by Ben Galley
A curt gesture from the midwife brought several of the servants who had been standing in the shadows forward. They held a long bolt of gleaming black cloth; behind them, other servants bearing cloth the color of the morning sky clutched their burden to their chests and remained motionless. They would not be needed this day.
Their movements slow and solemn, the servants unhooked the red curtain and replaced it with the black. Jhenna glimpsed what lay upon the bed: a tangle of soiled silks, smeared with blood. Black hair spread over velvet cushions. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Consort Wei’s pale arm, dangling over the edge of the bed, and her plum-colored nails – it was only yesterday that Jhenna had applied that lacquer while they gossiped about the other women in the palace. Now she was gone.
The head midwife cast a fearful glance behind her, at the chamber’s entrance. “My lord…”
“Go,” the warlock said tiredly. “He may be wroth.”
The midwives and the servants hurriedly retreated from the room, their eyes downcast. The head midwife was the last to leave, briefly slipping within the black curtains, then emerging a moment later cradling a small bundle. She bowed again to the old warlock and followed the others from the chamber.
Only Jhenna and the sorcerer remained. He did not seem to notice her, huddled as she was in the corner. This did not surprise her. She had grown very skilled at not being seen in the months since arriving at the Jade Court.
A shudder passed through the old warlock, and before her eyes, he seemed to grow more gnarled and stooped, as if finally allowing the weight of what had transpired to fall fully upon his shoulders. He raised his hand to run it through his gray-threaded hair, but then stopped himself, staring at his blood-drenched arm.
Footsteps. Not the whisper of a servant’s slippers as they hurried to their tasks, or the heavy clump of a soldier’s boots, but confident, measured strides. Jhenna turned to the archway that led deeper into the women’s quarters and caught a flash of yellow robes as someone entered the room.
Her breath seized in her throat and she threw herself to the floor, pressing her forehead to the cold stone.
He was here. The Beloved of Heaven had come. He may be wroth.
“Excellence.”
“Bae Fan,” the emperor said softly, “what has happened?” He didn’t sound angry, Jhenna thought. Weary, perhaps.
There was a long pause. Jhenna could imagine some of the various explanations and excuses the old sorcerer was considering. In the end, he told the truth, as Jhenna had witnessed it.
“Consort Wei went into labor soon after breaking her fast this morning. I hurried here, and immediately could tell that something was very wrong. The child…your son had wrapped his birth cord around his neck. He was strangling himself, and he could not finish pushing his way out. I tried to save him and the mother by cutting…”
Again, a terrible silence filled the birthing chamber. Jhenna wanted to glance up and see the expression on the emperor’s face, but if he glimpsed her doing this, such impertinence would result in a beating, or worse. So instead she ground her forehead into the stone and breathed as quietly as she could.
“Give the prince and his mother a proper funeral. Let them lie for three days and three nights in my family shrine, then inter them in the tomb of my ancestors.”
“As you wish, Excellence.”
The footsteps began again, this time receding. Jhenna stayed in obeisance for another dozen heartbeats to make sure the emperor was truly gone. When she finally raised her head, she found that the Autumn Warlock had vanished as well. She hadn’t heard him leave.
She took a deep shuddering breath. Not long ago, the birthing chamber had been a riot of activity as a dozen people had endeavored to bring new life into this world. Now she was the only one here alive.
Jhenna rose and slowly approached the bed. Hesitating only for the briefest of moments, she pulled back the curtain.
Consort Wei lay as if asleep. Her eyes were closed and her striking face untroubled, her thin lips slightly parted. She had always been unusually pale, but now she looked like one of the noble children’s ceramic dolls. The color that had drained from her cheeks now stained the sheets. Jhenna reached down and laced her fingers with Wei’s, brushing her thumb against the consort’s still-warm skin.
She brought her lips to her ear. “May the Mother of Mares carry you past the Great Black Grass, my heart sister.”
A tear escaped as she gently kissed her friend’s brow. It fell upon Wei’s cheek and trickled away, leaving a glistening path.
Jhenna straightened. With a last, lingering look at the one friend she had made in Shan, she drew back the black curtain…and gasped.
She was no longer alone.
A young man stood in the chamber, his hands clasped behind his back. His dark blue robes were decorated with twining dragons picked out in shimmering red thread, and the hilt of a jeweled sword was thrust through his black sash. He watched her without expression. Her heart thundering, Jhenna stepped from within the curtains and fell to her knees.
She knew who this was – she had seen him in court, standing high up on the Heavenly Steps. Ma Qin, first son of Emperor Ling Qin.
Jhenna dared to look at him. He had his father’s strong jaw and piercing black eyes, but there was also something different. While the emperor’s gaze reminded her of the golden eagle that her father, the Yari of her people, had kept as a hunting bird, the prince’s did not. There was less of a predator about him, more softness in the corners of his eyes and the cant of his mouth. She swallowed as they stared at each other for a long moment, and then some emotion she could not place shivered the prince’s face.
“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 nek’avas. 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, and when she’d voiced this question to Consort Wei, the answer she’d given had seemed so obvious. The nek’avas 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 flicker 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 gyres 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 s
aid, motioning for her to rise. “Jhenna ne 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 to your father.”
“Tribute.”
Jhenna remembered the scarred giant astride his great horse, thundering toward 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 – even when saddled, there remains an insolent glint in their eyes.”
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 high, uptilted 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 that 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 an alacrity 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 them 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 heartlands. The shadows of clouds crawled across the great green expanse, mapp
ing 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, still 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, and she saw that 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.