by Sharon Shinn
“That’s Feng,” Kalen murmured in Daiyu’s ear. She nodded andlistened.
“Bad enough that he has quarantined the northwest provinces, effectively condemning every living soul above the Maiwei River to death,” Feng was shouting. “Bad enough that he has made it a felony offense to help an individual infected with zaogao fever. If your mother is dying, you cannot go to her! If your sister is sick, you cannot fetch her! If your father is starving, you cannot cross the Maiwei and bring him food. But no one else can either! He has closed the roads, he has cut off the supplies. Everyone in the territory will die!”
Appalled, Daiyu stared up at Kalen. “Is that true?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“How does he know?”
He shook his head and shrugged again, his expression sad.
Feng was bending down to pass out stacks of paper to the people in the front of the crowd. “Look, these are copies of the official order that was sent out a week ago, signed by Chenglei himself, to stop all aid at the Maiwei River. The last shipments of food and medicine went out eight days ago. Nothing has been sent across the border since.”
The crowd began to shift and murmur, growing more disturbed. The papers were scrutinized and handed around. One copy made its way to the back row with surprising swiftness, and Kalen plucked it from someone’s hand. He bent down so he and Daiyu could study it together. It was a bad reproduction of what looked like an official document, decorated with a river-and-dragon device that Daiyu guessed was the city seal of Shenglang. The wording was complex, and she had a much harder time translating written than spoken language, but it indeed appeared to be an order to terminate supply shipments to the northwest provinces.
It was impossible to tell if the document was authentic.
Deeply troubled, Daiyu looked up and began listening to the rest of Feng’s speech. “Did you know that Yazhou has passed a resolution to send relief to the northwest territories?” he demanded. “We are the richest country in the entire world, we have the most sophisticated medicine, and yet foreigners are crossing the entire ocean so they can take care of our people! These sick and starving people are not cangbai or heiren—these are not the people Chenglei despises. These are Han! People with whom he shares a bloodline! And yet he will let them die because it is too much trouble to keep them alive.
“If he does not care about the sick and suffering of the outer coasts, who will he choose to ignore next? Who else will die because he is selfish or careless? Will he decide that the heiren are too impure to live? Will he decree that they all must die? Will he place restrictions on the cangbai—deny them access to money and property?”
“I never yet saw a cangbai with a coin to his name!” someone from the crowd called, and many listeners laughed. The sound had an uneasy relief to it; clearly Feng’s rhetoric was making them all uncomfortable. And yet, Daiyu noticed, no one was leaving.Instead, more people were arriving every minute. Some of them were not the disenfranchised and poor who called this districthome.Afewlookedlikewell-to-domerchantsandyoung adults with some university education. Individuals Chenglei would not want to alienate.
“Yes!” Feng called back. “We have long lived in an unjust society where a man might sometimes be ashamed to call himself Han! But until Chenglei took up the prime minister’s title, a heiren man could earn a decent living. A cangbai woman could own a house and run a business. But Chenglei has proposed the Purity Property Law—”
“It didn’t pass!” someone else yelled.
“And do you think that’s the end of the matter?” Feng demanded. “Do you think Chenglei will not revise that law and submit it again under another name? Chenglei wants one thing and one thing only—prosperity for a handful of Han families who control the power and wealth of Shenglang. Everyone else may be a slave, or everyone else may be a corpse—he doesn’t care. As long as he achieves his ends.”
“Why does it matter to you?” a cangbai woman cried out. She was standing a few feet away from Daiyu, rocking a baby against her shoulder. “You’re one of them! A Han boy with a bank account.”
The crowd laughed and Feng laughed with them. He pushed his hair back from his thin face with an impatient hand. “Chenglei hates me more than he hates any of you,” Feng said.“Because I speak the truth, and men like Chenglei are always afraid of the truth. He would kill me if he could. He would send me to the northwest provinces to die of fever.”
Someone else shouted another question, but Daiyu didn’t hear it. Kalen’s hand had come up to grip her arm, and suddenly he was hauling her away from the assembled people. She started to protest, but then she heard it too—the sound of a dozen vehicles racing too fast over the broken roadways, headed in their direction.
“Chenglei’s personal guards,” Kalen whispered, urging her to move faster.
“Kalen,” she breathed. They began to run.
FIFTEEN
OFFICIAL-LOOKING VEHICLES arrived from two different directions, tires squealing and car doors slamming. There was a noise that was halfway between a horn and a whistle, but far more shrill, and the sound of people screaming. Another car came swerving up the very road that they were running down. Kalen jerked Daiyu into the dubious shelter of a ruined building and began wading through the upended stones and pool sof disintegrated mortar. She could hear the car screech to a stop; heavy footsteps hit the broken pavement and skidded on the unstable rubble. The guards were coming after them.
Kalen yanked her out through a window that had almost evolved into a door and, ducking low to avoid being seen, pulled her behind him to an adjoining building that was in similarly bad shape.
“If we get separated,” he murmured in her ear once they were inside the tumbled walls, “take this road. Turn left when you get to the big street with all the trees. The number sixteen trolley will take you back to the aviary.”
“Why would we get separated?” she whispered back.
He put a finger to his lips and they paused to listen. A short distance away, from the direction of the crowd, Daiyu could hear more screaming and the sounds of heavy objects striking something soft. She thought the guards were beating the mob with cudgels or clubs.
“Kalen,” she whispered, but he just shook his head. Silently, he urged her toward the high sill of a window that might once have overlooked a half landing. With his help, she swung herself up and over the crumbled ledge. She thought she saw the shadows of two men enter the building on the other side just as she dropped to the ground outside. Kalen scrambled out seconds after her.
A shout from inside the ruined structure—they had been seen. Hard boots hit buried stones as the men headed toward the easier exits left by the ruined walls. Kalen shoved Daiyu forcefully in the back.
“Run!” he cried.
The guards were coming around the building now, mouths open in ugly yells, nightsticks raised. “Kalen!” she said frantically. “Kalen, I can’t leave you—”
“I can’t stand it if anything happens to you,” he said. He kissed her hard on the mouth and then pushed her toward the street again. Turning his back on her, he charged toward the oncoming guards with an inarticulate cry. Sobbing, she did as he had told her, stumbling across the broken fields of masonry, hearing behind her the fading sounds of blows and shouts.
Theywouldn’tkillhim,surelytheywouldn’tkillhim.Itwas civil disobedience, it was disturbing the peace, it was a minor infraction. In St. Louis, he might be wrestled to the ground and handcuffed and maybe thrown in jail for the night, but what did she know about the laws in Shenglang? Maybe he would be beaten bloody, maybe he would be left to die, and she wouldn’t know, she couldn’t go to him later and find out ,and by midnight the next day she might very well be back in her own timewith no memory of Kalen’s existence at all.
Shuddering with sobs, she halted, hesitated, and almost went back. At that moment, she didn’t care if she horrified Xiang by getting beaten or jeopardized her mission on Jia by getting arrested. She didn’t spare a thou
ght for Aurora or Ombri or Chenglei. She wanted to go back—she would have gone back—except she didn’t want to make things worse for Kalen. A blow to her body would be a blow to his heart. He would sacrifice himself trying to save her. She could not endanger him any more than she already had.
She forced herself forward again, crying even harder. Blinded by tears, she fell down twice, scraping her left hand raw and leaving smears of dirt on her trousers and her shirt.
Her shirt. Inside out still to make her less noticeable. She could not possibly return to the aviary with her clothes in such disarray. She wiped her hands across her eyes and looked around. By now, she was on the fringes of this ragged part of town; she was almost to the respectable neighborhoods of Shenglang. There were more people on the streets, and the buildings here were whole, if not particularly well-maintained. She slipped behind one of them, not greatly caring at that moment if anyone saw her stark naked, and rearranged her clothes. Her hair was no doubt a mess and her face probably was streaked and blotchy, but maybe she could calm herself to a more suitable state while she rode the trolley.
What was happening to Kalen?
Daiyu bit back another sob and hurried on her way. Here was the broad, tree-lined boulevard that Kalen had told her to look for. She turned left, somehow convinced she was headed toward the river. Two trolleys passed by, neither of them bearing the number she wanted. Her adrenaline rush was ebbing, and suddenly she was so tired she didn’t know if she could continue another step. She was seriously considering collapsing to the sidewalk when she was startled by a vehicle pulling up so close to her that she actually jumped away from it in alarm.
“Daiyu!” It was Quan, staring at her in astonishment as he cut the motor and swung out of the car. “Daiyu, what happened to you? Has someone assaulted you? Here, climb in! Let me take you home.”
He darted around the side of the car and laid a hand on her shoulder. She staggered under the pressure, and he caught her with both hands, gazing down at her with his gray eyes. “Daiyu,” he said in a wondering voice, “what have you been doing?”
Her hands clutched his forearms as she stared up at him. She had been so focused on getting to safety that she had not bothered to come up with a good lie. “I . . .” she said, “I fell down.”
He did not release her, did not lift her up into the car, just continued to watch her. “What were you doing,” he said slowly, “here on the north side?”
He made the north side sound like the pit of hell. She was willing to bet that all sorts of illicit commerce happened in this part of town and that Quan was suddenly wondering if Daiyu was addicted to drugs or some other unsavory excitement. The so-traditional Quan would be disgusted to think she was drawn to such pursuits, Daiyu thought. But he had caught her in extraordinarily compromising circumstances. Only partial truth would do—very partial.
“I got lost,” she said, letting her eyes fill with tears again. “I was disobedient! I begged my aunt Xiang to allow me to go to the aviary, telling her it would calm my anxious mind, but I was lying to her because I wanted to get out of the house. I am a country girl! I am not used to being so bound and restricted, and I wanted to see more of the city. So I snuck out of the aviary, and I got on a trolley, and I rode around the city. But after I got off and walked a while, I couldn’t remember how to get back, and I went the wrong way, and I was so afraid! Those houses! Have you seen them? They’re falling down! But people are living in them anyway. Someone asked me for money and I said I didn’t have any, and then someone else asked me, and I started to run away, and then I fell down, and I—I—oh, my aunt Xiang will never forgive me.”
Now she allowed herself to cry in earnest. “She won’t take me to the Presentation Ball! She’ll say I’m no good, like my mother, that I don’t deserve good luck and beautiful things. I just wanted to see the city, and now I’m ruined. She’ll send me away tonight!”
Just for a second, Quan hesitated, but when Daiyu turned her head, trying to hide her face, he drew her in for an awkward hug. “No, she won’t, she’ll never know,” he said. “I’ll tell her you have been with me all afternoon.”
“And she’ll think you have been beating me with your fists,” Daiyu wailed into his shoulder. “I must look like I have been savaged in the streets.”
He laughed softly. “We can take care of that. We’ll find a place where you can straighten your hair and wipe your face and get something to eat. You will look perfectly fine by the time I take you home.”
Daiyu allowed herself to be comforted; she pulled back to stare at him with red-rimmed but hopeful eyes. “But I left the driver at the aviary,” she said. “He has been waiting all this time.”
“We will first tell the driver that you have come into my possession,” Quan said, and the way he said possession wouldhave given Daiyu pause if her circumstances had not been so dire. “You will see. I can make all of this unpleasantness go away.”
She smiled at him through her tears, trying to make her expression melt with gratitude. “Thank you, Quan,” she said. “You are the kindest man. I am so glad you found me.”
He helped her into the car and climbed over her to start the engine, and soon he was racing through the streets with the reckless speed she remembered. She squealed, which made him laugh, and she laughed back at him. In ten minutes, they were at the aviary, dismissing the driver; five minutes later, they were walking into a small, casual café. Quan ordered for both of them while she disappeared into the bathroom to clean up. When she returned to the table, she thanked him shyly, flirting a little from under her lowered lashes.
All this time she was trying to hold back an urgent, untamable terror. All this time she was finding it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything but succumb to hysteria. All this time she was thinking, Whathashappened to Kalen?
Xiang was not at all displeased to learn that Daiyu had spent the afternoon with Quan. She tapped two of those long red fingernails against Daiyu’s cheek, staring up at the taller girl with her dark eyes brightened by excitement.
“So the bird cage is not so interesting after all,” the old woman said, her face crinkled into a smile of satisfaction. “I am glad to hear it.”
“No, I—I did not go there to meet him,” Daiyu said, knowing Xiang would not believe her denial. She had balled up her left hand, which was scraped from her fall, and hidden it against her black trousers. Good thing she would be wearing gloves tomorrow night. “I promise you, Aunt.”
“Well, you would have done better to stay home and soak your feet in oil all afternoon, but you have not done so badly,” Xiang said, dropping her hand, but still smiling. “I suppose he asked you for nine dances?”
“Yes, but I told him I could only grant him three.” This particular ritual of courtship Xiang had drilled in her head so often that she had made the proper response without even thinking about it.
Xiang nodded. “Excellent. This is turning out even better than I hoped.”
Daiyu wondered how quickly Xiang would revise that opinion once Daiyu vanished into the night.
She was so worried about Kalen that she could hardly get through dinner; her stomach nearly revolted when she tried to eat. “I am nervous about tomorrow evening,” she said when Xiang demanded what was wrong with her.
“Well, do not show your nervousness to the prime minister,” Xiang snapped. “He does not like cowering girls.”
Daiyu lowered her eyes and toyed with the food on her plate. “Yes, Aunt.”
Once she was in her room, she could do nothing but pace and stare out the window as she waited for Aurora’s visit. Over and over again in her mind, she replayed those last few minutes—the guards charging at Kalen with their weapons raised, Kalen fearlessly running to meet them. She heard the sounds of fists hitting flesh and boots hitting bone. And she had run away, she had left him there—
She practically pounced on Aurora when the blond woman finally slipped through the door. “How’s Kalen? Did you talk to him? Is he a
ll right?”
Aurora shut the door firmly and stared at Daiyu. “Why should anything be wrong with Kalen?”
Daiyu strangled a sob. “I was with him this afternoon—and some of Chenglei’s guards attacked us—and I ran away—Aurora, he told me to! I wouldn’t have left him, but he pushed me aside—”
Aurora’s face was a study in apprehension. She glanced at the door, as if afraid spies hovered on the other side, then pulled Daiyu all the way across the room.
“Quietly,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
Daiyu stumbled through the narrative, clumsy with the words as she saw the darkening expression on Aurora’s face. “And I don’t know what happened to him,” she finished up.
“You have to tell me! You must go to the house to find out, then come back here to let me know.”
“I can’t do that!” Aurora exclaimed, her voice soft but her anger unmistakable. “Daiyu, you have risked everything! If any of those guards had caught you—if Xiang were to find out where you had been—”
“I know, I know, I’m very sorry,” Daiyu said hastily. “Xiang would throw me out of the house and I would have no chance to get close to Chenglei—”
“Worsethanthat!Wecouldbeexposed!Ifyouwerearrested and searched, the bracelet would be found, and Chenglei would instantly know what it was! He would realize that Ombri and I were here looking for him, and he would put up so many safeguards that we would never get close to him again. We have always been prepared for the possibility you could fail, but as long as you are not discovered, there is no great harm done. It would take more time, but we would find another sojourner and try again. But if he knows we are on Jia, if he knows we are trying to send him back—he will seal himself off so effectively, we will never get another chance.”
