Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  “General, I will. I would value time to talk.”

  That was another startlement for him, that she had interests beyond his unnamed task. He took it well, though, just a quirk and a nod before he walked away.

  · · ·

  SHE DIDN’T know why the emperor was quite so urgent to have the fisherman back so soon. “So that I can come again,” the old man said to her, as they watched formal greetings happen on the wharf, “with the general’s people and his properties. The governor’s, I should say.”

  Tien didn’t think even the emperor could be quite that heedless of others’ weakness. The old man looked exhausted already.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, laying fingers on his wrist to count the pulse of his liver, the pulse of his heart. “Go back if you must, if he has ordered it—but rest on the way, let your boy take the tiller. You do let your boy take the tiller …?” with a frowning scowl because she knew the answer before she asked the question.

  “Well,” he said, equivocating, “the boy is new to the strait and the boat, new to sailing, and the oar is hard to work …”

  “… And he will learn far quicker for working it himself, rather than watching you. You are to tell the emperor, if you please: a full day’s rest, a day and a night at least, before you cross the water again. Or shall I send a man back with you, to say so?”

  “No need. The governor is sending men enough, with messages of his own; he has been writing all the way across.”

  She might not have let him leave, despite the imperial order. She might at least have made him stay one night on this side of the water, except that she thought it would be better, so much better if Mu Gao did not see the child. Let him turn and go, then, weary as he was. His boy understood her orders; so did the men he carried. Let him go now, as soon as Tien had scurried off the boat …

  SHE FOLLOWED Ping Wen up to the palace. Court politics and army politics and all the needs of a city under siege, and one man to negotiate among them: one man that she must negotiate herself, a stranger needing to be read and learned and swiftly understood.

  He would need to feel the same about her. It was a pity, really, that he was not hurt or sick himself; people grow close to their doctors. And generals close to those who doctor their troops, the sentimentality never leaves a soldier—but the men here were only Ping Wen’s troops by appointment, he hadn’t fought with them, there was no shed blood shared. That was a pity too.

  He might find himself sharing their hunger, as time passed with the dragon on sea-watch and Tunghai Wang’s army in the hills all around. There had been little enough to eat in Santung all summer, but there could be less hereafter.

  She wasn’t sure that she could wait that long.

  So. Up the hill and she caught him up; processions are slow, ceremonials slower yet. He and his entourage were standing in the public courtyard, just within the palace gate. She wasn’t sure about that entourage. It looked makeshift to her, a hurried assemblage rather than the considered team he would need to bring order and security to Santung. No doubt the old man would fetch more help when he returned, but she still didn’t understand the hurry.

  The palace staff was just as makeshift. Soldiers and clerks and servants almost at random, those whom the emperor had gathered up and then abandoned here. And herself, of course, she ought really to be among them. She was a divided creature of uncertain loyalties, serving Tunghai Wang before the emperor came; even now she split her time between the palace and the hospital; but she did most definitely have one foot firmly in the palace, and was determined to keep it there.

  That was one of the matters she needed to explain to Ping Wen.

  Meantime, around the palace wall she went. Running now, suddenly urgent, and there was little of the respected doctor to be seen in the bedraggled, sweaty, mud-splashed girl who finally wheezed and panted in the shadow of a minor gatehouse.

  The guards there knew her anyway. It seemed that all the army knew her by this time. She was fussed at, for running in the heat; she was offered water, dried fruits, a seat here in the shade and all the company, all the gossip she might want.

  “No time,” she said, laughing, gasping, batting them off, “no time! But thank you. Later. I will hear all your news, but later …”

  She did offer them the name of their new lord governor, but they had it already. Palace whispers ran faster than she did herself, which was no news at all.

  Still hot, then, she hurried through the damp rock-and-moss pathways of the garden, under overhanging branches, past pools of gaping fish to a door into a back wing of the palace. Familiar corridors beyond, wood and stone and not a breath of air. Here was a room where she could strip off her dress and wash with cool and perfumed water. Here were fresh clothes to choose among, all of them in solemn grays and blues, the neutral thoughtful dress of a doctor. Soft slippers on her feet and she was ready.

  Ready to wait, but not here. Ping Wen had said that he would send for her; whoever he sent, anyone who knew her would know where to look first.

  To the library, then: and finding it more brightly lit than she was used to, still not used to this, other people among her books.

  Offered a cup of tea from an iron pot that was not quite hot, she apologized for not having thought to bring fresh. And turned on the word and left them, went to the little stone porch where they kept a charcoal-pot smoldering. Fed it tinder, blew it into life. Boiled water.

  Made tea.

  Good tea, palace tea, not the rough brew that soldiers favored, that she had learned to drink but never relish. Her old men would make faces, perhaps, but they would drink this just the same. It was one of her acquired skills, to induce sour old men to swallow what they would rather not.

  BACK IN the library, the darkly green perfume of the tea overlay the dry dusty smells of old paper and old unpolished wood. Old men had their perfumes too, but these were clean old men, she saw to that.

  The text she worked on was difficult, almost too artful to be legible, even where she knew all of the characters. More than once she had to ask for help, for two other pairs of eyes to pick at strokes of ink, minds to pick at meaning. It all ate time. She knew nevertheless that time was passing, some quiet aspect of her mind was still consciously waiting for a summons; she couldn’t lose herself entirely in her work or in her company.

  Nevertheless. When the interruption did come it was potent, it was unexpected for all that it was waited for.

  She had missed the sound of footsteps in the passage, she had somehow missed the sudden sense of presence in the doorway, coming in. What she saw was shadow, fallen across her page.

  And lifted her head half ready to protest, half willing to say he’ll have to wait, I can’t leave this now, I almost have it clear in my mind—but he was enough to drive that and all else clear out of her mind for a moment, because she had never anticipated this. I will send, he had said, not I will come.

  Here he was nevertheless, Ping Wen himself, in her library. She was not daunted, of course, oh no. She was accustomed to consorting with rebel lords, with Tunghai Wang, more recently with the emperor himself. What had she to fear from an administrator-soldier, one who did not even fight …?

  Even so. Startled first, she was swiftly in hand again, and making herself as pleasant as she knew how. Bowing low—well, there was simply no room to kowtow, precious little floor at all in between all these racks and shelves, these chests and desks and lamp-stands, chairs and men—and calling him lord general, saying, “I had not thought to welcome you in here …”

  “I am sure not,” he said. “I was … curious, when I had barely begun to ask for you and it was so immediately known where you would be found, and what doing. And with whom.”

  “Ah, my lord general, let me introduce—”

  “There is no need. General Chu Lin and I are … old friends. Ai Guo I know too. Though I have never known either of them as a scholar.”

  “Ah. That would be my doing,” with a smile, and never min
d all the currents in the room, all that hidden knowledge that might be threat or promise. Sail the surface and see what comes, treat with storms when you have to. “They are my patients, and I was always taught that the mind’s health matters equally alongside the health of the body. That the one indeed will feed the other. And there is so much to do here, and it matters so much, I have conscripted them both.”

  “Indeed. And what exactly are you all looking for in all these books?”

  “Um. If my lord general would come with me …?”

  Perhaps she should be calling him my lord governor general? But he seemed content enough, and that would be a terrible mouthful; and she did rather like that sense of holding back, of treating him with respect but not kowtowing, not filling her mouth or his ears with meaningless flattery. Treating with him as someone also worthy of respect.

  She took him down the passage to their tea-porch, and so out into the courtyard. Stood back, stood quiet, let him look.

  Let him see the damage left by the dragon’s landing, that no one had quite dared yet to clear up: all the fallen tiles and the slabs of broken masonry, the wrecked roof across the way, the great indentations filled with rain and seepwater where her feet had rested, where the stone flagging and the ground itself had simply yielded beneath her weight.

  Of course he couldn’t see what had followed her coming, that long breathless time that had been not quite a negotiation, almost a conversation, except that no one actually spoke.

  Sometimes Tien thought they had a pact, almost, she and Han and the old men and the dragon.

  Every time she caught herself thinking that way, she came here, like this, to see what the dragon left behind her when she took her boy away.

  The tree, the ancient ebony that might have stood for centuries just there, slightly off-center in the courtyard: that now lay in splinters where her belly had descended. Ebony was one of the hardest woods Tien knew, even still on the tree it only grew harder with the years; and in all the stories Tien had heard, the dragon’s belly was supposed to be her weakest spot, her vulnerability; and yet …

  She said, “We are not the first to have had trouble with the dragon. Someone wise has collected this whole library. We are reading through it now, in hopes of finding some way to control her.”

  Not a pact, no. A promise of resistance, perhaps, each to each. And Han caught between them, not to be forgotten.

  Ping Wen said, “Good. I … had not realized that she came to land here,” in my palace he was saying, and his pallor was stressing that. Almost, she thought he meant to reach a hand out and lean upon the doorpost. “I had thought her limited to the strait; I thought the city safe.”

  “I think we all thought that, my lord. Or else that the goddess would protect us all along the coast here, where her temples are.”

  “Well. Apparently we were wrong. Ask what you want, then, it is yours. Find what you can in the books here, if you cannot find a way to chain her to my will.”

  I am ahead of you, general my lord governor. I have done that already, chained her to another’s will: only that I did not put you on the other end of her chain, and I am not sure that it has helped. And then, aloud, “You said you had a task for me, my lord general, another?”

  “Yes. If this can spare you for the day?” Good; he was making concessions already, his own demands contingent on her choices.

  “My lord, my friends here are more experienced with old texts,” odd though that was in soldiers, pirates, torturers. Most of what she knew had come from her uncle, not from books. Most of what she knew about dragons had come from Han. This hasty summer’s reading had given her enough, just, to do what she had done; the consequences of that they would be living with for a while yet. She was happy to leave the reading to others for a time. “They both still need my care, and I have a temple full of other patients, but—yes, of course, my time is yours if you desire it.”

  “Good,” he said. “You have experience in caring for these mutes of the goddess.”

  He knew that, he had seen; but what he had seen was all there was. “That one boy, my lord. He was my uncle’s patient and in a way my own. I was never sure how much we did for him,” except to save his life, perhaps, and what was that? “If the goddess has a use for him, it’s beyond my skills to meddle with. If there are others, I have not seen them.”

  “One more,” he said, “there is one more that we know of. The emperor sent her to a temple outside the city, but I want her here. She will be safer here.”

  “Yes, my lord.” That was inarguable, if it was safer to be in imperial hands. There were rebels all around Santung. Also, if this girl were the promise of security at sea, then Ping Wen would feel very much safer if he held her close. Especially now he knew that the dragon had come to the palace. That news had shaken him, when he had seemed less than secure already. He couldn’t speak against the emperor’s command, but he had not been happy to see the old man sail away. He wanted such freedom under his own command, and who could blame him?

  “I am sending a troop,” he said, “to fetch her in—but I would like you to go with them. There should be someone with experience. Who better than a doctor, and a woman too? It will not take half a day.”

  “Of course, my lord.” This was how to treat with the great: give way entirely, and then bargain your way back to strength. Lay a burden of generosity upon them, and take full advantage while it was fresh. “My assistant Dandan will see to these men’s needs while I am gone.”

  “Yes, yes. Come.” He wanted to see her gone; he would usher her himself to the palace gate if he had to. That was all to the good, embedding her more deeply, setting her more firmly at his side in his own eyes and those of the court, the palace staff, everyone who mattered here. Tien was being seen to matter herself, which was ideal.

  Better yet, here was Dandan, coming down the passage. She would have kowtowed by instinct, by long palace training, except that she was burdened with a tray. Instead she pressed to the side and tried to efface herself entirely, until Tien ruined that entirely by stopping dead and addressing her by name.

  “My lord, here she is! What have you here, Dandan, nutriments for our patients? Soup, warming ginger soup for their healing tissues, good. And seaweed to strengthen their bones, yes …” Whatever she had must be whatever she had been able to beg, steal or scrape together from a far-depleted kitchen in a city close to starving. Tien knew. Probably Ping Wen knew also. But it was easy to make it all sound like medicine, so sparse it was and so particular. “We are short on good things, my lord,” we are short on everything, “so if you could allow Dandan her run of the kitchens and storerooms, as the emperor did …?”

  “I am sure we can spare a bowl of ginger soup and some boiled seaweed. As I am sure that any assistant trained by you will be, shall we say, scrupulous in her depradations?”

  “Indeed, my lord. And then,” taking the lead, walking on down the passage as she spoke, on his errand so that he had to hustle to catch up with her, “there is my hospital, so many of the emperor’s troops so badly hurt; their needs are greater. I need food, my lord, as well as medicine …”

  BY THE TIME they came to the great courtyard and its gateway above the city, she had named everything she wanted, everything she could think of wanting. She thought perhaps he would have granted her the moon too if she had only thought to demand it, if she would only go on his commanded errand, go now …

  Here was the governor’s own carriage for her to ride in, for her to fetch back the one girl he wanted and her sister who would apparently come too. Before ever he set foot in it, Tien did. And here was an escort of soldiers, mounted and on foot, before and behind the carriage. It was no way that she had ever traveled. Her uncle’s tent would pack down onto an ox-cart, and she used to ride atop the folded silk, when she wasn’t driving the oxen or another wagon laden with patients too ill to walk.

  She had thought that was freedom, exhilarating, the life of the road. She had thought that closed car
riages were its opposite, like traveling in cages, like the condemned.

  She had been wrong, she learned. Even for an hour, this was still the road; that was still the world that rolled by outside the windows. Everything changed, every minute. Just sitting here in unaccustomed luxury, she herself was changing. For one thing, she was learning that luxury did not necessarily equal comfort. Every rut in the road jolted her extremely, from her tailbone to the base of her skull, despite the cushions beneath her and the padded silk on every side. The ox-cart had been a better ride, where her own steel-spring legs absorbed the jouncing. Still, she could curl up and fold her legs beneath her, cling to the sill of the unscreened window and put her head out into the air, watch the sky and the trees and the paddy, the sea when she could see it. She could listen to the soldiers laughing as they rode, as they ran: laughing at her perhaps, but that did her no harm and them some good. It was always good to get away for a while, and to laugh.

  And now this was as far as she could go in the carriage, and these men would escort her through the trees till they came to the temple where she had to take two girls away from their mother.

  Which was the opposite of easy, and she understood exactly why Ping Wen had chosen her to do it. She could hate him for that, perhaps, except that in his place she would have done the exact same thing herself.

  Here was the headland, here the temple, and a boat out at sea beyond. That was bold, or else it was stupid. Both. No dragon in the sky overhead—she’d checked already, first thing, as they came out from the trees; she did that as a matter of course now, almost without needing to raise her eyes, she thought she was developing an extra sense that simply knew when the dragon was there, and when Han was with her—but the dragon could be there at any moment, swifter than wind. Or she could strike up from undersea, tear the heart from the boat before the crew ever knew it.