by JC Kang
From here in Jiangkou, it would sail south to Yutou, then to its homeport in Nanling Province, then into the foreign waters of Ankiras and Ayudra Island. In addition to transporting Ankirans out of Ayuri lands, it leased cargo space to several trading companies. The only company that had ever stood out to Tian before was Golden Fu Trading, a newer corporation that imported addicting but legal gooseweed from the Ayuri South. So why had Yutou Province decided to use the ship for smuggling?
“Little Tian,” his supervisor yelled from the main office.
Tian poked his head out of the records room. “Yes sir?”
“A trading company representative wants your help with a shipping declaration.”
Lamp Man, no doubt, perhaps with unspoken answers. Tian walked out into the rows of knee-high desks, making a show of bumping into one of them. His twenty-seven kneeling colleagues all startled and shook their heads.
Old Chu, an honest licensing official, snorted. “You’ve been here a year and you still careen into desks. Once the Ministry of Trade ships you off to the barbarian lands, I can’t say I will miss the shock to my old heart every time you crash into mine. I will miss your thoroughness, though.”
A compliment, perhaps? They were rare. Tian bobbed his head, all the while keeping a surreptitious eye on his own desk.
Lamp Man stood there, his gaze roving over the clutter of brushes, inkstones, and papers. He bowed his head as Tian approached. “Scribe Zheng, thank you.”
“How may I help you?” Tian dropped into a cross-legged sit on the floor.
Lamp Man sat down across the table, then withdrew two sheets of folded rice paper. “My company is new, and I want to make sure this customs declaration is correct.” He proffered the sheets.
New, of course—likely a shell company creating another layer to protect whoever was behind the smuggling. Tian examined the neat handwriting. Victorious Trading Corporation. Bloodwood furniture out of Wailian County.
Victorious… the written character was rarely used, usually only in names like Princess Kaiya’s. As for furniture, it provided an easy way to smuggle, as long as the right customs officials were bribed to ignore secret or not so secret compartments. Tian looked sidelong at a few of the most egregious offenders at their desks. “Everything seems to be in order on the first page.” He started to flip the page.
Lamp Man’s hand shot out and he shook his head. Not now, he mouthed. “Thank you for your help, Scribe Zheng.” Bowing his head, he stood up and left.
Waiting for all eyes to return to their own work, Tian peeled away the top page, revealing a paper treasury note worth ten silver yuan. That was a substantial bribe, three and a third times more than the largest bribe he’d ever seen taken in this office. Lamp Man wanted something big, and the second page…
Beautiful script meandered over the sheet, seemingly moving of its own accord. He blinked several times and shook his head. Victorious Trading Company apparently employed a master of written magic, someone who had hoped to put the reader into some sort of charm. Thankfully, Black Lotus training involved exposure to many forms of Artistic Magic, conferring a mild resistance.
His head might be spinning now, but the uninitiated would likely feel drunk, and open to the command written in the words: Bring all original manifests for the Steadfast Mariner to the warehouse at the third waxing gibbous.
Stuffing the page and cash into the fold of his robes, Tian glanced at the dwarf-made water clock. The third waxing gibbous was just past sunset, several hours from now. The Steadfast Mariner, registered to Yutou Province, was the suspicious ship that had first led him to the warehouse that morning. If Lamp Man wanted the originals, it was probably to destroy the evidence and tie up loose ends.
Did he see Tian as a loose end? Or as a resource for future smuggling?
Tian scribbled two coded messages. Waiting for the instant all heads focused on their work, he slipped out of the building. In the mid-morning sun, longshoremen, dockworkers, and sailors all bustled about, too busy with their own affairs to care about him. He beckoned his usual runner out of a crowd of boys looking for odd jobs.
Up to now, Little Ju had proven reliable and discreet. The tween grinned and hustled up. “What do you need, Mister Zheng?”
With a street performer’s sleight of hand, Tian retrieved the missive for his Black Lotus superiors. Creased into a twenty-fold shape that would tear apart if opened by untrained hands, it instructed them to track down Victorious Trading’s incorporation papers. He pressed it, and the silver coin Lamp Man had given him that morning, into Little Ju’s hand. “Run this to Sweet Lotus Shrine. Drop it in the donation box.”
The boy dipped his head and dashed off. Making sure no one was looking, Tian stashed his note for Jie into the light bauble lamp sconce on the right side of the door. It might be out of her short reach, but she’d never failed to retrieve his messages before. Hopefully, she would do so before he reached the warehouse, just in case Lamp Man saw him as a loose end in need of tying up…at the neck.
CHAPTER 7
Resonance
P ages ruffled as Kaiya flipped through ancient musical texts with Prince Hardeep under the bright illumination of unshuttered light bauble lamps. She’d performed in the Hall of Pure Melody’s acoustically perfect main chamber for large audiences of hereditary lords several times before, but it had been years since she visited its library.
Her two imperial guards stood at the doorway, expressions marked by tight-drawn lips and narrowed eyes. The Ministry of Appointments secretary clasped and unclasped his hands, turning his head out into the hall over and over again. He resembled a dwarf-made mechanical doll. Unlike those silent automatons, he had reminded her several times on the jaunt across the central plaza that General Lu awaited her, and that perhaps she should preen a little first. When it came time for him to file a daily log with his ministry, there was no telling what he would say about her.
Perhaps he would mention how she’d dallied with a foreign prince instead of meeting her future husband. The rumors would swirl through the palace for days, humiliating her—and worse, embarrassing Father.
Shifting her gaze from Prince Hardeep, she stifled a sigh. Helping him had sounded just and righteous earlier. Now though, rummaging through the music library, without permission no less, for the sake of a foreign country… Father might very well order her married immediately, before she even flowered with Heaven’s Dew.
And for what? The possibility of unearthing lost Dragon Songs seemed bleak so far. None of the hundred song transcriptions looked out of the ordinary, beyond the beautiful sound they each sang in her head. Gritting her teeth, she replaced yet another bundle of brittle rice-paper scrolls.
With the enthusiasm of a puppy, Prince Hardeep pointed to a wall of books bound in faded silk cord. “Perhaps we should search the oldest ones.”
A smile came unbidden to her lips. General Lu would never look at her like that, never think of her as more than a stepping stone. Never care about what was important to her. Yes, this was the right thing to do. Nothing bad came from helping others. Her hand left Tian’s pebble and reached for one of the books—
“What are you doing?” a male voice barked from the door.
Kaiya’s heart leapt into her throat. She swung around.
The Hall of Pure Melody’s steward marched in, his blue robes swishing. His glower fell on her, widened, and then shifted downward as protocol demanded. “Dian-xia, I was not informed you would visit today.”
She nodded. “I am…” She looked to Prince Hardeep, then back. “I am looking for a song to play for my brother’s wedding.” A cringe-worthy lie.
The steward shuffled on his feet. “It is uh, highly irregular for people to visit the musical archives, particularly the rare, and uh, especially delicate volumes. Perhaps I can help?”
“Yanyan,” she said. “Do you have any of her music here?”
Frown returning to his face, the steward favored the prince with a furrowed brow. “W
ho is this?”
Kaiya straightened and channeled her most authoritative voice. “A guest of honor.”
“And a fellow lover of music.” Prince Hardeep pressed his palms together. “I have researched your peoples’ music for years.” He hummed a familiar tune.
Da-xiong’s Lullaby? The famous flautist Da-Xiong, one of the last to master Dragon Songs, had calmed a furious Yu Dynasty emperor with that song, sparing hundreds of innocents from his wrath. Prince Hardeep knew the song, while the only songs General Lu probably knew of were war chants. The prince’s hum hung in the air, each note heavier than the next. Kaiya’s shoulders relaxed as the melody settled her skittering pulse.
The steward’s ridiculous grin spread from the edge of each eye, while he blinked as if he had dwarven anvils for eyelids. His Ayuri came out with a halting accent. “Simply amazing! Few have heard of that song, let alone can hum it. I am duly impressed.”
“You are too kind.” Nodding at the steward, Prince Hardeep winked at her. “I would love to see Yanyan’s songs. Even if none of my people could invoke the magic in her tunes, legend has it the melodies are beautiful.”
“Alas.” The steward sighed. “Her songs were transcribed in one single book, lost in the chaos after the Hellstorm.”
Prince Hardeep’s lips quirked upward. “A shame. In any case, though I appreciate the offer, we do not need your help. You may all leave us.”
“Let me know if you do.” The steward bowed. He turned and left, the secretary and imperial guards escorting him out.
Leaving her alone. With Hardeep. Whose command both the steward and the secretary and guards had obeyed. Kaiya’s heart buzzed like a dragonfly’s wings. Maybe the secretary would report back to Father that she was alone with a man.
Hardeep brushed a finger across her thumb, and then clasped her hand. Excitement jolted from her palm to her chest. Smiling conspiratorially, he tilted his head toward the older books. “Come.”
She cast her gaze down. Heat flared from her toes to her head. To think that an hour before, marriage seemed so onerous. With him, however… He understood her. Maybe he even liked her. She let him guide her toward the books.
He pulled a few off the shelves, handing her some while flipping through the pages of others. She peeked up through her lashes a few times to catch his singular focus on the task. From the bounce of his head, he could clearly read the musical transcription.
He passed another book to her. “What does the script say?”
The song itself was innocuous enough, a piece for the four-stringed, fretted pipa from the preceding Yu Dynasty. In that era, when the Tianzi had kept a large harem, a court musician had cheered a depressed concubine with it. “Once you have seized the song’s emotion and made it your own,” she read, “you must project it. Rooted to the ground, your spine aligned, let your heart impel your voice.” Rooted to the ground, spine aligned…it sounded like her doctor’s breathing exercises.
“As if people were trees.” He laughed, clear and jubilant. Still, his eyes darted over the page before searching hers. “I wonder what it sounds like.”
Her lips quirked upward as she contemplated his hand. Her own shot out to take his and she gave him a tug toward the exit. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“The main hall,” she said before she could change her mind. It was one thing to go to the library, but the main hall was off-limits except on rare occasions. If the Tianzi found out, he might never let her perform here again. Maybe it wasn’t worth the risk.
Yes, it was. Here was a chance to evoke a Dragon Song, something no Hua artist had accomplished in centuries. She could be special, something more than just a chess piece in the game of national politics. And Prince Hardeep wanted—no, needed—her to succeed. She squared her shoulders and shuffled ahead of him.
Though steeply pitched eaves of blue tile capped the Hall of Pure Melody on the outside, the main hall vaulted in an elliptical dome. Prince Hardeep looked upward, his irises tracing the coffering that partitioned the porcelain tiles.
“We need an instrument.” Kaiya beckoned him toward the front of the chamber, where she knelt and slid aside a wall panel to reveal a storage room. If he loved music as much as she, wait until he went inside. She invited him in with an open hand.
His hands barely brushed over her shoulder as he passed, sending a shiver through her. She stood and followed him in, almost running into his back when he skidded to a halt.
Arms outstretched, blue eyes round with wonder, he spun in a circle, pausing on some of the finest instruments: An antique guzheng zither, said to be worth more than a ship. An array of knobbed bronze bells, played only on New Year’s Day.
And finally, a pipa, believed to have been given to Yanyan by her lover, the elf angel Aralas, resting on a cloth-covered pedestal. Its sound plate glittered in gold, while the strings caught the light like a spider web at dawn. The smooth resonator, supposedly made of a dragon’s eggshell, swirled with color.
“What a beautiful lute!” Hardeep strode over and reverently picked Yanyan’s pipa up in two hands. If only her potential suitors had even a fraction of his interest in music! No, they were more interested in talking about themselves. He presented the instrument with an encouraging nod.
She hesitated. Only designated people were allowed to touch any of the artifacts. Then again, she hadn’t stopped him, either. Bowing her head, she received the pipa in two hands.
And almost dropped it. It seemed alive in her hands, pulsing ever so subtly, as if it had a heart, beating in harmony with mine. As if it belonged to her. She started to return it to its stand.
It felt like leaving behind a long-lost friend. She looked up to see Hardeep disappearing into the performance hall. Pulse racing, she cradled the pipa against her chest and followed.
When she reached the door, he was scooting a bloodwood chair, carved with nightingale patterns, to the most ideal spot in the chamber for playing. He set the music book on it and gestured for her to sit, then walked across the chamber. Though the location wasn’t marked on the white marble floors, he stopped where her father might relax—the most ideal spot for listening. Pressing his hands together, he bowed his head. “Please play.”
Kaiya looked at the instrument in her hands, then up at him. Of all the pipas, he had chosen this one. “Do you know the significance of this lute?”
He shrugged. “It drew my eye. It was the most beautiful in the storeroom.”
“Yanyan used it during the War of Ancient Gods.”
His mouth formed a perfect circle. “Then you must play it.”
She studied the pipa. She might be a talented musician, but… “No human in living memory has coaxed a sound out of it.” Hushed rumors spoke of the elf lord Xu playing it for Father twenty-nine years ago; other than that, the last masters to play it lived almost three centuries before, and had all died under bizarre circumstances.
Tapping his chin, he regarded her. “You won’t know unless you try.”
Kaiya’s head spun. If she succeeded where even the best musicians in the realm had failed, it would prove the worth of music. Her worth. Then again, if the pipa didn’t respond, it would only confirm what Eldest Brother Kai-Guo and the other lords believed: her only value was that as a bride to General Lu. Even worse, Prince Hardeep would think less of her. She met his gaze again.
His kind eyes encouraged her on.
Yes. She could do this. Had to do it, even if it was just to prove to herself she could. She scanned the music book, memorizing the complex changes. Settling on the edge of the chair, she took a deep breath and plucked out the first note. A beautiful sound emanated from the resonator.
Kaiya’s heart jolted and she nearly dropped the pipa in surprise. It couldn’t be. It had to be her imagination. She looked up to Hardeep.
Beaming, he nodded her on.
Could it be? She strummed a chord, emitting a wondrous sound. There was no mistake. Heavens, she had done it! Something no one el
se had accomplished in over two centuries!
Plucking each string, pressing each fret, the music came out inspired. The joyous soul of the song bounded off the page, swirling in seemingly tangible currents.
“Each note raises my spirit higher,” he said, yet his own tone was flat. “Maybe do what the book suggested. Adjust yourself in the chair? I think if you straightened your spine, feet more flat on the ground, it would sound even better. ”
Such strange advice, sounding more like her doctor’s counsel than anything her music teachers would ever say. Still, it couldn’t hurt. She shifted in her chair and plucked out the tune. Its vibration echoed in her arms.
“One shoulder is higher than the other,” he offered.
Adjusting her posture, she continued, and the pulsations merged into her core. With a slight tilt of her waist, they sank to her pelvis, awakening a flare of warmth there. After tucking her tailbone forward, the vibrations reached her legs as well. She looked up again.
Prince Hardeep’s expression brightened from his luminous blue irises. He placed a hand over his breast. “Yes! More emotion!”
She closed her eyes and strummed. Her spirit soared to a place only music could take her. Even though she was plain-looking, music made her feel beautiful. And now, playing for this audience of one…her beauty might rival Guanyin, Goddess of Fertility, in her glorious splendor.
Her entire body tingled, from fingertips to toes. Her pulse quickened, roaring loud and torrential in her ears. Her insides writhed like ten thousand fish squirming over each other in a shallow pool. An immense source of energy lay just beyond her reach, like an ocean of power trickling through a pinprick in a wall. There, ready to tap into.