by Alec Hutson
“She died,” Jhenna said, surprising herself. One of the first rules that had been drilled into her when she had arrived at the Jade Court was that she should never speak first.
But the prince only continued to watch her. “I know,” he finally said. His voice was quiet, and she heard the sadness. “I came to show my respect to my brother and his mother.”
He bowed his head in silence, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he nodded to her, and then with a mourner’s solemn steps he turned and withdrew from the chamber.
When the scrape of his slippers had faded away and she was alone again, Jhenna gave herself over to the grief that had been swelling inside her. With a wrenching sob, she fell to the floor and let the tears come.
He found her the next morning in the Labyrinth of Ten Thousand Blossoms.
She had woken early and entered the imperial gardens, following the twisting copper paths through shadowy grottos and beneath the limbs of monstrous banyans, until she had come to the tree her people called tsenalish. It was barely more than a shrub compared to the ancient sentinels standing vigilant beside the shrines and koi ponds, a tangle of spidery branches speckled with leaves red as heartsblood. She had wondered why the imperial gardeners had decided to include such an unimpressive tree in the Labyrinth, but when she’d voiced this question to Consort Wei, the answer she’d given had seemed so obvious. The tsenalish was the only tree that grew on the steppes, over which the Empire of Silk and Celadon claimed dominion. Just like her own presence here, its inclusion symbolized that it belonged to Shan.
She came to this tree when she needed to commune with the gods of her people. Watching the yellow and blue birds hop among the branches, hunting the tree’s small bitter fruit, she could almost imagine that she stood once more upon the steppes. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the wind slithering among the long grass and the distant shriek of a hawk as it turned circles in the sky . . .
“Good morning.”
Jhenna whirled around, the sounds of the steppe vanishing. He stood upon the gleaming path only a few paces behind her, resplendent in a green robe trimmed with gold.
“Prince Ma,” she murmured, dropping to her knees.
“Please, stand,” he said, motioning for her to rise. “Jhenna nas Kalan. You are my father’s consort. You do not need to abase yourself before me.”
She felt her face flush. “I . . . forgive me, Prince. I do not know all the court’s—” She searched for the proper word, but her limited Shan failed her.
“Customs. Intricacies. Rules.”
She smiled weakly. “Yes. Those things.”
His lips quirked, and she felt a small flutter in her chest. There was something pure about him. Without guile. Almost everyone she had met in the Jade Court – even Consort Wei – seemed to always be wearing masks that hid their thoughts and feelings. To show your true self was a weakness that could be exploited.
But not him . . . unless he played the game better than all the others.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“In the gardens?”
Again, the soft smile. “No. In my father’s court.”
“Three . . . no, four months. I arrived just before the earth shook and the eastern wall collapsed.”
“You are the Mak Yari’s daughter?”
“No . . . no. My father was one of the last Yari to fight him. When my tribe was defeated, I was taken as a prize.”
Jhenna pushed down the terrible memories that threatened to rise up as she said this. Fire and smoke and her brother’s screams . . .
“The Mak Yari sent me east as a gift for your father.”
“Tribute.”
Jhenna remembered the scarred giant astride his great horse, thundering towards her tribe’s yurts as ten thousand screaming, white-painted warriors followed. She had only known the Mak Yari for a few terrible days, but she was sure he thought of his dealings with the emperor of Shan as an exchange between equals, and not the offerings of a vassal king.
“If you say so, Prince.”
She started as the prince suddenly laughed. “I know what you’re thinking, Consort Jhenna. You barbarians are a proud people.”
“If you say so, Prince,” she repeated.
More laughter. “You remind me of the stallions from the steppes that sometimes come before the court – the insolent glint in their eyes persists, even when saddled.”
Jhenna had also known horses like that on the steppes. If their will didn’t eventually break, then they would be broken in other ways. She kept this to herself, though – it was not wise to contradict a prince.
His face suddenly grew more serious. “You were in the birthing chamber . . . you knew Consort Wei?”
Jhenna swallowed. For a moment she’d forgotten about what had happened yesterday. She nodded curtly.
“You were friends?”
“Yes.”
“It is not easy for consorts to make friends in the palace, especially with other consorts.”
She knew this. True friends, at least. False friends were as common as worms after the rain.
“Wei was kind to me. She had a pure soul.”
A distant look stole across the prince’s face. “I thought the same. Perhaps it was why she could not persist in this place.”
“My prince?”
He waved his hand, as if dismissing his thoughts. “Never mind.” He squinted up at the sun and pursed his lips. “I must go, Consort Jhenna. But I will speak to you again soon. Do not let the falseness in this place taint you – there is still nobility in the empire, I promise.”
The wagon lurched sickeningly, and something twisted inside Jhenna. She covered her mouth with her hand, willing her stomach to settle. The thought of being sick here, in this nest of pillows and silks that smelled of lavender and jasmine, was too terrible to contemplate.
One of the other consorts inside the wagon with her, an amber-skinned girl named Puli from the southern coast, noticed her queasiness and giggled. “You look terrible. Never traveled in a wagon before?”
Jhenna shook her head, struggling to even speak. “Horses,” she finally managed, swallowing away bile that had crept up into her throat. “I always rode horses.”
Puli made a face. “Horses, ugh. Big smelly brutes. Dangerous, too. My uncle was kicked in the head by one.”
“You traveled by wagons everywhere in your homeland?”
“Boats. We lived on the southern ocean and only came to land to trade. This wagon ride would have to get a lot rougher to be worse than the sea during a storm.” As if to prove her words false, the wheels bounced again, hard enough that Jhenna felt herself briefly lift from the pile of cushions she was sitting on. But Puli kept on grinning, as if nothing had happened.
The last consort in the wagon, Tan Pei, made a disgusted noise and stuck her hand out the small window beside her. A moment later a young soldier’s face filled the frame.
“Yes, Honored Ladies?”
“Is the driver trying to hit every rock in the road?”
The soldier flinched at the anger in Tan Pei’s tone. In the palace, she was known for having a wild temper, and it seemed that reputation extended into the barracks.
“No, Consort. I’m sorry for your discomfort. There is no road. We turned from it some li past. The ground here is very rough – but it seems to get smoother up ahead. We are almost to Sleeping Dragon Valley, I believe.”
Tan Pei dismissed the soldier with a wave of her hand and sank back into her mound of pillows.
His gaze lingered for a moment on Jhenna and Puli, and then he bowed his head and vanished.
“Oh, he was handsome,” Puli said after he had gone. “Let’s find another reason to bring him back.”
Tan Pei sighed and closed her eyes, ignoring Puli. Jhenna wanted to ask if she knew what this
mysterious journey was about, but didn’t care to risk Tan Pei’s anger. The Shan consort had the milk-pale skin, glistening black hair, and wide eyes which marked her as a paradigm of beauty in the empire. But like most of the Shan beauties Jhenna had met, she married her flawless looks with a disagreeable temperament. In the empire, it seemed that beautiful girls were expected to be spoiled brats – on the steppes, the older women would have sent her to gather horse dung for the fire if she’d dared the same antics Jhenna had witnessed daily in the women’s quarters.
Jhenna was curious why they had been chosen from among the emperor’s hundred consorts to accompany the imperial retinue today. The selection of Tan Pei and Puli made sense – rumors in the palace claimed they were the current favorites of the Beloved of Heaven, and both had recently begun sharing his bed. Jhenna, though, had never been invited to the imperial quarters, and only twice had she even stood in the same room as the emperor: yesterday, when she had huddled in the corner of the birthing chamber while he had spoken with the warlock, and months ago when the Mak Yari’s envoy had formally presented her to him in the palace’s audience hall. She wondered if Prince Ma was the reason she had been invited to come and witness this ceremony in the northern wilderness. The thought made her feel strangely warm.
Lost in daydreams that featured the prince’s soft voice and exquisite eyes, she didn’t notice that the wagon had stopped until the sliding door was drawn back.
“At last!” Tan Pei cried, lunging for the doorway with a quickness Jhenna had never seen her display before; most of the time in the palace she lounged about with the regal indolence of a housecat.
Puli followed, and then Jhenna emerged blinking into the harsh light.
“Sleeping Dragon Valley,” said the soldier, sweeping out his arm to encompass the vista before them.
Their wagon had halted on the lip of a rocky escarpment, and spread below was a deep and wide forested valley ringed by stunted mountains that looked to be in the process of collapsing back into the earth. A half-year ago even these stony hills would have awed Jhenna, but she had seen far larger peaks on the edge of the steppes where they’d crossed into the Shan heartland. The shadows of clouds crawled across the great green expanse, mapping strange continents upon the rolling woods. And they were rolling – the ground rippled strangely, like it was a rumpled blanket kicked from a bed during the night. If she squinted, it almost looked to her like there was a great serpent slumbering beneath the forest. That must be where the valley had gotten its name.
“Where is my palanquin?” Tan Pei shrieked, her long-nailed hands opening and closing like she wanted to throttle the gray-bearded functionary standing before her.
He regarded her calmly, even as the soldiers milling about shrank away. Clearly, he’d had some experience dealing with her in the past. “There is none, Consort Tan. Only the emperor and the empress will ride in palanquins today.”
“By whose orders?” she seethed through gritted teeth.
“The empress.”
“That insufferable bitch! It’s just like her to . . .”
Jhenna turned away from the raging Tan Pei, lifting her robes as she picked her way across the stony ground to get a better view of their procession. Several dozen wagons had halted in front of their own, and it seemed like many of the most influential members of the Jade Court were disembarking. Though she’d only been in the palace for a short while, she recognized several of the mandarins and their wives: there was Lord Cai, warden of the western reaches, and there was Lord Cho, who owned half the silk plantations in the empire.
They did not seem upset by the lack of palanquins.
She noticed with some surprise that even though they had ventured deep into the wilderness, most of them had still worn fine ceremonial dress. Strange.
The glint of gold drew Jhenna’s eye; two ornate palanquins had started on a path leading down into the valley. A tall man she suspected was Prince Ma walked beside them, his hand casually resting on the hilt of the sword at his side. The other mandarins and nobles were falling in behind the emperor and his empress.
Jhenna turned back to their wagon. Tan Pei was now stamping her feet, while Puli had sidled closer to the handsome soldier who had looked into their wagon earlier.
Leaving them behind, she hurried to join the procession.
They descended into the forest, passing from bright sunlight into a twilit gloaming. There was little underbrush, as trees with bark the color of mottled bone wove a dense canopy high above. The ground was covered by a thick carpet of moss; several times Jhenna’s slippered feet sank almost to her ankles.
The silence surprised her. She had expected the air to be filled with birdsong and the buzz of insects, but the forest was as quiet as a temple . . . or a tomb. It was almost oppressive. She must not have been the only one who felt this way, as the babble of conversation ceased soon after entering the woods, replaced by whispers.
She gasped when she felt a presence appear beside her, and then gasped again when she turned and saw who it was.
“My prince,” she murmured, ducking her head.
“Consort Jhenna,” the emperor’s son replied.
He didn’t seem surprised to see her, so that explained who had invited her. Jhenna’s heart quickened as she considered what this could mean.
“You don’t mind traipsing through the woods like this?” Prince Ma asked, kicking at a fallen tree and sending chunks of rotten wood flying. A centipede the length of her forearm slithered deeper into the log.
Jhenna shrugged. “I’ve never been in a forest before, but I’ve lived my life on the steppes, under the sun and stars. I don’t need silks and cushions to feel comfortable.”
Prince Ma eyed her appraisingly. “That must make you unique among my father’s consorts. Most of them seem to believe that waking up too late to be served breakfast is the greatest hardship anyone could endure.”
Jhenna glanced at the prince, in his fine clothes and bearing a jeweled sword. He seemed to hear her thoughts, because he chuckled. “Ah, you think I’m just like them.” He gestured at the Shan nobles stumbling through the forest. “Coddled and soft. But I’ve actually had my share of hardship.”
She tried to better mask what she was truly thinking, but he saw her skepticism.
“You don’t believe me. That’s understandable.” He looked away from her. “My father believes in strength, Consort Jhenna. He’s a student of history, you see, and the history of my people – the Shan – is riddled with stories of fallen dynasties. Strong emperors whose sons were raised in luxury and became weak, inviting disaster. So, when I was ten years old, my father sent me to live in a garrison bordering your home. I was to accompany the soldiers when they ventured out onto the steppes – dine with them, care for my horse, suffer those scouring winds that bend the long grass, that sort of thing.
“But a few days into our first patrol we were ambushed by the Mak Yari’s warriors. They butchered the Shan soldiers, sliced off swatches of skin to stretch across their shields, and took me prisoner. For five days I stumbled naked behind their horses with a rope around my neck. They joked about killing me, about cutting off my thumbs and nose and . . . other parts. I was sure I was going to die. I was tempted more than once to just stay sprawled on the grass when they kicked me awake in the morning and embrace the darkness that they would surely deliver. But in the end I found my will to live, and I reached the Mak Yari’s encampment. What do you think was waiting for me there?”
Jhenna shook her head.
The prince grimaced. “Lord Ban, one of my father’s foremost advisors, and a regiment of elite dragonhelms.”
“They came to rescue you?”
“Not really. The ambush had been planned, orchestrated by my father with the help of the Mak Yari. It was done to temper my will and show me hardship. Lord Ban was there to collect me and bring me back, if I survived the steppes.�
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“Your father did it . . .”
“Yes. But my father is subtle – the lesson was not just for me. Do you know who else?”
Jhenna thought for a moment, and then it dawned on her. “The Mak Yari.”
He smiled grimly. “Yes. You’re quick. The steppe tribes are always a threat to the empire, and the Mak Yari has united them for the first time in a century. By enlisting the Mak Yari’s aid in this scheme, my father also demonstrated to the steppe warlord that he was a hard, brutal man who would sacrifice anything to strengthen Shan. Not an emperor to trifle with.”
They walked on together in silence for a ways, both lost in their thoughts. “Is that why you sought me out in the gardens?” she finally asked.
She could feel him glance at her. “Yes. I . . . wanted to know more about your people. The only other Nasii I’d ever met were horribly cruel and vicious.” A small pause. “Though I now know they were acting on my father’s orders.”
“And what does that say about us barbarians?”
“Perhaps that we Shan are not so much more civilized,” he admitted grudgingly.
Jhenna could feel something between them. She didn’t want to touch it, lest it collapse.
“Where are we going?” she asked, changing the topic.
Prince Ma shrugged. “A temple of some kind, I think. My father has been very close-lipped about this trip.” He gestured, encompassing the rest of the nobles trudging through the forest. “I had no idea half the Jade Court would come along.”
“You truly don’t know what this is about?”
“Some ceremony that’s done every few decades. It’s important, or else it wouldn’t be so well attended. I see the head of every great house, the four warlocks of Shan, even one of their apprentices, and those boys almost never leave the towers.” Prince Ma squinted, peering into the distance. “Wait, can you see that?”