The Secrets of Jin-Shei (70 page)

“You’ve been crying,” Weylin said. For all his youth and brashness, he was not entirely insensitive. “I can hear it in your voice. What happened?”

“I said, go to
sleep!”
Nhia said, but her voice broke on the last word, and all of a sudden she was sobbing violently into her pillow, her shoulders heaving.

Weylin gathered her into his arms, turning her face into his chest, smoothing her hair with a gentle hand. “Tell me,” he said. “I can help, perhaps, and even if I can’t it helps to talk about it. Or are you going to tell me again it’s all a state secret?”

“I’ve lost too many of them, too fast,” Nhia sobbed. “Too many of them. Oh, my sisters!”

“I saw the Empress’s proclamation,” Weylin said. “Is it Qiaan? Are you thinking of how Qiaan is to die?”

“She will not die like that,” Nhia said, her voice muffled against his chest.

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “She won’t die …” Something about Nhia’s words suddenly changed shape, however, and Weylin did a rapid double take. “‘Like that’?” he questioned. “Like what?”

“I can’t let it happen,” Nhia said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand like a child. “It would be a betrayal of everything. Liudan could not even contemplate doing this if she stopped to think about the fact that she was doing it to one of her
own jin-shei-bao”

“She has always been a user,” Weylin murmured.

“No,” Nhia said. “She has always been Liudan. She was lonely, and she was insecure, and she acted to take as much power as she could so that she did not ever have to depend on anyone else’s goodwill for anything—she was Empress, and her word would be law. But she was also kind. She gave me a life when my own didn’t seem worth living. And now she has forced me to take a life because it was worth more than the value she put on it.”

“Nhia,” Weylin said, after a brief pause, his hand frozen on her hair, “just what did you do?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, pulling away from him.

“State secret?” he said, sighing.

“No. Mine. What I did is my responsibility, nobody else’s.”

“She won’t die, Nhia,” Weylin said, choosing his words very carefully. “Listen, there is something I have been wanting to tell you for some time. I know some people … people who are involved, who had been involved with the rising.” He stumbled to a halt, groping for words. Nhia, suddenly very still, sat with her eyes steadily on him, watching, offering no help.

“There was a faction,” Weylin continued helplessly, unable now to halt his confession, “that wanted Qiaan dead.”

“They nearly succeeded,” Nhia said. “My
jin-shei-bao
Xaforn to whom I just bade farewell on her journey to Cahan was there.”

“I know,” Weylin said. “But there were others … there are others … who did not agree. They might have been too late then, but they are ready now, ready to act.”

“What are you saying, Weylin?”

“Oh, Cahan. I suppose this is treason, too,” Weylin said, runing a long-fingered hand through his long hair. “I am not part of this group, but I have friends, good friends, who are. And I know that they … I should not be telling you this, but damn it all, it’s all getting out of hand now. For what it’s worth, you’re torturing yourself unnecessarily—Qiaan will not die in two days. I know because … you won’t go straight to Liudan with all this, will you?”

“Telling me what?” Nhia said.

“Liudan was waiting for her to recover from her wounds, was she not? Before she took any action?”

“Yes.”

“So were they, Nhia. They were waiting until they could snatch a well woman. It’s hard enough to take a prisoner from that place if that prisoner is cooperating and hale and hearty, it’s near impossible if that prisoner is slowed by a stab wound and is unable to move fast, or move quietly, or move at all, damn it, without being carried.”

“You left a very slim window of opportunity,” Nhia said, and now she sounded distant, frozen.

“I know. But it was necessary. But it’s all in place now, and we have plans.”

“Tell them to stand down,” Nhia said. She turned away, very suddenly, and lay down on the bed with her back to Weylin, curled up on her side, eyes wide and staring into nothingness.

“Nhia …? What are you …?”

“You’re too late,” she said. “I took her a vial of poison tonight, to sleep, if she will. I could not bear to see her tortured and flogged and put on show just because Liudan needs to feel secure. So I gave her an escape.”

“But, tomorrow! Tomorrow we would have …” gasped Weylin.

“It’s probably too late,” Nhia said, “even tonight. Go. Tell them.”

“But I told you, I don’t know …”

“You have
friends
,” Nhia said, laying ironic emphasis on the last word. “In my experience people with
friends
in situations are not infrequently discovered to share that situation themselves.”

“Your
friend is about to die!”

“Qiaan is not just a friend; she is my
jin-shei-bao.
I have done what I need to do, to protect my sister in the name of the vow that binds us. Go, Weylin. Go now.”

After a stark silence, she felt the bed shift as he swung his legs out and stood up.

“You might have slain the future for all of us,” he said.

“I might have,” Nhia agreed, suddenly weary beyond bearing, beyond hope. “Leave me alone.”

“If Liudan finds out, she will flay
you
alive instead,” Weylin said.

“Liudan is my
jin-shei
sister, too, remember,” Nhia snapped, raising herself on one elbow.

“That didn’t seem to stop her from passing that horrifying sentence on Qiaan,” Weylin said. “But one more thing I will tell you, then, and it’s free—I happen to know that they will try again to kill the Empress.”

“Again? Have they tried before?”

“Several times, and once came close.”

“The arrow.”

“Yes.”

“The Empress is well protected against arrows these days.”

Weylin gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “Do you think they are stupid enough to try the same trick twice?”

“How, then?” Nhia said, after a beat of silence.

“Poison,” Weylin said. She could hear him slipping into his trousers, elbowing his arms into his tunic. “And that is really all I know. If I had details I would give them to you. All I know is that the poison had been procured, and they were waiting for a good opportunity—and chaos is always a good opportunity. That’s why I’m telling you this now. You may not realize this yet but you have just created chaos. The perfect timing for that poison will be within the next two days. Or as soon as the news breaks that Qiaan cheated Liudan’s executioner.”

“What kind of poison?”

“I have told you all I know. Good night, Nhia.” He paused, the merest beat of silence, and then added, very softly, “Good-bye.”

She sat up, seeking him with her eyes in the twilight of the bedroom, but all she saw was the door already closing behind him. He would not be back, she felt that in her bones. All of Nhia’s recent relationships seemed to last only for a short while—a few months, often just a few weeks, once or twice no more than a couple of sizzling days. She had been the one to end it, every time. Sometimes she regretted the severing, a few times she actually mourned her loss, but mostly she was left feeling hugely relieved that
she would not be expected to give any more than she had already done, that she had escaped something which, if she had let it run its natural course, could have destroyed her.

Weylin had been quiet, kind. With him, it might have been different. If she had done things differently. If she had only tried harder. If only life was not such a mess.

Had he been speaking the truth? Had she really killed Qiaan, helped her die, perhaps only hours from rescue? She had hardly been able to believe the tortures that would be inflicted upon Qiaan, the bile had risen to the back of her throat at the very thought of it, and as the Chancellor of Syai it would have been her duty to be present when the sentence was carried out.
Was it Qiaan I was trying to save, or myself? Is it too late?

Her mind was a chaotic whirlpool, awash with painful memories, with guilt, with fear, agitated by concern for Liudan, by mourning for Xaforn, by grief for Qiaan. There was a time that she had known how to calm her spirit, how to slip into a meditative state, how to sit quietly for hours and become part of the light of Cahan and emerge refreshed and renewed—but she could not seem to remember how to do that anymore. It was as though it had been centuries since she had last called upon that ability, not the handful of years that had truly passed.

Nhia closed her eyes, pummeled her pillow into submission with both fists, tried to burrow into it and sleep, but it was useless—she could not seem to find a comfortable position, turning restlessly in her bed, getting the sheets all tangled around her twisted foot. Everything ached—her withered leg, her bones, her shoulders taut with tension, a throbbing pain behind her eyes.

Yuet might have told her trenchantly that the first thing she needed to do was get some sleep—but Yuet was gone, ashes now. Xaforn would have … Qiaan would have …

“Oh, Cahan!” Nhia moaned despairingly. There were too many ghosts sharing her bedroom with her this night. None of them had come to demand reparations, or to accuse, or to lay blame. But they were there, thick around her; Nhia’s skin prickled at their presence.

This room was no haven for her, not tonight.

She rose and dressed again, wincing as she forced her aching crippled foot back into its special shoe. It was well past midnight, and the city was quiet in the night as she slipped out of a postern door and into the streets,
hurrying past shuttered houses, past the big market square where already some stir was evident, the air perfumed by fresh-baked bread as the baker fired up his oven in preparation for the first customers of the day

Tai’s house was silent and dark except for a lantern lit by its gate as Nhia, pulling the concealing hood of her mantle closer around her face, beat on the door with her fist.

She had to do it several times before a sleepy servant emerged to answer her knock.

“I need to see your mistress,” Nhia said, allowing her mantle to slip back a little so that the servant could catch a glimpse of her face in the light of the lantern he carried. “I know it’s late. It’s urgent.”

“I will wake her,” the servant said, recognizing the visitor and stepping aside so she could enter, bolting the door closed behind her. “I will light the lanterns in the sitting room for you.”

The servant conducted her into the room and busied himself for a moment with a taper until three or four decorative lanterns made of heavy double-layered silkpaper bloomed into being and the chamber was filled with a delicate creamy light. Nhia lifted a piece of half-finished embroidery from the nearest chair and subsided onto it, breathing as though she had run here from the Palace—she, who had never run in her life, who could never run.
Perhaps that’s why I do what I do,
Nhia thought in a swift, chagrined insight.
I cannot flee using my fleet so I made it an art form to escape using my mind.

It was not long before Tai, rubbing sleep from her eyes with the knuckles of both hands like a child, padded into the sitting room. Her hair was unbound for the night and spilled around her shoulders like a dark cloak; her feet were bare.

“Nhia? What are you doing here? What time is it? What’s happened
now?”

“Liudan would have tortured her,” Nhia said abruptly.

Tai made the effort to wake up, to make the mental transition. “You mean Qiaan?” she whispered. “I know. I saw the proclamation.”

“Weylin told me they would have rescued her tomorrow,” Nhia said.

“Who would?”

“Her people. The rebels”

“Lihui’s people or her people?” Tai asked, thoroughly awake now. “You aren’t making any sense, Nhia. Let me get us some tea.” She took a closer
look, and realized that Nhia was crying quietly; she took a step closer, reached for her hand, squeezed it hard. “Don’t you dare. If you fall apart on me too, I swear I’ll go out and throw myself from the city walls.”

Nhia hiccoughed, laughing and sobbing at the same time. “I’m sorry, but I …”

“Tea,” Tai said firmly. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared briefly, to collar an early-waking servant in the kitchen and command a pot of tea, and then hurried back to Nhia, who was sitting with her face buried in her hands. Her sleep-tousled hair, which she had not bothered to comb or dress before she had made her mad midnight dash to Tai’s house, fell over her fingers in loose strands and tangles. For a moment Tai was transported many years into the past, when they had both been children of Linh-an’s streets, daughters of women earning a living by the labor of their hands, daughters of seamstresses and washerwomen. How far away it all was, and how close. Nhia had shed the skins of the Temple Teacher, the wise woman, the Chancellor, and was once more just the friend of Tai’s childhood. With everything that had been gained and lost in the passing years, there was always that.

“We are so arrogant,” Nhia whispered, “thinking we always know best.”

“What is it that you have done?” Tai asked, very gently, subsiding onto the floor at Nhia’s feet and leaning her cheek on Nhia’s good knee.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Nhia said. “I know Liudan wished Qiaan destroyed—I know the orders that the Guards had were to kill her if they found her. Qiaan said that’s what Xaforn … what Xaforn said, too, there in the courtyard. That the Guard had orders to kill Qiaan. But then, when they had the chance to do it after Xaforn no longer stood in their way, they didn’t do it.
They didn’t do it.
And they brought her back to Liudan. Who then decided that just killing her wasn’t enough.”

“That’s because orders coming from Liudan are seldom the same two days in a row these days,” Tai said. “These days people are struggling to second-guess her, to stay one step ahead, just to make sure that her wrath won’t descend on them for reasons that seem utterly irrational. But you, of all people, know this. You are Chancellor; you’ve been juggling Liudan’s explosive whims for years.”