The Secrets of Jin-shei Page 8

  “Eighteen?” Tai said, settling back into her pillow, suddenly sleepy. “That won’t be for a long time.”

  Rimshi stood over her, smiling, for a long time after she had fallen asleep, her dark hair spilled over the pillow. But her eyes were too bright, and the smile was a little sad; a whole tangle of emotions were filling Rimshi’s mind and heart. She was proud that Tai had been chosen for a tie so deep while still so young—and by no less a personage than the Little Empress herself. But there was also a fear, the fear born of her own past. The story she had never told Tai, who had idolized her father and was still mourning his loss.

  Rimshi had been sixteen when Tsexai had begun to court her; he had done it so subtly, so deftly, that she had not even realized that she was falling in love until it was done, and sealed, and irrevocable. And then Meilin had come to her, and Rimshi had known from the expression on her face that she had come with a hard thing to say. And it had been hard. It had almost been more than Rimshi could bear.

  “Tsexai … his family owns a business like our own,” Meilin had said. “So do two other families, but none have heirs of marriageable age. Like me. Like him. My family is all set to approach his, to ask for his hand, for me. Rimshi, if this does not happen, my family is going to be ruined—we are the smallest of the silk mills, and we cannot survive—and it is up to me—and I have to do this, this marriage has to happen. I know he wants to wed you. Has he approached you yet?”

  Rimshi had shaken her head mutely.

  “Then if he does … when he does … will you refuse him? I know what I ask, but I ask it for my family, for my ancestors. I’m sorry, Rimshi, I’m sorry, but I am asking you, in the name of jin-shei—I have no choice.”

  And neither had Rimshi.

  Tsexai had asked; Rimshi had refused the marriage token; Tsexai had married Meilin. They were, as far as Rimshi knew, happy together—they had a large family, and the combined business of both families was thriving.

  For a long time Rimshi had mourned, and when Gan had come for her she had accepted him, although he was much older than she and she was not in love with him. But he had been a good man, a caring husband, and a doting father for Tai, their only daughter. When Gan had died, Rimshi had honestly mourned him—and it had taken Tai a year to smile again.

  What will jin-shei give you, my daughter? What will it ask of you?

  From Rimshi it had taken joy, but it had returned contentment, and a good life. And a daughter she loved fiercely. A daughter she would never have had with Tsexai. Oh, children, probably—but not Tai, not the Tai with whom the Gods in Cahan had graced Rimshi’s life.

  She gazed on that daughter now with a strange premonitory dread, a heavy, sure knowledge that Tai’s fragile shoulders would have to bear the responsibilities of an Empire before this particular jin-shei binding was played out to its end. She had said to Tai that she was only just stepping out on this path, that the jin-shei was in its infancy, and this was true—she would only wake to its first morning on the next day. But where, oh where, was it taking her?

  Tai woke early, fretful, on the next morning. Her mother was still asleep on her matting, mouth slightly open, revealing the gap in her teeth. It was far too early for breakfast, it was barely dawn outside, the sky still dark and glimmering with stars. But Tai knew that she would not sleep again—she was fully awake, and all that this day was still to bring was quivering in her already. She got dressed very quietly, trying not to disturb her mother, thrust her feet into her sandals and slipped out of the room. She had meant to go into the garden for a while, but found herself angling for the balcony instead, the one where she had met with Antian on another early morning. For the first time since she had started spending her summers here in the Summer Palace Tai saw the sun rise over the mountains, painting distant snowy peaks first pale pink and then gold as the orb of the sun rose higher and spilled down the steep mountainsides. She watched the stars going out over her head, one by one, smaller and more fragile spirits extinguished by the blaze of the royal sun in the heavens. It was a thing of beauty and sadness and immense expectation, like waiting for something to be born.

  She had brought her journal along, the new red one that Antian had sent her, and sat down on the cold stone slabs of the terrace which the sun hadn’t warmed yet, with the journal in her lap, her little inkpot beside her, her jin-ashu letters as tiny and neat and meticulous as her embroidery.

  Saw the sun rise. Mother talked about liu-kala last night, and she was right, I feel something new beginning all around me. But nothing begins except that something else has ended, and I wonder what has ended for me this day. Like one of the stars in the sky this morning, I am gone—gone, but there is something else now where that which I was used to be—something greater than I was. Just like the stars vanish into the morning, and the sun appears, and all is light.

  “I didn’t think I’d find you here so early,” a soft voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Tai’s head came up. It was Antian, her hair in two plain long plaits again, looking much younger than her fourteen years, smiling.

  “I came because you told me mornings were beautiful here, too,” Tai said. “And … I could not sleep.”

  “I was eager for the day, too,” said Antian. She inclined her head a fraction at the red book Tai held, her smile broadening. “I am glad to see it is useful.”

  “It is beautiful,” Tai said, her fingers caressing the soft leather where they held the notebook. “I have never owned anything so precious.”

  “Then I will have to see that you get another just like it when you finish it,” said Antian, sounding genuinely delighted. “And then another, every year, my gift. Perhaps you’ll share some of its contents with me some time.”

  “Thank you,” whispered Tai. It was not a specific thanks she was expressing, not just for the notebook or the promise of its eternal replenishment; she was thanking Antian for opening the world to her a little, for sharing a wider sphere than Tai could ever have aspired to on her own.

  Antian understood, and reached out a hand. “Walk with me,” she said.

  Tai closed the journal notebook, folded the lid down firmly onto her inkpot, tucked everything into a pocket of her tunic, and reached out her own trembling fingers. Antian took her hand, tucked it under her arm, and led the way. Side by side like that, with the same dark hair braided in the same long plaits with Tai’s only a little more untidy than Antian’s, they really did look like sisters. Real sisters, sharing the same blood and kin.

  But this is better, thought Tai, her heart beating very fast. We are jin-shei. We are sisters of the heart.

  They left the balcony arm in arm and crossed over into the garden where the butterflies were waking, the flowers were beginning to open and the air was heady with scent. For the time being they did not talk; they exchanged a word here and there, when one of them would point to a hummingbird or a bumblebee as if neither had seen them before and whisper, “Look!” For the time being, that was enough. They had to learn to share time, to meld two different lives which had been running in two different streams until last night and had now merged into something bigger, deeper, stronger.

  “Look,” said Tai, yet again, pointing to something that had caught her eye in the garden. But she was also pointing at the pillars of the shaded cloister where the garden merged into the first open pavilions of the Summer Palace, and as she pointed a thin, fox-faced girl maybe a year or so younger than Antian peeled her back off a pillar on which she had been leaning, gave the two walking girls in the garden a smouldering look, and turned away sharply as though she had been stung by the sight of them.

  Tai snatched her arm back, embarrassed. The girl had been wearing turquoise silk, and her hair was dressed formally, with silk flowers and pearls.

  “Who was that?” she asked, cowed. The look that had whipped her had not been friendly.

  “That?” Antian said, smiling sadly. “That was my sister. My angry sister. That is Liudan.”

&nb
sp; But the look on Liudan’s face had not been anger. It had been a recoil born of fear. And pain. And loss.

  PART TWO

  Lan

  From mother’s arms to cradles

  to cribs we grow, and rise

  to our feet and walk; and when they

  lay the first milk tooth

  of Lan into a silk cloth where a fond mother

  keeps it always

  we are no longer babes.

  Qiu-Lin, Year 5 of the Cloud Emperor

  One

  It is very quiet out there tonight.

  Tai paused, lifting her brush from the page of her journal, listening to the silence.

  This was the first year that she had been in the Summer Palace without her mother—Rimshi had developed a debilitating cough and chest infection over the previous winter, and her physician, the healer Szewan who attended the women of the Imperial Court and who had been sent to take care of Rimshi by the Empress Yehonaia herself, had counseled against travel. But this was the second year of jin-shei between Tai and Antian, the Little Empress, and Tai had been invited along in her own right as a guest of the Court. She had not been given the quarters she and her mother usually occupied, out on the fringes of the Palace, in the outer courts. She had a room to herself this summer, close to Antian’s own suite—a room with a window that looked out into the garden, a room full of billowing curtains and soft cushions. There was even a servant who left a beaker of iced tea in the room every morning, when the heat came, as she did in all the women’s chambers.

  Tai felt awkward accepting all this. She also felt isolated. That she was jin-shei to Antian was an open secret in the court—but there were times that the hallowed precepts of jin-shei did clash with the more traditional strictures of status and class, and many of the inhabitants of the plush women’s wing in the Palace did not much like it that a commoner was invited to live among them. Antian was of age now, however; Tai had been a guest at the Little Empress’s Xat-Wau ceremony only that spring, and was witness to Antian’s grandmother, the old and fragile Dowager Empress, placing the red lacquered hairpin through Antian’s lustrous piled-up black hair. Antian was an adult, according to Syai custom. She was also a senior member of the Imperial household, with her own personal court which was now her responsibility. She had asked Tai to the Summer Palace, and the other women had to at least be polite.

  Or that was the theory of it. Tai had learned to tell the difference between three very specific kinds of women in the Court where she was concerned. There were those who were genuinely pleasant, and offered a smile or a kind word in passing even when Tai was not accompanied by Antian and they felt constrained to be polite in the presence of Tai’s powerful friend and protector.

  There were the ones who would pass Tai in silence if they came upon her alone, but smiled and fawned upon her when she was in Antian’s company; Tai soon learned to recognize a smile that did not reach the eyes and the touch of cold, reluctant fingers.

  And then there was Liudan.

  In the two years of her jin-shei tie to Antian, Tai had completely failed to get anything but cold hostility from Antian’s sister Liudan. It had started on the very first day of the jin-shei, when she and Antian had been walking in the very gardens that her room now gazed out into, when she had pointed at a flower and seen Liudan’s recoil from her.

  That was my sister. My angry sister.

  Antian had explained about Liudan, later.

  “I was only two when she was born,” Antian had said, “but my mother was the Empress and everyone spoiled me. Every concubine’s child is taken to belong to the Empress, of course, but when Liudan was born, Cai—that’s her mother—did not wish to give her up to be raised by a wet nurse and then the court.”

  “Which one is Cai? Have I met her?” Tai had asked.

  “No,” Antian had said, shaking her head. “Cai is dead. She was at the Court for only a few years, but she lived her life like a comet.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “She was a daughter of a poor farmer, up in the miserable rocks and stones of the north country. He could not afford to keep her—she was the ninth child in the family, the sixth daughter—and so he took her and two more of his daughters and brought them to Linh-an, and sold them into concubinage. Cai was the only one who made the Imperial Court.”

  “What of her sisters?” Tai had asked, her eyes wide.

  “Who knows? Cai never did, or at least never spoke of them after to anyone here in the Court.”

  “So what happened?” Tai had asked, held rapt by the sorrow she could sense between the lines of this tale, by the tendrils with which this sorrow had snared Liudan herself.

  “She might have been happy,” Antian had said. “I don’t know, I was only a child. Cai caught the Emperor’s eye quickly enough, but rumor had it not for long. She did bear him a daughter, though. One of only three daughters, including me, that he sired on his women. And we were all more or less born at the same time, too—there is just over a year between me and the next daughter, and then another year between her and Liudan. She’s the youngest of the female line. The rest, well, his line runs to boys. His sons, now, range from their twenties to babes in arms.”

  Tai was old enough to do the numbers on this. Inheritance went through the female line in Syai; the Emperor might rule the land, being male and having that power vested in him, but he came into his power through the woman he had married and who had been his path to the throne, and his legacy rested in the daughters he had sired. So the Emperor had secured his succession, and then provided a couple of spare heirs to the Empire, two other daughters, in case anything happened to the Little Empress. The boys would be married off well, and were of no further importance.

  But Liudan was the Second Spare, born of a mother who, once her duty was done, became a shadow in the Court, no longer noticed, no longer needed, supplanted by other women in the Emperor’s retinue of concubines. The only thing of value Cai would have had would have been her child … but Tai had extrapolated from Antian’s earlier words. Cai had not wished to let others raise her daughter—and perhaps, if she had borne a son, she would have been allowed to keep the child and rear him. But she had borne a potential heir—one twice removed from the throne, to be sure, but a potential heir nonetheless—and the child was taken away from her not long after it was born.

  “She must have been very lonely,” Tai had said.

  “She had two of us she grew up with,” Antian had said, misunderstanding and applying Tai’s words to Liudan, of whom she had just been speaking.

  “I meant Cai,” Tai had said. “What happened to her after Liudan was born? When did she die?”

  “I don’t really know,” Antian had said thoughtfully. “I do know they said that she was pregnant again less than a year after Liudan was born—but after that, I don’t know. It may be that it was thus she died—in childbirth—her and the babe both because when she disappeared from the Court there was no child left in her wake that I know of, male or female. But then there were the rumors.”

  “Of what?”

  “She was in some sort of disgrace,” Antian had said. “I don’t recall what, but she had done something that reflected badly on her. And that meant on Liudan, too, on her child.”

  And Tai had suddenly understood Liudan’s recoil in the garden. “She was the one left behind, wasn’t she?” Tai had whispered. “The child of the erring one. Without friends. Except you, Antian. Except you.”

  Antian had looked at her with lustrous dark eyes. “You see? You always understand. Yes, she grew up as the Third Princess, the youngest in protocol, the last in line, the not-quite-needed. And her mother had fallen from grace, and nobody wanted any part of her other than her continued existence.”

  “And she was afraid, wasn’t she? That morning in the garden, she was afraid that she would be the price of my coming into your life. She’d be abandoned if you chose another companion.”

  “Oh, she was never a co
mpanion—not like that—she is my sister.”

  “Is she mine, now, too?”

  “No, the jin-shei bond doesn’t mean you have to take Liudan on,” Antian had said with a smile. “Not like that. She is my blood-sister, and that makes it different from the jin-shei bond. And she is wrong, in that I am not going to abandon her just because I have found a jin-shei-bao to share my heart with. But she has always felt the edge of the Court turned at her, and she has always been angry at the world. And she has grown up alone, for all that these halls are teeming with brothers, sisters, and women who had been her mother’s companions.”

  “She is very pretty,” Tai had said.

  “So was Cai,” Antian had said. “I don’t remember her, not really—but there is a portrait that the Emperor had done, on ivory—the miniature stands in the Palace back in Linh-an. I’ll show you some time. She was very beautiful.”

  “It was a pity she was not loved,” Tai had said.

  Antian had given her a strange look. “Yes,” she had said slowly. “It was a pity.”

  It was the custom of the Court that one of the heirs always had to stay behind in Linh-an when the rest of the court came away to the Summer Palace—just in case of some calamity In the year that Tai and Antian entered into jin-shei, the third sister, Second Princess Oylian, had been the one to have remained in the sweltering capital city over that long hot summer. The year after that it had been Antian herself This third summer it was Liudan’s turn—and Tai, despite a guilty cast to her sense of relief, was not entirely unhappy that she did not have the angry Third Princess watching her and Antian together with smoldering, jealous eyes. Her feelings for Liudan ran the gamut from pity to deep resentment that she should be the focus of so much undeserved hatred for no better reason than that she was Antian’s chosen companion.