Hidden Cities (45 page)

Old Yen’s turn to blink. “Why? Is someone ill?” A complex this large, almost a city in itself: at any given time, someone must be ill. But by the same token, a complex this large, it must house someone skilled in medicine. Even his village had its healer-woman. And here lived Ping Wen, the governor himself and a soldier to the bone. He was safe to keep a doctor close. His own, someone he trusted, not a new-met girl.

“Not ill, no. Broken, maybe. She keeps two old men here, fusting over scrolls older than they are. Ping Wen values them, or what they do; or she does, and he values her. I don’t know. But she is here, and today she is not to be let leave. I hear she is in something of a temper about it—but she is still here.”

That was curious. Old Yen could make no sense of it, except, “Don’t send her to me,” he said, changing his mind quite urgently. “If she is unhappy already, that would not help, I think.”

The guard grunted. “I think so too, unless you are sick. She might be glad of a reason.”

“Could you take me to her? I am not exactly sick, but perhaps I can give her something else to think about.”

T
HE GUARD
seemed gratified by the errand. He might perhaps be eager to see the girl raging.

He brought Old Yen to another soldier, who was transparently grateful. This man had endured the tempest; had survived it, but—he felt—barely; was glad now of any relief, any distraction for himself or his prisoner.

Tien was undoubtedly a prisoner, as much as Old Yen was, exactly as much: welcomed and watched and forbidden to leave. The only difference was that she had tried, forcibly, had insisted on her right to go.

And had been held back, forcibly; and was being held now in a closed room with a guard at the door.

Old Yen found her at the window. Might have found her out of the window and gone, he rather gathered, but that another guard
stood four-square on the grass below. She had—just—too much pride to be manhandled, but oh, she was angry. She was almost spitting as she turned to face him, and only swallowed it back when she saw who he was, when she managed little by little to place and name him.

“Fisherman,” she said, and, “Old Yen, isn’t it? Mei Feng’s grandfather? I’m sorry, I didn’t … Why are …?” And then, with a massive effort of will, setting her own mood aside as she remembered what she was, “Do you need my help?”

“I do,” Old Yen said, because it was true, and because she all too clearly needed that.

“How are you unwell? I have little with me here beyond my needles,” in a tube at her belt, “but—”

“But there are other doctors here who will be very well provided, and I am sure that you could raid their stores at need.” He spoke that way deliberately, to make her feel piratic, vengeful, powerful. And then, to let her mull on that—Mei Feng thought he was not this subtle; but Mei Feng was his granddaughter, and knew herself adored, and thought she had manipulated him all her little life—he changed tack abruptly. “We will talk of what I need, but what of you? Why are you here?”

“I came,” she said, “because I come every day to see my patients here. I am here still,” through stiff lips, through a sudden wash of anger, “because I was detained by order of my lord the governor, no less. We have spoken, and even so he is keeping me here until he wants me, which will be tomorrow, and—”

“He is not sick?”

“Not he, oh no. Not anyone that I can discover.”

There would be someone, Old Yen was sure, if she would only look for them less furiously; but, “What did you speak of, then, what did he want, if not your skills?”

“He wants my knowledge about the dragon,” hissingly, “which he would have been welcome to at any time, if he were not keeping me from my patients. And he wants my old men too, who can
make up their own minds whether to dance in his shadow up a hill, and I am not to be held hostage for their obedience,” although apparently she was, “and please do not ask me why, because he would not tell me and I do not know!”

Which last was what bit deepest, apparently, what made her most angry. She was not one to forgive ignorance, even in herself.

He said, “Up a hill?”

“His excellency the governor is pleased to parade to the height of the ridge tomorrow morning, early. And he wants my two old men to drag themselves up there in his train, which is a cruelty to both of them, they are not fit for it; and that is his first excuse for wanting me, because he thinks I can help to get them there. And he is right, of course. He knows that if he takes them I will go, because I wouldn’t let them face such a climb without me, even carried on other men’s shoulders. And even so he locks me up like this, to be sure he has me on hand for the morning …”

She was working herself up into a fury again. Wise in the ways of young women, Old Yen didn’t try to shush her, nor urge her to be calm. He said only, “Soldiers are not a trusting breed. They set a watch on me too, men on my boat, when I was sailing back and forth for the emperor. Before the dragon rose.”

“The dragon, yes. That might be truly why he wants me, but …”

“I came to him from the dragon,” Old Yen reminded her. “So, yes, it is no surprise if Ping Wen is interested in the dragon. He has to negotiate with her. Tomorrow, perhaps. He may be ready to fly her banner at last and draw her in. Why he wants your old men there would be another question, unless they know more than you do”—a stubborn shake of her head, that he was not too inclined to accept—“but then there is one question more, which is why he has been interrogating me about the goddess.” And why he was keeping Old Yen here too, if not to sail boats for him. There was nothing more to be said about the goddess; yet the fisherman was beginning to wonder if he might not himself be rousted out of bed early, made to march up to the ridge.

Tien had nothing to offer to that question. His goddess was not hers, and, “I do not like the way she uses children.”

No more did Old Yen, and he was almost prepared to say so. Better not, though, here in the heart of a palace with listening ears at door and window. Ping Wen thought him still a devotee.

Perhaps so did the goddess, despite his refusal out at sea.

Perhaps they were right.

Tien said, “How can I help you, Old Yen?”

“Not at all, I think. You have said it, you do not know the goddess, and—”

“Old Yen,” quite kindly, almost laughing, temper not forgotten but set aside, “you came to me, you sought me out.”

Oh. Yes. He took a breath, straightened his spine a little, wished he were at sea; what did he know of palaces, of doctors, of governors and guards?

Of lies, evasions, flight?

He said, “It is difficult to sleep here, far from my boat.”
Far from my life
. It was true, this much.

She smiled at him, a little curiously. “One more night, old man. Is that so hard?”

“It may be more than one. Who knows what Ping Wen wants? Besides, he is a traitor,” suddenly vehement, truth on truth, “and he worries me, what he might do next. He preys on my mind, and I cannot sleep.”

Tien shrugged. “Is he a traitor? I didn’t know. Perhaps he keeps good company. There are traitors all around you; half of us are traitors here, if you mean rebels against the throne. I served Tunghai Wang before I served the emperor.”

That was right, she did. He had forgotten. If she was ashamed, regretful even, she didn’t show it. He said, “Well. I cannot sleep. Nor the children, whose house I have been sharing.” That was better. She cared about the children.

She said, “The children don’t worry about Ping Wen’s treachery.”

“No,” not even Pao; their concerns were closer at hand. This was still, almost, true. “They are frightened of the tiger.” She must at least have heard of the tiger, even if she hadn’t seen it. She might have seen the bodies that it left along the shore, or the man brought in still living. Ping Wen’s torturer had that man now, somewhere in this same palace, for whatever he might still be worth. Old Yen had heard the rumors, like a whisper-echo of distant screaming. Perhaps there would be an end to it now, if Ping Wen and Tunghai Wang could come to an agreement. With or without the dragon. Already they had stopped skirmishing, holding their armies strictly apart. Old Yen could feel vaguely responsible for that, when he wanted something good to hold on to.

“Well. You cannot sleep, because Ping Wen is a traitor; the children cannot sleep because of the tiger.”

“Yes,” he said stubbornly. “We need something to help.”

“There are teas that I can mix for you …”

“The children will not drink a tea if it is bitter. They need something stronger, something sure. Something in quantity. Ping Wen might keep them here for weeks, months, whatever he does with us. Jin and Shola and my boy Pao. I think Pao is helping Jin, a little; I think he could help her more, but I doubt Ping Wen would allow it.”

How much more should he say, how much was needful? He couldn’t judge. Tien was smiling again, distantly, thoughtfully. She said, “Well. Something strong, and in quantity. Something to make them sleep … Come with me, Old Yen.”

And she strode to the door and hammered on it, and when the guard opened she said, “Take us to the governor’s own doctor, wherever he keeps his office. I need to plunder his stores.”

A
FTER SHE
had bullied the guard and then the doctor, after Old Yen had what he had come for, heavy and sticky and warm in his sleeve like a weight of sleep compounded, she said, “Come and meet my old men. I can do them both some good anyway,” patting
the tube of needles at her waist, “to help set them up for tomorrow; and a new face, new conversation will be better yet. For you, too.”
And we can all four of us talk about Ping Wen, and what he wants of us tomorrow:
that she didn’t say in front of the guard, but Old Yen read it in her eyes.

S
O SHE
took him to her library, a room full of books and scrolls and papers and two men. Both men moved with a pain not born of age, and one of them was introduced as Ping Wen’s torturer, who had been Tunghai Wang’s before; and the other was Li Ton the pirate, who had been another man altogether—another general, Old Yen remembered—in another life and was not to be trusted in either guise, was a man who stole boats and people with equal equanimity, was a traitor twice condemned, by the old emperor and the new. And by Tunghai Wang too, apparently. How these two could work together Old Yen did not, could not understand, after what one had done to the other. And yet they could, they did; and yet, he could not. He would not. It was like what the goddess had demanded of him, out on the ocean. Even at the risk of the dragon, he could not. He would not.

He made his stiff little bows, once to each of the men and more deeply, more truly to Tien; and then he left them, and took his sleevely treasure back to Pao.

And showed the boy what it was, and told him of its uses; and then said no. Said, “No, listen, you must do this yourself. I am too old for this. This is what you must do …”

iao was snoring in the back room of the pavilion.

She was quite willing to bed down alone and apart, letting her charges all sleep together in the front. Confident that they wouldn’t slip away in darkness. She was the lightest of sleepers, she had told them this, alert to the slightest sound; and besides, they were not unwatched.

The tiger slept sprawled and massive along the balcony, chained to one of the doorposts. It wasn’t going anywhere, and neither were they.

So Jiao thought, at least. But she was snoring, because of all the poppy in her supper; and all the rest of the poppy, the whole sticky lump of it had been rubbed into the great slab of meat that made the tiger’s meal.

So. Jiao was oblivious, and the tiger—well. The tiger wasn’t snoring. The tiger lay stretched across the doorway there, eyes closed. It might have been stone for real. If it was breathing at all, Pao couldn’t see.

It was hard to see anything, in the dark of the pavilion. He didn’t dare light a lamp. Jiao and the tiger might not be all the watch there was, and any outside guard would be curious about a light shown this late. Moon and stars beckoned, through the open door—and the tiger lay between, inert, inherent with possibility.

Oh, it was asleep. Surely it had to be asleep. So much poppy, even a magical creature with stone in its blood, even a jade tiger could not withstand so much poppy.

Could it …?

In truth, Pao didn’t know. Nor did the old fisherman who had given it to him.

Pao had said, “You do it, master. Please? We’ll follow you …”

But Old Yen had said no from the start, and was immovable. “This you must do alone. I am not coming with you.”

“Master, I can’t …!”

“You must. The girls will depend on you.”

“But, but, why aren’t you coming? Master? If you stay—”

“If I stay, then I am not responsible and cannot be blamed. And Ping Wen would miss me before he will miss any of you. I am ordered to the ridge in the morning; I want you gone before then. With luck he will not know until after he has done whatever he means to do up on the ridge there, if the dragon allows him to do it.”