thirteen
Mei Feng was not actually being as stupid as her friends believed. She knew as they knew that she could never fight her way through to the emperor’s side, cry I have come to protect you, lord! and expect to be taken seriously.
What perhaps they had forgotten was that she knew Santung at least a little. Specifically, she knew on which side of the river stood the governor’s palace.
Finding Jiao on the road had really been no part of her plan. Following the older woman up to the roof and so having the chance to show her that she could look after herself—yes, and her friends—just with the little blade she carried had been an unexpected gift, a blessing. A touch of the goddess at work, perhaps. Yes.
At least that incident and the all-but-empty city together had allowed Jiao to relax her watchfulness a little. Which allowed Mei Feng to let her and her troop get just a little ahead, and then just a little farther, and then …
AND NOW she could grip Dandan’s arm with one hand and the boy’s with the other, tug them both swiftly into an alley and lead them away before anyone looked back again to find them.
“Mei Feng, what …?”
“Shh, don’t talk yet. Just run …”
BY THE time she heard a yell of alarm, it was some distance behind, and muffled by the rise of walls between them in this tangle of lanes. She wasn’t sure if Jiao would send men after, or come herself; either way, she hoped to have lost them already. If not, if luck or judgment or some more mystical skill kept them on her tail, she still thought she had speed enough to stay ahead.
Like Jiao, indeed, she was surprised to find just how fast she could run when she needed to. Sailor-girls grew tough muscles, but she was better used to endurance than speed.
Ah, Chien Hua, lord of my body—what have you been putting into me …?
Apart from the obvious, of course, the blushworthy, though that hadn’t happened for a while now …?
He did occasionally feed her a bite or two of his own food; that might make a difference. Or else it was the simple constant, the physical presence of him. After so long in his company, so immediately there to be kissed or caressed or just incidentally rubbed up against, small wonder if some fraction of the magic invested in him should have rubbed off on her. Skin to skin, just a hint of jade-dust.
Or maybe it was just her fancy, or Jiao’s, or both. Dandan too was frequently around the emperor, but apparently took no benefit; she was gasping already, stumbling and dragging back. At last, too soon, she grabbed hold of a gatepost and couldn’t be moved, not yet.
“Mei Feng … Where are we … where are we going?”
“Up there,” with a jerk of her head to where the governor’s palace frowned down over the city.
“Whatever for?”
“Because Tunghai Wang will have been living there, all the time he was here. And he won’t have taken anything away, all his papers will still be there; and you can read, Dandan, you can help me search …”
Dandan shook her head, breathed a little, at last managed, “If the papers are there today, they will still be there tomorrow, Mei Feng. What’s the hurry?”
The hurry, of course, was Mei Feng herself. She would not be free like this tomorrow. She might be back in Taishu, or locked at the emperor’s side, or locked somewhere far away from the emperor. She needed to bring him something, to justify herself; she hoped to bring him something to justify her accusations, Ping Wen’s guilt.
She had to find it now, but Dandan wasn’t moving. And if Jiao was coming after them, she might be getting close …
“Dandan, I can’t wait. You know where I’m going. You, boy,” she still hadn’t learned the boy’s name but demanded his obedience anyway, “stay with her. When she’s fit for it, bring her to the palace. You know the way, yes?”
He nodded, mute and nervous.
“Good boy. If our friends find you first—well, bring them too.” It wouldn’t be so bad, having Jiao and her troop arrive; just so long as Mei Feng had time enough to find something first. She had to justify herself to everyone these days, apparently. To everyone who loved her, who ought to trust her …
Perhaps that was war, or it might just be adulthood. She remembered when life was easier.
No matter. She left them there, her two unlikely allies, like a stepping-stone for anyone who tried to find her. She’d do well enough without Dandan, if she had deserved any grace at all from the goddess. She had at least learned the characters for “Ping Wen.” If his name was on a sheet of paper, she would find it. If she was only given time …
THE GOVERNOR’S palace stood on a sudden natural bluff above the river, where it could look as though it had been lifted by the swift hand of the gods above the common people and their business. She had known it all her life, but only to stare at from way down below.
She had no doubt in her mind that Tunghai Wang would have lived in the palace, for these short months that Santung was his city. And where a general, a governor, a city’s lord lived, there he ruled from; there he met his ministers and kept his clerks and gathered all his papers. If there was any proof that Tunghai Wang and Ping Wen had been in conspiracy together, there she would have the best chance to find it.
Best proof came in written documents. She had hopes. The two men couldn’t meet or speak directly; short of sorcery, then, they must have written, unless they trusted verbal messages to their go-betweens.
Conspirators are not a trusting breed, and generals do not rise to power by being open with their underlings. Mei Feng thought there would be papers.
There were no bodies at the palace gates. Of course not: this wasn’t a last stand, desperate men backed into a corner, defending what they valued more than life. Tunghai Wang wouldn’t let himself be trapped here in the city. He would have heard the first rush of the invasion and been away, leading his men upriver as soon as it was clear that they could not stand.
He might have thought it out already, ahead of time. If the emperor did somehow manage to come against him, he must have known they could not stand. A good general would surely have a plan of retreat. Even against the most unlikely of circumstances, the running boy turned warrior at last, the rabbit that bit back …
Mei Feng astonished herself with a smile, just as she walked between unguarded open gates. Even once she had saved his idiot life, exposed the traitor and won his love again, she thought perhaps she would not tell the emperor that she had envisioned him as a rabbit. Even a most ferocious and deadly rabbit with jade eyes and steel teeth, a bold and courageous hero-rabbit leading an army of …
No. Not that.
A tiger, jade tiger, yes. That he’d like. Blessed by the mountains, by the stone itself …
She could wish for a tiger herself right now, proud and lethal, padding at her side. Rumbling, perhaps, deep in its wonderful throat, as a warning to the watching world.
If you were a tiger, of course—a jade tiger, most rare, most wonderful—the world would always be watching for you. Best, probably, to assume the same was true for her, here and now. Tunghai Wang had gone, and taken his soldiers with him; that didn’t mean the palace was empty. Or safe. There would be servants clustering in their own halls, anxious, waiting for the new dispensation. Tunghai Wang would not have left his soldiers, but he might have left his clerks; they might be hiding and hoping, sitting it out till nightfall. She knew how dangerous a clerk could be, with a knife in his belt and nothing to lose except his life.
There might even be assassins, dressed as clerks or servants and told to wait in hopes of the emperor’s arrival, the emperor’s inattention, the emperor’s throat suddenly at their blade’s edge …
The emperor’s woman would be a lure to such a man. Mei Feng needed to be careful. Frightened and abandoned men will kill without thought, without reason; she might find both within these walls. They might find her.
She needed to find someone. Everything was risk. She would be careful, she would be as sensible as she could, and in the end she would still have to accost a stranger and ask for help.
Pardon me, sir, can you read? Oh, and can you read your future, can you see how very good for you it would be to help me now, and how very bad if you refuse …?
She really could wish for a tiger, just to help her make the point. Or a man, a big man or two; there were times when being small was nothing but a handicap, when she wanted to be imposing and make demands. Perhaps she should have waited with Dandan and her boy; perhaps she should have run a little less fast or a little more obviously, and let Jiao and her troopers catch them up …
Too late now. And no point trying to sneak in here like a thief, however much she wanted to sidle along the walls and keep to shadow.
Boldly, then, she walked across the paving of the first court and up broad shallow steps to the vast bronze doors of the palace. One leaf stood ajar. She allowed herself one moment to be just Mei Feng, which meant nervous and utterly out of her depth here, a little fishergirl abroad and lost in the affairs of state, of emperors, of war; then she took a breath, wiped her sweating palms on her borrowed trousers, and stepped inside.
FIRST AND foremost, it was dark in there. Great halls and wealthy houses were all like this, she had learned: as though the air, the light itself darkened with the costly woods that made the floors and furniture. They turned inward, on their private courts. If there were brighter rooms, they would be farther in than this, looking out onto the gardens behind the palace. Likely, though, even the gardens would be dark, with narrow paths between high and gloomy trees, cramped pavilions overlooking murky lily-crowded ponds. If she had missed any one thing more than any other since the emperor brought her ashore—apart from her grandfather, of course, and her freedom, and the strait—it was the light and space of her childhood. Which meant the strait, of course, which meant her freedom. Which had been all bound up in her grandfather, until the emperor took her away.
It was as well for that boy that she loved him.
Here was an audience hall, empty. As empty as the streets, as the city. The city was irrecoverable, she thought. It was no doubt too convenient to let go; there would always be a city here, to handle trade with Taishu and fetch back jade. But whatever they called it hereafter, it would never again be what Santung was. That was gone.
No wonder if the streets were empty and the halls abandoned. If she had been a servant here she might have left herself, sooner than stay to serve another master in a city of ghosts.
Still, there had to be someone. She needed someone, and so there had to be at least one lurker left. Yes. That was how the world worked; she decided it.
She didn’t want to run through the palace, calling; she didn’t want to skulk. There had to be a way between those two, a calm and mature means to locate someone useful, preferably literate, perhaps a little cowed …
If there were any such person—if it were her—they might well be lurking in the more private corridors of the palace. Here in the great hall was too obvious, too open. Yes. She’d find them somewhere that was harder to find, even if they weren’t exactly hiding.
She knew the way that palaces worked now. She knew exactly where to look for a door and a swift way through. Over there, behind the screen in the corner, farthest from the public door and closest to the dais where the governor’s chair was set …
She was halfway across the hall floor when someone walked around the screen ahead of her.
Limped around the screen, rather.
His crutch and the way that he used it—with an awkward wincing skill, leaning into it in a way that would have cost no thought if it didn’t cost him pain at every step—both said that this was no fresh injury, no damage of the day. He had limped for a while at least, likely for a long time. Long enough to find himself the perfect prop, just the length and weight he wanted, with a grip for his hand and a padded rest beneath his armpit.
He might, perhaps, have been expecting to see someone else. Some other kind of person altogether: a soldier, say, or perhaps an officer with a troop of soldiers at his back. Rather than a single stub of a girl, oddly dressed and oddly bold on such a day, in such a place as this.
He recovered quickly, though she could see that a recovery was necessary: a hesitation, a falter in the swing of his lopsided stride, a moment where she thought the crutch might slip, he might lose balance and fall and be altogether helpless at her feet.
A moment, and no more. Then he stood magnificently recovered, magnificently still, waiting for her to come to him.
It was still dark, but her eyes were adjusting. Besides, she was used to this being in vast and shady halls with looming men. This one at least didn’t loom so much as the emperor, he wasn’t so tall by a distance. That might have been his twisted leg, bending him down. He did have the face of a northerner, with all its inherent height.
Could he have come—could he have been brought—all that way, chasing the emperor with Tunghai Wang? For sure he was not the emperor’s man—unless he’d been left behind in the evacuation to Taishu, in which case he was probably not the emperor’s man any longer—and she would bet that he was not a Santung native either. If the generalissimo had gone to the trouble of arranging a carriage or a litter, carrying him in the army’s wake for a year and more, this must be someone of value.
He didn’t dress like a general, nor like a senior official. Besides, he hadn’t fled with Tunghai Wang. He had been left behind—again?—or else he had chosen to stay.
Mei Feng’s hand was on her dagger-haft, her every muscle was alert; she was hoping devoutly that she really was infected with the emperor’s jade-strength, his jade-speed and startling eyesight. She might need them now. Twice in one day …
The man spoke, and his voice was rough and raw; he said, “Well. What are you looking for, young woman?”
Instantly honest, just to see what effect it had, she said, “Tunghai Wang’s papers, if he has left any behind,” as he seems to have left you.
The man smiled, with all the bitterness that comes with wisdom. “As he has left me, you mean? Well, well. Can you read?”
“No.” That wasn’t a confession, she didn’t say it sulkily, caught out; nor was it an appeal, though she might ask him for help if he came close to offering it. For now, this was an exchange of information. “Are there papers?”
“Yes, yes. Of course there are papers. He has not taken the time to pack.” Neither his papers nor me, he seemed to be saying; and, pity me if you dare.
“Can you show me?”
Actually, that might be an appeal; but he seemed to be treating it as again a simple question of fact.
“I can show you where to go,” he said meditatively, in some way—some very polite way—drawing her attention to his crutch although he neither shifted it nor glanced at it, nothing so crude. “There are a great many stairs.”
“Oh. Is there, um, somebody else? Someone who might come with me, and read what the papers say?”
“There are other people, yes. Some no doubt can read. Why do you wish to have these papers read?”
If there was a stress on one word in that sentence, it was as mild as the twitch of his eyebrow: not an insult and not contempt, merely a part of the question, a piece of information that he lacked. An officer of the emperor might well be interested in Tunghai Wang’s abandoned letters, but a girl so young, so rudely dressed …?
He wasn’t rude himself, and nor need she be; but neither need she be forthcoming all at once. It was a trade, almost a game, this posing question for question: one answer at a time …
“The generalissimo has been in touch with someone on Taishu.” The crippled man’s gesture said, Of course. Well, yes: of course. But, “Someone high,” she went on, “high up in the emperor’s counsels. I… wish to know who that is, and have hopes that his papers may tell me,” and never you mind who I am. It was, perhaps, not something to be noised abroad too loudly, at least not here and now: where she was keeping company with a man who might be lame and slow but was still entirely proficient, who quite possibly had fitter colleagues within call, who might have need of good currency and see it suddenly in a hostage, one who stood by her own claim high in the emperor’s regard …
“I know a man,” the man said, “who can tell you that, as clearly as any paper would.”
Did he mean himself? She was doubtful and hopeful, both at once. She said, “A man I can take before the emperor?”
“If you can get him there,” said judiciously, almost an examination, another way to approach that question he had not yet asked, who are you?
“That,” she said firmly, “I can do.”
“Well, then,” the man said. “Perhaps you had better come and meet my man.”
HAD HE been negotiating right from the start?
Yes, of course he had. He was a cripple, left behind; whatever relationship he’d had with Tunghai Wang, it had left him in obvious peril. Mei Feng might be a girl, she might be dressed like a peasant; neither she nor her body nor her dress could disguise—apparently—the fact that she had purpose and knowledge, which suggested some manner of influence. Which suggested, apparently, some degree of hope to hobble out of here, if it could be bargained for.
They were, apparently, bargaining. Sight unseen and all unknowing, ignorance on either side.
She said, “May I ask your name?”
Yes, of course she might ask; that was in the rules. He might even answer. If he did, it would be honestly.
He said, “My name is Ai Guo. And yours?”
“Mei Feng.”
If he knew the name, he didn’t show it. Ping Wen might have told Tunghai Wang this or everything, if he had a way to do it.
She didn’t know. She did know that they were bargaining, because he was taking her down further stairs, crutch notwithstanding. Presumably he did also mean to climb back up, which meant his first refusal had been a negotiating position and not a confession of weakness after all.
So no doubt was he, but he was good at this; she couldn’t tell what he knew already, what he learned or guessed or only hoped.
Stairs and stairs. This was stairs enough to be significant, dungeon-down. Ai Guo might be a swift and subtle negotiator, but he paid a bidding-price with every step. He could put his crutch down first and lean on that, he could hop down onto his good leg and try to keep the other from any contact, and still the jar of that halt-and-hop glossed him with a bitter sweat, it set his mouth in a hard thin line and stilled his tongue entirely.
She might have talked for both of them, but she was afraid of giving too much, winning too little. His silence was no use to her, and she was unconvinced about this man he wanted her to meet. Papers with Ping Wen’s chop on them, those were what she wanted. She had a man already willing to swear to his treachery, only that she couldn’t produce him, for fear of what would happen if she did. Another such would be no use to her.
Still, she followed Ai Guo. Three flights of steps that grew increasingly narrow, though oddly well lit; there were lamps already burning in niches all the way down. She supposed he could hardly manage a light and the crutch together, given how often he grabbed at the wall with his free hand. He must have been ready for this, waiting for someone to come. Waiting to betray Ping Wen—she hoped!—to whoever came along.
To her, as it happened. Which might convince him no more than it convinced her, but she was what he had …
Down, then, to the dungeon level; along a passage that was chill and gloomy and unhappy, the walls sodden with ten thousand miseries.
He brought her to a door that was locked, to which he had the key; he unlocked it and swung it open and gestured her within.
She expected a prisoner in chains, naked and brutalized, because what else would you find in a dungeon, locked away?
She found a man in a cell, yes, but with a lamp of his own; and a robe too, and a pallet on a frame to keep it off the dank floor. The robe was scant enough and the lamp was bright enough to let her see that his skin held words, characters she couldn’t read and really wished she could.
He glanced up at the open door, saw her and stood effortfully, bowed with an edge of irony that she could appreciate, that she would have liked to applaud.
Then he nodded at Ai Guo and sat back down with an air of expectation, like a man waiting to be questioned. Again.
Very well, then. She jerked her head and said, “Who is he?”
Looking at the prisoner, a question for him; jerking her head toward Ai Guo.
The prisoner didn’t even quirk an eyebrow. Very simply, he said, “That is Ai Guo, who is Tunghai Wang’s torturer. Who are you?”
One answer deserves another; they were playing that game again. With honesty, again. She said, “I am Mei Feng, the emperor’s favorite,” because that was information that could win her more than it could lose her, now. She thought, she hoped. She gambled.
A suck of air but that was behind her, that was Ai Guo, making calculations; which was fair enough, because she was doing the same herself. Tunghai Wang’s torturer: a man skilled enough to be worth bringing all this way, dispensable enough to be left behind. Bitter enough or desperate enough to make a trade, his promised safety for—what? For this, perhaps, a prisoner delivered?
She waited, and soon enough Ai Guo at her back completed the introductions: “This is Li Ton the pirate, who used to be Chu Lin the general, who can tell you all about Ping Wen the traitor.”
The man’s eyes seemed to spark at that, even as her own heart lifted; but what he actually said was, “Never mind Ping Wen, let me tell you what else you need to know, what this man … persuaded me to tell the generalissimo.”
A tortured man tells true: that was fundamental, inherent to the ways of justice. She blinked, at the thought of anything mattering more than the exposure of Ping Wen; and said, “What? What is that?”
“I had a boat,” he said, “command of it, with an old man as captain. He took me to the Forge, at Ping Wen’s word; and then he brought me here, to the mainland. I should have gone back with him, except that I was taken prisoner here. Tunghai Wang … learned the truth of this,” with a glance at Ai Guo that was not at all accusing, all revealing. “I don’t know, but I suspect he sent someone else in my stead.”
“Wait,” Mei Feng said, “wait … This old man. What was his name?”
“Old Yen, everybody called him.”
Oh, Grandfather …
“Keep him,” she said to Ai Guo. “Keep him until my friends come, a woman and a boy; they will be here shortly. They may have soldiers with them. Then say that Mei Feng has given orders that the two of you should be brought to the emperor, as soon as may be.”
The one man was crippled, and the other had been his guest, his tortured guest for weeks; neither one of them was in any state to move fast, and now she really had to.