The Veiled Dragon

by Denning, Troy

  The witch turned to see the princess pushing her head out of the hole in the floor. Her hair was disheveled and there was a red mark on her brow where Ruha’s heel had glanced off, but otherwise she showed little sign of their battle.

  Wei Dao allowed two of Hsieh’s men to help her into the room, then pulled Ruha’s jambiya from her sash and pointed the curved blade at the witch. “Lady Ruha is insidious assassin!”

  The accusation caused several of the guards to reach for the witch, but Hsieh raised a finger and waved them off. “If Lady Ruha wishes me dead, she has many chances better than this to attack.”

  Ruha inclined her head to the minister. “I am grateful—”

  Hsieh warned her off with a scowl and quick shake of his head. “Must wait for princess. To Shou, form is all.” The mandarin looked at Wei Dao, then gestured at one of the mats beside their table. “Please.”

  The princess slipped the jambiya into her sash, then took several moments to straighten her hair and collect herself. For a time, Ruha thought she might be stalling until her own guards entered the room, but no one climbed into the room after her, nor did Hsieh’s men give any indication that they expected—or would welcome—any of the princess’s soldiers to join them. At last, Wei Dao came to the table and bowed to Hsieh, then calmly kneeled on a mat beside Ruha as though she had not just accused the witch of being a murderess.

  “Esteemed Mandarin, please to forgive Prince and me.” By the continuing blare of Wei Dao’s voice, it was clear that her ears were suffering from the detonation even more than Ruha’s. “We do not tell you all.”

  “Then do so now—more quietly,” Hsieh urged.

  Wei Dao kept her eyes lowered. “Lady Feng does not visit sick friend in Elversult.”

  Hsieh barely kept from smirking. “Truly?”

  “Truly. Prince Tang learns of plan to kill Third Virtuous Concubine, and he sends her into hiding.” Wei Dao raised her chin and glared at Ruha. “Treacherous witch is assassin.”

  Ruha could not stomach the lie. “That is—”

  Hsieh waved a cautioning fìnger at the witch. “You ignore form, Lady Ruha.” Though his voice was stern, his face remained as blank as ever. “Please to let Princess explain why someone—presumably Vaerana Hawklyn—wishes to kill Lady Feng.”

  Wei Dao was ready with another lie. “To stop trade in poisons. Vaerana threatens many times to ‘take measures’ if we do not stop, but Honorable Husband does not let savages dictate business of Ginger Palace.”

  “How wise.” Hsieh’s tone was as flat as his expression was blank.

  Wei Dao continued, “After we must exchange witch for person of Esteemed Minister, we think she give up and leave—then we find her hiding in ylang blossoms.” The princess peered at Ruha from the corner of her eye. “She is most resolute killer.”

  Hsieh nodded sagely. “Most.”

  “We are taking her to Chamber of One Thousand Deaths when she makes lamp explode and escapes again,” Wei Dao continued. “Please to lend me sword. I promise Honorable Husband that I kill barbarian before he returns with Virtuous Mother.”

  Yu Po immediately reached for his sword, but Minister Hsieh quickly raised a hand to restrain him. The adjutant’s jaw fell slack, as did those of several guards.

  “Do you not wish to hear what Lady Ruha says?” Hsieh asked.

  Yu Po and the guards glanced at each other as though the thought had never crossed their minds. “But Lady Ruha is barbarian!” Yu Po gasped. “Princess Dao is wife of son of Third Virtuous Concubine.”

  Hsieh nodded as though he were in complete agreement with his adjutant, then bit his lips as though struggling with a difficult decision. “What you say is most true. It does not matter that Lady Ruha saves our lives when dragon attacks Ginger Lady.”

  The mandarin allowed his gaze to linger on Wei Dao, who took several quiet breaths and tried not to look concerned as the color drained from her face.

  “If Shou princess claims barbarian witch intends to kill Lady Feng, then we must believe her.” Hsieh continued to glare at the princess. “If she feels certain we understand her correctly—and if she is certain she says what she means.”

  Wei Dao’s painted lips began to quiver, but she did not look away from Hsieh’s penetrating gaze. “I … I am certain.”

  Yu Po placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, but cast a questioning look at Hsieh and stopped short of drawing it. The mandarin remained as motionless as a statue and continued to glare at Wei Dao. Ruha hardly dared to breathe. She did not understand all the nuances of the exchange, but it seemed clear enough that the minister was trying to save her life—whether because he wished to repay her or because he needed a spy, she did not know. It hardly mattered, and the witch sensed that even the slightest movement on her part might well bring the contest to an unfavorable end.

  As frightened as Wei Dao appeared, it was Hsieh who looked away first. “It appears the princess is most confident of herself.”

  Yu Po drew his sword. Before Ruha could summon the incantation of even a simple spell to mind, two guards grabbed her arms and pushed her forward, laying her head flat upon the table. The witch uttered a silent prayer, begging the forgiveness of Lander, her dead lover, for failing as a Harper, then took her last breath and prepared to die.

  The blow did not fall. After a time, Ruha opened her eyes—she did not remember closing them—and craned her neck against the restraining hands of her guards. She saw Hsieh and the others standing over her beside the table. The mandarin had taken Yu Po’s wrist to restrain him from giving the sword to Wei Dao.

  “The Emperor’s justice cannot be denied, but we are in land of savages,” said Hsieh. “We must allow Lady Ruha to speak, so her friend Vaerana Hawklyn may not protest that our execution is unjust.”

  “Esteemed Mandarin, why do we care if Vaerana Hawklyn protests?” Wei Dao’s voice continued to be overloud. “She is barbarian!”

  “Vaerana Hawklyn is barbarian with army. If she makes hostage of Shou Mandarin, does she hesitate to sack Ginger Palace?” Hsieh paused to let the others consider his point, then continued, “But if we follow form of barbarians and let prisoner speak, perhaps we appease Vaerana’s superiors. Perhaps we avoid battle.”

  The mandarin released his adjutant’s wrist. Yu Po lowered his sword, but did not return the blade to its scabbard. He and the other Shou no longer seemed quite so confused by Hsieh’s perverse defense of the witch’s life. Ruha dared to hope their reaction meant the minister had finally prevailed in the strange battle of protocol between him and Wei Dao.

  The princess frowned, but seemed unable to effectively oppose the suggestion. “Ask, but her answer is lie.”

  Hsieh smiled grimly. “Yes, if you say it is.” He leaned over Ruha. “Lady Ruha, does Princess tell truth?”

  “No.” The witch’s answer reverberated through the tabletop and returned to her ear sounding loud and deep. “Lady Feng has been abducted.”

  Ruha’s assertion elicited no cries of outrage or gasps of surprise. The Shou remained as silent as stones, and by their silence the witch knew that none of them, even Hsieh, gave any credence to her claims.

  Wei Dao reached for Yu Po’s sword.

  “I can prove what I say!” Ruha exclaimed.

  It was Hsieh who scorned the witch’s claim. “How can you prove what is not possible?”

  The mandarin’s tone was severe and impatient, as though he had expected her to say something else. Cold fingers of panic began to creep through the witch’s belly. Yu Po was awaiting permission to yield his sword, and Ruha could not imagine what Hsieh wished to hear. Wei Dao had already declared anything the witch said to be a lie, and the Shou seemed unwilling, perhaps even unable, to believe otherwise. The truth, even if it could be proved, did not matter—and Ruha suddenly realized what the minister wanted her to say.

  “Princess Wei Dao is protecting her mother-in-law,” the witch said. “Lady Feng has taken a lover.”

  Hsieh gasped much too
loudly, prompting Yu Po to step back and sheath his sword.

  “Lady Ruha, you are certain?” Hsieh did not even bother to feign his shock well. “Princess Dao is … mistaken?”

  “Is that not a good reason for her to have me silenced?”

  “Indeed, but it does not work. I suspect this myself.” Hsieh whirled on Wei Dao and fixed her with a stony glare. “Do I not warn you about lying to me?”

  “I am Shou Princess.” Though her chin was trembling, Wei Dao held it high. “I do not lie, Esteemed Mandarin.”

  “No?” Hsieh glanced at the guards pinning Ruha to the table, who promptly released the witch and stepped back. “Lady Ruha, please to show proof of Lady Feng’s imprudence.”

  Ruha straightened her aba and started to remind the mandarin that what she had offered to prove was not Lady Feng’s infidelity, but her abduction—then she thought twice about confusing the issue and held her tongue. To the Shou, the witch was beginning to realize, truth was a relative thing. As long as she had Hsieh’s support, any evidence she offered would no doubt be taken as proof of whatever the mandarin wished.

  Ruha started to lead the way out of the room, then remembered her manners and bowed to Wei Dao, gesturing toward the door. “If the princess will show us to Lady Feng’s apartment?”

  Wei Dao frowned in confusion, then turned to lead the way out of the room.

  Halfway to the door, she suddenly stopped. Her forehead was slick with sweat and her face was sick with fear. “This is not right. I cannot show others into Lady Feng’s apartment.”

  “Then I shall.” Behind her veil, Ruha allowed herself a small smile. “I know the way, as I’m sure you remember.”

  As the witch moved to step past, she saw Wei Dao’s hand drop toward her sash.

  In the next instant, two of Hsieh’s guards lay on the floor holding their bloody throats, and Wei Dao was leaping through the air, slashing at Ruha’s throat with her own jambiya. The witch twisted her body to the side and reached out to meet the assault at the wrist, but the princess’s reflexes were as quick as lightning. She circled the blade beneath Ruha’s blocking arm and reversed it, driving the tip toward her victim’s heart as though she had been fighting with jambiyas all her life. The witch saved herself only by falling to the floor and madly flailing her feet in a desperate attempt to trip her attacker.

  There was no need. Moving with a deliberate grace that appeared almost languid, Hsieh slipped behind the princess. He clamped one hand over the wrist of Wei Dao’s weapon hand, then shot his other forearm around her throat and brought it up under her jawline so hard her feet came off the ground.

  Wei Dao’s eyes bulged and her tongue appeared between her lips. She flung her head back in an attempt to smash her captor’s nose, but Hsieh simply tipped his face out of the way. The princess made a brief, rasping attempt to breathe, but the veins in her neck were being pinched shut by the mandarin’s arm, causing her head to run out of blood long before her lungs ran out of air. Her face turned a shocking shade of purple-gray, and the jambiya slipped from her hand. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets; then she stopped struggling and began to spasm.

  Hsieh dropped her at a guard’s feet. “Greatly unexpected. I am most curious to see what we find in Lady Feng’s chamber.”

  Ruha could not take her eyes off Wei Dao’s unconscious form. During all her training with the Harpers, she had never seen a woman move with such deadly speed and grace. Had she not seen the ease with which Hsieh disabled her, the witch would not have believed anyone—especially a one-eyed man of Hsieh’s age—could move more swiftly.

  “Minister Hsieh, I thank you for my life,” Ruha said. “You are a man of many hidden talents.”

  The mandarin smiled. “In Shou Lung, we long ago learn wisdom of being better warriors than those who guard us.” He turned to Yu Po and gestured at Wei Dao. “Bind princess well and take her to apartment. Inspect her chambers to see that she is … safe.”

  Yu Po bowed, then began issuing orders in Shou. As Hsieh’s guards scurried into action, the mandarin selected a half-dozen men to accompany him, then led the way up an immense staircase to the second story, where he astonished the palace sentries by allowing Ruha to use her wind magic to open the door to the Third Virtuous Concubine’s apartment. The minister scowled at the macabre frescoes that decorated Lady Feng’s antechamber, then followed the witch through the dressing closet into the bedchamber.

  Ruha went straight to the corner and pulled Lady Feng’s writing desk from the wall. When she did not hear any scratching or whining on the other side of the secret door, she began to fear that Wei Dao had done something with Chalk Ears. The witch took a deep breath and, wondering how Hsieh would react if it turned out she could prove neither Lady Feng’s indiscretion nor her abduction, pushed open the hidden panel.

  The secret chamber looked as though a whirlwind had erupted inside. The worktable in the center of the room had been swept clean of its cauldrons and balances, which now sat upon the floor amid a knee-deep jumble of books and broken glass. Heaps of severed bat wings, blackened fingernails, and silk-wrapped spider eggs were scattered everywhere, often coated by stripes of rainbow-hued dusts and powders. One of the cabinets had even been pulled over and now lay broken into two splintered pieces.

  Save for a sleeping cushion, sandbox, and two silver bowls containing untouched supplies of food and water, there was no sign of Chalk Ears. Although the jagged shards of glass had been broken out of the window through which Ruha had escaped, the casement itself remained open and not repaired.

  “Is this what you bring me to see?” Hsieh asked.

  “No. What I brought you to see is gone.”

  Ruha could almost see what had happened. After she jumped through the window, Wei Dao, or some of her guards, had tried to capture Chalk Ears. The familiar had panicked, and the ensuing struggle had destroyed Lady Feng’s laboratory. In the end, the little creature had escaped through the broken window, and the princess had elected to leave it open in the hope that the beast would return.

  The witch picked her way across the room. “I had hoped to show you Lady Feng’s familiar.” She picked up the red sleeping cushion. “But I fear Chalk Ears has fled.”

  “Chalk Ears? Perhaps you mean Winter Blossom?”

  Ruha held her hands about a foot apart. “It was a little creature that could have been a cross between a monkey and a raccoon. I found it here when I—” The witch stopped short of admitting what she had been doing in Lady Feng’s chambers. “It looked like it had not eaten for a week.”

  “He,” Hsieh corrected. The mandarin waded into the room and kneeled beside the familiar’s lair. “Winter Blossom is male lemur—though I think Eye Biter is better name.”

  Ruha caught herself staring at Hsieh’s silken eye patch and looked away. “Winter Blossom is more than a pet to Lady Feng. Had she departed the Ginger Palace willingly, I doubt she would have left him behind.”

  Hsieh sighed heavily. “But familiar is not here.”

  The mandarin waved his guards into the room, and Ruha’s mouth went dry. She glanced out the empty window pane, already summoning to mind the same wind spell she had used to escape Wei Dao, then swallowed her fear and told herself not to panic. The guards arrived and arrayed themselves around Hsieh, at the same time blocking the witch’s path through the window.

  Ruha squatted beside Winter Blossom’s silver bowls and waved her hand over the contents. “The familiar escaped after Lady Feng’s departure, or these would not be full. Wei Dao hopes to lure him back.”

  Hsieh met Ruha’s gaze. “I do not doubt what you say. If Lady Feng takes Winter Blossom, she takes his bed.” He picked up the lemur’s sleeping cushion, then tossed it to a guard. “So, where is Lady Feng, and why does she not take familiar?”

  “I told you—she was abducted.”

  “So you do, but I think you are lying. It is so much better if she takes lover.” Hsieh shook his head in disappointment, then gave Ruha a stern glance. “
Perhaps you tell me what you are doing in Ginger Palace—and no lies. Today, I grow impatient with lies.”

  When Ruha paused to consider how much she should say, the mandarin rose. “Please do not refuse.” He glanced at two guards, who took Ruha by the arms and jerked her to her feet. “Truth potions are most damaging to mind, and you cannot escape.”

  “It was not my intention to try to escape—and let us both hope that does not become necessary.” Ruha fixed an icy glare on Hsieh and remained silent. When he finally waved his guards off, she began, “Not long ago, a staff of some sentimental value was stolen from the Lady Yanseldara …”

  The witch told Hsieh of how someone was using the staff to steal Yanseldara’s spirit, and of Vaerana’s belief that Lady Feng was responsible, and of her own effort to recover the staff from the Ginger Palace, and, finally, of her subsequent discovery of the Third Virtuous Concubine’s abduction. The mandarin listened patiently and closely. He did not interrupt, even when she told him of Tang’s involvement in the Cult of the Dragon and how the prince had attempted to conceal his mother’s kidnapping.

  When Ruha finished, the mandarin contemplated her account in silence for many moments, then raised his hand and held up three splayed fingers. “I have questions. Where is Prince Tang now?”

  “He seems to have decided that the only way to redeem himself is to personally rescue his mother.” Ruha did not say in whose eyes the prince wished to redeem himself. The less Hsieh knew about the prince’s attraction to her, the better. “I believe he has taken a company of guards and gone to attempt that.”

  Hsieh winced, but nodded and folded down one of his fingers. “Second question. Theft of spirit takes no more than two or three days. Why has Lady Feng not finished?”

  “I am not certain. But I do know Prince Tang was awaiting the fresh ylang blossoms aboard the Ginger Lady.” When the mandarin furrowed his brow, Ruha hastened to add, “The kidnapper believes he is in love with Yanseldara. Perhaps they are for a love potion?”

  Hsieh shook his head. “Then why does he steal spirit? Only reason to use love potion on spirit is to bind it to another spirit, for long journey through Ten Courts of Afterlife.”