Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  “I concede,” Thụ Kiếng said, bowing to Mei. And, to Liên, “Think of what I’ve said.”

  And she left.

  Liên wrapped both hands around her fading flute, trying to stem the shivering of her whole body.

  What she’d said.

  Would you? Would you be shaming your parents?

  And she knew what she’d already known before playing: that she wasn’t scared of shaming her parents. She was scared of losing. Of losing her place in the house and Sinh’s cryptic lessons.

  Scared of losing Mei.

  Mei was leaning against the banyan tree, her eyes on the river. “Let’s go home,” Liên said, slowly, tentatively. “Big’sis?”

  “It’s your second to last duel,” Mei said, and her voice was tight. “Did you see the river?”

  The dragon rising from the heart of it, close enough that she could see their head about to break through the water. Close enough that she could touch them. The Dragon Princess, Sinh had said, but Thụ Kiếng thought that the princess was long dead. What was below the surface of the water?

  Her second to last duel. That felt unreal. Unearned. “Surely—”

  “Sinh will tell you. It’s almost over, lil’sis.” Mei turned towards her—and in that one moment as she started moving, in that one unguarded moment, Liên saw her face, and her bearing. It wasn’t tears of joy or nostalgia in her eyes, but rather of her entire being wracked by a pain so great it made her cry.

  “Big’sis!”

  “Lil’sis?” Mei’s voice was puzzled.

  “You’re in pain.”

  “I’m not,” Mei said, but it was as if the song had granted Liên double vision, overlaying Mei’s graceful demeanor with a deeper truth. “You’re lying. What’s wrong, Mei?”

  “There’s nothing wrong.” A grimace, utterly inadequate against the way her entire body was braced against the pain. “Nothing’s changed, lil’sis. Come on, let’s go home.”

  That last rang with a sincerity like nothing else, but the implications were horrific. Nothing had changed? Liên followed Mei back to their quarters, watching her, watching the way she held herself: that small pouting with her lips she always did when she walked, that quiver. But it wasn’t pouting, was it? Merely a scream, held back, and the way she moved was elegant and graceful, a mask that slipped here and there—hips jutting out a bit too far when a thigh spasmed; lips closing a fraction, thinning; fingers clenching for a mere breath, pupils dilated just a bit too much.

  Had she... had she always been like this, since the start? Had Liên been blind, the entire time? What did it mean?

  What was wrong?

  * * *

  In their room, Mei busied herself, brightly—a little too much, a little too brashly—making dumplings and noodle soup. “You need food, lil’sis.”

  Liên waited until Mei was done. “It’s Sinh, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “He wants something from you, and you’re in pain because of that.”

  “I already told you I’m not in pain.”

  Liên drew in a deep, shaking breath. “Big’sis.” She put into her voice all the things that usually went into the flute song. “I can see it. I can see you. Ever since the duel. The last one.”

  “You can’t possibly—”

  Liên said nothing. She didn’t touch her chopsticks, either. She just stared until Mei gave up busying herself and sat cross-legged on the floor with her head cocked—and every so often she’d flicker, and Liên would see her bent backwards, her chest pierced with shadowy swords. Not just a few, either. There were so many impaling her, hilts and blades and crosspieces all jumbled together. How could she—how could she even breathe or talk or move?

  “That’s not possible,” Mei said. Her voice was filled with dawning, fragile wonder.

  “No one has ever—”

  “No one. How many times have you done this, Mei?”

  A weary sigh. “Too many.” Mei flickered again—arched backwards, face tense and slick with sweat, the swords’ blades glinting in the lantern light—they flexed as she moved, with the clear sound of metal on metal.

  “You said it was the last duel. You said it was almost over. What’s happening, Mei?”

  Mei said, finally, “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “You held me. You touched my lips. Was that part of the plan, too?”

  “No!” Mei’s voice was full of panic. “I would never. Big’sis. Please. I would never—”

  “Sleep with me? Sinh hinted, didn’t he? Putting us in the same room is kind of unsubtle.”

  Mei’s face was drawn with pain, haggard. The blades in her chest glinted with blood and sweat. Liên fought the urge to hug her. “I would never lie to you by faking feelings. And you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what.”

  “Sleep with me. That... that mattered.” She made it sound like an extraordinary feat.

  “That’s basic human decency,” Liên said. “Wait.” Her voice was flat. “You said this had happened too many times. There were others.”

  Mei didn’t deny this, which was as good as an admission.

  “They slept with you.”

  “It’s... it’s nothing more than I deserved, for what I’ve done.”

  “No one deserves—” Liên stopped, because she didn’t know how to say it. What kind of twisted universe did Mei live in? And—more pressingly and importantly—how long had it all been going on? “He’s thrown you at duelists, and they’ve taken advantage.”

  “Not always.”

  “Often enough.” Liên’s fists clenched. “Big’sis—” She did reach out then, not to kiss Mei like she desperately wanted, but simply to squeeze Mei’s shoulder, gently and slowly and watching warily for any signs Mei didn’t want it. But all she could see was the pain: the swords impaling Mei, their weight bending her backward. “I can see swords, Mei. They’re going through your chest. What are they?”

  Again, no answer. “You can’t tell me. It’s Sinh, isn’t it? What hold does he have over you? Is it the swords?”

  A silence. Then, “The swords are my fault. My pain to bear. Because I was the one who suggested it all, you see. The arena. The duels.”

  Liên stared at Mei, suddenly chilled. “You—what does he want, Mei?”

  “The music.” Mei’s voice was flat. She ran a hand through her own topknot, catching on the golden hairpins. “He lost it, and he was so desperately unhappy. He—” She breathed out, her face filling with that same wonder she’d shown, back at the river. “He was so young, once. So full of light and striding across the land as if he understood all of it, from the carps to the stars in the sky. He held my hand and saw me. Truly saw me, just the way I was.”

  Somehow Liên didn’t think Sinh’s desperate hunger was going to be filled by simply listening to Liên play. “My flute. He wants my flute.”

  “The flute of the player strong enough to summon the dragons in the river. Perhaps even calling the Dragon Princess Scholar Vương summoned. He won’t be able to play it for long. Playing a flute not your own burns it.” Mei’s voice was mirthless. “But he’ll have it. Sinh always gets what he wants.”

  Including Mei. “Because you give it to him, don’t you?” Liên didn’t have words for how much it hurt her. Sinh’s betrayal was nothing unexpected, but to know that Mei would stand by him no matter what. “Always and always.”

  A shadow of that same wonder in Mei’s eyes, brittle and dark. “He smiles, and I see it again. The heart he had when he was younger...”

  And was that enough reason for what she was doing? “And what happens afterwards? When he’s walked away with the thing inside my chest? He just steals people’s lives and you let him?”

  Bitter laughter from Mei. “It won’t kill you. Just—” She spread her hands. “It will hurt. Every day, it will hurt.”

  “Like swords in your chest?”

  “It’s not the same thing!”

  “I
s it not? Because it sounds like he’s just leaving a trail of broken people behind him. Including you.”

  “You don’t understand.” Mei pulled away, stood up. The swords flexed as she did, driving deeper into her flesh—a clink of metal against metal, and Mei stopping, gasping, her eyes closing for a brief moment, sweat running down her forehead. “There’s nothing you can do, lil’sis. Nothing you can change. Just—just go. Find Sinh. He’ll know you’re ready.”

  As if she wanted to find Sinh and offer herself for the slaughter. “You don’t trust me.” That hurt, a lot.

  “You’re a child.” Mei’s voice was cold. “Playing with flutes and with songs and not understanding what’s happening.”

  “You’re not helping me understand, are you?”

  “Because you can’t!”

  “That’s pointless!” Liên rose, too, scattering chopsticks and bits of herbs. “Help me, Mei.”

  But Mei had turned away from her, and wouldn’t speak anymore.

  * * *

  Liên ran. She didn’t know where she was going and didn’t care—her feet pounded the shriveled grass of Sinh’s gardens, and the hills, and the road leading to the arena, and back to the buildings of the Academy—the classrooms where teachers waited to impart wisdom from the sages, where her classmates would be waiting for her to take her place—until she finally reached a knoll of grass. She sat, sheltered by the branches of a willow tree whose dense jade foliage cut off her view of the world.

  You’re a child.

  If she closed her eyes she would see, again and again, Mei’s drawn face, the careful way in which she moved.

  Every day, it will hurt.

  Sinh would take everything from her, just as he had taken everything from Mei, and she didn’t know enough to stop him. And Mei... Mei would stand by him, and that was the worst.

  How many times have you done this, Mei?

  Too many.

  And yet... Liên remembered the hand in hers, Mei’s fingers on her lips for an all too brief moment. You are seen. That conversation in the gardens, Mei telling Liên that Sinh shouldn’t push her so hard. Mei cared, didn’t she?

  And did Liên care?

  “You look like a whole turmoil of thoughts,” an amused voice said.

  Mei’s gaze jerked up. It was Thụ Kiếng.

  The former duelist wore scholar’s robes and an impeccable topknot. Her seal—a match to the one that had allowed her access to the dueling arena—swung on her chest as she sat down next to Liên. It was a smaller and newer thing. Her personal one?

  “Steamed bun?” Thụ Kiếng asked.

  Liên took it, because she didn’t quite know what to do. They nibbled together in almost companionable silence. It was pork and cat’s ear mushroom, and a small but perfect quail’s egg in the center, the yolk dissolving into sharp, salty powder in Liên’s mouth.

  “Feeling better now?”

  Liên couldn’t see the point of diplomacy. “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.”

  Thụ Kiếng laughed. “Not everyone has hidden agendas within hidden agendas. I’m out of the dueling game. I lost. But for someone who won everything, you look decidedly unenthused.” Her expression was distant, almost serene.

  Liên stared at the swaying willow branches. She thought of Sinh and flutes and music and stealing the work of his students. Of Mei and swords and kindness. “It’s the last duel,” she said. And it would be against Sinh. “Why?” she asked, finally.

  “Why do I duel? Because in spite of myself, I believe in miracles. There was a girl, you see.” Thụ Kiếng's voice was wistful.

  “You want someone to love you?”

  “No,” Thụ Kiếng said. “You know that can’t be forced. But I wanted to show her that... stories could be real. That there could be happiness ever after.”

  Liên remembered the song in the arena, the one Thụ Kiếng had played. “The boy. The one who loved you back.”

  “He’s dead. Or out there in the world, which is perhaps the same thing. This is his seal,” Thụ Kiếng said, lifting the seal around her neck. “The last thing he gave me before he left. Why do you duel, younger aunt? And don’t tell me your parents. That’s what granted you access to the arena in the first place—your mother’s seal and all it symbolized—but that’s no longer true.”

  Liên said nothing, for a while. “She’s in pain.”

  “Mei? Nothing that she didn’t bring on herself.” Thụ Kiếng's voice was almost gentle.

  The swords are my fault. “How long has it been going on?”

  A shrug, from Thụ Kiếng. “Who knows? They’ve always been there, insofar as I know. You hear about the chairmen of the school, but I think there’s only ever been one, wearing different faces and different names.”

  “Always.” It was vertiginous and unwelcome. “All that time.” All that time in pain and denying it. “It shouldn’t be that way.” And she had something Sinh wanted. Her flute. Her music. All that had shaped her as a scholar. She could bargain, if she wanted it badly enough.

  Did she?

  What kind of person would it make her, if she walked away from Mei?

  “You want to help Mei?” Thụ Kiếng stared at her for a while. “Oh, I see. That’s the way it is.”

  “No,” Liên said, before she could think. “I don’t—”

  “Care for her? Of course you do.” Thụ Kiếng laughed. “This doesn’t have to be a love that echoes down lifetimes, lil’sis. It just has to be enough. But you know that she’ll stand by Sinh. They’ve stood by each other all that time. Asking her to step away, no matter how well-intentioned...”

  “She loves him.” It shouldn’t have hurt so much, when Liên said it. Because how could Mei possibly love Sinh?

  “Sinh? Yes.” Thụ Kiếng played with the jade seal at her neck—the dead boy’s. “She will not thank you, you know.”

  “For rescuing her.”

  “You’re assuming she will view it as a rescue.” Thụ Kiếng sighed. “You’re a real scholar. Never standing for injustice or unfairness.” She used an uncommon word for “real,” one that meant “bright” and “real” all at once, like a miniature jewel. “Because I wouldn’t walk into that arena, myself.”

  Liên sighed. She thought of Mei and of—not love, but a connection, and care for each other. “I guess it’s all up to me, then.”

  * * *

  Mei was waiting for Liên at the arena’s entrance. She was wearing the long, flowing, five-panel robes of the imperial court, red silk with golden embroidery of flowers and mythical animals. She’d unbound her hair, and it hung loose on her shoulders, with the golden hairpins scattered in their strands like stars.

  She looked like someone out of myths, out of fairy tales—someone Liên would watch dance and later share celestial peaches with—someone breathtakingly, fragilely beautiful, like cracked celadon.

  “Lil’sis?”

  Liên just stood and gaped. “Big’sis.”

  Mei walked to her. Linh breathed in a smell that was cut grass and the sharpness of a storm. And then Mei bent forward, and kissed her, and she tasted like steel and salt.

  “Big’sis,” she said, gasping, when Mei stopped, and still stood close, close enough to touch.

  For a moment, there was the same slow wonder in Mei’s eyes there had been in their room, when she’d understood Liên could see her pain. “I wanted...” Mei said.

  “It’s all right,” Liên said. And slowly, gently, kissed her back until her mouth was full of Mei’s sharpness. “It’s all right to want.” She was everything to Liên, and they both knew it would not last.

  “Not here, not now.” Mei’s voice was bitter. She pulled away. “But thank you. For the kindness.” She flickered again, and Liên saw the swords, sprouting from her chest as if she’d grown a tree of thorns from within, a tangled mass of gleaming sharpness and bloodied blades.

  Liên said, finally—because Thụ Kiếng was right, because she couldn’t rescue
Mei against her will—“you said I was a child. You said you didn’t trust me. I need you to—” She stopped, then, because she didn’t know what she said that wouldn’t be platitudes, or a rerun of an argument they had already had. Instead, she reached out, and wrapped her finger around the hilt of a sword in Mei’s chest. She hadn’t expected to make contact—she’d thought they’d be as ghostly visions without power to wound—but what she grabbed was cold and slick and hungry.

  Old sins and blood and punishment and the will of heaven and the order of things and love cannot should not triumph because nothing is eternally unchanging....

  She let go, gasping. “This has to end. It’s not fair. It’s not equitable.”

  Mei’s face hadn’t changed. “I told you—”

  “I know what you said,” Liên said. She raised her hand—slowly laid two fingers on Mei’s mouth, in the curve of those lips drawn back in a pain Liên couldn’t alleviate. “That it’s your fault. That it’s all for him. That it’s worth it. That I’m a child.”

  “Do you think I kiss children?” Mei’s voice was stiff, barely audible. Liên didn’t move her fingers. She pressed, gently, against Mei’s lips.

  “No. But still... things end,” Liên said, gently, and with more confidence than she felt. “And you matter. I’m not asking you to trust me, but will you stand by me?”

  “I don’t know,” Mei said, and Liên knew then that she wouldn’t. That she couldn’t, because Sinh was her whole world and her whole being.

  A chance. That was all she wanted. A chance for Mei to change. To cut the cord that bound her to Sinh, the chain of complicities and bargains Liên wasn’t privy to. A chance. Give me this, please, Mother and Father. Let me matter. This is how I want to leave my mark on the world. Please.

  “Watch me,” she said, instead, and withdrew her fingers from Mei’s mouth, reluctantly. She wanted to kiss Mei again, but it was no longer time.

  “Always,” Mei said, and her voice was sad.

  The doors were closed, but this time they opened at Liên’s touch. The characters on the lock contracting to display, not the name on the seal around Liên’s neck, but a single archaic word in Việt.