by Sarah Zettel
Auntie Cai Yun peered at her. “I do not know your face.” The taller pirate fingered the hilt of his knife. Guarding the house had probably become quite dull, and escorting a nuisance away from the gate would provide at least some diversion.
Mae Shan did not ignore that knife, but neither did she let herself appear to be afraid of it. “It has been twelve years since we have seen each other. I was ten when I first stole away from my father who had come to trade at the market, so I could come visit my infamous Uncle Lien. I climbed a tree to get over the wall and fell on my head.”
Auntie Cai Yun lowered her staff, but her face did not relax nor her eyes grow more open. The taller pirate looked disappointed. “Who is that with you?” Cai Yun nodded toward Anna.
Ask me a simple question, Auntie. “My charge, Anna. We’ve come from the Heart of the World and we need shelter and to speak with Uncle Lien.”
The mention of the Heart of the World felled her suspicions. Her face paled. Even the shorter of the two sailors blanched. Cai Yun reached out to her younger cousin between the bars of the gate. “Heaven and Earth, Mae Shan, how did you escape?”
“With great difficulty, Auntie,” quipped Mae Shan with a tired smile. “Is Uncle here? Will you let us in?”
By way of answer, Auntie Cai Yun produced an iron key that had been inlaid with silver. She unlocked the gate and pushed it open a crack, looking sharply this way and that as she did. At the same time, her escorts tensed, ready for action. Mae Shan urged Anna through the gate with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Inside the wall, the girl relaxed visibly. Evidently, none of Uncle Lien’s protections drowned out her father’s voice.
It could not possibly have been so easy to rid her of him, thought Mae Shan as she followed.
Auntie closed and locked the gate again before she turned to embrace Mae Shan. She said nothing, but Mae Shan could feel from the tension in her shoulders that things had not been easy in the house of Jinn, as if the presence of her uncouth companions were not proof enough of that.
Auntie released Mae Shan and turned to bow to Anna.
“Mistress, our house is honored by your presence. Let me make you welcome in my uncle’s name and offer you such poor hospitality as we have.”
Fortunately, Anna had not forgotten her manners. She bowed in return. “Thank you. Your hospitality does me much honor.” Suspicion still gleamed in her eyes, but if Auntie Cai Yun noticed it, she gave no sign.
“Come.” Auntie glanced back at the street. “We should be indoors, and Uncle Lien will want to see you at once.”
She led them up the garden path, the sailors following silently behind. The years had obviously been good to Uncle Lien’s fortune. His gardens were even more beautiful than Mae Shan remembered, and the house shone with new paint and gilding. Uncle Lien’s pride was bound up in his houses. It was part of his great feud with the Nine Elders that he should live grandly and openly in the cities under their protection, and that there should be nothing they could do about it.
Four other sailors waited on the veranda and were waved back from the door by Auntie Cai Yun, but no servants came to greet them as they entered the house. Mae Shan suspected they had been sent away, but she did not remark on it to Auntie, who set her cudgel beside the doorway.
“If you will please follow me,” was all she said, and she led them across the teakwood floor of the entrance hall to the carved screen that closed off Uncle Lien’s personal study with its many shelves of scrolls and low rosewood tables.
Uncle Lien looked much as he had when she had seen him ten years ago, which was not surprising. Sorcerers aged slowly, unless, as her uncle once told her, they overreached their power. Then their lives would fade like the flowers in summer. Uncle Lien would never tell Mae Shan what he had done to turn his hair so white or put the wrinkles in his face.
“Mae Shan, my child.” Uncle held up his hand in greeting as Mae Shan bowed. “Come and sit next to me. Tell me who this is with you.” He gestured that Anna should take the seat across from the table.
Mae Shan sat beside her uncle gratefully. She could feel his warmth and sympathy even though he held himself in correct and dignified stillness and allowed no emotion to overcome him. They were, after all, not alone. His composure allowed Mae Shan to keep hers despite her tremendous weariness.
She introduced Anna as her charge from the Heart of the World. “She was guested there by her father, Kalami of Isavalta.” She did not say the word “hostage,” but Uncle Lien surely knew that was what she meant.
“My father is of Tuukos,” Anna corrected her. “Not Isavalta.”
“Of course, mistress.”
“Kalami,” said Uncle Lien. “Is he not lord sorcerer to the Dowager Empress Medeoan?”
“He was, but no more,” answered Anna.
“I had not heard his fate.” Uncle Lien shook his head once with regret, but Anna offered no more information. With difficulty, Mae Shan held her tongue.
“Uncle, times are going to be very bad now for Hung-Tse. What will happen to us at the Center of the World I do not know. I do know it will be worse for a child whose destiny is not ours. I mean to return her home. Her father will be able to help us.” Please do not ask how, Uncle. “But we need shelter until he can do so.”
“Of course, Niece. You and your mistress will have all the protection I can offer. Cai Yun will show you to a room where you may wash and rest. Food is being prepared.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Mae Shan did not bother to hide either the gratitude or the weariness in her voice.
“Please come with me,” said Auntie Cai Yun kindly.
Auntie led them up the wide, dark staircase to a tidy bedchamber. She began unlatching the doors to the second veranda that overlooked the garden, and opening chests to expose bed linens and fresh clothes.
It disturbed Mae Shan to see her refined cousin acting as house maid but she said nothing, because she knew Cai Yun saw it as part of her duties as mistress of the house, whether there were proper servants or not. While she bustled, Anna perched on the edge of one of the softly cushioned chairs. Mae Shan looked away to accept a jacket and trousers from Cai Yun. When she looked back, Anna had curled up in the chair and was sound asleep.
“Poor child,” said Cai Yun as Mae Shan scooped the girl up and laid her on the bed, covering her up with a quilt from one of the open chests. “This all must be terribly hard for her.”
“More than you or I can know, Auntie.” Mae Shan smoothed Anna’s hair back from her face. “I only hope the hardships are over soon.”
Auntie’s jaw tightened, but she made no answer to Mae Shan’s hope. “I’ll leave you to dress. Come down to Uncle’s study again when you are ready.”
She left. Mae Shan, moving carefully so as not to disturb Anna, changed out of her grimy nightclothes and into respectable black broadcloth trousers and a red undershirt with a black quilted jacket and red sash. She combed out her short hair and rinsed her face and hands in the white porcelain basin. Then, so she would not have to make a light later, she folded several of the soft linens and blankets into a pallet beside Anna’s bed.
The clean clothes felt wonderful against Mae Shan’s skin. She knew the sheets and blankets of her pallet bed would feel even better, but her own time for rest was not yet. She was reluctant to leave her mistress, but Auntie Cai Yun and the “servants” were diligent in the protection of this house and she felt with cold certainty Anna’s father would not permit his daughter to be harmed. Not yet, anyway.
Rubbing her arms against a chill that came from inside as well as outside, Mae Shan stole softly from the room and down the stairs. Moonlight shone against the dark wood. The Greeting Hall was empty but she heard movement in the scroll room and smelled the sweet odor of burning incense.
Uncle Lien knelt before the ten polished spirit tablets on the camphor wood table. Each one had been dedicated to a particular ancestor and carried their name, their horoscope, and the prayers the priests had devised for them upon t
heir crossing to Heaven. On the walls hung white silk scrolls with the history of those same ancestors and details of the family lineage and accomplishments. It was a stark room with only a straw mat on the floor. Nothing here was to distract one from proper contemplation of the ancestors.
Mae Shan knew how to move silently. Nonetheless, her uncle turned as if he could hear her very breath.
“Come here, child,” he said, holding out one arm. “We are alone now.”
Mae Shan rushed to him. As he pulled her close into his embrace, hot tears spilled from her. Now she could weep full for Wei Lin dead in the ashes of the Heart of the World. Now she could weep for the fear she felt of all she had seen and all she could scarcely imagine would come. She could weep for herself, her place lost, her world gone, and not even able to go home and find her family, if they were still on their land, if riot and fire had not taken them too.
When at last she had wept herself empty and had dried her eyes on the kerchief stowed in her sleeve, she was able to kneel back. Her uncle passed her a cup of tea and a branch of bitter willow. She set them both before the spirit tablets and bowed down until her forehead pressed against the floor.
“Honored Ancestors, your daughter Wei Lin walks to join you, her hair unbound and her feet bloody with violence. Please accept your daughter’s prayers and take her kindly into your embrace. Let her drink from the wells of Heaven and forget the sorrows of her life. Let her be reborn where she may rejoice.”
And please, Sister, forgive me. I wanted to save you. I truly did.
She said the prayer a second time, and a third, and a fourth, and slowly Mae Shan’s heart began to ease.
Anna lay in the soft bed staring at the darkness. She was very tired, and she would have liked to remain asleep, but her father’s voice warned her against it.
We must hear what Mae Shan is saying about us to her uncle.
“Mae Shan is my bodyguard,” Anna whispered back. “She will always protect me.”
When there was an emperor to make her do so, Anna, this was true, but now he is gone. We can’t know what she will do.
“She didn’t leave me in the fire. She could have. The others did.”
She didn’t know how bad the fire would be. Trust me, Anna. I am your father. Mae Shan has done her job very well, but she is just a soldier. We are heart and blood, you and I.
Don’t worry, Anna, he added, and she felt the warmth of his love in her heart. It surely is as you say. We’ll just make sure, that’s all.
So Anna slipped out of her bed, and stood swaying on her bare feet for a moment. She was so tired.
Let me help, Anna.
Her father reached out from her heart, and her legs moved, quickly and soundlessly. Her hands cleverly found the door latch and lifted it so she could steal into the moonlit corridor. He made her legs do a quick little skip as they hurried down the hallway and Anna had to stifle a giggle.
Quietly now, Anna, said Father, but she felt a ripple of amusement in the stern thoughts.
The moon was waning so the house was nothing so much as vague shapes of shadow. The polished wooden floor was still warm from the heat of the day. She padded down the stairs, keeping to the deep shadows by the wall. But she saw no telltale lantern glow, heard no patter from other feet, nor the rustle of other cloth.
The first floor of the house was brighter than the second, for it had more paper walls to let in the fresh air and the moonlight. Anna, Father, hesitated, and she strained her ears and eyes instinctively. A faint gold spark shone to the left. Father stirred approvingly within her and took Anna’s footsteps in that direction.
The light proved to be coming from the house’s scroll room, the place where the lineage was recorded and the ancestors were venerated. Father took her to the edge of the threshold and pressed her against the wall, but at her own thought, she crouched down close to the floor. When Anna was still Tsan Nu, she didn’t spend too much time with the other children in the women’s palace, but she knew a thing or two about not being seen while on an expedition to the forbidden gardens or the kitchens.
Father lit her heart with his smile.
In the scroll room, Lien Jinn and Mae Shan bowed before the altar in meditation. Anna held very still. The room was silent except for the distant night noises beyond the house walls. The smallest sound would be heard.
Just as Anna was beginning to get bored and sleepy again, Mae Shan and Lien both straightened up from their prayerful attitudes.
“Now, Mae Shan.” Lien took two more cups from the tray beside him and poured fresh tea for them both. Anna’s mouth watered a little at the sight. “Tell me of your mistress and her father. In my study, your eyes spoke of something that is not right there.”
Anna’s heart thumped once.
Mae Shan sipped the tea noisily to show gratitude for it. “Uncle, I know nothing about magics other than what you have told me, but I believe the girl is possessed and I’m afraid of it.”
Heed her not, Anna, whispered Father. She does not understand.
“Tell me,” said Uncle Lien softly.
Mae Shan did. In the clipped, precise voice Anna had heard her use with her superiors, she told of their escape, and of Tsan Nu, now Anna, calling on her father. With each word, Lien grew progressively more still and more grave.
“This is a serious matter, Mae Shan, and you were right to tell me of it.” Lien was silent for a moment. Mae Shan set down her cup and rested her hands on her thighs to show her willingness to listen with her full attention.
Now we shall see their true faces, Father told Anna. For the first time since she had taken him into her heart, Anna felt cold.
Uncle Lien also set his cup down on the tray, turning it slightly so the bamboo pattern faced him. “What is not commonly known is that almost thirty years ago, when Hung-Tse came under threat of invasion by Isavalta, the Nine Elders summoned the Immortal Guardian of Fire and the South, the Phoenix, to save us. What is even less well known is that by means of great magic, the then empress of Isavalta, Medeoan, was able to imprison the Phoenix within a golden cage and hold it hostage.”
An image rose in Anna’s mind with the strength of a spell-wrought vision. She saw the Phoenix, not as she had seen it before spread out across the sky, but much smaller, crouching in a cage with filigree bars of charred gold. The sacrilege of it bit hard in Anna’s mind.
“I would not have thought such a thing possible,” Mae Shan was saying, her voice filled with dread and wonder.
Uncle Lien’s face took on a brief expression of grudging admiration. “It took great skill, and cost a life for the making of that cage. It took much of Medeoan’s strength and sanity to keep it whole. Her judgment began to fail, as did her life. In her middle years, she took to her court a chief sorcerer, the lord sorcerer they called him, named Valin Kalami. He came from a province of their empire called Tuukos. The Tuukosov, however, hate the Isavaltans with a passion that will not die. The empress did not know that Kalami sought nothing less than the destruction of Isavalta.
“To help accomplish this end, he contacted certain representatives of the Heart of the World within the boundaries of Isavalta. Eventually, he was allowed to speak with the Nine Elders. He promised to free the Phoenix, so long held captive by Medeoan, and to facilitate an invasion of Isavalta by Hung-Tse, so that the threat to our northern borders would finally be ended.
“The Nine Elders of course wished to ensure his good behavior, and so asked that he send to them a hostage as a guarantee that he would do as he said.”
Is this true, Father? What they say?
Some of it, Anna, but they do not know everything.
“Anna.” Mae Shan’s gaze flicked up to the ceiling, surely thinking of Anna where she believed her to be, asleep in bed.
Uncle Lien nodded. “Kalami was treacherous, and his only loyalty was to the land of his birth. How he met his end is uncertain, but there are those who say it was brought on him by the queen of the fox spirits. What is known i
s that his death was bound up with the death of Medeoan, and that these two things freed the Phoenix from its long imprisonment.”
Father?
This is why I brought you here, to understand whose roof we are sheltered under and who your so-called protector is seeking advice from. Keep listening.
“But why raze the Heart of the World?” Mae Shan was asking, her voice coming close to cracking. “Why did it not take its vengeance on Isavalta?”
“I do not know. Who can say what such imprisonment would do even to one of the guardians. The great threat was always that Medeoan had found some way to alter the nature of the Phoenix. Perhaps she succeeded.”
She did not. The Nine Elders underestimated the anger of their guardian at being left to languish.
Anna shuddered, remembering the heat and noise of the fire, and the sacred guardian presiding over it all.
Courage, Anna, whispered Father.
“And this treacherous spirit has rested himself in his daughter’s heart,” said Mae Shan and disbelief dropped Anna’s jaw. Mae Shan couldn’t believe what her uncle was telling her, surely? He was a pirate, a thief. How could she take his word for anything?
I’m sorry, Daughter, but you had to know.
“How powerful is the child?” Lien asked.
Powerful enough that all walk quietly around her. Powerful enough that ones she had thought she could trust must speak in whispers of her after dark.
Anna trembled. She did not want to think about that.
Be proud, Daughter, as I am proud of you.
Anna tried, but she just felt sick.
Mae Shan was looking down at her hands. “I don’t know, Uncle. But I can tell you she saw what the Nine Elders did not. She knew the Phoenix would return for revenge.”
Startled pride reached Anna from her father’s place inside her. Powerful enough that the Nine Elders ignored her and brought down their own destruction. Oh, my child, you are greater than I dared to dream.
Lien sat silently for a long moment. “It was good that you brought her here.”
