Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  Took seize, and let not go. She had seen Jiao watch everything, and quietly walk away; she thought perhaps that she would do the same, in time. With her people around her, a family, a tribe. They would all be better away from this. Ai Guo away from his torture-chambers and his generals who abandoned him and used him and abandoned him again; Li Ton away from the sea and his lost Shalla, his pirate life; all of them away from war and soldiery and death. There must be country somewhere inland where they could settle, build a home and a new life. Gieh was a peasant and so was she at heart, they knew how to farm, they could teach these rough bewildered men …

  SHE’D MEANT Gieh to stand as crutch to Li Ton’s slowness on the path down to the city: to pace the old man on his other side, lend a youthful arm at need and on instruction. Apparently he was too distracted to be dutiful, his head full of dragon and smoke, his legs full of bounce. He had slithered ahead and involved himself with faster walkers, more important men, the generalissimo and his party.

  Or not quite that, in the event. It was the monksmith that he skipped beside, at the tail of the generalissimo’s party; the monksmith that he listened to along the way, insofar as he was listening at all.

  For some obscure reason—or under some obscure instruction—he had rescued the dragon’s green banner from the ruin of the paddy and was flying it aloft like a kite, like the boy he was.

  No matter. Dandan could manage Li Ton by herself, so long as they didn’t try to keep up; and she thought she could likely reel Gieh in again once they reached the city, once he remembered who he was and what he did when he wasn’t playing among the great. If she were wrong, if the monksmith decided to keep him—well. Boys were cheap, and plentiful.

  There was another one ahead and below her on the path, giving an arm to his master the fat general. Not abandoning his duty, though he was constantly looking back over his shoulder, all too clearly itching to fly kites alongside Gieh.

  It was turning into quite a parade ahead, as stray runaways came awkwardly back to their commanders. Shuffling along behind, Dandan had a view all the way to the city’s edge. That was more than a guard detail waiting there in greeting. News must have run all through the city like a breaking wave, far ahead of any running soldiers. Everyone could have seen the dragon and the fires that brought her down. By now, that growing throng should know not to expect Ping Wen among this returning troop. Tunghai Wang was back instead, their master by default, and—

  AND THEY were looking, the whole city was looking to the north, to the valley road, to see him come.

  No one was looking up or back, into the southern sky.

  Perhaps Dandan was the first to see her, when the dragon came as well.

  They all knew soon enough: when men pointed and cried out, when Gieh let his kite-banner fail on the wind and fall down, when her shadow overswept the crowd packed close at the city’s edge, waiting for Tunghai Wang.

  When her bulk came down, right there, at the city’s edge. Blocking the road, breaking the road and the buildings to either side, crushing anyone too slow or too stupefied to run.

  Dandan wondered if she’d come back to eat Tunghai Wang after all. Or to eat them all.

  But she seemed content just to squat there, magnificently in the way. She hadn’t eaten her boy either; he slid down off her neck and stood beside her, one arm against her claw. Leaning against her strength, it seemed to Dandan, his new chains dark and heavy under the weight of sun.

  After a long time, after a long time, two men walked out of the generalissimo’s party where it had tangled itself together into a knot of reluctance, and went slowly forward to speak with her.

  One of them was Li Ton, and the other was the fisherman, Old Yen.

  It was as well to be changeable, these changeable days. Dandan thought she might need a new plan.

  five

  ere on her balcony, looking out over the forest and the rising peaks, Mei Feng was farther from the sea than she had ever been.

  It didn’t seem to matter. These days, she thought she carried a sea inside her. Within her swelling belly, her little spawn-of-emperor swam in tidal salt. That was enough, apparently. She hadn’t thought she could be happy away from the coast and boats, storm and surf and far horizons, but she was happy here.

  Happy with herself among others, with her subterfuges and her plots. Little things that made life better for someone, and then for someone else. She could save the empire, she thought, if she could only do it one person at a time.

  If the emperor would only stop arguing with her.

  She was happy with him too, with her man. Even when he was angry. He was still magnificent about it, and still prepared to listen. Eventually, she thought, she could bring him to see that she was right. Until then—well, she supposed that they would argue. And she would get her own way, because she plotted and subterfuged, because she was sneaky where he was plain and forthright and didn’t quite understand that being emperor wasn’t quite enough.

  She looked down the length of the balcony, to where Yu Shan and Siew Ren and the boy were playing a game with little round beads of jade. Rules didn’t seem to matter much, and every now and then the child would pick up a bead and suck it instead of rolling it. He had decided, apparently, that jade was meant for his mouth.

  It made him laugh, which made Siew Ren smile; that was good enough.

  He spoke sometimes too, a word or two. Her name, or Yu Shan’s. Not his own, not yet; but they called him Yaya, and he lifted his head when he heard it and came if it was called, if he was interested, if there was food.

  The emperor was troubled by the changes in the child. It was what they argued about most often.

  “Mei Feng, you should have left him at the temple. He’ll forget the goddess if we keep him here, she’ll lose her grip on him.”

  Yes. Exactly. “He’s good for Siew Ren,” she said, “and she’s good for him.” Someone, and someone else. All the empire, one person at a time.

  That was only today that she had said it, though not for the first time; and she had gone on, “Bring Pao back with you, and the girls.”

  “Mei Feng!” He had been on the point of mounting a horse, to ride to the city; a runner had come with news, a little boat sailing in from the mainland all unexpectedly, with an unexpected crew of mostly children.

  “And their mother too, of course, bring her. She’s a priestess, all but. She’ll make sure they don’t forget the goddess.” Even so Mei Feng thought, she hoped, the goddess might lose her grip on Jin too. This far from the sea, this far from her influence. If the girl could be induced to talk again, if she could learn another kind of life … “They’ll like it here, I think, this little house,” this far from the sea. Four more people, they had room for another four. One at a time, she would find a way to settle them.

  “Do you want us to be stranded here, with no means to cross the strait?” The question was serious, and so was he. But he slipped his arms around her waist as he asked it, because he needed to be touching her—or touching them, perhaps, her and their baby, two in one—whenever she was close enough, whenever he could. Whenever she allowed it. Even when they were arguing.

  Yes. Yes, I do. No more adventuring in pursuit of a lost empire. She wanted to keep him close, in protection of a child who had been nearly lost and an island the same, a life that she would cling to as much as could be saved. She couldn’t quite say that, not yet, that was too big an argument. She said, “Send Grandfather back to the dragon, he can negotiate.” For a boat, perhaps, a truce-boat that might even be true. Not for an army. Not again. Secretly, she rejoiced at that. She could almost bless the dragon.

  “Your grandfather is on the other side of the water, as far as we know. And he doesn’t have either of the children anymore, to help him cross back.”

  “The dragon will let him by,” she said. That had to be true; she insisted on it. “But you,” with her hands clenched in the silk of his robe, little fists of determination, “you bring the children here t
o me. Tomorrow. Promise me.”

  “Or?”

  He knew there had to be a threat to follow. It made her smile, even as she growled it: “Or I will come and fetch them, all that way and back again. In that nasty jolty carriage I will come, with all the upset and the danger and …”

  “Little liar. You like it here, and you hate going to the city, and you would never do anything to upset our baby.” Laughing, he bent to kiss her, while his hands stroked the bowl of her belly. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps I will bring them back. For a while, for a little. If I don’t, you will only send someone to steal them again.”

  She nodded, firmly. That was true. It was her best weapon, so long as he believed it. Plots and subterfuges, one laid within another. He would bring the children here, and she would do what she could to draw Jin back from the goddess, and if that made her a traitor so be it; it was only the empire that she betrayed. Never her man.

  She thought the empire was the old woman in the silent room behind her, under a skin that did her no good now. There was someone who could not be drawn back, from wherever it was that she had gone. Mei Feng sat with her an hour dutifully every day, listened to the slow rasp of her breath and saw no reason why she should ever leave this state, caught half and half between life and death, favoring neither one above the other.

  Should Mei Feng pity her? She wasn’t sure. On the whole, she tried not.

  THE SKY darkened. Siew Ren fetched lamps, and then led Yaya and Yu Shan off to bed. People had learned not to try to chivvy Mei Feng. It was harder than ever to lie comfortably in bed, unless she had her man there to nestle into. If she was alone, she’d often drowse the night in her chair here, as she used to with the empress. She liked waking to the sounds of wind and distant trees and night-creatures, waking and waking. She liked moonlight on her face, the bright strewn ribbon of the silk-stars overhead. Not so much the occasional night-creature on her skin, a curious moth or a spider dropped from the roof above, but those were as likely indoors as out, and they did no harm. Nothing seemed to bite her anymore, or if they did bite she didn’t feel it and her skin didn’t swell or bruise.

  Perhaps there were mosquitoes out there now with stolen jade in their bellies, in their blood, that had trespassed and departed all unseen. Go well, little thieves—she could be placid even about mosquitoes now, apparently.

  Perhaps there were mosquitoes out there somewhere that had tried to bite the emperor. Mosquitoes with sore bent noses.

  She giggled on a breath, and missed her man, and hoped to remember to tell him that.

  And looked up, and saw something occlude the stars.

  Something big, too big. Monstrous big.

  Dragon-big.

  She watched it come, thinking that surely her heart should be in her mouth, she should be running, screaming for help, alerting the guards.

  But the guards would know soon enough if the dragon came to ground, and what could they do? What help should she scream for, where should she run?

  She sat where she was, and watched. Waited.

  She was unreasonably sure that it would come to her.

  IT SWOOPED low over this petty palace, and settled on the hill above.

  Now Mei Feng didn’t need to run or scream or alert anyone. They knew. Everyone was running and screaming on their own behalfs, alerting themselves and one another.

  She sat in her chair and waited.

  Yu Shan came out from the house still lacing his trousers, bare-chested. He told her to stay, as if she were a puppy uncertainly trained; then he vaulted the balcony railing and was gone.

  A little later, a boy hauled himself up over the railing, much less gracefully.

  A boy with broken chains hanging from his neck and wrists, trying—with small success—not to let them make a noise as he came.

  Having come, he seemed to have nothing to say to her, but only crouched warily in the shadows.

  She said, “How did you ever get past Yu Shan, jingling the way you do?”

  He said, “I held still under a bush and let him go by me. He went up to the dragon.”

  Of course he did. Everyone would have done that, except those who were running away. One stray boy, slipping from the dragon’s side, clinging to the shadows—he would go as disregarded as a moth tonight. He could depend on that.

  She said, “So can you really have the dragon take you wherever you want, whenever you want to go?”

  He snorted laughter through his nose, which she took to mean no. “Sometimes,” he said, “I can persuade her that it’s in her best interests if we go somewhere together. Though she never quite believes me. Which is wise of her, because it’s never quite true. Like tonight,” with a jerk of his head toward the fallen silence that must exactly describe the location of the dragon, the awe that Mei Feng could almost feel even through the width and height of the house, the weight she was sure she could feel, that the hill itself seemed to complain about. “I had an excuse, but really I wanted to see you.”

  Why me, what can I do for you?—but what she actually asked was, “What’s your excuse?”

  For answer, he shook his chains at her. “I need these cut away. I told her we’d both be easier, with them gone. She bit through the links, but she couldn’t get her teeth under the collar and cuffs,” great bands of iron hammered around his flesh, “without biting off bits of me.” Important bits, she gathered: his head, his hands. There was a livid gash on his neck where she must have tried, tried and failed while he kept very still or screamed and thumped puny fists against her snout or …

  She couldn’t really imagine their life together, how they did ever deal with each other. It was just too extraordinary, beyond the reach of her mind, she who had gone from fishing boat to emperor in one night and onward after. She said, “Well, I can have men from the site remove those for you.”

  “Tell them to be careful,” he said, very earnestly. “She will be watching. She doesn’t quite trust me, and she won’t trust anyone else. At all.”

  “I will do that,” solemnly agreeing, as though any man would need to be told, with the dragon’s great head thrust at him and her eyes aglow. “Will it make much difference to you and her, when the chains are gone?”

  “Not really. I still have all the old words written on my skin,” shifting his shoulders gently. She might offer him a shirt before he left. One of the emperor’s, perhaps; this boy would be lost in it. “But these are stronger, some of them. That monksmith …”

  “The monksmith?” she said sharply. “The monksmith’s dead.”

  “Well.” He didn’t sound convinced, though the way she’d heard it, he had himself seen the old man die. Long ago, that seemed now. Back at the start of everything. Lost in the fog. “If so, they found another. Who looks, well. Like the monksmith.”

  “Perhaps all monks look alike,” at least to a boy in confusion.

  “Perhaps. Anyway. I’d like to be rid of these. And so would she. Nothing I can do about the words on my skin, but it’s better if they don’t jangle in her face.”

  “I’m sure. So,” coming to the point at last, “why did you want to see me, actually?”

  “I thought you ought to know what’s been happening,” though his eyes glinted as they shifted in the lamplight and the shadows, and this wasn’t the truth either, though still not a lie. “Your grandfather wanted to tell you, but he’s waiting for Li Ton to find his crew, what he can of it, and …”

  “Wait.” Her grandfather, and Li Ton? The fisherman and the pirate, the loyal peasant and the traitor general? “What do those two have to say to each other?”

  “Quite a lot, actually,” and the boy Han was grinning in the darkness. Nice to know that he could still do that. “Li Ton chained me and your grandfather freed me, more or less, but since then they’ve been talking about boats. They’ll be coming across in Old Yen’s soon enough, and then Li Ton wants to find the Shalla and crew her again, reclaim her. He thinks she gives him a better claim on me,” and his fingers st
rayed to his ear, a sliver of metal, a piercing ring that he might have plucked out at any time but oddly hadn’t.

  “Is he right?”

  “Mmm? Oh. No. But you may be seeing more of him, in these waters. I think the dragon wants to keep him, to be her voice to the people.”

  “Li Ton? I thought you …?”

  “Oh, me too. She just doesn’t like to let me out of her sight. I’ll be her voice to Li Ton, I think, and then he’ll sail up and down the strait and talk to people. Talk to you, on her behalf.”

  “Han.” Mei Feng’s mind was failing, a little, at the thought of the pirate as ambassador. For the dragon. “What’s happened, that she should want him to speak for her?” Or to make him agree—but one question at a time.

  “Oh—yes. That’s what I came to tell you. She ate Ping Wen.”

  “She did what?”

  “Ate him. He tried to chain her again, but your grandfather wouldn’t let the goddess take her back to the strait; and they were trying to control her through me,” with barely a shudder at the memory of it, whatever they had done to him, these fresh chains and more, “and I … Well. I let her eat him.”