by Henry Lien
I turn to Yinmei and hiss, “You wicked, venomous, cowardly snake. How dare you do that to him? How dare you defy my order?”
At the entrance of the radial, Sensei Madame Yao appears. She announces, “After consulting with Sensei Master General Moon Tzu, we have made a decision.”
I blurt, “Venerable Sensei Madame Yao, please, I’m the captain of this battleband and—”
“All the other battlebands,” she continues over me, “shall proceed to be tested in the Annexation as planned. However, as for your battleband”—she looks not at me but at Yinmei—“that is enough already from you—”
“But I did not authorize—”
“—to take first place.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
We make our way back toward the baths at the dormitory compound. As soon as we have gotten away from any other students, I skid to a stop on the Bridge of Serene Harmony and turn on this Wu Yinmei.
“How dare you defy my order! You could have gotten us disqualified! You could have provoked a coiling water dragon with Ong Hong-Gee’s skate!”
“My decision was the only thing that kept us from losing and kept you in Pearl,” she says. “And dropping an unliving object into the sea would not provoke a coiling water dragon.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I dropped several objects into the sea first to test.”
I’m so staggered by her response that I struggle to find words to express sufficient anger. “How dare you decide on your own to recklessly endanger the whole academy. We have no room for your treachery here.”
“Peasprout—” begins Hisashi.
“And you, Hisashi. Why under heaven did you obey her over me? I’m your leader.”
Cricket says, “Peasprout, calm down. We should discuss this as a battleband.”
Yinmei says, “You are upset because you are afraid of seeing what a true leader must do to lead.”
Doi says, “No, she’s upset because we don’t need a Suki in our battleband. Peasprout, her actions prove that your first instinct was right. She probably is a spy. She’s going to sneak a letter orb to the Empress Dowager to tell her about the pearlstarch and the forcedrums and that you demonstrated to everyone how to use them against Shin!”
Yinmei turns and sings to me in perfect Shinian:
“Before you decide not to let me abide, may I try to provide explanation?
“Your prolonged hesitation and profound accusations over my motivations may subside.”
Whatever she plans to say, it’s clear she’s been practicing for this moment. I shouldn’t listen to another word she sings. But I admit that I want to hear what she has to say.
She finishes, “Let us meet in one hour without subterfuge or scheme …
“In the court where the power of the placid reigns supreme.”
* * *
When Doi, Cricket, and I arrive at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness an hour later, Yinmei and Hisashi await us. When I see them together, I remember what I forgot, what I wanted to forget: They spent a year together. They know each other in a way that I don’t know either of them. There is a drum, an erhu fiddle, an Edaian shamisen that looks like a stretched lute, two seats, and scrolls displayed on stands. There is also, draped on a white plastered-straw mannequin, a complex headdress made of translucent gauze.
Hisashi motions for Cricket to take the seat in front of the drum, and Doi the seat in front of the erhu fiddle.
Hisashi bows and presents a scroll to me with both hands.
I unroll it. The title reads, THE BITTER TEA OF THE DYNASTY IN THE DYNASTY. It’s a score written in Shinian for a scene in the Meijing opera style, a duet between two characters: Wu Yinmei and the Empress Dowager.
Hisashi lifts the headdress from the mannequin and holds it out to me. So I’m singing the part of the Empress Dowager. The idea of playing this vile woman repulses me.
I say, “So what, do you think that if I take her role, I’ll understand her rather than fear her?”
Yinmei answers tonelessly, “I want you to understand me.”
I place the headdress on my head, and Hisashi leads me to a spot in front of the exit out of the courtyard. The cloth of the headdress draws a haze over everything, as if we’ve been dropped into a cloud or a dream.
Across the courtyard’s sixty-lucky squares filled with sand for meditating upon stands Yinmei, facing me like a counter on a chessboard.
Hisashi nods to Doi and Cricket. The three of them start to play the musical accompaniment from the score. Yinmei begins to sing in a voice of fear and doubt:
Why have you summoned me, great-great-grandmother?
The invitation called me to a feast.
But if this is a feast why aren’t there any others
To join us but the honorable deceased?
I sing my lines from the score as the Empress Dowager:
I’ve summoned you to feast, great-great-granddaughter
On something that is precious beyond price.
So what I pour into your cup is more than water,
What I put in your bowl is more than rice.
Doi’s erhu fiddle counter-melody rises, Cricket’s drumming rumbles from below, and Hisashi’s shamisen lute trills with poignancy as I sing the chorus in the role of the Empress Dowager:
Will you take the bitter tea
Of the dynasty in the dynasty?
For your sake, commit to me
And the dynasty in the dynasty.
Will you join us, will you Empress Yinmei be?
As the scene continues, Yinmei sings of her great-great-grandmother poisoning their family, one after another, as she decided that each one failed to make a good puppet, until only Yinmei remained.
Then the score has me sing the Empress Dowager’s excuse for her ruthlessness.
They talk of vicious things that I have done to
Each person who’s inheriting my throne.
It’s only that I’m searching for the special one to
Convince me with some merit of her own.
A girl who has the courage to put finding
A way to change the law into her plan.
When she is Empress, Shin will have no more foot-binding.
Our girls will walk as far as any man.
Yinmei’s singing becomes tense, punctuated by sharp, rhythmic claps as she recounts the Four-Day Feast. Her great-great-grandmother laid a great feast before her and ordered her to eat and drink. Did she do so to poison Yinmei or to test her loyalty? Yet, all of Yinmei’s family swore their loyalty to the Empress Dowager, and they still ended up dead. So Yinmei made her decision:
So for four days and four nights I stay composed,
With my spirit steady, for my mouth is closed.
I refuse your poison, I will not comply!
I live unafraid until the day I die!
Yinmei throws her head back and her voice soars over us, intercut with my protests as the Empress Dowager.
I won’t take (Why won’t you break) your bitter tea (Come drink my tea)!
Of the dynasty in the dynasty,
I won’t break (I tried to make), so set me free (you into me)
Of the dynasty in the dynasty!
I won’t join you, I won’t Empress Yinmei be!
The music of her singing and of the instruments ends at once, like a life cut short. The echo of her voice rings in the courtyard.
I sway slightly, fighting back emotion. I don’t know if it’s from the Chi expenditure of singing as my greatest enemy or from the enormity of what Wu Yinmei has shared.
At last, I ask her, “So you won the battle of wills? She let you out?”
“I walked out of the Four-Day Feast. She wasn’t testing my loyalty. She was testing my courage to stand up to her. She wanted to know if I was a leader.”
“But you defied her. What good is a successor who defies her?”
“A leader tests but then ensures. Afterward, she secretly fed me
ivory yang salts to keep me from running away. I survived her test, but I am never going to walk more than five steps again in this lifetime.”
This lonely young person did something few have ever done: She stood up to the Empress Dowager. And survived to recount it.
I say to her, “I’m not unmoved by your story, Yinmei. But all it tells me is that the Empress Dowager finds you worthy. I fear that’s why she sent you here as a spy.”
Yinmei says, “That is not what you fear. You fear that I am showing you what a leader has to do.”
“I don’t choose to be that kind of leader.”
“You fear making bold decisions.”
“No, I don’t.” I snap my head up. “Wu Yinmei, you are expelled from my battleband.”
Hisashi says, “She helped us win!”
“I don’t want to win that way,” I say, shaking my head.
Doi reaches out and touches the edge of my sleeve. She says, “Peasprout, maybe you should listen to her. She’s been through extraordinary circumstances.”
I turn to Doi. “Wait, are you protecting her?”
“I’m just saying that you’re not appreciating what she’s been through. You have no idea what it is to have your own family, who should be protecting you—”
“Our parents abandoned us! Because of the Empress Dowager’s law. So don’t talk to me about how much she’s suffered under the—”
“Being abandoned by your family is nothing like being attacked by them! Do you know how that feels?”
She’s not talking about Yinmei. Or not only about Yinmei.
She’s talking about herself.
Silence follows Doi’s outburst. The sound of lowing wafts across the campus from the direction of the Conservatory of Music. It’s Chingu, playing the same sequence of notes on the wave organ that she hummed to me.
Yinmei looks in the air as if reading the notes and says, “I shall depart this battleband if Peasprout orders it. If Peasprout decides she does not wish for my talents. If Peasprout decides to close her ears to my music. If Peasprout decides she does not wish to know the oracle hidden in the melody sung by Sensei Madame Chingu.”
She knows exactly how to play on my emotions like a pearlflute. And what I learned from last year is something that I don’t like knowing: I’m easy to play.
I say, “No. I don’t want to know what Chingu’s oracle said or anything else from you. You are expelled from my battleband.”
“I accept your decision, Chen Peasprout. The key does not fit the lock. I leave your battleband. I shall file a request for hearing over scoring.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“To decide whether the points earned by Nobody and the Fire-Chickens at the First Annexation stay with you,” she says carefully, “or leave with me.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
The consequences of kicking Wu Yinmei out of our battleband make themselves felt immediately. The next day, after morning assembly, Sensei Madame Liao wordlessly hands me a scroll. I skate behind the knee of the statue of the Enlightened One and read it alone.
“To Disciple Chen Peasprout, Captain of Nobody and the Fire-Chickens: You are hereby notified that the senseis have received notice that your former battleband member Wu Yinmei has embarked on a solo career; that she has filed a petition arguing that your battleband was on the brink of defeat when she decided to take hostage the skates of your opponents; that such action won you the Annexation; and that all points earned should go with her and no points should stay with you. No reply to the petition from you is necessary as the facts were witnessed by all and are not in contention, and this is a matter to be solely decided by interpretation of law. We shall notify you of our decision.”
It’s signed, “On behalf of the senseis of Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword, Sensei Chairman Niu Kazuhiro.”
The Chairman will revoke my provisional sanctuary status if Yinmei takes away my first ranking at the First Annexation. He’d prance with glee at an excuse to send me back to the Empress Dowager, because he’s just that petty.
And so is Yinmei. She doesn’t need the points. She doesn’t need to succeed at the Annexations. She’s a political puppet. She could blunder at everything, fail in every discipline, fall in the water and bring coiling water dragons rampaging through Pearl Famous, and it wouldn’t affect her at all. Must be nice to have no consequences.
By that afternoon, somehow the information has swept across the whole school. Probably through Yinmei.
During wu liu free training at the Conservatory of Wu Liu, Etsuko and her entire battleband Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess keep skating by Yinmei. “Ah, your chair is so kawaii!” they squeal, petting her bladechair. As if a bladechair could be cute. Etsuko says, “Please accept this decoration I made to make your bladechair even more kawaii!” She bows and with both hands presents Yinmei a bright yellow pearlsilk kite in the shape of a happy-face butterfly.
When Suki sees this, she and the two other girls in the Last-Place Losers on Skates glide over to Cricket, hand him something, and leave. I race over. “What did they give you?” I ask.
He shows me a sweet red bean mochi.
“Don’t eat that!” I say, knocking it out of his hand. “She probably blew her nose into the middle of it.”
Cricket says, “I don’t think so. They were eating them from a box.”
So she’s trying to woo my battleband members. By the end of the hour, it seems like every battleband’s trying to pick off my members. Doi receives a bow and a smile every time the members of Fancy Pretty Princess World skate by. Doi bows back to them.
“Eh!” I holler at Doi.
Cricket says, “They’re just being nice.”
Doi says, “They did survive the eight waves in the First Annexation.”
I shout at their backs, “Keep on skating. As if Doi would join a battleband with a name like Fancy Pretty Princess World.”
Hisashi says, “I would have loved to see Suki’s expression when she learned that they got to use the word princess in their name!”
Behind us, a boy’s voice says, “How’s it going, big brother?” It’s Dappled Lion Dao and all the rest of the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots. He places a hand busy with rings and bangles on Hisashi’s shoulder. “We were just wondering if we could talk to you and ask you how you do that hip-roll thing when you come down on a scissor jump. It’s got style!” And before I can think of a reason to stop him, off he goes with all the other handsomest boys at Pearl Famous. I have to admit: They look really good together.
From the snatches of conversations I hear, the consensus seems to be that
1. Peasprout’s battleband has a talented lineup, but;
2. They have serious internal conflicts, and;
3. They’re going to splinter apart before the Second Annexation because “Chen Peasprout has trash for leadership skills.”
And throughout the whole of the session, Sensei Madame Chingu’s wave organ moans the tones of that little melody that she hummed to me, like a key in sound that fills the very air around us. The answer to my own most desperate questions, the secret to my safety and my success, is ringing in my ears right now, in everyone’s ears, but in a language that no one can understand. No one except this Wu Yinmei.
When White Hour is over, we line up to ride the gondola back to the Principal Island so we can bathe before evenmeal. Behind Doi and Hisashi is Yinmei.
I say, “I don’t think Yinmei should come on the next gondola with us. We have things to discuss.”
Hisashi says, “Peasprout, don’t be like that.”
Doi says, “I think that’s a little petty, Peasprout.”
“What?” I say, turning to Doi. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. She filed a petition to steal our points!”
“Peasprout, we’re supposed to be nice this year,” says Cricket.
“Well, I’m sitting as far from her as possible. And, Cricket, you’re not to sit next to her. I don�
�t want her putting ideas in your head.”
Yinmei says, “I wish to sit next to Hisashi or Doi or both.”
Hisashi says, “Aiyah, so much fuss. Peasprout, I’ll sit between you and Yinmei.”
Doi says, “No, I think I should sit on one side of Peasprout if you’re going to sit on the other.”
“Wing Girl! What does it matter?”
Doi continues, “And you got to sit next to Yinmei on the gondola ride over by yourselves. I should get a turn to sit next to her.”
Why under heaven is Doi being so difficult? I’m irritated, but from her refusal to return my questioning look, I sense that she’s struggling with deeper emotions that have nothing to do with the dispute over points. So I let the issue rest. For now.
I shuffle us so that it’s me, then Cricket, then Hisashi, then Doi, then Yinmei boarding the gondola. Make me drink sand to death.
When we arrive at Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, we find that a special midmeal treat has been laid for us on tables outside in the middle of the southern quadrangle. It’s vegetable-stew hotpot with glass noodles, served in a steaming vat over a live fire. Which is traditionally served on a rotating central dais. Which is why the tables are all round. Which means that the seating arrangement of me, then Cricket, then Hisashi, then Doi, then Yinmei around a circular table would leave me seated next to …
Ten thousand years of stomach gas.
* * *
In the days that follow, I assert my power over my battleband through tiny battle after tiny battle over Wu Yinmei. It’s not fun. But I didn’t expect leadership to be fun. However, Wu Yinmei never complains at my treatment. Never gives me a glance in resentment, never makes a snide remark.
One day, in wu-liu-combined-with-music class, Wu Yinmei watches me as I struggle with the drum exercises. We are supposed to lightly drum with our bare hands on an open-bottomed forcedrum in a regular rhythm to keep it floating slightly above the pearl. I make Wu Yinmei sit far away from my battleband in case we come up with something useful for the next Annexation. She doesn’t protest.