Hidden Cities (41 page)

“Excellence, she would want to speak to you. Directly.”

“How so?”

“That is my message. She sends me to fetch you to the Forge, or if you will not come”—added quickly, in the face of his abrupt shake of the head—“then she asks that you fly a flag of her color, a banner in an open space outside the city, and she will come to you.”

“She will come? And how am I to trust this accommodating dragon?”

“Excellence, she wants to parley,” the old man said simply. “I have negotiated with her already, to allow the fleet at Taishu to fish with her consent. The boy said she will make the same arrangement with you.”

“In exchange for what?”

“You would have to ask the dragon. All she wants from us on Taishu is that we fly her color at the mast, and not cross the strait. I do not suppose that she would want more of you.”

Ping Wen grunted and stood still for a moment, gazing up at the empty sky. Then he walked again, more quiet than he had been; the fisherman and the doctor both were left behind.

It was a pity. Chung would have welcomed their company, any company: anyone else who really shouldn’t be here, who really didn’t want to be doing this.

Shen the soldier was looking forward to it, he thought, as much
as any man might want to see the results of his handiwork. Chung the pyromancer, who might deny it as much as he liked but still knew himself to be responsible, knew that none of this would have happened without him—he didn’t actually want to be anywhere near, did not want to be confronted with what he had done.

Only that he thought he ought to be, and so did Ping Wen, so here he was.

M
EN CLEARED
aside the barricade to give them an easy walk along the road.

There was an open stretch of ground, littered with spikes and pits and obstacles to frustrate an assault.

The assault had never reached so far. The bodies made another line of litter, farther off.

Ping Wen wanted to examine the bodies, to see the results of his new weapons in the flesh. Deep in the torn scorched flesh.

Chung didn’t want to look at them.

He kept his chin up and his eyes on the horizon, except when Ping Wen spoke to him, words of considered praise like coins counted out by generous, careful fingers.

So it was that—despite the entourage, despite the guards who ought to have been watching but were all too readily distracted by the dead—Chung was first to see movement on the road westerly.

Banners and flags, designed to be seen at a distance: this wasn’t another assault. A tentative party, rather, coming slowly, making themselves plain.

Chung said nothing, waited for others to notice. Hid his smile when it was Shen who saw, Shen who pointed, Shen who called an alert.

Ping Wen straightened, turned, assessed. Said no, they would not fall back behind the barricade. This was an embassage of some sort, riders flying the flag of Tunghai Wang with bannermen running before. Ping Wen would receive them on the road here, in person, right now …

·  ·  ·

I
T COULDN’T
have been what they were expecting. Functionaries speak to functionaries, by and large. If they had thought to be brought before Ping Wen at all, it would have been in the governor’s palace, in the audience hall with perhaps a word in private after, before they were sent back to their master.

Not this, to find the man himself with such a small party, outside his defenses, surveying the night’s carnage. They weren’t quite ready for it, these runners and riders. Perhaps some distracted aspect of their minds was wishing they had laid a little ambush, live men among the fallen …

Still, they recovered. They saluted Ping Wen with respect; they conveyed the greetings of their own lord Tunghai Wang, who asked for a meeting between them, the two powers on this side of the strait.

Two equal powers
was not said. Neither was anything said about victory or defeat, surrender, submission on either side. It was all most courteous and diplomatic.

Ping Wen took a little time to consider, but not too much. He stepped aside for a minute, and stood untroubled among the corpses; then he came back and said, “I will fly a banner on the ridge, north of the city. Do you tell Tunghai Wang to come to me there, and we will speak.”

“When will that be, may we tell him, excellence?”

“When I fly the banner. Do you watch. A green banner; you will not miss it. It will be soon.”

The green banner was the dragon’s signal. Chung wondered what it was that Ping Wen might have to say to Tunghai Wang and the dragon together, or to either one of them that he might like the other to overhear.

Then Ping Wen dismissed the embassage, and watched them ride away with their bannermen running before them; and then he summoned Chung with a brisk wave of the hand, and then Chung didn’t have to wonder anymore.

iao thought probably she should have gone with Ping Wen to see the bodies beyond the walls. She had seen bodies enough in her time, but these might have been interesting, handiwork of those curious boys with their curious machines. Besides, it would be good practice to establish herself at the governor’s side, let her seem to be there by nature. If she really did want to act as his second voice, his shadow. It was one of her options. She was considering it.

But she would have had to take the tiger, her own second voice, her shadow. She was nothing yet without the tiger; and she thought perhaps he had seen enough of blood and death for a while. He was young yet, just a cub. She didn’t want him thinking that human beings were always to be found beneath his feet. Dead by nature.

There might be no faster way to make a tiger-skin of him, and she was hoping to avoid that for as long as possible.

For now, he was worth more to her alive, and she meant to keep him that way.

For now.

B
ESIDES
, J
IAO
had let that girl-doctor Tien at her with her needles, and had been feeling heavily, pleasantly sleepy ever since. And a brisk fall of rain had passed over, and now the air was heavy with that scent of hot sun on wetly green, and the breeze had picked up some of that weight and warmth as it pressed like a tender hand against her skin, and she very truly did not want to move.

·  ·  ·

B
ESIDES …

H
ERE IN
the governor’s gardens was a pavilion that overlooked a pond. The reedy margins had been kept clear of trees, perhaps to draw ducks and herons, to let the birds and the water be seen and admired, painted perhaps, from the balcony above.

That made it a fine place also to keep watch on necessary children. Jin and her little sister lived in the pavilion, very much under the governor’s eye; so did the boy Pao. They were not short of deckhands here in Santung, but he did seem to be required for the girls’ ease of mind, and hence the governor’s.

Sprawled in a chair on the balcony in the sun, Jiao was entirely doing her duty, watching over Ping Wen’s greatest asset.

The children were playing catch beside the pond, the three of them tossing a bright feather-light ball from one to another. The little girl wasn’t very good at catching; her big sister wasn’t very good at paying attention. Pao had been a model of patience and encouragement.

Until the tiger came.

N
OW ALL
three of them were caught in a twisting wind of laughter that bent them entirely out of shape and even Jiao was grinning, struggling not to join them altogether. It had taken her till now to learn that laughing offered whole new avenues to pain.

The tiger had been lying sprawled on the balcony beside her, asleep or nearly so, his bright flank shifting sunlight as he breathed.

Perhaps the children’s voices had woken him. Drowsing herself, she had been none the less aware when his head lifted to watch them at their play.

When he stirred to crouch alert on his haunches, she dropped a quieting hand on his shoulder, feeling the weight of bone there and muscles like cables beneath the dense coarse fur. She’d sensed a response to her touch, but not what she had reached for, not the
discipline of submission. Before she could take a grip on his collar, he was gone: one tremendous leap took him over the balcony rail and down to the grass below, two more bounds and he was in among the children.

Jin was the unlucky one, standing with her back to the pavilion, couldn’t see the tiger coming.

Which meant of course that the other two could and did, but they were as slow as Jiao. Only her mind was moving, keeping up. She saw how little Shola was wide-eyed and scared for her sister, ready to scream but she didn’t have the air; she saw how Pao was just as scared but bold in the moment, ready to hurl forward between beast and girl, but he didn’t have the time.

Even from the back, she saw how Jin herself was blithely ignorant, focused entirely on catching Pao’s high careful lob.

Jiao saw everything, it seemed, every little detail: the ball’s rise and the tiger’s too, those great ground-eating bounds that sent all his lethal mass flying toward Jin’s unprotected shoulders …

T
OWARD THEM
and above them, close enough to stir the girl’s hair as he overleaped her; and he was turning, twisting in mid-air, stretching out one long vicious leg—

—
AND BATTING
at the ball as it tumbled by, like a kitten playing with a falling leaf.

S
ENDING IT
—by chance, surely, it had to be chance—straight at Pao, who was stumbling lad-like over his own feet but still managed to hurl a hand out and catch the ball before he fell.

T
HEY CAME
down together, boy and tiger, rolled on the grass and came up almost eye to eye. Caution or downright fear had kept the boy at a distance before this, but now he would have hot musk breath in his face, all the glitter and charm of that fierce eye in his head. Jiao knew. She was almost envious.

He stared, enraptured, and the tiger moved no more than he did.

Then, slowly—oh, so slowly!—the boy raised his arm, cocked it, flung the ball back over the tiger’s head.

The tiger leaped and pivoted, couldn’t quite swat it out of the air.

This time, he landed squarely on all four feet. And then just stood there, looking from girl to girl to boy to distant ball. Not a dog, quite clearly; not going to fetch the thing, no. Expecting it to be fetched.

Remarkably, it was poor hollow Jin who ran to do that. Who turned and tossed it back toward the tiger; who crouched and leaped and caught it this time on a claw, and dragged it down to earth and snuffled at it while Jin squealed and clapped her hands, while the other two stared at her, at the great cat, at her again.

No longer worried, Jiao subsided into her chair. Now she was just watching.

Pao had his courage back, but still no certainty. He glanced up at the balcony as if for consent, or else refusal. Seeing neither, he was desperately slow again but bolder than before, stepping forward, reaching down to take the ball. To take it from the tiger.

Who was growling, Jiao could hear it from here. The boy might be hoping that was just a purr made gross. It wasn’t, but neither was it a dog’s growl, promise of a fight. Sometimes it was an invitation. Sometimes. He growled when he ate, and she wouldn’t try to take his food away from him.

The ball was only silk and feathers, and it must be torn already; Jiao saw a drift of leakage as the boy lifted it from the tiger’s paw.

The tiger raised his head, and sneezed.

And crouched, his eyes intent on the ball again.

Pao tossed it from hand to hand, making the tiger’s head turn and turn, back and forth. Now both the girls were giggling.

He called to Shola, to be sure the little girl was ready. When he saw her determined nod, saw her hands cup in hopes of a clean catch, he threw the ball.

High over the tiger’s head, who made a wonderful unavailing effort to swat it; and turned again in mid-air to see how it fell, as neatly into the little girl’s hands as if it had been drawn there on a string.

The tiger crouched again, and waited for her to throw.

She stretched her arm out and flung so hard she turned herself entirely around in a circle and so didn’t see how poor the throw was, how she virtually hurled the ball straight into the turf. Instead, she recovered just in time to see the tiger pounce and tumble head-over-heels with his prey, growling mightily the while.

By the time he came to rest, he was closer to Jin. Jiao could see, she could almost measure how the boy struggled to hold himself back, not to interfere. Trust was a hard thing, and he had to trust them both.

There was no hesitation in the big girl, doing what she had seen him do. She stepped forward, bent down, took the ball away from the tiger.

Jiao wasn’t sure, but she thought it was just possible that Jin had murmured a word to the tiger as she did it. Certainly Pao was staring, startled.