The Jade Spindle

by Alice Major

  As she stood partly screened by the horses, she saw the king, Ssu-ma and Ssu-kung come out of the king’s quarters and walk towards the prison tent. They stood looking for a few moments; then the king spoke to Ssu-ma, who nodded and raised his voice to give orders to the guards.

  “See no-one comes near. No food—give them a single mouthful of water at each meal time.” The leader of the guards, partially concealed by the swirling fog, gave a gesture of salute, and the king and his companions headed back towards the royal tent.

  Joss knew suddenly that she had to hear what they were going to talk about. She waited until they had disappeared, then scurried along the line of horses to the far side of the royal tent. Here, she took a breath and forced herself to stroll coolly, purposefully, as though she were approaching the king’s quarters from the direction of the main camp. She passed the guard at the entrance and nodded casually to him. She was a common enough visitor and she knew he wouldn’t challenge her.

  Once inside, however, she did not go through to the main reception area. Instead, she slipped into one of the small chambers that rimmed the centre, screened off from the centre by silk walls fastened to carved wooden supports. She tiptoed across this space to crouch in the far corner, her knees hugged against her chest.

  “. . . and most of all, I need information.” It was Ssu-ma’s voice, flat and forceful. “We have come into this region poorly equipped . . .”

  “Poorly equipped! The best-equipped army since my father’s campaign against the Chou. I gave you all the money you asked for.”

  The Director of Horses cut into the king’s indignant voice. “Poorly equipped with knowledge, Your Highness. We do not know this country and you would not wait for me to send spies and have them return. I am playing guessing games, and if the winter fogs continue to come down so early, we are even more vulnerable.”

  “Then these prisoners are like a gift from the God of the Soil. They can tell you what you need to know.”

  “If—and only if—I can get anything out of them.”

  “Lack of food will weaken them.”

  “I pin little faith on that, sire. The man has no look of treachery about him. He does have a look of great stubbornness.”

  “But the boy...”

  “The boy will not be nearly so useful a source of information. He is too young.”

  There was a pause, until Ssu-kung spoke. “Then we will have to carry out your threat.” Joss could hear a sort of gloating in his voice. “Torturing the boy will uncork the father’s mouth.”

  “Torturing a child is not consistent with the power and dignity of the Middle Kingdom.” The king’s voice was clear and indignant, and Joss felt a rush of warmth towards him.

  “Of course, of course.” Ssu-kung was soothing. He knew he had stepped over the line.

  “I warn you, sire, it may be necessary.” Ssu-ma said heavily. “I may have no alternative but torture.”

  There was a silence, and in it Joss seemed to hear the awful word again.

  The boy she had helped capture would be put through slow, agonizing pain while his father had to watch. Joss saw the calm face in her mind’s eye, saw the affectionate concern with which he had looked at the young face beside him when they were captured in the clearing.

  Torture. The word banged in her ears like a gong.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alasdair found her a while later, sitting at the far edge of the encampment. Only the top of her head showed over the grass and scrubby bushes as she sat hugging her knees and shivering.

  “What’s the matter,” he aked.

  Joss told him what she had overheard, with that awful word “torture.”

  “I can’t let it happen,” she said at last. “It’s my fault they got caught.”

  Alasdair frowned and sat down beside her. “I don’t see that,” he said. “It was Chuan as much as you. What does she think?”

  Joss shivered again and hugged her knees still tighter. “I haven’t talked to her. She ... she’s too caught up in the king. I don’t think she’d do anything to take away his precious prisoners.”

  “Well, she’s got a point. Ssu-ma needs information—needs it a lot. And whose side are we on in this, anyway?”

  She blinked as if she had suddenly walked into a stop sign. She hadn’t thought about taking sides before. This had all been an adventure, just a wild adventure in a story she had found herself in. Even leaving Ariel behind hadn’t seemed like a choice, just like reading the next page. But now there was a choice. She couldn’t avoid facing it any more than she could avoid the fog rolling in. The little boy’s face, looking up at his father, flashed into her brain again.

  “I’m not on the side of torturing anyone,” she said at last, harshly. What good would it do anyway? Hurting some travelling salesman’s little boy?” She scowled. “I’ve got to get into their tent and cut them loose somehow. Maybe they’d be able to run away.”

  “But the tent’s guarded. Even if you got in, they couldn’t get out.”

  “If I did it when the guards were eating ... the fog ...”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think it will work, Joss.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t care. I just keep thinking about that ... that rat Ssu-kung. He’ll make it as bad as he can. He’d like to.”

  “If we’re caught helping them escape, we’ll be tortured. And Ssu-kung would like that just as much.”

  “I don’t care,” she repeated. “I don’t care. You don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to. But I can’t let them torture him. He’s just a kid. Just a KID.” She stood up and made a few useless swings at the fog with her fists.

  “Oh, sit down. Of course I can’t let you do it all alone.” Alasdair put his hands together and bent his head, considering. At last he looked up. “We need to give them a chance to get away. And we need to convince everyone that we were somewhere else when it happens.” He looked at his knuckles. “What we need, Joss, is an alibi. One that Ssu-ma himself can’t doubt. Let me think about this.”

  It was after the third meal that the prisoners were taken back to the royal tent for more questioning. Joss had been summoned to act as translator again. But the audience room was less crowded than it had been during the first interrogation.

  The prisoners were hustled in and placed in front of Ssu-ma. The merchant’s face was as self-contained as ever. But Joss saw that fear and hunger were already showing on the boy’s face. His cheeks seemed thinner and his eyes had a brightness that spoke of tears held back.

  Ssu-ma’s first questions were general in nature, repeating many of the ones he had asked before. It was as if he was leading the merchant through a series of harmless questions in the hope that Deng-Xu would fall into the habit of answering—and then give away more information than he intended to.

  But the strategy did not work. As soon as the questions approached any useful topic, the merchant closed his lips firmly. Once that happened, Ssu-ma did not drag the interrogation out any longer.

  “Tell him,” he commanded Joss, “Tell him that he will have until after the first meal of the next pulse to consider my proposal. If he will give me the information I need, he will be well rewarded. His goods will be returned and added to—twice as much again as was taken from his camp.

  Joss translated, and a look of slight contempt crossed the merchant’s face, although he made no reply. Ssu-ma took a step closer to say, “If he does not give me information, he will watch great pain inflicted on his son.” His voice was level and his eyes locked with the merchant’s.

  Swallowing, she translated the sentence.

  The merchant’s mouth moved slightly, as if he had tasted something bitter. But still he said nothing.

  “Tell him to think carefully. Tell him to weigh the return of all his goods and more against watching the slow torture of his son.”
>
  Joss translated, “He says think it over.” Then she added quickly, “Don’t give me away, but when they take you back, try to untie the bottom of your tent on the east side.”

  Deng-Xu’s eyes turned towards her for a moment as she spoke. Then he looked back into the eyes of the Director of Horses. After a moment’s reflection, he nodded.

  Ssu-ma seemed satisfied by the reaction. “Take them away,” he ordered, and the guards hustled the captives out. The king waited until the tent had been cleared of prisoners and guards, then rose from his carved chair.

  “Will he speak?” he asked, moving over to the wide table where the maps were set out.

  The Director of Horses shrugged. “He is intelligent, so he can spend the time imagining what will happen to the boy. This may break him down. My hopes are not high.”

  Alasdair moved over to the table to join them. “He says he is from a place called Xi. Is that on this map anywhere?”

  Ssu-ma bent over the maps. “My guess is that it could be in this area ...”

  The voices settled into a steady murmur as they launched into one of their long discussions of strategy. Alasdair lingered nearby, asking the occasional question.

  Joss wandered over to an alcove on the far side of the audience chamber, partially hidden by a screen and oiled with rugs and cushions. She curled up on one of the cushions, watching the group across the room. Perfumed wood smouldered in a brazier in the middle of the room, sending smoke to hang lightly in the air. A servant brought cups of spiced wine. Ssu-kung was vigorously arguing a position. Joss stretched and yawned and lay down, pulling the rugs and cushions into a mound around her in the depths of the alcove.

  Then, after forcing herself to lie perfectly still for a few moments, she began to inch her say backwards, deeper into the alcove until she was right against its silk wall. Slowly, slowly, she worked the strings loose that held the silk to its carved wooden post and worked her body out from underneath it.

  This brought her into one of the small rooms on the northern perimeter of the royal tent. Hastily, she went to the outer wall, untied a corner, and after crouching silently for a while to collect herself, squeezed quickly outside.

  The fog was thicker than ever, like a bolt of white fleece unrolled across the landscape. She blessed it. Not only had it kept them here, but it would help hide her. At the same time, it was alarming. Sounds seemed nearer—the stamp and whicker of the king’s horses seemed as though it was only a metre away instead of six—and the fact that she couldn’t see anything was scary.

  Joss gathered herself into a crouch, then ran quickly in the direction of the horses. She worked her way to the back of the line and then, staying well clear of a stray kick from the hooves, used the line of horses as a compass to lead her in the direction of the prison tent. At the end of the line, she paused again to listen intently. In the direction of the prison tent, she knew, was a soldier mounting guard on the north side of the tent. His companion guard was stationed on the south side.

  She took a deep breath and moved silently in the direction of the tent. She had kicked off her sandals before leaving the king’s tent and was wearing only a pair of thick socks like burlap. They protected her feet from the worst of the sticks and rocks, but let her move almost as quietly as the mist itself.

  She had taken only a few steps when she froze—a rough-throated cough sounded off to her right, and she though she could see a blurred shape moving in the fog. She closed her eyes in a silent prayer. Outside, she stood absolutely still; inside, she was a ferment of fear. “Don’t come any closer. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” she thought desperately. As if in answer to her command, the dark shape faded back into the mist and Joss hurried on. Another few steps brought her to the tent. She crouched beside it, relief flooding her for a few seconds—but only for a few. Off to her left, she heard another footstep and cough.

  It was the second guard. She was paralyzed. She hadn’t thought the guards would be quite so close to the tent. But of course they would have to be with the fog so thick, she thought. The slightest noise she made would carry so clearly in the mist-laden air that they couldn’t help hearing her.

  As if to confirm her fear, there was a stirring and a slow murmur of voices from the prisoners, followed by a shout from the guard on the north side. “You! Shut up in there.”

  Joss crouched, thinking furiously. This part of the plan wasn’t going to work. And then fortune helped her out. She heard a bustle of activity on the far side of the tent—a clunk of clay bowls and the sound of cheerful voices.

  “Food for you poor sods.”

  “About time.” It was the voice of the guard on the north side, not sure whether to be grumpy or grateful. The guard on the south had no doubts. He was delighted.

  “Yao-chi be praised! We thought you’d forgotten us.”

  “The meal was late for all of us. The cooks were probably drunk.”

  The three voices collected around a small fire burning on the far side of the tent, and the soldiers stood eating and joshing each other.

  Joss’s paralysis had snapped at the first sound of the voice, and she rolled herself under the tent wall. Somehow the prisoners had managed to loosen a corner. She hadn’t really expected them to be able to do this, but it saved her a few precious seconds.

  The prisoners were seated on the floor, their backs to each other and their arms lashed firmly together with thick leather thongs. The merchant was facing her, and Joss laid her fingers on her lips as she slid over to them and pulled a penknife from her pocket. Quietly, she sawed through a loop that bound them together, then through a loop of the cord around his ankles.

  Putting her mouth close to his hear, she whispered, “Wait ‘til you hear a lot of noise, then leave that way.” She pointed in the direction where she had entered. “Go straight for a little while, then left.” She paused. “This is all I can do for you. It will be a while yet.”

  The man nodded. Joss slipped her penknife in his hand and rolled herself back under the tent. The guards were still talking by the fire. She bolted towards the horses again. Working her way back along the line, she came to a pile of hay. Here she stopped and drew out a box from her tunic—a small box like the one Chuan had carried on their journey from the garden. Inside was a small bed of moss, sheltering an ember.

  Her hands trembled as she built a little hollow of straw and dry twigs. she laid the ember in the hollow and blew carefully on it so that the edges glowed white and dull red. She pulled a few thin strands of hay, damp from the clinging fog, over the nest. The material should take a while to catch fire, and should send out a lot of smoke when it did.

  “I hope this works,” she prayed to herself.

  Then she moved to the horses’ heads, unknotting the tethers of two ponies so that they could pull themselves free with a quick tug. The voices of the guards had stopped by now. They had returned to their posts, and she heard them shout again to the prisoners to be quiet.

  One horse gave a loud snort when she passed, but then silence descended again. She hurried back towards the royal tent, slipped back in and re-tied the silk wall to its support. Then she pulled off the burlap socks and stuffed them down the front of her tunic. As she lay down to edge her way into the alcove, she heard the murmur of voices still continuing. Alasdair’s voice rose clear for a moment, asking another question.

  “Good old Alasdair,” she thought. “They haven’t missed me yet.”

  Slowly, patiently, she inched her way back into place under the rugs and cushions. Just as slowly, she moved her feet back into the loops of her sandals. Then she forced herself to lie still for a few long moments until her beating heart returned to normal. At last, she allowed herself to sigh and turn over, like a sleeper stirring. At the sound, there was a brief pause in the conversation beyond, before the voices continued.

  Joss lay there, cheek cradled against her hand. Now it wa
s a matter of waiting to see whether the plan would work.

  “Oh, God, I hope so,” she thought.

  And amazingly, as she lay there forcing herself to be perfectly still, she really did fall asleep.

  Alasdair stood by the others, nerves on the stretch. He was relieved to know Joss was back, but equally anxious about how his plan would work. The talk droned on, the perfumed smoke continued to rise from the brazier. Then, after what seemed like hours, something finally snapped.

  There was a high, frightened whinnying from outside and the thumping of hooves in the distance. Loud cries came from outside the tent, and Ssu-ma leaped to his feet, catching up the double-bladed axe and positioning himself as if to protect the king. He shouted to the guards stationed outside the royal tent. As one of them ran in, he was followed by a heavy smell of burning. Joss rolled over and stood up, her face convincingly flushed and her eyes heavy from sleep.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Fire—a hay bale near the horses, your honour. A couple of horses bolted. They’re trying to put it out.” Shouts and the sound of thumps came from outside as soldiers flailed heavy pieces of leather to put out the fire.

  Ssu-ma relaxed and put down his weapon. “See if it’s under control,” he ordered another servant who had come in nervously with a pitcher of wine. “And see whether any of the horses are injured.”

  But the servant had barely left the tent when another wave of shouting broke out. A few moments later, another guard rushed in.

  “Prisoners—escaped, sire,” he gasped, clearly terrified.

  Ssu-ma swore, a deep rumbling sound. “When?”

  “Not long. We heard them in the tent just moments before the fire broke out. They must have made a break when we ran to douse the flames.”

  “Horses?”

  “They could have taken them. We don’t know.”

  Ssu-kung spoke up suddenly. “How could they have escaped without help? They were bound.” He looked suspiciously at Joss, who was still rubbing her eyes and yawning to disguise her nervousness.