by Daniel Fox
For sure it had sounded like Mei Feng, and the emperor had looked around also at the call.
And then, never mind whoever had whooped: that was the dragon and she was here, and now they would learn—again!—whether they were safe indeed under the goddess’s blessing.
THE DRAGON rode the air, low above the fleet, and then climbed higher. She hung overhead like an omen, like a raptor, like a promise of doom. When your goddess turns away, she seemed to say, you will find me here. Waiting.
six
Tunghai Wang had slept well all his life, even as a soldier on campaign. Especially, perhaps, as a soldier on campaign, when his bed was a blanket if he was lucky, under a roof if he was lucky, more often on ground that was dry if he was lucky, under a sky that—if he was lucky—might not rain on him.
As a general he had rated a tent, a wagonload of furniture and men to erect it every night, take it down and pack it up next morning. His bed was a rice-straw pallet on a frame, and he had still slept well.
On the long march from the Hidden City, the year-long chase across the empire, when sometimes they were so close to their quarry that there was no time to pitch a tent and he had simply lain down among his men for what few hours’ rest they could afford to snatch—then, yes, with all the noise of an army camp around him and all the tension of the hunt, then he had slept exceedingly well.
Now, though? Now that the chase was over, now that his hopes were in abeyance, now that he had four close walls and a solid roof, a good mattress on a good bed, warmth and comfort and company too if he chose it, a guard outside the door to ensure that he was not disturbed whether he was alone or not?
Now he slept badly, those nights that he slept at all. The doctors said his body was out of balance with his soul; they prescribed teas to drink and prayers to recite, gifts to various temples, exercise and particular foods.
Nothing helped, which surprised him not at all. He thought it was the dragon in his dreams. Certainly he had slept well before the dragon came, even the night the beacon flared, the night he sent the fleet.
The dragon destroyed the fleet, and Tunghai Wang had not known an easy hour since.
He consulted the doctor on the ridge, but that fool was no better than any other. It was his assistant, the girl working as his servant who offered hope, but not there. She would need to study, she said, certain books, certain scrolls that might be in the city, in the palace he occupied himself, if she might have his consent to search …
Anything, of course. He had hopes of that girl, though none of her master.
THE MORNING of the beach raid, he had heard its noise and smelled its smoke before any man thought to come and tell him. Sound and smoke both travel, far and fast; they can outstrip any news of war, to find a wakeful soldier.
Walking on one beach after another, amid sprawled bodies and smoking ruin, the stinks of blood and ash intermingled in the sand beneath his boots, he said, “This was desperation, no more. They saw our fleet and knew they could not stand against it; they knew we would build again, come again; they came to do what they could to forestall us, to delay us a season if they could. No more.”
“The dragon, though, general,” an aide murmured, his eyes shying at the sky. “They dared the dragon, to do this …”
“I said. It was desperation. What else?”
NOW, THIS morning, he knew what else.
He had been sure, so sure they would not come again; and now they had.
The typhoon had come and gone, the endless storm that was said to be the dragon’s temper. He had taken that as assurance that they would not come again. If their first raid stirred up such a fury, a second must bring destruction on their heads.
Besides, there was nothing more to raid. It would take a year to build another fleet; they would know that, knowing how much damage they had done, how many craftsmen slain, how many hulls stolen, how many burned. Why should they chance the dragon again until they had to?
But now they had. He was called again, privately from a sleepless bed; he had ridden up to the headland. In the clear light of an early sun, he saw a stain on the water to the east, a stain to the west. Boats, his runners and riders told him; ships, they said. Fleets. Invasion. Oh, he was bold suddenly, this emperor boy …
PERHAPS HE had reason to be.
High on the wind above, drifting from one fleet to the other as they parted, rode the dragon. A weapon, a conscript, an ally …?
Whichever one, it really made no difference. She made all the difference in the world.
Already the men here, his most reliable men, were wanting to retreat up the river valley out of Santung, to head inland as fast as they could go. They might have fought an army here, even depleted and anxious, as startled and unready as they were; but who could fight a dragon? Who would dare?
seven
Biao was master in the doctor’s tent because Tien allowed it: because it flattered him and did her no harm. Her uncle might have been angry, but he was beyond this world now. She did not, she most determinedly did not believe that the ghosts of beheaded men were cursed to wander for eternity, sundered from heaven. No.
Her uncle had believed it, but—well, right or wrong, his faith could make no difference. None at all.
No.
The space behind the tent, the slope down to the river belonged to the eunuch boy’s mother. She drew water there and washed clothes and dressings and sometimes patients too, just as Tien used to do. She cooked meals there, again as Tien used to do. When it wasn’t raining she spent all her time out there, crouching quietly bereft in those brief times when she could find nothing to do.
Lacking any name for her else, Tien called her Mu Gao, because she was tall and lean and her son was far out of her reach now, and again it cost Tien nothing.
EXCEPT HER space, perhaps. She had lost what she used to have, and had not gained what used to be her uncle’s. Between Master Biao and Mu Gao she could have felt entirely squeezed. Except …
Her proper life was still in healing; her practice was still in her uncle’s tent. It was she who diagnosed the patients and dispensed the medicines, though she worked behind the puppet figure of Master Biao. Everyone knew. It was her they trusted, though it was his fat hands they paid. She had her place and the respect that she was due, though it was all veiled by a conspiracy of deceit. She and he pretended that Master Biao was the doctor here, and the patients pretended to believe it.
Still. He was master in the tent. That was agreed between them. The rest was Mu Gao’s, by right of seizure. Which left nowhere for Tien, except …
Except that Tunghai Wang had come to consult the doctor, because he was not sleeping. She wasn’t sure whether the generalissimo remembered her face, whether he knew she was her uncle’s niece; but he saw soon enough who could help him.
Every morning, then, before sun-up, she would take this walk: away from the tent and from Mu Gao, who would be already awake—Tien was not entirely certain that the dour silent woman ever actually slept—and nursing a slow fire into life, ready for the day, while Master Biao snored on inside the heap of his blankets, never ever ready for the day however late it came.
With no more than a cup of something hot inside her—“white tea” they called it but it might be anything except tea, brewed from whatever fresh leaves they had picked yesterday unless there had not been time to go harvesting, in which case it would be nothing but hot water—and the pearl glow of the sky to guide her, she would follow the steep road down into the city.
Shadows along the way would resolve themselves eventually, reluctantly, into people—they might be soldiers on watch or soldiers on patrol, they might be soldiers at liberty, they might be civilians hungry or hopeful or sick, they might very well be patients on their way to the doctor’s tent even though they knew the doctor would not be seeing patients for hours yet—who would greet her with respect because everyone knew her and what she did.
The high square shadows of the city streets would enclose he
r, with their little groups of soldiers always gathered at the corners like rubble fallen from the walls. Here now there were no greetings, only the falling silence and that awareness of being watched as she hurried by, knowing she was safe enough because these men knew her too. Which might not have been enough, except they knew also that she had the sanction of the generalissimo to come and go at will, which was like having the sanction of the dragon: exactly like, as both the dragon and Tunghai Wang had lost one battle, one, and the dragon had come back from that, she had risen into her power again, and so why not Tunghai Wang?
At last, here was the governor’s palace that Tunghai Wang had claimed for his own, where she like a little mouse half-hidden and half-ignored had nibbled off a corner for herself.
The guards at the gate knew her, and let her by; so did the guards in the first courtyard. Indeed, they waved her through more briskly than usual, as if she mattered less than ever, as if their minds were thoroughly elsewhere.
In the second courtyard, she glanced briefly toward the gateway to the third, where the generalissimo would ordinarily be bathing and breakfasting and briefing his generals at this time. Today there lacked the usual bustle of horses and litters and guards, but busy or not, she would still not go that way. She did not need to speak to him, to see him, to examine him again. She knew what ailed him, what kept him wakeful. There was no cure for it this side of the strait, except by poisons that would harm him night by night even as they numbed him into sleep, that would kill him quickly by carelessness or slowly by constant repetition. Either way he would be dead too soon, unsatisfied, his ambition unrequited. That would be no use to her, and possibly a danger.
Left, then, to a guarded doorway, where again she was let through unchallenged.
Here was a hall, dark-timbered, dark; she stepped over the threshold and reached to the left, where a lamp was always burning on a shelf. Waiting for her, set ready. Sometimes she wondered if the generalissimo filled it and lit it himself in his restlessness, in hopes that it might guide her to a cure.
If he did, he was doomed to disappointment. Another disappointment. He was a disappointed man already, which was why he could not sleep.
With the lamp cupped between her hands, she walked to a smaller door, a side-chamber, her little miracle, the space that she had made her own.
No one else came here. Tunghai Wang did not read, assuming for a moment that he could. A man might have the gift of it, she supposed, and still choose not to use it. If he was a warrior, say, if he thought he could win all his arguments at the edge of a blade; or if he was a commander of men, say, with his eyes on yellow silk and a green stone throne, who could order others to read to him, and then most likely only messages and treaties.
Where Tunghai Wang chose not to lead, not a man in his long shadow would push ahead. It took a girl, she liked to think, not sworn to him, a lucky chance, though the luck was all her own.
Not even his looting, raping soldiers had found this room, or troubled with it after it was found. Shelves and boxes full of books and scrolls: why bother? They would be good only to start fires, and Tunghai Wang slew firestarters out of hand.
Tien was careful with her lamp, though not from fear of Tunghai Wang. It would be her tragedy to start a fire here, whatever the consequences. It would be burning out her own heart.
Whoever made this room had worried themselves about fires. Here was a niche set into the wood of the wall, rough stone to stand a light on and bright polished stone to reflect its light out into the room. She put her lamp in the niche, opened shutters in anticipation of the day, sat at the reading-desk and reached to the shelf below. Here was the scroll she had been looking at yesterday. A slip of polished bamboo marked her place.
It was no doubt a terrible thing to be deceiving Tunghai Wang, and terribly dangerous too. She ought to be ashamed; she ought to be afraid. But she did already know the cause of his insomnia, and there was no cure to be found outside himself. She had told him so, as best she could, and given him advice that he was not following because she was a slip of polished girlhood and he carried the marks of a hard lifetime on his body and had no idea how he might listen to her.
Besides, he didn’t want to change his soul, his life or his ambitions. He wanted a draft that he could swallow down and so sleep, and so rise again the same man but better rested.
And—who knew?—perhaps she would find the recipe for such a draft, somewhere in this library. No cure, but a treatment, yes. It was not what she was looking for; she might not believe that it existed; it might turn up none the less. There were records here from a thousand years of medicine and magic. She had not tried to count the many hands, the many minds whose work had been brought far and far across the empire. She wasn’t cataloging the collection—although she could, and someone ought to—nor trying to put it into order. It had an order already, like a map of its first owner, a network of ideas and connections that Tien tried first to trace and then to understand.
If there was a path to what she wanted, here was where she would find it: here if anywhere, if she was able. Where else could such a library have collected, an aggregate of wisdom on the two subjects that most concerned her? She was not the first to wonder, to worry, to need. Her uncle had studied as best he could, without notice or resources; she could do better. She must do better.
What she lacked, of course, was time. She read hastily, skimming anything that didn’t seem useful, dwelling only where she found mention of the dragon or control. Which was unlucky perhaps for Tunghai Wang, but she consoled her conscience with the thought that control was what he needed too. Coupled perhaps with a modicum of insight.
She had brush and ink on the desk there, and a sheaf of little papers supplied by Tunghai Wang, or at least at his order and supplied by his men, which meant that they were torn from any other source of paper that they found. Often there was some part of a painting on the reverse, and she hated that. Using those, she felt as guilty as the hands that had torn it: as though the desecration, the destruction of art, continued beyond the destruction of the thing itself.
Perhaps that was why she was less inclined to copy what she needed, more inclined simply to tear it from the book or from the scroll, to slip it inside her shirt and steal it as she blew out her lamp, as she left the library to the light of morning, a little less every visit than it had been when she came.
Perhaps she wanted to be as guilty as she felt.
Or perhaps she only wanted to be practical. Master Biao had torn so many pages already from her uncle’s books, it was just easiest to hide new pages, needed words among the discards and the ruin where no one would ever think to look.
NO ONE would ever look in any case. It was herself she hid them from. Who else? Master Biao read no more than Tunghai Wang, whether or not he could, and Mu Gao surely not. There were no thieves came sniffing around their tent; one at least of them was always there, and they were known to treat thieves and rogues as well as honest folk. Instead of honest folk, perhaps. There were no honest folk, in this grim city these grim days. People survived by thieving, one way or another.
Perhaps that was why she had taken to it herself, because theft was the currency of the times. Or else because the knowledge was stolen, so the paper might as well be also? Or something deeper, perhaps, and more determined. Whatever she took, she kept from other people. If there was an answer for Han here, he would have to come to her …
OR IT might only be that there was a pleasure in this, scuttling out of the palace in the early day with secrets crinkling against her breast, past guards who knew nothing of them, away from Tunghai Wang who had no notion what she was taking from his seize; climbing the long hill out of the city with something at least to compensate her, something achieved against the desperate cruel failure of the streets around her, that could not feed or shelter or protect their people; coming to the tent with something that Master Biao could not touch, Mu Gao could not interrupt, no one could have anything to say to it but her.<
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Perhaps that was why she stole these pages, to give her sole possession: to let her feel, just for once, this is mine …
Hers and she was holding to it, her whole little stack of knowledge, speculation, fantasy and lies. In there if anywhere was the gem of truth she sought, that moment of recorded wisdom. Set down for the ages, and hers now if she could only find it.
Lost forever, perhaps, if she couldn’t, if it needed other wiser eyes. She should feel guilty; she did feel guilty. More than that, she felt determined. It would be here somewhere, and she would find it, and save so many lives and hopes …
MEANTIME, HERE was a queue of the early sick, and Master Biao livid with her for being absent, again, when he was wanting her.
“You, Tien—where have you been? Again? Always sneaking off when you know you will be needed, when you know mornings are the busiest times, when people bring the diseases of the night to us and I want you most urgently and you are never here, and …”
She stood calm beneath his onslaught, because it was only words; he wouldn’t strike her again. These days, he didn’t even shout: hissed rather, as though all the roughness and sharp edges, all the volume of his voice had been rubbed away by a too long flow of words. She waited for that flow to check, and then bowed low, an insolent submission that he would know to mean nothing.
“Give me one minute,” she said, “to change my clothes, I have the mud of the road on me; then I will be here to help you serve your patients, Master Biao.”
A screen of silk gave the thinnest illusion of privacy, but it was enough. If he eyed her silhouette as she changed, whatever soft shadows the light might cast against the screen, that was only his lust and she was accustomed to it, accustomed not to worry about it. If he was harvesting snatched glimpses of her body—the thrusting peak of a breast, the slim roundness of a buttock—he wouldn’t see what mattered more, what her hands did besides shedding fabric from her skin.