Gateway

by Sharon Shinn

  When she broke the kiss, for a moment she leaned her head against his chest and shut her eyes. “I was so afraid they would kill you,” she whispered. “I couldn’t bear to leave you, and yet I did. And I almost didn’t believe Aurora when she told me you would be all right.”

  “Oh, I’ve been beaten up a time or two in my life,” he said, his voice soothing. One of his arms was still wrapped securely around her waist; his free hand was stroking her hair. “It takes more than a few ugly guards to do me any damage.”

  Her voice muffled against his shirt, she said, “I didn’t put the bracelet on Chenglei at the dance.”

  Hishanddidn’tfalter.“Iknowyoudidn’t.Theworldwould be a much different place today if you had.”

  “I suppose Aurora and Ombri are very angry with me.”

  Now his hand stilled. “They just assumed something went wrong with the plan. That you didn’t have a chance to slip the bracelet on his arm.”

  “I could have,” she whispered, “but I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She burrowed her head deeper into his shirt, catching the familiar scent of his skin even under the odor of mud and fish and river stink. She didn’t know how to answer.

  “Daiyu? Why didn’t you?” The hand that had been patting her head came around to tilt up her chin. “I hope it wasn’t because of me.”

  She let him lift her head and she stared up at him in hopeless confusion. “Maybe it was—maybe that was a part of it,” she said. “But I think even more it was just that I can’t be sure. How can I do such a dreadful thing to someone else when I’m not positive he is guilty as charged? It would haunt me the rest of my life.”

  He attempted a smile. “The rest of your stay in Shenglang. Not so long.”

  “I think I’d remember some of it,” she whispered. “I think part of me would remember I had done something wrong. I wouldn’t know what, but I’d know it was dreadful. And it would eat away at me. Forever. Kalen, I can’t do it.”

  He nodded and dropped his hand, drawing her head back to rest against his chest. “You can’t fight battles that you don’t believe in,” he said. “You can’t be a soldier in somebody else’s war.”

  “Maybe some people can,” she said, “but I can’t.”

  They were quiet a moment, standing intertwined on the narrow catwalk. Finally Kalen stirred and lifted his head, which had come to rest on the top of hers. “So what do you do now?” he said. “How soon do you go home?”

  She pulled back a little, enough to see his face. “I think I have to stay for the next two weeks,” she said. “Chenglei invited Xiang and me to come to his house for the summer holiday, and Xiang is so excited. I think I have to give her that much—it will be such a blow to her when I suddenly disappear.”

  Kalen grinned. “She’s become fond of you?”

  Daiyu made an inelegant sound. “I don’t think she’s fond of anyone. But she’s enjoying the benefits of having an eligible young woman in the house. We’re using her, after all, and I feel bad about that, too. So I want to do this one thing for her before I go.”

  “I wonder what Aurora and Ombri will do next to try to get rid of Chenglei,” Kalen said.

  “Maybe they’ll find someone else to carry out their quest,” Daiyu said. “Some other sojourner who finds the choice much simpler than I did.” She reached into her pocket and drew out the silver bracelet, carefully wrapped in multiple layers of silk. “Give this back to them. Tell them I can’t do it.”

  Kalen took it gingerly and stowed it in an outer compartment of his bag of rocks. “They’ll be disappointed,” he said. “But I think they’ll understand.”

  She was immeasurably relieved once she had handed the bracelet over. She felt lighter by pounds, not ounces; she felt as if she had suddenly been cured of a bitter, suffocating consumption She smiled at him. “So! How did you do today? Find any qiji stones?”

  “You would know,” he said. “Here, let me show you what I kept.”

  He carefully set the bag down between them and they both knelt on the narrow walkway. Daiyu rummaged through the stones he had rescued from the river, her finger ssettling on each rough surface and moving on. “Oh! There’s one!” she said, pulling it out. “A big one, too. Look at that, Kalen! That’s worth two stones any day.”

  He grinned. “I almost threw it back because it seemed too good to be true. Really? That’s a qiji? I’m rich!”

  “You almost threw it back!” she repeated, and her voice filled with mock horror. “You foolish boy! Are you always so careless with items of value?”

  “No,” he said, abruptly sober. “I know what matters. And I never throw those things away. I hold on to them as long as I can.”

  As he spoke, he dropped the qiji into his bag and came to his feet, drawing Daiyu up beside him. She stared at him, suddenly as serious as he was. “These days are precious,” she said. “I don’t want to throw them away either.”

  “I don’t want them to end,” he said.

  She studied his face for a moment, trying to memorize it. Trying to file that memory away in a place that wouldn’t be erased by a trip through the gateway. “At least we know they won’t end right away,” she said. “At least I won’t leave Shenglang for two more weeks.”

  “Maybe you could stay longer,” he suggested. “A month.”

  “I have a life to get back to,” she said. Even if it was harder every day to remember that life.

  “But if it doesn’t matter how long you’re gone,” he said in a low voice. “If you will return to your world just an instant after you left it—then it doesn’t matter how long you’re in Shenglang. You could stay a year. You could stay twenty years. And then go home.”

  She took a deep, hard breath, because that hadn’t occurred to her. Live an entire lifetime in Shenglang—marry—have children—grow old. And then when she had finally had her fill, when she had saturated her soul with memories of Kalen, she would pul lout the rose quartz talisman and go back to her own world, her proper place. She would live two consecutive lifetimes, though she would only remember one, unless fragments and glimpses of the first one, the impossible one, glittered up from her subconscious now and then. She would become one of those odd, impassioned people who claimed to have been reincarnated, who claimed to have lived through exotic pasts that even now shaped them and haunted their dreams.

  The thought made her shiver. Maybe every one of those lunatics was absolutely accurate—maybe all of them were sojourners who had slipped accidentally or by design through some gateway into another world and time. Maybe their patchy memories were of alternate iterations as foreign and familiar as Shenglang.

  Maybe Daiyu would remember enough of her time with Kalen to comfort her bereft soul. There was a hope to hold on to.

  “I can’t,” she said, whispering again. “I’m afraid that even if I stay till the holiday I won’t want to return. If I stay a year, I won’t remember I have another place to return to. I’d never go home, and sooner or later, I have to think, time would start going forward again on Earth without me. I love you, Kalen, but it would break my parents’ hearts if I never came home to them. The longer I stay here, the more it will break my heart to go.”

  “Well, that’s something for me to remember when my own heart is aching,” he breathed against her mouth. He had put his arms around her again, leaning over the bag of stones to take her in an embrace. “That you said you loved me.”

  She had both arms wrapped around his body as tightly as they would go. “And I’ll remember you,” she said. “I know I will. I can’t possibly forget anything as precious as this.”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE NEXT TWO weeks passed in a blur of dressmakers’ appointments, cobblers’ visits, highly public outings with Quan, highly secret trysts with Kalen, and meals too numerous to count. Xiang took every opportunity to lecture Daiyu on things she needed to know to be the perfect guest, and the two of them shopped for days to find just the right gift to present to
their host. It must not be too expensive, for the prime minister was not supposed to accept costly items from his constituents, but it must not look shabby, either. It was Daiyu who suggested they give him an exotic plant ornamented with a replica of one of the red birds so plentiful at the aviary. Xiang commissioned the foremost artisan of the city to create a tiny creature out of silk, feathers, and enamel. It looked exquisite against the deep green of the leaves and the black jade of the vase.

  “Every part of this gift will remind the prime minister of his conversations with you!” Xiang exclaimed. “A most excellent present!”

  They were to be at Chenglei’s residence for three days—two and a half, really, since they and his other guests would depart once they had consumed an intimate breakfast the morning after the holiday celebration. It had taken some carefully casual questioning on Daiyu’s part to get a sense of what to expect of the holiday itself. She had been in Shenglang almost five weeks now, so it should be roughly the middle of August—the hottest part of the summer, at least in St. Louis—and this event appeared to be an acknowledgment of that. Outdoor celebrations would take place all over the city, especially at night; official and unofficial fireworks displays would burst overhead until dawn. Clothing appeared to be one of the more interesting aspects of this particular holiday, since people dressed for the heat in thin fabrics and sleeveless ensembles.

  “Girls who do not care about their reputations will sometimes take off their clothing altogether, or at least their shirts, when the young men exhort them,” Xiang had told Daiyu with a sniff. “It is very unbecoming.”

  Sounded like the average Mardi Gras celebration to Daiyu, and she hid a grin. “I would never do anything so disgraceful, Aunt,” she said.

  She had no incentive to do so; she loved the dress Xiang had commissioned for her. It was a slim black sheath that fell from her shoulders to her ankles in the simplest of lines. It was embellished with thousands of pearls sewn on in the shapes of suns and quarter moons, and a border of pearls set off the high round neck and both armholes.

  It featured hidden pockets on both sides, but she didn’t need them. She had given away the silver bracelet, of course, and she only bothered to carry the quartz talisman every few days, whenever she remembered. She had lost that edge of paranoia, the conviction that she might suddenly have to escape from Shenglang. She would go home, of course—very soon, right after the festival—but it would be a planned journey, not an abrupt and disorienting departure.

  She had not seen Aurora again. At times she wondered if Xiang had dismissed the cangbai woman or if Aurora just had nothing to say to Daiyu. She was sorry if Aurora was angry with her, but she would not have been able to apologize. She supposed it was just as well that the other woman kept her distance.

  The day before Daiyu and Xiang left to take up their brief residence at the prime minister’s house, Daiyu had two very different meetings with two very different men.

  She was at the aviary, of course, for both. The one with Kalen was short and unsatisfying, for the bird house was too crowded for them to attempt to sneak away to the waterfall. So she sat on one of the freshly scrubbed benches and Kalen stood behind her, holding her parasol.

  “How will you celebrate the holiday?” she asked him. She often found herself greedy for the most minute details of his life, and sometimes she asked him questions about wholly insignificant matters.What did you eat for breakfast today? Where did you get that shirt?

  “There are usually parties on all the streets in my neighborhood,” he said, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “Plenty to drink, a few fireworks, and lots of pretty girls in very skimpy clothing.”

  “Don’t you go telling girls to take off their shirts for you,” she said sternly. “Xiang told me what happens in some parts of town.”

  “I’ll behave if you will,” he said. “No showing yourself off to Chenglei and his friends.”

  The idea made her laugh. “I will be very proper. Anyhow, the way this dress is made, I’d practically have to be naked if I wanted to show off my chest.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that so much,” he said, still smiling, “if I was the one you were showing it off to.”

  “Kalen!” But she was laughing. “Am I asking you to strip your clothes off?”

  “Well, you might ask,” he suggested, “and see what I do.”

  Now she was blushing, though she was still laughing. “This hardly seems the place.”

  “Maybe before you go,” he said. “Once you come back from Chenglei’s.”

  There was a sweet thought. There was an incentive to disappear from Xiang’s mansion the minute the holiday was over. But . . . “Somehow I don’t think Aurora and Ombri are going to want me hanging around the house too long once I leave Xiang’s,” she said.

  “We won’t have to stay in the house,” he said. “It’s summer, and I know where we can buy a tent. We can pitch it in a vacant lot between a couple of buildings. You can stay as long as you like.”

  “Maybe we could borrow some blankets from Aurora and Ombri,” she said. “I don’t mind sleeping on the ground.”

  “We’d get our water from the public faucets,” he said. “Make our meals over an open fire. It’s a pretty good life as long as the weather’s nice.”

  “And with two of us working the river, we’ll be able to earn money twice as fast,” she said, getting deeper into the spirit of the fantasy. “I can tell a qiji the minute I touch it. Maybe we can make money four times as fast.”

  “Maybe we can save enough to buy a house of our own.”

  “It doesn’t have to be very big,” she said.

  “Just enough room for the two of us.”

  “And then one day we’ll decide to have a baby. . . .”

  The words conjured up a vision so real, so desirable, that she almost gasped—and then, when she realized it would never come true, she almost whimpered. Kalen had fallen silent; she thought that he, too, was struggling with a sudden sense of powerful loss. She felt his hand brush the back of her neck, a touch of reassurance so light that no one in the aviary would be likely to mark it. It took all her control not to twist around on the bench and reach out for his embrace.

  “I’d pick that life, if I was staying in Shenglang,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I hope you’ll find someone else who can live it with you.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely that I will,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t bear the thought that he would be alone the rest of his life—but she hated imagining him sharing her tent, her small house, with some brisk, cheerful cangbai girl. Her only comfort, and it was bitter, was knowing that she would not remember enough of this adventure to be jealous of any girl who might capture Kalen’s heart.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose neither of us can be sure what the rest of our lives will hold.”

  “I suppose not,” he said, and she could tell he was attempting to lighten his voice. “I never would have guessed that this part of it would hold you.”

  Quan met her at the aviary’s front gate. That last exchange with Kalen had shaken her; it was an effort to summon a smile for Quan. Fortunately, she didn’t have to talk much at first. The instant Daiyu had settled herself on the front seat of his car, he took off down the crowded streets, dodging around trolleys and terrifying unwary passersby. Between the wind and the noise of traffic and the shouts of angry pedestrians, there was no chance to make conversation.

  By the time they stopped at a fancy café, she had somewhat recovered her poise, though she had to work at it to present her usual expression of serene good nature. Quan ordered frozen chocolate drinks for both of them, and Daiyu was pretty sure that the ice for these beverages cost more than the ingredients. She should have been appalled at the expense and the casual way Quan covered it, but she was hot, thirsty, and more than a little sad. She took the first few sips and closed her eyes to savor the cool, rich sweetness. Nothing had ever tasted so
good.

  Quan chatted easily about how he had spent his week and how much he was looking forward to the summer holiday at Chenglei’s. Only a handful of honored guests would spend the holiday at the prime minister’s house, but dozens would be invited for the festivities that night.

  “When will you arrive for the celebration?” Daiyu asked.

  “A little before night fall. Everyone waits till dark, of course, to set off the fireworks.”

  “Xiang is so excited,” Daiyu said. “It’s as if she’s never been on holiday before.”

  “Never as an overnight guest,” Quan said. “This is her proudest moment. The fact that Chenglei likes you has done a great deal to boost her social credit. She has already made two business deals that have eluded her for the past year.”

  Daiyu was disquieted by the words. What would happen to Xiang’s social credit once Daiyu mysteriously disappeared? Of course Xiang could always say Daiyu had been called back suddenly to her mother’s side, but even so, it would look very strange. And if Xiang herself didn’t know what had become of Daiyu, she would worry. She might think Daiyu had been murdered or kidnapped—she might raise an outcry or contact the authorities—

  “What’s wrong?” Quan asked.

  Her perturbation must have showed on her face. “Oh—I was just thinking how strange it will be to go back home after the exciting time I have had here in Shenglang.”

  Quan looked surprised. “Are you going home? Back to the northwest territories?”

  Daiyu nodded, wishing she had found some other topic to turn the conversation. “I think I must. And perhaps soon. My mother did not send me here to become a permanent burden on my aunt, you know.”

  Quan studied her soberly. “I think perhaps she did,” he said. “Though I am convinced Xiang does not think of you as a burden. I am convinced Xiang expects you to stay in Shenglang, perhaps to make your home with her forever.”

  “That would be kind of her,” Daiyu murmured. She could see where this conversation was going and she wasn’t sure how to stop it. It had been painful, but so very sweet, to sit with Kalen and pretend they had a future together; she was not sure how to get through that same discussion with Quan.