by Prue Batten
‘This is the Small Wall.’
‘Small?’
She laughed at the irony.
‘As opposed to the Great Wall which encircles this wall. It is ten leagues or more away so you will not see it.’
Two walls.
That had not been something she had countenanced.
But in the spirit of the Han, something as forbidding and dangerous as the wall was shielded and softened by beauty. Trees crept right to the walls, their crowns pruned to a pleasant height, their limbs espaliered along the wall’s length, with clusters of azaleas and rhododendrons crowding the base of the trees.
In some of the bare branches of more freely shaped trees, cages of singing birds hung, trilling in the early morning sun, whilst underneath, old men with skins as wrinkled as walnut shells, sat with their eyes closed as they smoked long-stemmed pipes.
The Han Gate stood impenetrable and for a moment Isabella could only see further impossibility engraved on its surface. But she had no desire to admit defeat and watched with care. The traders lined up, one horse behind the other, and her companion dug into a saddlebag and retrieved a scroll.
From in front of the Gate a man walked toward him, and Isabella sank into the horse’s back, allowing her companion to shield her.
The Gate guard was as giant as a shaitan, the worst of the djinns, and who were created from the fires of Hell. Bald except for a small tag of hair hanging to the side of his head, an air of savagery seemed to drift from him to circle her shoulders. His odd plait had been smeared with vermilion paint and given that the ear below was a mere stub against his skull, one could be forgiven for imagining he had just been struck. His eyes were dark and when he smiled at her escort, she could see his teeth too were red, the unmistakable dye of betel juice and she was put in mind of the Strigoi who suck on the blood of their victims. He spoke in the sharpened language of the Han, laughing at some joke with her escort and her companion’s voice rumbled through the leather of his jerkin.
The guard moved closer, walking by the horse, pointing at Isabella. More words followed. Her escort answered calmly and the guard looked down at the scroll he had unrolled. His eyes drifted over her, lingering on her legs which hung against the horse’s sides and then he spoke again, making a lewd gesture with his index finger enclosed in his other fist to which her companion shook his head but laughed anyway.
And then the Gate was opening and Isabella had to control herself so that she didn’t ram her heels into the horse and send she and her companion careering out into the wider world.
The gate spliced in two, its ornate calligraphy splitting as if it were cleaved apart. A line of men watched them from each side of the road, Isabella not unaware of the shouldered and sharpened armoury. But then there was nothing but birdsong and the encroaching shade of a thick forest and the horses’ footsteps sinking into thick moss and leaf.
At last she spoke.
‘They were men.’
‘Trained for the purpose of guarding the borders.’
‘Born of slave-mothers?’
He didn’t reply, manoeuvring his horse in and out of towering firs to a small copse where he dismounted and held out his arms, his pleasant face looking up at her, a faint smile carving the olive skin.
‘This is where we are instructed to leave you.’
He swung her down so that she landed lightly on the ground.
‘Thank you, I am grateful.’
The trader turned back to his horse after nodding his head, gathering the reins in his hand and placing his left foot in the stirrup.
‘Tell me,’ she asked impetuously, ‘you’re not Han, are you?’
He swung up, the only sounds the creaking of the saddle and the horses blowing down their noses. The other trader might as well have been deaf and mute, so little did he react to any conversation. Isabella’s companion looked down at her as if considering whether he should reply at all and when he did she was surprised.
‘No. I was born in the Raj but have lived in the Han since I was young.’
He began to turn his horse away but she grabbed hold of the reins.
‘Are you a slave like me?’
‘No. I have the freedom to come and go.’
‘How?’
She held on tight to the horse, preventing it moving forward and the man sighed, running a gloved hand over the animal’s neck.
‘I am a Han trader. I was reared as trader. So that the Han remains secret, all those who trade Han goods with the outside world are Raji, speak Raji and trade in the Raji way.’
‘But why do you come back? Why not go home? You have a mother, a family who must ache with loss?’
‘I came as a small boy from a poverty stricken Raji family who lived in the slums of Fahsi. I have only ever been treated with care and have money and position and my own home. I trade for the Han, for the House of Koi, and am regarded for my success. Why would I go back to the Raj?’
‘But you could take your money and escape, marry, have a family of your own.’
‘I cannot. I am treated as a respected member of the First House of Merchants. It would be ungrateful to Master Koi. As to children, I am unable. All males who came from outside are unable.’
‘Why?’
Her hand fell from the reins as she listened to the perplexing and horrifying explanation.
‘I am a eunuch. We all are.’
Her companion bent down and tucked in a saddle strap, speaking very quietly.
‘Your questions are pointed, seamstress. Mark you. Outside the Han Gate to the left, there is a chopping block where they lay the legs of those who try to escape before slicing off their feet and allowing the transgressors to bleed to death. On the right side, and hidden behind trees and shrubs is the graveyard. All female slave babies are buried there, all transgressors, all old slaves. All female. Beware it doesn’t become your everlasting home as well.’
He clicked his tongue and closed his heels on his horse and the train moved off.
*
She watched them go, sick with the knowledge that he had imparted; aghast at the cruelty that was accepted as a part of this introverted society. As the horses crunched across the leaf-fall, she thought of the bale of shifu cloth which had departed on the backs of such a train not long since and which hopefully had been sold.
Aware that she had set something in motion and that only Fate could stop it, she had an image of a small grey marker in a graveyard, surrounded by similar markers as far as the eye could see. And being Isabella, she pushed at the fear that twisted her gut like a piece of wrung-out laundry, instead concentrating on the bales on the horses’ backs. Which added another hard twist to her bowel when suddenly the horses were gone as if they were invisible.
The shock of their passage had her senses alert and she stepped quickly after them.
One of the many skills Phelim had taught her was how to move quietly amongst animals, to step like a feather falling, breathe like a zephyr. The horses were lost in shade but she could hear the occasional brushing of a branch or the crack of a twig. She thanked Aine for the shadows that smudged around her indigo robe and for the quiet soles of her handcrafted boots from home.
Step like a feather, breath like a zephyr.
Closer to the morning light above, she could hear the trill of tiny birds, precious sounds that reminded her of her island home and she had to drag herself from the memory as a booted foot almost stepped into a clearing which itself hung on the edge of a precipitous precipice.
She ducked back behind a thick rhododendron, her feet silent on the aeons of pine needles that had dropped into a resinous carpet. On the other side of the abyss, a similar clearing stood empty and between it and where the horses now stood, a chasm echoed with the far away rush and roar of rapids.
What now? Flying horses?
She watched the mute trader manoeuvre his mount to the edge of the abyss, her breath sucking in as he nudged his heels into its sides. It proceeded to walk on as surely a
s if its feet rested on a firm surface. It betrayed no fear, followed by two more of the packhorses. Finally her companion moved forward onto whatever mystic bridge joined the two sides together.
Isabella dared not blink, so desperate was she not to miss a thing. Tiny tears gathered on her lower lashes and still she would not relieve her discomfort. The man reined in when his horse had moved two or three lengths and he turned in the saddle, staring back to the trees and shrubs that shielded her. She would swear their eyes met, a piercing, questioning gaze from him that pinned her down like a moth in a collector’s case. She blinked and rubbed at the tears. When she opened her eyes again, he was following the last horse into the distant clearing and in seconds, he was gone.
How?
She ran to the edge of the abyss and dragged her toe through the air.
There was nothing there…nothing. She bunched her fist, her fingers shooting into the protective sign of the horn.
What glamour? What is this?
A skittering behind her drew her attention to the passing of time and she knew she must retrace her steps to where she could see the Gate. To where someone, even the Han guards, could see her. But clever Isabella, she sat and fiddled with her boot for a minute and laid a dark thread on the ground and as she walked back with speed, unwound the bobbin in her fingers so a trail as shadowed as the path she had trodden lay behind her.
This, she thought, was a fishing trip and the thread her line.
The sun had climbed swiftly, as it always did in winter. Her search for a wasp’s nest was haphazard as her mind dwelled on the unbridgeable chasm, on the difficulty of escape, for surely that way was south by southeast. She gazed upward into tree after tree but could spy nothing of the mud and daub that signified a nest and eventually she felt obliged to sit and open the bag from Lucia. The food was cold, and apart from the crispy pastry rolls, she could have left it all for the wolves. She bit into the flakes, little motes falling on her trousers, the smell of ginger and garlic tingling her tastebuds. Blessed Lucia had stuffed an orange into her bag and she peeled it now, slipping her fingernail under the dimpled flesh, allowing the citrus smell to re-energise her. But still the sun moved west and still she was nest-less.
She twisted back and forth along the paths near the wall, so close she could hear the guards yelling to each other, conscious of the sun tracking aft, beginning to feel her heartbeat change from trot to canter. She stumbled over a log and saw it then, one nest just lying on the ground, none the worse for its fall.
Looking up she saw another and another – all empty and denuded of the humming insects. She searched for a branch, a longish staff, and then played knockdown, swishing and jumping until thumps brought the nests cascading into the shrubbery and she had three and knew Madame Koi would get her rich red dye.
*
The sun set early in winter, although at the spring end of the calendar a little later each day. Nevertheless, by mid-afternoon the shadows were long and filled with a bitter cold that ate into Belle’s fingers. She looked to the west and could see the sun had gone, hidden by the upthrust of forest verdure. She began to run, the three nests stuffed in the bag from which she had tipped the food and banging on her hip.
She sped along the walls to the Han Gate and hammered and it folded open like a stiff book in a library, the binding cracking and groaning. The guards looked at her, the giant standing as stiff and cruel as a warning and then she was past him and pelting down the road, the shadows racing her as if they wanted to see her errant feet parted from the legs that drove her on.
Winding in and out of lanes, her breath hot and sharp in her chest, small clouds of vapour sucked in and out as she spun around the last cold corner and slid to a slippery halt, the black ice of oncoming frost causing her to tumble hard against the Koi Gate. She lifted her hand and rattled the iron bell, and as the Gate slid open she fell in, the sun gone, the lamps being lit in the trees across the garden.
‘At last,’ Lucia grabbed her, and Isabella laughed at the sheer audacity of her day.
As she chided Lucia for squashing the nests in her bag, she looked over the maid’s shoulder and saw Master Koi on the verandah outside his library.
She held up the bag and he stood, an unmoving black shadow, but then she saw his head nod as he turned and slid the door shut without a sound.
*
That night she could barely listen to Lu’s chatter as the maid admonished her charge and then gossiped in equal parts. Isabella’s mind was at the wall, gauging her escape, finding the key to the bridge that wasn’t, thinking about the second wall, so that when she crawled under her heavy roll on the mat in her room, even with eyes closed she could picture everything in unerring detail. A fever of anticipation tossed her from one side of her bed to the other and when sleep came, it was calamitous and touched by broken ends of thread and footless steps into an abysmal nothingness and the little paper room filled with shrouded moans and whimpers.
Chapter Eight
Nicholas
Nico’s fist bunched and pounded, a crack on the jaw that resounded even above the tavern uproar. The drunken lout reeled and fell into the laps of three men on a bench, their tankards spilling, a platter of gristle and congealed gravy crashing to the floor. The fellow felt for his jaw as if he were not sure he would find it, waggling it in giant maws, gritting his teeth and then spitting blood. Hands reached to pull him up and he roared as he regained his balance, lurching forward, a tumultuous punch heading for the side of Nico’s head. But he ducked and settled a fast score into the jellied paunch, naked and pink as it hung over the drunkard’s belt.
The hit found its mark but like a hornet sting, merely served to enrage the man so that he swung again, colliding with Nicholas’s forearm. The collision vibrated through to the bone, a sickening ache whereby the arm became numb and useless, the fist unable to ball and return the punch.
Pain in an Other is most often an unknown quantity, more likely to do with frustration than physical sensation. But Nicholas had the blood of a mortal mother and pain was as real to him as the Other way of ignoring it. His right arm hung lifeless and he turned slightly to bring his left fist into play, anger hardening the thrust, swinging through a red haze. Poisoned with a year of fury, grief and frustration, he wanted to down the beast before him, pound him, pulverize him, exorcise everything.
He swung with speed, catching the drunk on the side of his head. He crashed to the floor and Nico followed, kneeling astride, using his left fist like a drummer on skins, the crowd quiet, stunned at the ferocity of this youngblood’s reply.
A hand grabbed at Nico’s arm, powerful strength pulling it back.
‘That’s enough.’ But Nico jerked hard against the restraint. ‘I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH.’
The voice roared in Nicholas’s ear and the sound filtered through the bloodlust, quieting the ferocious lack of control, the waves of fury slapping less and less until all that could be heard was his sharp breathing, sucking in, out, in, out.
He looked down at the fellow between his knees, at the blackened eyes, bruised jaw, split lips, at the blood pouring from a cut on the temple and from the smashed nose. He staggered to his feet, his left arm still in the steel grip of the stranger, managing to bring the slightly less useless right hand to his nose and wipe underneath with the back of his hand. The disgust of the tavern crowd eddied toward him like a foetid mist.
‘Come on.’ The stranger pulled him by the imprisoned arm, ‘You need to cool off.’
Nico tried to drag away from the grip but a word in his ear was enough, ‘Don’t.’ Such a singularly powerful word whispered so quietly.
He allowed himself to be manhandled through the door as the stranger threw gelt on the table.
‘For the fellow’s bruises. Get him some grog.’
The door slammed shut and the dark outside wrapped round Nico, the stranger still not loosing him.
‘I’ll let you go if you’re calm. Nod yes if you understand.’
&nbs
p; Nicholas’s head ached from its pounding and blood trickled down his neck from a cut earlobe. He nodded gingerly.
‘Good. Sit next to that brazier and let’s have a look at you.’
He hustled Nico’s aching body to the bench against a wall, the glowing coals spreading heat into battered muscles.
‘By the Cuachag, man, you’re not a pretty sight.’ Nico raised his eyes as strong fingers lifted his chin to examine the bones and skin in detail, pressing gently. ‘Nothing’s broken, by which I assume you must be made of granite because the fellow knew what he was doing, he is a prize-fighter after all, whereas you, Aine, you knew bugger all and just had a bit of luck.’ He passed Nicholas a small beaten copper flask. ‘Here, brandy. Drink it.’
Nicholas sucked it back and coughed as the alcohol burned down his gullet and into his belly, spreading comfort.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’
The stranger sat next to Nicholas, sucking back the brandy before offering it again as Nicholas pointed to his throat and shook his head. There followed more scrutiny whilst from further away came the tintinnabulation of tabor and mandolin, of voices calling and of applause. The mummers were strutting their stuff and soon fireworks would spangle the sky and scour eardrums with salvo after salvo. Nicholas was able to discern pale hair on his companion and a broad shoulder capable of exerting the pressure that was now thoroughly familiar, and his impressive height was equal to Nico’s own.
‘Why don’t you speak? You’re not shy. No one would venture into a public brawl like that if they were.’ The man jerked his thumb back toward the tavern, but as the light flared from the brazier, he leaned forward and grabbed Nico’s face again, before a bray of sound exploded from his mouth. ‘What’s your name,’ he asked with excitement.
Nicholas tried to sign his disability using the swollen hands from which oozed clotting blood.
‘You can’t speak?’
Nicholas nodded.
‘Write your name in the dirt.’ He grabbed a stick and shoved it in the damaged fist with no thought for consequence.
