Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  What was he saying …? It seemed as though she ought to know, but her only reading of it made no sense. This boy was small and thin and apparently crippled, but far from a baby; he couldn’t be the emperor’s child. Unless Chien Hua had been—well, precocious. And dishonest with her. Perhaps his mother had encouraged him? Emperors notoriously found it difficult to sire children. Supposedly the jade in their bodies poisoned their seed, so that a woman’s body could not nurture it. A wise woman, a dowager empress might well think that an early grandson would be a boon, treasure stored in heaven.

  If her boy were old enough, and willing. If the babe were healthy. Perhaps it had been deliberately left behind, abandoned …?

  Mei Feng still didn’t believe it. He would have told her; she would have learned it in his touch, that he was not new to the pleasures of his bed, her body. He certainly wouldn’t have lied.

  She said, “I don’t understand. How—?”

  How does this boy belong to the emperor, my emperor, my Chien Hua? Grandfather, be plain …

  Perhaps he tried to be, but something overwhelmed him.

  “By law,” he said. “As Jung does. Unless, unless he belongs to the goddess now. Mei Feng, we saw the dragon, but she kept us safe …”

  “One thing at a time, Grandfather,” or they would all of them get utterly lost. She seized the gnarled strong rope-rough hands that were fretting at her gown, snagging the silk as they tried to make her see what he had seen, what he lacked the words to say; she held those hands tightly in her own, realizing suddenly how soft her own were becoming, how little use she would be now on the boat; she said, “What law—Oh. Oh, no …”

  Unexpectedly, it was Hui—who had claimed, of course, not to be listening at all—who cleared matters up, brisk and kind and declaratory: “I think the little one must be a eunuch, lady.”

  So did she, now, at last. Had rain and unhappiness made her stupid, or was she always this slow? Perhaps you didn’t need to be clever to sail a boat and net fish, net an emperor in a fog …

  Her grandfather was nodding, and so was Jung. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. But how could …? Was it an accident?” Boys were castrated deliberately, even by their own parents, to win a place for them in the Hidden City, where they might rise and rise; but surely not in time of war, of rebellion, when the emperor had fled the palace …

  Her grandfather was shaking his head. “It was … not an accident. A terrible thing.”

  Something so terrible, he didn’t want to say. It must have been something of war, then; she knew that appalled him. Very well. No doubt Jung knew, and could be induced to tell her later.

  She said, “Never mind. He belongs here, to us. That is enough. My women will take care of him; the emperor’s own doctor shall see him immediately. Hui, will you attend to that?”

  “Of course, lady.”

  “Good, thank you. Jung, would you prefer to be with the other eunuchs,” make friends, make a place for yourself, “or to stay with the child for a time?” Be fussed over yourself, no doubt, pretty young man with taking eyes; be better fed and sleep more comfortably, avoid other duties for a while …?

  He said, “Please, lady, I would like to stay with the child.” Sensible young man with taking eyes—but Jung went on, “He is … special to me, to us both. He saved our lives, I think, on the water.”

  “It was the goddess who saved us,” Old Yen said flatly. “The child is her vehicle, no more.”

  “It is enough,” Jung retorted. “Without him—”

  “Without him, I would not have sailed; but he was the goddess’s promise, her word in flesh, her doing.” Which was a grim thing, seemingly, from the way he tried to flinch back from his own words.

  “Wait,” Mei Feng said, almost desperately. “Jung, can you tell me what happened?”

  “Not properly, lady. I was late to this story, as your honorable grandfather has told you; I only saw the end, when the dragon came again.”

  “Again?”

  It was one word and she dropped it like a stone; she could almost not bear the weight of it.

  Jung bowed his head, her grandfather lifted his to meet her eye to eye. “I had seen her at the Forge, before. When the pirate Li Ton had charge of my boat and me.”

  Bewildered, she could only repeat, “The Forge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would—a pirate—take you there?” There had been a beacon on the Forge, she remembered, smoke still rising in the dawn before the dragon was seen to rise and plunge and rise again. Again and again. Before the bodies began to float ashore, before all the wreckage arrived.

  “We were sent.”

  “Grandfather …”

  “We didn’t know what it meant, to set a blaze on the Forge-top that night. We had no choice anyway, he would have killed us if we refused—but we didn’t know about the fleet.

  “We did that, yes, we built the beacon, under the pirate’s orders. The doctor and his niece, the boy in chains and me. We built it and burned it, and come the morning we saw the rebel fleet on its way to Taishu.”

  She wished, she really wished he would stop talking now. It had been so hard to see him started, and now he dug his own grave with every word, he built the scaffold on which he would be tortured first. Hui was listening. Whatever was said here, it would be repeated to the empress; and to have in her hand the names of those who fired the beacon, that was power she would welcome. Power she would use. Mei Feng could not see, now, how to save her grandfather’s life.

  “But, but that was a good thing in the end,” she said desperately. “Because the dragon rose and destroyed the fleet …”

  “She did. Because the boy broke his chains, and hers.”

  Mei Feng shook her head. Again. This story kept leaving her suddenly stranded, just when she thought she understood. “It was the monks who kept the dragon chained, you always told me that.”

  “It was; and it was a survivor from the Forge who chained the boy, trying to echo their work. He managed, barely, for a time. She stirred, she was seen, we saw her; but she could not rise. Until the boy Han broke those chains. Then she was free, and any boat abroad on the water was in danger.

  “She sank them, she sank them all; and then she came to the Forge. To kill us, I think, but she could not. She was not so free after all. The boy prevented her, and so we were allowed to sail away.

  “The pirate made us sail to the mainland,” where something happened, it seemed, that Old Yen did not want to say; “and then he walked us into Santung. He wanted to speak to Tunghai, I think. He thought the doctor might bring him there. But there was … trouble, and the doctor died, and the pirate was arrested; and I, I was sent by the goddess. With a message. For the dragon …”

  “Sent by the goddess? Grandfather …” She had never questioned his devotion, although she’d never really shared it. When she was a small girl, trips to the temple were fun, whether they involved tramps along clifftops or the tight fascinating streets of the big cities, Santung or Taishu-port. Smoke and bright colors and chanting, a moon-cake for the goddess and a moon-cake for herself: it was a treat to go, and an extra treat to go with Grandfather. By the time she understood that her father and uncles and most of their neighbors weren’t so devoted, that most other sea-captains either didn’t follow his heartfelt rituals at all or else did so in a perfunctory and dutiful manner—well, it didn’t matter. Most other sea-captains weren’t such good sailors either. That was what did matter by then: the kick of the living deck beneath bare feet, a taut rope and a batten-sail trimmed to catch the wind exactly, salt water and salt air and the heave and rush of the sea. She watched her grandfather and learned from him. And never quite learned his faith, but never quite learned to match him either at the steering oar or in his simple read of tide and weather: where the fish would be running, where drift would carry the boat, where to marry the two. It seemed … fair.

  But this, now? He was old and strained and anxious; perhaps his mind had finally toppled
over, from dedication to obsession? If he went to speak to the goddess, and actually heard her talking back to him …

  He was nodding emphatically. “Yes. The Li-goddess sent me. She spoke to me: once in her little temple on the headland west of Santung, and then again in the city.”

  “She spoke to you. How did she do that—through the priestess?” There was no priestess in the abandoned temple, as far as Mei Feng knew; they used it as a landmark more than a place of prayer. Grandfather liked to go up there sometimes, but she used to stay in the boat.

  “Through the children,” he said. “There are refugees everywhere, and damaged children, mutes. She uses those. She used this poor boy,” a gesture to the silent child, “everyone heard him. Everyone in the temple. She spoke to the pirate, but it was a message for me.”

  He sounded, she thought, entirely mad. She didn’t want to look at Hui, because his face and eye would confirm it. She didn’t want to speak, because her voice would give her away. Even mad, he would still understand her. He always had.

  A silence fell, but only briefly; then the eunuch Jung lifted his head again, from where he had been smiling down at the unresponsive child.

  “I wasn’t in the temple, lady,” he said, “but I believe the old man is right. The dragon would have drowned or swallowed us both on the water today, but something stopped her. She was enraged, but something stopped her, and calmed the waters. I thought it was the boy. Old Yen says it was his goddess.”

  “It was the goddess. These are her waters, and she will not tolerate the dragon free. She used the children to say so. To me. It was my task to say it to the dragon. I thought, I thought she meant I should sail back to the Forge and tell the boy Han that we had left there. Let him tell the dragon. But the dragon was watching the strait, of course; and she saw us abroad and came for us, and …”

  And, poor old man, he must have been terrified. Who would not be, confronted by the demon of all their early terrors? Every child on Taishu grew up with tales of the dragon beneath the sea, and how she was chained. Every fisherman’s child feared the day when she would rise. Just as inland children feared the night and what lay in holes beneath the earth, creatures of darkness, sea-children feared creatures of wind and water and storm. Dragons, that is to say: and the one dragon in particular, their own, the one they knew to be there.

  After a long lifetime sailing above her head, listening to the monks’ great hammer pounding chains like a guarantee that she was safe in her prison below, he had heard its recent silence with dread. Mei Feng understood that. He was a man of faith: he couldn’t believe in the goddess but not in the dragon, or in the benevolence of one and not the malice of the other. How he had found the courage to sail deliberately into that maelstrom, where the one must be pitted against the other, she couldn’t imagine.

  “She rose up from the sea, from the goddess’s own waters. I didn’t know what to do, except what the goddess had told me. So I cried the message up to her, before she could eat us. And I did, I did wonder if the goddess would be done with us then, if she would allow the dragon to … But of course not, she wouldn’t treat me so …”

  He still didn’t sound entirely certain, Mei Feng thought. Something had shaken him. Not in his faith, but in his ardor, perhaps, or his tender regard. Something he had seen, and had not loved.

  Never mind. She said, “So did the boy,” this wordless child in his utter absence, “did he speak to the dragon, is that what happened?”

  “No, no. I had to do that. I had to speak to the dragon,” which had clearly been momentous, and she really wished she could have been there to see him standing in his frail boat and bellowing in his great sea-voice at a creature that could swallow him as easily as she breathed.

  “And, what then, did the dragon listen to you? To the goddess, I mean, to her message?” This was how to get him telling stories, she had learned it long ago: ask the right questions, and let him find the answers one by one.

  “She did understand me, I think, but she was … infuriated. She meant to kill us anyway, for sailing on her waters, but now she wanted to break the boat around us first, let us watch our own deaths coming …”

  “So what happened?”

  “They’re not her waters,” and he sounded almost smug in his goddess, almost as he used to. Mei Feng was still sure she could hear a difference in his voice. More awe than worship? Something. “She was furious, but she couldn’t touch us, the goddess wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t come close to us: the water wouldn’t carry her, and if she tried to fly she fell out of the air, and even the splash of her falling, even the wave from that never reached us. We might have been floating on a different sea.”

  “He says it was his goddess,” Jung said softly, “but I think it was the boy. He has been like this all the way,” slack in the eunuch’s arms and slack apparently in his own head, staring in mute disinterest at whatever fell before his eyes, “except just then. He didn’t speak, not to the dragon; but he was alert and sitting up suddenly. He watched the dragon, his eyes followed her everywhere—and as the old man says, she could not come near us.”

  It wasn’t quite a quarrel between Jung and Old Yen, whose hand had saved them, but it veered close. Mei Feng knew where she stood; she did want the boy to be more than a puppet, but nothing would allow it. He offered a convenient body where perhaps the goddess needed one—her spirit was too diffuse to work against the physicality of the dragon, unless she could be physical herself?—and so she used him. And then slipped away again, and left him as he was. Discarded, still ruined. Perhaps hurt a little more, damaged beyond recall. She was too big, and he too vulnerable …

  Raped girls and mutilated boys, the lost and silent might be easier vessels for a goddess to inhabit than stubborn women and strong-willed old men. It was unbearable, but it might also be true.

  Mei Feng said, “It is a wonderful story. My lord the emperor should hear it; he likes to know of his servants’ adventures, and he needs to learn more of the goddess. And the dragon. He is in council now with the lady empress his mother and the generals, but Ping Wen will—”

  “Wait,” Old Yen said, startling her. “Ping Wen?”

  “Yes. He is …” What was he, exactly? Chief of the council, governor of the island? Something, certainly, more than one general among the rest. He sat on her own little footstool in the emperor’s absence, and spoke in his name. He was the second man on Taishu, she supposed, in this new dispensation: almost the first, given that the emperor was something more than a man, afflicted with godhood.

  “I know what he is,” Old Yen said urgently. “He is a traitor. The emperor must not trust him! Nor you, you must not. He will betray us all.”

  “What? Grandfather!” She did not like Ping Wen, had not liked—or, indeed, trusted—him even before he hatched his plan for war and seduced her proud and gullible lord with it, but still … “You must not say such things! Really, you must not.” Ping Wen was a proud man himself, and not at all gullible; he might have as many ears in the palace as the old woman did. And pay them better. “How could you know this, anyway?”

  “I was there,” he said. “Here, in the palace, in the throne-room. It was Ping Wen who put the pirate in command of my boat and sent us to the Forge, to light the beacon.”

  She shook her head slowly. “No …”

  “Mei Feng, it was.”

  She didn’t disbelieve him, exactly: she was only bewildered. How could her grandfather have been here at the palace, taking orders of any kind from General Ping Wen? With a pirate? Nothing made sense, except perhaps his accusation. She hadn’t lived long in the court, but it was long enough to believe that traitors could be anywhere.

  Even in the empress’s entourage, there could be traitors. There must be. Ping Wen would have his ears there above all, to learn what the old woman was saying, thinking, planning to do. Just as she would have her ears as close as possible to him.

  Mei Feng glanced at the old eunuch Hui under his umbrella, and tr
usted him not at all.

  Hui put a finger in his ear, miming rain and deafness. Well. She could trust that or not, it made no difference. He had heard, and he would use it as he chose. There were perhaps people who would poison him, sooner than let him speak; she was not one of those. Besides, she had no poisons.

  Old Yen was urging her to warn the emperor, to have the general arrested, everything sensible and safe and impossible. She had advocated so much against Ping Wen these last days, she had so fallen out of favor with her lord already, he would not listen to her; and she couldn’t thrust her grandfather forward as a clear and unbiased witness. His open confession before the throne that he had helped to build that beacon would mean his death, unequivocally.

  She was baffled, helpless; she needed an ally, and found unexpectedly that she had one.

  If she could trust him.

  Hui said, “Lady, I may have rain in my ears, but not yet in my head. If your honorable grandfather will tell us all that he knows, perhaps I can find a way to alert those who should be watchful of his majesty. It ought not to come from you, nor from my own mistress.”

  No, indeed; the empress was in worse odor with her son than Mei Feng was herself. Those two were probably still arguing across the throne-room floor. While Ping Wen watched and listened and said very little, because the emperor was saying it all on his behalf. Digging the pit himself, perhaps, in which Ping Wen meant to trap him …?

  Hui had lived all his life as a palace servant, at the heart of court. If anyone knew how to raise suspicions where they would do most good, he would be that one.

  She would need to trust him. That was hard. The second lesson of palace life was that everyone needed a network, allies and servants and spies; the first lesson was to trust none of them.

  And then there was Jung, listening. Too late to send him away, far too soon to trust him.

  She took a breath, took a step, walked into conspiracy.

  Said, “Yes. Grandfather …?”

  four