Heart and Soul (52 page)

When he dared look up again, he knelt, incongruously, in the middle of the manicured grounds of the vastest palace he’d ever seen. There were marble buildings in the center, and small marble pavilions standing amid clumps of trees and flowering bushes. Amid them moved lumbering clay men.

“Thank you, Grandfather Yu,” one of the men on the barges, the one Nigel assumed was the emperor because he seemed to give the orders, shouted. And, following the emperor’s gaze, Nigel saw a shadowy golden bridge and a couple crossing it, hand in hand.

They turned and waved, then disappeared, seemingly in midair.

Over in a corner, the huge dragons were eating something. Nigel looked at Jade. She shuddered. “Zhang,” she said.

“Dragons are cannibals?” he asked, appalled.

“These are not quite dragons,” Jade said, softly. “Not like I’m a dragon. They merged with the rivers, see, and became, in a way, river gods. And the rivers eat everything, living and dead alike.”

But she turned and hid her face on his shoulder.

Out of the ground, more and more clay men emerged. “What are they?” Nigel asked Jade.

She looked at the clay men and her eyes grew wide. “Soldiers. They’re soldiers. All the soldiers who were buried in the tombs of emperors throughout the millennia. Clay soldiers. I should have anticipated this. I think they’ll stay with Wen as long as he needs them, so he can secure the country.” She gave him a sudden, dazzling smile. “It doesn’t matter if you are the anointed one, with the Mandate of Heaven. You still need soldiers.”

“Yes,” Nigel said. “Yes.” He should have felt relieved, because, given the clay-men armies, no one was going to try to steal the rubies from him now. But he felt a little light-headed and lost. He felt, in fact, as though his heart had been taken from his chest. How could he go, leave Jade behind?

Once before, in the African savannah, a woman had become his comrade in arms. But he’d never felt for her what he now felt for Jade. He never felt for anyone what he felt for Jade. It was as though she were a part of him that had accidentally wandered off. To leave her would feel like an amputation.

DUTY

Before Third Lady gave Nigel the pill that would
make him look again like the foreign devil he was, she brought him to Wen. After a long conversation the night before—during the celebrations of the recovery of the throne—Third Lady had, with much difficulty, convinced Wen that his sister had lost her heart to this foreign devil.

As troublesome as it was for Wen, and as much as it might make people around him doubt that he really did have the Mandate of Heaven, Wen loved his sister, who had protected him and tried to keep him from harm when he couldn’t protect himself.

So he’d told Third Lady to bring him Nigel Oldhall—even the name hurt the tongue to pronounce it—this morning. And now Nigel stood before the golden Dragon Throne, in a magnificent salon. Wen was surrounded by an escort of clay men and two dragon guardsmen, who looked distinctly uncomfortable with their new colleagues.

Nigel Oldhall should have kowtowed, of course, Third Lady thought, but he didn’t know it. And all of a sudden she had a sharp doubt whether this could work. But she knew that Wen would try. And she knew that if Jade wanted this man, Jade would make sure it worked. No one could doubt the will of Lady Jade.

Oldhall did bow, and appeared genuinely awed by the magnificence of the salon. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I was told you wanted to see me. I hope you don’t need the rubies anymore,” he said, with a note of weariness in his voice, “since I need to return them to the avatar in Africa.”

“I understand,” Wen said. “And I do not need them. But I do have a proposal for you.”

“I listen, Your Majesty.”

“You have done me a great service, and secured my kingdom for me. In fact, your work and heroism were greater than anyone’s, save my wife’s and my sister’s. I propose that, instead of taking the potion to change your appearance, you take another, which will make you look like this permanently. And then marry my sister and stay. I shall make you lord of vast domains.”

Third Lady could see that Oldhall was tempted. Desire passed behind his eyes like a storm, and left his face harsh, like a parched desert, his lips white and bloodless like those of a dead man cast to the shore. “I can’t,” he said. “I wish I could, but I can’t. You see, I am the only surviving son of my father’s house. Someone must look after my parents in their old age. Bitter as it is, I must go back.”

After he had left, Third Lady told her husband, “He is a filial son. Indeed, he has every virtue Lady Jade could hope for in a husband. It is unfortunate their very virtue separates them.”

And Wen, looking remote as he did when lost in thought, smiled at her and said, “Not all is lost. Remember when there is a knot, there are two ends to the string.”

A ROYAL AUDIENCE

“You called me, Brother?” Jade asked. She’d been
summoned to her brother’s office, from which he magically directed the armies of clay men who were delivering China to his control.

Wen looked up from the map he’d been studying. Not for the first time, Jade was struck by how different he looked. How intent. How focused.

“I did call you,” he said. “I have arranged your marriage.”

“You…you have?” Jade asked, faltering. She’d half expected this from her father on any given day since her adolescence. She’d never expected it from Wen.

“Yes,” he said. “It is a marriage with someone I wish to reward for his loyalty, someone to whom I owe a very large favor, and someone, furthermore, who will help me stretch my diplomatic relations in a direction I wish them to go.”

“But…” Jade said. And suddenly, with swelling indignation, “But I don’t wish to be married!”

“That hardly matters,” Wen said. “You are my sister, and therefore your duty is to the Dragon Throne. The Dragon Throne wishes you to marry, and you will fulfill your duty.”

Jade could do nothing but agree. It had been words like those, or something much like it, that had kept the explanations locked inside her, when she wished to tell Nigel how she felt about him. It had been such words, or some much like them, that had kept her from throwing her arms around him, confessing her love, and asking him to take her back with him to his land. But she was the sister of the Dragon Emperor. And she must obey him. Yet…

Her feelings rose within her like bile at the back of the throat, at the thought of marrying anyone but Nigel. “I cannot, Wen. My heart is given, and once given, I cannot stand the thought of marrying anyone else. And him I cannot marry. I will always be your obedient sister and servant, but do not force me to marry.”

“If you stay here,” Wen said, remote, moving things about on that map of his, “then you must marry whom I tell you to marry. You are my servant, and someone I can dispose of.”

“Well, then,” Jade said, in sudden rebellion, convinced he would back down once she spoke. “I shall leave. I shall go to my mother’s country. I’m sure I have family there. I will throw myself at their feet.”

There was a sparkle of humor in Wen’s eyes as he looked up, though he made his voice drily official. “If you’re going to the foreign-devil land, you might as well follow my command. I wish for you to marry Nigel Oldhall.”

“But…” she said, feeling her legs give. “How…You know I…He has left…”

“Only now. I know the carpetship he left in. You can change into a dragon and follow him. Your mind link should allow you to find your way to him, in any case. Just follow your heart.”

CAPE TOWN

Cape Town looked harsh and white under the bright
sunlight of summer, when Nigel landed, as flight magician in yet another carpetship.