glittered more desperately than ever before in that year, the Festival of All Souls, when it came round on the last day of Chuntan, proved memorable for quite a different reason.

  The Great Temple was closed to the public on this day, the only day of the year that the three massive gates were closed and barred. The one who wore the Imperial Tiara took on the responsibility of being his people on this day. Traditionally, the Emperor and Empress walked to the Great Temple from the Palace in the morning of the Festival of All Souls, through the streets of the city, and entered the Temple through a special small door on the side of the building, usually kept sealed and bricked up the rest of the year. On All Souls’ Day every year, the wall built before this door was torn down by the priests of the Temple to allow entrance to the Emperor and the Empress; and every year the door was bricked up anew after they had passed through it, to hold in the renewal and rebirth they were bringing into the Temple. The Imperial pair would walk barefoot around the Temple, through all the Circles, and spend the day in prayer and offerings and meditation in the inner sanctum, in the temple in the Tower of the Lord of Heaven. What the actual ceremonies were that were performed there, nobody outside the Temple circles and the Emperors themselves actually knew. Naturally there was a lot of speculation—it was certainly considered propitious to conceive a child on this day, for instance, and the less reverent teahouses would often refer to intimate dalliance as “doing what the Emperor does on All Souls Day.”

  But Liudan had no Emperor, no mate to take in with her, and what rituals she was led in by the Temple priests remained her own mystery, although there were those who had muttered that it obviously wasn’t working because bad harvest after bad harvest was edging some remote communities into starvation. Liudan’s procession to the Temple in the year of Tai’s forebodings was watched only by scattered crowds on the streets, but there was little cheering and there seemed to be rather more Guards about than were usually required.

  The rites took most of the day, and as twilight started to gather Liudan finally emerged from the Temple, through one of the Three Gates, unbarred again and thrown open to the people. She had done everything that had been required, had bowed before every God, had lit incense before every shrine and then burned sweet oils in bowls of lapis and jade at the innermost altar of the Great Temple of Syai, and her prayers had been fervent and genuine—Help my land, for it is troubled. She walked back to the Palace in the hour of gathering shadows, surrounded by torches and lanterns, a vision of Empire, the anointed one who had just communed with Cahan itself and bought a year of peace and prosperity for the realm. Glittering with gems in the darkening st
reet.

  A perfect target.

  One of the Guards heard the whistle of the black arrow that came winging out of the dark, and shouted out a warning as he threw himself in front of the Empress. The arrow nicked his shoulder armor, and slid off the sleek metal shell. It lost momentum—enough to keep it from being deadly. But it was still moving. It struck a faceted gem on Liudan’s shoulder, glanced off, and embedded itself in a padded fold on her heavily embroidered outer robe.

  Liudan’s face did not change, and she continued walking at the same stately pace as she had been doing up until that moment. But her Guards coalesced into a tight circle around her, and two of them held a pair of shields over her head from behind. It cast a shadow on her, quenching her glitter. She was unharmed, but only by the sheerest fluke—and the point had been made more than adequately by the rest of that tense march back to the relative safety of the Palace walls, a walk that seemed to take a year out of the lives of every one of the people in that street who were charged with protecting the Empress. It was only after she was safely delivered into her own rooms that Liudan started weeping, from fear and from fury, and would let nobody in to see her, not even Yuet, who came hurrying to the Palace as soon as she heard what had happened.

  “She will do herself a worse injury if she doesn’t let me at least give her some sort of a calming infusion,” Yuet said to Xaforn. “But she wasn’t even hurt you said. Just frightened.”

  Xaforn tossed her head. “Sometimes fright is worse. She is afraid of everything these days, of her own shadow. I’ve seen her shying at my presence sometimes. I think she is desperately lonely right now, fighting a war on three fronts, and I don’t know how she stays sane in all this.”

  “Three fronts?” Yuet said, frowning.

  “Maybe even four,” Xaforn said. “Lihui, the Magalipt thing, and then the treachery of people like Zibo when the whole Tammary situation exploded. She never really trusted Zibo, but she was appalled that she could have let him plot as deeply as he did without her having got wind of it sooner. This was a poison in her own Court.”

  “But you said four,” Yuet said. “That’s three.”

  Xaforn gave her a strange look. “Herself,” she said. “Really, Yuet, you’re the healer. You can see that she’s tearing herself apart. She is all there is—there’s no mate, no heir, nothing and nobody to take the pressure off her. She didn’t bargain for this when she wanted to be Empress.”

  “How did you get to be so wise?” Yuet murmured.

  “You and Tai,” Xaforn said, with a sad smile. “And the times we live in.”

  When Liudan finally admitted one of her jin-shei circle into her presence, it was neither Yuet nor Xaforn but Nhia—who had had to pull both the strings she had available, jin-shei and the duties and needs of her Chancellor’s office, in order to achieve this.

  “You look a wreck, Liudan,” Nhia said when she was ushered into Liudan’s rooms, almost two days after the attack. “Have you slept in the last forty-eight hours? Have you eaten anything? You look half dead.”

  Liudan’s head came up sharply at that word. “I could have been wholly dead,” she said.

  “Now you’re wallowing,” Nhia said gently. “Talk to us. All of us. Any of us. You know Tai would spend every waking hour with you if you ask her. Liudan, if you go on like this you’ll be doing their work for them. You’ll kill yourself far faster and probably with far more suffering than they could ever hope to inflict on you.”

  “Don’t lecture,” said Liudan.

  “I’m not,” Nhia said. “None of us is immortal.”

  “You said Lihui was,” said Liudan unexpectedly.

  “Perhaps,” Nhia said carefully, but her voice had gone tight at the mention of Lihui’s name. “But I think it is given to us, in the end, to choose how we live and how we die. And I would not want the responsibility of living Lihui’s life. The price he will eventually pay will be very great. And even the Immortals … well, but Khailin is probably far more knowledgeable on that subject than me, these days. You read her paper on the ages of the world.”

  “I meant to,” Liudan said. “I have a copy of it in my chambers somewhere. But I hardly even read the poems that Tai sends me these days. There is too much in my head, and I don’t have the time anymore to think of other things, and of what is to come if I should … Nhia, what would happen to Syai if I had taken that arrow? I have left nothing settled, I had thought I would have years.”

  “You do have years,” Nhia said. “Liudan, get some food into you. Get some rest.”

  Liudan gave her a curious sidelong glance. “So what does Khailin say on the subject?”

  “Of food? She takes it occasionally,” Nhia said. “On the whole, I think she approves of the concept.”

  Liudan made a sharp little movement with her hand. “Don’t mock me,” she snapped. “I meant on immortality, of course. She is doing work on that?”

  “She does a lot of things,” Nhia said. She was beginning to catch a dangerous drift, and tried to steer the conversation into other channels. “She and Maxao, forever fluttering around that laboratory of hers. Half the time I don’t know what she is brewing in there. However, I have other things here that need your attention, Empress, from your Chancellor’s office. You order some breakfast in, and we can discuss them at our leisure over some tea.”

  Liudan emerged from her isolation after Nhia’s visit, but her mood was dark and brittle. She was brooding on something, something that she wouldn’t talk to any of her jin-shei sisters about. No further attempts on her life occurred, and for some weeks things appeared to go on as normal until one day, on the eve of Khailin’s twenty-fifth birthday, she gathered an entourage of Guards and made her way to Khailin’s house in the city.

  The visit was unexpected and Khailin, informed by a flustered servant that the Empress was waiting in the drawing room, stripped off her working smock and hurried out to greet her.

  “Happy birthday,” Liudan said, by way of greeting.

  Khailin blinked. “Believe it or not, I had actually forgotten,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “I have a present for you,” Liudan said, and gestured to one of her retainers, waiting by the door of the room. He bowed, signaled somebody outside, and a small cedarwood chest was brought into the room.

  “What is that?” Khailin said, eyeing the curiously carved box.

  “Open it,” Liudan said.

  The hinges creaked as the lid was lifted. “This hasn’t been opened in some time,” Khailin said.

  “Probably not,” Liudan said. “It’s doing no good where it was. I thought you could use it.”

  The box was full of neat scrolls which, when Khailin experimentally unfurled one, proved to be closely written with tiny hacha-ashu script. Khailin peered at it, squinting.

  “I need glasses,” she said, “or this thing was written under a magnifying lens. What is this, Liudan?”

  “Records,” Liudan said, “from the Imperial astronomers. I think some of them date back maybe two hundred years.”

  Khailin looked up. “This is a royal treasure, Liudan. Why are you giving this to me?”

  “You use it,” Liudan said. “Nhia said you were working on a lot of things.”

  “Yes,” Khailin said slowly. “I am.”

  Their eyes met, held; many things were said without speaking. Then Liudan laughed. “You’re right, it’s also a bribe of sorts. There is something I want you to do for me.”

  “And it is not something I will be happy doing, is it, Liudan?”

  “I don’t know,” Liudan said.

  Khailin rolled up the ancient scroll again and put it back in its box. “So, what is your wish?”

  “I nearly died last autumn,” Liudan said.

  “I know.”

  “I would have left the Empire adrift, unprovided for.”

  Khailin waited, in silence.

  “I need time,” Liudan said, a tinge of urgency in her voice now, even of desperation. “I cannot do
what I have to do if I am waiting for the arrow in my heart every moment. I cannot plan if I don’t have the time to see it all come to harvest.”

  “I’ve already made such protective amulets as I may,” Khailin said quietly. “Some of them guard the gates of your Palace as we speak. But what else may I do that …”

  “Nhia said you were working on it,” Liudan interrupted. “And I want it. I want that from you. I want …”

  “Want what, Liudan?”

  “Immortality,” said Liudan, and her eyes glinted with naked need. “In the name of jin-shei, I want you to give me immortality.”

  PART SIX

  Pau

  It’s winter at last. Everything sleeps.

  The soul, too, is at rest in Pau.

  Qiu-Lin, Year 28 of the Cloud Emperor

  One

  The servant had barely had the chance to open the door before Khailin swept through and into Yuet’s sitting room. Her expression appeared to be made up in equal parts of frustration, fury, exasperation, and fear.

  Tai, sitting curled on the window seat and sipping a cup of Yuet’s herbal tea, uncoiled like a whip at the sight of her.

  “You look like you want to kill somebody,” she said.

  “On the contrary,” Khailin retorted. “I’ve been presented with an ultimatum to keep someone alive.”

  “To keep someone alive?” Tai echoed in puzzlement.

  “Isn’t that my job?” Yuet said ironically.

  “Yes,” Khailin snapped, “and not in the way that you are thinking of, Yuet. I mean indefinitely. Liudan has woken up to the concept of immortality.”

  “You’d better sit down, and have some tea, and tell us everything from the beginning,” Yuet said, already pouring into a porcelain cup.

  Khailin could clearly remember the conversation in her parlor that had started the ball rolling, nearly two weeks before.