Armed with an actual name, Yuet could search with more focus for the first time, trying to follow the trail of the case. There had been little in the original account to connect the girl named Jokhara with the child in the mountains, but the time frame was correct, and there had been the gradual cessation of Traveler presence in Linh-an not long after this event—not hard evidence, perhaps, but suggestive in itself.
Jokhara’s name came up twice more in the Blackmail Books. Once in the city book—barely a month after her initial rape she had been brought in to Szewan by a female Traveler companion, had been discovered to be pregnant, and had been issued with a dosage of herbs which would terminate the pregnancy.
Once more, in the mountain book, eight months after that, describing Jokhara’s being brought to childbed.
Szewan had been present at the birth of the child, a girl they had named Tammary, according to the records in the book. A child whose birth was the culmination of an impotent rage by Jokhara, who had refused to take the herbs that Szewan had provided, who had wanted to bear the child of her shame so that she could teach it enough of its heritage to somehow shame the man who had begot it upon her. But Jokhara had never had the chance to teach her daughter anything. She was dead of milk fever before her daughter was a week old.
Tammary remained up in the mountains, to be raised by her Traveler kin.
That was the last time either of them had been mentioned in the books. But Yuet knew, knew deep in her bones, that Tammary was Tai’s snow-dancer child.
Her mother’s status had been moot, and there was no proof that Tammary’s mother had ever been part of the Emperor’s household, but Tammary was the Emperor’s child, and all his children by a concubine were considered as belonging to his Empress. The eldest of his daughters was by tradition the heir to the Imperial throne.
And by the time Liudan, Syai’s Empress, was born, the child that the Emperor had begotten on the Traveler woman was already four months old.
And now that Yuet knew of Tammary’s dangerous paternity, she was also aware of how easily it could make Liudan lash out to protect her own position. Liudan seemed to be in control, but Yuet, of all people, knew all the insecurities that still clung to the young Empress even after she had apparently achieved her goals. Liudan had been no more than a figurehead for so long, had been powerless and dismissed as merely the backup heir to a backup heir, and a tainted one at that. Now that Liudan had reached the level where she was mistress of both her own fate and the fate of an Empire, Yuet knew that she was capable of almost anything to ensure her position. Yuet didn’t want to believe it of Liudan, her own jin-shei sister and someone whom she had started to think of as friend, but she was desperately afraid that Liudan could destroy the child of her father’s arrogant passions without a second thought if she feared Tammary could come between her and her legacy. With Liudan, of all people, the stark choice between jin-shei and Empire would be an almost impossible one to make.
Six
The last week of Kannaian, like a final sting in the tail of summer, was hot and sultry. The sky was often full of angry clouds promising the relief of a storm, but somehow the storm never came. Each heavy day that passed only served to build up the weight of oppressive heat further on the city.
Yuet was given no time to ponder long on what she had discovered in Szewan’s Blackmail Books. She had barely closed them after finishing her research on the Traveler girl named Jokhara and her daughter before a runner arrived to summon her urgently to the Guard compound. There was a problem.
The Inner Court, where the families lived, was a wretched place that morning. Yuet could sense it as she approached, a healer’s instinct, even before the tragic and inconsolable wails of sick children began to penetrate her consciousness. These children cried with a helpless, hopeless intensity which implied that there was no comfort; their mothers and fathers were not leaping up to soothe them, to ease their misery. The crying hung above the courtyard like a shroud. It seemed to be coming from everywhere.
“What happened here?” Yuet snapped at her guide.
“It’s been miserable, Healer Yuet,” the guide, a Guard trainee maybe a year or so older than Xaforn, said. “There’s been no fever, but everyone’s been throwing up all night, or running for the privies. The children are particularly bad.”
“How long has it been going on? Why didn’t someone call me sooner?”
“There were sick people here and there over the past week, but it was nothing like this,” the trainee said. “Yesterday it was suddenly everywhere. Last night was unbearable.”
“What has been done so far?”
The trainee shrugged. “I don’t really know. I was sent to fetch you. They thought, yesterday, it might have been tainted fruit, or something like that. But then more people started falling ill, and some of them were small babies, and they had eaten no fruit, and …”
“Thank you,” Yuet said, cutting off the incipient speculations, which were of no value to her. “Is it confined to the Court or is it all over the compound?”
“So far as I know, nobody in the outer compound has been ill yet,” the trainee said.
“Let’s keep it that way, then. You’d better not wander in and out of there at will, and pass the word that nobody else is to, either, until I clear it.” Yuet had been running the symptoms that had been described to her through her mental records, and was not happy with the numbers that came up. “I don’t like the speed of this, and I emphatically do not want the entire Imperial Guard coming down with acute ricewater bowel flux on my watch.”
A sour smell of vomit hung about the doorways of most houses Yuet passed. But she could not go into every house and interrogate some poor soul who happened to be a little less sick than the rest. She needed a central source of information. Someone who knew the inner workings here.
Xaforn had spoken of a girl … what was her name?
Qiaan. Daughter of a Guard captain.
It was a start.
Yuet peered into the nearest dwelling, letting her eyes adjust to the shuttered gloom inside. The place was empty except for one dozing woman sprawled on a low pallet by the far wall. Yuet noted a basin with a film of foul-smelling vomit still clinging to it on the floor beside the woman.
“Is anyone taking care of you?” Yuet asked, stepping inside.
The woman’s eyes fluttered open. “My husband was, but it took him too—he left for the privy.”
Yuet touched the inside of the woman’s wrist with light fingers. There was no fever, but her pulse was only a faint, thready beat. Her eyes looked enormous, circles of dark shadow underneath them. “How long have you been ill?”
“I took sick last night,” the woman whispered.
A sound at the door made Yuet look up; a man, his skin sallow and his eyes bloodshot, was leaning against the doorjamb—presumably the husband.
“I will return,” Yuet said, straightening up. “In the meantime, for the love of Cahan, drink plenty of fluid, both of you. Your lives may depend on that. Can you tell me where I can find a young woman by the name of Qiaan?”
The woman didn’t answer, eyelids drooping again, but the man at the door still seemed to have enough wits about him to reply.
“That would be Captain Aric’s daughter,” he said. “She’ll be at the officers’ quarters, at the top of the court.”
The officers’ quarters seemed a little quieter than the rest. A child who appeared perfectly fit and well was playing by herself out in the gardens, and pointed out Captain Aric’s quarters to Yuet with a dimpled grin. The door was shut, but it opened to Yuet’s touch when nobody answered her hail.
“Hello?” she called, standing on the threshold, her hand on the handle.
A low groan answered her, and, healer’s privilege, she stepped in, leaving the door ajar behind her. In an adjoining room, a bedchamber, a woman lay on a thin straw-tick mattress in a slatted wooden bed, the sheets twisted about her legs. She appeared to be in a fitful sleep. Yuet wasn�
��t sure if it had been she who had made the noise or not. But as she hesitated she was addressed from behind by a youthful voice.
“Hello. Are you the healer?”
Yuet turned, and suppressed a gasp of surprise.
The girl that stood before her may have been a little shorter than Empress Liudan of Syai, and her body was still the coltish shape of childhood, without the sweet curves that Liudan was beginning to show—but in all other respects she resembled Liudan strongly enough to be her twin.
“I am Qiaan,” this Imperial double said. The voice was different, slightly higher pitched than Liudan’s.
Yuet blinked, mentally shaking herself. Just because I dug around in the Blackmail Book and came up with Liudan’s half-sister, now I see them everywhere, she chided herself sharply. “Yes, I am the healer. And I’ve been looking for you.”
“Yes, Min said someone had asked after me.” Qiaan stood looking at Yuet with a quizzical tilt to her head. “Is there some way I can be of assistance?”
“Are you sick with this disease?”
“No,” Qiaan said, “but my mother and my aunt both are, and I’ve been taking care of a dozen children in the compound who are ill themselves and whose mothers have been sick enough not to be able to cope with it.”
“An organizer,” Yuet said, with a quick grin. “You are most emphatically what I need right now. Xaforn told me your name,” she added, when a look of confusion started to creep into Qiaan’s eyes.
Qiaan’s mouth quirked. “You are Yuet, aren’t you? The one who fixed her ribs, and made her sit out the training for a month? She has spoken to me of you, too.” Her tone left no doubt that Xaforn may have done so in trenchant terms.
The woman on the bed groaned in her sleep. Yuet crossed over to the bed, and laid a hand on her temple. “No fever, but she looks exhausted,” Yuet said in a low voice.
“This is the first sleep she’s had in almost forty-eight hours,” Qiaan said. “She was among the first who got sick. And she was not well before, even. It’s taken a lot out of her.”
“Right,” Yuet said. “We can talk outside.”
They left the bedside, closing the door of the sickroom behind them. “Your mother?” Yuet said, indicating the room they had just left.
“Yes. My aunt is in the second room. She’s been sick too but she hasn’t been as bad.”
“Tell me when all this started.”
Qiaan gave a succinct and cogent summary of the previous few days, describing how the debilitating disease had taken hold in the inner compound. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it might have something to do with the wells—one of the wells started to smell bad right after the first people started coming down with this flux. Once it did, people stopped using that well for drinking water—but by that time …”
“Qiaan!” A feeble voice that still managed to sound peremptory came from a back bedroom, its door pulled nearly to but not quite closed. “I want water!” the querulous voice demanded. “Where have you been? And who are you talking to?”
“My Aunt Selvaa,” Qiaan said, her voice resigned.
“Has she been drinking this tainted water you speak of?” Yuet said.
“I tried not to bring that water here after I had my suspicions about it,” Qiaan said. “But the kitchen might have it. Things could have been cooked in it or washed in it.”
“Qiaan!”
“Coming, Aunt!” Qiaan started toward the second sickroom, grimacing at Yuet.
The healer followed a few paces behind. Qiaan was pouring water from a pottery jar into a shallow cup and offering it to the hatchet-faced woman lying on the pallet in this back room. The patient’s eyes, raised to the girl with the water cup and full in the sight of Yuet as she approached the open door, were snapping with active dislike.
“You just abandon us here, we could die, and you go off.”
“Actually, there have been a few that died, Aunt,” Qiaan said with an edge of irritation. “And I am not ill, and others could do with some help. There are children who …”
“You should care more about the woman who took you in,” Selvaa spat out. She was weak from dehydration, her voice was soft, but it carried, and the disease had stripped off whatever sheath of tact had been covering her dislike of Qiaan until now. “My sister helped you. Cahan knew what would have happened if she had not forgiven …”
Qiaan stared at her in incomprehension, then reached out for her aunt’s fingers. “The others do not have fever, but you sound …”
Selvaa snatched her hand away. “Water. Give me water. You owe me that, owe us that. We took care of you.”
“Let me,” Yuet interceded, stepping between the two. “Your name is Selvaa? I am the healer, Yuet. How long have you been ill?”
“A week,” Selvaa said weakly.
“She took ill yesterday,” Qiaan said quietly.
Selvaa shot her a poisonous look. Yuet ignored both of them for the time being, turning Selvaa over on her back and palpating her abdomen. “Does it hurt when I …”
Selvaa grimaced. “Yes. No. I am not sure. I need water.”
“Yes,” Yuet agreed. She looked up and caught Qiaan’s eye. “And sleep. I will make you a herbal to help you get some rest. Qiaan, show me where I may make an infusion.”
They went back to the front room to pick up Yuet’s satchel and Qiaan led the way to the empty kitchen area. Yuet sniffed at the water in a barrel that stood by the door, and Qiaan said, “That one came from the clean well.”
“You will have to show me this other well,” Yuet said. “In the meantime, put a pannikin of this on to heat for me.” She rummaged in her satchel and came up with a twist of silk, secured with a ribbon tie. Unfolding this on a clean section of the kitchen table, she measured out a quantity of the pungent ground herb it had contained and poured it into the container Qiaan had swung out over the hearth. They waited until the water with the powder in it boiled, releasing a rich green aroma in the kitchen, and then Yuet set the brewed potion aside to cool a little.
“When it’s cool enough to drink, but still warm, give her a cupful of it—and to your mother as well, when she wakes. I will leave the rest of this packet with you; boil it all up, no more than a pinch or two per pan, and let the children have it—it will help them sleep, and help prevent the dehydration. I need to go back to my workroom and get some more of this, and I will be back with that. In the meantime, if you will find me at least one person who is strong enough to wield tools, we will seal this tainted well before it spreads any more contagion,” Yuet said.
“Is it the water?”
“Probably. I’ve seen this before, it’s sparked by tainted food or water, and then it spreads fast,” Yuet said. “Are there any others who are not ill? We may need a few people to nurse the worst-off through this. And we must make sure that there is clean water enough for washing. Wash your hands after you clean up after someone who is afflicted, and before you allow yourself to go near food or drink. The outer compound draws water from a different well, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, several.”
“I will have to check those too. And I’ll pass the word to other healers, lest this jump the water somewhere and spread into the city. It’s hot, and people will drink tainted water if they aren’t aware that it carries disease. And, Qiaan …”
Qiaan jumped, as though the sound of her name had interrupted some internal train of thought. “Yes?”
“Through Xaforn, who is jin-shei to us both, we too are jin-shei-bao of a second circle,” Yuet said, smiling. “You’ve done well here.”
Qiaan flushed. “I am not sick,” she said. “I did what I could.” She hesitated. “My mother … should I have called someone … she is so weak. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Make sure she has some of this when she wakes, too,” Yuet said, laying the back of her hand against the cup holding the herbal infusion to test the temperature. “I’ll be back with more presently.” She paused, looking at the faint scowl th
at had etched itself into Qiaan’s forehead. “Don’t let your aunt upset you,” Yuet said gently. “She is ill. People say strange things when they are not themselves.”
“You said yourself she had no fever,” Qiaan said. “She is hardly delirious.”
“No, but she is suffering, and hurting, and full of self-pity—and you are what is there to pour it all out on. It means nothing.” Yuet reached out and squeezed the other girl’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry. If we can isolate the taint, we can prevent it from spreading—and if we can stop those who are already sick from getting too dehydrated, we have a good chance of stopping this. Luckily it’s isolated and contained here, and it isn’t in the city. And it’s going to get cooler soon, so the heat will not help spread it. Go, take in the infusion. I will be back as soon as I can.”
Qiaan lowered her eyes, took up the potion and went back to her querulous aunt.
Yuet, departing the inner court, went straight to her stillroom by way of a short visit to the Guard Commander on duty in the main compound to request a full short-term quarantine for the patients in the family quarters and immediate attention to the delivery of clean drinking water until the problem of the tainted well could be dealt with. She washed her hands with lye soap to make sure they were free of whatever agent was causing the infection in the inner court and raided her stocks of dried herbs, grinding a mixture of roots and leaves into quantities of fine powder and pouring it into stoppered earthenware flasks. She stowed each batch of the preparation in her satchel as she finished it, to take back to the compound.
As she worked, she heard a diffident knock on the thick oaken door of the stillroom, and left her mortar and pestle, wiping her hands on her still-room smock as she did so, to answer it.
“I beg your pardon, mistress,” said the servant, “I would not disturb you at your work, but there is a messenger from the Palace, and I thought …”
“Ask him to wait,” said Yuet. “I will be right up, as soon as I’ve finished this particular batch. I will only be a few moments.”
The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 22
