Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  All around the harbor, then, ropes were flung from wharf to deck, boats jostled for space, men cursed as they tried to ply poles and oars until they could get out to open water and the wind. What magic the fisherman had, Yu Shan didn’t know; perhaps it was only that other captains gave him space, for his own sake or the emperor’s. One way or another he found room for his steering oar, he found a current that gripped the keel, he even found a wind to fill a sail and draw him neatly out of harbor.

  Everyone else on deck was looking forward to the sea or upward to the sky, anxious about the dragon or the war to come, or both. There was only Yu Shan looking back at who was left behind them.

  The great jade ships took longer to unmoor, or else their captains were wise enough to wait until a waterway was clear. Or …

  Yu Shan was, perhaps, still looking for a glimpse of Jiao. That ship above all seemed to be lingering, as though the captain waited for something specific. For someone …?

  The emperor’s farewell party had paraded back toward the palace. His mother had disappeared from her balcony. There was only Mei Feng left, suddenly very small and alone despite the eunuch who stood with her.

  They seemed to be walking the wrong way, farther down the wharf. Then they disappeared behind the bulk of the jade ship. Yu Shan watched sailors scurry about her decks; when he glanced back to the wharf, there was a eunuch, scurrying off alone.

  No certainty that it was the same eunuch, they all looked alike in palace dress at a distance. No certainty of anything, but Yu Shan was smiling to himself as he turned away from the rail, as he looked to see where Siew Ren had gotten to, whether she might be willing to put up with him.

  four

  Well, what? Should I just sit quietly with all the other women—”

  “Mei Feng, he doesn’t have any other women.”

  “With his mother, then. Does anyone think I should sit there in the women’s quarters with his mother and just wait to hear news, eventually, when someone dares, someone deigns to sail across the strait and bring it to us?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s what everyone thinks you should do. Everyone who doesn’t know you,” Jiao amended hastily. “They’re going to be disappointed, then, aren’t they?” Disappointed was hardly the word for it. Surprised, astonished, outraged: those came closer. But only the people who didn’t know her, and why should she care about them? Jiao did understand, entirely. Which was why she had bribed the jade ship’s captain with promises of imperial favor hereafter. Those promises could yet turn out untrue—when the emperor found out about this, he might be angry to the point of executions—but they had been made in good faith, and Jiao was easy about them.

  Besides, she had left broken promises in her wake before, and men dead because of them, and had never yet been haunted by vengeful ghosts.

  She said, “His mother will likely think you’ve dressed up as a man and sneaked aboard with the soldiers.”

  Likely, everyone would think it. Mei Feng still kept her hair cropped boy-short—the Son of Heaven liked it, apparently: though that might only be because he had no experience of long hair, or because he liked her however she came, or because she liked it herself and therefore so did he—and she was infamously more at home with sailors than with courtiers, and had wickedly seduced the emperor into spending weeks and weeks in the forest with a camp of unschooled fighters. Where else should they look for her now, but among those same fighters on their way to war?

  Jiao still thought she would look better with the soldiers. Not all of them were men, though the women were almost entirely among the emperor’s personal guard, where Mei Feng dare not go. Jiao was an exception; Mei Feng might have tried to be another. She looked far less comfortable, more out of place here in a cabin, with a flurry of more or less reluctant women.

  Which Jiao very carefully did not say to her, because no good ever came of that kind of honesty. Instead, she said, “When the time comes to take the girl on deck,” when the dragon comes was what she meant, “will you be staying down here out of sight?”

  Oh, the glare! That was what she’d worked for. She didn’t need the words that came with, the torrent of denial, “No, I will not be staying down here out of sight! These are my responsibility,” with a nod sideways to the two girls, the big one and her younger sister who was so very much in charge, “and when we take them up to outface the dragon I will be going with them, standing with them, whatever may come of it. And …”

  And actually that was when Jiao left the cabin, grinning as soon as she dared, as soon as her back was turned to the still-ranting Mei Feng.

  LANDSFOLK HAVE no place on deck when a ship is leaving harbor. Jiao knew that better than most. Down, then: down to one of the holds, where these ships had ferried load after load of jade, year after year. Raw jade and carved jade, jade-dust and polished jewels: the air down there was heavy with the memory of stone.

  The memory of stone and the presence, the immediate presence of men.

  Too many men, packed too close. If the ship could carry its loads of stone, surely it could carry this load of bone and muscle; but this hold could not contain them. They were too nervous to be kept in the dark, swayed to a rhythm they couldn’t read, jostling one another as they slipped and snatched. Men couldn’t be stacked like jade, stored until wanted. They would be fighting soon; there would be blood and deaths before they ever crossed the strait, perhaps even before the dragon came.

  It was the dragon, of course, they were afraid of. Regardless of goddesses and magic children, regardless of imperial promise and imperial risk. They had likely all bought amulets and charms that offered immunity from dragons, and still none of them would actually believe it until they saw her veer away, plunge into the sea, miss all the fleet entirely. Stowed away down here, of course they could see nothing. They stood or sat or squatted in the dark and waited to die, and were afraid and edgy and flung about by the sea’s heedlessness—where was that goddess when Jiao wanted her, to settle her waters down?—and any minute now, there would be trouble.

  It was a hatch that Jiao flung open, so that she was gazing down into the mass of men. The fall of lamplight showed her a rise of hopeful, upturned faces. For the moment, she had their attention; a sudden toss of the hull or a careless elbow and a snarled curse would seize it from her.

  She sat on the edge and let her legs dangle, booted feet just a little above their heads. Any other woman would be taking a chance: a fuck would do as well as fighting, to distract them from their fears. If the fuck was an effort, if the woman screamed and struggled, all the better. But these men knew her, or at least they knew who she was. No one down there would touch her without an invitation.

  Which only added salt, of course, to her goading.

  “Well, look at you,” she said, her voice pitched to carry to the farthest corner of the hold. “Packed like fish in a jar. Are you comfy down there, lads?”

  A few voices called her down to join them, but the effort was half-hearted.

  “Steady, now. If I had time, I’d take you all—but not all at once, and trust me, there is not time enough to give each of you the attention you deserve. A hero deserves a hero’s portion.”

  A voice asked about Yu Shan, his heroic qualifications. She frowned, and reached as though to close the hatch; a dozen voices forestalled her, and there were sounds of a scuffle below.

  “Ohé! Stop that, you let him be … Is that the man who doubts Yu Shan’s … capacity, is it?”

  A mumble from the man himself, any number of others more assertive: yes, this was he, the fool, the disparager.

  “Well. This is the hero who’s prepared to fight Yu Shan, is that right? To prove a man is better than a boy? Don’t you lot knock him about, that’s not fair. He needs to be fit when he faces my boy …”

  A gale of laughter, all but drowning out the man’s humiliated, desperate pleas: no, he didn’t mean that, he didn’t mean anything, he didn’t want to fight Yu Shan …

  “I don’t suppo
se you do. I don’t suppose any of you do. You’d need to, though; you’d need to best him first if you wanted to bed me. I’d insist on it. Tell you what, though,” she went on, in the face of their sullen silence. “Rather than fighting him, why not fight with him? Prove yourselves better, outpace him, outslaughter him? He’s only a boy, after all. And not a warrior.”

  She let them ponder that, until, “We can’t fight with him, he’s with the other fleet!”

  “He is, he’s with the emperor. So let’s race them to Santung, get there first, be in the city before they are. Then you can fight side by side when he arrives. You can do me a favor, show him how to use a blade, teach him some tricks maybe; he’s not stupid, but he’s no use with a tao. All he’s got is strength and speed, and he stole those from the emperor …”

  While she bantered, the shift and sway of the hull had changed beneath them. They must be out in the open strait now. There would be less work on deck, less urgency, more tolerance for passengers. And a far greater chance of dragon. Almost a certainty.

  Men like to see the thing that’s like to kill them.

  She said, “Meantime, we’ve a long night to get through. What say we get up on deck before the light goes and the rain comes, before the rest of you ugly types spill out of the other holds? There’s no sleep tonight, and no one’s going to mind if we burn some lamp oil, so long as we keep out of the way. I’ve a flask, and so do half of you; and you’re all holding cash, and a curious yen to lose it to me in a game that I can’t possibly be any good at, being a woman and all …”

  They had a ladder to climb, but few of them troubled to use it. Jiao backed away, and the hatch-rim was suddenly aswarm with hands as men leaped up and hauled themselves out. It was the best she could manage, one squad pacified and brought to hand; one squad that would fight with her all the way, watch her back, die with her if necessary. Not die for her, perhaps, not yet. That too might come, if the fighting turned bad.

  If they ever came to fighting.

  First, there was still the dragon.

  And then—if they weren’t all eaten or drowned—she could play these men all night, bond them to her like a pirate crew, land-pirates.

  And come the morning there would be fighting, war. That would keep her busy.

  AND NONE of it, nothing of it could substitute for Yu Shan, or squeeze him out of her head. He lurked in her blood as much as her mind’s eye, his absence a constant dull ache that had her rubbing her arms although she was not cold, a hollowness in the air that had her always looking around although she knew he was not there.

  It would not kill her; it would not even distract her when there was work to be done, fighting or ducking dragons or bonding with her men. Nor would it leave her, ever.

  It felt, just a little, like the way he said he felt in the absence of jade. Needful, hungry, unsatisfied.

  She was too old for this, and far too wise. And here none the less, caught somewhere between desert and desperation, a lack in her body and a yearning in her head.

  five

  All his life, Old Yen had sailed above the dragon’s head and barely given her a thought, except to be grateful to the monks of the Forge as their hammer pounded out their promise to the world, that she would be kept in chains.

  Grateful too to the Li-goddess, of course, always that. These were her waters, where the dragon lay.

  Now he sailed back and forth across the strait under the dragon’s eye, and she was never out of his mind.

  He believed—who better?—in his goddess, and in her protection. He had seen it demonstrated again and again, even before the dragon rose; he was her living proof.

  Her advocate, that too. He had made promises in her name, and even the emperor believed them. Even the emperor’s advisers, who had allowed the Son of Heaven to sail with him.

  If that cautious council could trust in her, who had never offered a moon-cake at her shrine or seen her hand on the waters; if they could trust the precious body of the emperor to his promises, then certainly he should trust in them himself.

  And he did, of course he did; and yet, and yet …

  OLD YEN might not doubt the goddess, ever, but he could still doubt himself. He was no priest; he might be mistaken. And the goddess—he had learned, newly—was not the kind and gentle lady he had worshipped for so long. She had, no doubt, purposes of her own. In this mood, he could no longer imagine why she should want to save the fleet, or the emperor, or himself. If she was not well disposed, inclined to listen to an earnest prayer, then he had no idea what she was or why she would ever lend a hopeful fisherman a hand.

  Nothing to do, then, but pray and hope, reach for a lifetime’s faith and never try to understand it. Certainly not try to understand her; she was beyond him, as she always had been, only that he had been too slow to grasp that. He had thought they were friends, as a kitten might think it was friends with an emperor.

  HE HAD thought his own beloved Mei Feng was friends with this emperor, but he wasn’t so sure of that now either.

  The emperor stood out on the stern deck with him, only to show his men that he was not afraid of any dragon, so long as he stood under the shield of the goddess; and Old Yen had to ask, of course. It would not be true to say that he was not afraid of any emperor, even on his own deck, but this particular emperor was a boy, and almost a friend of his, and almost family. And the generals and advisers who had come aboard with him were still in the cabin, out of earshot; there was no one but the emperor himself to be offended, if a fisherman spoke to the Son of Heaven.

  He said, “Majesty, I saw Mei Feng on the quay there, giving you that, that,” that object so extraordinary he had no word for it, a shirt somehow made of scales of jade that clung to one another and to the emperor like a second skin. The emperor himself seemed hardly to believe it; he kept glancing down, shifting his body to feel the weight of it and the way it moved. Reaching to touch, to run his hand over the hard glimmering smoothness of it.

  “Yes?” The emperor’s eyes, lifting to find his: they too were hard and glimmering and smooth, as darkly green as the shirt and as impenetrable.

  Old Yen had been hoping for a smile on the face of her boy, at least a little warmth in his voice, perhaps a little wonder. She was wonderful, and two men who loved her ought perhaps to talk about her a little, when they were tense and anxious and uncertain.

  Instead—well, he couldn’t falter yet, although he wanted to. One step more: it felt uncomfortably bold in the face of that blank regality.

  He said, “Majesty, how is my granddaughter?”

  “You saw her. I believe she is well enough,” and apparently even the gift of that shirt was not enough to mend whatever had broken between them.

  Well, it was a hard gift in a hard season. There would be time later for reparations, perhaps. In his triumph, if it came to that; or else in his defeat if he survived it. He might lose the battle and retreat again, if he could find a boat to carry him back to his mother. He would need Mei Feng then, then above all, but there was no way to tell him so.

  Perhaps he knew already. He touched the shirt again, was suddenly all boy and not at all emperor; slid his eyes sideways and murmured, “Has she always been so angry?”

  Which gave Old Yen the chance to smile, to nod, to stroke his beard and say, “Yes, indeed. She was born furious, and nothing has softened her yet.”

  The emperor sighed. “I thought she was furious like a kitten, fierce and delightful. But now she is like a river in spate, a mountain river, cold and angry and unforgiving …”

  “No, majesty,” daring to deny the emperor his insight, “not unforgiving. Relentless, say rather, until she achieves what she wants. It’s something that we love in her, that she will be angry at the world until it changes.” At the world, or at a man; he didn’t need to say that.

  The emperor almost seemed to hear it anyway. He shivered visibly, though he couldn’t be cold and Old Yen didn’t think he was afraid. “Well,” lifting his head, staring for
ward, “she cannot change this. Except …” He laid his hand flat against the shirt almost as though it might have been her hand. “She thought of this, you know, and had it made. Even, even in her anger.”

  “Yes, of course. Her anger is always practical, majesty; she doesn’t only shout and steam, she looks for ways that she can make things better.” Better to have an emperor and a man to love, than not; better someone to be angry with, than the other thing.

  HIS THIN words couldn’t bridge the gulf they’d torn between them, and besides, he was probably speaking to the wrong one; but he could at least point out where a bridge might lie. He’d need to bring the emperor safe back to Taishu first, or it would be him Mei Feng was angry with, and no hope of forgiveness. She was … not always reasonable, where she had suffered an irredeemable loss. Her mother’s death she had always blamed on her father; that was why she made such a willing crew for Old Yen, so young. It was a way to escape her father and a way to spite him, both at once.

  Youth and rank are famously not receptive to wisdom. He had preached hope and patience, as carefully as he could; now he had nothing more to offer. They stood each of them caught in the other’s silence, nowhere to go from here except onward into ocean, night and war. None of which seemed to matter as much as that silence did.

  It was almost a relief when the dragon came.

  SHE CAME in low, gliding over the water like the dusk, a darkening shadow; and rose to skim—barely—above the highest mast in the fleet, which was the jade ship’s. There was someone up there at the masthead, Old Yen heard the whoop faintly in the wind of her passage; and was already smiling in recognition before he remembered that no, Mei Feng was not with this fleet, she was safe back on Taishu.

  Likely that was Jiao, then, whooping in some folly of excitement under the dragon’s belly. For sure it had sounded like a woman.