by Daniel Fox
“No, lord. We need to do this. He won’t go back until we’ve seen him. Make him wait any longer, he’ll insist on coming here, and nobody wants that. I think we should go today. I’ll tell people to be ready, shall I? In an hour?”
She might never have seen him look more petulant or less imperial. He could always be managed, though, if he couldn’t be forced. His stubbornness was like his throne, all stone, too heavy to shift; but it stood on the softest of sand, no foundation at all—she blamed his mother, entirely—and that could be eaten away in patience, so that the whole edifice of his will would topple into the gentle stream that was hers.
ONCE PEOPLE were busy—arranging guards for the journey, sending scouts and messengers ahead so that no one would be surprised en route or on arrival—she went to find Guangli, where he had settled disconsolately into a hut.
Which he was sharing with Jiao, so no wonder he was disconsolate; but her bitter companionship was only sauce for his mood, not the root cause of it.
He felt as out of place, as uncomfortable here as Mei Feng had, her first days in the palace. She knew.
“Mei Feng, tell me. What am I doing here?”
She had found him squatting on his doorstep in watery sunshine, waiting for more rain. She valiantly resisted saying you are avoiding work, of course, as you have done since you arrived. Instead, she said, “The emperor wants you, and the emperor is here; and jade belongs to the emperor—”
“—and so do I, I know, but—”
“—and he means to stay out here, and there’s no point shipping the stone back and forth to the city, it makes far better sense if you’re here at hand.”
Even she wasn’t sure how much sense that made, truly. His expression was like flame on new growth, withering.
“Does it? Really? When the city is one day’s travel from here, and holds a house that doesn’t only offer simple amenities like dry beds and decent clothes and comfort, but also has the space and tools I need to work, and the stones I need to work on?”
“I think his majesty thought that if you were this close to the mines, new stones could be brought directly to you, or you could supervise their cutting, even, right in the mine there, and—”
“I don’t think his majesty thought at all. He just had a whim, and snapped his fingers, and dragged me away to this forsaken ditch that doesn’t have the courtesy even to pretend to be a mining valley. There’s nothing I can do here, Mei Feng, and I want to go home.”
It was another of his majesty’s whims that had spared Guangli’s life when that was absolutely forfeit to the law. She forbore to say so; instead, she seized on the one complaint she might be able to relieve.
“Is your hut uncomfortable?”
“The roof leaks,” he said flatly, knowing this to be an evasion but following anyway because truthfully, what else could either of them do? “Jiao doesn’t care, but it troubles me. And I am tired of sleeping—of not sleeping, rather—on a bed of ferns.”
“His majesty sleeps on the same ferns,” she said reprovingly.
“His majesty is young and magnificent, and I am neither. My bones hurt, worse in the mornings and worse yet in the wet. And I only have a journeyman’s tools, which would only allow me to do a journeyman’s work if I had any work to do, but I do not.”
“We gave you stone! Everything we brought back from the mines …”
Almost everything. They had collected what they could, against a promise of payment later. Yu Shan had insisted that every man and woman from the mountains needed a little piece of jade, on their person, all the time. Crude stone, unworked, that didn’t matter. They wore them as pendants mostly, against the softness of the throat.
The dust and sweepings the emperor had kept, for his meals.
All the rest of the jade had gone to Guangli, and he despised it.
“You gave me nothing. Nothing I can work with. Spoil, cracked pebbles, detritus. How am I supposed to work with pieces that come apart when I set an edge to them?” His hand made a gesture that started fierce and ended weary; his voice softened abruptly. “Not your fault, I know. You gave me what was there, what Yu Shan’s people had dug. Good jade is rare, and getting rarer; but I have good pieces under guard, back in the city. Work to do, work the emperor will love. The dragon I am carving on his commission, that is not finished yet. Mei Feng, tell your lord, I want to go home.”
Which was the one thing he could not do, of course, and neither could she. She could inveigle and manipulate and tease the emperor to his imperial heart’s content, but even she dared not tell him what to do, or what he did not want to hear. They both knew it. Fetched at a whim, Guangli was here until that whim should turn against him.
Instead, Mei Feng said, “You should come with us today.”
“What, where? Why?”
“To the Autumn Palace. We are going to meet with General Ping Wen,” who actually would try to tell the emperor what to do, what he did not want to hear. That should be interesting. “You should come to see the site, to understand his majesty’s plans. You might have ideas to contribute. We can tell the emperor that, at least,” with a smile to be shared between the two of them, no farther. It came by nature now; she was learning all the arts of conspiracy, too quickly for her entire comfort. “You might rather stay there than here. The emperor wouldn’t mind; it is his palace, after all. Going to be. We’ll be spending more time there as the work progresses. Even now, you might think it more civilized. Less jungly. We can find you a tent that doesn’t leak. And we could bring a wagonload of your things out from the city, if you wanted: stone, tools. Your own bed …”
For herself, she had far sooner be here in the valley compound. Small, enclosed, protected: it was like a village, where the palace site was a city even now, albeit a city of tents and men. Far too many men, packed far too close together and worked too hard: small wonder if they quarreled and fought for amusement. Even without the knowledge that any one of them could be a spy or an assassin, she could never be comfortable there. With that knowledge, she was nervous every moment, desperate to take the emperor away, and utterly unable.
Which was her remembered reason for being here: “Guangli,” while he was still mulling over the suggestion, “I have a commission for you.”
“You do?”
He was distrustful, thinking that she’d offer him some make-work, a trinket to be carved for herself or for her lord. Something to keep him busy and make him feel useful. Of course he was.
She nodded firmly. “We are told that one of the Lords of Heaven has an armor made of jade, yes?” She wasn’t strong on mainland gods, but this was common knowledge.
“Of course. Lin Bao: it turned the serpent’s tooth, when he went down into hell for his beloved.”
“Yes, because he had modeled it on the serpent’s scales, so it would not shatter at the strike. Guangli, is that actually possible? Could you make an armor out of jade, a scaled armor, that a man might wear?”
He shook his head instantly. “It would be impossibly heavy, he wouldn’t be able to move. It needs a god to carry such a suit.”
“My lord the emperor is a god.”
Technically, at least, that was true; and it amused them both for her to remind him of it, now and then. More to the point, he was a man infected with jade from birth, who still ate jade-dust daily and wore stone next to his skin. He was strong past any mortal measure. And terrifyingly quick to heal, magically quick, but she still feared assassins and wanted him better protected in the world.
Guangli whistled air softly through his teeth. “The emperor … Yes, he could wear it. And lawfully too, the only man who could … Does he want it? I have heard that blades cannot cut him.”
“That … is not true. I have seen him cut, and almost killed. I want this, Guangli.”
“Will he wear it, though?”
“If I ask him to, and if he loves it.”
Guangli’s head was shaking again, more in thought than refusal. “It will be … cumb
ersome.”
“No. You can make it better than that. Snakeskin is not cumber some. The finer you make the scales, the more supple it will be.”
“And the stronger, too. But you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes, I do.” She was laying a challenge at his feet, something far beyond makework. “Make my lord safe, Guangli. No one can, if you can’t. I will bring you the finest silkworkers from the city, to make a tunic for the scales to be sewn to. Quietly, though. He is not to know.”
“No one should know, until it is ready. Until it is perfect. Interlocking scales, that will give like skin to pressure but lock against a blow, resist a blade … Go away, Mei Feng, and let me work.”
“Come with us, though? To the palace site?”
“Yes, yes. I must watch the emperor as he walks, see how he moves …”
HE CAME like a muttering bearded demon in their midst, harmless and eccentric, with a bag of rejected jade fragments on his belt and a flake always in his palm, which he scraped at as he walked, as he stared at the emperor’s back and neck and arms.
“Mei Feng.”
“Lord?”
“What are you grinning at?”
“Oh, nothing much, lord. Nothing at all …”
“I,” reaching out a long arm and curling it around her neck, “am emperor of the world,” kissing the top of her head, “and you will not lie to me. Will you?”
“Never, lord!”
“Good. What were you grinning at?”
“I was just, just wondering …”
“Mmm?”
“How tall you are, lord. How broad.” How much jade the carver will need to make you a suit of clothes, and how he will ever make it cling and move like snakeskin …
“How wet, you mean,” for there was a river that ran across their path and they had to wade it, and so they were all sodden from the waist down.
The waist in his case, at least, this tall unlikely northern boy of hers. On her the water had come higher, significantly higher, even though she had clung to his arm and almost floated over.
“My lord knows that his physique is magnificent, and I do like to look upon it,” making a great show of doing exactly that, simply in order to make him blush. He would still do that, this great gauche awkward northern boy of hers; and now he had entirely forgotten his original complaint, and her present to him could go back to being a secret if she could keep it so, if she could trust the jade carver.
The jade carver and Jiao. No hope of keeping it secret from her, whether or not he kept within her hut.
Jiao was out there somewhere now, scouting ahead of them, not trusting the jungle any more than Mei Feng trusted the work site. Or so she said. More likely she didn’t trust herself to walk peaceably in company, when Yu Shan and his clan-cousin were in the party. As they had to be, because the emperor wouldn’t go anywhere without Yu Shan and Siew Ren wouldn’t let Yu Shan go anywhere without her.
And then there were the emperor’s bodyguards, half of them mountain folk, half soldiers from far away; they were hammering one another—quite hard, quite a lot of the time—into what seemed to be a single unit, almost a new clan. It wanted a name, perhaps.
For sure it wanted a captain, a leader, someone to take charge. Lacking that, lacking any voice of authority among them, they did more or less what they chose, individually or together. Which meant that more or less all of them were coming along, because nobody would agree to stay behind.
General Ping Wen had come to have a conversation with the emperor, and would find himself confronted by a circus.
Mei Feng was not entirely sure how that would go.
five
Tell me again, Chung, why you needed to be here?”
“I am the Lady Mei Feng’s runner,” as though that were simply and obviously something to be proud of. “Of course I must be here. What if she needed to send a message, what then? Could you run to the city?”
“Yes, of course. Any of us could.”
Unhappily, that was probably true. They ran up and down the mountains, just for training. But, “Could you find your way around the city? Could you find anywhere at all, except the palace?”
Shen shrugged, and Chung felt a brief spur of victory. Too brief, too soon: Shen said, “Why would I need to? She never sends you anywhere except the palace.”
“That’s only when she’s sending messages to the general; and the general’s here, so …”
“That’s my point. The general’s here. What are you going to do, trot from one side of the tent to the other? He’s come out here so they don’t have to send each other messages. Which means she’s not going to need you. So I repeat, what exactly are you here for?”
For the walk, he could say. Or for you, but that would only make Shen laugh the harder.
“Why,” he said, “are you worried about me?”
Shen frowned and concentrated on his fingers, where they were picking a stone out of dried mud at his feet. Chung couldn’t see quite what it was about that particular stone, but it was suddenly demanding a lot of Shen’s attention.
“Yes,” Shen said distractedly, “yes, I am. Mei Feng worries about the emperor every time she brings him here. No surprise, after what happened before. There are so many people: who knows where they all came from, and what they all want? And if she’s right to worry about his majesty, then of course I have to worry about you. You don’t need rebels and assassins to talk yourself into trouble, you can do it with any old random soldier. I’ve seen you, kitchen boy. Remember?”
“That was you.”
“That’s my point. You get into trouble and you can’t defend yourself. Despite everything I’ve tried to teach you …”
Actually he could, against anyone but Shen, but this wasn’t the time to argue it. Nor the place to prove it. He just smiled and said, “Well then, I’d better stay close to you, hadn’t I? Let you defend me, when I talk myself into trouble. Maybe I’ll do it deliberately, just to watch.”
Now that he’d dug it loose with his fingernails, Shen seemed not to know what he’d wanted the pebble for. He tossed it in his hand, looked to toss it away, changed his mind and wrapped his fist around it.
Probably as well, not to fling it casually aside as he might have done in the valley camp. Here were people all over, who were almost sure not to appreciate having a stone flung at their heads.
It might be amusing, if Chung seized the chance to step in and defend him—but Mei Feng was almost sure not to be amused. Not here, not now.
They were in the middle of the new palace site, between the hill where the palace would rise and the vast sprawl of tents and huts that made the workers’ encampment. Most of the men had been soldiers before the emperor made laborers of them: his own soldiers for the most part, that army that had fled the Hidden City with him. That had kept him safe for a year, for so many miles; that had seen him across the water and installed him here as lord of this shriveled empire; that labored now to build his proper home, and would no doubt defend him in it when the invasion came, if it only held off that long.
So why did Chung—yes, and Shen too—feel as though they crouched in the camp of their enemy?
Maybe it was only Mei Feng’s nervousness transferring itself to them. She had a right to be nervous; nobody could hope to check that every man here was reliable. Nor every woman, either. There had been a little flurry a while back, women with trays, yum cha: tea and dumplings for the emperor and the general. Why bother to assassinate with blades and risk and rumpus, when you could do it with quiet discreet poison and slip away before anyone was even dead …?
The emperor should have a taster, perhaps. Jiao might just be reckless enough to do it—but who would be reckless enough to ask her? Her mood was lethal these days, there was no talking to her.
All the way here she’d ranged ahead, alone. Even now she wouldn’t join the others, where they stood or squatted in a watchful ring around the tent where the emperor and the general were meeting.
Mei Feng was in there with them, and so were Yu Shan and his new girl, if that’s what she was, if that’s what had so upset Jiao.
Something, at any rate, had stopped her following them inside. Whether it was the same thing that prevented her from standing guard with her fellows, Chung couldn’t say; but she was very conspicuously keeping herself apart.
This one big tent—this palace of a tent, silk-covered board walls and a carpeted floor, chairs and a table and Chung didn’t know what more—stood at the foot of the hill, just outside the palisade. When the emperor and Mei Feng stayed here, they had another, grander yet, barely any longer a tent at all, inside the palisade. Apparently General Ping Wen was not entitled to presume that far, or else he had chosen to display this little modesty, a hesitation before the gates of greatness.
He had at least found himself a little distance from the common splay, the rough accommodations of the men. Some had actual tents, or at least a share of a tent; some had rude improvisations, a length of greased fabric and a couple of poles. Some, many, did the best they could with less than that, branches and dried reeds.
There were paths all through the encampment, beaten by many feet many times over, giving it a semblance of order. Here men slept, here they washed, here they ate together. Here were the yards where wagons came, all day and every day, to offload what they brought: ropes and timber and iron, stone and sand, oil and charcoal and rice. Here were the smithies, making tools and pegs and nails, chains and hinges. Here was the path, almost a road, that led the men from yards to smithies to the palisade with everything they needed for their work within.
Within was not so different, except that the worn paths made a map around ditches and terraces, land cleared to build on. Out here the paths were the only clear spaces; they took their winding ways between chaos and confusion, too many men pressed too close, their dry clothes and precious few things stored in their cooking pots and woe betide any other man who came to steal them. There was always someone offsite, resting or injured or sick, and so free to watch over his things and his neighbors’. And there were always thefts despite that, and other quarrels besides, and so the emotional ground among the men was as crowded and messy and insecure as the ground beneath their feet, with very few paths that were clear and safe to walk on.
