Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  “No.” That was neither of the men; the voice came from behind them, from the temple steps. From the woman standing there. “No, you leave them be. If the goddess will allow it, we will come.”

  She sounded weary, as though all fights were unavailing, victory as useless as defeat.

  Chung thought she was right. And went in with her none the less, the old man at his back, silent and filthy and breathing hard. Mud in his beard.

  Both girls were standing in the altar-smoke, hand in hand. When their mother beckoned them, they went to her; or at least the little one went, tugging her elder sister behind her.

  She looked from one adult to another, and no words were needed; in her mother’s too obvious surrender, she found her own.

  “Are we all going?” That was her only question, and it was meant for her mother, are you coming too?

  The woman was desperately uncertain, looking from her children to the altar and back again, setting her own peace against her daughters’ futures. She said, “I think, I think we should ask the goddess. If she wants me to keep her house here, then I must; but—”

  It was her elder daughter that she looked to, as though in hopes of hearing the goddess speak through her. Old Yen had said something much the same. The girl was silent; Chung thought perhaps she was an idiot. Or just too much hurt, like the eunuch boy on the boat.

  Like him in other ways, seemingly, a mouthpiece for the goddess when she chose to speak. Not now. In the face of her silence, the mother seemed lost, utterly unable to decide. It was Old Yen who found her a solution.

  “Stay,” he said, more gently than Chung had heard him yet, “and I will bring her back to you. I will bring them both. The emperor will not want to keep her long.”

  That might not be true. Still, Chung wanted to believe the old man, as much as the old man wanted to be believed. If it was a conspiracy, the woman seized the chance to join. Seized it slowly, reluctantly, but seized it none the less; nodded and said, “Yes. He would not take a daughter from her mother without great need. When the emperor needs, and the goddess does not forbid: yes.

  Take her, take them both. Take care of my girls, and bring them back. I will be here. I am sworn to this place now, and these people are sworn to me.”

  She was trying, Chung thought, to sound like a priestess, all un-practiced. Perhaps she had been a mother too long.

  HE HIMSELF, not used to girls, he left them to the fisherman.

  Stepped out of the temple, thinking only of the steep climb down—a little of what help the girls might need, and mostly of Shen who was waiting at the bottom—and not at all of the men they had left out here, the peasants staring at the fleet.

  And so found himself staring at two drawn taos, with determined men behind them.

  “If you don’t live to run for help,” one said, “your men won’t know to come.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Chung said instinctively, “my friend’s waiting in the boat. If we don’t come down …”

  “He’ll come up, and we can finish him too. Or we can go down and do it, when we’ve done you.”

  “And, what, you think the fleet will just sail away without us? They’ll come looking.”

  “We’ll be long gone by then. We’ll take the priestess and her girls, keep them safe, your men will never know where to look for them.”

  Chung could have said no need, we’re leaving you your priestess, but they didn’t give him the chance. They just came at him, there on the steps, while the others were only shadows in the doorway at his back.

  Unarmed, against men with blades: Chung suddenly remembered every one of the bruises, nosebleeds, black eyes and concussions that Shen had given him during weeks and months of training in his difficult empty-handed skills. More, he heard Shen’s sharp instructions, almost literally, inside his head:

  DUCK UNDER the blade as it swings, so, and be glad the man is no warrior who faces you. Root yourself and strike back, hard and upward, here between his belly and his ribs, where he has no notion of protecting himself. See him double over with the breathless pain of it—and as his head comes down, catch him in the temple with your elbow, so.

  Good. As he falls, he lets his tao drop; leave it lie, you’re no good with a blade. And here’s the other man, hewing at you already. These peasants hack as if they were cutting paths through the forest, of course they do, it’s the only speed they know. You work at a different speed, they won’t come near you. Step back beyond the fall of his blade, then swiftly in again and kick. Not the arm that holds the blade, nothing that moves. Kick for his hip, shake him where he stands. Then step inside his reach and use your hands, both hands, swift and hard, no mercy: do you want to live, or not? He wants to kill you. He knows nothing, but he’ll still kill you if he can. If you let him. That would be a shame. You know nothing either, but at least you’re trying to learn …

  EVEN IN Chung’s head, in his imagination, Shen still had that sneering whip to his voice that could drive Chung beyond his own limits, past pain or fear or reluctance. His hands hammered at the peasant, at ribs and shoulders and belly. The man had no room to use his tao, so his arm came swinging at Chung like a club; Chung blocked it with his forearm to the wrist, and saw the blade fall from suddenly numb fingers. And knew how that felt, exactly, and punched while the man was still staring down at his dropped weapon, wondering perhaps how to retrieve it.

  Chung’s fist broke his jaw, perhaps. Something, at least, shifted in the man’s face; and in his head too, some shift of understanding.

  NOW A knee to the groin, now the elbow again, and a kick to the head as he falls …

  IT WAS SHEN, almost, more than Chung; he felt little more than a puppet in another man’s hands. That made it easier, perhaps. Especially afterward, when there were two men lying broken and bloody on the ground and one of them might never stand again; when even the fisherman was looking at him askance, stepping out of his shadow; when his voice snapped to hurry the girls to the path down, and the little one looked at him with a kind of hatred mixed with fear, and he could tell himself that that too belonged to another man, who would not care about it.

  four

  Apparently Mei Feng could be angry at the emperor in a whole new way, for a whole new offense, without in any way affecting all those other earlier reasons she had to be angry with him. Angers could accumulate, layer upon layer, all sliding over one another like these awkward and ridiculous silks he obliged her to wear—and yes, even she did know and acknowledge that was unfair, that he would far sooner see her in the scruff-clothes she wore at their first meeting or indeed in nothing at all, if he only ever actually looked at her again. But he didn’t get the choice and neither did she, and so it was entirely his fault, like everything that had happened this morning.

  It was afternoon now and laying toward evening, but these were the morning’s troubles just coming into harbor now, safe at last. Or safe for now, at least. Safe until the emperor chose to send them into danger again, his chosen children: into dragon-haunted waters with war beyond.

  The war had made her angry first, but now it was the children. The little eunuch boy had inflamed her, but he was apparently only the start. He had been brought to Taishu in hopes of finding shelter, and was being used to wage war; this new girl had been fetched, deliberately fetched, for the same stupid purpose.

  And Mei Feng’s own messenger had helped, apparently, but she wasn’t really angry with Chung. If she shouted at him anyway, it would only be to relieve her feelings, because she did need to shout and it was getting harder to shout at the emperor. These days, he was inclined to walk away. To seek out General Ping Wen, as often as not. She and he used to plan their palace together as a way to escape the stifling emptiness of the court; now he planned his war as a way to escape her.

  And with Ping Wen, who was a traitor and meant to destroy him, and she still had no way to alert the emperor that would not betray her grandfather. She had tried, sinuously, to embed doubts and suspicions in him,
but what would have been easy a season ago was suddenly impossible, because he was not listening to her.

  Which was another reason to be furious with him, as he walked blindly to his own calamity. The empress his mother had tried also, and failed also. They needed to be less subtle, perhaps, but simply talking, telling him wouldn’t do it now. They wanted proof, a witness they could safely bring before the throne; and Ping Wen had been careful so far with his witnesses. There was only her grandfather, this side of the water and surviving.

  The war, Ping Wen, the children: Mei Feng was exhausted, almost, by the effort of being so angry. Worse, now she was angry and provoked. She had come here to the dockside for the children, to claim them into her own particular care, and the emperor had taken them away from her.

  There was the eunuch boy, with the perennial Jung carrying him in his arms; and then there were two girls, a young one leading an older as though she were blind or slow in the head. And because the emperor and Mei Feng were not talking, because what he did used to be what she did too and now was not, therefore he had contrived to take possession of them all with a word and a snap of his fingers, a flurry of palace servants like a flock of birds about the children, wafting them away up the hill.

  Leaving her standing, stranded, alone on the quay.

  Not alone for long, because there was Chung her runner whom she could compel with a snap of her own fingers, and shout at to her heart’s content—except that he was coming off one of the little boats with his friend from the emperor’s guard, and Shen was pale and hurting, with one arm bound up tight.

  Mei Feng had never understood those two, from the first day when they tried to kill each other and came perilously close to achieving it. Now they were inseparable, when she would allow it. Occasionally she had valid need for her own personal runner; more often she used Chung because he was her own and she felt a need to assert it, to have some moments, places, people in her life that were not subsumed by the emperor; the rest of the time he might as well have been in the emperor’s guard himself, living side by side with Shen and sharing his duties and his training, his food and his blankets and his time.

  She might not understand it, how they had gone from that to this, from swift hatred to a swifter love; but she knew pain and distress when she saw it. Shen was in pain and Chung was distressed, and now was not the time to shout at either of them.

  She was really growing very good at swallowing down anger. She stopped them with the gentlest hand imaginable, just as though they were any other pair of soldiers disembarking. “How is he hurt?”

  Chung seemed not to have the words; it was Shen who managed a smile somehow. “Not so badly as he looks, thank you, lady. My collar-bone is broken, and I have a cut to the ribs …”

  “… Which is worse than you want me to know, and not as bad as Chung imagines. I understand you perfectly.” It would be sweet if she weren’t still so angry, swallowing it like bitter bile. “See where the lamps are burning, along the dock there? I brought doctors,” the emperor’s own, ordered down before the emperor could think of it himself. “There will be a wait, other men have been hurt perhaps worse than you, although Chung will not believe that; but they will see you as soon as they can.”

  A nod of thanks to her, an odd smile that passed between the boys—something said already, that could not be said to her—and they moved on in that slow cautious shuffle, young survivors bringing their hurts home, still wary of the world and each other, wrapped entirely in the joys and pains, the relief and wonder of that survival.

  She watched them go, still bewildered, thinking that men were so strange, so very strange; and now there was only her grandfather worth shouting at, and he would be a longer wait, the last man ashore. In the meantime, there were others coming down the quay. Some she knew and some were hurt, they were all exhausted; now that the emperor had seized his children and gone off with his generals, there was only her from the palace to speak to them, to walk with them a little way, to leave them feeling better than they had been.

  So she drifted slowly away from her grandfather’s boat, just to the foot of the quay. When the flow died to a trickle, when it died altogether, when she looked back and saw just two more figures coming down the gangplank with her grandfather still stowing ropes while his boy washed down the deck behind them, then it was time to go and speak to him, perhaps to shout, if she could still find the energy; but she knew these last two before she saw their faces, just from their size and the way they moved, and they ought not to have been anywhere near this mad expedition, she was sure they hadn’t had the emperor’s permission to go—more, she was sure they hadn’t asked for it—and now perhaps she might shout except that she didn’t really want to, it was all too much for her, though she might yet want to hit them.

  “Jiao! Yu Shan!”

  “Ah.” They glanced at each other, as guilty as children caught in mid-crime. The mercenary woman, bored and wanting an adventure; the boy from the mountains, the jade-eater, unnaturally strong and fast, wanting to test himself against the world. She understood them both, she thought. And why they would need to sneak away, to avoid both the emperor’s gaze and Siew Ren’s.

  There was something more, though: something in the way Yu Shan was standing, trying to shadow himself behind Jiao. He wasn’t hurt, not him, she wasn’t sure he could be hurt anymore. Something, though. And something in the way they glanced at each other, unreadable, a secret not for sharing …

  Except that they could swallow all the secrets that they chose, but they couldn’t hide what Yu Shan was wearing, some new kind of armor it looked like, though why that boy in particular would ever want to burden himself with armor she couldn’t imagine. He looked uncomfortable in it even now, sweat-sodden; and the lowering sun caught it strangely, made it seem …

  “Yu Shan, no. Tell me that’s not …”

  It was, though. She could see it, she knew it from intimate experience these days, though even that stray thought was a soreness, a bruise tonight. He wore a long sleeveless shirt of linked scales, and every one shone with the true deep-sea green of imperial jade, the emperor’s own stone that no one else might wear, that they should not even touch except to mine it or to work it or to haste it on its way to the Man of Jade.

  No wonder these two had been lurking aboard until the emperor had left the quay. That was death, right there on Yu Shan’s shoulders: the death they’d both escaped before, and this time even the emperor’s friendship wouldn’t save them. It couldn’t, in the face of such extravagant defiance. Mei Feng had seen most of the emperor’s treasures by now, much of the beauty that had come from the Hidden City; she had seen nothing remotely like this, wearable jade, a marriage of craft and artifice and wonder …

  She said, “I ordered that for my lord the emperor. Not for you.”

  “Well, but we had to test it. Before we could let Guangli—or you—give it to him. Didn’t we?”

  Perhaps that was right, perhaps they did. She should be grateful, but it was hard to remember how; all her good feelings had been rubbed away. She took a breath, took a step back from her anger, said, “Tell me, then.”

  It looked … magnificent. Imperial. A work of astonishing craft: supple and substantial, almost liquid in the light as Yu Shan shifted his shoulders and the stone shivered all down his body. But she hadn’t wanted it for beauty, or for an exhibition of its maker’s skill. They had plenty of those already, jades left almost natural because no carver would touch them, others cut so intricately they were like portraits of other cities, older days.

  Jiao grinned, took Mei Feng’s wrist and pressed her hand against the shifting scales. It felt unexpectedly warm and yielding beneath her fingers; no wonder Yu Shan was sweating, on the inside of such a skin.

  No doubt the emperor would sweat too. She used to enjoy making him sweat. Such a treasure as this, such a toy, she could have found inventive ways to do it, better than sending him to war …

  That was no longer her interest. She fr
owned and said, “You feel like a snake, Yu Shan. It’s almost soft to the touch.” And smooth like polished jewels, warm like gold; it seemed to tingle just a little against her skin. She didn’t know how a dragon felt, but it should be something like this.

  She didn’t want to think about the dragon. She was still too angry with all of them, for chancing their lives and one another’s—and the children’s, those especially—against the dragon.

  She said, “That’s not what matters, though.” Not the beauty, not the craft, not the feel of it. No. None of that. They might be at odds, but he was still her emperor; it was her duty, to see him safe. Where she could. “Does it work in combat, is it effective?”

  Yu Shan smiled, and gestured vaguely at himself. He was still breathing and apparently unhurt, unmarked; but she had seen him survive a fight without benefit of armor. He wasn’t a warrior, he didn’t have skills like Jiao, but he was lethal none the less. Did you test it properly, did you stand still and let them hit you? That was what she really wanted to ask.

  Apparently, Jiao knew the question, all unasked. “Here,” she said, still holding Mei Feng’s wrist and guiding her hand to one patch of scales, over Yu Shan’s breast. “Here is where a flung dagger-ax struck him, point-first. It should have skewered him. Can you feel where the point broke through the scales?”

  “No.” The shirt felt immaculate, there as everywhere.

  “No. Here,” a tug on her wrist and then the pressure, touch again, low down on his hip, “here is where someone cut at him with a shipmaker’s blade on a long handle. It could have cut through oak. He’s no fighter, this boy, never saw it coming; and I couldn’t reach him in time.”

  “You? You stood and watched.”

  “I said, I couldn’t reach you. What should I do, then, turn away?” It was—almost—like the byplay of old, tussling in words, when they were intimate friends. Perhaps they were friends again, back end of a battle. Mei Feng was envious: may I come and fight with you next time, will that buy me the right to tease my lord and see him smile at me again?