by Daniel Fox
Even here, in a dragon’s dreadful shadow, he found a hint of pleasure in surprising her. “I think we should go closer to Han. Stay close, as he said. I thought it was boy’s talk, bravado; but look at her,” as though either of them, any of them was doing anything else. “She came to kill, to kill him, and she couldn’t do it. Now they’re … negotiating. I think. I think he’s inside her head. We need to stay inside his head, in his sight,” where he would—perhaps—hold them in the compass of his will. So long as he chose to. The boy had no reason to love Li Ton; which meant that Li Ton had a fine reason to stay as close as possible, within a dragon’s swallow of Tien.
The doctor seemed beyond words, beyond understanding. The night’s labors or the morning’s dragon or both together had drained him entirely. He offered no resistance, no effort either as they raised him to his feet and took him forward, step by slow shuffling step.
Old or young, vigorous or exhausted, it would be hard to do anything but shuffle into that shadow, under that glare. It was Han she watched, but she was aware of them all; each of them stood separately under her claw, however close they clung. He could see her claws, iron-gray blades carving great gouges in the rock of the Forge. He thought he could feel the stone groaning under the weight of her. He was astonished that his own bones could hold up under the weight of her awareness. How Han could survive her full attention, let alone resist it, struggle with her, deflect her purposes …
Well. It defeated him, but he could accept that. He could accept this, the need to squat in the boy’s lee. If any of them survived this it would be her choice, inhuman and immeasurable—unless it was the boy’s.
Han turned his head to find them, so suddenly it drew a gasp from Tien, a wary frown from Li Ton. Perhaps it was the dragon entirely in his head now, and working him? That was how it looked, entirely.
But he sounded more like Han the boy now, even giving orders: “Tien, all of you—go back to the boat. Tell the fisherman to take you away from here.”
“Where shall we go?” That was the doctor asking. Tien was bereft, and Li Ton had not asked any man for directions since he was the emperor’s general, since he was betrayed.
“It doesn’t matter. Taishu, or the mainland. Inland would be better.” Because the dragon is a creature of the sea, he meant, and I don’t know how much or how long I can control her. “Or there are other lands, beyond the empire. Li Ton will see you safe.” That was not a prediction, it was an instruction. The boy’s eyes were not the dragon’s, no, but they had something of that hammer-hard implacability. He had been weak before or frightened, hurt or overwhelmed. Now he was compelling.
“What about you?” Tien had found her voice, though it was thin and tremulous, as she was.
“I stay here.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“No,” he said, and there was no arguing with him. That was the deal, evidently: himself and the dragon to stay here on their own, until something was resolved. One way or another.
Li Ton could picture one way, which was the boy swallowed whole. He found it impossibly hard to picture any other. What, did Han imagine he could fly out of here on the dragon’s neck, ride her like a plaything, like a horse?
It almost seemed a shame to lose him now, but there was no challenging this. Even Tien realized; she only said, “How, how will you find us?” Meaning, of course, how will you find me?
“I’ll find you,” which was no answer at all, and yet it seemed to satisfy. Perhaps it meant the dragon will know, which was not a reassuring thought at all.
The dragon’s eyes moved to follow them, but he thought they were pushing now, wanting them gone. She might want them gone from the boy’s thoughts too, but he didn’t think she could have that. Tien was like a splinter in the boy’s eye, forever sharp; and every time he looked at his hands, Han must remember Li Ton. Even now, the boy’s fingers were rubbing at the raw scar where his thumb had been.
Jorgan had tossed it into the forge-fire, Li Ton remembered. Any last lingering ash of it, any nub of bone would stand under the dragon’s foot now. That seemed … appropriate.
four
Chung took the message from the general himself, from his hand. It came with a scowl attached, as though the general anticipated the same response to this as to the dozen that had gone before. If he did, he was probably right.
Chung had carried several of those messages. Which the general knew. It was never a good idea to let the lords of life come to know your face. Chung’s mother had told him that, when he was chosen to serve in the jademaster’s palace. He had listened attentively, he had tried to be wise; he was sure the jademaster could never have picked him out from any line-up of the kitchen staff.
But things had changed, one extraordinary night. The jademaster had been displaced by the emperor, the palace had filled with soldiers and servants and officials, and it was suddenly so much harder to stay out of notice and out of trouble. Impossibly hard, it seemed, for Chung.
Now the emperor was gone too, and the soldier who sat beside the empty throne and governed in his name, General Ping Wen, knew Chung’s face well. And what Chung meant to him was messages sent but not replied to, or not satisfactorily; and it was all too easy for a great man to blame the messenger.
This particular great man was said to have executed an entire squad of soldiers because they had claimed to see a dragon and so lost sight of an enemy boat. Ping Wen had not believed in their dragon, and so the men had died. Now almost everyone believed in the dragon, even perhaps Ping Wen, but the men were still dead.
If Chung was grateful for one thing in this new life, it was the yellow sash he wore, that said he was the emperor’s own man. It wasn’t true, not quite, but it said so none the less; and even a general could not touch an imperial runner. Which was definitely something to be grateful for today, to judge by the depth of the general’s scowl.
There was this also to be grateful for, that he could put the general’s message into his satchel and back away, bowing, shuffling his soft boots across the wonderful floor, leaving the great empty throne and the great man on his footstool; and when he reached the door he could turn and trot out into the air, and the guards there would simply stand and watch him go.
Across the courtyard to the imposing gate, which couldn’t impose on him. More guards here, and he could ignore them all—gratefully—and run out onto the road.
The Jade Road they called this, or they used to: running as straight as a road might, from the harbor to the mountains and the mines. These days, as often as not it was called the Palace Road, because so much traffic came and went from the jademaster’s palace here to the vast site in the foothills where they were building the emperor’s new Autumn Palace, a second Hidden City.
Where most people believed the emperor was living now, and were wrong.
Chung knew.
OF COURSE Chung knew. How could he carry the general’s messages, else?
HERE THE road was always busy, like a fish-dam in a stream. There was no city wall, no gate, but the general’s soldiers funneled all the traffic into two queues, coming and going. They searched wagons and interrogated peasants at their own unhurried pace. Assassins had come after the emperor, and had barely been defeated; of course the authorities were more alert, more wary now. Quite what the soldiers searched for so assiduously, though, once they’d seen that no assassin was hiding in the wagonback; quite what questions they asked—and why they would believe or not believe the answers—Chung couldn’t fathom. He knew what things they kept. He saw them piled by the roadside, the piles growing as the day passed. Quite how a rice pot or a string of garlic might be contraband, how a bolt of silk might pose a risk to the emperor’s person, he chose not to speculate. It was wiser not, with their general in the emperor’s throne-room, if not quite yet on his throne.
Chung himself was neither searched nor questioned. The imperial sash was good for that; he could trot straight by the queues, straight through the roadblock. So
mething to be grateful for.
The road beyond was still full of soldiers, but none of them was interested in him. An alert sergeant or an officer might even move a troop out of his way, not to delay an imperial messenger. Mostly, the men held the crown of the road and Chung ran easily around them.
Soldiers never ran. Going out to the palace site or coming back, they idled as much as they were allowed to. If they had civilian conscripts with them, the civilians carried the soldiers’ bags.
Chung was safe from conscription too, but they weren’t taking palace servants anyway. City workers, rather, laborers and clerks. Breadwinners. Nothing was easy anymore, and the levies made it harder. Chung might be untouchable, but he wasn’t blind. Nor deaf. The general seemed to be deaf to the general complaint, unless his stool at the throne’s foot lifted him too high to hear.
Chung thought someone ought to tell him, but nobody would. With the emperor in the mountains, who could criticize his general?
Only one name came to mind, and she was in the mountains too.
He had a stone in his boot, a sharp pain in the ball of his foot. One more thing to be thankful for: that he could sit on the side of the road with his legs overhanging the ditch, shake out the stone, and then sling the boots around his neck and have done with them for now. Like the sash, his running-boots with their emphatically yellow lacings marked him out as a messenger, untouchable. But Chung was a boy of the lower town, who had never seen a pair of shoes before he was brought into the palace as a scullery lad. Who wore shoes, except for mandarins?
He hated them. At their best they were a definition of discomfort, tight and hot; and they were seldom at their best, either rubbing up blisters or else attracting stones. Or both.
He was knotting the laces together to make a handy sling when he felt a buffet on his shoulder: “You, boy! Up, and come with us. And carry this …”
A large pack, dropped by his side. A soldier, just beyond the pack: just a random trooper spotting an idle civilian and seizing the chance.
Chung stood, so that his sash came into clear view.
The soldier was twice his age, perhaps, but that meant he had the wisdom to blanch, to step back, to lift his hands in apology. He might have done more, might have dropped to his knees and kowtowed, because an insult to an imperial messenger was an insult to the emperor himself and a man might die for that; but Chung just smiled and turned away, trotted on barefoot and grateful.
IT WAS hard work on a hot day, but he’d never minded work and he’d learned to love the sense of moving on. A person on the road ahead became a person on the road behind. The land unrolled like a banner of silk horizons at a puppet-play; only the sea never seemed to shift, those times that he could see it, those times he turned his head as the road rose.
It was a joy to be away from the palace, away from walls and doors and a formality that was like another door always closed in his face, but that was not what put lift in his feet and power in his legs. It was a joy to be heading for the hills, the high hills and what waited there, that even the general barely knew about and did not understand. That was a promise and a lure, but not a reason for the pulse of contentment he felt at every pounding step and every sweat-soaked breath.
This was where he was made to be, this narrow ribbon world, this rolling treadmill that only rolled because he ran, he kept it moving on. Running, he was at the core, he was the steady beating heart of what was true.
HE CAME TO the spur at last, the junction on this road that had no junctions before the emperor came this way. This was what emperors did, apparently: they brought changes, choices, risks. Chung’s life had been quiet and easy and monumentally dull until the emperor came. Then even in the palace there was danger, even to a kitchen hand; and now—
NOW THE soldiers and their wagons, their conscripts, their horses and mules and all else turned aside, to follow the new road that last mile or so to where the new palace was rising slowly on its hill. Chung had been there, he had seen the great workings, the mud and the labor and the endless spread of the encampment around. No doubt the emperor must move there soon enough, or else go back to the city, with all his court in train and Chung too.
But not yet. For now Chung could follow the Jade Road a little farther, where it climbed into the foothills; now he could leap the ditch and run through tall grasses and into the shadow of the encroaching trees.
There was a path, but barely so. It looked little more than a hog trail winding through the forest, muddy in the valley bottoms and hard to find on the high ridges, easy to lose. The mud was cool and welcome to his feet, though, the heights were a challenge and an achievement.
One valley and another, yet one more: and at every ridge there were two or three watchers idling beside the path, wearing little and apparently doing less. Hard bodies, hard eyes. Sharply green in the shadows, those eyes would track him remorselessly, though their hands waved him on. It wasn’t the sash that passed him through this scrutiny. They knew him, so they let him by; no reason else. This path led directly to the emperor, who was in their charge. They took that charge quite seriously, although they were new to it. General Ping Wen had sent his own men, day by day more senior, to learn just exactly where the emperor was; word in the palace said that every one of them had been turned back. Those who had drawn weapons and tried to force their way by had been found next day on the road, too hurt to walk.
Officially, the general was said to be increasingly anxious at the emperor’s staying somewhere so remote, in the hands of people not known to the court. Privately, he was said to be furious. Personally, Chung had seen hints and edges of that anger: enough to worry him, perhaps, if it weren’t quite so impossibly presumptuous to worry about the welfare of the emperor …
The general was officially concerned only for the Son of Heaven’s safety; and nowhere, truly, could be safer than here. No man could be safer than he was, in this hidden valley with lethal guards on every height around. Chung had tried to explain that to the general, the time he’d been called on to describe and then to draw the route from the Jade Road to the emperor’s camp. That was one time he’d seen the general angry, because he was no good with words, nor with a brush and ink.
That was also the day that he’d seen a soldier’s anger utterly eclipsed by a mother’s. The empress had been there too, and oh, she was scathing. He thought that her vicious contempt was simply a by-blow, that her true fury was aimed at her son; but Chung was the one at hand, and he had suffered for it, and might have suffered worse. An imperial sash was no defense against an empress. Blessedly, she had remembered in time that her contact with the emperor depended on him and those few like him, messengers who were trusted. Trust was a fragile commodity in the hills just now. Let her execute even one of the emperor’s runners, and she would be unlikely to see another.
Wise in her age, even in her temper, she had understood that; and so he had preserved his head, this long at least. There were other dangers on the road and in the forest, but nothing felt so risky as a palace empty of its emperor, in the heat of the summer of his absence.
NOW CHUNG came down into the last valley, near journey’s end. He stopped at the bitter river to wash, to cool his skin and startle his tiring body into one last effort; then he kicked on along the river path, to the settlement at the head of the valley.
The clans were mining folk and they guarded their valleys jealously, from one another more than from the world beyond. The world beyond generally had better sense than to trespass. Here, though, a simple compound had outgrown its own palisade, sprouting tents and ruder shelters like fungus around a tree stump.
Not all the inhabitants were clansfolk. A mixed group of men and women stood in a circle on the only open ground, down at the river’s edge. As Chung emerged from the trees, a voice greeted him: “Ha! Where’s your cleaver, kitchen boy?”
He stiffened, and sighed; pushed a hand through dripping hair; tried a smile, knowing it would fail. “Not now, Shen. I have a message fo
r the emperor …”
“Of course you do. Why would you be here else? No kitchens for the scrubbing, and you’re not much use otherwise, except for running. Will you run away from me?”
He was a short, stocky young man, a soldier, stripped now to his trousers. He didn’t have the lean scarred hardness of a miner. What he had instead were fighter’s muscles, slabs and cables beneath his oiled skin.
“If you’ll let me by, sure, I’ll run. If you want me to.” There were fighters, and there were runners; never the two should meet, if the runner could only get a head start.
“I don’t want you to run,” the soldier said softly, working his shoulders. “I want you to fight. Will you fight, kitchen boy?”
He wasn’t really offering a choice. He stood between Chung and the compound, and the circle of his friends was re-forming around them both, to make an arena. This wasn’t the first time. Chung’s hand lifted involuntarily toward a seamed scar on his lip, where Shen had left his mark at their first encounter. Shen saw, and smiled. A point to him, if this had been a game played for points.
It wasn’t. It was played for blood. Around the circle people were betting sweets and trinkets, duties, whatever they had to gamble with. Chung knew how few of them would be betting on him.
“The emperor won’t be happy,” Chung said, “if I go to him with blood on my sash.”
“Take the sash off, kitchen boy. It buys you nothing here.”
He knew that, but he’d had to try. He lifted it over his head, along with his satchel and his boots; a woman took them from him with a glance he couldn’t read. One of the clanswomen; there were no women in the army. He ought to know her name, but he was never here long enough to learn them all.
“If I go to him hurt, I meant.” And he hadn’t quite meant the emperor, but Shen knew that.
“Oh, I won’t hurt you. Much. You’ll still be able to run. That’s all he cares about.”