by Zoe Marriott
How I wanted Yang Jie now. How I wished…
“Is that what’s the matter?” Wu Jiang asked, suddenly softening. His hand slid down my armoured wrist, attempting to entwine our fingers. I let my hand hang limp, still unwilling – unable – to find the energy to struggle. After a moment he gave up and clasped my hand between both of his instead. Cradling it as if it was … fragile. Breakable. “I’m not trying to get rid of you. This doesn’t change anything between us. I will keep my promises to you. After the war is over and the empire is safe, I will come for you, and I will meet your father and mother. And then I will bring you back here, to my home, and you and I shall be together.”
He gazed at me ardently. It was clear, horribly clear, that he did not have any idea what he had done. None at all. How could a man of such intelligence understand so little?
“No.” The word was like a heavy rock dropped into the quiet.
His patience was straining again. “I’ve already apologized. I will again, if you wish, but you must see that I had no choice. You must see this was for your own good.”
A shrill, sharp-edged sound – the fey laugh that I had discovered within myself while travelling through the endless dark in an iron cage – broke from my lips. Now Wu Jiang flinched. His hands tightened on mine, but I had experience against attackers bigger and stronger than I: a twist and a jerk brought me free.
I stepped back when he tried to touch me again. “What you did was nothing to do with my good at all.” Now rage was beginning to bubble up, prickling my skin and pounding in my ears. “You did this because you were afraid. You betrayed me because you are a coward.”
His face flushed, eyes flashing with anger. “Take care how you speak.”
“Why? What more can you possibly do to me now, Wu Jiang?” I asked, spreading my arms. “You have done what the Leopard himself could not do. You have destroyed me.”
He baulked. “No, that’s not—”
I raised one hand to silence him, and it shook, not with fear or upset, but with a fury that could gladly have torn him to pieces, and painted curses in his blood. I wanted to spit in his face, to scream at him. The effort of holding myself back made my voice emerge as a kind of low growl that echoed strangely from the jewelled pillars of the palace.
“If you had turned me in when you first discovered me, that would have been one thing. An officer doing his duty. But you didn’t. You promised me that you would keep my secret, that I could serve my country. I was fit for the rank of corporal, fit to serve you in the Glorious Brotherhood, to fetch and carry and scribble for you. I was fit to save your life, and to defend the emperor, and sacrifice myself in her place if necessary—”
“But that’s what made me see that this must end now!” he burst out. “It was sheer luck that you survived your ordeal – Hua Zhilan, I thought you were dead! I believed it! I wished I had died with you! How could you expect me to go through that again?”
I bared my teeth at him. “Women all over this empire must bear such a burden every day. If I were your wife or your concubine, you would expect me to wave you off to battle with love and encouraging words, and to wait patiently for your return. You would never stop to think of the courage that takes. The will that a woman must have, to live without knowing if her husband, the one who is her only protection from poverty, degradation and despair, is alive or dead. You selfish, spoiled prince. You were too afraid to let me go. And you had the nerve to call me unfit?”
I jerked around and began to walk away.
“Hua Zhilan!” he shouted, voice stony. “Return to the barracks. I will arrange for an escort to take you home. It’s too dangerous now for a woman to travel the country alone.”
The final cruelty. Without looking back at him, I replied, “I will never forgive you for what you have done today. You are the one who is unfit, Young General. Not me.”
I stalked through the glittering pillars, almost breaking into a run. But I wasn’t fast enough. Before I had taken five steps, I felt the heat of my fury drain away, leaving me cold and empty again. I clenched my hands and gritted my teeth to keep tears at bay. I would not cry for him.
I would not let him see me break.
I ignored Wu Jiang’s orders. I was already, in his eyes, a woman in a man’s uniform. Already insubordinate and insolent. I might as well be absent without leave, too. If Wu Jiang decided to have me flogged to death, it would at least save me the trouble of returning to my family and seeing the shame on their faces. So, riding through the city streets on Yulong’s back, I asked myself: what would a man – a real man like Wu Jiang – do in this situation?
There was only one answer.
Midway through the third cup of cheap, throat-burning wine, I realized that Wu Jiang hadn’t even presented my papers – the vital papers for which I had nearly died – to the emperor. The most urgent transfer of intelligence, in the face of an imminent invasion of our capital, and it had been deferred because he was too worried about his potential concubine.
It was laughable. I would laugh at it.
How was he going to explain that one to his aunt, I wondered? Meanly, I decided that he would probably seek to ameliorate her wrath by claiming the discovery of the intelligence for himself. After all, it was very evident that his idea of honour and mine were rivers that had never flowed together.
I didn’t allow myself to suffer any pangs of concern for the war effort. Not a single one. It was nothing to do with me any more.
Yes, at this instant my comrades must be scrambling to succeed at an impossible task, forming a viable defence against an attack that could come from within their own city walls at any time. Yes, the identity of the traitor and the location of the tunnel entrance were both still unknown. Yes, I had planned to be there with them, fighting alongside them and laying down my life for theirs, if necessary. But it wasn’t my concern any longer. I had been cast out.
I was unfit.
A serving man approached the shadowy corner where I was working steadily through my bottle of wine and tentatively asked me to stop laughing. It was disturbing the other customers.
I snarled at him through my teeth.
No one came to bother me for the rest of the afternoon.
By the time the curfew drums began to beat, I was so drunk that I had stopped wondering if and when the invasion would come. Didn’t care at all. All I wanted was a bed that stayed still, since the chair and the floor of the room where I was drinking kept heaving up and down like a river boat. I complained to the owner about it. He apologized earnestly, and had the serving man help me up the stairs to a room for the night. I heard a cheer go up behind me as I left, but didn’t waste any thought on it.
Several hours later, I woke to darkness and a headache that turned my own heartbeat against me, transforming each thump of my blood into a hammer blow that rattled my ear drums in my skull. My stomach churned with sickness, and my stupid eyes were already filling with tears.
I still remembered everything in excoriating detail, but now I was also ill. The man’s solution had failed me.
This, I thought miserably, should not have been a surprise.
Flowers on my bedroll, sweets, a new sword and a few kind words… I had allowed myself to be wooed into trust by these foolish things, and now I was justly punished.
The Young General. The fairy-tale prince. Handsome, intelligent, charming and gallant. What maiden wouldn’t fall all over herself to become his woman?
I didn’t know him at all. And he didn’t know me. We had never had a single real conversation, had we? He hadn’t sought one – and neither had I. We had colluded to keep our interactions on the shallowest level in every respect. Me, because I hadn’t really wanted a relationship with him, hadn’t wanted to play the role of “girl” for anyone, but had been too cowardly to admit it to myself or him. And he? Because he hadn’t believed there was any other way to interact with me.
He hadn’t thought there was more to know.
I remembered
a little rhyme that my mother had taught me when I was a child. She had often repeated it to me during our weaving lessons:
“To become a master of any art,
One must possess the hand,
The eye,
And the heart.
Only two,
Will not do.”
Was love an art? Building a friendship and the foundation of a family? I thought perhaps it was. This was what had been missing from all of my interactions with the Young General. Heart. Mine and his. How could anyone really care for another person if they did not seek to know them?
Wu Jiang had treated me like a figure from a ballad or epic poem. Like a fantasy woman. That sounded wonderful. But in reality it was terrible. In his head, that was all I was. An exquisite paper doll that walked and talked and breathed. Not a real person. Not a human being, like him, with my own ambitions, fears, passions, dreams. He had seen me as … a thing. An object. Something to be won and owned. A representation of his ideal.
An honourable man, I thought suddenly, should not have spoken of his feelings while I was in his power as his direct subordinate. He would have taken steps to remove me from his chain of command, even if that removed me from his presence. Instead, the Young General, seeking to secure his possession, had ensured that I was under his hand and eye at nearly all times. He had thought that was the way to entrap my heart.
It had nearly worked. Not quite. No. Not quite. He just couldn’t stop himself from pushing me, could he? Pushing me at all the wrong moments and in all the wrong ways. Whenever he tried to force me closer, instinctively I had drawn back. But I couldn’t flatter myself that I had been entirely immune to him, to this seemingly perfect ideal of manhood, and with a little more time…
I had been so very stupid.
The only person who had known me, seen me for who I truly was and cared for me anyway, had been Yang Jie. But I had not been ready to accept that understanding when he offered it. I hadn’t wanted to be known, to take the risk of laying myself open to his perceptive eyes. I had been sure that if even one person saw through me, subjected me to questions or doubts, then the new self – the true self – that I was busily discovering, would fall apart. And so I pushed him. Pushed him away.
I told myself that it was to protect my secret, to protect his safety. That the world was too dangerous for us to be together. But it was just cowardice. I had not been brave enough to trust him to love me, or to trust myself to love him back. In my own way, I had been as cruel in my fear as Wu Jiang in his.
If I had been honest with Yang Jie, things would have been entirely different between us. Perhaps it would have changed nothing that happened during the ambush. Or perhaps… But even if not, I would have had something. Something of him to remember and cherish, something that was real, before I lost him for ever.
I rolled over and buried my face in the sheets, letting tears leak out and pool, hot and uncomfortable, in the hollows on either side of my nose.
Close by in the narrow room, there was a soft, telltale click. The sound of the screen door unlocking.
My hands curled slowly into fists among the bedclothes. I focused on my breathing, forcing away my awareness of headache and nausea so that I could find my qi. With an effort that made my muscles tremble like plucked wires, I thrust the energy out of my pores, cloaking myself in a new illusion. That of rumpled sheets. The flat plains of an unmistakably empty bed.
If they were here to rob me then my saddlebags, thrown carelessly down next to the bed, would be their target. If murder was their aim, they would search the room for me. Which would it be?
I heard a cautious step – and then a surprised breath. They had expected to find the room occupied. No movement towards the saddlebags. I tensed, readying to fling myself from the bed and fight.
“Corporal, are you here?” a familiar voice asked softly. “I’m calling in that favour you owe me.”
Thirty
ou are aware the curfew is in effect?” I muttered grumpily, pulling the folds of my cloak up around my face as I slunk through the darkened alley.
“Astonishingly, yes,” Dou Xianniang replied over her shoulder, sounding both exasperated and amused. “This way, to the left.”
“We’re going to be caught.”
“I’ve never been caught before.”
I choked with outrage. “That’s how we met!”
“Shhh! Yes, but that’s the only time it ever happened. Through here.”
We turned right this time, and I saw that we had reached a dead end in the alley, an awkward, cramped little space hemmed in by walls on both sides. It stank of stale piss and rotting food. A small creature scurried over my foot and I tried to restrain my panicked jump. Clearly no one, including the department of municipal maintenance, paid much attention to this area.
Dou Xianniang waded fearlessly through piles of rubbish, reached in among the layers of half-dead creepers that covered the wall dividing this ward from the next, and then pulled back, leaning on her heels to utilize her full body weight.
A section of the wall swung slowly away, trailing a fine net thickly decorated with dead leaves, vines and cobwebs.
“This is completely illegal,” I protested, shocked. “The city statutes – anyone who knows about this could be arrested and flogged.”
“The people who know about this are well able to keep a secret. And I don’t believe for a moment that a person who has broken so many of the army’s laws really cares about city statutes. Now stop spluttering and help.” She ducked under the carefully constructed mess of vegetation. “We have to pull it shut from the other side and make sure it doesn’t show.”
I swallowed more protests and followed her, helping to push the camouflage net up and out of the narrow opening in the wall, and then drag that swinging section – cleverly built of wood that had been painted to blend in with the bricks – back into place. Once on the other side, in another narrow and less than fragrant alley, Dou Xianniang dragged heavy broken boxes and more rubbish into place to conceal the secret opening.
“Where are we going now?” I asked as she led me away from the unlit alley on to a main road. Brightly coloured lanterns – and brightly coloured ladies – decorated the street, and music and laughter flowed around us like water. This was the northern quarter.
Dou Xianniang, rearranging her own cloak so that her face was even more difficult to make out than usual, replied, “I told you. The place I usually stay here in the city.”
“But where is that? And if you have a place in the northern quarter – and a secret exit – then why in the world were you climbing over the wall that night we met?”
“Because I had other places to be,” she said. I noted her avoidance of the first question, but before I could point it out, she went on, “And the guards were patrolling this part of the city too closely that night for me to risk using that particular way out. I’m going to explain everything you need to know later, but for now, put your arm around my shoulder and act drunk. Drunker, I mean.”
“I’m entirely sober just now,” I said, obeying her and trying to hide my wince as the movement pulled at bruised ribs. “Unfortunately.”
“Were you always this whiny?” She laughed suddenly, a low, husky sound that sent an odd shiver down my spine. “Actually, never mind. You were.”
A pair of guardsmen walked by, faces alert but posture relaxed. I watched them pass with a frown. Where was the Leopard’s invasion? Had it been foiled before it started, and the story suppressed again? But surely victory over the rebels ought to be celebrated for public morale. Had they worked out the location of that tunnel entrance somehow?
Or had the invasion come at all?
What if it was happening right now—
“I can hear your brain whirring,” she whispered, her breath disturbing the fine hair next to my ear. I shivered again, fingers curling in the material at the shoulder of her cloak. I almost missed her next words. “Quick, in here.”
She yan
ked me sideways into the gap between two buildings. One fine-boned hand darted out and tapped a complex pattern on a narrow door. It opened silently, light spilling out into the dark gap. Dou Xianniang slipped inside. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I had little to lose any more, and stepped after her.
Inside was … not what I had expected. I shrugged the hood of my cloak back, looking around curiously. The shabby receiving hall was small and badly lit. An elderly woman sat by a glowing fire, rocking a baby and humming low in her throat. She didn’t open her eyes, or acknowledge our presence in any way. Wooden toys were abandoned on the floor at her feet, over a thick rug where a toddler slept, snuffling out bubbles of drool.
The person who had let us in handed her lantern to Dou Xianniang, then closed and locked the door behind us. She, too, held a child – a girl of four or five, balanced on her hip. The little one regarded us with large, wary eyes, chewing on her small fist. There was a purple, spreading bruise on her lower arm. It was the shape of a man’s hand.
The woman herself was young, well-dressed and remarkably pretty. An old brand puckered the flesh of her left cheek. I recognized the shape as one applied to the families of traitors, if they were lucky enough to escape execution. From the size and positioning, the paleness of the scar, it had been done when she was very small.
“This is him?” the woman asked Dou Xianniang in hushed tones, eyes darting shyly away from me.
“Yes. I’ll take him through to my room in a moment. Is Li Li all right?”
“In her body, at least. You must speak to her when you have the chance.”
“I will. Thank you, Sun Mei.”
“Good luck.” Sun Mei allowed her eyes to meet mine again for an instant. “And to you.”
I followed Dou Xianniang and the soft glow of the lantern’s light into a narrow, dark corridor. The lack of space and the shadows made my fists clench involuntarily. I breathed slowly, seeking calm. “What is this place?”
