Hidden Cities (53 page)

If the emperor would only stop arguing with her.

She was happy with him too, with her man. Even when he was angry. He was still magnificent about it, and still prepared to listen. Eventually, she thought, she could bring him to see that she was right. Until then—well, she supposed that they would argue. And she would get her own way, because she plotted and subterfuged, because she was sneaky where he was plain and forthright and didn’t quite understand that being emperor wasn’t quite enough.

She looked down the length of the balcony, to where Yu Shan and Siew Ren and the boy were playing a game with little round beads of jade. Rules didn’t seem to matter much, and every now and then the child would pick up a bead and suck it instead of
rolling it. He had decided, apparently, that jade was meant for his mouth.

It made him laugh, which made Siew Ren smile; that was good enough.

He spoke sometimes too, a word or two. Her name, or Yu Shan’s. Not his own, not yet; but they called him Yaya, and he lifted his head when he heard it and came if it was called, if he was interested, if there was food.

The emperor was troubled by the changes in the child. It was what they argued about most often.

“Mei Feng, you should have left him at the temple. He’ll forget the goddess if we keep him here, she’ll lose her grip on him.”

Yes. Exactly. “He’s good for Siew Ren,” she said, “and she’s good for him.” Someone, and someone else. All the empire, one person at a time.

That was only today that she had said it, though not for the first time; and she had gone on, “Bring Pao back with you, and the girls.”

“Mei
Feng
!” He had been on the point of mounting a horse, to ride to the city; a runner had come with news, a little boat sailing in from the mainland all unexpectedly, with an unexpected crew of mostly children.

“And their mother too, of course, bring her. She’s a priestess, all but. She’ll make sure they don’t forget the goddess.” Even so Mei Feng thought, she hoped, the goddess might lose her grip on Jin too. This far from the sea, this far from her influence. If the girl could be induced to talk again, if she could learn another kind of life … “They’ll like it here, I think, this little house,” this far from the sea. Four more people, they had room for another four. One at a time, she would find a way to settle them.

“Do you
want
us to be stranded here, with no means to cross the strait?” The question was serious, and so was he. But he slipped his arms around her waist as he asked it, because he needed to be touching her—or touching them, perhaps, her and their baby,
two in one—whenever she was close enough, whenever he could. Whenever she allowed it. Even when they were arguing.

Yes. Yes, I do
. No more adventuring in pursuit of a lost empire. She wanted to keep him close, in protection of a child who had been nearly lost and an island the same, a life that she would cling to as much as could be saved. She couldn’t quite say that, not yet, that was too big an argument. She said, “Send Grandfather back to the dragon, he can negotiate.” For a boat, perhaps, a truce-boat that might even be true. Not for an army. Not again. Secretly, she rejoiced at that. She could almost bless the dragon.

“Your grandfather is on the other side of the water, as far as we know. And he doesn’t have either of the children anymore, to help him cross back.”

“The dragon will let him by,” she said. That had to be true; she insisted on it. “But you,” with her hands clenched in the silk of his robe, little fists of determination, “you bring the children here to me. Tomorrow. Promise me.”

“Or?”

He knew there had to be a threat to follow. It made her smile, even as she growled it: “Or I will come and fetch them, all that way and back again. In that nasty jolty carriage I will come, with all the upset and the danger and …”

“Little liar. You like it here, and you hate going to the city, and you would never do anything to upset our baby.” Laughing, he bent to kiss her, while his hands stroked the bowl of her belly. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps I will bring them back. For a while, for a little. If I don’t, you will only send someone to steal them again.”

She nodded, firmly. That was true. It was her best weapon, so long as he believed it. Plots and subterfuges, one laid within another. He would bring the children here, and she would do what she could to draw Jin back from the goddess, and if that made her a traitor so be it; it was only the empire that she betrayed. Never her man.

She thought the empire was the old woman in the silent room
behind her, under a skin that did her no good now. There was someone who could not be drawn back, from wherever it was that she had gone. Mei Feng sat with her an hour dutifully every day, listened to the slow rasp of her breath and saw no reason why she should ever leave this state, caught half and half between life and death, favoring neither one above the other.

Should Mei Feng pity her? She wasn’t sure. On the whole, she tried not.

T
HE SKY
darkened. Siew Ren fetched lamps, and then led Yaya and Yu Shan off to bed. People had learned not to try to chivvy Mei Feng. It was harder than ever to lie comfortably in bed, unless she had her man there to nestle into. If she was alone, she’d often drowse the night in her chair here, as she used to with the empress. She liked waking to the sounds of wind and distant trees and night-creatures, waking and waking. She liked moonlight on her face, the bright strewn ribbon of the silk-stars overhead. Not so much the occasional night-creature on her skin, a curious moth or a spider dropped from the roof above, but those were as likely indoors as out, and they did no harm. Nothing seemed to bite her anymore, or if they did bite she didn’t feel it and her skin didn’t swell or bruise.

Perhaps there were mosquitoes out there now with stolen jade in their bellies, in their blood, that had trespassed and departed all unseen.
Go well, little thieves
—she could be placid even about mosquitoes now, apparently.

Perhaps there were mosquitoes out there somewhere that had tried to bite the emperor. Mosquitoes with sore bent noses.

She giggled on a breath, and missed her man, and hoped to remember to tell him that.

And looked up, and saw something occlude the stars.

Something big, too big. Monstrous big.

Dragon-big.

She watched it come, thinking that surely her heart should be in
her mouth, she should be running, screaming for help, alerting the guards.

But the guards would know soon enough if the dragon came to ground, and what could they do? What help should she scream for, where should she run?

She sat where she was, and watched. Waited.

She was unreasonably sure that it would come to her.

I
T SWOOPED
low over this petty palace, and settled on the hill above.

Now Mei Feng didn’t need to run or scream or alert anyone. They knew. Everyone was running and screaming on their own behalfs, alerting themselves and one another.

She sat in her chair and waited.

Yu Shan came out from the house still lacing his trousers, bare-chested. He told her to stay, as if she were a puppy uncertainly trained; then he vaulted the balcony railing and was gone.

A little later, a boy hauled himself up over the railing, much less gracefully.

A boy with broken chains hanging from his neck and wrists, trying—with small success—not to let them make a noise as he came.

Having come, he seemed to have nothing to say to her, but only crouched warily in the shadows.

She said, “How did you ever get past Yu Shan, jingling the way you do?”

He said, “I held still under a bush and let him go by me. He went up to the dragon.”

Of course he did. Everyone would have done that, except those who were running away. One stray boy, slipping from the dragon’s side, clinging to the shadows—he would go as disregarded as a moth tonight. He could depend on that.

She said, “So can you really have the dragon take you wherever you want, whenever you want to go?”

He snorted laughter through his nose, which she took to mean
no
. “Sometimes,” he said, “I can persuade her that it’s in her best interests if we go somewhere together. Though she never quite believes me. Which is wise of her, because it’s never quite true. Like tonight,” with a jerk of his head toward the fallen silence that must exactly describe the location of the dragon, the awe that Mei Feng could almost feel even through the width and height of the house, the weight she was sure she could feel, that the hill itself seemed to complain about. “I had an excuse, but really I wanted to see you.”

Why me, what can I do for you?
—but what she actually asked was, “What’s your excuse?”

For answer, he shook his chains at her. “I need these cut away. I told her we’d both be easier, with them gone. She bit through the links, but she couldn’t get her teeth under the collar and cuffs,” great bands of iron hammered around his flesh, “without biting off bits of me.” Important bits, she gathered: his head, his hands. There was a livid gash on his neck where she must have tried, tried and failed while he kept very still or screamed and thumped puny fists against her snout or …

She couldn’t really imagine their life together, how they did ever deal with each other. It was just too extraordinary, beyond the reach of her mind, she who had gone from fishing boat to emperor in one night and onward after. She said, “Well, I can have men from the site remove those for you.”

“Tell them to be careful,” he said, very earnestly. “She will be watching. She doesn’t quite trust me, and she won’t trust anyone else. At all.”

“I will do that,” solemnly agreeing, as though any man would need to be told, with the dragon’s great head thrust at him and her eyes aglow. “Will it make much difference to you and her, when the chains are gone?”

“Not really. I still have all the old words written on my skin,” shifting his shoulders gently. She might offer him a shirt before he
left. One of the emperor’s, perhaps; this boy would be lost in it. “But these are stronger, some of them. That monksmith …”

“The monksmith?” she said sharply. “The monksmith’s dead.”

“Well.” He didn’t sound convinced, though the way she’d heard it, he had himself seen the old man die. Long ago, that seemed now. Back at the start of everything. Lost in the fog. “If so, they found another. Who looks, well. Like the monksmith.”

“Perhaps all monks look alike,” at least to a boy in confusion.

“Perhaps. Anyway. I’d like to be rid of these. And so would she. Nothing I can do about the words on my skin, but it’s better if they don’t jangle in her face.”

“I’m sure. So,” coming to the point at last, “why did you want to see me, actually?”

“I thought you ought to know what’s been happening,” though his eyes glinted as they shifted in the lamplight and the shadows, and this wasn’t the truth either, though still not a lie. “Your grandfather wanted to tell you, but he’s waiting for Li Ton to find his crew, what he can of it, and …”

“Wait.” Her grandfather, and Li Ton? The fisherman and the pirate, the loyal peasant and the traitor general? “What do those two have to say to each other?”

“Quite a lot, actually,” and the boy Han was grinning in the darkness. Nice to know that he could still do that. “Li Ton chained me and your grandfather freed me, more or less, but since then they’ve been talking about boats. They’ll be coming across in Old Yen’s soon enough, and then Li Ton wants to find the
Shalla
and crew her again, reclaim her. He thinks she gives him a better claim on me,” and his fingers strayed to his ear, a sliver of metal, a piercing ring that he might have plucked out at any time but oddly hadn’t.

“Is he right?”

“Mmm? Oh. No. But you may be seeing more of him, in these waters. I think the dragon wants to keep him, to be her voice to the people.”

“Li Ton? I thought you …?”

“Oh, me too. She just doesn’t like to let me out of her sight. I’ll be her voice to Li Ton, I think, and then he’ll sail up and down the strait and talk to people. Talk to you, on her behalf.”

“Han.” Mei Feng’s mind was failing, a little, at the thought of the pirate as ambassador. For the dragon. “What’s
happened
, that she should want him to speak for her?” Or to make him agree—but one question at a time.

“Oh—yes. That’s what I came to tell you. She ate Ping Wen.”

“She did
what
?”

“Ate him. He tried to chain her again, but your grandfather wouldn’t let the goddess take her back to the strait; and they were trying to control her through me,” with barely a shudder at the memory of it, whatever they had done to him, these fresh chains and more, “and I … Well. I let her eat him.”

Mei Feng heard more than that,
I told her to eat him
or
I saw the chance
or something on that order, his decision almost, his incitement, something. His the guilt, at least, except that he didn’t feel guilty.

Nor would Mei Feng, on his behalf or her own. Ping Wen had been a traitor, and undoubtedly deserved a slow death in a dragon’s belly. She hoped it had been slow. She cradled her own belly and said, “Well, then. Who rules in Santung now?”

Expecting the obvious answer,
Tunghai Wang
and themselves no better off, she was startled when he said, “She does, the dragon does, if anyone.”

“How …?”

“She was angry, after Ping Wen tried to chain her. After he did chain me. She took me away, to the Forge. She liked the Forge, we both did; I thought that was the home she wanted. I do still think it was. Only, she was angry, and she doesn’t trust people. You, Taishu, she trusted you, your grandfather made a pact with her; she thought she could do the same the other side, and they betrayed
her. So now she won’t let anyone have Santung, she wants it for herself. It’s going to be … complicated. The Forge was
easy
,” a sudden protest, all boy, “but that’s not good enough anymore. The palace in Santung is hers now, that’s where you should come if you want to speak to her. I think she’ll let people cross the strait, some people. Your grandfather, Li Ton. The emperor, perhaps, if he wanted to come. You, but I don’t suppose …”