by Zoe Marriott
“Mother?” he muttered. “Is that you?”
I was so taken aback that I choked on my own breath. Was it worse than I thought? Was he delirious? Then I heard the tiny, pained snort of his laughter, and panic dissolved into annoyance and amusement. “You ass!”
“Insulting me when I’m down, Hua Zhi? I’m shocked at you.”
I sat back, scrubbing the heels of both hands into my eyes. When I lowered them, he had managed to roll his head sideways on the thin infirmary mat where they had laid him out, and he was looking up at me. His eyes looked huge in the dim interior of the building. The white of the left one was marred by an ugly red bleed around the iris, and the delicate skin of his left eyelid was painfully swollen, blotched black and purple.
“Shouldn’t you be at training?” he asked.
“Not yet.” I took a deep breath. “Yang Jie, you have a head injury, bruised ribs, a possible chip to your eye socket, a badly sprained wrist—”
“And a chill from lying in the river unconscious for my ancestors know how long before Ma Wen found me and dragged me out,” he completed acerbically. “Yes, I know all that, thank you. The doctor told me when I woke up the last time. Any particular reason for reminding me?”
“They said that you didn’t see who attacked you.” I leaned in again, lowering my voice again. “Is that true?”
“They got me from behind – I only felt the first blow. Then I was out.” But his eyes flicked away from mine as he said it, and I knew. He might not have seen the person who attacked him, but just like me, he had worked it out.
I couldn’t even tell if it was rage or terror I felt, or some mixture of both. When Ma Wen found him, Yang Jie had been almost fully submerged, only a buried tree stump just under the surface keeping his head partially out of the fast-moving water. His attacker had tipped him into the river without caring if he drowned – or worse, had intended for him to die.
“Hua Zhi?” Yang Jie’s voice was suddenly nearly as hushed as mine had been. “Your face is doing that – that scary blank thing. You know I hate that.”
My shadow mask had not been designed to reflect such emotions. My real face, I had no doubt, would have scared Yang Jie far more.
“It was Lu, wasn’t it?”
Yang Jie said nothing.
“There’s no one else who would want to hurt you. You weren’t even worth robbing. Your money purse was still in the barracks. It’s punishment for yesterday – for me sparring with the Young General instead of him. For showing off. He couldn’t go after me directly, so he punished you instead.” I closed my eyes as my tumbling words slowed to a halt, leaving only the fatal ones left to be spoken. “It’s my fault.”
“Oh, don’t start,” he said wearily. “It’s just as likely he did it because he despises me for being a weakling and, anyway, you’re not my bodyguard—”
“Yang Jie!” His name came out as a shout. A nearby doctor and two of his assistants looked up from grinding mysterious powders to stare at me curiously. I fought the urge to cringe away. They couldn’t find me out just by looking.
Yang Jie was staring at me in concern. “What?”
“You almost died.” The words hung in the air between us and Yang Jie’s face went still. “Lu tried to kill you because he hates me. I caused this. What do I do?”
Yang Jie’s fingers twitched. Gingerly, he slid his hand up to clasp mine where it rested on his shoulder. His hand was very warm.
“You realize I’m the one lying here in my sickbed,” he said dryly. “Aren’t you supposed to be comforting me, instead of the other way around?”
Stricken, I started to pull my hand away. “I’m sorry—”
“Listen.” His fingers tightened around my hand. “This may come as a shock, but the fact is: not everything is about you. You didn’t do this to me. He did. Him. You can’t take responsibility for whatever warped thoughts make him act this way. People like Lu … you can’t appease them. I know that because I tried for years with – with my father and brothers. It never, ever worked.” His words slowed, and he took in a short, gasping breath.
“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said, alarmed at the sudden welling of moisture in his eyes.
“Shut up, will you? Let me speak. It’s hard enough.”
I clamped my lips closed.
“My family. They hated me. My whole life. Just because I was the youngest, the smallest, just because I was…” He waved his free hand to indicate his delicate face, his slim form. “The way I am. I followed their rules, I tried to be what they said they wanted me to be, but I think that just made them despise me more. My mother would comfort me, but it was always the same questions. What had I done to deserve it? Had I spoken too loudly? Spoken at all? Breathed in their presence? Why couldn’t I just … not do whatever it was I had done? I had to have done something. It had to be my fault. For a long time that defined me. They made me feel there was nothing about me that was worthy of love, or kindness or respect. But I couldn’t live like that, hating myself the way they hated me. I would have … broken. Become just as bad as them, or worse. Eventually I had to accept that it wasn’t my fault. It was hard – hard to admit to myself there was no hope, that they would never love or accept me. That there was no perfect way I could conduct myself, no better version of the person I was that would deserve not to be hurt and scorned and despised. But it was freeing, too. Because if nothing I did could change them, then I could stop trying to please them, and just survive them. I could finally accept that there was nothing wrong with me.”
Without realizing it, my other hand had moved to cradle his, holding it gently as if I could protect it. “You volunteered. Didn’t you? When your family received the red-sealed scroll. You wanted to go.”
He blinked at me for a second, light still glittering wetly in the corners of his eyes. Then he snorted out a feeble laugh. “Good guess. Hua Zhi, I’m not telling you this to make you sorry for me. I’m telling you this to try to make you see the truth. This is the kind of man Lu is. He will always find someone to hate and torment. This sort of thing has been going on in this camp since long before we arrived and he will keep on this way after we’re gone, too. It’s not our fault.”
“But…” There must have been something I could do to prevent this. Don’t you see? I’m an imposter. I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m a – a…
A girl.
I wanted to spill that pain out, to confess everything to him. In that moment I wanted to trust him, so much. He had opened his heart to me – I ought to have the courage to do the same in return.
But how could I bear it if he turned from me? He was the first, the only real friend I’d ever had. What if he was disgusted and hated me for what I had done? What if he told everyone? I couldn’t bear it if he was the one to bring me down.
I just couldn’t.
He waited for me to finish, and when I didn’t, he cleared his throat. “Last night, when you fought the general, I was … I was shocked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that way before.”
I frowned, baffled. “What way?”
He sighed. “Happy. When you were fighting him, you looked happy. You’re always so careful, so locked down, as if you expect the world to collapse on you if you stop worrying for five minutes. I know you have your own troubles; that you came here under a weight of expectation I can’t even imagine. But last night I felt as if I glimpsed someone else – someone inside you that I barely even know. The real you. You were extraordinary, and I feel privileged to have witnessed that. You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
The words plucked some deeply hidden chord inside me, and rang true, like a clear, high note of music ringing through my whole body.
On the other side of the valley, the great gong rang out.
“Time for these girlish confessions to come to an end,” Yang Jie said, straight-faced.
I nodded, hid my face in the bend of my elbow, blinking away the telltale moisture hid
den by my shadow mask. If I stayed here much longer, I would collapse and weep all over Yang Jie’s thin, bruised chest. “I – I’d better go, I haven’t eaten and Sigong will have my hide if I’m late.” I climbed unsteadily to my feet, then stopped, worried I’d been too abrupt. “Thank you, Yang Jie. Thank you for … everything.”
He gave me his usual sunny, guileless grin – only now, of course, I knew him well enough to see the sly intelligence and humour hiding behind those wide eyes. “All part of the service. Bring me my money purse from the barracks next time you visit, will you? I have to pay some people here.”
“What? Why?” I asked, momentarily distracted from the confusing whirl of thoughts in my skull.
“Bribing them to keep my secrets, of course,” he said, deadpan. “And for a better grade of slop than the rest of the patients have to choke down. The food in here makes our rations look like a banquet at the Imperial Palace. Blerk.”
I laughed, a real laugh this time, if a bit watery. “I’ll remember. Rest and get well quickly. We’ll miss you.” I’ll miss you.
As I left the infirmary, I saw Bingbing perched on the lintel of the doorway. I whistled at her and she chirped back, but didn’t leave her post. Yang Jie’s words were still echoing in my head. Such simple words.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
The great gong had rung. I was going to be late. But instead of running for the mess or to the field for training, I stepped back into the narrow, dusty gap between the surgeon’s tent and the one next door, grasping at the dry wood of a tent pole for support as my thoughts surged and whirled in my head.
I had won the right to be here, hadn’t I? Fought for it, not just by defeating my father, but day by day, down in the mud and dust. Learning and bruising and bleeding and laughing and sweating alongside all the other men and boys of this camp. What they had gone through, I had gone through. What they had endured, so had I.
A mere imposter would not do any of those things. A deception couldn’t learn and bruise and bleed and sweat. Or laugh. A lie couldn’t love his friends so very much.
I had been living in a state of constant fear since I arrived here. Fear of getting things wrong, of exposing my deception, of dishonouring myself and my family. But I hadn’t.
I wasn’t fooling anyone. There was no deception. There was no Hua Zhi and Hua Zhilan. My soul didn’t separate neatly into dutiful daughter and mirror-image fake son. I wasn’t lying about who I was. There was only me. All the fractured, uncertain, masculine and feminine aspects of me – and whatever those added up to, it was enough. I was a good soldier. A good man. I had risen to every challenge this place and these people threw at me. I was Hua Zhi and Hua Zhilan, both and neither, always and never, and there was nothing wrong with that. There was nothing wrong with me.
The thought was as beautiful as the still silence that falls when a storm dies. The white, roaring void that had clawed and screamed at the edges of my consciousness the whole time since I left home was gone. I could think and see – see myself – clearly for the first time in months.
It was in this moment that I saw Captain Lu rounding the corner of the tent in front of me.
My shadow mask flared, stretching out across my entire body, cloaking me first in threads of qi and then in the rough, faded red fibres of the tent wall behind me. In an instant, I was nothing more than a shadow, a fold in the cloth. I cowered back behind the shelter of the tent pole, trying to breathe silently, and Lu brushed by so near that I could have reached out and touched his sleeve if I had wished it.
Then, almost directly opposite my hiding place … he stopped.
For a moment, I feared he had somehow seen me, sensed me, after all. But his glittering eyes passed over the tent wall without any visible reaction. He was breathing fast. His fists were clenched and his brow damp. He was angry all right, but more than that – afraid. His expression was distant and his eyes, I realized, were focused inward.
My gift’s response to seeing him had been born of unthinking panic. But now I felt my focus on the captain sharpen. Here he stood, Yang Jie’s attacker: bully and tormentor of those weaker than himself. If I had chosen to, I could have pulled my knife from my belt and struck him down – struck at him without honour, as he had struck down my friend. I almost wished I could be that kind of man. Yet even as the thought came, I allowed it to dissolve. Such a man could not be Hua Zhou’s son.
Such a man would not be Yang Jie’s friend.
I had crammed myself into this dark gap between tents because I was overcome and needed a moment alone. The more I looked at Lu, the more I realized it was the same for him. He was taking deep, slow breaths, trying to calm himself. Trying to nerve himself up for something.
We were probably only a few feet away from where Yang Jie rested.
My own hands knotted slowly into fists. If Lu thought he was going to sneak into that tent to finish the job – but no. He couldn’t try to murder one of the patients in front of the medical staff. Did he intend to question Yang Jie on what he remembered? Threaten him to ensure his silence?
Before I could begin to make my mind up, Lu lifted his chin, squared his shoulders and turned back the way he had come, slipping out between the tents. Driven by an instinct that overbore everything else, I drew my cloak of shadows close and followed.
If Lu had marched out into the bright daylight, I would have had a hard time keeping up. Such illusions as mine were more effective in the shadows, and ensuring that the flicker of my movement went unobserved would have taken a great deal of energy and effort, the kind that would have been difficult – near impossible – while also moving at a trot and avoiding bumping into other soldiers in the busy camp.
But Lu was sticking to the shadows, darting almost soundlessly from tent to building to tent. It was easy to keep track of him without being seen because he clearly didn’t want to be seen himself. What under the heavens was he up to? He definitely wasn’t heading to the medical tent, to Yang Jie. But he couldn’t possibly be planning anything good, either, not when he was acting so furtively.
He stopped by the wall of a large tent, cocking his head as if listening for sounds from within. All was quiet. I heard him take another deep, slow breath. Then he fell to his knees, seized the bottom of the crimson fabric and swiftly ducked beneath it, into the tent. I stared at the place where he had stood, jaw slack in astonishment, not daring to follow. What was he doing in there?
I crouched and put my eye to the coarse fabric, squinting through the holes in the weave. The tent beyond was not brightly lit, but I could see the dark blocks of camp furniture and the shape of Lu himself. He was standing by a tall, thin cabinet of some sort. I saw light gleam on a pale, curving shape as he lifted it. A wine gourd?
There was a small, metallic clink … a pause. The clink again, and then a sloshing sound. He had uncorked the gourd? And now he was shaking it…?
I stiffened, my blood turning cold.
He had put something in the wine.
Captain Lu was trying to poison someone.
I drew back, thinking frantically. Whose tent was this? Not Commander Diao’s – we all knew that one by sight. It was too big to belong to one of the other captains… Perhaps the censor? Maybe one of the other officials?
But why? Why would Lu do this unless…
My chilled blood seemed to freeze in my veins. I couldn’t move. Only my mind was still alive, still working, finishing the thought.
Unless Lu was a traitor.
Unless he worked for the Leopard.
I crouched unmoving as Lu replaced the gourd in the cabinet and then ducked out of the tent again. He actually did brush against me this time as he passed, but he didn’t seem to notice anything. He probably thought he’d touched a rock. I felt as solid as one, paralysed.
The captain paused above me for a minute, still sheltering in the shadow of the tent. He closed his eyes, nodded to himself. Then a tiny smile curved his lips and he strode away in the opposite direction
.
I watched him go, still struggling to come to terms with what I had seen. A traitor, one of the Mad General’s agents, right here in our camp, all along.
I had to report this.
It didn’t matter that it would be my word against Lu’s, or that Diao might not believe me at first. It didn’t matter that if I couldn’t convince anyone I spoke the truth, I would probably be flogged – maybe even by Lu’s own hands – and exposed, and killed.
I had to try. If I kept silent, someone was going to die.
Shaking, I made to scramble up and nearly fell, letting out a tiny sound of exasperation at the weak, numb sensation in my limbs. My qi was low. I was out of practice at larger scale illusions like this, and I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything today, in addition to having my dinner interrupted the night before. But I had to know which tent – whose tent – Lu had visited, or my information would be worse than useless.
I let the draining expanse of my shadow cloak disperse back into my skin, retaining only the light mask of my face that was second nature to me now. Immediately, I felt my energy levels stabilize. Before anyone could spot me, I hastily pushed up the fabric wall and ducked inside, looking around me for evidence of who made their home here.
Details spun before my eyes. A beautiful and probably priceless rug in shades of red and gold and cream underfoot. The largest bed I had ever seen in a tent anywhere, so finely wrought that one could hardly tell it was designed to fold up and be carried. An equally large desk with maps, papers and books neatly piled on it. Dark wood trunks and cabinets, inlaid with mother of pearl. A finely worked bronze shield, a spear and several swords, hanging on thin iron chains between the tent poles: decoration. There was a smell of expensive grooming oils and fresh soap. The wood shone with polish and the bed linens were spotless and uncreased. I had never been inside the commander’s tent, but this was how I would have imagined it – warlike luxury. So who on earth could this place belong to?