two

It was entirely the wrong way around, for Guangli to be laughing and easy on the road while Jiao was increasingly uncomfortable. It was against the natural order. He was a jade carver, an aging man with a sedentary occupation, a heavy belly, a comfortable house and a settled life that the emperor’s word was fetching him away from. She was an outlaw, a pirate of the road, unencumbered and dangerous and free. This was her proper habitat and she should be rejoicing in it, she should be making a triumphant parade of herself, and …

And she was scowling and kicking dust like a sulking adolescent, while he smirked and prodded at her temper and marched along like a lad half his age, delighted to be out on the emperor’s highway with his discomforted companion. He was a mean-spirited old man and she was torn by honest doubt and worry about someone who mattered to her deeply, and …

“Tell me about this clan-cousin of his, then,” Guangli said, not at all for the first time, “who has kept him from coming with you.”

“It was the emperor,” she snarled, through gritted teeth and not at all for the first time, “who prevented him. He asked to come,” and never mind that he had asked to come alone. Guangli had no need to know that.

Guangli might have divined it, to judge by his snort of laughter. “Who is this girl, then, that he’s so eager to escape her and yet fails so profoundly? Is she so very dangerous?”

She’s half my age, and she’s been his seductive playmate all his life. Also, she amuses the emperor. So yes, she is so very dangerous …

Quite why it mattered so very much, when she had come and gone through a dozen dozen men’s lives and beds and never hurt too badly over any of them, that was a question she would have found hard to answer. And yet, it did matter. Extremely.

Which was why Guangli’s teasing mattered, immediately, now; why a long and cynical friendship stood suddenly in the hazard, because he couldn’t see the risk. Because he thought it no more than funny that she had lost her heart to a stripling, to a boy: when he of all people should have understood how much deeper it ran, like a vein of stone running all through her, twisting, lethal …

He might have learned just how lethal, because her temper was on a short chain and due to snap. Only there was a sound behind them, a sound that she hadn’t heard for a while. That had her stiff and still, turning to look although there was nothing to be seen yet around the bend in the road; gesturing to the old man to be silent, seriously, and to get off the crown of the road, get off the road altogether, get behind her and if that meant get into the ditch then it meant get into the ditch!

Thankfully, he was wise enough to understand how very much she meant that. Awkward under the load of his tools—wishing no doubt for his former apprentice, for Yu Shan, even as she was wishing for him too, as she had been all this damned journey—he stumbled over the verge and down, to stand sandals and feet and calf-deep in muddy water without the least real notion why he should, except that she had told him to.

He could hear it too, surely, the slurred steady rhythm of shuffle-running feet. Men in number, under discipline, under an urgency. It meant soldiers, necessarily. On this road, soldiers were nothing new but never in a hurry. Something had changed, then; and on this road, between the one palace and the other, any change must engage the emperor.

The absent emperor. This might be revolt, rebellion, an army uprising. More likely it would be his mother sending troops to fetch her wayward son: he might not come back for his generals, but for her, surely, he would come as he always had …?

Those were all the options Jiao could think of, in that little time she had for thinking. Here came the advance guard now, banner-men and troops, sweating hard and trotting steadily, at that mile-eating pace that she knew trained men could keep up all day. She could do it herself, if she had to.

The banners had a lot of yellow in them. So did the men’s uniforms, scarves flying free in the breeze, tassels around their spearheads. Not the pure yellow of the emperor’s own guard, but close enough. Too close. Any man on this road could claim to be on the emperor’s business, but few declared it in their clothing. She could do so herself, but she’d sooner keep that quiet; which being true, she stepped back off the verge and joined Guangli in the ditch. Better to look like peasants, better to pass entirely unnoticed by anyone this proud or this important. Who could command soldiers and dared assert such close imperial connections? His mother, again; his generals, perhaps.

And here came a high-wheeled carriage pulled by men, and that too was decked out with yellow streamers; and perhaps she and Guangli both should be kowtowing like real peasants, but she really needed to see this. Whoever it was in that carriage, they must be going to the new palace site, and the emperor would want to know.

Someone wise in the ways of the court might be able to read what the banners signified, this much yellow and that much blue; she was mystified. All she could usefully do was count the men and hurry back to the valley in the hills …

Except that the carriage stopped when it reached her, which made her lose her count entirely.

The carriage door had a sliding screen; it was a man’s hand that slid that screen aside, a man’s face that peered down at her from the shadows. Not the empress, then, she could tell the emperor that much. His mother wasn’t come herself in search of him. This could still be an envoy.

Except that the man looked entirely too haughty to be anyone’s envoy but his own; indeed, he looked thoroughly out of temper. Which gave her a clue, perhaps, knowing as she did how many messages had been run from the valley to the city and back.

He said, “You, there. Where are you going?”

She kept her head low like a terrified peasant, and made the vaguest possible gesture, along the road, highness, that way …

He said, “No. Don’t try to fob me off. Whom do you serve?”

He wouldn’t be satisfied with anything but a direct answer; he wouldn’t be satisfied with this, but none the less she said it. “We all serve the emperor, highness.”

“That is true, but would he miss you, if I took your heads now? Both of you?”

That brought her head up, no more dissembling. She met him eye to eye and said, “I think he would.”

“Yes, I thought so too. Where would you actually be going, if not to him?”

Guangli put his silence aside, to forestall her own answer: “To the new palace, of course, lord. I am a jade carver, and I thought there might be work. The woman is my bodyguard: unusual, I know, but she is an unusual woman. And she is right to say the emperor would miss my work, if I were not there to make it.”

“No,” the man in the carriage said again, and she was increasingly certain who he was. “Nice—but no. The new palace is not ready for its decoration, and no jademaster would let a skilled carver wander the island unsupervised.”

“Alas,” Guangli said, “the supply of jade has been … interrupted, since the emperor came. My master has seen none of any quality for too long; he thought perhaps it was being intercepted, diverted to the new palace, to await the emperor’s pleasure. And so he sends me, to please the emperor more.”

“Almost credible, old man—but, still, no. If you lie to me again, I will take your head in earnest. I think you know where the emperor actually is, and are going to him.”

It was imperative, she thought, to save Guangli’s head. And her own. She bowed low, and said, “Highness, we do. This is his favorite jade carver, and his majesty has sent for him.”

“Indeed. Why does his majesty want a jade carver?”

“He is in the mountains, highness, among the mines. Perhaps he has found a stone he wishes to see carved. I was only sent to fetch the man.”

“And to lie to your superiors if necessary, to see him safely there? I understand you perfectly. Very well, go your way. And tell his majesty that General Ping Wen has come to visit him; and is waiting at the site of the new palace, but will not wait for long. If his majesty does not come to me there, tell him, I must come to him. However hard he is to find. Tell him there are matters of great importance to discuss. Do you understand me?”

“Highness, I do.” And had foreguessed him, his name at least, which pleased her.

WHAT PLEASED her more, he clapped his hands and started his whole procession moving again, lifting the weight of empire from her shoulders. For a moment there, she’d felt as though the whole edifice had been looking at her, through him: assessing her place, her contribution. Her inadequacies.

She never felt that way when the emperor looked at her. Despite his rank and his extraordinary body, despite his astonishing eyes, despite his undeniable allure, when he looked at her she still only saw a boy. A boy’s curiosity, a boy’s amusement, a boy’s hope.

His empire had been missing all this time. Apparently his general had it, in the pocket of his sleeve.

Had it, and had taken it away.

She counted the hundred soldiers he had in his tail, and waited until the last of them had moved on, shuffle-shuffle out of sight.

Then she helped Guangli up out of the ditch, and set them both to following rather faster than they had been going before. No danger of catching up with the general again, even her long loping pace couldn’t match that short shuffling relentless run, even if Guangli could have kept up with her; but she thought the emperor should hear this sooner rather than later.

If that meant that she saw Yu Shan sooner rather than later, well. That was incidental.