Hidden Cities (23 page)

Perhaps she had no choice.
Sleep
was one of the words on his
back, and he could compel her into a slumped somnolence; that was only a mockery, another way to take her freedom from her. This was something else, a genuine dream-filled slumber. He had been astonished the first time, and he could still be astonished now. Why in the world should she need sleep? She was an immortal, wild as the wind and as restless, shifting as the tides and as relentless …

She had mocked him for his physical weakness, threatened to do dreadful things while he slept.

And yet here she was, curled like a snake on a mountain peak. Raising the height of the mountain, making a new peak in herself, of herself. Not snoring, no—not conspicuously breathing, even—and yet apparently asleep. Decidedly asleep. Perhaps her great body demanded it, perhaps that was the price of such tremendous physicality, that she must obey at least a few of the laws that bound mortals to their flesh—but he was still surprised. Astonished, when he thought about it.

A
STONISHED ALSO
at himself, that he would choose to sit here and watch her sleeping. So close to her head, snapping-distance if she should wake, if she could snap, if she would choose to do it.

He didn’t, now, think that she would. They had come to … an accommodation. Yes. Call it that.

He sat beside her head and watched her, almost watched over her while she slept.

When he slept himself, often he woke to find her wakeful on the peak, or in the air just overhead, or thrusting head-up from the sea.

Often and often, while he slept, he was aware of her lightly in his head, in his dreams, curious and watchful.

Even now he was aware of an open door that he could step through, into her mind.

If he chose not, if he found her dreams appalling—well. At least it was his choice, his opportunity.

·  ·  ·

S
HE MIGHT
sleep, but she stayed alert. She was never, ever, sleepy.

Now her eye, the one great eye that he could see snapped open. Briefly it surveyed him, considered him, engulfed him almost except that she had swallowed him long and long ago; this out here—this body—was only a shadow, a messenger, a husk.

Her head lifted and swung: out to look over the sea, back to look at him. Both eyes now, the focus of her attention, of her glare.

What is it, great one?

There is a boat on the water. On the strait
.

Again?

Again
. Her head turned again, like a needle seeking north. Seeking, finding. She was right, of course: a dot of black against the shifting patterns of green and gray and blue, between Taishu and here. He could pick it out exactly, following her lead. And,
This carries one of her cursed children, I can feel it from here. I cannot touch this one. I will not try
.

No
.

He wanted almost to shift his seat, to sit on the height of her leg and throw his arm across the ridges of her neck, just to be physically with her in her shame as they watched the boat go by …

No.

As they watched it come.

he human body,” Ai Guo said, “is a fascinating artefact, a fascinating study.”

He was lying on his back, naked. His groin was draped in a scrap of silk for an absurd and ineffectual decency; his head was propped up on a silk-bound wooden block to allow him the very study of which he spoke, his own body the exemplar—the rather disgusting exemplar, though none the less fascinating for that disgust—and Tien the student-master with her silver needles to make her points for her.

She grunted, not listening, laying hands on his twisted leg. Tapping lightly, feeling out the bones beneath the skin and the run of muscle, judging where her next needle ought to go. In its misshapen state the limb was an artefact indeed, manufacture of another man’s intent. He flinched when she found a point of consistent pain, perhaps unwittingly.

Perhaps not. She was another article of his study, and her own body spoke against her. Tien was a believer, and one of the tenets of her belief was justice. Something in her thought it right that he should hurt so much. She was a doctor, and would try whatever she could to relieve his hurts; and in doing so she worked against that instinct, and all her body betrayed her. He found the whole process fascinating.

Like a person under interrogation, she had a story to tell the world and a story to tell herself, and they were different. He could
read them both, because that was his profession; and just now his mind was very much on his profession, as those fingers of hers—those doctorly, judicial fingers—tapped out pathways of pain within himself.

This was instructional in the most useful way, learning from the inside just what could be achieved by pressure applied to old damage. He could look down the length of his body and see the external evidence, what had been done to him, how long ago; he could watch what Tien did now and measure that directly against what he felt, how his body responded.

Never mind that she was seeking to ease his hurts, however much she felt that he deserved them. There was a lesson in every seeking fingertip. He watched, felt, learned.

And if all this ruthless self-examination, all this uncharitable consideration of a young girl doing her best to help, all this
study
was a device to separate himself from the actuality of his pain, well. He did know that. It was an element in his study.

So was talking about it.

He said, “We see the mean mechanics of it, laid out here,” with an airy wave at himself as though he were a diagram exhibited, as though the simple lifting and wafting of a hand could cost him nothing, nothing at all, “but the meat is not the man, I think. Where does the spirit, where does the soul reside?”

“Where does it hide, you mean,” Tien countered, no fool she, “when the body is unbearable?”

“That too. Like the emperor, fled to Taishu because the empire is untenable for him at the moment. There is a tether, clearly, but one can achieve at least a little distance. Even without benefit of your teas and needles.”

“Oh? And did you allow your prisoners the benefit of a little distance, ever?”

“The art is … not to do that. To keep them absolutely within their bodies, within the pain. Unh,” as her tapping fingers drove a
needle in, perhaps a little sharply. “But you and I together, Tien, you with your knowledge and I with mine, with our very different practices, we could combine our skills and experience, and—”

“There is nothing,” she said harshly, “that I want to do, that your—
skills and experience
—could possibly contribute to.”

“Except perhaps to chain the dragon?” he murmured.

She stood very still, the tip of one needle resting against his skin there, too light to scratch. He knew just where to drive that needle, to extract the utmost pain and the thinnest, most urgent gasp of confession. So, he suspected, did she.

She only waited, and the needle wasn’t any kind of threat in her hand: only relief withheld. If he pointed that out she would correct it at once, setting the needle just where she meant it to go. He had only distracted her mind, not driven her from her duty.

He held his silence, enjoying the tremble of waiting in her, the determination not to ask, the absolute expression of patience at its absolute limits.

Until she broke, as she had to, because he would not: until she drew a tremulous breath and turned her head to face him and said, “Explain?”

She had dropped her precious needle.

He thought she hadn’t noticed.

A cruel man would have pointed it out, perhaps, tormenting her with further delay while she scrabbled about on hands and knees to find it. But Ai Guo never had been cruel; he thought cruelty inefficient, and not interesting. He said, “We know that one spirit may stretch to subdue another, even in its own body. You have seen the goddess do that in her chosen children.”

Tien twitched as though the memory were a needle unkindly placed, unkindly tapped at now to drive the point a fraction deeper in her flesh. “An immortal,” she muttered, “what they can do …”

“What they can do, we can discover how to do it. A tether runs both ways. In large, we know already. We know it can be done,
from a mortal to an immortal. It has been done; the connection is there, and you yourself helped to make it stronger.”

No flinching now. This was a pain she was accustomed to carrying, long and deep. She said, “Han.”

“Han, yes, who is already a check upon the dragon when he chooses to be. Whose predecessors were the means by which she was kept asleep through centuries.”

She was beginning to understand him, reluctantly. She shook her head regardless. “I don’t think Han will do more than he does already, to keep her from harming us. I don’t think he’d be willing, even if we could ask him. He is … not necessarily given to the emperor. Or even to the people.”

“No.” Was it cruel to make her wait for this, until she could say it for herself? Ai Guo didn’t think so; he thought it was necessary.

Delaying, she said, “It’s no use, though, we don’t know what magics were used on his chains before. I did as much as I could manage, with what I found in the library, but …”

“You did magnificently,” he said, “for a girl working on her own, in a hurry, with no help. I am here now, and we can plan. With what you and I have read in the books collected here, with what you know about the body and how it resurges, what I know about the spirit and how it retreats, what we both know about truth and ease and silence—well. I think we could between us find ways to work on Han in his body, ways that would reflect back on the dragon. Ways to make her sleep again.”

In chains
, he was saying; which meant, necessarily …

“I don’t,” she said, “I don’t think I can chain Han again. I couldn’t.”

“I could,” said another voice; and that was Li Ton, who had been a party to this conversation all the time, sitting in a corner waiting his turn to lie beneath her silver needles.

oung people stand as witness to their elders’ lives, to carry memory as lessons to the future.

Sometimes Old Yen thought that age-old principle had been perversely turned about, to make him stand as witness to Mei Feng.

To
allow
him to stand as witness to Mei Feng.

Sometimes to learn from her, and carry those lessons on into his own life.

H
E HAD
been summoned to the palace today, to help plan a way by which the Li-goddess could be used or manipulated or induced to put the dragon in chains again. Hale her down to the sea-bed again and keep her there, for the convenience of empire and the privilege of boats.

Caught somewhere between rage and outrage, he had only stayed because of Mei Feng, because in these days he would seize any chance to be with her. And what else did he have to do, where else to be? His instinct was to go to sea; when he was in the grip of a fever—often, when he was younger, when he could be angry or bored or appalled at any moment, with barely a flying cloud beforehand to warn of storm ahead—there was always this call to take it out into deep waters, to lose it in wind and tide and the toss of salt wood beneath his feet.

Even he could hardly go out in these days, just to cool his temper.
He had license—some said an extraordinary license—but his own notions of honor and right wouldn’t allow it. When any trip beyond the shallows meant taking one of the children, how could he do that for simply selfish reasons? How could he dare?

He would do it for a fishing trip, but fishing was about survival now. His duty was to lead a fleet, because he could always find where the fish were shoaling; and to protect it, because the goddess would stretch her hand out to encompass every boat that sailed with his.

Gathering so many independent captains and masters without warning was as hard as herding cats. If he went to the dockside now, it could take half a day; by which time the tide would have turned and the wind shifted, those who were ready early would have changed their minds while those who came late would be impatient to go now. And then someone would come running at the last minute with another summons from the palace, another meeting where Old Yen’s presence was required, somehow imperative …