Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  “My boat, boy. What did you do with my boat?”

  “Master, I … I misread the tide, and by myself I couldn’t change the sails in time enough to catch her …”

  “Yes, yes. No blame to you for that; no one can sail her single-handed. She won’t yield to it, she needs a strong hand on the tiller and swift feet across the deck.” Nothing about that day had been the boy’s fault. He’d done well to bring the boat whole across the strait. A week ago, Old Yen would have told him to be grateful to the goddess.

  Now? Well, now he was not so sure. Now he might almost tell the boy to be grateful to the boat. Stubborn determined bastard boat, beaten and broken and never sunk yet …

  Again, “What did you do with her?”

  “Beached her, master. Not,” as this was confession, staring down at his big bare feet, “not by intent. The tide had us and she was too heavy for the wind, the sand was gripping almost before I had the sails set for it. We came in abeam, and …”

  And that was the worst news so far, because she would topple for sure and might be irrecoverable without a team of men and oxen, ropes, supervision. Permission.

  He said, “Just sand, though? Sand, not rocks?” only to encourage the boy; and then, “You left her there, like that?”

  “She turned bow-on before we struck,” good old boat, self-reliant and wise. “I think the tide would lift her. I had no choice, though, Jiao would never let me stay …”

  “No, I am sure not. Will the boat still be there, do you know, have you heard?”

  A shake of the head, a shrug; and then a lift of that head, a boy seeking comfort where he could, which was not here and not from Old Yen. Pao looked down to the pond’s margin, where the girls were weaving flower-heads into chaplets of grass. The little girl was laughing, high and shrill. It was hard to tell from here, but Old Yen thought perhaps he heard a second voice, lower and more tentative, older and more damaged, coming back.

  “Master, I don’t know. I am not allowed to know, perhaps. I am not the one to ask. I am sorry …”

  IT OCCURRED to Old Yen that he too might be not allowed to know, as he was so clearly not allowed to go and see for himself.

  Still. He was most certainly allowed to ask, because what else was Ping Wen keeping him for, if not for his evident ability to cross the strait with or without the dragon’s consent?

  He asked to speak to Ping Wen.

  He asked a servant, one of those attentive men who trailed him through the palace, who watched him on his walks and at his meals, who fetched him this and that and the other thing and somehow slitheringly denied him anything that might matter, those things he was too wise to ask for, his freedom or his boat.

  He asked for a minute of Ping Wen’s time, when the governor might be at liberty.

  The servant looked first toward Jiao, who sprawled at her perennial ease barely out of earshot. She could certainly take Old Yen directly to Ping Wen if the fisherman only asked it. But if they had learned one thing in all their spying, these wary watchful men, it would surely be that Old Yen did not speak to Jiao.

  The servant took his query to a sergeant. Ping Wen might pretend to a civilian rank now—with his eyes perhaps on another, a higher, the highest that could be, above all soldiers ever—but the structure of his mind, the hierarchy of his service was all military. Even inside the palace, soldiers watched the servants, soldiers made a wall between the governor and his people.

  If Old Yen expected anything, it was to be interviewed through a chink of that wall by some high official allowed to pay court higher yet. More likely, he thought, it would be a brick of the wall itself, an officer of the army who fetched him a refusal.

  He was astonished, then, twice astonished not to be refused and not to be summoned either: to look up an hour later and see a little procession coming to him. Soldiers and functionaries, yes, but the man himself among them, Ping Wen come at a fisherman’s request.

  What else should a fisherman do, then, but ask about his boat?

  “My lord governor,” Old Yen said after no more than a bow, just to underline that he had manners but no courtesies, that he no longer kowtowed even to the emperor, “do you have any news of my vessel?”

  Ping Wen should have been furious at this interrogation, by someone so lowly. His face showed nothing, though, beyond a polite confusion. “Your … vessel?”

  “My boat, excellence. That Jiao took to bring the children to you.”

  “Quite so. Your boat, yes. I regret that I do not have news of it. Perhaps I should. Every vessel in the harbor is important to me, but your own … Well. Let us inquire.”

  Inquiry involved no more than the crook of a finger, to draw one man out of his entourage.

  “Master Yen’s boat. What news?”

  The functionary bowed—a little smugly, Old Yen thought, unless what he read as self-content was actually relief, this I know—and said, “Master Yen’s boat is still on the beach where it was set. It has been put to rights, and will be ready whenever you wish him to depart.”

  “Still on the beach? Why so,” frowning, “why has it not been brought to the harbor here, to be convenient?”

  “Men were sent, excellence, to do that. They were … they found themselves unable to bring the boat away from shore. It was felt, perhaps, that Master Yen’s own hand on the tiller, his own eye on the sails, perhaps his own voice raised in prayer …”

  Absurdly, he was proud of his boat, his bastard boat. She had brought the boy Pao in on sufferance, alive and unhurt with his companions; she would not take strangers out at all. For Old Yen, he was sure, she would lift on the tide and seize the wind and ride out where he would.

  And no, next time he would not be praying. His voice would stick in his throat. If the boat did lift, if she did find the wind, she would do it by his skill and her own temper. And he would fly the green banner at his masthead, for all that he hoped to have the girls aboard. Let the goddess and the dragon fight it out between themselves, which one objected and which one let him pass.

  He said only, “Thank you, excellence. When you send me, I will know where to find her.”

  Or anytime before then, but, “You will find her well cared for,” the official said, “and well watched.”

  That he had been afraid of. Or anticipated, at least. Of course they would set a watch on her. There were rebels abroad, and simple runaways too, and every craft was precious.

  He was himself, he thought, a runaway, though nothing simple now.

  Also—apparently—he was an object of interest now. To the great, and in and of himself.

  Ping Wen was not done with him. Indeed, Ping Wen seemed to have small interest in his boat, which was strange in someone who had welcomed him exactly because he could cross and cross the strait.

  Ping Wen said, “Master Yen, tell me about your goddess, and her power in your waters.”

  It was the last thing he wanted to do, speak about the goddess who had let him down so badly, whom he had betrayed so well. Also, they were not his waters. He had spent a lifetime believing they were hers. Now, he thought not; he thought the dragon had the better claim.

  He said, “I am no priest, excellence.”

  “Something to be grateful for. I have spoken to priests. Priestesses. They know nothing of the sea, or of the dragon.”

  He had not mentioned the dragon till now. Except that any mention of the goddess now was a mention of the sea, which made it a mention of the dragon too, in the way that any mention of the moon was a mention of the stars she swam among and the sun she could not outface. The one brought the other to mind as irresistibly as the tide brings in the seawrack and the ruin of men, broken wood and bodies in the weed.

  Well, Old Yen knew the sea, and something of the dragon—but it was the goddess that Ping Wen asked about.

  He could talk about her, of course, he had been doing it all his life. Never easily, he was not a man of words, but she had mattered intensely and he had learned to say so. And he had alr
eady betrayed the goddess to the dragon, twice. What difference could it make if he did after all betray her for a third time now? Betrayal was the spirit of the time. He stood with traitors on every hand, Jiao and Ping Wen and Tunghai Wang somewhere beyond, close by …

  He said, “The Li-goddess can shift the sea, but only in a small way,” to lift a boat across the rocks, to make a frail banner body for herself and wind it about a pole. “Nothing like the dragon’s storms and tsunamis.”

  “And yet she could hold the dragon prisoner all that time?”

  “Yes, excellence. If she has a strength, it is perhaps in holding on. The dragon was delivered by the hand of man, I think, already chained; the goddess was her jailer, not her captor. All she had to do was keep hold. It was … necessary, but not arduous. Native to her, I think. The sea endures, and does not let go.”

  “And yet she can keep the dragon from attacking ships, a whole fleet of ships, two fleets …?”

  Again, “Yes, excellence. If she has someone in the fleet she can possess.” Not me. “She needs … solidity, I think, to turn the dragon aside. She needs to work through people. In herself she is immaterial,” where the dragon was so very opposite, so very immediate, so physical.

  “Well. This is interesting to me. Can you say more?”

  WHEN HE had said all he could, when it was obvious to both of them that he had run high onto dry sand with the tide ebbing at his back, the governor left him. With expressions of thanks and instructions to hold himself available, as though there were anything else he might find to do instead, anywhere else he might be permitted to go.

  Well, he could learn a lesson from Ping Wen. Where he could not go himself, he could draw someone to him.

  HE BECKONED one of those ever-present guards. And stood his ground, waited, beckoned again.

  When the man came, he said, “I need to speak to the young woman doctor, Tien. She will be somewhere in the city here. Can she be fetched?” It would be complicated, sure, a hierarchy of soldiers and officials and messengers, but he was in hopes that at the last someone would go, and the girl would come.

  The guard blinked. “Tien? She is here now.”

  “Yes. I said so.”

  “No, I mean, she is here. In the palace.”

  Old Yen’s turn to blink. “Why? Is someone ill?” A complex this large, almost a city in itself: at any given time, someone must be ill. But by the same token, a complex this large, it must house someone skilled in medicine. Even his village had its healer-woman. And here lived Ping Wen, the governor himself and a soldier to the bone. He was safe to keep a doctor close. His own, someone he trusted, not a new-met girl.

  “Not ill, no. Broken, maybe. She keeps two old men here, fusting over scrolls older than they are. Ping Wen values them, or what they do; or she does, and he values her. I don’t know. But she is here, and today she is not to be let leave. I hear she is in something of a temper about it—but she is still here.”

  That was curious. Old Yen could make no sense of it, except, “Don’t send her to me,” he said, changing his mind quite urgently. “If she is unhappy already, that would not help, I think.”

  The guard grunted. “I think so too, unless you are sick. She might be glad of a reason.”

  “Could you take me to her? I am not exactly sick, but perhaps I can give her something else to think about.”

  THE GUARD seemed gratified by the errand. He might perhaps be eager to see the girl raging.

  He brought Old Yen to another soldier, who was transparently grateful. This man had endured the tempest; had survived it, but—he felt—barely; was glad now of any relief, any distraction for himself or his prisoner.

  Tien was undoubtedly a prisoner, as much as Old Yen was, exactly as much: welcomed and watched and forbidden to leave. The only difference was that she had tried, forcibly, had insisted on her right to go.

  And had been held back, forcibly; and was being held now in a closed room with a guard at the door.

  Old Yen found her at the window. Might have found her out of the window and gone, he rather gathered, but that another guard stood four-square on the grass below. She had—just—too much pride to be manhandled, but oh, she was angry. She was almost spitting as she turned to face him, and only swallowed it back when she saw who he was, when she managed little by little to place and name him.

  “Fisherman,” she said, and, “Old Yen, isn’t it? Mei Feng’s grandfather? I’m sorry, I didn’t … Why are …?” And then, with a massive effort of will, setting her own mood aside as she remembered what she was, “Do you need my help?”

  “I do,” Old Yen said, because it was true, and because she all too clearly needed that.

  “How are you unwell? I have little with me here beyond my needles,” in a tube at her belt, “but—”

  “But there are other doctors here who will be very well provided, and I am sure that you could raid their stores at need.” He spoke that way deliberately, to make her feel piratic, vengeful, powerful. And then, to let her mull on that—Mei Feng thought he was not this subtle; but Mei Feng was his granddaughter, and knew herself adored, and thought she had manipulated him all her little life—he changed tack abruptly. “We will talk of what I need, but what of you? Why are you here?”

  “I came,” she said, “because I come every day to see my patients here. I am here still,” through stiff lips, through a sudden wash of anger, “because I was detained by order of my lord the governor, no less. We have spoken, and even so he is keeping me here until he wants me, which will be tomorrow, and—”

  “He is not sick?”

  “Not he, oh no. Not anyone that I can discover.”

  There would be someone, Old Yen was sure, if she would only look for them less furiously; but, “What did you speak of, then, what did he want, if not your skills?”

  “He wants my knowledge about the dragon,” hissingly, “which he would have been welcome to at any time, if he were not keeping me from my patients. And he wants my old men too, who can make up their own minds whether to dance in his shadow up a hill, and I am not to be held hostage for their obedience,” although apparently she was, “and please do not ask me why, because he would not tell me and I do not know!”

  Which last was what bit deepest, apparently, what made her most angry. She was not one to forgive ignorance, even in herself.

  He said, “Up a hill?”

  “His excellency the governor is pleased to parade to the height of the ridge tomorrow morning, early. And he wants my two old men to drag themselves up there in his train, which is a cruelty to both of them, they are not fit for it; and that is his first excuse for wanting me, because he thinks I can help to get them there. And he is right, of course. He knows that if he takes them I will go, because I wouldn’t let them face such a climb without me, even carried on other men’s shoulders. And even so he locks me up like this, to be sure he has me on hand for the morning …”

  She was working herself up into a fury again. Wise in the ways of young women, Old Yen didn’t try to shush her, nor urge her to be calm. He said only, “Soldiers are not a trusting breed. They set a watch on me too, men on my boat, when I was sailing back and forth for the emperor. Before the dragon rose.”

  “The dragon, yes. That might be truly why he wants me, but …”

  “I came to him from the dragon,” Old Yen reminded her. “So, yes, it is no surprise if Ping Wen is interested in the dragon. He has to negotiate with her. Tomorrow, perhaps. He may be ready to fly her banner at last and draw her in. Why he wants your old men there would be another question, unless they know more than you do”—a stubborn shake of her head, that he was not too inclined to accept—“but then there is one question more, which is why he has been interrogating me about the goddess.” And why he was keeping Old Yen here too, if not to sail boats for him. There was nothing more to be said about the goddess; yet the fisherman was beginning to wonder if he might not himself be rousted out of bed early, made to march up to the ridge.
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  Tien had nothing to offer to that question. His goddess was not hers, and, “I do not like the way she uses children.”

  No more did Old Yen, and he was almost prepared to say so. Better not, though, here in the heart of a palace with listening ears at door and window. Ping Wen thought him still a devotee.

  Perhaps so did the goddess, despite his refusal out at sea.

  Perhaps they were right.

  Tien said, “How can I help you, Old Yen?”

  “Not at all, I think. You have said it, you do not know the goddess, and—”

  “Old Yen,” quite kindly, almost laughing, temper not forgotten but set aside, “you came to me, you sought me out.”

  Oh. Yes. He took a breath, straightened his spine a little, wished he were at sea; what did he know of palaces, of doctors, of governors and guards?

  Of lies, evasions, flight?

  He said, “It is difficult to sleep here, far from my boat.” Far from my life. It was true, this much.

  She smiled at him, a little curiously. “One more night, old man. Is that so hard?”

  “It may be more than one. Who knows what Ping Wen wants? Besides, he is a traitor,” suddenly vehement, truth on truth, “and he worries me, what he might do next. He preys on my mind, and I cannot sleep.”

  Tien shrugged. “Is he a traitor? I didn’t know. Perhaps he keeps good company. There are traitors all around you; half of us are traitors here, if you mean rebels against the throne. I served Tunghai Wang before I served the emperor.”

  That was right, she did. He had forgotten. If she was ashamed, regretful even, she didn’t show it. He said, “Well. I cannot sleep. Nor the children, whose house I have been sharing.” That was better. She cared about the children.

  She said, “The children don’t worry about Ping Wen’s treachery.”

  “No,” not even Pao; their concerns were closer at hand. This was still, almost, true. “They are frightened of the tiger.” She must at least have heard of the tiger, even if she hadn’t seen it. She might have seen the bodies that it left along the shore, or the man brought in still living. Ping Wen’s torturer had that man now, somewhere in this same palace, for whatever he might still be worth. Old Yen had heard the rumors, like a whisper-echo of distant screaming. Perhaps there would be an end to it now, if Ping Wen and Tunghai Wang could come to an agreement. With or without the dragon. Already they had stopped skirmishing, holding their armies strictly apart. Old Yen could feel vaguely responsible for that, when he wanted something good to hold on to.