by Daniel Fox
If they went on following that line of patients along the wall, soon enough they would come to the corner where Yu Shan crouched above his clan-cousin Siew Ren.
Mei Feng set down her cup, kicked herself abruptly free of the emperor’s beguiling grip and swung bare feet to the rough stone floor.
Startled, he was still quick; his hands arrested her, shoulder and hip.
“Mei Feng, what are you doing?”
“Going to help.”
“There are any number of men here—”
“Yes, and none of them is doing anything useful.”
It wasn’t true, quite, but almost it was. Some of the hurt had the attentions of their friends, but not enough. Mostly the healthy sat in huddles, quiet and dripping and overwhelmed.
He said, “If you give orders, they will be obeyed.”
That was, undoubtedly, true. And would be useful to the needy, and not at all to her.
“I want …”
Lacking the words to say what she wanted, she gestured with empty hands. That was it, exactly. She wanted to busy those hands and numb her mind and stop watching Yu Shan. Time and again, her helpless eyes came back to him. Even the emperor wasn’t quite distraction enough, even at her feet. This whole building smelled of defeat; defeat breeds sorrow, and what she saw in that corner was the root and the fruit together, black welling misery.
“We need light,” she said, “and air. And tea.”
“You have tea,” he said. “Is it finished? I’ve had enough, but …”
“Me too,” she said. “And who else? Who else has had enough? If I can’t make people better, at least I can bring them tea and tell them that the rain will soon be over.”
“So can other people do that.”
“Yes, but they’re not.”
“Mei Feng,” his long arms around her, and that was better than sharing his cup, better than his attentions to her feet, except that he was stopping her from doing what she wanted, “I will send men to find cups and kettles, to make tea for all. They will get wet, and the fire-smoke will make us cough, but I will do it anyway. Only I will not sit here and watch you bustle about like a servant—”
“Come with me, then,” she said. “We can do it together. The emperor should be servant of his people. And things will happen twice as fast if you are there,” clumsy, unpracticed, adorable: oh, she knew. It ought probably to be what she wanted.
“Things will happen,” he said, “as fast as they may, if we only give the orders. You and I, together. Sitting here, supervising. Together. You are pregnant, and you are not going to risk our baby by—”
She was laughing, almost, into his sleeve as he held her. His name was a sweet cake in her mouth as she mumbled it against the fabric. “Oh, Chien Hua. I’m not one of your delicate palace ladies, scared to lift a finger. Peasant women work until their waters break. If there is risk in movement, then I have risked our baby so very much already: on my feet all day and running so far, crossing that angry river on a mad raft in the end because I had to reach you somehow …”
“Yes,” he said, as if she had made his point for him. “You have risked so very much already,” his hand on her belly now, as though he could guard the little life inside it just by touch, “I can’t let you loose again. It is a joy to see you, but you really should not have come.”
“Oh, and what was I supposed to do, sit quiet at home in your horrible empty palace with all those people all around me, trapped between Ping Wen and your mother, while you were off fighting a traitor’s war for him and letting assassins close enough to test their blades against your back …?”
“There was only the one assassin,” he said mildly. “And his blade broke, in the event. And you didn’t know about him until you had crossed the water.”
“No, and how many others are there, that neither of us knows about? So many soldiers, so many strangers,” and she glowered around the jade store, trusting none of them, “you don’t know who might be next, sneaking up to you with a blade in their sleeve. And maybe the next one won’t break. You’re not immortal, you only think you are. You’re not very bright, either, letting Ping Wen trick you into this even before Tunghai Wang put his eunuch at your side. You’re not safe this side of the water, not any kind of safe.”
“It was you, as I remember it, who brought the eunuch to me. But wait,” he went on frowningly, “I thought we were talking about you, and how you should not be this side of the water?”
“I wouldn’t need to be, if you had listened to me back on Taishu. What have you gained here, truly?”
“My city of Santung,” he said, meaning my victory, my first, seeming not to notice that they were once again not talking about her.
She snorted. “Oh, and what are you going to do with that? You haven’t defeated Tunghai Wang, only seen him washed away in rain. He would have defeated you, you would have lost your city and your army and your life too in his ambush, if it hadn’t been for the dragon. Everyone says so, when they don’t think you’re listening. One thing for sure, you can’t go chasing after him into the country, he’ll just ambush you again and again and again. So tell me, where do we go from here, mighty warlord …?”
“We go straight back to Taishu,” he said. “I take you back to Taishu, because I can’t trust you to go by yourself.”
Which was of course exactly what she had come for, to shepherd him back by means of playing sheep. She hid her triumph in his sleeve, while he stroked her belly and explained to her with utmost firmness that he would never allow her to move, never to lift a finger again, “No, not even to make tea for my army. Peasant girl,” his lips at her ear, more touching than talking, “I will teach you to be idle and delicate and ladylike, fit vessel to carry my son.”
“Ohé, a boy, is it? I say a girl. I thought I’d give you a bevy of girls. I’d like to see you mobbed by a pack of daughters …”
It was banter and distraction and delight, a return to delight, and still not enough to keep her eyes from straying to that shadowed corner, the brutal stillness of the figures there. Which was why she wanted so very much to be doing something more. But there was no moving him—literally, no shifting against his grip—and besides, here came someone else now, free to do what Mei Feng could not.
Here came Jiao, striding in through the rain-blown doorway with men struggling under the weight of steaming cauldrons. Jiao who had the gift of it, lucky Jiao, not to glance once into that corner as she called out, “Tea, then, here’s tea for all if you only come and get it, lads. Tea and soup, your choice, take one in each hand if you’re hungry, if you’re lonely, if you’ve got no friends needing help to bring them something in a bowl …”
Just her voice brightened the room, rough and carrying, as good as a shelf of lights. Scents too, wafting on the steam: tea like grass and something richer, darkly savory. Mei Feng couldn’t guess what the woman might have found, to make soup in a starveling city. She was what the occasion demanded, exactly: a pirate used to raiding, used to handling men.
Mei Feng leaned her head on the emperor’s shoulder in utter surrender, saw his smile and knew he thought himself victorious once more. And couldn’t tell him otherwise, wouldn’t unpick the day any further to show him how very much was lost here, how much more was uncertain. Let his mother do that on Taishu, when he was safe.
Meantime, thinking how to make him safe, thinking Ping Wen, Ping Wen is on Taishu, she said, “The dragon is in the sky again, and we only have two children blessed by the goddess, to guard us in the crossing.”
He said, “Two is plenty. They can herd all our fleet back to Taishu between them.”
“Yes, lord, but then?” He frowned, not understanding. She kissed his nose and said, “Emperor of two cities, if you want to keep Santung you will need to appoint a governor, and speak with him after. Back and forth constantly, men and news and instructions. And only two boats safe, and the dragon always watchful. It won’t be easy.”
“Nothing is easy,” he said, shr
ugging. “You don’t need to worry about that, our baby is your concern.”
At that she made a noise, quite startlingly rude. “Our baby,” she said, “will look after itself, mostly. My worrying will not sour it,” though no doubt his mother could find someone to tell her that it would. “And there’s a game my grandfather and I used to play … No, listen. This is important.” If he wouldn’t let her bustle about like a servant, he couldn’t stop her plotting like a general. “The game has one boat and a farmer, who needs to cross the river with his sack of rice, and his ducks who will eat the rice if they’re allowed to, and his bad dog who will eat the ducks if he turns his back, and his leaky sampan will carry the rice or the ducks or the bad dog but no more, not any two at once; and …”
three
ike a tortoise drawn into the safety of its shell, Chung hunkered high in the arch of the bridge—his back arched against the underside of the boards above, right at the apex, he could be no higher—and was very glad to be there.
This bridge was becoming curiously important in his life, although he’d never crossed it.
He’d nearly died first, herebelow, among its beams and buttresses. Then he’d killed a man. Then he’d nearly fallen and so nearly died again, except that the emperor had saved him.
Now, though—now there was death everywhere else, death all over and only the bridge was safe.
Perhaps.
This last little rise, the underside of its peak, squeezed between one death and another. This bubble, this shell, that he had to share with a handful of prisoners and a barrel-load of fire barely contained, barely understood …
CHUNG AND his prisoners had been stranded on the rocky island, fierce river on either side, fire between them and the bridge as the rebels’ engines burned. As the fire died, so the emperor’s abandoned guards showed on the bank, calling for their lord. Chung called back through the smoke to say that he’d been here with Yu Shan and swum ashore again, they should chase him upriver; then he settled back to wait till the fire was dead entirely.
Settled back on his pot-barrel, last survivor of the projectiles the rebels had been hurling across the water. Where they struck, they broke; where they broke, they burst into flame. Chung was curious, and this one he was keeping.
By the time the rain came, the riverbank was a mill of soldiers. Chung saw no chance of shepherding his prisoners safely through, never mind his precious lethal pot. He stayed put, and the rain kept coming.
The rain kept coming and the wind blew, air turned to iron, splinter-vicious. The river rose, and flung its waters across the rock.
There was no hope that it would stop rising, while the typhoon squatted like a toad above the valley. Chung yelled above the wind, telling his prisoners to go if they wanted to, cross the bridge and lose themselves among the army as it scattered. Let them find what shelter they could. No man would care, beneath this dreadful weight of water. Afterward, they could do as they liked.
Only, if just a few would stay to help him with his pot, he would see them safe and settled. Here or on Taishu, with the emperor’s own word to shield them …
Half a dozen stayed. They carried the pot among them to the footings of the bridge, but already that high arch was a dangerous path; they watched the last of the leaving men blown off his feet and almost over the rail, saved only by the grip of his companion.
Thought of trying to carry the barrel over, rising step by step into a harder blast of wind with no hands free to hold on to each other or the rail; and shook their heads, set the pot down, stepped back.
Looked at Chung, who was almost defeated but not quite.
“Under the bridge, then,” he screamed. “Look, where the footings will shelter us. Bring rope …”
There was plenty of rope, kept spare for the machines that hurled the pots. The stone footings were a strong wall at their backs, the boards of the bridge above made a roof that barely leaked, and a roof and a wall together made better shelter than they would find across the river now. They huddled beneath the sheer blast of rain, and didn’t move.
And the river kept on rising; and with water hissing at their heels he said, “Tie the rope around the pot—carefully!—and we’ll hoist it up into the beams. We can tie it off up there, hold it as safe as anything can be. We can rope ourselves together too, and cling to the beams, and be safe as long as the bridge lasts …”
THE BRIDGE creaked and flexed, but it had stood through any number of typhoons, and this was just one more.
The river kept on rising, but the bridge arched high. They climbed up and up, hauling the pot with them until they were squeezed into the last space that offered, barely sheltered from the hurl of the wind above and the stinging spume of the river beneath. If the waters rose higher yet, Chung thought the men would kill one another—or kill him, rather, kill him first—just for that little extra breathing-room before they all drowned anyway.
He thought Shen might be angry, if he drowned.
But the rain finally stopped battering on the planks overhead, and the wind slacked at least a little. There was still a valley’s worth of water to funnel off, and the river would have to keep rising; but now a bold man—or, lacking that, himself—could worm his way out between the beams, haul himself over the parapet of the bridge and try to stand.
Cling hard to the rail, he did need to cling, but his hands weren’t ripped from their grip and his body wasn’t flung out like a banner behind him. He could look up, even, and see clear sky behind the shredded clouds.
And so call the men out to join him, leaving the pot securely tied among the beams beneath. If the river reached it, the rope should hold it in its nest of wood, and it could hardly be wetter than it was.
· · ·
SOON ENOUGH, Chung said, “Who among you is the bravest?”
None of them spoke, nor moved except to glance sideways among themselves.
He smiled. “All right, then. Who among you is the most afraid?”
That was easy, apparently. They all glanced the same way, and the one they glanced at—the youngest of them, barely more than a boy—did take half a shuffling pace forward.
“Good, then. Take this,” Chung’s yellow sash, rain-washed and startlingly bright. “This marks you out as an imperial messenger, which is barely even a lie: I am an imperial messenger, and now you are mine. No one will touch you, with this. As soon as the water drops back, as soon as you can reach the bank in safety, I want you to go into Santung and find the emperor. He will be at the docks or close at hand, waiting to send a boat across the strait. Your sash will take you past his guards. Say that Chung has sent you; I am Chung. Say that I am keeping one firepot on the island here, with some men to guard it. Say that I hope to learn its secrets. And say this too, that I am sending you to Taishu to fetch Shen.”
The boy nodded uncertainly, gripping the sash. “And then?”
“And then, I want you to go to Taishu and fetch Shen. Like the emperor, you will find him somewhere around the harbor,” watching that first boat come in: impatient for news of victory, news of survivors, losses. Scanning the faces on the boat, wondering who lay wounded belowdecks, who had been left behind too hurt to move. “You will know him by his temper, which is foul. And by his shoulder, which is hurt, but mostly by his temper. When you find him, bring him here. If you have to, say that it is an imperial order; the sash confirms it. But see first if he will come for me.”
four
iao had been a thief in his time, and a thief-taker too.
When he was young and hungry—young and pretty, he liked to say, without worrying whether it had ever been true—he sold his body, often and often. More than once he sold himself more literally, into formal bondage; and stole himself back again each time, running in the dark with the bond-fee tucked safe into his cheek.
For a while he had been an itinerant magician, until the people he impressed grew too urgent and too demanding, wanting proper magic, curses that worked and fortunes that might actually com
e true. That time he walked away in daylight, more dignified but no more honest, leaving promises that held as much value as his horoscopes.
That time the fees they paid swung in a purse inside his robes, from where his own nimble fingers could not have stolen it. He felt like a stallion with his worth hung between his legs, ponderous and heavy.
He became a doctor by happenstance and crime, the way he had lived all his life. He might have used the money in his purse to buy himself the knowledge that he needed; indeed, he swore that he would. He found a mentor and paid upfront, half of what the old man asked. Traveled with him for a season, learned what he would need—the tricks and patterns of a doctor’s speech, the names of herbs and cures, the proper size of fees—and then denounced the old man to a magistrate as a fraud and felon.
Provided evidence enough to see his mentor’s head struck off.
Paid the magistrate his due share of the old man’s goods and moneys, kept the rest and called himself a doctor in the next town that he came to, and the next.
He hadn’t meant to stay long with the army—he never meant to stay long anywhere, never long enough to see his patients die—but soldiers can prove reluctant to see a doctor go. Sometimes he was lucky, some men recovered. Some men always will, despite their doctors.
That kind of luck wouldn’t last, he knew. Luck has a way of turning sour, like soup let sit too long. The wrong man would die, or too many men too close together.
Santung was a mistake he should have walked away from. But the real doctor’s empty tent had been too tempting and the road too long, too hard. He was suddenly tired of always moving on. He could discover a taste for staying still, the same roof every morning, the same path outside the door, not walking it.