Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  If it cost her pain, she was prepared for that and so was he. Her body, her pain. So long as she never mentioned it, neither would he. His arm was there beneath her hand, and if she was leaning more weight on it by the day’s end, if she was gripping it more tightly that would perhaps be his victory but it would pass quite unacknowledged.

  ALL THAT long road they walked, and came to Taishu-port as the sun was setting. Siew Ren looked shocking in the low sun: her face drawn tight to the bone, all her scarring standing proud, her eyes as tense and narrow as her lips.

  Yu Shan said, “You must be tired. We can sleep here,” at the jademaster’s palace, adopted by the emperor until his new Hidden City was completed, “and go down to the temple in the morning.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want …” Even her voice had been touched by fire. It was hoarse and scratched now, and inclined to peter out. It said enough, though: I don’t want to deal with all those people, their pity and revulsion, their superiority, their fuss. “Can’t we go to temple now?”

  Let the nuns have us, she was saying. If they keep us overnight, the morning will be easier to manage.

  Perhaps she was right. Certainly she didn’t want to walk through these high and guarded gates. The temple was really not much farther, and downhill all the way. He had gawped, Yu Shan remembered, and dragged at Jiao’s heels his first time here—but he was not going to think about Jiao. It was suddenly harder, in the city where all his first experience was hers, but still. Not.

  There were many temples in Taishu-port: temples and temples, to offer their due to gods and gods. And goddesses. Even so—just as in the mountains there were mystical creatures that were not stone tigers, but when you spoke of a glimpse, a presence, a touch of wonder in the night, everyone knew what you meant—if you talked of temple in Taishu, there was only one temple you might mean. There was only one goddess who belonged here, who could lay claim to the island’s people because hers was the strait that they depended on.

  Even before she proved herself mightier than the dragon, that was true. Now it was inherent, inescapable.

  No. The last time he was here, it was inescapable. Now, not quite so. Now the old man had done a deal with the dragon, and it was by that creature’s license that they fished from here. Did that make it her strait, did that displace the goddess?

  Perhaps. Yu Shan wasn’t sure, and neither apparently was anybody else. The temple of the Li-goddess was thronged with people, red altar-lamps flinging shifting shadows all across the open court and the roofed galleries that enclosed it. One voice, harsh and female, rose above the murmur of so many, a prayer like a saw blade biting deep, back and forth, unstoppable.

  Yu Shan stood just inside the gateway and laid his arm around Siew Ren’s shoulders as he looked down into that chaotic mull, all smoke and sound and shadow. He said, “You wait here,” setting her by a pillar, something she could cling to. “I’ll find the priestess.”

  He couldn’t see her face beneath the hat, but he could hear her smile in the way it shaped her words. “No need,” she said. “The priestess will find us. Do you think she could miss …?”

  Miss you, she meant, tall mountain boy, friend of emperors. Jade-eater. You are famous in this town. Haven’t you seen them staring?

  Yes, of course he had, all through the streets; but all his concern had been for her. Guilt made him over-protective. He knew it, and could not apparently change it. Could not even apologize for it, because she was right, of course: here came the priestess from her prayers to greet the emperor’s shadow, all unexpected in her house.

  He said, “My friend and I, we need a bed tonight, and then away early in the morning,” with our errand, which he would not explain until that time. “Do you have a corner where we can be private?” meaning do not ask Siew Ren even to take her hat off, until we are alone.

  “Of course,” said the priestess, meaning of course not, we are over-full already and half our people will be sleeping in the open court, meaning take my cell, and I will sleep in with my sisters.

  Ashamed, he would still use his fame or anything to buy Siew Ren the space and shelter that she needed, to be alone with her all night and undisturbed. Once he used to want the same thing for a wholly different purpose—but in those days they could have it for the asking, just walk out into the forest and find a place to be. In those days, he waited for her invitation. Now he had to negotiate on her behalf. Never mind that the priestess made it easy, it was still a significant shift and he hated it.

  And could see no way to help her past it, back to a place where she had the confidence to ask and the arrogance to expect. For now, he was content that she should sleep; happy that she should sleep next to him, nestling into his warmth, as though her body at least remembered.

  HE SLEPT himself, a little, as much as he needed to and perhaps a little more; and woke to her wakefulness, to the bright glitter of her eye just there beside him, her body stretched against as much of his as she could reach.

  She said, “You make me feel better,” which made him feel as better as he could be.

  He slipped one arm beneath her head, the other down to her hip, where he could hold her without hurting her. “What,” he said, smiling, “like Biao’s tiger-skin?”

  She nodded fractionally, little more than a shift of her cheek against his shoulder; she was learning these marginal, potent gestures, when any pulling of the deep-scarred skin could suddenly hurt her extremely. “Yes,” she said. “Like that, but not so … urgent. Like a stew that will sit all day in charcoal and cook itself slowly, slowly. The tiger-skin is a fierce flame, bamboo. Was fierce. Now I think it is burning itself out.”

  Like the old woman who lay beneath it, whose life was perhaps not ebbing any longer but neither was it flooding back. The skin had done what it could, they thought; it was slack water with her now, and always would be.

  “Well,” he said, “I can be your coals all night, every night, if it will help you heal.” Now that Jiao is gone, I can, but he wasn’t going to think about Jiao.

  She smiled, that tight and savage twisting that was nothing lovely to see; it sat in her eyes and in his head like a promise received and witnessed.

  THE TEMPLE woke around them, woke and rose and put itself to work.

  They rose themselves, washed in cool perfumed water, dressed in borrowed robes and left the cell.

  “Should we pray, do you think?” It was Siew Ren who asked, another momentary betrayal of herself, measurement of what she had lost. She used to be the one who decided, we should pray or we should not. He would have looked to her to tell him, either way.

  Now she looked to him, and he didn’t know. Temples and prayers were no part of their life in the mountains. The clans tended rather to respect the gods at a distance, leave them to the world beyond. Stone tigers and other creatures walked in the forests and on the slopes, the emperor himself sat at the farther end of the Jade Road, which might be any distance but it started in their hills. What need had they of other gods, or other gods of them?

  He said, “We could burn joss, maybe.” It would only be polite, guests in her house—but here came the priestess before they could achieve it, to sweep them up with an imperious gesture and take them to a small refectory.

  “Sit, sit,” the priestess said, clapping her hands for service.

  “Oh, please, you’ve all had your breakfast; don’t worry about us …”

  “Nonsense. What, did you think we would send you out hungry? Neither the emperor nor the people nor the goddess would be pleased with us, did we so.” A scurrying novice brought bowls of congee, a bowl of salted eggs, a pot of tea; the priestess smiled upon her beatifically and went on, “See, I will sit with you and drink tea, so that you need not feel awkward in our house; and when you have eaten, you will tell me why you are here and how we may serve you better than a scant meal and a cramped bed.”

  Yu Shan took a breath; Siew Ren dropped her face into congee-steam. He swallowed down any risk of wo
rds, picked up a horn spoon and began to eat.

  WHEN HE realized that he was eating more and more slowly, when he caught himself reaching for an egg he didn’t particularly want, then Yu Shan laid his spoon down, wiped his mouth, turned to the priestess and said, “Forgive me, but I must take one of your children away from you.”

  She understood, of course. The temple might give a home to any number of orphans; some might stay a lifetime, girls raised as nuns, gifts to the goddess; nevertheless, when Yu Shan spoke of a child, he could mean only one.

  She said, “The emperor charged me to keep him safe.”

  “As you have.” And more carefully so, since Jiao—he didn’t want to think about Jiao!—stole the girls away in the old man’s boat. “But I have come from the emperor,” which was almost true, “and it is felt”—if not exactly by the emperor—“that he will be safer if we keep him farther from the sea, with those guards who protect the emperor himself and his mother,” and his favorite too, whom Yu Shan was very carefully not mentioning here. She was no fool, this priestess.

  “Safer, yes. Perhaps.” She was thinking it through, aloud. “Safer, but less useful. Far from the sea.”

  Far from the goddess, she meant. From her goddess, whose interests she served, which would not always be the emperor’s interests, perhaps.

  At the moment, Yu Shan served Mei Feng’s interests entirely, which were also perhaps not the emperor’s just now.

  He said, “The little boats can fish without protection, if they fly the dragon’s flag,” which was not perhaps a tactful thing to say in this house but true none the less, “and the emperor has no need to return to the mainland.” That was pure Mei Feng and not the emperor at all; if he had said no plans to return it would have been a lie absolute. “Now that Tunghai Wang has the girls”—stolen from your care but he wasn’t going to mention that, he didn’t need to—“and can launch an attack of his own at any time, we want to keep the boy some way from danger.”

  What danger, what other danger, he didn’t clarify: not here. He’d said enough, he thought.

  Siew Ren had thought he could not do this by himself, and he had proved her wrong. Her hurts might have made the task easier, because who could distrust anyone who had given so much for the emperor? But he had saved her that, and was delighted with himself; and the priestess was nodding, saying, “Yes, of course. If it is an imperial order,” and he simply stood and waited, no response necessary.

  AND THEN they brought him the child, and he had not the first idea what to do with it.

  HE KNEW something about boys, he had been a boy himself: but not like this, damaged and possessed, like a puppet abandoned. He hated that sense of emptiness. It was different in babies, who were waiting only to grow into themselves. This one had begun his growing, and then been emptied out; and now …

  Well. He was something like a baby, but too big; something like a boy, but too hollow. Unpurposed. Lying slackly in the priestess’s arms, then slackly in Yu Shan’s. Meeting his gaze with an insensate stare, no hint of any mind behind the eyes.

  Easier, somehow, to think of him as it: as though it were unpersoned, dead already or else not yet born. Either one, a little of both together in a living body. That might have been terrifying, if it weren’t so sad.

  Saddened and appalled, Yu Shan gazed down into the unresponsive face and didn’t know how to move on from here. Couldn’t imagine how to go from here to there, a long day’s walking with an absence in his arms. He thought this child would suck his soul along the way, and still have nothing of its own. He thought it was a drain into a desert.

  Siew Ren rescued him, all unexpectedly: suddenly showing something of herself again, what she had claimed to come for, how do you imagine you might manage by yourself?

  She wore a nun’s robe in somber drab, with a hood hanging down at the back. She lifted that up to mask her face, better than her rain hat ever had; and then took the child from his helpless arms.

  Crooned down at it from the shadows of her hood, which made no perceptible difference to the child but he rather thought it made a difference to her. Then she lifted her head, so that he could at least see the glitter-and-twist of her eyes as she said, “Are we going, then? We have a long journey and I want him home before the day ends, there’s nowhere to stop along the road.”

  YES, YES, they were going. They were going now. This was them, going: bidding a long farewell to the priestess, a swift one to the goddess at her altar, leaving a gift of money—the emperor’s money, which he would not miss but Yu Shan felt bad about regardless—to buy clothes for the orphans, joss for those who could not afford it. It was a guilt-offering, given what they were stealing, and never mind that they had stolen the money too.

  THIS WAS them on the road out of town, the Jade Road, walking; and here was an ox-cart laden with stone for the new palace, so slow that they were overtaking it when the driver called down to offer them a ride.

  And, for a wonder, Siew Ren said yes; and so they sat on all that stone, as comfortable as they could be, and the laggard beasts hauled them home.

  And at some point in the journey, Siew Ren dangled her jade bead on its thong and the child caught it, carried the bead to its mouth and sucked on it.

  Yu Shan thought nothing of it. Only later, when they were closer to the palace, he saw her slip the bead out of the child’s mouth and tuck it inside her robe again; and then, oh, then he heard the child protest.

  seven

  e was the one, the only one who had sailed the strait in safety without an escort-child.

  He was the one who knew the goddess most intimately, more so even than her own priestesses; she was of the sea and so was he.

  Also, he was the one who had negotiated with the dragon.

  Of course he was a guest in Ping Wen’s palace.

  Guest or prisoner, and who could ever know the difference? He slept in comfort, he was brought fresh clothes every morning, there was always more food than he could eat; and he was always watched, and he could wander wherever he cared to through the palace grounds but the gates were somehow closed to him in the most polite manner imaginable.

  Sometimes a captive will deliberately place himself under a stricter watch. Perhaps in protest, perhaps to punish himself for his own situation; perhaps for other reasons, darker or more hopeful, more obscure.

  Once Old Yen had found the boy Pao and the children in their pavilion, of course he chose to stay with them.

  That this set him too under Jiao’s eye, under the tiger’s—that was not quite coincidence, and not quite immaterial. Jiao had stolen his boat, his boy and the children of his goddess; she had handed them over to Ping Wen, whom both he and she knew to be a traitor; she had led him also into that dreadful confrontation on the water, himself and the goddess and the dragon.

  Twice now he had betrayed the goddess. A third time would be unimaginable, which was why—one reason why—he would not be leading any men of Ping Wen’s across the strait. If he had said or implied otherwise, he was lying for the sake of his head, his friends and his future. And his boat.

  For all the same reasons, he would say nothing to Jiao, when all he had was accusation, truth laid bare. He’d rather talk to the tiger. That was at least an honest beast. It didn’t wrap itself in a cloak of kindness, or pretend to an allegiance not its own. Jiao could only keep it by keeping it on a chain.

  He had lamented, he still lamented, he was appalled by the dragon’s being free of her chains. The tiger, sometimes he thought he ought to free it quietly in the night, let it run. He knew nothing of tigers, mountain creatures, forest creatures, tree and stone; still something in him thought it should be free. Even here, the wrong side of the water, far from jade.

  But he was a practical man, Old Yen. He thought the tiger would rip his old frail bones apart, if he ventured to set it loose. And then he thought it would destroy the children, before it turned to Jiao and at last perhaps to its own freedom: leaping from a window, running like storm thro
ugh the tame wilderness of the palace garden, taking the guarded wall at a bound and seeking the shortest road out of the city, already sniffing for mountains, for distance, for height and solitude.

  Unless the call of its home would be the stronger, unless it turned to the sea and tried swimming to Taishu.

  Old Yen wondered vaguely, self-mockingly, if the dragon would let the tiger by. Did power call to power, was there sympathy between one mystical creature and another?

  If so, perhaps the goddess would drown the tiger, because she could not drown the dragon. Petty again, but he had seen her in his boat, he had felt her in his body, felt the weak stubborn fury of her grip.

  Shrugged her off, denied her, betrayed her.

  He wasn’t quite sure—what weighs a lifetime of service, against a sudden betrayal?—but he thought she might be petty enough to drown him, next time he put to sea.

  He thought she might try, at least.

  If he took the children, would that risk their lives, or save his own? He wasn’t sure, he couldn’t tell. Nothing was clear anymore, in a world where his goddess was a paltry thing, a ragged twist of water on a stick, ineffectual and sour.

  Not sure if he could do it, he could plan for it, at least.

  He could talk to Pao while the girls were at their games, drowsy in the grass in this late-season heat: