by Sean Stewart
“Don’t want cookies,” Lark said, scowling. Wire bit her lip to keep from smiling. Even Bell couldn’t win them all.
“Want muffin.”
“You know,” Bell said, “I have some blackberries I’ve been meaning to use. Perhaps blackberry muffins would be just right.”
Lark, much put upon, suffered herself to be led into the kitchen, making it clear with dragging feet and slumped shoulders that she had a very poor opinion of this transparent attempt to buy her off. Wire watched her go, exasperated when she was in the room, indulgent when she had turned the corner, and deeply affectionate when she had been out of sight for a minute or two. It was a very familiar sequence.
She looked at Raining.
“Shut up. I didn’t kill her.”
“Mm.” Wire stood. “We better clean up.”
Raining grunted.
In a few minutes she came to help, bringing a pail of warm water and a mop. Wire scrubbed the floor and took the cleaning supplies back to the kitchen. Then she settled into the armchair in the parlor.
Raining came in from the workroom, her lips quirked in a small smile. She spread her arms. “Well? How do I look?” Her hempen blouse was cedar green, with a black and red lacquered brooch at the neck. On her black shirred skirt she had slashed a simple design in the spilled red paint, half-drawing, half-calligraphy. It might have been poetry. It might have been leaves of bamboo.
“Gorgeous,” Wire said.
“Nick always loved me in this kind of thing. I mixed some dye with glue and a powder thickener. It won’t last through a wash, but for tonight…”
Wire smiled brightly against the heartbreaking unfairness of things which had put her in Cedar House tonight instead of Nick. How right Raining was. How his heart would have leapt to see her.
“I saw his ghost last night,” Raining said.
“Nick?”
“I came into Lark’s room to check on her on my way to bed. She was fast asleep. I bent down to give her a kiss, and when I stood up, he was standing beside me.”
“But—I mean, what did he say?”
“Nothing, of course. He was never much of a talker,” Raining joked. Tears stood in her eyes. “That’s it. No more story. I guess that’s why I made this dress. He would have liked it.”
The silence stretched out. Raining went into the kitchen to have a quick word with her mother and then returned. Wire cast around for something to say. “Why do you even bother boiling bark and crushing shells and pissing on lead to make paint?” she asked. “Why not do all your painting on the Companion?”
“Yuck.”
“Seriously.”
“I don’t know!” Raining threw up her hands. “It’s—it matters, it’s important to make colors from bark and shell and stone. To make glair from eggs and thinner from pine sap and mix your paints in gum arabic and linseed oil. That’s what we are,” she said. “Meat and fat and skin and muscle. That’s the world. That’s life.”
Wire looked at her right hand that still ached where the god had kissed it.
“You better get changed,” Raining said. “Your pants are all splotched. I probably have a skirt you could squeeze into. It will show a little more leg on you, but…”
Wire went upstairs to change.
It was the middle of August, high blackberry time. Emily Thompson had returned to Vancouver, putting the finishing touches on a series of diplomatic pacts. Southside soldiery was keeping the Downtown core from utter warlordism, if you looked at it one way, or enforcing martial law for its own purposes, if you looked at it another. It was not a comfortable situation, and Wire was glad she wasn’t involved. She was, however, invited to the dinner; Raining had asked her along for moral support.
She finished changing out of her dye-stained clothes. Chirps and exclamations came from the baking party in the kitchen as she came downstairs. No sign of Raining. Idly she picked up the Companion to Art. She wondered when it had been made, and by whom, and how much longer it would last. The magic was fading everywhere, it seemed. Raining’s father agreed with her about that; he had been spending a lot of time talking to merchants and radio operators of late, listening to news from other cities, other countries. Wonders and miracles were seeping away as if a long night were passing at last. All the dreams of the world’s troubled sleep were slipping away as daylight came, and one by one the dreamers all woke up.
Raining came out of the bathroom. “Are we ready?”
“Have you ever thought to look up yourself in the Companion?”
“No. And don’t.”
“Why not? I’ll bet you’re in here.”
“It’s too important,” she said. She went into the kitchen to check on Lark.
When she left the room, Wire picked the Companion up again. “Chiu,” she said.
The Companion’s screen cleared and returned with a self-portrait of a woman Wire did not immediately recognize.
Chiu, Lark Climbs Singing
The daughter of a laborer and a competent amateur, Chiu came to art after a troubled adolescence which saw—
“Clear,” Wire said, and she closed her eyes.
Chapter
Thirty-three
Mother should have been here for this, Li Mei thought, looking around the banquet hall. She would have been so much more accomplished, so welcoming, so elegant. But she is gone, it is partly my fault, and strangely I stand here, greeting guests, acting the hostess. Being her. And time goes on, and life continues, and grief turns into sorrow, and there are obligations to fulfill.
She paced through the room, smiling as well as she could, correcting a flower arrangement on the table near the entrance.
“Lovely party,” Johnny Ma had said an hour before, winking at her. Li Mei suppressed a snarl. She could not remember having asked to deal with temperamental cooks. She did not recall expressing an ambition to run a restaurant. She had tried as politely as possible to decline the task of organizing this ridiculous banquet, not once but several times. If it was a disaster, it was only what Floating Ant and Johnny Ma deserved for pressuring her into managing this party.
She wasn’t fooled by Johnny’s flattery, either.
A thread was ravelling from one of the ties of her overgown. Surreptitiously she licked one finger and tried to smooth it back into place.
She prowled back to her place at the end of the high table, far from the exalted dignitaries, and close to the kitchen, so as to be able to intercept problems as they arose. Well, things seemed to be going smoothly so far. The exalted dignitaries were having a fine old time, to judge by the snorting pig sound of Emily Thompson’s laughter, which punctuated Johnny’s stories at fairly regular intervals. Li Mei allowed herself a small, dour smile. She had been right to seat Southside’s heir next to the new Minister for the Interior. Two more good-natured, clever, thoroughly unscrupulous people it was hard to imagine. Thick as thieves, and didn’t they deserve one another.
She did hope poor pathetic old Huang Ti didn’t show up and make another scene as he had when the new government was sworn in without him. Mm. She’d have to tell the doormen to be alert.
A young woman came drifting over from the buffet and sat across the table in the chair Li Mei had specifically left empty to give her a better view of the hall. The interloper was vaguely familiar but Li Mei couldn’t place her. Green blouse with a daring neckline and a slit skirt that she wore with easy familiarity. Emphasis on the easy. “Is there a problem?” Li Mei said frigidly.
“No, not at all! S’ Delicious! Pretty nearly as good as what they laid on in the Southside, I’d say.”
“Ah. Indeed. How very kind of you.”
“The only thing I really miss from there would be the cabbage rolls. Oh, and they have these red things, these vegetables—oh, what were they called?”
“Beets.”
“Yes! Beets! That’s right. Most amazing things. So…passionate. Don’t you think?”
Li Mei looked at her. “I am terribly sorry,” she said
, excruciatingly solicitous. “I don’t believe I have you on my guest list.”
The young woman tried to pick up a barbecued chicken’s foot with her chopsticks. When it slipped for the third time she gave in and grabbed it with her fingers. “My name’s Wire,” she said between nibbles. The little trollop smiled winningly. “Raining said I could come.”
“Ah,” Li Mei said. “She did, did she?”
Johnny Ma walked behind her on his way to the buffet. He stopped and gave the trollop a second look. And a third. His smile was every bit as winning as hers. “Is Li Mei here giving you a hard time? She’s a damp firecracker tonight.”
“Not at all! We were just talking about beets.”
Johnny spared Li Mei a merry glance. “I see. Well, be a good hostess, my dear girl. I almost think this young lady is here as my guest.” The young lady in question examined the exceedingly dapper Minister for the Interior. She smiled archly back at him. “Yes. Now I am certain of it,” Johnny said. “Perhaps, when we are done here, I could show you something of Hastings Street after dark?”
Really, it was too repulsive. If Johnny were a cat, he would be spraying the woman’s chair legs.
“Have you ever been to one of our casinos?”
“Yuck. What a waste of a nice night. But I would very much enjoy a tour of the grounds. My one previous stay in Government House was a bit confined.”
Li Mei could just see this Wire as a blackjack dealer. Or maybe a cocktail waitress.
“I can think of some charming views already,” Johnny said. At least he had the grace not to look down her dress while he said it.
Li Mei watched him eel over to the buffet. She noticed that the page boy had overlooked a crooked flower arrangement on the head table. She wondered if she could have him flogged.
The dinner was a great success, especially for the hosts. Li Mei had not forgotten Winter’s feasts of Scotch and beets. She extracted a terrible vengeance by alternating the Peking Duck and crispy crab and black cod with platters of steamed chickens’ feet and bowls of rich broth, floating in which were succulent chunks of what she explained to Emily, halfway through her bowl, was boiled tendon.
When the food had been cleared away, Li Mei sought Claire out. She explained that Water Spider had not been present at the dinner, but had just now arrived at the front door and was wondering if the governess could spare an hour or two. He had promised himself he would introduce her to a cup of rather special tea, should the occasion arise.
Claire accepted with pleasure. Lacking Emily’s muscular enjoyment of politics, these diplomatic functions left her bored to stupefaction.
Water Spider walked Claire back to his apartment.
There he made Ti Kuan Yi in a tiny pot of great beauty and took it out onto the balcony. The first serving he left for the gods. The rest of the fragrant gold-green tea he poured into two cups of exquisite porcelain, one embossed with a dragon and the other with a phoenix. “This is the tea they call the Iron Goddess of Mercy,” he said. He gave the phoenix cup to Claire and they sat down on the balcony in the warm late summer night.
Claire took a sip and closed her eyes. The tea was the distant smell of grass burning; wind on the mountaintop; old grief remembered.
They drank together for a little time.
“I was sorry to hear about Jen,” Claire said. “I came to like him.”
Water Spider nodded. The Iron Goddess of Mercy opened in him, delicate with the scent of autumn and distant smoke. “He is something of a hero now. Cold comfort to his mother. You remember Pearl? I—the Government has provided her with funds to open a modest shop. Small reparation for a great loss.” He sipped his tea. “Jen is a hero, and I am something of an embarrassment. Which is how it should be.”
“You served your people.”
“Did I? I am not so sure. Certainly that was not the way Huang Ti saw it.”
“Oh, him. Anyone who takes him seriously isn’t anyone you need to care about. Come to think of it, I didn’t see him tonight. Was he ill?”
“Mm. No, Huang Ti is no longer a member of the Government. In fact, he is living at his mother’s house. He has suffered some…reversals.”
The look Claire gave Water Spider was skeptical in the extreme.
“He ran afoul of another colleague of mine,” Water Spider said, in his most detached voice. “The former Minister for the South, since promoted to Minister for the Interior.”
“Ah yes, Johnny Ma, isn’t it? The one who always looks like he just drew an inside straight. Somehow I hadn’t figured him for a political heavyweight.”
“I never saw worse from Huang Ti than cutting off a man’s hand. But Johnny Ma and I were junior officials together when his supervisor made the mistake of offering him an insult. Johnny took the trouble to ruin his business, buy his house, evict his parents, and get a child on his wife.” Claire blinked. “Any Minister for the South must keep pace with the Double Monkey. He or she must be a person to be respected, or indeed feared. Never trusted.”
“Are you then also dangerous, a man who was the Honorable Minister for Borders?”
“Deadly,” Water Spider said. “That is the point of a meritocracy. But that was a long time ago. I have lost some of the edge arrogance provides, but have not yet discovered a replacement for it.”
Claire could find no immediate reply. She sipped her tea.
“I wondered if you could tell me a little more about the Southside,” Water Spider said, with unconvincing nonchalance. Claire looked at him narrowly. He was working extremely hard to maintain his habitual blandness.
“Why?”
He coughed. “Curiosity, largely.” She looked at him. “And, actually, I have been toying with the idea of asking for the post of ambassador.”
“You?” Claire said. “Living on the Southside?”
“Do you think I would be a poor ambassador?”
“No, well, I’m sure you’d make an—wait a minute. Surely someone from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be given that post?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes. But, although this is not yet public knowledge, I can tell you that there is soon to be an Emperor in Chinatown again, and I will have some leverage in that quarter.”
“An Emperor! Who?”
“My father,” Water Spider said, with some satisfaction. “It was actually Winter who started me thinking in this direction. As soon as I did, the matter became obvious. Chinatown needs an Emperor. Too long have we sat with the red throne empty. But who to reconcile the different Powers? Who was aesthete enough to please the Lady, strong enough to satisfy the Dragon, devious enough to earn the respect of the Double Monkey? Who could clearly be seen as an heir of Wu Lei, the last to hold the Dragon Throne? Who else but the last of his knights? Who but the man who had wielded both sword and pen? Who better to lead Chinatown back into the daylight, as the magic’s long dream draws to a close, than the one man among us who can remember a time before this world of ghosts and spirits?” Water Spider paused. “I also thought it a suitable revenge, for what he had done to me.
“I surmise my honored father’s accession will occur before midwinter. His rise will doubtless mean a senior post for Li Mei. So, at least one of my people I will not have utterly destroyed.”
“Good for Li Mei.” Claire laughed. “I didn’t get much chance to talk to her tonight. She looked like a cat trapped in a car wash. It was worth it just to watch her squirm, though.”
Water Spider drank the rest of his tea and took a deep breath. “As I said, I am something of an embarrassment here. That will only be more true when my father takes the throne. But I had one other motive for considering a move to the Southside.”
“Which was?”
From the pocket of his robe Water Spider pulled out a small jade box and studied it very intently, not meeting Claire’s eyes. “Perhaps I could unfold that more fully at another time. In a few weeks, or months. For now, would you do me the honor of accepting this small, this unimportant…?”
Running out of words, he held the box up and lifted the lid. Inside was a small green-gold ring set with a white diamond that gleamed like frost in sunlight.
Claire looked up in surprise. “Oh. I really don’t think I could—”
“Take it. Please.” Lifting the ring from the box he pressed it into the palm of her hand and folded her fingers over it.
Claire was just beginning to protest again when she stopped, the words turning to tears in her throat. At the touch of the diamond in her palm, the strangest sensation came over her, as if she had found something she thought lost forever. Something precious to her beyond all price. Memories flooded back into her. “It’s my day,” she whispered. “The one they took from me in the Garden. I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Then do not speak,” he said.
Water Spider did become Ambassador to the Southside. There he and Claire were married. Some years later, Claire stood with their daughter in the snowy field of McKernan Elementary. It was Christmas Day. Most of the houses around them were empty; the good people of the Southside were in church, chanting the long, joyful Christmas mass.
But Claire had seen the sun burning bright and low in the sky and felt the sharpness in the air. She sneaked out with little Mei, who had no more enthusiasm for standing still and chanting in Slavonic for hours than any other five-year-old. Even if it was a little wicked, how glorious and open the skies and field, compared to a tiny dark church! How sharp the wind compared to clouds of incense; how much brighter the sun was than candles.
There were sun dogs in the sky, one, two, no four of them, dazzling and incorruptible. Arcs of brightness joined them. Little Mei clapped her hands and laughed and Claire picked her up and swung her around so the snow and sky went spinning and Mei laughed so hard she got the hiccups.
Claire put her daughter down and opened her arms to the cold and the snow and the whole world white and dazzling. “This is for you,” she said.
Chapter
Thirty-four
Many years later.
First, she laid down two color masses: blue-grey sky at the top of the canvas, pale green Forest beneath. The green was one of her favorite colors, pressed from iris blossoms and boiled with alum. Clothlets dipped and dried twenty times made good watercolor cakes. She wet her brush in gum water and took up the dried color, quickly building a few masses in the Forest; there the suggestion of a salal bush, here a hummock she would later clothe in cedar needles.
