Hidden Cities (52 page)

“Being a doctor, in ways that you cannot. You can at least tell me whether this one needs her wisdom,” which almost certainly meant
whether this one is dying
, which she thought he probably understood.

All he said was, “You will need to lift him up.” He might have made it a point of pride,
I am not accustomed to stoop to my work
—but that would only have seemed to be cover for the truth,
I am no longer able to stoop to my work
, and he was too proud to allow that.

Gieh was willing, Chung could be bullied; between them, they built a hasty scaffold of wood and stone, and hoisted Shen onto it with what care they could achieve. Which was more than they had shown in pulling him free, but not enough, not now that urgency was gone. He hissed, and turned his face away.

Ai Guo took his time, his professional time overlooking the body before him, assessing its hurts. Touching, twisting in ways that she had balked at, bringing degrees of knowledge to the task that she couldn’t approach. Never shy of making Shen flinch or hiss again or cry out loud: satisfied, seemingly, when he did, because that was information.

At last he stepped back and said, “There is nothing here to concern me.”

Chung had been silent so long, he was suddenly boiling, boiling over: “
Nothing?
What kind of doctor are you? He’s in so much pain …”

“Pain, yes. I am … the kind of doctor who seeks truth in pain,” without so much as a glance down or a gesture to draw attention to his own visible damage or the constant pain he lived with. “Burns hurt, and so do broken bones. Shen has both. But these are simple burns, and simple breaks. I have looked for deeper harm, crushed organs or interior bleeding. I cannot find either. I may be wrong,” though he clearly didn’t think so, he presumably rarely was, “but I believe your friend will mend entirely, with time and care.”

“Meantime,” Dandan said swiftly, for fear that might prove altogether too much for Chung, “pain can be managed. Here,” she still had a lump of poppy in her sleeve, fetched up against her old men’s needs. They might need it yet; they would have to share. She broke a little off and gave it to Chung. “Feed him this.”

“So little?”

“Yes, and less than that. Less at a time. Rub it on your thumb, and let him suck it.” They’d both enjoy that, she guessed, once they had started feeling easy in this new dispensation. Easier. “Give him more and he’ll sleep,” which would be no bad thing but Chung would worry. “Make him comfortable, and yourself too. Ai Guo will help.”

The old man blinked. “I will?”

“Of course. This is your special study. What else would you do here?”

His hand gestured tightly toward the group gathered around Tunghai Wang: where the world presumably was being meted out, where he might have seized his portion, if he could have held it.

He had perhaps not anticipated Dandan. He was in part her portion, and she was not prepared to let him go.

She wouldn’t willingly let anything go, and she was hoping to use all this smoke and fuss to gather around her what was hers, and what ought to be. She thought all those important people would go soon, walk back down to the city, leave everyone else here doing what they could amid the wreckage. It would fall to her
anyway, no question, to bring her old men down at a pace that they could manage; she wanted to let everyone else get far ahead, just keep her own people close. There would be turmoil, she thought. It would be important first to keep out of trouble, and then to rebuild amid the chaos: to emerge stronger, better placed, more secure.

She’d forgotten, though, her own people were not hers alone. Or at least, no one else recognized her claim. The old men, the boy Gieh, any of them would have squabbled with it; and then there was Tien.

The whole of Santung would squabble with her over Tien. Here came Li Ton into the smoke now, stiff and stately, looking for the doctor.

“Oh, are you hurting too?” Of course he was hurting, he always hurt. Like Ai Guo, though, he rarely asked for help.

“Not for me. For Tunghai Wang, he wants her.”

“And what, he sent you to fetch her? You who can barely walk?” Disappointment made her snappish. She’d hoped power would just walk away and leave them here, leave them all to her.

“Why not?” the pirate said equably. “This at least I can manage. I can play messenger, so long as there is no hurry. And Ai Guo is over here already, and you had taken our boy too. There was no one left but me.”

That was clearly not true, Tunghai Wang still had an entourage of sorts; or there was the monksmith, or the fisherman, or …

Still. Li Ton it was that came, one of her own; and he came to take it all away from her.

“Gieh,” he said, “now that I’ve found you, run and fetch the doctor.”

“She’s busy,” Dandan asserted, last desperate defense, “she’s being a
doctor
 …”

She was; but Gieh went anyway into the thick of the smoke, and he came back coughing with Tien in tow.

She said, “There are people hurt here, badly hurt …”

“Ping Wen’s men,” Li Ton said, with a shrug. “Eventually, Tunghai Wang will remember that they are his men now—but not yet. Just now, all he remembers or understands is that you and I and Ai Guo know more about the dragon than anyone else in Santung—I have been at pains to impress that upon him, in case his spies had missed it—and that he needs dragonlore more than he needs anything else in Santung. She has made a dragon-shaped hole in his head, and he wants us to fill it for him.”

“I’m a
doctor
,” Tien said—but even she sounded unconvinced, and she couldn’t keep her eyes from the southerly horizon, where the dragon had gone.

“Then you shouldn’t have made yourself an expert in something he values more. The generalissimo has been a soldier all his life, there are few things he values more than a good campaign doctor; and yet here you are, and he will take you away from all your doctoring. Come.”

“No, wait, I can’t”—and yet she was, already moving unhappily in his wake, looking back only to say, “Dandan, you’ll have to look after them up here, until I can arrange—”

Dandan surprised herself perhaps as much as anyone else there, perhaps more. She said, “No. If Tunghai Wang wants Li Ton too, he will need me to come too. If he wants Ai Guo too, he will have to wait; I can’t manage more than one of them at a time down that hill.”

“There’s always Gieh.”

That was Li Ton, and Dandan laughed at him. “Would you trust your pain to that boy? Or Ai Guo’s? Besides, in Tien’s absence, Ai Guo knows more about bodies than anyone else. No,” she said, astonishing everyone, taking charge entirely, “we will leave Ai Guo up here for now. With Chung’s help, he will organize a hospital for you, Tien. Chung, there are all these others you can use,” the walking wounded and the merely shocked, those she had guided herself out of the smoke, who were still milling around or else just sitting and nursing their memories and griefs. “Round
them up and make them busy. See the injured as comfortable as they can be, with whatever you can gather,” coats and flags abandoned by the fled. On beds of earth at first, but at least the dragon had broken it up for them. “I will give you the rest of this poppy, here, and you are not to give it all to Shen,” which—said aloud—meant that Shen would refuse even what little Chung might offer him, and so save more for others who might be in greater need. Or not, but the two young men would feel better for it. Ai Guo should probably take some too, and would not. “Tien may have more that she can leave with you,” if she hadn’t used it all already, knowing that Dandan had some to spare. “Ai Guo will use his own knowledge, to help you make them easy. I will go down with Li Ton, and come back with more help. With Mu Gao and a squad of men.” Dandan was forming another plan as she spoke, as all these more important people unaccountably stood and listened and allowed her to do it. It was necessary to be changeable, in these changeable days. “Be as useful as you can, Chung, and as patient as you must. It will take me half the day, but I will be back; and we will make a camp of tents for everyone who can’t be moved, and live up here until they’re better. And you can make fireworks while you wait for Shen to mend, and we will let them off in triumph when he does.” And then—well, by then she would count these young men among her people, these and perhaps more, because that was what she did, she cared for those who needed it and so made them her own. Her outraged heart took seize.

Took seize, and let not go. She had seen Jiao watch everything, and quietly walk away; she thought perhaps that she would do the same, in time. With her people around her, a family, a tribe. They would all be better away from this. Ai Guo away from his torture-chambers and his generals who abandoned him and used him and abandoned him again; Li Ton away from the sea and his lost
Shalla
, his pirate life; all of them away from war and soldiery and death. There must be country somewhere inland where they could settle, build a home and a new life. Gieh was a peasant and so was
she at heart, they knew how to farm, they could teach these rough bewildered men …

S
HE’D MEANT
Gieh to stand as crutch to Li Ton’s slowness on the path down to the city: to pace the old man on his other side, lend a youthful arm at need and on instruction. Apparently he was too distracted to be dutiful, his head full of dragon and smoke, his legs full of bounce. He had slithered ahead and involved himself with faster walkers, more important men, the generalissimo and his party.

Or not quite that, in the event. It was the monksmith that he skipped beside, at the tail of the generalissimo’s party; the monksmith that he listened to along the way, insofar as he was listening at all.

For some obscure reason—or under some obscure instruction—he had rescued the dragon’s green banner from the ruin of the paddy and was flying it aloft like a kite, like the boy he was.

No matter. Dandan could manage Li Ton by herself, so long as they didn’t try to keep up; and she thought she could likely reel Gieh in again once they reached the city, once he remembered who he was and what he did when he wasn’t playing among the great. If she were wrong, if the monksmith decided to keep him—well. Boys were cheap, and plentiful.

There was another one ahead and below her on the path, giving an arm to his master the fat general. Not abandoning his duty, though he was constantly looking back over his shoulder, all too clearly itching to fly kites alongside Gieh.

It was turning into quite a parade ahead, as stray runaways came awkwardly back to their commanders. Shuffling along behind, Dandan had a view all the way to the city’s edge. That was more than a guard detail waiting there in greeting. News must have run all through the city like a breaking wave, far ahead of any running soldiers. Everyone could have seen the dragon and the fires that brought her down. By now, that growing throng should
know not to expect Ping Wen among this returning troop. Tunghai Wang was back instead, their master by default, and—

A
ND THEY
were looking, the whole city was looking to the north, to the valley road, to see him come.

No one was looking up or back, into the southern sky.

Perhaps Dandan was the first to see her, when the dragon came as well.

They all knew soon enough: when men pointed and cried out, when Gieh let his kite-banner fail on the wind and fall down, when her shadow overswept the crowd packed close at the city’s edge, waiting for Tunghai Wang.

When her bulk came down, right there, at the city’s edge. Blocking the road, breaking the road and the buildings to either side, crushing anyone too slow or too stupefied to run.

Dandan wondered if she’d come back to eat Tunghai Wang after all. Or to eat them all.

But she seemed content just to squat there, magnificently in the way. She hadn’t eaten her boy either; he slid down off her neck and stood beside her, one arm against her claw. Leaning against her strength, it seemed to Dandan, his new chains dark and heavy under the weight of sun.

After a long time, after a
long
time, two men walked out of the generalissimo’s party where it had tangled itself together into a knot of reluctance, and went slowly forward to speak with her.

One of them was Li Ton, and the other was the fisherman, Old Yen.

It was as well to be changeable, these changeable days. Dandan thought she might need a new plan.

ere on her balcony, looking out over the forest and the rising peaks, Mei Feng was farther from the sea than she had ever been.

It didn’t seem to matter. These days, she thought she carried a sea inside her. Within her swelling belly, her little spawn-of-emperor swam in tidal salt. That was enough, apparently. She hadn’t thought she could be happy away from the coast and boats, storm and surf and far horizons, but she was happy here.

Happy with herself among others, with her subterfuges and her plots. Little things that made life better for someone, and then for someone else. She could save the empire, she thought, if she could only do it one person at a time.