six

Oh, and are you too speaking for the goddess now, is that her voice you are using?”

“No,” Tien said with a shudder. “No, it is not. I speak for myself. But I want you to go. I think you should go. I think you have to go, when she tells you to. This is her house, and those are her waters …”

It was a strange reversal, but Old Yen did not want to go to sea.

Not even to escape this hissing confrontation, Tien and the pirate Li Ton snarling at each other right here in the temple courtyard, which was twice profane: once for the fight itself in a holy place, and once again for what they were fighting over, whether or not they should obey the goddess.

It really wasn’t a question, as far as Old Yen understood it. Certainly it should not be a question here. In her house, as Tien said.

And yet, Old Yen stayed silent, and caught himself hopeful that the pirate would win the fight. He had served the goddess all his life, she was his second nature, the spirit that underlay his thoughts as much as she underlay the waters that he sailed; and yet he was afraid of her now, shudderingly reluctant, wanting not to be here.

And not to go to sea.

HIS GODDESS had always been private with him. Never secret—all the world knew him to be her devotee—but never ostentatious: he could talk as much as he liked about how she helped him find his way in fog or lifted him over a mud bank, and all that other people ever saw was good seamanship and local knowledge, never her hand at all.

He was accustomed to that and liked it, rather. Not for the praise it brought him, which he would shrug off discontentedly when it was offered, a coat that fitted ill; but for the sense of intimacy it left him with. What would she care, if no one recognized her touch? He knew it when it came.

Now she was speaking to him directly, and to others too. She borrowed the mouths of muted children but put her own voice within them, and it was nothing, nothing that he recognized. Or wanted to know, or to listen to.

He had excuses, one prime excuse, the dragon: she had allowed him to sail from the Forge to the mainland, but there was no reason to suppose she would allow him to sail back. There was every reason—wreckage on the water, bodies coming bloated to the shore—to imagine that she would not.

In truth, though, he was just a man who had heard at last the true voice of his goddess, and was appalled. And afraid. And wanted to be nowhere near her.

IT WOULD, of course, never be his choice whether he sailed or not.

He was beginning to think that it wouldn’t be Li Ton’s either.

The pirate was still trying to deny that.

“She didn’t tell me to go,” he said, blustering. “She said to tell the fisherman what he is to say to the dragon. Well, I have done that. When he is free to sail as he chooses, no doubt he will do as she says. At this time, he sails for me, where I choose. I see no profit in going back to the Forge, and no purpose in it. We will not go.”

“You’re afraid.”

Of course he was afraid, they were all afraid; of course he could not confess it. “The command is mine, you little fool; that is what matters here. Do you still not understand that? Have I not shown you …?”

He had not changed his clothes; he still wore the spatters of her uncle’s blood. Deliberately, Old Yen thought.

Her head came up, pride in sorrow; she would not be cowed. Not in here, in sight of the goddess, where she was oddly certain of her ground and Old Yen was oddly so very much not.

“That wasn’t command,” she said bluntly, truthfully. “That was desperation. You needed my, my, my uncle,” my uncle’s head, but apparently she couldn’t quite say that, “to save yourself. Perhaps you needed me too; you promised me to them. If I was under your command before, if I was,” meaning that she had never thought so, “I am not now. Perhaps I will stay, and do what I can with my uncle’s medicines, with his teaching and his books; if I do, that will be my choice. I still have a choice. You don’t. You and he,” a gesture of her chin toward Old Yen, “you’re under another command. She spoke to you—and what, you want to just ignore her?”

“I’ve seen fortune-tellers and their tricks before,” the pirate said unconvincingly, unconvinced.

“Do you think she’ll let you sail anywhere else? On her strait, with her message undelivered?”

“There is a world beyond the strait, girl.”

“I know that. But can you reach it?”

In Old Yen’s bastard boat, to sail against the will of the goddess? The dragon might bring storms, but tide and current were in her hands, under her control. He half thought that the boat itself would work against him. That was fancy, of course. But whether it was the boat or the water or the goddess herself rearing up like some sea-made monstrosity—now that he had heard her voice, all salt and weeds and the grindings of rock in water, he could not see her body except the same way, made of the water at its darkest—something he was sure would stop them if he steered anywhere except toward the Forge.

The pirate snarled, which was answer enough to say that he agreed. Then, “Well, say we go. Say we deliver her message, what then? Do you think I will bring your boy back to you?”

Old Yen was still astonished that Tien wasn’t looking to come herself, to be taken back to her boy. She shook her head, though. “Han will do as he chooses.”

“Really? I think the two of you are on different sides, girl. I think he will do as the dragon chooses.”

Old Yen thought so too. If the girl believed him, she did not seem broken by the news. Oddly tough she seemed as she drew herself up, as she almost faced him down, that stone-hard pirate three or four times her age and nastier than she could ever hope to be.

As she said, “He will come to me when he is ready, whether you bring him or not. And when he does, I will be ready for him. Whether the dragon comes with him or not.”

It was magnificent, and it should perhaps have been the end of things, defeat for the pirate, capitulation. Something had happened here, more than the brutality of loss: something had turned inside her, turned or changed, transmuted. Perhaps it was the courage of community, being here in a house of women, under the eye of the goddess; perhaps she thought she was untouchable, with the strength to make her own choices.

Perhaps she was right.

HE WAITED for the pirate’s word, and heard another voice instead.

Not the goddess again, no. The voice might carry her authority, but in a simple human sound: that nun who had met them at the temple door, who was not apparently a common nun at all but high priestess of this place.

Who had that dreadful child in her arms, mutilated and silent and full of dark promise, that voice just a stolen throat away.

She said, “You will be sailing, then? Where the goddess wills it?”

The pirate only glowered at her; it was Old Yen who had to say, “I think we will, mistress, yes.” If the goddess’s will could overcome the dragon’s. Which had to be an article of faith with him, or he would never have the courage to put to sea.

She smiled and nodded, as though it were an accepted fact. “I think you should take this boy with you. He and his mother … only harm each other, the longer they keep together. She cannot forget what she did to him, she cannot live with it, and neither can he. In another place, there is no reason why he should not thrive; here he never will.”

Old Yen looked immediately, without thought, to the girl Tien. She was a doctor, was she not? Or at least she had a doctor’s knowledge, albeit much of it in books, as yet unlearned. And the child was clearly unwell, so where else, where better should he go?

But she was backing away, shaking her head, raising her hands in refusal. Besides, it was himself to whom the nun was offering the child.

If Old Yen took it away from here, perhaps the goddess would not use it again. Thus far, she had only used children in her temples.

If it could be taught or induced to speak, perhaps she would not use it; she had only used mutes. Thus far.

Old Yen did not want the child at all, in any way. If it had been a normal healthy boy, he would not have wanted it. A eunuch, cut by its own mother? No, and twice no. A mouthpiece for the goddess, for such an appalling voice? No, never …

And yet this seemed as inevitable as the other, that he and the pirate would sail again for the Forge; and no, Old Yen really, really did not want to go to sea.

THERE WAS a knocking then, thunderous on the door, and voices calling. The priestess rolled her eyes.

“It’s not even latched,” she said, as though this were some simple domestic house. “Those will be soldiers. They need to make a noise now, every time they come, to show how delicate and respectful they are of us.”

And she thrust the child casually into Old Yen’s arms, as though this were some simple domestic arrangement, and went striding to the high wood of the door.

SOLDIERS IT was, a full squad of them, striding in behind an officer.

“Well,” said the priestess, “have you come to offer to the goddess, or to pray? She will be grateful either way, and take your gifts and words at equal value.”

Was that as barbed as it sounded? Old Yen wasn’t quite sure. But he was quite glad not to be the man who had to face this woman down.

Who was looking past the priestess now, scanning the temple courtyard and its open galleries around.

Who found Old Yen—a graybeard with an infant in his arms, an overgrown infant, silent and staring: probably an idiot, then—and ignored him entirely, looked straight past him.

And found Li Ton, necessarily, the only other man in the building and looking so piratical; and said, loudly and distinctly, making believe that he addressed the priestess when so clearly he did not, “Sister, I am here on commission from Tunghai Wang himself, seeking the eunuch Chu Lin.”

That was not, perhaps, the summons he expected or would have sought; some words carry a weight beyond their simple meaning.

Still, he was too proud to deny his status, or his former name, when he himself had sent it to the generalissimo.

“You have found him,” he said, mildly enough, “though I am more often known as Li Ton these days. That would be Captain Li Ton. Or General Chu Lin, perhaps, if you must. Thank Tunghai Wang for me, for his swift response to my message. What says he?”

“He says,” the officer replied, gesturing his men forward, “that the eunuch Chu Lin is to be stripped and manacled, and taken to await his justice. Which will be swift to come, I think, but slow to linger. He is extremely angry.”

LI TON gave up his weapons, and then his clothes. It was Old Yen’s first sight of his body, with its block tattoos and its cruel maiming: his first sight of imperial justice and its residues on anyone. He wanted to turn his head away, and would not.

Which meant that he was still staring, deliberately at Li Ton’s face rather than the appalling body beneath, when the pirate looked to find him.

And shaped words that Old Yen could read across distance, used as he was to reading Mei Feng’s lips in a storm: “Be sure you tell the dragon,” Li Ton mouthed mockingly, “she is not welcome in these waters.”

WHICH MEANT go on your own, clearly. Or with the boy Pao, no more company than that. Pao was good to sail the boat, but Old Yen would certainly not take him onto the Forge, to face the dragon.

The dragon might come to them, of course, in open water. If she was still in a sinking vein. And he had nothing to set against her, except …

He gazed down at the child, weighing heavy in his arms; and saw solemn black eyes looking back at him, and a mouth that was closed and still, no way to tell if the goddess had any hold on it at all.