four
Chien Hua?”
“Mei Feng.” He always knew she was serious when she used his name. Whether his solemn response was a sign that he took her just as seriously, or whether he was only teasing—that, she wasn’t always certain of.
“Do you think you could—well, not grin quite so broadly when you see Yu Shan with Siew Ren, or with Jiao?”
“Or with both,” he said, and he was grinning in the darkness, she could hear it in his voice. She wanted to thump him.
He was emperor of the world, and she did thump him.
“Ow,” he said, quite unconvincingly. And then, “Why should I not grin? I think it’s funny. I think it was you who taught me how funny it was. I know it was you who almost swallowed her tongue from trying not to laugh, the day Siew Ren showed up.”
“Yes, lord—but time passes, moods change, and I don’t think it’s funny anymore.”
“I do,” he said stubbornly. And, “Time passes, moods change, people come to an accommodation. It’s only funny because they keep resisting. How many women did my father keep? And Yu Shan stumbles over two, and cannot make them happy …”
Mei Feng wasn’t prepared to guess how many of his father’s women had actually been happy. She saw no need to pierce his smug self-content, so long as he remained content to keep just the one woman himself. When that changed—well. She hoped to deal with it better than her friends were.
“He doesn’t know how,” she said, still struggling to introduce him to the idea that not everyone saw the world from the peculiar perspective of a dynastic throne. “None of them was expecting this. Yu Shan’s torn down the middle, Siew Ren is still angry, and Jiao—”
Jiao was the one who worried her most: because she was twice their age, and seemed to hurt twice as much because of that. And she had perhaps been hurt twice over, though she’d never admit it. She was the only one of them not to have seen the jade tiger. Of course she saw that as an omen. They all did. Only, Jiao saw it as an omen against herself. Yu Shan had been alone with Siew Ren when they saw it: how could that not be significant?
Mei Feng had been alone with the emperor when they saw it, but she didn’t think its significance had anything to do with them.
Well. There was nothing she could do just now about Jiao, except try to stop the emperor’s mocking. He didn’t see the harm, but it was one of his charms that he would listen so carefully and let her teach him. She was his tutor in the world, as he was hers in the palace.
And it wasn’t all lessons, explanations, worry. Sometimes they could just be quiet together. Or the other thing. He seemed to be thoroughly awake now; she thought they might be very noisy together, soon enough.
She did have another question for him, but later. Over breakfast, perhaps. He wasn’t a greedy boy—at least, as boys go, or emperors—but he did tend to linger over his breakfast.
“LORD?”
“Mei Feng. What have I done wrong now?”
“Nothing, lord,” with a swift reminiscent smile, “nothing at all. Except that I think you should eat more congee, and not so many eggs.”
“I like eggs. And I am emperor.”
“Yes, lord, and your farts are most imperial. But the ducks are not laying often at the moment, or else we are not finding them; and other people also like eggs, although they are not emperor. Also, congee is good for you.”
He smiled at her, in that sated way that suggested he might like to be sated again later, not too much later, if the opportunity arose. Ping Wen was waiting for them at the Autumn Palace site, and really, they ought to go today; but let someone else tell him that, or else she could tell him later. Not too much later, but just not immediately now.
Instead, “Lord, why did you ask Guangli to come here?”
“You know why. He is my jade carver. I am here, the jade is here, he should be here also.”
“Is that all?”
He frowned. “Isn’t it enough?”
Not for Jiao. Not to justify sending her away, making her miss the tiger, making her lose ground so far. She needs to feel it was important that she went, more than just your whimsy …
“Of course, lord. Never mind. When shall we go to see General Ping Wen?”
He made a face. “Tomorrow?”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I could say it again tomorrow?”
“No, lord. We need to do this. He won’t go back until we’ve seen him. Make him wait any longer, he’ll insist on coming here, and nobody wants that. I think we should go today. I’ll tell people to be ready, shall I? In an hour?”
She might never have seen him look more petulant or less imperial. He could always be managed, though, if he couldn’t be forced. His stubbornness was like his throne, all stone, too heavy to shift; but it stood on the softest of sand, no foundation at all—she blamed his mother, entirely—and that could be eaten away in patience, so that the whole edifice of his will would topple into the gentle stream that was hers.
ONCE PEOPLE were busy—arranging guards for the journey, sending scouts and messengers ahead so that no one would be surprised en route or on arrival—she went to find Guangli, where he had settled disconsolately into a hut.
Which he was sharing with Jiao, so no wonder he was disconsolate; but her bitter companionship was only sauce for his mood, not the root cause of it.
He felt as out of place, as uncomfortable here as Mei Feng had, her first days in the palace. She knew.
“Mei Feng, tell me. What am I doing here?”
She had found him squatting on his doorstep in watery sunshine, waiting for more rain. She valiantly resisted saying you are avoiding work, of course, as you have done since you arrived. Instead, she said, “The emperor wants you, and the emperor is here; and jade belongs to the emperor—”
“—and so do I, I know, but—”
“—and he means to stay out here, and there’s no point shipping the stone back and forth to the city, it makes far better sense if you’re here at hand.”
Even she wasn’t sure how much sense that made, truly. His expression was like flame on new growth, withering.
“Does it? Really? When the city is one day’s travel from here, and holds a house that doesn’t only offer simple amenities like dry beds and decent clothes and comfort, but also has the space and tools I need to work, and the stones I need to work on?”
“I think his majesty thought that if you were this close to the mines, new stones could be brought directly to you, or you could supervise their cutting, even, right in the mine there, and—”
“I don’t think his majesty thought at all. He just had a whim, and snapped his fingers, and dragged me away to this forsaken ditch that doesn’t have the courtesy even to pretend to be a mining valley. There’s nothing I can do here, Mei Feng, and I want to go home.”
It was another of his majesty’s whims that had spared Guangli’s life when that was absolutely forfeit to the law. She forbore to say so; instead, she seized on the one complaint she might be able to relieve.
“Is your hut uncomfortable?”
“The roof leaks,” he said flatly, knowing this to be an evasion but following anyway because truthfully, what else could either of them do? “Jiao doesn’t care, but it troubles me. And I am tired of sleeping—of not sleeping, rather—on a bed of ferns.”
“His majesty sleeps on the same ferns,” she said reprovingly.
“His majesty is young and magnificent, and I am neither. My bones hurt, worse in the mornings and worse yet in the wet. And I only have a journeyman’s tools, which would only allow me to do a journeyman’s work if I had any work to do, but I do not.”
“We gave you stone! Everything we brought back from the mines …”
Almost everything. They had collected what they could, against a promise of payment later. Yu Shan had insisted that every man and woman from the mountains needed a little piece of jade, on their person, all the time. Crude stone, unworked, that didn’t matter. They wore them as pendants mostly, against the softness of the throat.
The dust and sweepings the emperor had kept, for his meals.
All the rest of the jade had gone to Guangli, and he despised it.
“You gave me nothing. Nothing I can work with. Spoil, cracked pebbles, detritus. How am I supposed to work with pieces that come apart when I set an edge to them?” His hand made a gesture that started fierce and ended weary; his voice softened abruptly. “Not your fault, I know. You gave me what was there, what Yu Shan’s people had dug. Good jade is rare, and getting rarer; but I have good pieces under guard, back in the city. Work to do, work the emperor will love. The dragon I am carving on his commission, that is not finished yet. Mei Feng, tell your lord, I want to go home.”
Which was the one thing he could not do, of course, and neither could she. She could inveigle and manipulate and tease the emperor to his imperial heart’s content, but even she dared not tell him what to do, or what he did not want to hear. They both knew it. Fetched at a whim, Guangli was here until that whim should turn against him.
Instead, Mei Feng said, “You should come with us today.”
“What, where? Why?”
“To the Autumn Palace. We are going to meet with General Ping Wen,” who actually would try to tell the emperor what to do, what he did not want to hear. That should be interesting. “You should come to see the site, to understand his majesty’s plans. You might have ideas to contribute. We can tell the emperor that, at least,” with a smile to be shared between the two of them, no farther. It came by nature now; she was learning all the arts of conspiracy, too quickly for her entire comfort. “You might rather stay there than here. The emperor wouldn’t mind; it is his palace, after all. Going to be. We’ll be spending more time there as the work progresses. Even now, you might think it more civilized. Less jungly. We can find you a tent that doesn’t leak. And we could bring a wagonload of your things out from the city, if you wanted: stone, tools. Your own bed …”
For herself, she had far sooner be here in the valley compound. Small, enclosed, protected: it was like a village, where the palace site was a city even now, albeit a city of tents and men. Far too many men, packed far too close together and worked too hard: small wonder if they quarreled and fought for amusement. Even without the knowledge that any one of them could be a spy or an assassin, she could never be comfortable there. With that knowledge, she was nervous every moment, desperate to take the emperor away, and utterly unable.
Which was her remembered reason for being here: “Guangli,” while he was still mulling over the suggestion, “I have a commission for you.”
He was distrustful, thinking that she’d offer him some make-work, a trinket to be carved for herself or for her lord. Something to keep him busy and make him feel useful. Of course he was.
She nodded firmly. “We are told that one of the Lords of Heaven has an armor made of jade, yes?” She wasn’t strong on mainland gods, but this was common knowledge.
“Of course. Lin Bao: it turned the serpent’s tooth, when he went down into hell for his beloved.”
“Yes, because he had modeled it on the serpent’s scales, so it would not shatter at the strike. Guangli, is that actually possible? Could you make an armor out of jade, a scaled armor, that a man might wear?”
He shook his head instantly. “It would be impossibly heavy, he wouldn’t be able to move. It needs a god to carry such a suit.”
“My lord the emperor is a god.”
Technically, at least, that was true; and it amused them both for her to remind him of it, now and then. More to the point, he was a man infected with jade from birth, who still ate jade-dust daily and wore stone next to his skin. He was strong past any mortal measure. And terrifyingly quick to heal, magically quick, but she still feared assassins and wanted him better protected in the world.
Guangli whistled air softly through his teeth. “The emperor … Yes, he could wear it. And lawfully too, the only man who could … Does he want it? I have heard that blades cannot cut him.”
“That … is not true. I have seen him cut, and almost killed. I want this, Guangli.”
“Will he wear it, though?”
“If I ask him to, and if he loves it.”
Guangli’s head was shaking again, more in thought than refusal. “It will be … cumbersome.”
“No. You can make it better than that. Snakeskin is not cumber some. The finer you make the scales, the more supple it will be.”
“And the stronger, too. But you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes, I do.” She was laying a challenge at his feet, something far beyond makework. “Make my lord safe, Guangli. No one can, if you can’t. I will bring you the finest silkworkers from the city, to make a tunic for the scales to be sewn to. Quietly, though. He is not to know.”
“No one should know, until it is ready. Until it is perfect. Interlocking scales, that will give like skin to pressure but lock against a blow, resist a blade … Go away, Mei Feng, and let me work.”
“Come with us, though? To the palace site?”
“Yes, yes. I must watch the emperor as he walks, see how he moves …”
HE CAME like a muttering bearded demon in their midst, harmless and eccentric, with a bag of rejected jade fragments on his belt and a flake always in his palm, which he scraped at as he walked, as he stared at the emperor’s back and neck and arms.
“Mei Feng.”
“Lord?”
“What are you grinning at?”
“Oh, nothing much, lord. Nothing at all …”
“I,” reaching out a long arm and curling it around her neck, “am emperor of the world,” kissing the top of her head, “and you will not lie to me. Will you?”
“Never, lord!”
“Good. What were you grinning at?”
“I was just, just wondering …”
“Mmm?”
“How tall you are, lord. How broad.” How much jade the carver will need to make you a suit of clothes, and how he will ever make it cling and move like snakeskin …
“How wet, you mean,” for there was a river that ran across their path and they had to wade it, and so they were all sodden from the waist down.
The waist in his case, at least, this tall unlikely northern boy of hers. On her the water had come higher, significantly higher, even though she had clung to his arm and almost floated over.
“My lord knows that his physique is magnificent, and I do like to look upon it,” making a great show of doing exactly that, simply in order to make him blush. He would still do that, this great gauche awkward northern boy of hers; and now he had entirely forgotten his original complaint, and her present to him could go back to being a secret if she could keep it so, if she could trust the jade carver.
The jade carver and Jiao. No hope of keeping it secret from her, whether or not he kept within her hut.
Jiao was out there somewhere now, scouting ahead of them, not trusting the jungle any more than Mei Feng trusted the work site. Or so she said. More likely she didn’t trust herself to walk peaceably in company, when Yu Shan and his clan-cousin were in the party. As they had to be, because the emperor wouldn’t go anywhere without Yu Shan and Siew Ren wouldn’t let Yu Shan go anywhere without her.
And then there were the emperor’s bodyguards, half of them mountain folk, half soldiers from far away; they were hammering one another—quite hard, quite a lot of the time—into what seemed to be a single unit, almost a new clan. It wanted a name, perhaps.
For sure it wanted a captain, a leader, someone to take charge. Lacking that, lacking any voice of authority among them, they did more or less what they chose, individually or together. Which meant that more or less all of them were coming along, because nobody would agree to stay behind.
General Ping Wen had come to have a conversation with the emperor, and would find himself confronted by a circus.
Mei Feng was not entirely sure how that would go.