Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  He saw them wish that Yu Shan were that man. And wished it so himself, somewhat, but wishing didn’t make it true.

  So the army still plunged on down the slopes of Santung, looking for the war that it had come for; and the emperor ran on in the fore of that army, blade in hand, while his officers panted and sweated behind and even his personal guard was lagging and Yu Shan was the only one who could keep up, the only one who could match him for speed and endurance both, certainly the only one who could stop him.

  And would not.

  NO YOUNG MAN—certainly no young man in armor, with a blade—would want to hold back, to watch a battle from a distance, to give orders and see other men die in pursuit of them.

  Even so, emperors should learn to do it. This emperor in particular should have learned by now.

  What it was, Yu Shan thought, was that this very particular emperor had been in a fight already, face to face and hand to hand. He knew the taste of it, the bite, the smell and effort, and the shivering rush that came afterward like wind in the veins, a flow of chill through all your body’s tissues as you walk away with your enemies dead on the ground at your back.

  The emperor had fought and killed, seen his friends die and survived it. He probably thought he was immortal.

  So did Yu Shan think so. He’d seen the emperor felled by a blow that should have killed him, a tao slash at the emperor’s ribs that should have cut through shirt and skin, through flesh and bone together, to pierce to the heart of empire, the emperor’s heart itself.

  He had seen the emperor fall bleeding. He’d seen that dark flow stop too soon, as if there were no heartwork left to pump it: as if the blood lay still in the emperor’s veins, and the emperor lay still in the hands of death, as he ought.

  But the emperor’s eyes had shown nothing but a bright bewilderment, which was more or less how Yu Shan felt also, because that tao had only glanced off his bones and not cut through at all, despite having enough fury behind it to knock him clean off his feet.

  Jade in his blood, to stop it gushing; jade in his bones, to give them the stone’s strength against steel. What could kill him, then, what possibly?

  And that was when the fighting caught him unprepared, all but undressed, only a shirt to wear. For this battle today he wore jade mail. Yu Shan had already seen one arrow strike that and shiver into flinders. He thought any blade that reached so far—tao or dagger-ax or spear, any blade at all—would do the same exactly, try to slide harmlessly off stone and find itself too much harmed already, shatter from the force of its own blow. While the emperor just stood there, unshaken, untouched.

  It was unfortunate that the generals had also seen that arrow strike the emperor. They must also have seen it break and fall, but that was negligible, against the simple fact of its impact.

  “The shirt protected me, that’s what it’s for.”

  “Majesty, yes, but if the arrow had struck your throat, your eye …? Your majesty should stay back with us where he ought to be, where he promised his mother to keep …”

  “… Then I might as well have stayed in the palace on Taishu, and not come to the war at all!”

  Which was no doubt how the old men felt too, and what they must most devoutly be wishing right now, though none of them quite had the nerve to say so. Yu Shan himself snorted softly, the least possible reaction, and caught a swift sideways glare from the emperor: which might have mellowed into a self-knowing giggle under other, almost any other circumstances. The emperor was always privileged to laugh at himself, often with the connivance of his friends.

  Not here, not now. The emperor made a gesture that said step aside! to those generals who had actually dared to stand in front of him, to block the road down to the river; at the same time it said gather round, and stay alert! to his imperial guard, men and women both, where they dawdled watchfully, trying to achieve distance from the argument while keeping protectively close to the Man of Jade; at the same time, briefly, it said keep up if you can, if you must to Yu Shan.

  All in that one little moment before he dodged around the slowest of his generals and went running like a carefree child down the hill.

  There was a longer moment of hectic, cursing scurry: and then they were more or less as they had been, running order, with the guards in their proud yellow ahead and behind and to either side, the emperor in his green between, Yu Shan at his shoulder.

  Siew Ren one with the guards, in yellow of her own, why not? She was here by right, as a fighter. Yu Shan could neither deny her place nor keep her safe; she would have been furious if he had tried.

  The generals here and there, keeping up or left behind, as they would. The laggards had their own guards, and would not be left exposed; besides, there was hardly any danger, in an all-but-abandoned city with hardly any war in it.

  Which was another reason, perhaps, for the emperor to be so on fire with the need for speed, to race down to the river before all the rebels could slip away, to catch up at least with his vanguard—those bold soldiers who had run ahead of their master—and so engage at least with Tunghai Wang’s rearguard, if he couldn’t arrest the traitor generalissimo himself.

  He wanted something to show for his day, Yu Shan thought: something more than an empty city too easily regained. He wanted to be a warrior, scars on his armor and blood on his hands. His own hands, not just his fighting men’s.

  So this, the hard hunt down to the river: and there were bodies to run by, but none too many of them and some of those were only stray civilians by the look of it, killed by one side or the other because they were foolish or unlucky or simply there where the blade or the arrow chanced to be. There were broken doors and scattered barricades, but all the men—the living men—in the street were their own. There must still be rebels cornered and in hiding, there might yet be an arrow or two or a shrieking fanatic leaping from shadow; but the war had marched ahead of them like weather, it wasn’t here in Santung anymore.

  Which ought to have been all that he wanted, all that they had come for; they ought to settle for that. Even Yu Shan—who knew all about fighting to defend a friend or a mine, a clan’s hold on a valley, but nothing about waging war—felt sure that they ought to stop now.

  Here at the city’s edge, with the river valley bending ahead of them and the last of Tunghai Wang’s fleeing army still in view, he said so.

  “Majesty,” he said, because there were generals listening and some of the emperor’s less courtly soubriquets should really be kept for more private occasions, when no one could hear but the imperial guards who had invented them, “do we need to go farther? You have chased Tunghai Wang entirely out of Santung; his army is divided, disorganized, utterly in retreat,” both sides of the river, they could see that quite clearly; utterly unready to offer any resistance, the rebels had seen their doom coming and simply fled. It was a triumph. “It is your triumph,” he said, making the emperor a gift of his good fortune, just as some wiser courtier might have done. Given his audience, Yu Shan felt proud of that.

  “But?” The emperor was ready to make him a gift in return, in acknowledgment, because they were friends of a sort.

  “But I think it would be wise to stop here.” Your generals are right, but there were better ways to say it. “Your army is not organized or equipped to chase him farther; we came to fight, not to pursue. The empire is vast,” and never mind that Yu Shan had seen almost none of it, that this was in fact the farthest he had ever come from home. “If they scatter as they run, your army will scatter too, trying to hunt them down,” like dogs in a field of rabbits when you had gone out to hunt deer. “What if the rebels turned to fight after all? You could lose half your men before morning,” and whistling through the woods wouldn’t bring them back again.

  The emperor laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, wouldn’t listen: “Not these men. They have spent a year running from Tunghai Wang; now this is their chance to make him run. I couldn’t call them back now if I tried,” meaning you can’t call me b
ack now, though I hear you trying, “and I wouldn’t try. Strategies of war, Yu Shan: you didn’t have lessons half your life, you didn’t have to read all the books there are. Any city that’s fallen once will fall again, and Santung has fallen twice this year. We took it, yes, but we couldn’t keep it; not if we left the rebel army out there. Tunghai would draw them together again, if we gave him time to do it. He would march them back, and we would have that fight we came for, only we’d be trapped against the sea again, and there is no way to defend this city. There’d be nothing to do but flee again, and carry our losses with us. That would be catastrophic; one bad decision and I would turn a victory—my triumph, did you call it?—into a defeat I could never recover from.

  “Come on,” he cried, embracing them all now with his voice, with his wide-spread arms, with his bright and startling eyes, “when they’re running, would you leave them to run alone? Besides, there are our friends,” right there where they could see them but not reach, the other half of his army on the other side of the river, “don’t you want to meet up with them again? There is no bridge in Santung and the ferries are gone, but a mile higher up the valley we can cross the river and be one army, at least for a little. Then we can organize, Yu Shan, for the pursuit.” And you can see Jiao again, be sure she’s safe, don’t you want to do that? “For now, tell them to do what we do, to chase along that bank as we do along this.”

  Flags and trumpets would carry that message, but he wasn’t waiting to see it done. He could see his war still retreating from him, hear it in the too-distant sounds of fighting, and his feet wouldn’t hold him still any longer.

  It had never occurred to Yu Shan that so much of war would be running. Or trying to slow the emperor down, to remind him over and over that the two of them could outrun their friends without trying and it would be a really, really good idea not to do that.

  thirteen

  Mei Feng was not actually being as stupid as her friends believed. She knew as they knew that she could never fight her way through to the emperor’s side, cry I have come to protect you, lord! and expect to be taken seriously.

  What perhaps they had forgotten was that she knew Santung at least a little. Specifically, she knew on which side of the river stood the governor’s palace.

  Finding Jiao on the road had really been no part of her plan. Following the older woman up to the roof and so having the chance to show her that she could look after herself—yes, and her friends—just with the little blade she carried had been an unexpected gift, a blessing. A touch of the goddess at work, perhaps. Yes.

  At least that incident and the all-but-empty city together had allowed Jiao to relax her watchfulness a little. Which allowed Mei Feng to let her and her troop get just a little ahead, and then just a little farther, and then …

  AND NOW she could grip Dandan’s arm with one hand and the boy’s with the other, tug them both swiftly into an alley and lead them away before anyone looked back again to find them.

  “Mei Feng, what …?”

  “Shh, don’t talk yet. Just run …”

  BY THE time she heard a yell of alarm, it was some distance behind, and muffled by the rise of walls between them in this tangle of lanes. She wasn’t sure if Jiao would send men after, or come herself; either way, she hoped to have lost them already. If not, if luck or judgment or some more mystical skill kept them on her tail, she still thought she had speed enough to stay ahead.

  Like Jiao, indeed, she was surprised to find just how fast she could run when she needed to. Sailor-girls grew tough muscles, but she was better used to endurance than speed.

  Ah, Chien Hua, lord of my body—what have you been putting into me …?

  Apart from the obvious, of course, the blushworthy, though that hadn’t happened for a while now …?

  He did occasionally feed her a bite or two of his own food; that might make a difference. Or else it was the simple constant, the physical presence of him. After so long in his company, so immediately there to be kissed or caressed or just incidentally rubbed up against, small wonder if some fraction of the magic invested in him should have rubbed off on her. Skin to skin, just a hint of jade-dust.

  Or maybe it was just her fancy, or Jiao’s, or both. Dandan too was frequently around the emperor, but apparently took no benefit; she was gasping already, stumbling and dragging back. At last, too soon, she grabbed hold of a gatepost and couldn’t be moved, not yet.

  “Mei Feng … Where are we … where are we going?”

  “Up there,” with a jerk of her head to where the governor’s palace frowned down over the city.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because Tunghai Wang will have been living there, all the time he was here. And he won’t have taken anything away, all his papers will still be there; and you can read, Dandan, you can help me search …”

  Dandan shook her head, breathed a little, at last managed, “If the papers are there today, they will still be there tomorrow, Mei Feng. What’s the hurry?”

  The hurry, of course, was Mei Feng herself. She would not be free like this tomorrow. She might be back in Taishu, or locked at the emperor’s side, or locked somewhere far away from the emperor. She needed to bring him something, to justify herself; she hoped to bring him something to justify her accusations, Ping Wen’s guilt.

  She had to find it now, but Dandan wasn’t moving. And if Jiao was coming after them, she might be getting close …

  “Dandan, I can’t wait. You know where I’m going. You, boy,” she still hadn’t learned the boy’s name but demanded his obedience anyway, “stay with her. When she’s fit for it, bring her to the palace. You know the way, yes?”

  He nodded, mute and nervous.

  “Good boy. If our friends find you first—well, bring them too.” It wouldn’t be so bad, having Jiao and her troop arrive; just so long as Mei Feng had time enough to find something first. She had to justify herself to everyone these days, apparently. To everyone who loved her, who ought to trust her …

  Perhaps that was war, or it might just be adulthood. She remembered when life was easier.

  No matter. She left them there, her two unlikely allies, like a stepping-stone for anyone who tried to find her. She’d do well enough without Dandan, if she had deserved any grace at all from the goddess. She had at least learned the characters for “Ping Wen.” If his name was on a sheet of paper, she would find it. If she was only given time …

  THE GOVERNOR’S palace stood on a sudden natural bluff above the river, where it could look as though it had been lifted by the swift hand of the gods above the common people and their business. She had known it all her life, but only to stare at from way down below.

  She had no doubt in her mind that Tunghai Wang would have lived in the palace, for these short months that Santung was his city. And where a general, a governor, a city’s lord lived, there he ruled from; there he met his ministers and kept his clerks and gathered all his papers. If there was any proof that Tunghai Wang and Ping Wen had been in conspiracy together, there she would have the best chance to find it.

  Best proof came in written documents. She had hopes. The two men couldn’t meet or speak directly; short of sorcery, then, they must have written, unless they trusted verbal messages to their go-betweens.

  Conspirators are not a trusting breed, and generals do not rise to power by being open with their underlings. Mei Feng thought there would be papers.

  There were no bodies at the palace gates. Of course not: this wasn’t a last stand, desperate men backed into a corner, defending what they valued more than life. Tunghai Wang wouldn’t let himself be trapped here in the city. He would have heard the first rush of the invasion and been away, leading his men upriver as soon as it was clear that they could not stand.

  He might have thought it out already, ahead of time. If the emperor did somehow manage to come against him, he must have known they could not stand. A good general would surely have a plan of retreat. Even against the most unlikely of circums
tances, the running boy turned warrior at last, the rabbit that bit back …

  Mei Feng astonished herself with a smile, just as she walked between unguarded open gates. Even once she had saved his idiot life, exposed the traitor and won his love again, she thought perhaps she would not tell the emperor that she had envisioned him as a rabbit. Even a most ferocious and deadly rabbit with jade eyes and steel teeth, a bold and courageous hero-rabbit leading an army of …

  No. Not that.

  A tiger, jade tiger, yes. That he’d like. Blessed by the mountains, by the stone itself …

  She could wish for a tiger herself right now, proud and lethal, padding at her side. Rumbling, perhaps, deep in its wonderful throat, as a warning to the watching world.

  If you were a tiger, of course—a jade tiger, most rare, most wonderful—the world would always be watching for you. Best, probably, to assume the same was true for her, here and now. Tunghai Wang had gone, and taken his soldiers with him; that didn’t mean the palace was empty. Or safe. There would be servants clustering in their own halls, anxious, waiting for the new dispensation. Tunghai Wang would not have left his soldiers, but he might have left his clerks; they might be hiding and hoping, sitting it out till nightfall. She knew how dangerous a clerk could be, with a knife in his belt and nothing to lose except his life.

  There might even be assassins, dressed as clerks or servants and told to wait in hopes of the emperor’s arrival, the emperor’s inattention, the emperor’s throat suddenly at their blade’s edge …

  The emperor’s woman would be a lure to such a man. Mei Feng needed to be careful. Frightened and abandoned men will kill without thought, without reason; she might find both within these walls. They might find her.

  She needed to find someone. Everything was risk. She would be careful, she would be as sensible as she could, and in the end she would still have to accost a stranger and ask for help.