Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  Mei Feng had no stomach for a fight, nothing to offer except honesty and desperation. “These days, he only pays attention to Ping Wen. Great lady, you know that. And Ping Wen is a traitor, and the emperor will not listen …”

  “I have known Ping Wen all his life,” the empress said neutrally, “and I would not listen either, if a girl said such things to me.” And then a breath and that blank black stare again, before she added, “Without evidence.”

  “I, I cannot …” Really, she could not; if she brought her grandfather forward as witness, he condemned himself from his own mouth. “But it is true. Ping Wen ordered the beacon lit, to launch the invasion from the mainland.”

  “And thus destroyed the invasion fleet, and left the emperor in his current happiness, planning the rebels’ annihilation.”

  “Yes, but Ping Wen didn’t know that would happen, he didn’t raise the dragon!” She knew who did, but this wasn’t the time. “And he knew about the assassins too, who came to kill the emperor. He was warned! But the soldiers who brought the news, he had them all executed. And instead of passing the warning on to us, he sent us a letter telling us to stay where we were, where the assassins were coming to find us.”

  “Did he so? And do you have proof of this? I heard that he executed a squad of soldiers for lying to him about the dragon.”

  “Which turned out not to be a lie at all. But he hides the truth behind that apparent mistake. I might, we might still have his letter, urging us to stay at the site of the new palace, because there were assassins here in the city …” But there had been a lot of letters, and time since, and the chaos of flight and the chaos of building-work and servants constantly cleaning up, and the possibility—no, nor even the probability, but utter certainty—of spies in the workforce, Ping Wen’s hidden hands. She was not at all confident of finding the letter now. Her only other witness was again her grandfather, who had stood in the throne-room and heard the warning given and seen Ping Wen’s response; whom again she could not produce in evidence, for his life.

  The old woman shook her head. “Letters can be forged.”

  That was true too, but so was this: “Generals can be poisoned. He tried to slay your son. And now he wants to lead him into an insane war against the man you’ve been fleeing all this time. Even if you don’t believe me, can you afford the risk? Ping Wen dead will keep Chien Hua safe, here, under your eye …”

  It was the first time she had used the emperor’s name in his mother’s hearing. She did it deliberately, but it won her nothing more than a slow shake of the head and a harsh, astonishing laugh. “Do you think so? It would be too late even now, he would insist on his war even without his general. Besides, it cannot be done. I have been trying to poison Ping Wen for weeks. He is too well protected.” A little pause, to let that sink in. “Perhaps we should hope that tonight’s expedition is not a success. I hate to wish ill fortune on my son, but …”

  It was tonight’s expedition that Mei Feng had particularly wanted to prevent—her grandfather’s leading the fleet out into uncertainty and darkness, peril beyond measure—but she had nothing more to plead. The empress would care little for the fate of a fisherman, less for a mutilated peasant child. Indeed, from the old woman’s point of view, it would be better all around if the whole fleet foundered and was lost under the dragon’s wrath. That would be seen and known, and an end to all hopes of crossing the strait. An end to all threat of invasion, too. The empress could hold her son in safety, content; and beware of Ping Wen’s future machinations, and machinate no doubt on her own behalf against him, and …

  And Mei Feng’s grandfather would be dead, along with the child and a few hundred men besides, and she didn’t think she could bear that. But otherwise, what? The fleet would sail home in success, immune to all dragons and swollen besides, leaving the enemy in disarray and dread; and the emperor would carry on planning his invasion, under the guidance of a traitor who wanted to see her man dead, and she didn’t think she could bear that either.

  When she counted all the betrayals of her life, mostly she ended up counting the emperor on every hand. Almost everything she valued had come to her through him; everything she lost now, that too was due to him. And she could stoke her fury up again, stoke it and stoke it, there was so much fuel there—but it was still only a shadow, a mask laid over what she wanted, what she lacked, what she lamented. She had had influence, and treasured it; she had loved to be the core around which the emperor had turned, the fixed sure heart of his world, for those few months that she had sat there. She had loved her man, and still did. Love was a blessing, something to hug to her, in the hollow of her heart. Rage was a flower that embraced it, a false flame that burned away nothing beneath. Being loved, though, knowing herself loved and listened to and yearned for: that had been beyond price, beyond measure, the most of everything that he had taken from her.

  What she could, she was resolved, she would take back.

  three

  I am Chung the messenger, he thought, almost desperately, I am Chung the messenger! I am not Chung the warrior! What am I doing here …?

  He did know, of course, exactly what he was doing here; he just couldn’t quite believe it of himself.

  He was crouched in the bow of a boat that smelled of fish and weed and rank salt water, along with far too many other men. All of whom were warriors trained, who carried arms as naturally as he carried a sealed scroll in a satchel; all of whom were watching the setting sun at least as nervously as he was, and possibly wondering just as hard, quite why they were there.

  One of them, the man on his immediate right, was Shen. Who was of course the sole true reason for Chung’s being there: because if he couldn’t stop Shen’s going off on some lunatic adventure—and that was a given, that Shen couldn’t be stopped—then Chung was most certainly going with him.

  Even at the cost of this terror and worse, this bewilderment: this not at all knowing what he should do when they came to land, even assuming that they did survive the dragon.

  Shen said “Stay with the boat,” but that was … not possible. No.

  First, though, first would come the dragon. If she came. If she wasn’t hunting far away, or lurking deep down, ashamed or afraid after her last confrontation with the goddess …

  It had all been carefully explained to them, how the little eunuch boy spoke with the voice of the goddess and would keep the dragon off. They all understood that, yes. Whether they believed it, quite—that was another question entirely. Shen of course was from far away and had never heard of the Li-goddess; the same was true for all the emperor’s army, which meant most of the men aboard the fleet tonight. Chung was Taishu born and bred, he had lived all his life—he was told—under the goddess’s favor, as the dragon had lived so long under her guard. Under her waters.

  Even so, Chung was terrified. And doubtful. Even here on Old Yen’s own boat, the same that the eunuchs rode in, that had already defied the dragon and made the crossing once. The fisherman might be a special favorite of the goddess; she might have less interest in Chung, none at all in Shen or all these others. There was no good reason to imagine that she would act to save a fleet, just for the sake of one old man and a child.

  Which was why the emperor was sending just a raiding party, of course, this first time out. If the fleet was lost, he wouldn’t lose his army.

  Nor most of his bodyguard, nor any of his close friends. Shen had volunteered, and still had to argue his way aboard. Where Shen went, Chung followed; that was understood. He was only a messenger anyway, he was expendable.

  Mei Feng might not think so, but hopefully Mei Feng would not find out. She wasn’t here, of course. She hadn’t even come to the dockside to see them sail.

  The emperor had been there, almost alone by imperial standards. His bodyguard stood all about him and General Ping Wen was at his side, but no Jiao, no Yu Shan. Perhaps they’d taken Mei Feng’s side against this whole affair, and stayed away as a gesture of support. Perhaps t
hey were sulking, because they wanted to come and the emperor wouldn’t let them. It was odd not to see them there, but Chung was grateful; they were more eyes not to see him, not to carry the news back to Mei Feng that her own personal runner had run off on this desperate folly in defiance of good sense and her explicit order. In defiance of his own instinct too. He squatted in the bows and gripped Shen’s sleeve and really really wished that neither of them had come. They would fetch home nothing good, he was sure of it. If they got home at all, with the sea and the enemy and the dragon all working to see that they didn’t.

  It was evening under a clearing sky, with the sun just lowering into the last of the day’s clouds. The Forge was a silent, sullen shadow off the port bow, all wrong: no spark of fire at its peak, no hint of hammer-blows rolling over the water. Chung really wished the old man had not chosen to sail so close. Let the others watch the wide open sky, or peer fretfully into the water; Chung watched the Forge.

  And so was first to see its shadow stretch and rise. When something else rose, rather, from its shadow. How had he known? He couldn’t say: only that the Forge had been at the heart of the dragon’s story all his life, so where else should a man from Taishu look to find the dragon?

  SHE ROSE, and her undulating flanks glittered and sparked in the low sun. A low breath of wonder rose in response from the flotilla, even as all the overloaded boats shifted closer together, packing as tight as they could around Old Yen. Taishu and the emperor could ill afford to lose any boats at all, but if they must, these were the ones they could best do without: low and leaky for the most part, half held together by residues of ancient fish.

  The men would be a greater loss. They were close enough to swamping their paltry vessels simply by their numbers; closer now in the rush of their fear, their rush to come within the saving shadow of the boy’s grace, of the goddess. They must cluster and press, barge others out of the way. Boats rocked dangerously into each other, bounced in one another’s wakes, came close to tipping over entirely. Men clutched and yelled, cursed and prayed; few had the sense to sit down and bail.

  Perhaps it was the kindness of the goddess, that none of the boats did overturn or sink. Perhaps it was the luck of fools at sea. They gathered close and no catastrophe occurred, but catastrophe was coming none the less. What would a few lost boats matter, after all, against the dragon, who sank entire fleets in her temper …?

  She swam in air, as it seemed, more eel-like than birdish, wingless as she flicked her way toward them. Until she stretched her legs down, with all their talons showing. Then she was bird-cruel and malign.

  The babble was frantic and futile, curses and imprecations and pleas addressed to the dragon or the goddess or the absent emperor, some other distant treasured god or lover, mother, anyone. What struck through it all was the old man’s voice, Old Yen at the steering oar, chanting his own prayers as though no other man were saying anything. His was a faith Chung was ready to believe in, or at least to cling to: like wreckage, if it could only keep him afloat. Him and Shen together.

  Clinging to Shen and gazing back toward the fisherman, Chung saw two other figures emerge from the boat’s cabin, toss back the hoods that hid their faces, look around …

  Chung yipped, he couldn’t help it; and thrust his way down off the foredeck, hauling Shen after.

  There were men everywhere, surging mindlessly to and fro or else static and staring, watching the dragon come. Chung kept his eyes on his target and plowed relentlessly aft, until at last: “Jiao, Yu Shan! What are you doing here …?”

  It was the wrong question, of course, an idiot’s question. They didn’t answer; they didn’t need to. They had sneaked aboard against the emperor’s order and hidden out of his sight below because they didn’t want to be anywhere but here this night, they couldn’t bear to be left behind.

  The tall bandit woman glanced upward, nudging Yu Shan to do the same. There was something about Yu Shan that was odd, not himself but the shirt he wore, that rippled and gleamed in the shadows; but his head tipped back, his eyes turned to the sky and dragged Chung’s with them, because in the end nobody could avoid looking at the dragon.

  She loomed in the sky above them, like—well, like nothing they had ever seen. Too dense and deadly for the blackest of thunderclouds, too vast and solid for the most extravagant of kites, too ultimately real for a dream. Like death, Chung thought, suddenly trusting not at all in the rumor of a goddess he had never seen, when the dragon was so entirely and absolutely there. And had been the death of many, many men in boats gathered together just like this, just a few short weeks ago.

  And meant to be the death of many more, here and now, by the way she coiled and poised like a snake about to strike, if snakes had ever been so monstrous large, so toothed and clawed, so casual in air, so bright and cold and deadly.

  She hung for a moment, and the men in the boats all around were screaming now. Here on the fisherman’s decks, they were mostly screaming at the eunuch where he stood in the stern with the little boy in his arms.

  “Lift him up!… Let her see him!… Let him speak to her!…”

  Some few were screaming at the fisherman to bring his goddess forth, but Chung thought that was just as pointless. The goddess was there in the child, or else she was there in the water or the air or wherever a goddess might choose to linger, or else she was not. Whether or not they cared about mortal lives, gods did not come to mortal call.

  The old man paid no attention. He shifted his oar automatically, stared up with the rest of them, wheezed out the monotone of his prayers.

  The young eunuch who held the boy, his shaved head was glistening with sweat and he was whispering urgently in the child’s ear, talking either to the boy or to the goddess, who could tell? The child didn’t speak, the goddess didn’t reveal herself by any other means, the dragon didn’t go away.

  THE DRAGON struck.

  OR TRIED, at least, to strike. Tried to snatch: she came slamming down out of the sky with one foot reaching, claws extended to seize a boat by the bows and shake the crew out of it, or else carry them away still clinging.

  And she failed. She missed; or her leg slid off some barrier that no man could see, that wind and water flowed straight through but dragons apparently could not pass. Her clutch found nothing, and her body plunged into the deep.

  It was the fools aboard who cheered. The dragon was at least as dangerous underwater. Maybe more so, because you couldn’t see her coming. Actually that might not make a difference, but water was her element as much as air, that was the point. She was somewhere beneath them, and she hadn’t at all gone away.

  The fleet knew it too. At least the captains and masters knew it, and the men learned it soon enough. On this boat they learned it from Jiao, who leaped up onto a barrel, spread her arms wide and bellowed: “Hold tight, hold hard, you fools! Do you not realize she’s coming back up …?”

  They snatched hold of ropes or spars or anything fixed that they could reach, and stared down between their feet as though decks and hull were all transparent and the dark sea too. Unless they were expecting to see her eyes burn through wood and water and all. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they would …

  Don’t think about it. He took his own hold—on Shen, the most solid object within his reach, who had already bonded himself to the mainmast—and tried not to stare between his own feet. There were Shen’s eyes to gaze into instead, until he scowled and shook his head and nuzzled into Chung’s shoulder. After that there was at least Yu Shan’s curious shirt to look at—like a snake’s skin, made of so many interlocking links and what were they, not steel but … no, surely not, they couldn’t be …?—until, indeed, the dragon rose.

  DECKS TOSSED, water threw up white between them, that close gathering of boats was torn apart as she came up like a whale through a spinning school of fish, mouth agape to seize and swallow.

  And yet, and yet …

  She rose like a spear through a ring, as the water bore the boats apart to m
ake a hollow circle that she exploded through; and so she missed them all another time.

  And hung overhead again, and if a creature that was half god and half reptile could look baffled, then Chung dared to think that perhaps the dragon did. She was almost half-hearted, as she plunged to strike again; he was almost not surprised when she missed again.

  This time she veered so sharply from her line, no one could think it deliberate. It was as though a wind had struck her, a wind of solid storm, so hard she toppled in the air and twisted as she fell, and met the sea side-on and a long way from the fleet.

  The great splash of her falling raised a wave that might have flooded some of the low boats, but that it never reached them. The sea flattened somehow, between her and here; all they did was rock gently in the distant whisper of that shout.

  This time the hand of the goddess was manifest, and awesome. This time no one cheered or cried out; there was a terror in seeing the power of an immortal so close, even when it worked to your own good. People were wordless, breathless almost, staring first at the sea and then at one another and then at the rear of the boat, where the old man stood with the eunuchs at his side.

  Did Jung go to lift the child high, feeling that massed gaze on him? And did Old Yen still him, with a hand on his arm and a shake of the head?

  Chung wasn’t sure, it was hard to see through the surge of men around him as fear of the dragon was consumed by fear of what had forced the dragon off. Someone had voice enough to cry “Will she come back?” without being exactly clear whether he meant the dragon or the goddess. Not even Old Yen had any answer to offer. The only possible response was to sail on and see. The fisherman’s boy Pao elbowed his way through the throng, shrieking for space to work, to help the sails find their lost wind again. Old Yen called across the water in a strange hooting voice, presumably saying the same or something like it to the other boats, give me room here, room to sail, fall back and follow me …