The Hidden Blade

by Sherry Thomas

  At last the connection between them warmed. Something was getting through to Amah. Her eyelids fluttered. Her lips moved. “Stop,” Amah whispered hoarsely. “It’s no use.”

  “We’ll find you a court doctor,” Ying-ying promised wildly. “We’ll find you a martial-arts master who can help save you.”

  “It’s no use,” Amah repeated, her voice thin as a ghost’s breath. “You must look out for yourself now. Dig under the third pomegran…”

  She did not finish her sentence.

  Ying-ying’s eyes burned. Her heart burned. She stood up and marched toward Little Dragon. Master Gordon was there, hunched over him, tearing strips off his own clothes to bind Little Dragon’s shoulder and leg.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he shouted to Ying-ying, his words falling over one another. “The bullet must have struck the top of the artificial hill, then ricocheted. Fortunately it only grazed him. I don’t think any major arteries have been—”

  Ying-ying pushed him aside and pointed her sword at Little Dragon’s throat. She almost didn’t react in time to the kick he aimed at her left shin. Whether he had already opened his chi paths on his own, or whether she had botched the sealing of those paths in the first place, he was mobile.

  She somersaulted backward. As she landed, Little Dragon got up, his sword again in hand.

  “Please stop!” Master Gordon placed himself between them and spoke in Chinese. “You are both my pupils. Must you do this?”

  Little Dragon strode forward, lifted Master Gordon by the front of his tunic, and heaved him to the side. Master Gordon flew as if he were a rag doll, hit the garden wall, and fell limply to the ground.

  “Master Gordon!” she screamed.

  But she could not go to him. Little Dragon’s sword seemed to have multiplied to become a forest of blades. And no matter how she swung her own, she could not hack her way through.

  She didn’t hear the footsteps at all until the garden had filled with guards, their weapons drawn.

  “What is going on here?” demanded Da-ren.

  Chapter 23

  Aftermath

  Such was Da-ren’s authority that Ying-ying and Little Dragon each took two steps back.

  “What is going on?” Da-ren repeated, his voice even quieter.

  “She killed Master Keeper Chang!” Little Dragon got in the first word.

  “He killed my amah, and he would have killed me too if Master Gordon hadn’t intervened!”

  “Her amah was the thief, Da-ren! She was the one who took your jade tablet. She deserved to die.”

  “What?” Da-ren stared at Ying-ying. “Is that true?”

  “No, no! He is trying to slander a dead person!” Ying-ying shouted, half in panic. “I’ll wager that Chang, his master, was a notorious criminal, hiding out here, feeding on your largesse. And he tried to use force to make me submit to Young Master!”

  “My son?” Da-ren’s eyes narrowed into slits. “He is in Canton. What has he to do with anything?”

  “He is back. Chang lured me to my courtyard, saying my amah sent him. But when I got there, Young Master was in my room. I ran away, but Chang wouldn’t let me go. He kept after me. I had no choice but to fight him.”

  “You think you are too good for Young Master,” Little Dragon snarled. “You daughter of a whore.”

  “Shut up,” Da-ren exploded. “How dare you speak so of Bai Fu-ren. Shut up!”

  Tears welled up in Ying-ying’s eyes. For the first time in her life, Da-ren had come to her defense. But then Da-ren’s harsh gaze turned to her. “I have always wondered about last summer. I have always wondered that my son should have been so stupid as to go before Minister Chao’s residence and make a fool of himself. He insisted that he had never gone there. That he had simply wakened there. I did not believe him at that time.”

  Ying-ying suddenly felt her icy wet garments, as if she were plastered all over in a dead man’s skin.

  “You and your amah did it, did you not? You did it so that you would be rid of him.” Da-ren’s voice was dangerously quiet. “He is a wastrel. I do not blame you for not wanting him. But what you did brought shame not only upon him, but upon this entire household.”

  Upon Da-ren, the man she most wished would think well of her.

  She dropped to her knees. “Da-ren, please extinguish your anger. It…it wasn’t like that.”

  Too late she saw that she should never have mentioned Shao-ye.

  “So you admit it.”

  “Da-ren!” shouted the majordomo. “I cannot feel a pulse on Master Kuo-tung!”

  Ying-ying cried out and rushed to Master Gordon’s inert body, convinced that Master Keeper Ju must be wrong. Master Gordon’s pulse was slow and weak, that was all.

  But she, with her trained and sensitive hands, also could not find a pulse. Nor could she detect any air coming out of his nostrils. And when she placed her ear over his chest, she heard only a resounding silence.

  She screamed.

  And kept screaming.

  Ying-ying didn’t know how she ended up in her own courtyard—there was so much roaring in her head, like a spring sandstorm, all dark, relentless clamor. She did have a faint impression of seeing Little Dragon being led away, his hands and arms bound together. And she had just as vague a recollection of Bao-shun’s gentle, sympathetic voice in her ear, reminding her that much needed to be done for Amah’s “after matters.”

  She cleaned Amah and dressed her in her best clothes, her whole head numb as she did so. After she had finished, she sat by Amah’s side, holding her cold, callused hands. When she had been a little girl, Amah used to brush her hair, and those hands had always been infinitely gentle as they pulled a comb through her tangled strands.

  And in the bottom of one of her trunks, Ying-ying still had all the candle-stub mock seals Amah had carved for her, the very last one of which gave her the title “Lady of the Silver Blade.”

  It was easy to feel compassion for a frail mother or an exiled friend. But Amah had always been so strong, so capable, and so stoic. Ying-ying had never thought about how difficult her life must have been—or how lonely. She had never wondered what broken dreams Amah held close to her heart. She had never even asked about her years in the Abode of the Shadowless Goddesses—and now she would never be able to.

  She was shivering uncontrollably before she realized that she was still in her clammy and bloodied clothes. She changed out of them, tidied herself up as best she could, then crossed the entire breadth of the residence to Master Gordon’s rooms.

  He had been laid out on his bed, shoes and all. She stared at him in the light of a flickering candle, half hoping his eyelids would flutter. He couldn’t be dead. His young friend had just found him after traveling half the world. His enemy was no more. He could at last go home again and revisit that beautiful house in the south of England where he had been so happy.

  He had everything to live for.

  She was bone-weary, but she could not seem to sit still for long. So she started to tidy his things: They probably needed to be delivered to the British Legation, along with his body.

  Da-ren had provided him with a well-appointed suite of rooms. It wasn’t until she was making piles and stacks that she realized he had brought very few possessions of his own from England—clothes and books, mostly.

  She would like to keep a memento for herself. But she didn’t know what would be appropriate for her to take—the boy who had journeyed ten thousand miles to see him probably had a much stronger claim on everything.

  Then she came across the poem about listening to the rain that she had written out for him. Beneath it she found a translation he had undertaken. She ran her fingers over the lines of his spidery handwriting. This would be a beautiful memento—beautiful and utterly inadequate. For what object could represent kindness, understanding, and acceptance?

  And how could anything embody friendship that made the soul glad?

  Someone was calling her name. She look
ed up to see a young lackey. “Bai Gu-niang, Da-ren wants to see you.”

  Mutely she followed the manservant. But instead of leading her to Da-ren’s study, or to the middle hall where he received callers, the lackey led her back to her own courtyard.

  Da-ren was already waiting, his face hard. “Where is the jade tablet your amah took from me?”

  Ying-ying trembled. In addition to all the other black marks against her, henceforth she was also a girl who had been brought up by a thief. “I don’t know, Da-ren. My amah never showed me anything valuable.”

  “Did she say nothing to you, then, before she died?”

  Ying-ying hesitated. She had wanted to find what Amah had left her in private. But that luxury was no longer possible. “She said something about a third pomegranate.”

  “Dig it up.”

  It was pitch dark outside; she lit a few lanterns for illumination. Plunging a shovel into the soil was like trying to hew granite with a spoon—the ground was solidly frozen. Only after her arms had been jarred numb did she remember to use her chi.

  The digging was slightly easier after that, but it was still cold, exhausting, skeleton-rattling work. And after she had pulled the poor tree out, root and all, she found nothing underneath. She closed her eyes for a moment and started on the third one from the right.

  Her arms were about to fall off from exhaustion when she at last found the buried bundle. Underneath the layers of oilcloth was a black-lacquered box the size of one of Mr. Gordon’s dictionaries. She wiped it with her handkerchief and took it to Da-ren.

  As he reached for the lid, something occurred to her. She slammed her palm down on the box.

  He frowned. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Da-ren, please be more careful.”

  She turned the box around so that the lid would open away from him. Then she moved to the side.

  He lifted the lid of the box. Several golden gleams shot out—Amah’s needles. To his credit, Da-ren did not flinch. Turning the box around, he looked inside.

  His breath caught. “You have never seen any of it?”

  The contents of the box dazzled in the candlelight. Pearls bigger than apricots, jasper as green as summer grass, bangles of blood-red jade. Was this something Amah had set aside for her old age, for when she could no longer leap high walls or even lift a sword? So that she’d always have a roof over her head, money for food, and perhaps, just perhaps, an occasional string of coins for betting?

  Ying-ying’s throat felt as if someone had been rubbing sand inside it all night. “No, Da-ren. I have never seen any of it.”

  Da-ren pushed the precious jewels aside. At the very bottom of the box was the tablet of white jade—the one object that had changed Ying-ying’s entire life.

  “Do you know what this is?” Da-ren asked.

  The question surprised her. She almost nodded before she remembered that she should disavow all knowledge of the jade tablet. “No, Da-ren.”

  “It is one of a set of three made by Buddhist monks in a time of imperial persecution of their religion. The monks hid their treasures, and left clues to the whereabouts of those treasures in these jade tablets. They look almost identical, except for markings on their edges.”

  Ying-ying had dismissed the tablets as inconsequential, because she had been convinced that they were all copies of something else. So they were supposed to be duplicates?

  “The monasteries today are but a shadow of their former glory,” Da-ren went on. “But in their heyday, during the Tang dynasty, legend has it that they had giant Buddhas made from pure gold.”

  Ying-ying often wished that she had lived during the Tang dynasty, when China had been at the height and breadth of its power, when art and literature flourished, ladies’ garments were light and vivid, and foreigners came bearing paeans and tributes instead of demoralizing demands.

  It had been a time of such abundant wealth and grandeur that anything seemed possible.

  “Everywhere I go I see desperately needed reforms. There is not a single ministry that is remotely efficient or effective. The civil service examinations still test only the Confucian classics. No one knows how to make modern machinery or steel-clad warships. And it takes less time for news to travel from Moscow to Shanghai than it does from Shanghai to Peking.”

  Da-ren sighed, a deep, bone-weary sound. “So many have the funds, but no will for forward-looking changes. I have the will, but no funds. At one point it seemed I might track down all three of the jade tablets—a soothsayer went so far as to tell me that I would find the treasure in my lifetime. And then I found out that two of the three tablets had gone overseas—and this one here was taken from me.”

  Ying-ying kept her eyes on her feet, mortified at the reference to Amah’s theft. Perhaps, if she could locate the jade tablet in Master Gordon’s possession…

  “Now it has come back to me,” Da-ren continued. “It is a sign from above. I will have all three tablets in time and they will lead me to the treasure.”

  “Da-ren is certain to have swift and resounding success,” she answered with the language expected of her.

  Before Da-ren could say anything else, the majordomo rushed in, his face ashen.

  “Did you find my son?” Da-ren demanded sharply. “Which pleasure house did he run off to this time?”

  Shao-ye dared to leave the residence on a night like this?

  “We have not yet located Shao-ye,” answered Master Keeper Ju. “But the maid Little Orchid has hanged herself. She is beyond saving.”

  Ying-ying gripped a nearby table.

  Da-ren covered his face with his hand. “Give her a good burial. Compensate the family accordingly. And disturb me no more with such news.”

  He rose and left, taking the jade tablet and the rest of Amah’s cache with him.

  Ying-ying expected the majordomo to follow. Instead he remained behind and checked at the door to make sure Da-ren had gone far enough. She steeled herself. The majordomo was entitled to scold her: He was the one who had to set everything right again.

  When he came back to her, he pulled a silver ingot of at least ten taels out of his robe and pressed it into her hands. “It’s a shame what happened to your amah,” he said in a hushed voice. “Maybe she was a flying thief and maybe not, but she was a good woman. You buy her a decent coffin.”

  “I can’t, Master Keeper.” The silver was solidly heavy in her hand, and still warm from his body heat. She couldn’t believe it. The majordomo, of all people, the man who had always seemed so supercilious and impatient. “It’s too generous.”

  He sighed, his pointed face softening with pity. “Keep it. Things are worse than you think, Bai Gu-niang. Da-ren is the best man there is. I would scale of a mountain of knives and swim a sea of fire for him. But Young Master…”

  He shook his head. “Young Master returned to his rooms last night in a rage. He screamed at everyone. And when the rest of his lackeys had left, he beat the girl. The marks on her face when we took her down just now, you don’t want to know.”

  The beating had been the last straw for the already desperately unhappy girl.

  “Mark my word, Bai Gu-niang,” the majordomo warned her. “Young Master will not make things easy for you. I know you are handy with a sword but a sword does not defend against everything. For as long as you remain here, he will try to take his revenge on you. And now that your amah is no more…”

  Ying-ying nodded slowly. She should have known it would be impossible for her to stay on after the events of last night. But to actually hear it, to have Master Keeper Ju’s silver in her hand for when she must survive on her own—she could not think. She could not think.

  “Bai Gu-niang use care,” the majordomo said. “I take my leave.”

  Ying-ying walked him to the gate of the courtyard. And then she stood in the cold, paralyzed. There was Amah’s funeral to attend to and Master Gordon to accompany to the British Legation, but beyond that the future was a dark abyss. Where would s
he live? And how would she feed herself when the majordomo’s silver had run out?

  Someone threw her down and gripped her neck. Little Dragon, strangling her with his bare hands. The guards’ ropes must have been no match for his wiles.

  She hit him on the head with the silver ingot. But his chokehold only became tighter.

  “I can’t find him, so I’ll kill you first,” he said, his teeth gritted. “If you hadn’t been so uppish, Little Orchid would still be alive—and the baby too. That baby was mine. Mine!”

  She hit him even harder with the silver ingot. She wasn’t a helpless girl like Little Orchid: She fought back. Finally, on the third hit, Little Dragon cried out and let go.

  Loud footsteps ran toward the courtyard, dozens of men. Little Dragon leaped up. Ying-ying, too, scrambled to her feet. Where was the shovel with which she’d been digging half the night? She would bash his head in yet. But he rushed out and leaped on top of the wall that penned in the alley leading toward the courtyard.

  “You get down here, Little Dragon!” shouted Bao-shun’s voice.

  “That’s Master Keeper Lin to you,” Little Dragon shot back.

  He jumped onto the roof of the house in the next courtyard.

  The men rushed to follow him, but Ying-ying knew they wouldn’t catch him. She rubbed her neck, her hand icy against the probably sorely bruised skin of her throat.

  A huge commotion erupted in the direction of the front gate of the residence. Horses, definitely horses. Had Little Dragon stolen a mount from the stables for his escape? No, the horses were coming toward Da-ren’s residence, not away.

  Checking all around to make sure that Little Dragon was really gone and not about to ambush her again, she made for the front gate. Already she could hear the horses being reined to a stop. Now footsteps came pounding.

  Several lackeys sprinted past her.

  “Master Keepers, what is going on?” she shouted.

  One of the young men turned around to answer even as he kept running. “Imperial messenger—with imperial directive for Da-ren.”