by Julie C. Dao
“I do like that tale after all,” Wren admitted, and they laughed. “So you think Silver Arrow is the relic of Dagovad? Between that and the rose, I know what I would choose.”
“It wasn’t easy retrieving the feather cloak,” Jade said, remembering the wailing bundle in her boat and the mocking, resentful ghost. “I wonder what we’ll have to do to prove ourselves worthy of the rose and the sword.”
“Father always said to cross bridges only as you come to them,” Koichi reassured her. “We will find out in time.”
And that time will be soon, Jade thought. She remembered Ming’s stern determination; he wasn’t a man who would sacrifice the life he had built, not for a strange renegade princess. It would not be long before she and her companions were flung back to the mercy of the desert to survive and find the relic—or perish in the attempt.
Although her friends slumbered deeply, and Ming—who had returned with Fu after an hour or so—was snoring peacefully on his own pallet, Jade found herself tossing and turning with the man’s words weighing upon her: Do you honestly think you can challenge the Empress?
At last, she gave up and slipped from the tent. The night air felt refreshing on her face as she sat beneath the star-strewn skies, missing Amah. A year ago, on a night like this, she would have been at the monastery, listening to another one of the nursemaid’s grand and whimsical tales after evening prayer with the monks.
“What are you doing out here?” Fu asked, drifting out and folding himself on the sand beside her. “You should be inside, getting the rest you need.”
Jade brushed a hand over her wet cheeks. “I was thinking about home.”
As merry as the ghost had been earlier, his gaze on her now was solemn. “You lost someone you loved. Someone who took care of you, and who is taking care of you even now.”
She looked sharply at him, but he had turned away to study the stars. “My nursemaid once told me that spirits linger when they have unfinished business,” she said. “I wonder what your purpose is in haunting Ming.”
“I don’t know. It’s not revenge,” Fu said thoughtfully. “There were assassins in pursuit and I would have died anyway. But I told him I preferred death at the hands of someone kind and good rather than those of my enemies. That’s his account of what happened, anyway.”
“But how did you know he was kind and good? He was a stranger to you.”
“Was he? I wonder. It’s hard for him to have me around, and not just because I love to annoy him,” he added, grinning. “My presence reminds him of a past he’d rather forget. He has only ever known pain and loss and the years have been hard on him, so he pushes everyone away. I’m only here because I can’t leave. I hope you’ll forgive him, young friend.”
“So you know he wants me gone,” Jade said quietly. “He must have told you who I am.”
Fu leaned back on his elbows. “He didn’t need to. I can’t seem to hold two memories of my former life in my head at once, and yet I knew who you were the moment I saw you.”
“Not every spirit has such difficulty remembering,” Jade said, thinking of her mother and of the farmer with the crane cloak. “Do you think the way you died had something to do with it? Perhaps you gave up your memories when you gave up your life.”
“Anything is possible, but I recognized you right away. How can that be, do you think?”
“Perhaps our destinies are tied together,” she suggested.
“As your friends are tied to you. Ming doesn’t want to help because you’re in danger and so too is everyone associated with you.”
Jade leaned her weary head on her knees. “I know it. It weighs on me like stones. But every time I bring up the subject of going on alone, neither of my companions will hear of it.” She peered at the ghost. “What would you do in my place?”
“Me?” Fu raised a brow. “I would do everything I could to protect them. I would use whatever was in my power to determine the danger, and keep it as far from them as I could.”
The poisoned comb.
She closed her eyes, feeling the familiar tug of longing. What was a bit of blood if it meant she could see into Xifeng’s plans? If she could find out where Kang had gone, if she could anticipate his next move, it would be worth the risk to keep Wren and Koichi safe. She opened her eyes to see Fu watching her with concern.
“On the way here,” she said, changing the subject, “we came across a man who told us about stone horses. Do you know anything about that?”
“He was talking about the maze,” Fu answered, surprising her. “About a day’s ride west, there’s a treacherous expanse of sand, a death trap made of stone horses interlinked. I’ve seen many adventurers passing by to attempt to claim its treasure of unparalleled value.”
The rose, Jade thought, her pulse picking up, given to the phoenix as a reward for her resourcefulness. The flower’s everlasting warmth and light would be a boon outside of the desert, and its ability to purify water was needed everywhere. The relic of the fire-worshipping Serpent God lay in the center of a death trap. “Why would anyone build such a maze here?”
“It’s thought to be the tomb of some ancient king who thought himself grand enough to order a thousand stone horses built in the desert. You are too interested in this,” Fu commented, studying her. “I hope you know it would be almost certain death. You would be wandering in the hot sun with no means of escape.”
“You said almost.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She gave him a weak smile. “You said almost certain death. Which means there’s a chance of surviving.”
“Well, when you fall into a river full of starving alligators, there’s always a chance of surviving,” he said, laughing. “You’re determined to die so soon, then?”
“I could succeed, you know,” she said, nettled by his conviction that she would fail.
“You could. Or you could be sentencing your friends to a death by roasting alive.”
All at once, the pain of Ming’s doubt came rushing back with Fu’s cruel joke.
Jade rose to her feet. “I happen to know why you’re haunting Ming,” she said angrily. “It’s because you’re the same. Neither of you has any faith. You judge people you don’t know and make assumptions that aren’t yours to make.”
“My dear, I didn’t mean . . .” Fu began, but she didn’t stay to hear the rest.
She went back inside and sat on her pallet, breathing slowly to calm herself. No one could picture her and Xifeng together without imagining a result in which the Empress crushed her like a beetle. Jade leaned her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands.
Wren, who had been snoring, gave a little snuffle and Jade looked up. The older girl’s face was relaxed, and so was that of Koichi, who was still lying in the same position he had been in when he had stayed up late talking to Jade. She remembered how his words had grown slower and quieter as he fell into slumber. She longed to reach out and touch him, just to see him open his eyes and look at her again.
Anything would be more bearable than seeing them hurt and tortured by the Empress. But they were with her on this quest, and it was like having their blood on her hands already. Like playing her stepmother’s game of lives, using people wherever it suited her.
Jade turned away, her heart aching.
She felt for the little wooden box. The teeth of the silver comb gleamed at her. The last time, Xifeng had seemed to sense Jade’s presence. And Jade’s mother had warned that Xifeng might use this knowledge against her somehow, that deploying this weapon against the Empress might backfire. But it was the only way Jade had to see into her enemy’s mind, and if it could help her keep Wren and Koichi safe, then there was nothing more to consider.
Fu was right—it was time to protect them with whatever she had, no matter the risk.
Tell me your secrets, she commanded it.
And then she gave i
t her blood.
* * *
• • •
Jade stood in the tengaru clearing by the apple tree.
A light wind blew, scattering pink-and-white petals on the grass. Voices rang out from beside the Good Queen’s Lake and she turned, hoping to see the dragon again. It stood on the island with the drooping willows, but it was not alone. A woman gazed up at it, and with her were nine men garbed in black.
Xifeng.
Jade fell back in shock at the sight of her stepmother. There was something sordid, horrifying about the Empress being in the clearing so strongly associated with Jade’s mother.
The woman’s lips and cheeks were redder than ever, but something was amiss—she looked peaked, feverish. She glanced past the dragon to the apple tree, her restless eyes darting over its branches, and then her gaze fell on Jade. Not again, Jade thought, her body freezing, as though by standing motionless she might evade the Empress’s further notice. But Xifeng’s expression did not change, nor she did acknowledge Jade as she turned back to the dragon.
“It seems I’m still not allowed to go in, even after puzzling out your little riddle,” Xifeng told the dragon. “It’s not complicated, is it? The secret of the red lanterns begins with that bridge, made from the wood of the apple tree. It’s lucky for me I’m so well read.”
One of the soldiers behind her stepped forward and bowed. “Your Majesty, the dragon may enter those gates and get to the tree, even if we can’t.”
“You’re right,” Xifeng told him. She moved closer to the dragon, which held itself with unnatural stillness. Despite whatever enchantment held it rigid before the Empress, the creature refused to meet her eyes. “Come now, we were friends long ago. You haven’t forgotten me so soon, have you, Lihua? Or is that not what you’re called anymore?”
The dragon’s head drooped.
“But I didn’t come here to exchange pleasantries with you. Your daughter has been gone from the palace for quite a long time, and I hoped to find her here.” Xifeng clasped her hands before her. “I was grateful that the eunuch Pei’s heart, as well as the nursemaid’s, both healed my face after the old woman ravaged it, but they weren’t enough to satisfy my hunger. I think only the hearts of young women can do that. They are, after all, deeper, unfathomable.”
Jade gagged, her fists clenched on the bars of the gate, eyes burning with tears of hate and fury. Her brave, beloved Amah and Emperor Jun’s faithful eunuch—both gone, both violated in such a horrible manner. She clenched her fists and imagined tearing a bar from the gate to drive through the Empress’s own heart. Let the evil woman know what it was to suffer, to have her life wrenched from her ribs as she had done to all her victims.
“The princess will come back to me,” Xifeng said confidently. “I know she will, and I will fulfill my destiny at last. Go on.”
The dragon rose shakily on its front legs. It staggered in Jade’s direction, and when it came near, she saw that its eyes were clouded and lifeless. A deep, oozing wound gaped from its neck to its belly, splattering blood on the ground as it entered the apple tree enclosure and stumbled past Jade.
No, not blood.
Jade knelt down, her shoulders trembling.
It was water. The dragon was bleeding the ocean, raining its essence upon the grass around the tree. The wound had a scent like noxious soil and dead woods, a smell Jade knew well by now. She whirled to see Xifeng’s soldier sheath a cruel sword, its blade coated with a shining black substance—the poison Xifeng had used on Emperor Jun and on the teeth of Jade’s comb.
“No,” Jade sobbed, hurrying to the dragon. “Be well. Heal yourself.”
But she knew there would be no surviving this.
The dragon collapsed, its body curving around the tree trunk. Its beautiful antlered head dropped on the ground with a noise like thunder, and its eyes closed. It lay still, but for the water that still flowed freely from its wound.
Another sob of anguish ripped from Jade’s throat. Xifeng has taken this from me, too, she thought, her anger returning with such power that it threatened to choke her. She pounded her fists into the grass by the dead dragon, screaming with rage and devastation, envisioning all the ways in which she might make Xifeng pay. Whirling, she ran back to the gate, where the Empress and her men still stood.
No, you are not like Xifeng. You are better than her.
Even as the thought ran through her head, Jade realized that Xifeng was once again looking in her direction. The woman’s eyes were not focused on her, but somehow she sensed where Jade stood.
“Come home, sweet child,” the Empress said in a low, loving voice that chilled Jade’s bones to the marrow, knowing the malice it hid. “I need you.”
All of this, everything, Jade realized, was planned carefully, with the knowledge that I would see it.
Lihua had been right.
Jade watched, cold and frightened, as Xifeng and her men mounted their horses and rode into the forest, back to the Imperial Palace to lie in wait for the heart of a lost princess. Whatever game she meant to play, whatever she had planned for Jade, had been set into motion.
“Oh, Mother,” Jade whispered, her sorrow so vast, she thought she would split apart with the unfathomable pain of it.
A small pond had formed around the tree, submerging the dragon’s body and relinquishing it to a watery grave like all of the Empress’s other victims. The tree, too, began to change as its roots drank this strange water. The buds shifted and whispered among the leaves.
One branch, in particular, began to tremble.
And as Jade watched, that branch sprouted a single perfect, shining apple, as red as the dragon’s blood should have been.
Have you been out here all night?” Ming asked, coming out of the tent the next morning.
“I slept a bit, but I had a bad dream and came out here to sit.” Jade rose and rubbed at her temples, soothing the edges of her sharp, pounding headache. She had been violently ill upon waking and had taken just enough time to put away the comb before leaving the tent to suffer until dawn, retching as the pain pierced her skull like daggers. Her nausea had faded after a few hours, but the tight band of discomfort around her forehead persisted.
Ming assumed his usual posture, crossing his arms. “Your friends were cheerful at supper last night, but you were quiet. Was it because of what I said to you about leaving?”
Jade shrugged. “I would feel the same if I were you. You have no obligation toward me.”
“Then why did I save your life, knowing who you might be? Why you, of all people?” He began walking to where his three horses were tethered beside Koichi’s stallion and Wren’s pony, then stopped in his tracks. “Do you believe in destiny?”
“You’re the second person to ask me that in a month,” Jade told him, startled. She waited for him to ask who the other was, dreading it—as though naming a monster would summon it.
But he did not ask. “I knew someone once who lived only for what the future could bring. Life is such a gift, and when someone squanders it that way, and the future they hoped for never comes—or arrives in an unexpected form—what is there left but regret?”
“That person chose to live that way,” she said, watching the play of emotions on his face. “What you call squandering is what they might call living.”
“Perhaps.” Ming led her over to the horses and patted his black-and-white mare, which blinked large, gentle eyes at Jade. “Fate is still a puzzle to me, even after all these years. What led me here to this empty desert? What led you here? If you had left a day late, if I hadn’t gone hunting at the exact moment I saw Wren . . . we wouldn’t be standing here talking.”
The mare pushed her nose into Jade’s stomach, sniffing for food. Jade accepted a bundle of hay from Ming and held it out to her, smiling when the horse accepted it with a snuffle.
“She likes you. She can be yours.�
�� Ming waved away her protests. “You need your own horse, and it will spare your friend’s pony from carrying two riders.”
“Thank you, sir, for everything. I’m glad our destinies intertwined, even if you aren’t.”
Ming studied her. “I woke up when you and Fu were talking last night and heard you ask about the maze. You insist on following this folktale nonsense, then?”
“Folktales aren’t nonsense,” Jade retorted. The familiar pain ebbed below her heart as she thought of Amah and of her old, quiet life—a life that she now knew would never have been enough. Abbess Lin and the elder had been right. “I used to think of stories as you do—foolish, childish. I took them for granted, not knowing how important their lessons would be.”
“Important for what?” He raised a quizzical brow.
“For becoming who I’m meant to be,” she said, as her mother’s and her nursemaid’s loving faces flickered across her memory. “Becoming who my loved ones believed I could be. Someone who is strong and just and tries to do what’s right—who doesn’t give in to fear. It may take me longer than others to find my courage, but I try to find it just the same.”
Ming was silent.
“Everything I know, I learned from stories.” Jade glanced at him, expecting to see a scornful expression, but instead she saw inexpressible sadness.
“And everything I know, I learned from living,” he said. “You love folktales so much?”
“They’re shaping my life as we speak.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then gave a chuckle, quiet but genuine. She frowned, confused, until she realized that they were facing each other with the same exact posture. She, too, had adopted his stance of crossed arms, legs slightly apart, head to the side. They might have been father and daughter, to any passerby who didn’t know the truth.
“I think I judged you too soon, Jade of the Great Forest. You may be a braver soul than even you know. And you’ve had to work long and hard to be that way. Who among us hasn’t?”
She gazed up at him with surprise and gratitude. “You’ve had to work at being brave? You, who live alone in the desert with scorpions and death?”