Jian drank. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Perri do the same. Naruteo reached for the tray almost eagerly and shot them a look of spite as he tossed his drink back and dropped the delicate cup, and then he crushed it with his bare foot.
Xienpei chuckled and removed her blade. “Courage,” she mocked. Then she was gone.
I am Tsun-ju Jian, he told himself, son of Tsun-ju Tiungpei, the pearl diver of Bizhan. I have braved deep waters and sharp teeth. I have seen the face of shongwei. In my veins flows the blood of the Issuq…
One of the first boys to drink the tea dropped to his knees with a shout, a cry that became a gargling shriek as he bent over double and began to vomit bright splashes of red upon the gray cobblestones. Another succumbed, and another. The air grew thick with the smell of sickness and blood and panic. There was a commotion off to one side as a boy near the walls tried to break away and flee. Jian watched in horror as two of the lashai took his arms and a third grabbed him by the jaw and forced him to drink. Though the boy struggled and screamed, the three pale servants were no more moved than adults holding onto a small child, and their faces remained as blank and still as smooth waters.
This scene was repeated over and again as someone tried to escape or to fight back, and always with the same result—a boy defeated, sometimes bloodied, with his belly full of tea and his eyes full of fear. One boy, a larger youth that Jian recognized with a shock as one of the pig-farm boys from Hou, thrashed his head from side to side and howled, fighting the servants who held him down. The noise was cut abruptly short as one of the yendaeshi stepped forward. The bladed staff licked forward and down like a lizard’s tongue and opened the pig-boy’s belly like a sack of grain, then up again and sidewise across his throat. Red bloomed against yellow silk, like a dream poppy in a field of buttersweet, and the boy fell forward to thrash in a spreading pool of his own blood and entrails.
Two more boys met similar fates as the lashai and yendaeshi swept through the ranks subduing, dosing, and occasionally butchering boys as they went. As they were finishing up, Jian felt the first pangs in his gut, pains like those he had experienced once after eating the wrong kind of eel.
It is not so bad, he thought as the pain bloomed and receded first in his gut, then in his chest, and finally in his kidneys before starting up in his gut again. Not so bad. I can handle this.
Then the pain had its way with him.
One time, when he was very small, Jian had pattered down the moons-lit path from his mother’s house to the sea. The gulls were calling to him, and the waves, and the low and mournful voice of some great beast far out to sea, lifting its head above the waters to sing for him. It sang of loneliness, and need, and of home far away. Little Jian had waded into the sea in search of the song’s owner, and the sea had claimed him.
The tide had been cold, unflinching, an unnatural greedy mouth that sucked at his feet, his legs, and finally opened to swallow him whole. Jian would remember for the rest of his life how it felt to be sucked in and rolled about by the water, end-over-end with his arms and legs flailing like an abandoned rag doll, utterly without control.
Now, as Jian fell to his knees and then toppled to his side, boiling from the inside out as if he had swallowed a cup full of sea nettles and slag, he was gripped by the same feeling of helplessness. He would die, or he would not die, and there was nothing he could do about it either way.
The cool rock felt good against his cheek. He smelled blood and shit and death, and he smelled the bilious stink of the thick black stuff he retched up. People were screaming, people were dying, but the stone was cool and quiet, so Jian pressed closer and closed his eyes with a sigh.
He heard the creaking of heavy wooden wheels, very near, and footsteps hurrying back and forth, so close he was kicked and tripped over any number of times. The pain came in like the tides, advancing and receding, advancing and receding, taking small bits of him away with every wave. During one of the moments of relative calm he had enough left of himself to wonder whether Perri had died, and whether he would die as well, alone on the stones with vomit in his hair. But he could not rouse himself to care.
Soon enough the pain claimed the last of him, and he was gone.
* * *
Eventually the pain came to an end. It was not a sudden end, a shock of bliss and blessed numbness, and neither was it a fading end like sunlight gone to the moons. It was a violent end, full of death and anger as the pain tried to keep its claws in him, to take one more bite, to wrest one more scream from his bloody throat.
As soon as Jian understood that he was screaming, he stopped. His had been the last voice. No one else screamed, or wept, or moaned. It seemed as if his harsh and labored breathing, the pounding of his heart, and the scrape of his fingernails against stone were the last sounds in the world.
Then something grunted, and snuffled, and grunted again. Jian could hear the sound of claws dragging along the ground. Hot breath seared his face and wet flesh touched his skin. Jian tried to recoil, to cry out, to escape, but the best he could manage was a shadow-thin wail as his eyes cracked open.
His vision wavered and danced as if he stood behind a waterfall in the dim light, and what he saw made no sense. Golden slippers and gray, a forest of slippers, soaked in blood and worse. Standing between the slippers and his face was a smallish creature in a golden harness, some breed of tusked dog, or maybe a kind of pig. It had thick, wiry-looking gray hair, and a long naked tail like a rat’s, and a long flat snout with curling flat tusks that clacked and gnashed together as it peered at him with round, bright eyes. It nuzzled his face again with a flat, wet pink nose, and squealed, and wagged its tail, as pleased with itself as a lady’s lap-dog that had just learned a new trick.
“Dahwal, Jinjin, good girl.” Jinjin, if that was indeed the creature’s name, whipped its tail back and forth so hard the hindquarters danced along with it. “This one is Daechen. And,” the voice sounded surprised, “it is awake.”
Gray slippers glided close. Hands grasped Jian under the arms and hauled him upright until he stood, supported by a pair of the lashai. He swayed and would have collapsed had they not been holding him upright, yet the servants—both considerably shorter and slighter of build than he—seemed to bear his weight without effort.
“Ah, young master Jian.” Xienpei’s face swam into view. Jian felt a shudder run through him, and the servants gave him a shake that set his head lolling to the side. “I am so pleased to see you alive. And awake. I am claiming this one,” she added to someone behind her. “I have the sea things this turn and this boy is pure Issuq. Look at those eyes.”
She turned back to him. Something glittered in her hands. “Hold him still,” she snapped to the servants who bore his weight. “I will not have him damaged.” She stepped close, so close he could smell the sandalwood and cinnamon of the oils she used in her hair, and something cold touched the side of his face. He would have pulled away if he could, but it was all Jian could do to breathe in and out, in and out. There was a kachunk, and fresh pain blossomed in his ear, but it was a small and warm kind of pain, almost comforting after all he had been through.
His mouth tasted of bile, and bitter herbs, and of blood. Jian tried to spit, wishing he could get away from the taste and the horrors of the day, wishing he had the strength to spit into the round and smiling face of the yendaeshi. But his tongue felt thick, and his mouth would not work properly. The best he could do for now was drool disgustingly down the front of his ruined yellow silks.
“Charming.” Xienpei laughed, a sweet and girlish sound that made the hairs prickle at the back of Jian’s neck. “Strip him, wash him, make him presentable,” she told the lashai. “Daechen Jian will be riding back to the palace with me.” Her smile was honey and poison. “I have plans for this one.”
The servants half-led, half-dragged him across the market square. He stumbled over the stones, and his own feet, and once he stepped on an outstretched hand. It was cold underfoot and did not move,
and as Jian slipped and staggered through the bloody ruin he realized that he was crying.
This is what it means to be a Prince of Khanbul, he thought, weeping. A Prince of the Forbidden City. How his mother would tear her hair to see him now. How the bullies of Bizhan would laugh to see Daechen Jian, blessed by the emperor himself. He did not stop weeping as they stripped the silks from his body and threw them in a growing pile of gold and yellow rags that had been the finest clothing of a thousand young men.
Jian tried to pull free from their hands as they led him to the wash racks that had served to bathe meat animals before they were sold, but they were too strong. He stood as little chance against his handlers as a yearling steer.
In the end he stood stripped of clothing and pride as they dumped buckets of cold salted water over his head, over and over again, and the tears continued to wash down his cheeks as they scrubbed him with handfuls of salt and sand, dried him with less care than the butcher might show a slab of meat, and rubbed scented oils into his skin. One of them pried his mouth open and scrubbed his mouth out with something that tasted of mint but stung his cheeks and tongue where he had bitten them earlier. Strangely, this new pain, and the throbbing in his earlobe, helped him to gain control of the sobs that wracked his body. The tears still spilled over, now and then, but he was no longer heaving and gasping like a child.
Other boys were dragged and carried over for much the same treatment. They were stripped, scrubbed, dried and oiled like so many redjaw during a spawn. Jian saw Naruteo being carried by three of the lashai, and to his relief he recognized Perri as they dragged him past, limp and bloodied but apparently alive. None but Jian were awake, however, and as he looked around he realized that the boys being washed and laid aside represented only a small fraction of those who had drunk the tea.
“Where are the others?” he asked. His voice was a broken whisper. “The other boys… where are they? Where have they gone?”
He hardly expected the lashai to answer. They never had, before. One of them turned his head—or her head, it was hard to say—and some strange emotion flickered behind those dull eyes. Jian thought that behind its impassive mask, the lashai was laughing at him. It lifted one hand, slowly, and pointed.
It was then that Jian saw the covered wagons. There were a score of them, or more, enormous things crudely fashioned from dark wood and bound in iron, each pulled by a team of surly-eyed, stub-horned ghella. All in a line and facing the gates, they were piled high and covered with ugly brown sacking. Jian’s gut clenched and he would have been sick again, had there been anything left to sick up.
Beneath the covers, something was moving. Some things were moving, and Jian knew what those cloths concealed, just as clearly as if he had seen them beaten and cut and tossed like offal upon the carts. As if he had put them there himself.
The carts began to roll, drivers swearing and shouting and cracking their whips over the heads of the sullen ghella with no more concern that they would have shown had they been hauling barrels of salted meat. They rolled through the gate one by one as an oily black smoke began to rise somewhere in the distance, and Jian could no more stop the wagons and save those boys than he could stop the trembling in his legs, or save himself.
The lashai stared. Jian dove deep, deep into the cold depths of his terror, and there he found a perfect black pearl, big as the last joint of a man’s thumb. A prince’s courage. He closed his fingers about the pearl. It was warm to the touch, and smelled of the sea. In the back of his mind he heard the gulls cry, and his mother singing as she mended the nets. He surfaced, looked into the servant’s dead eyes…
And smiled.
It was a small gesture of defiance, a candle against the dark night, but later Jian would remember that moment and think, That is when it really began.
The lashai turned and led him away from the wagons. His defiance spent, Jian sagged with relief at that and nearly stumbled over his own feet. They walked across the stones and through a small doorway tucked away in one corner. He found himself in a plain room of gray-and-white stone. A long, low counter ran along one wall and a bench along the opposite. Jian swayed dangerously on his feet and the lashai pushed him to sit on the bench before picking up a small brass bell from the counter and ringing it, startling him with the pretty little sound.
A small door opened and a young woman stepped into the room. She stopped and blinked at the sight of Jian.
“Ah,” she said. “You have brought me a live one. How… unusual.”
Jian was painfully aware of his nudity. The bench was cold, and he fought not to weep. He was finished with weeping, with feeling like a mewling babe exposed to the elements and left to die. Unfortunately, it seemed, the world was not finished with him.
The lashai only waited. The girl began pulling wrapped bundles off the shelves, never once looking at Jian. Each package was shown to the lashai, and then the girl would make a mark on the rice paper wrapping and set it aside in a growing pile. Jian watched it all from a great distance, and wished he dared lie down on the bench and sleep. He was so weary, and so tired of being frightened, and the thought occurred to him as he watched the girl and the lashai that if by killing them both he might make an escape, he would do so.
At long last the girl turned to him and snapped her fingers. “You,” she said, “stand.”
He tried to obey, tried and failed. How had he thought to kill them and make an escape? His strength, as his defiance, had come to an end.
“I cannot.” His voice was raw, his eyes were raw, and tears began spilling down his cheeks again.
The girl stared and for a moment her face went slack with pity. Then she glanced at the lashai, set her mouth, and shrugged before reaching for one of the larger bundles. She unwrapped it as she crossed the room, set it on the bench next to him, and pulled him to his feet. The room lurched dangerously.
“Stand,” she told him again, and he found that he could. Barely.
She dressed him as if he were a child, or a corpse to be laid out for burial. Yellow silk again—Jian found that he had come to loathe the sight of it—a long robe, fine in quality and make but plain and unadorned, falling well past the knees. Black silk trousers, loose through the leg and gathered at the ankle, and tall boots of pressed felt with upturned toes and leather soles. A shorter robe of sheer black spidersilk went over all, and a wide belt that tied at the back.
When she had finished the girl stood before him, fussing with the belt and the lay of the cloth. Jian glanced at the lashai. The gray servant seemed indifferent. Still, he kept his voice low.
“What is this? What is happening?”
She would not meet his eyes.
“Do you know?” He caught her arm. “Please tell me. Please.”
She shrugged away from his grip and shot him a look that mixed anger and fear and guilt in equal measure. “I cannot say.”
“Please.”
“I cannot say.” She put her hand against his chest and gave him a little shove, so that he staggered backward and half-sat, half-fell upon the low bench.
The girl turned to the lashai and bowed low. “He is finished. I will have the rest sent up to the Yellow Palace.” She barely waited for the servant’s nod before turning to flee through the door by which she had entered.
The lashai looked down at Jian with mocking eyes. When it turned to leave he staggered to his feet and followed, defeated.
* * *
Xienpei was waiting for them.
“Leave us,” she said. The servant bowed and walked away without a backward glance. Xienpei turned to Jian and smiled. “Let me look at you. Up and walking about as if nothing had happened. Oh, these are yours.” She reached into the pocket of her robe and drew out Jian’s necklaces of jade, and amber, and pearl, and looped them over his head. None of it felt real. “Come, walk with me. It will help move the tsai-si through your blood.”
A tremor passed through Jian, and he thought his legs would collapse from beneath him. Xien
pei put her hand on his shoulder to steady him, and then took his arm and led him away. The market square was dotted with kneeling servants, each with a bucket and brush and paddle, washing away every trace of the day’s events. He realized with fresh horror that this place was the scene of such slaughter every year, this place he had visited with his mother time and again to buy honeyed ice from the mountains and laugh at the fools’ plays. He should have known. Somehow, he should have known. Next year, in the very place he had fallen, people would laugh, and flirt, and bid on livestock, and watch the jugglers…
“Is it not a beautiful day?” Xienpei’s eyes were bright, and her jeweled smile blinding. “Come, come, I want you to see something.” Together they crossed the square and walked through the gates, which had been flung wide and left unguarded, and into the Princes’ District of Khanbul. The black smoke still rose in the west, but she took his arm and pointed eastward, toward the palaces of the Daechen rising yellow and white and black. Beyond that he could just make out the shining walls of the Forbidden City and the golden dome of Taizhen Dao, the Palace of the Last Dawn.
“Do you see this path?”
It was more of a road than a path, cobbled and well kept, wide enough for five carts to drive abreast. He nodded.
“This path is five thousand years old,” she told him. “Five thousand years ago, our first emperor had these very stones set down, that those few who were worthy might one day find their way to the palace. To learn the ways of Daechen, to walk the paths of day and night, of roses and moonlight, to pass through the courts of the soul and kindle the fires,” she touched one hand to her heart in an odd gesture, “and add to His Illumination. You cannot understand what I am saying yet, but you will. I am telling you, Daechen Jian, that five thousand years ago the emperor laid this path for you.” Her smile turned inward.
The Dragon's Legacy Page 17
