Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  Really, little thing?

  This was their bargain, their new bargain; he had demanded it in exchange for what she wanted. And had been rather astonished when she said yes, when she complied. She had done it and he should be satisfied, she could demand her own satisfaction now but seemed content to wait. And he had brought this on everyone below, and he thought he ought to be there, if only for a moment.

  Really. Take me down. Then, I promise …

  You have promised already.

  So she took him down into that wicked swirl of cloud, and he thought he knew typhoon but he had never known anything like this: the wind that gripped like madness, like steel fetters, that would have lifted him straight out of his boat if he hadn’t been holding on quite so tightly already, his legs wedged deep beneath a cross-beam; the rain that was not like rain at all but like walking—sailing—flying into a wall of water, a wall that fell and fell and fell on him, that flooded this folly of a boat in moments and would have drowned him right there in the sky if the dragon’s claws hadn’t already done so much damage to the sprung timbers of the hull that the water drained away as fast as it could fill.

  He could see nothing through the water that engulfed his head, though he left it hanging hopefully over the side until he genuinely thought the wind might rip it off as a bauble. He couldn’t breathe, could barely move: only to draw back into the unshelter of the boat, the unsafety of the dragon’s protection, huddle his head beneath his arms and hope to survive this. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it must be for those below, those not gripped in the security of a dragon’s clutch. He couldn’t imagine anything, his mind would not move beyond its own immediate miseries.

  Take me away from here.

  He had wished this on them, on all of them, the two fighting armies below. He had brought it down on them, and he couldn’t bear it.

  And he still thought he was right.

  Take me away meant now we do what I promised you: it meant take me to the beach, where the smiths are, where he could get these chains finally struck off and set her entirely free. If she chose to eat him then, it would be her choice and nothing he could do about it, but he didn’t think she would. Not now.

  She flew low along the river, letting everyone see her, letting them all know that this was her storm, her mastery of the sky’s temper. Actually he thought it was his storm, the price he’d demanded for her freedom: see where all those tiny people are contending, two armies at war, impossible to misunderstand even from above; do something, anything you can to stop them fighting …

  Tien would be grateful, he thought, when he found her.

  Other people would survive because of it, maybe thousands of others, but he did it for Tien, for the thought of her.

  WHEN THEY reached the city’s edge, the rain failed; the wind turned its back on them; the last water fell away through the holes in the boat’s hull. He could stand again, hold again to the side and peer over.

  Even with his back turned to that great storm-shadow, Santung looked strange from the air. It was no great wonder; everything looked strange from the air. The dark winding of the river that looked so like a road from up here, stony and still, except that it was too wide and too empty, like a spill of ink across a page; the streets that were straight like needles, the lanes and alleys that wound between them like thread, like an inextricable tangle of thread; the people who were nothing but fragments of movement, vanishing stitches up and down the streets, in and out of shadow, in and out of buildings.

  And the buildings like boxes, square or stretched or twisted, roofs that were only blocks of color, one shade or more than one; if he knew the city intimately, if he’d had years of living there, he still didn’t think he’d be able to map his way around it from above.

  In any case, the dragon wouldn’t give him the time. She was fast through the air, astonishingly fast, as she was astonishingly huge on the ground. There was the sea already, an incomprehensible vastness of water; and between the city and the sea were the narrow yellow shavings of beach, and she was dropping down already to make landing, and—

  —AND THERE was no point, because the beach was empty. There was the run of smiths’ forges, one or two even leaking a little thin smoke still, but no one was attending them. Han had lived days and weeks in pain and fear, to and from this beach, dragging whatever metals he could find and carry and keep; its busyness then proved as fugitive as that life of his, now that he had fallen into this other.

  Of course the smiths were gone. If they’d had a choice, it could only have been to have died here, under the blades of imperial troops. At the first rumor of invasion, they would have fled with Tunghai Wang and all his rebels, out along the river roads and up into the hills.

  She said, Little thing. You promised me men, with hammers. A wealth of threat in so few words, such a small accusation to carry such an infernal weight of danger.

  I did, he said, and we will find them. Take me to the western ridge, above the city. Smiths were craftsmen, not soldiers; one of them might be lurking in the camp there, hiding while the invasion front passed through, hoping to establish himself with the emperor after. More likely—Han thought, he hoped—he would find the doctor there in his tent, not hiding, confident in the gifts and use of his profession.

  The doctor and Tien. She would know if there was a smith to be found. If not, for sure she could find a man strong enough to wield a hammer, to break a few chains and work a collar off.

  They would need tools. Han scoured the line of forges, found hammers and cold chisels in swift time, bundled them up and hurried back to the boat, where the dragon had set it on the sand and now lurked above it. Scowlingly, he would have thought, if her face had had anything human about it, if her spirit had. She was always fearsome, but her coiled body, the pose of her neck, her eyes above all as they glowed at him: everything about her spoke of suspicion, distrust, doubt. All of that on top of her common mood, rage barely contained. She never had been anything other than furious, since she broke free—no, since he broke her free of her long sea-prison bed.

  Mostly she was furious with him. He ought to be too terrified to move; and yet here he was, hurrying almost heedlessly toward her, anxious only not to drop the awkwardness of his burden, angular sliding weights of wood and metal …

  He let them all fall into the bottom of the boat, checked that they wouldn’t fall out through any of the various holes, and barely had time to scramble in himself before she had seized it—more holes, her talons punching through the timbers as though they were paper—and lifted it, lifted herself and him too into the wind again.

  He fell, in the jerk of that lift-off; and lay sprawled painfully on his back across the thwarts, gazing up the length of her scaled leg toward her vivid throat and astonishing himself with a smile. Not for her, of course—what use would she have, for his smile?—or for her sake, but a smile none the less. Insensible, incomprehensible, rising from somewhere deep and dark and mysterious within him, when he had thought all smiling lost or locked away, gone for now if not quite gone for ever.

  NOW HE did have to navigate himself and her, from mid-air. Hanging over the side, spinning directions like a thread in his head—yes, follow this road to the height—or was it that one? No, no, this, I’m sure this—and wishing he didn’t need to, wishing she could just reach into his mind and take out what knowledge was there, whatever she needed. It would be so much simpler than this struggle to see and explain. Her eyes and her understanding were both so much greater than his own, and she was so used to knowing the world in this layered way, from above and below and all around …

  If there had been a window to his brain, I make you free of what is in here, all of it, he would have done it. So long holding out, and suddenly he would have surrendered utterly.

  No need, though, or not for this. There now, see it? That pale sprawl among the hutments there, where the only smoke is rising? That is the doctor’s tent, and Tien’s little fire behind it. I can find what
help I need there. Soon now, soon, I swear it. Let me down. Let me down here, at a distance. If you try to land any closer you will hurt someone, or scare them into a fit …

  IT WAS strange, the strangest of ways that he had found yet to come to her, stepping out of a boat on a high dry ridge with barely a view of sea or river. The dragon made everything strange, though, or perhaps she made everything normal.

  He stepped out of the boat and gathered up his tools, struggled again to find a way to carry them, ended by lifting up his shirt hem and making a sling of it. Which he had to hold in both hands, rather grimly, when he could only grip thoroughly with one; which made a hard struggle of his walk through the abandoned camp. He had been seriously cautious in where he’d had the dragon set him down, half a mile from the tent, and he was filthy and sweating and probably ridiculous when he ducked through the tent’s doorway and found himself eye to eye with a stranger.

  A man, middle-aged, with none of the doctor’s lean significance. He was packing knives and bottles into a bag; perhaps the doctor had taken on a servant? He would be needing all the help he could find, sure, with all the hurt there must be now—again!—in the city and beyond it, the injured struggling to find some way back out of the impossible rain …

  “What is it you want, lad?” the man demanded sharply. “I have no time, unless your errand is urgent?”

  Unless your errand is well paid was what he meant. Han knew that phrasing, that particular look. And frowned, and said, “Sir, I was looking for the doctor.”

  “I am the doctor.”

  “No, I mean Doctor Hsui …” Could Tien’s uncle have taken on a partner, rather than a servant?

  “Doctor Hsui is unfortunately dead. I am master here now. What is the nature of your business? Any need you have for a doctor …”

  Dead.

  It happened, of course. Around armies, around broken cities, it must happen too often, too early. Around doctors too, perhaps, exposed as they were to their patients’ diseases.

  And Doctor Hsui had not been a young man; and even so, Han was shaken by the news. Shaken physically, so that he nearly dropped his tools again. And could only shake his head to the new man’s questions, and was still trying to find a way to frame one new question of his own—where is Tien, is she dead too?—when the flap at the back of the tent opened and she came in.

  “Master, are you ready yet? And did you see that shadow that came over? It was gone by the time I looked up, but I think the dragon’s back. We need to move, down to the temple. And we should—”

  AND THEN she saw Han, and her momentary frown, her swift recognition, her sudden awful stillness were all marvelous to him, marvelous to watch.

  And then she was hurtling across the space at him, seeming almost to pass through the benches and chests that stood between them. He couldn’t fend her off, with his hands full of bundled shirt and that great weight of wood and iron stretching the fabric; he had no time to find a place to stow it.

  In the end he simply let it all fall, dangerously between his feet and hers, so that they both had to dance a little to avoid bruised toes; but then he had his arms again, and her slender solidity inside the circle of them. And her arms around his neck, her face against his chest, her hair in his mouth and no words, no words anywhere in the tent until the man—she had called him “master,” which seemed odder even than his calling himself a doctor, and that was odd enough in here, where Doctor Hsui’s ghost overstood every shadow—rasped his throat impatiently and said, “Who is this, Tien? And what has happened to your hurry? You were all urgency to be away, down to treat the soldiers; and now …”

  And now she lifted her head away from Han, which was a wrench, it tore at him; and she turned her head, which was worse, except that he could look at her for a little, at this little part of her, the black top of her head and the way her hair was combed and knotted; and she spoke, and he could hear her voice again and she was still not speaking to him but that didn’t matter at all because his name was in her mouth anyway, she was speaking about him.

  Tien said, “This is Han, master. I told you about him, he’s the boy who chained the dragon.”

  Which was all wrong, entirely and deliberately so; and entirely and deliberately cruel, Han saw, as the man paled behind her. It was the second time she’d mentioned the dragon in as many breaths, which was neither accidental nor innocent. She meant to do it; but her mind was moving on already, he could watch it at its quick work: looking down at all that ironmongery about their feet and then up at him, at the iron around his throat, feeling the cold weight of chains that pressed against her body, imagining the cold weight of dragon on his mind …

  She said, “Han, you look terrible. Have you been eating? At all?”

  “Yes,” he said smilingly, “of course …”

  “Not enough, and all the wrong things. And there is pain in your face, that hand of yours has been bad again, I think; it drains you, even if there’s no poison in it anymore. And the dragon, she drains you too, she does you damage every day. Sit, sit—don’t argue with me!—and take that shirt off. I will brew a tea for you, a medicine; and when you’ve drunk it I’ll put my needles in your neck, and take that pain away.”

  He had known her needles before; he remembered the dreamy drifting state they brought him to and tried to hold out against her insistence. “Tien, I need to shift these chains first, I promised … The dragon is waiting … It won’t take long, and then I am all yours, but I must …”

  Apparently he must sit down, her firm hands offered him no choice. “She has waited all this time, she can wait one little hour more. You will still be here; I cannot vanish you from the tent and steal you away from her. But while I’ve got you under my hand, right now, I am going to give you the start of what you need, Han,” and indeed she was pulling the shirt off over his head, giving him no chance to do it himself. “Look at you, all bones …”

  The doctor said, “Tien, if the boy needs feeding, we can spare him some food. We can leave him with the food for all I care, let him eat all he can and watch the rest until we return. But we should go, do you hear me? Go. There will be men, perhaps women too, at the temple, hurt far worse and in far more need of your medicines than he is …”

  He was fidgeting at the very door of the tent, carrying those bags he’d packed, more like an impatient servant than a master, casting worried glances out into the air as he spoke. Don’t fret, Han could have said, she is a dozen miles away upriver, playing with her storm, herding your soldiers this way and that, flicking lightnings at them like a whip, like a playful child with a whip, while she rolls on the wind and waits to be freed utterly, waits on my promise.

  It was Tien’s to settle, though, however she chose; and she startled them both, the man and him, by snapping, “If you’re suddenly so keen for it, go doctor the soldiers yourself. Watch out the dragon doesn’t eat you on the way. I’m staying here.”

  The man’s hand lifted and he took a step toward Tien as though it was natural, as though he could beat her as he chose. But a step toward Tien meant a step toward Han also, and brought Han’s face into his eyeline. What did the man see there, just a cold threatening fury—touch her if you dare, I have a blade here that will take your hand off if you do—or something more, a hint of the extraordinary, I have a dragon in the air?

  Whatever it was, it paled him again, it stayed his hand and stole his will; he stepped backward through the tent door, “Yes, yes, I will go down. You follow, you will find me …”

  And then the flap was falling behind him, and he was gone.

  After a moment, Tien said, “Will your dragon eat him?”

  Han didn’t suppose so, no, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t speak for her. He only felt confident to say, “She hasn’t tried to eat any of the soldiers yet, or anyone on the ground. And she isn’t my dragon,” chains or no chains. Sometimes he thought he was her human, her boy. Soon they’d both be free now. Soon now, soon.

  It felt good to be sitting,
better to have her hands on his body, on his skin. It was a loss when she left him, a hurt that was almost physical and very immediate, something to be indulged in, almost a pleasure because he knew that she would be coming back so soon, with a kettle hot from the fire; he could enjoy the anticipation of that even before he enjoyed the thing itself, watching how she moved, seeing and cherishing the little ways she’d changed since he saw her last—her hair was a little longer and a little more rigorously controlled, she was a little older and a little more rigorously controlled, as though she had grown a steel core in their parting—and loving how she kept glancing back at him between scoops as she mixed her tea, a little out of this jar and a little out of that.

  She brought him the draft, black and steaming, bitter in scent and sour in the mouth. She frowned at his sipping and said “Swallow it off, all of it. Oh, never mind if you burn your mouth, it’ll do you no good cold in your belly.” Her hands were gentler than her words but just as determined, tipping the bowl at his mouth so that he had to swallow and swallow or else let it run down over his chin.

  And then her hands were in his hair, rumpling it, tangling it between her fingers as she looked into his eyes. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, exactly, only that it was something that needed searching for deep; and it meant that he could look back into hers, which suited him exactly. It was like a plunge into ink-pools, into the words of her, where she was written deep in the book of the world’s soul; and if he felt the dragon stir, well, no doubt she was just anticipating her freedom, stretching her winglessness against his chains …