Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  This was not the place, the tent no enduring roof. It was a mistake. He knew it. And yet, and yet: he stayed. Some wiser part of him was only waiting to find catastrophe, but he was a fat man and that worried whisper was small and buried deep.

  When Tien came, he thought at first that she was the catastrophe.

  Then he thought she was a blessing. She had the knowledge that could destroy him, and decided not to use it. She could doctor, but she was too young and the wrong sex; he had authority to match his ignorance. Together they were stronger than either one apart. His luck had brought her to him, good sense should make her stay, and she was sensible. She must see that. And yet, he did not trust her. She had a secret purpose, something more than putting rice in the bowl each day and accumulating comforts in the tent.

  Also there was her woman, the silent servant that she called Mu Gao. Biao disliked her entirely. How could he beguile someone who would not speak to him? She washed the clothes and cooked the meals, did all the work of the tent and he detested her.

  Every night in the darkness, Biao’s private self told him to go. His days were easy, though, and hard to walk away from. He was cozened by comforts, a full belly and a dry bed. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would just pack and leave …

  ALWAYS TOMORROW; and now perhaps tomorrow was too late. Today the emperor had come back to Santung, war had come and the dragon with it.

  Or the dragon had come, and war with her.

  Biao had seen the dragon flying, with some poor captive thing in her claw.

  He knew all the inner shades of fear from intimate experience, but he had never been more terrified. When the clouds broke because she broke them, when she hung like a line of wet brushwork against the paper sky.

  Biao could not read, but he knew the character for death, and she was it.

  He would have run then—why not, when everyone was running?—but that it all seemed suddenly too late. He was fat and tired, and could not outrun a dragon.

  Neither could he outstubborn Tien. She said she was going down into the city, to treat the wounded of whichever side. And taking Mu Gao to help her; and him too, taking him.

  Her scorn was a whip that his fear hardly needed. In the end, indeed, he came down ahead of her, while she dallied over some stray unexpected boy. He and Mu Gao, doing whatever they could between them. War was simple butchery, by and large, and called for simple medicine. Complications saved themselves for later days, for putrefying wounds and sweating fevers. He would happily leave now, and leave those to Tien.

  Tien came to find them, sooner than he might have wished. And then the storm came, the dragon’s typhoon; and then the emperor’s guard, desperate for a doctor, him.

  Her.

  Him.

  AND SO this, a warehouse of stone, a shelter for the wounded and the half-drowned. And the emperor too, half naked and extraordinary, fussing over his pet girl. His pregnant pet.

  That was an opportunity, but Tien would waste it. She would let the emperor take the girl back to Taishu, to his own imperial doctors, when she might instead attach herself with just a few worried words, a gesture of kindness, a hint of hidden knowledge.

  Biao could not read but he could see this written, a secure horoscope, a new life under the emperor’s broad roof. He could see Tien spurn it or simply not understand it, let the opportunity go by. He wouldn’t care, but he could go with her, where he could not go alone. Master Biao was nothing here, but the mentor of Mei Feng’s private midwife, oh yes …

  Tien apparently preferred to doctor the common soldiery, going from one bleeding groaning nobody to the next. Biao really had no choice but to go with her, carrying the bag of herbs and staying close, where he could at least seem to be an equal voice. From a distance, to anyone who couldn’t overhear.

  Here again, blade-wounds and broken bones were the most of what they saw. At least he could treat cuts himself, and set a bone as well as anyone. He could let Tien get a bed ahead of him, even. He could have this man’s friends hold him still, jerk the leg clean and sharp into its proper alignment, tie off a splint and dispense a simple mixture of herbs to ease pain, reduce swelling, help the bone to knit.

  He could turn to catch up with Tien and find her oddly still, oddly quiet, far from her usual brisk competence. Kneeling above a half-naked figure with a man who sat beside, both just as silent and unmoving.

  And the man was barely more than a boy, and something about him reminded Biao very much of the emperor; and the one he crouched over was a girl, and hideously burned. Hideous in her burning, Biao thought, and she would heal worse, her flesh twisting and contracting as it scarred.

  If she healed at all. He thought it would have been kinder to slit her throat and leave her in the street. She might die yet, but it would be a slow death now and cruel of the boy to drag her through it.

  From her silence, he thought that Tien was thinking much the same.

  And couldn’t say it, of course, not possibly. When at last she stirred, when she did speak, she said, “I can make you up a brew to bathe her skin. I will give you a tea in the meantime, to ease the pain and help her sleep. No dressings, it will be best to let her wounds dry in the air, when they are done with seeping.”

  The boy said, “She cannot bear to have them touched, that’s why I …”

  Why he had left her lying naked, uncovered, his gesture said. Among all these men, one perfect breast exposed, one ruined.

  “Yes,” Tien said. “We will find her a room, where the two of you can be private.”

  But the boy was shaking his head, saying, “I am taking her home. To Taishu, as soon as the first boat sails.”

  “Impossible,” Tien said sharply. “She is too hurt to move, she could not bear it.”

  “I carried her here, and she bore that. We belong in the mountains, she and I. I have the emperor’s promise, I can take her home.”

  Tien shook her head again and almost seemed to look around for the emperor, to have that promise withdrawn. Biao took advantage of the moment to ask a simple question.

  “What does she have in her mouth?” A leather thong hung from her lips, and looped around the back of her neck: something she wore as a pendant, that she was sucking now.

  “Jade,” the boy said, impossibly. And reached a hand to his own throat and touched the stone that hung there, glimmering green; and no, it couldn’t possibly be jade, and yet …

  That was what this boy had in common with the emperor, Biao realized: a faint green cast to his skin, as though it were dusted with jade. He said the mountains, he said Taishu, they must come from one of the mining clans; and it still made no sense, it was utterly unlawful for mere mortals to be wearing jade, but Biao was beginning to believe it.

  He said, “How can she …?”

  “The emperor allows us. His private guard and me,” without quite saying who or what he was himself. “It helps her now, I think, it keeps her strong. Strong enough to make the journey,” defiantly, almost flung across the silent bitter body at Tien.

  Who shook her head, defiant too; said, “She will need treatment daily, if she is to heal well.”

  “There are other doctors. Imperial doctors, on Taishu already …”

  “… Who do not know my remedies, don’t have access to my books. And will not be willing to travel up into the mountains, live there months among your people. It will take months, to bring her back to health.”

  “Teach me,” the boy said. “Give me the herbs and show me how to use them.”

  Again, Tien shook her head. “It needs a doctor. These drugs are dangerous; I would not trust them to anyone not used to giving doses and observing the results.”

  “You come, then.”

  “No. My work is here,” with a gesture around at so many others hurt.

  “Some of these too will be coming to Taishu.”

  “And some will not. And I don’t belong to, to the army,” to the emperor Biao thought she had nearly said, nearly, “the city needs me here; and the boo
ks are here too, that I need,” and she had her secret too, something to do with the dragon and a boy, and no, she would not leave.

  “The emperor will make it an order, if I ask him to.”

  “And still I will not go; and what then?”

  Then, inevitably, they would come down to threat and counter-threat, the emperor will have you carried away in bonds and I will not treat your friend then, not treat anyone, not be a doctor if I am a prisoner—and Biao forestalled them both.

  “I will go,” he said.

  They stared at him.

  “I am a doctor,” he said, with at least some evidence about him. “I will … confer with Tien, what remedies she thinks best, what treatments,” when they could be alone, when she could show him exactly, “and I will come with you.”

  A roof, safe shores, the end of the weary road. A reputation he could bring with him, a task within his powers if the girl should live, and small blame on his shoulders if not.

  And jade: a fortune that could be worn on a boy’s neck, sucked in a girl’s mouth. Jade in the valleys, freshly mined, and himself right there, oh yes.

  five

  andan was surprising herself, surpassing herself.

  She felt like a knife: chilled and forged and sharpened, lethal, meant.

  It astonished her.

  Till now, till this she had thought herself so placid, so content.

  She had had a life and she liked it, in the jademaster’s palace. Then the emperor came and all his entourage, his eunuchs; and the jademaster made a gift of her along with all his things, his other things, to serve the emperor. Which meant, she thought, to serve his eunuchs; but they picked her out and paraded her before his mother the dowager empress.

  Who picked her out and gave her to his girl, his favorite, Mei Feng. It was understood—at least by the empress—that Dandan was to be her spy. Along with all the other women that she picked, and the eunuchs too.

  But Mei Feng picked out Dandan in her turn to be a confidante, and Dandan thought that perhaps the empress had spies enough, while perhaps Mei Feng was short of friends. When Mei Feng wanted to sneak over the water to Santung, of course Dandan went with her, though she had never left Taishu before and did not want to now.

  And when they had crossed the strait in the dragon’s shadow and survived; when they had gone ashore to give thanks to the goddess and Mei Feng had nudged Dandan aside and stolen her away, even then Dandan had been willing. Someone had to stay with the little fisher-girl, however wild she ran. She was the emperor’s favorite, his only love; and, what, should she go ramping off in wartime on her own? It was unthinkable. Unpardonable. There would be heads hewn from necks if it was discovered.

  Besides, Mei Feng was her friend, which made it unthinkable in a whole other way.

  And besides again, Dandan knew a secret. Mei Feng was pregnant. Or might be. Or hoped that she would prove to be, perhaps. It was a slithery kind of secret, different every day, depending on her mood: whether she had quarreled with the emperor again, or with his mother, or with the court. Pregnancy was a weapon that she didn’t know how to use.

  For her own sake, Dandan would have gone. For Mei Feng’s sake, she would have gone. For a baby, an imperial child, just for the possibility—well. There was no question.

  Which Mei Feng knew, even before she asked it.

  DANDAN WAS neither built nor dressed nor fit for a hard slog on mud roads. No more was Mei Feng dressed for it, but then they met Jiao and her soldier-troop along the way. Mei Feng slit her skirts and kept up with the pirate, trading one companion for a better, leaving Dandan to flail along at the troop’s tail.

  And then there was a boy come from somewhere, bare-legged and bruised, and they could flail together. Dandan had decided by then to be angry with Mei Feng, that this was not at all the behavior of a friend.

  She took the boy in charge because that was her nature, and, yes, because she had been told to. That was her nature too. The troop moved more slowly, coming into the city; there was time to find him trousers, time and breath enough to bully him a little. He was called Gieh, and he was a peasant through and through. Like any peasant he had been hungry even before the soldiers came. Then he had been hungry and afraid. Then he had been hungry and afraid and charmed, a little, by rough kindnesses. Now he was all of those things and hopeful too. What peasant boy couldn’t be lured away by a passing army, gifts of food and the promise of another life, sweeter and more interesting, less hard …?

  She might have struck him, just for his simplicity. She might have struck Jiao for laying those casual inducements, except that the woman was taller and stronger and certain to strike back even while she laughed. And was besides at the head of her troop, while Dandan and the boy were raggle-taggle at the tail.

  It was easier to stay resentful, and cloudedly angry at Mei Feng. Even when she dropped back to walk with you after all, pale and shaken from some rooftop adventure that she didn’t want to talk about. Even then. You might stop seething because she was after all your friend, and needed perhaps to hold your hand for a while, till the trembling in her fingers stopped. Your anger might fall like sediment to leave your spirit clear because she needed you as she knew you, calm and accepting and unchanged. Even so, it was still there like sediment and could be stirred up again.

  You might learn so when she dragged you back a little, you and the boy both, to allow the troop to pull ahead; when she tugged you suddenly into a shadowed alley and away, the same trick again, without a word again, with only the boy at your heels; when once again she ran ahead and left you, with only the vaguest instructions what to do and how to follow her.

  DANDAN AND the boy together found their way up to the governor’s palace, arriving at the great gate just in time to find Mei Feng tumbling out. This time she couldn’t be forestalled, couldn’t be delayed. Babbling incoherently, some threat against the emperor, conspiracy and traitors—but Mei Feng was always unreliable about traitors, seeing them everywhere at court, even among the emperor’s generals—she barely paused long enough to give fresh orders. Find two men in the palace, guard them and give them over to Jiao, who should bring them before the emperor as soon as might be. Where was she going? Why, to the emperor, of course, to save his life from traitors. Why couldn’t she take the men herself? Because they would be too slow, she had to go now, see her go, pell-mell away in hopes of a boat across the river …

  Dandan stood and watched her go, felt herself abandoned one more time, felt the anger stir and start to rise.

  It was an old friend, almost. Dependable. She was beginning to understand how some people lived so constantly angry at the world.

  Thought she was.

  Didn’t know how thin, how weak and selfish it was, that discontent that she called her anger.

  Not until she turned and trudged in at the gate with the boy Gieh at her heels, wondering just how the two of them were supposed to search a whole palace and all its grounds for two particular people—whom Mei Feng had not of course described, in all her heedlessness and hurry—when there would no doubt be dozens, maybe hundreds of people here taking shelter from the war, hiding in whatever darkest cubby-hole they could.

  Perhaps the boy and she should wait right here in the courtyard for Jiao. Especially as this errand was really Jiao’s in any case, Dandan only the messenger. Take these people to the emperor, yes; no harm, surely, in letting it be Jiao who sought them out as well? Find these people, and take them to the emperor. Yes …

  Except that here they came, two men finding themselves, finding Dandan and the boy. Looking for them, perhaps. There must be some urgency that would bring them out squinting into the sun, as if they had lived long in the dark. Something that would pull them toward the gate when one was twisted and broken and needed a crutch to shuffle himself along, while the other stood straight enough but even so could barely keep up with the first.

  Dandan watched their slow and painful progress and broke all too soon, long before she thought she s
hould.

  She hurried across the courtyard to prevent them. “No, no, please. Look, here is a bench, sit, sit. Both of you, just sit down. Do you want water? Here …”

  The boy Gieh had her bottle. The two men—both of them gray-haired and grizzle-bearded—seemed glad enough to sit, to drink, to pass the bottle between them and then have the boy run to fill it again. He would have gone to the fishpond in the courtyard there if she hadn’t snapped at him to go find a well or a kitchen cistern. Food too if he could do that, if he could sniff it out.

  Meantime she had a handkerchief, a square of silk that she could dip into the fishpond to wipe the scouring sweat from the old men’s faces. The breeze was cool up here and clouds were blowing in but even so they sweated, as though they shared a fever.

  She thought she knew already what they did share, nothing so easy to treat. Nor so easy to catch. One man certainly could pass it to another, but only over time and only with care and concentration, deliberately, an act of will.

  She thought they hurt, deeply and consistently. She thought they had been hurt, deeply and consistently. This wasn’t the kind of hurt that comes from birth or accident; nor the kind that comes in war. As a precursor of war, perhaps, or in its aftermath, but not from stabbing or slashing or crushing, not from blades used in anger or terror in the heat and confusion of battle.

  No. She thought both these men had been hurt methodically and slowly and with intent. She thought they had been tortured.

  Really it wasn’t—or at least it shouldn’t be—a surprise. Of course Tunghai Wang tortured prisoners. He was a traitor and a rebel; no doubt torture would be commonplace to him. No doubt these were loyal supporters of the emperor. She still didn’t see why Mei Feng wanted him to meet them quite so urgently, but that wasn’t important quite yet.

  She introduced herself in the simplest way she knew: “Please, my name is Dandan. How may I serve you?” She had her instructions, get them to the emperor, but there are ways and ways to hide one purpose in the shadow of another. Ways to hide a disobedience also. The emperor was on the wrong side of the river, in the middle of a war. Whatever these old men had to tell him, it could wait. She was not dragging two cripples half across the city in chase of him, not even for Mei Feng.