Hidden Cities (31 page)

Dandan wasn’t sure she could have run, even if there had been sense in it. She wasn’t sure she could move, against such a glare.

Also it was Jiao’s tiger, seemingly. She shouldn’t forget that. That had to be worth something, didn’t it? The men had threatened the boat, and Jiao had unleashed the tiger. There had been that rattle of chain, that command.

Jiao wouldn’t let it hurt Dandan. They were on the same side. Weren’t they …?

Remembering what Jiao had said to the rebel captain, Dandan was suddenly not so sure.

Still didn’t start to run, though. Couldn’t move against the hot stone glitter of those eyes, the coiled tension in its sleek wet dreadful body.

Also, it was beautiful. That counted for something too. Apparently it was hard to turn your back on beauty, even where it was terrible.

S
HE WASN’T
the only one not running.

A handful of men had stood their ground, rallying behind their captain. They stared back at the tiger, equally tense, moving no more than it was.

Perhaps, Dandan thought, they could let terror and tension wash through them and ebb away. Perhaps if none of them was stupid, if none drew a weapon, there needn’t be any kind of fight at all. Perhaps the men could just wade slowly back to shore after their fleeing companions; the tiger could leap up onto the stranded boat again and drip all over its deck while Jiao fastened it to its chain again; and Dandan, Dandan could …

S
HE WASN’T
sure, quite, what she could do. What she should.

A
ND THEN
it didn’t matter anyway, because Jiao spoke a word from above and the tiger leaped.

F
OR A
moment, in the air again, it almost blotted out the sun. Eclipsed in its shadow, the men drew blades. Did they really think their simple taos could make any difference to
that
?

Dandan shrank back against the dank timbers of the boat’s exposed hull. She thought the tiger would slay the rebels, and then turn to her. She did just want that little pause, that little space between them. To say
no, I did not stand with them, I was not one with them, no
, if the question ever arose in the afterlife. She didn’t
quite see how it would matter then, but
I was faithful, loyal to the emperor
—it mattered to her, it mattered now.

T
HE MEN
were fighters, trained and tested. They knew their lives were in the balance here, they fought to save themselves; they used blades and brains together, they worked with one another, they made a deadly team.

The tiger had none of that. It was a creature alone, magnificent but lethal only in itself. And still an animal, however splendid. It fought because that was its nature. Almost, it might have been playing. Seeing it so closely—seeing how lean it was in its slicked-down fur and how supple, twisting and rolling in air and water—Dandan was beginning to think it very young. Still monstrous, still vicious, but young. Not quite a kitten but still a cub, a youngling. Almost, she could have pitied it.

I
T LEAPED
, and fell among the gathered men and their raised blades. In that little moment she thought she would see a slaughter here, the swift death of something lovely.

And then the tiger was in the midst of the men, rolling and kicking in the water, yowling when it had air. With a ring of armed men around it, Dandan still thought it should be doomed, dying already, bleeding out into the sea.

But it was still a tiger, jade tiger, immensely more than any man. Where it kicked, a man was hurled back, brutally bleeding; where it rolled, it rolled with a man between its paws, pierced and pierced, his head in its teeth.

It could break a man with simple impact, the stone strength of the thing. One long raking kick with a hind leg could gut him, open him from throat to groin and spill out all his innards.

Why didn’t the men—the surviving men, so few—have sense now to run away?

Why didn’t she?

·  ·  ·

P
ERHAPS, LIKE
her, they still couldn’t turn their backs. Even though it meant their deaths, separate and dreadful.

The captain was the last to die. She thought perhaps he might have welcomed that. He seemed the type: first to meet the enemy, last to fall.

Last of the men, at least.

There was still herself.

The tiger was sea-washed, still green in all its aspects, only its appalling teeth and jaw stained red as it tossed aside the ruin of that last man and turned its head, unsatisfied.

Turned to her.

D
ANDAN MIGHT
have cowered there against the hull until it leaped again. She might have died, her body ripped asunder beneath the tiger’s claws, her lost ghost to haunt the weed-wracked shore.

She was too afraid of that: so much afraid that she did the other thing, she stepped forward into the tiger’s stare, lifted her head, found her voice.

Found at least a thin and tremulous memory of her voice, a shadow. Enough—barely—to call up to the deck there, “Jiao …?”

The pirate presumably could see her. Dandan couldn’t actually look up, she still couldn’t take her eyes from the tiger, but she heard Jiao bark with laughter and then say, “No, you leave her. Leave her be. Get after those who ran away, save me one of those men.”

The tiger seemed impossibly to understand. Its gaze lingered on Dandan one little moment longer, and she thought it would still like to kill her. Then it turned, almost more liquid than the water, and plunged away in a series of leaps and splashes, bounding high above the breaking waves.

Jiao watched it go, and pitied the men it chased, and hoped it could distinguish soldiers from civilians, or at least men from women.

She was still watching that distant racing shadow when a ladder of rope and bamboo clattered down to swing in the air beside her.

S
HE MADE
the perilous climb, and at the top she found not Jiao but a boy, pale and anxious as he helped her over the side.

The two girls she expected to see were in the bows; at this distance she couldn’t tell if they were upset at having run aground, if they were oblivious to the slaughter below.

Jiao was in the boatmaster’s place, by the stern oar. Dandan didn’t need the jerk of the boy’s head to send her aft. There was never any question who was in charge.

There were so many other questions—
Jiao, what happened to your arm, your shoulder? Where is the old man whose boat this is? Why did you come ashore here? What did you mean, when you said about going to Tunghai Wang? Where, how, why did you find yourself a tiger, a jade tiger …?
—that she could apparently ask none of them, they clogged her throat and left her speechless.

That last especially. The tiger filled her mouth and mind, it left her trembling so hard that she could barely stand. She had to cling to the rail. And could only stare up at Jiao, bewildered and not feeling very rescued after all, still afraid.

“Well. You’re Mei Feng’s little friend, aren’t you? The one she left behind?”

It seemed that there were words after all, perhaps there was just a hint of pride. She said, “I stayed, yes.” To take care of her old men, and she would give anything to have them with her now, quiet and experienced and potent at her back.

“What were you doing here?”

“Gathering seaweed. There is not much to eat, even in the palace.”

“Ah. If you’re still in the palace, you can help me to Ping Wen.”

She could, perhaps. At least, she could take Jiao past the guards on the gate. But, “Your tiger would do that,” half joking, half hoping for a smile. Not seeing it, and plunging on doubtfully, “So
would this,” the boat itself; and then, a more specific gesture, “so would they,” the girls in the bows. So, most emphatically, would they.

“Yes,” Jiao said, “I thought that. Something to bring, a gift. Only polite, I thought. But he can’t have my tiger.”

With immaculate timing, a low and terrible howling came rolling out across the water. Jiao glanced ashore, and her mouth did twist now into a smile, utterly humorless. “I think he’s done what I asked. Good tiger. That may be another way to buy my way into Ping Wen’s good graces, if I bring him a prisoner.”

“Jiao, I don’t understand.” In honesty she understood none of this; here was a question she could ask at last. “Why should you need to do that? If you come from the emperor …”

Her voice died away, in the face of that smile again. It looked worse every time it appeared.

Not from the emperor, then. Dandan wondered briefly if she herself stood in any danger here. Perhaps she should stop arguing how much Jiao really didn’t need her.

But there seemed to be no way back from here, for either of them. Once Jiao had made that implicit declaration,
I am not here from the emperor
, which was to say
I am not loyal to the emperor
, it didn’t really matter what else was said between them. There were no secrets left, only things that had not yet been said. Dandan said, “You told that man, you might have gone to Tunghai Wang …”

“Why, so I might. A gift for one will do as well for another. I was fairly sure of my welcome, if I could only find him,” with an awkward one-armed gesture that mocked Dandan’s own, encompassing the boat, the girls in the bows. Not the tiger. “But his people found me first, and I didn’t like them. Did you? So I think perhaps I’ll go to Ping Wen after all. I find I like his people better.” That smile again, meaning Dandan,
I mean you
.

Dandan shivered, and knew that Jiao had seen it. She wanted to rub her arms, where her skin was prickling. She said, “But, but
Tunghai Wang, he’s a
traitor
,” and how could she go from one to the other, how could she not care?

“Yes, of course, you little fool. So is Ping Wen. Didn’t you know?”

Dandan shook her head slowly, meticulously. She did know that Mei Feng believed that, of course; it was impossible to spend any time with the girl, to be close with her at all and not to know it. Dandan had never believed it, though, a traitor so near to the throne. And if it were true, why on earth would the emperor have appointed him governor of Santung …?

Ideas, revelations came slowly this morning, it seemed, but they did come. Jiao only stood there, while Dandan worked things through on her fingers. The governor of Santung sat in exile from Taishu, from the throne. The strait lay between them, and the dragon ruled the strait. It could not be crossed except in those vessels protected by the goddess, which carried her chosen children—which Jiao had apparently stolen, in a stolen boat. Brought as a gift to Ping Wen, or else to Tunghai Wang. Two traitors in stranded opposition, and yes, Dandan could see why the emperor would leave them so. And why the girls would be so potent a gift, to either one: how this one boat’s one journey could turn the war.

“Come,” Jiao said, watching all that parade of thoughts as it tumbled slowly through Dandan’s reeling head. “Let’s go and see what my tiger’s caught me. If he’s left any of them alive.”

J
IAO HAD
the boy—Pao was his name—drag a line above the high-water mark and anchor it among the rocks, in case the beached boat should float free on the rising tide. The big girl Jin had to carry little Shola ashore, through water that was breast-high already; Dandan needed to let the waves lift her as they came, or she would have been mouth-under.

Dripping wet on dry land, Jiao set them in marching order, the girls and the boy and Dandan too. She put herself last, where she could overwatch the line. At her word the two girls set off, firmly
hand in hand and it was hard to tell which one led which, though Dandan thought she knew.

She thought that between them, she and the boy Pao might have overpowered this new Jiao who sounded so brash but walked so tentative, who had struggled to climb down on the ladder.

But this new Jiao had her tiger, which was out of sight but had probably not gone beyond earshot. It had left a trail. Here was a body on the beach, some fool rebel who had lingered to watch the slaughter in the boat’s shadow, thinking himself safe away. Finding himself wrong. He must have turned to run again, too late, seeing the tiger bound toward him; he lay on his belly, in the bloody rags of his clothing, with the spine torn out of his body.

The tiger hadn’t lingered, it had killed and run on. There were dark marks in the sand, bloody pawprints on the rocks. Jiao waved them on, but Dandan balked, just for a moment. If they must encounter more bodies, at least the girls needn’t be first in line, the ones who found the dead.

Besides, there was the tiger. Jiao might trust it; she might not care. Neither of those was true of Dandan.

Swiftly, trying to seem indomitable, she set the girls behind her, in Pao’s care, and took the lead herself. Jiao only watched with flat black eyes and an ominous silence.

On, then. On over the rocks, where she had come to gather seaweed. She had had a purpose then, her old men; she had had a basket. Almost she looked around to find it, somewhere on the tideline at their backs. Almost, she thought she ought to fetch it. Almost.

But she could hear the tiger somewhere ahead, beyond the rocks; with the girls at her back, she really had no choice. Someone had to show them how to face tigers.

Like this: up over the rocky margin to the dunes and broken land behind, where men might think—for a minute, for a little minute—that they had room and time to run.

Until the tiger ran them down, one by one, to leave bodies like footprints sprawled all in a line.

Cats will defend their kill. It was standing four-square astride the last in line, and the salt air rumbled with its growling.

As they came closer, Dandan saw that the man was moving, if only a little, while the tiger’s belly-hair dripped seawater on his body.

She seemed to be walking more slowly. Well, she had reason for that. It wasn’t the fear—or no, of course it was the fear, she was terrified entirely, she had seen nothing of this animal except its willingness to kill, but it was more than that. What was she meant to
do
…?