by Sharon Shinn
Kalen pointed toward the bridge. “Watch,” he said.
And then, as if raised in tandem by precision-trained teams, the three huge river gates began rising. As the barriers slowly ascended, water first began seeping out, then gurgling out, then pouring through in a great frothy frenzy, leaping and joyous as a fluid pack of hunting dogs. The sound buil tfrom a mild rumble, like a hundred faucets turned at full blast, to a whooshing roar as the greatest part of the pent-up water came gushing through. And then the noise became quieter, calmer, as the river found its level and the water slowly returned to normal.
“Wow,” Daiyu said.
“I know. I thought you’d like that,” he said.
“Now can we get something else to eat?”
They returned to the house for the noon meal and found Ombri before them, vague about how he had spent his morning. Aurora would be at Xiang’s until late, he informed them, but they could practice the tiaowu without her that night.
“First I want to sort through Daiyu’s stones and take them in for scanning,” Kalen said.
“We brought home bags of rocks, but I don’t know if any of mine are qiji stones,” Daiyu said. “Why do some of them feel funny?”
She had the attention of both men. “Feel funny—in what way?” Ombri asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “They thrum. Like there’s a really slight power current running through them.”
Kalen was looking at Ombri, but Ombri was still watching Daiyu. “Most people can’t feel that,” the black man said. “I’m surprised you can.”
“You know what she’s talking about?” Kalen demanded.
Ombri nodded. “A qiji has a specific cellular makeup that vibrates at a slightly different level than most of the solid materials on Jia,” he said. “I can feel the difference. So can Daiyu, apparently.”
“Oooooh, so those were qiji stones?” she said, reaching for her bag. “Let me see if I can find them again!”
Daiyu dumped her bag out on the floor and then settled herself on the rug beside the loose stones. Kalen and Ombri sat across from her. She picked through every rock, culling out the ones that sent a faint skitter across her fingertips.
“These two,” she said, handing them over to Ombri.
His fingers closed over them and he nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. Those are full of tremors.”
Kalen took them from Ombri’s palm, furrowing his brow in concentration, then he sighed. “They just feel ordinary to me.”
Ombri gestured at Kalen’s bag. “Let’s see if she can find any treasures in the stones you brought back.”
She sorted more quickly through Kalen’s haul. “Only one, I think,” she said.
Ombri took the stone from her hand and nodded. “Quite remarkable,” he said.
“Still,” Daiyu said thoughtfully. “It’s not much of a time savings. If I was a stonepicker, I’d still have to spend half the day in the river, touching every rock I found.”
“You could sell your services to other stonepickers in the neighborhood,” Kalen said. “They wouldn’t have to go to the scanners to get the rocks appraised. They could bargain directly with the merchants and make more money off of eachqiji.Once the merchants learned to trust you, of course.”
“And dozens of stonepickers would be lifted out of poverty,” Daiyu said. Not for nothing had she listened to her father’s lectures on microfinance. “Almost makes me wish I was going to be staying here for a while.”
Kalen smiled at her. “I was wishing that already.”
She smiled back. “Hand me that big rock. I want to check something.”
The minute he offered it to her, balanced on his open palm, she slapped the copper bracelet around his wrist. Ombri’s approving “Very good!” was lost in Daiyu’s squeal as Kalen dove from his knees and wrestled her to the floor.
“Any iteration I go to, you’ll follow me there!” he cried.
“As soon as he releases you, pull out your quartz talisman,” Ombri advised. “Or whatever you have chosen to simulate the talisman while you are practicing.”
She slipped free of Kalen’s hold and rolled to a sitting position. “Ihaven’t. Picked a stone to practice with, I mean. I guess I could just use one of these.”
But Kalen was already pulling something out of his own pocket. “I found this in the river today,” he said a little diffidently. “I thought it was pretty, so I kept it.”
She took the rock from his hand. It was about the size of an egg yolk, although very irregularly shaped, and smooth from long tumbling in the river. The color was a milky caramel veined with darker lines of orange and inset with a nugget of opaque blue. “Oh, I like this,” she said. “Thank you, Kalen.”
Kalen jumped to his feet. “Time to go sell the qiji stones,” he said. He carefully placed the three confirmed qijis into his bag and then added a handful of ordinary rocks. When he caught Daiyu’s expression of surprise, he said, “I twould look very suspicious if I showed up with only gems. No one in Shenglang can separate them out by touch alone. The scanners would think I had stolen them.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “Can I come with you?”
“I’d be glad if you did.”
They took a trolley down to the river, north of the red gate, where there was a cluster of industrial sheds that Daiyu supposed held the scanning equipment. Outside each one, lines of stonepickers were already waiting for their bounty to be assessed, and they picked the shed with the shortest line. Soon it was their turn to step inside the testing station, which was little more than a room, a couple of workbenches—and some pretty sophisticated-looking machinery attached to the workbenches. The air inside was stifling and a little acrid; the four men who were operating the equipment and handing out money looked sweaty and bad tempered.
“Next,” one of them called out. Kalen stepped forward and poured the contents of his bag onto the black cloth that covered a section of one of the benches. The technician activated the machine and a startlingly bright light played over the stones. Three of them glowed an opalescent pink under the scope’s hard stare. The others remained obdurately dull.
“Three,” the technician said, scooping them up and transferring them to a scale situated at his right hand. “Six ounces,” he added. The man working with him recorded the information and pulled a handful of coins out of a drawer. Moments later, Daiyu and Kalen were back out in the fresh air.
“I feel rich,” he said. “I should buy us all a special dinner.”
But Daiyu had been in Shenglang long enough to appreciate the precarious nature of Kalen’s economic status. “You should save your money,” she scolded. “Anytime you get a windfall, you should put part of it away.”
“But I want to celebrate,” he said. “And I want to thank you. You found two of the qiji stones!”
“You can buy something small and inexpensive,” she decided. “Dessert for tonight’s dinner, maybe.”
He grinned. “All right,” he said. “I know something you’ll like.”
It was clear that whatever else might not translate between Jia and Earth, chocolate had certainly crossed iterations. Daiyu was willing to believe it had originated in the very first dimension and been faithfully copied ever since.
Aurora was still at Xiang’s, so Daiyu and Kalen and Ombri ate dinne rwith out her, topping off the meal with the chocolate confection Kalen had bought. Then Daiyu and Kalen practiced the tiaowu over and over, while Ombri tapped out a musical accompaniment. Daiyu closed her mind to her ongoing questions about whether she really should be planning to send Chenglei away and concentrated merely on learning the skills she needed to master. By the end of the evening, she was completely successful in slipping the bracelet on Kalen’s arm during one phase of the dance or another. She had also perfected the art of freeing her practice stone from a little pouch and squeezing it in her palm, even when Kalen was shouting at her or tickling her or dragging her across the floor.
“Bracelet in my left pocket, talisman i
n my right pocket. That’s what seems to work,” Daiyu said when they finally called it quits. “We’ll have to make sure I have pockets on both sides in all my clothes.”
“Aurora will take care of that for you,” Ombri promised. He put away his musical instrument and yawned. “A long day for me,” he said, then disappeared into his own room without another word.
Kalen lingered. Daiyu thought he looked a little troubled. “But you have to remember to write yourself a note,” he said. “In case you really do get pulled to another dimension. In case you really do forget who you are.”
She glanced around. “Is there something to write with? I’ll do it now.”
He produced materials that were close enough to paper and pencil that she could understand them, though the paper was rough and the lead of the pencil was grainy. She tore off a piece of paper small enough to fit inside the pouch, and she carefully lettered a few words onto the scrap.
“‘Everything’s fine,’” she read back to Kalen. “‘Just take hold of the stone and don’t let go.’”
“That doesn’t tell you much,” he objected.
“I just want to be reassured and told what to do,” she said. “What’s the point of a long explanation that I won’t believe anyway?‘You’ve been transported to an alternate universe, but this piece of quartz holds the key to returning home safely.’ If I really am back in Ombri’s world, things will be so confusing that I don’t want anything complicated.”
“I suppose it might be even more confusing if you foundt hat message once you were already home,” he said. “If you didn’t remember anything about this trip, you wouldn’t know why you needed to be transported.”
She laughed. “Well, maybe I’ll remember more than Ombri thinks. He didn’t know I’d be able to read the qiji stones.Maybe he’ll be wrong about this.”
She turned toward her own bedroom door, but an odd expression on Kalen’s face stopped her. He was watching her closely, toying with one of his earring sand looking a little wistful. “What?” she said.
“Will you want to remember?” he said. “Or will you be glad to go home and forget us all?”
She paused with her hand on her doorframe. “Of course I’ll want to remember,” she said. “The idea of losing any of my memories is terrifying to me when I think about all the ways that could happen—if I have a concussion, if I have a brain tumor, if I fall into dementia when I get old. If I’m here, if this is real, I want to hold on to it forever.”
“It’s so strange for me to think that I’ll remember you for the rest of my life and you’ll forget me as soon as you go back home,” he said.
She started to respond but found that she didn’t have a good answer. Instead she just looked at him for a long time, taking in the details of his thin face, his wide mouth, the slightly rueful expression in his brown eyes. In just two days, he had turned himself into a true friend; he had become, unlike Ombri and Aurora, someone she completely trusted.
Actually, he had become that the day he rescued her at the red gate.
“I think I’ll remember you,” she said softly. “I think Ombri is wrong.”
There was a rattle at the door and Aurora stepped in, all blond hair and smiling face. “Oh, good, I was afraid you’d all be asleep by now,” shes aid. “Daiyu, we have to get your things ready. Xiang wants you to join her tomorrow morning.”
NINE
THE NIGHT HAD been virtually sleepless, so Daiyu was exhausted, but extreme nervousness kept her wide awake the following morning as she prepared to leave. Ombri had departed early on some mysterious errand, but Aurora and Kalen stepped out of the house behind Daiyu. Kalen was carrying a small suitcase filled with an assortment of Aurora’s castoffs, although Aurora had assured Daiyu that she’d never have to wear anything they’d assembled.
“Xiang will have you in custom-made clothes before the day is out,” Aurora predicted. “She will not want you to shame her by appearing in public wearing anything as awful as what you’ve got on right now.”
Daiyu glanced down at her gold shirt and black pants, the outfit she’d been wearing when she walked through the Arch. She had the silver bracelet in her left pocket, the quartz stone in her right, just to accustom herself to the feel of their weight. “I don’t think I look so bad,” she said.
“She favors a much more elaborate style of dress. And so will you, while you’re with her.”
Daiyu was not entirely certain she trusted Aurora, but she was anxious at the idea of going to Xiang’s house with no one else she knew nearby. “You’ll be at Xiang’s, won’t you?” she asked hopefully. “Every day?”
“Most likely,” Aurora said. “But Xiang will want you to very quickly forget that you and I were ever friends. I’m a servant and a cangbai. It will be better if you never seem to notice me—unless you have an order to give me.”
Daiyu looked at Kalen. “And you’ll come visit me?”
“Daiyu,” Aurora said sharply. “While you are with Xiang, you will not be permitted to mingle with the lower classes. You must not think you can continue your friendship with Kalen.”
Daiyu ignored her, keeping her gaze on Kalen. “I can’t bear it if this is the last time I am ever to see you,” she said.
He smiled, but his expression was wistful. “Aurora’s right, though. People like Mistress Xiang do not even realize people like me exist.”
Daiyu shrugged and turned back toward the door. “Fine. Then I’m not going to Xiang’s. I’m not staying on Jia if I can’t see Kalen.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a sleek black car turn the corner and head their way. No other vehicle like this had come to the neighborhood since Daiyu had been in residence. Surely this car had been sent by Xiang.
“Daiyu—yes—very well,” Aurora said urgently. “We will find a way for you to meet with Kalen. Please do not take this moment to destroy all our careful planning.”
Daiyu inhaled a deep breath and faced the street again, just as the car purred to a stop. The Han driver who stepped out seemed to be trying not to sneer as he glanced around. “I have come for the girl Daiyu,” he said in a cold voice.
“This is Daiyu. I will accompany her to Mistress Xiang’s,” Auroraanswered.
The driver nodded. “You are expected,” he said. He didn’t even glance in Kalen’s direction.
Wordlessly, Kalen strapped the luggage onto the back of the car. The driver helped Aurora into the passenger compartment, an unroofed seating area behind the driver’s bench. Daiyu watched Kalen with a growing sensation of despair. She could not even hug him or take his hand to say good-bye; this unfriendly employee of Mistress Xiang’s seemed like just the type to report such transgressions. She could not make him swear he would keep Aurora’s promise and find a way to see her while she lived in Xiang’s house. She probably shouldn’t even speak to him one last time.
But she did. She ignored the driver’s outstretched hand and trained her fierce gaze on Kalen. “I will not forget your many kindnesses,” Daiyu said. “I will not forget any of it.”
He didn’t speak, but his eyes met hers, and in his expression she read both sadness and resolve. He nodded once, very briefly, and she knew it was an answer to the unspoken question on her own face: Will I see you again? Then he turned away.
She took the driver’s hand and stepped into the car, settling herself beside Aurora, who gave her a quick look of exasperation. The driver put the car in motion; within three minutes they had turned two corners. Daiyu had to suppress a clutch of terror at the thought that Kalen was now irretrievably out of sight.
She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the trip. Soon enough they were winding through streets that she had never explored with Kalen—wide avenues lined with massive trees that shaded mansions crowded together on the bustling street. They had left most vehicular traffic behind as soon as they entered this district, which was clearly where the wealthy lived. The driver had followed such twisting streets that Daiyu was having a hard ti
me placing where they might be in relation to St. Louis, but she knew there was no neighborhood like this in the same space back home. Maybe these houses stood along what would be Jefferson or 20th, home to the big skyscrapers that housed financial companies. In both iterations that would mean that these neighborhoods enjoyed a concentration of money.
“I usually walk this distance or take the trolley,” Aurora murmured to Daiyu. “This is much nicer, don’t you think?”
Daiyu nodded without answering.
A minute later, the car stopped in front of one of the most impressive houses in the district. It was three stories high and built mostly of white stone, with red pagoda-shaped accents ove rthe main door and a few of the bigger windows. The house was surrounded by an inviting and well-tended garden, which in turn was enclosed by a lattice dwooden fence that ran around the entire property. The front walkway was accessed through a round moon gate. The whole aspect was so serene that Daiyu felt a little of her trepidation fade.
The driver jumped out, grabbed her bag, and offered her a hand out of the car. “Mistress Xiang awaits,” he said in an important voice. “I will take you to her.”
Xiang was terrifying.
She was a tiny woman, almost lost in an enormous room overdecorated with gold furnishings, gold statuettes, red wall hangings, and scattered pieces of jade and enamel. She sat stiffly in a plush chair covered with gold cushions, her black hair and black clothing irresistibly putting Daiyu in mind of a spider at the heart of a particularly gorgeous web. She looked old enough to be Daiyu’s grandmother, with deep lines etched into her face, and eyes so dark it was impossible to find a pupil. Those eyes were boring into Daiyu the minute the driver led her across the threshold.
“Daiyu has arrived,” he announced.
“Leave her with me,” Xiang said in a voice made raspy with age and perhaps whatever the local version of alcohol and cigarettes might be.
The driver bowed and stepped back, then Aurora did the same. There was the soft sound of the door closing, and Daiyu was left alone with Xiang.
