three

They did, of course, have to come back.

Mei Feng had always known that, in her heart. It was the emperor who had resisted the idea, with the stubbornness of absolute rank, not seeing why he should ever do what he did not want to do; and she had clung with joy to that intransigence, for as long as ever it could last.

Then General Ping Wen had come, with his plans for war; and her boy-emperor fell in with him almost gleefully, which was so strange and—to be honest—such a disappointment, after so long living free of the court, living almost wild in the forest. So now they were back, too abruptly, too soon: back in what used to be the jademaster’s palace and was the emperor’s now until his new Hidden City had been built, which would take longer if he sent all the soldiers off to war.

She wasn’t the only reluctant one. In the valley they had lived like a clan, all together, and most of them had learned to love it. She thought he had loved it too. But, We can’t plan a war from the jungle, he had said—in Ping Wen’s voice, frighteningly—and of course that was true, which was another reason why she thought they should have stayed.

Some few, the lucky few had stayed, if only to keep the idea alive, the emperor’s retreat in the mountains. And to keep some of them out of the palace. Pirates and jade-eaters, say. The rest were back, and not his clan-kin now. His personal guard, most of them, which was still a fine thing to be, but different. And she? She was his concubine again, and nothing more. She could look out of her window and across the courtyard to his mother’s wing, again; and he had deliberately put himself back under that woman’s wing, she thought. If that wasn’t entirely fair, well, she didn’t feel like being fair. She wasn’t obliged to be fair.

He had put himself even more into the hands of Ping Wen, whom Mei Feng liked and trusted no more than she did his mother. Less, perhaps. The empress would try to keep him safe and ineffectual; Ping Wen would do the opposite, make a hero of him, a leader and a warrior.

With faithful Ping Wen right there at his shoulder, of course, number two in the realm, just in case. She was painfully aware—who knew better?—that the emperor had no heir, and the Jade Throne could not be left empty.

Sickness, assassination, war: those were the means of untimely death available to an emperor. She could only think about it ironically, because thinking about it seriously gave her the terrors. Already there had been assassins, and now he was planning a war.

Sickness—well, no. He was absurdly robust. It came with the throne, his vigorous good health and radiant charm and energy and such. At least, it came with the jade that made the throne.

So did strength, the simple strength of stone, and its endurance. He had taken a blade to the chest, and survived it; he could fight all day and exhaust all opposition and still want exercise. If any man, any one man was made to survive a war, he was that one.

And yet, people did die in war however good they were. Emperors, indeed, had died in war. Miraculous powers of recovery wouldn’t stop a frenzied squad of soldiers hacking his head off, and there would be no coming back from that.

Mei Feng hated the thought of war in any case. She hated the actual war that had come so close, seizing Santung and sealing off Taishu. She had hated the little splinter of it that she saw, the assassins who slipped under the island’s skin and drove almost to the heart of empire, the emperor himself. Fleeing and fighting, blood and death, she had hated all of that.

More than anything she hated this, that her idiot the emperor would leave this island, load as many men as possible into the ramshackle fleet that they’d accumulated, and sail over the strait to fight Tunghai Wang and his rebels. The very army that they’d been fleeing for so long, that had driven them here to Taishu, driven the emperor to her in the dragon’s-breath fog.

She hated that he wanted to; she hated and dreaded that he would, that he was committed, if it could only be achieved.

HE WAS speaking to the council now as if it were all his own idea. He said, “We know what happened to Tunghai’s fleet, with so many of his men aboard. What’s left of the rebel army is stranded in Santung now, or else it’s in flight already. We will never have a better chance to strike. One blow, one battle and we can end this. Destroy Tunghai and all his traitors at a stroke …”

He wasn’t even talking like himself, but the council listened to him regardless. Some were nodding their agreement: old generals, men who had fought and won under his father, who thought that winning was the natural order. Who would have fought at the Hidden City when the rebels first rose, would have fought and died and lost everything sooner than run, if they had had command.

The empress was wiser. It was the empress, of course, who had seized up her son and fled, dragging everyone else along in her imperial wake.

She said, “Have you inherited your father’s folly, together with his empire?”

Her son looked at her, momentarily wordless. All the council waited for what in the world could follow. Mei Feng waited too, private in her corner with the tea-things.

“Your father,” said the woman who had perhaps known him best, “was foolish often, when he was young. I had his own word for that. Even later he made mistakes, which other men would pay for. Battles were lost, though few remember those. He became invincible mostly by means of outliving all his enemies, or waiting until they were old and weak before he struck against them. It is an effective tactic, but the first essential is to stay alive long enough to employ it.”

The simple scorn in her voice was like a blow. He did flinch, and Mei Feng almost wanted to cheer for the old woman. How strange was that, to find herself supporting the empress in an argument? With her boy? The empress was the enemy within the palace, whom they fought day in, day out. Until they left the palace.

Now they were back, and something had shifted. The world was new, and the old woman had acknowledged it; at last, she was actually right.

“That’s what I say,” he said, sounding almost child-like for a moment, urging his case against her implacability. “Tunghai is weak at last, and now …”

“Oh, and are you strong?” No one else could interrupt the emperor in council, no one else would dare; he didn’t know how to override her, so he subsided, looking weak. “Do you have more soldiers than you did a month ago, are they more willing to fight?”

“More than him,” he muttered, more and more the sulky boy. “We have more than he does!”

“And you know this how?”

“We saw the dragon destroy his fleet at sea, we have seen the bodies …!”

“Bodies, yes. The dragon, yes. The fleet? How many ships, how many men aboard them?”

His silence was her answer; she let it hang until at last, almost desperate, feeling it all threaten to slide away from him, he said, “We don’t know. How can we tell? No one has been over the strait to see. At least, no one has come back. But it must have been the most of his army.”

“Oh, must it so? Why not a scouting force, a probe, with the most of them held back for another day? How can you tell how many he has lost?”

“Because the dragon took so long to eat them.”

That was a score for him, alas, and he had had the line from her. She felt the mood of the room sway, these men so easily persuaded, they wanted war so much, to redeem their mortgaged honors and ride in triumph home, all those long months of miles along the same road where they’d fled.

But the old woman wasn’t done yet.

“Yes,” she said, “the dragon. Why have we not sent more spies to Santung, to try again to learn the true situation there?”

Again she waited, to force it out of him.

“No one will go now,” he mumbled.

“And why not, why don’t you command them across?”

“Because of the dragon. They are afraid …”

“Their fear means nothing, but the dragon, yes. No boat can evade the dragon’s eye, be it dark or day. If she will not let a sail by, then how can you mount this invasion, how can you have your foolish war? Will you tunnel to Santung? You cannot fly, unless the dragon carries you.”

To that, he simply had no answer and offered none. There was no answer to the dragon. The skies were hers, and the seas too. He could command his invasion—no, Ping Wen’s invasion, that he had so gleefully adopted—as often as he liked, as often as he could make men listen to him; blessedly, not he nor Ping Wen nor anyone could command the dragon.

ANOTHER BLESSING, someone came to take Mei Feng away from this: one of the palace eunuchs, sidling into the throne-room where the council met. That was Hui, who had given some time and attention to her when she was new to this life, when she needed training. She had a fondness for Hui, although he was the empress’s man through and through; she thought perhaps he was fond of her too. It was her that he came to now, rather to her astonishment, among all these great figures. He dropped to his knees behind her, as though she too were a person of importance, and leaned forward to murmur in her ear.

“There is a person, lady, who begs an audience.”

“With me?” It came out too loud; it turned heads. Now no voice would be quiet enough. The old woman at least could read lips, Mei Feng was sure of that. She gestured, then, outside; and bowed low to her puzzled lord and followed through the servants’ door, behind a screen in the corner. Probably not a good idea politically, too much like an admission of her proper status, but right now Mei Feng might not even want to argue that. Making the emperor’s tea hardly qualified her for responsibility and respect. Nor did quarreling with him in whispers in the night, in the suddenly awkward spaces of his bed, trapped by those same heavy curtains that used to offer such a welcome privacy.

OUTSIDE APPARENTLY meant literally outside, though it was raining. The eunuch had an umbrella to hold over her; there was none for her visitor. Visitors. In the public courtyard stood a bedraggled little group of three, not what she had been looking for. She had expected perhaps a message from the forest compound, where they had left some friends behind. Instead, here was a young and shaven-headed stranger, bowed shelteringly over a recumbent child: and—

“Grandfather!”

She should have hurtled, should have hugged him hard and could not, because that too would have found its way back to the empress. Which ought not to matter, never would have mattered until now. Now, though, when they slept hunched apart with their backs turned, when the emperor refused utterly to listen to her, he might slip back into old habits and allow himself to listen to his mother, to let her opinion influence his.

So no: under Hui’s eye, Mei Feng swallowed her delight. She must still have glowed; she might have bounced; her voice did rise indecorously, but only in that first squeal of joy. With that outside her, she could be moderate and duly deferential. She bowed courteously to the stranger, deeply and genuinely to Old Yen. She’d never really treated him with the respect he undoubtedly deserved, all the years she was living with him; she was a beloved child, and then she was crew, and both of those muddied the waters. Now she was—something else again, but distant from him, gone away. She could see him more clearly, and show him something of what she saw.

Also she could fuss over him outrageously, not to let him think that she had changed too much to bear. He always loved it when she fussed, he could be all gruff and weathered, as sweet and stubborn as his boat.

“Grandfather, honored Grandfather, whyever are you standing in the rain? What were my people thinking, to leave you so …?” This, of course, to the man who was soaked through five nights out of seven, who thought nothing of sailing across the strait and back with a bitter wind sealing sodden clothes to his skin, who would barely think of this as rain at all, though it was dripping from his beard.

She might have been more honestly angry about the child, who looked sick, or at least too big to be carried about that way unless he was sick. But she was completely confused about the child, and the man who carried him. Who were they, strays that Old Yen had collected somewhere? Probably so, but he wasn’t supposed to be bringing any more people over the strait. Why would he have fetched them here, and to her …?

Come to that, no one was supposed to be sailing the strait anymore, under the dragon’s watch. The empress had just been exulting about it, laying it like a piece in elephant chess to frustrate any invasion. For a moment there Mei Feng had forgotten that it ought to apply even to her grandfather.

She couldn’t take him or any of them into the palace; protocol would forbid her. She wouldn’t speak to anyone out here in the rain. Very well.

She signed them to follow, and led out of the courtyard and into the broad gardens behind. Hui shuffled along beside her, with the umbrella as his excuse. She kept him because she had to, because it would be a scandal else; she walked far enough ahead that the rain he kept off her would fall on him instead, his punishment for leaving her grandfather out in it.

She could not send him out of earshot, so anything said here would be passed on, directly to the empress. Hopefully Grandfather would understand the need, the absolute imperative to be discreet …

As they went along, though, Mei Feng remembered that she was not on terms with her beloved, that there would be no murmured, gleeful sharing of secrets in the curtained dark of the bed tonight, only the hard broad silence of his back. That, rather, she was at one with the empress for once. That, whatever Grandfather had brought her—strangers, a child, news in the flesh and otherwise—she might prefer to share it with the old woman than with the emperor.

That the old woman’s network of spies and servants could be her friend, if she could find a use for it.

That was a revelation, and it needed time to think about. Not now: here was the bench already, where she and Grandfather had sat once before. At least, he had sat while she knelt at his feet. She couldn’t do that today, in the rain and the mud with Hui watching. He had allowed it once, when she was new and foolish; now they were past that, she and he. But if she took the bench, at least Grandfather and the stranger could both come in under the shelter of its roof; and officially she was only a concubine, they needn’t kneel to her. Which was just as well, as Grandfather’s knees were not so good and the thought would probably not occur to him.

The stranger did just that, though, instinctively it seemed; and he took off his rice-straw rain hat so that she could see the stubble on his skull where a shave was growing out. Which explained those little hints of familiarity in the way he stood and moved and bowed: a shaved head was the swift sure way to lose a giveaway queue, if a man for example had to journey unprotected for many days before he could find a way back to his master. This man had been a palace servant, which was what the queue denoted, the intimate service of the emperor; which meant he was a eunuch, and had somehow contrived to come this far because what else could he do, where else did a eunuch belong, except in the service of the Son of Heaven?

And—

“Grandfather, where have you been?” Which was both a question and an accusation, if he was listening properly.

He said, “In Santung,” in a voice she hadn’t heard from him before.

“In Santung? Grandfather … !” That was more than she had expected, worse than she had imagined; it almost put the dragon out of her mind. She glanced instinctively at her eunuch servant under his umbrella. He heard that. Saying you have been to Santung is saying you have been to the enemy; and he is not truly my servant at all, he belongs to the empress. What he hears, she will hear. Oh, what is the death due to traitors …?

The eunuch smiled thinly. “Lady, this rain blurs an old man’s ears. I can hear nothing today.”

Did she believe him? No, of course not; the smile was to emphasize the lie, to draw her into the conspiracy.

Did she trust him? No, not that either. Of course not. Hui had been the empress’s man long and long before he was ever hers. Fondness could not outrank loyalty; it would not prevent betrayal.

But. Information was currency all through the palace, from top to bottom. The empress was weak just now, seeing her son in Ping Wen’s sleeve and not her own. Anything she had, which they did not: that would be jade to the empress in her bitterness, in her determination. Anything she could use.

Information, say, about the state of things in Santung …

Let this go to the empress, then. Mei Feng had Hui’s implicit promise not to bring consequences back to Grandfather. That would be the best that she could get from him, the most that he could offer; she did not think the empress would renege on it.

She didn’t think so. No. The old woman paid her debts.

She said, “Tell me, then. Was it in Santung that you found … these friends you have brought to me?”

“Mm? Oh—no. Well, yes. Yes and no. Mei Feng, this is Jung. He is, uh …”

“He is a eunuch,” she said quietly, “like my friend Hui here; and I think, like Hui, he must have been a servant in the Hidden City, am I right?”

Jung bowed. “Master Hui was too far above me to be troubled by my presence, but I watched him and admired and tried to learn. You see very clearly, lady.”

“I see a queue shaved off, and a hard road traveled; I think you were not always so thin. Young, though, I expect you have always been young.” Actually, he was older than her; she forgot sometimes, here at court, how young she was herself. And he was impetuous, unless he was desolate. Foolish either way, to chase so far after the emperor once he had been abandoned. Surely there were others like him, eunuchs left behind, finding other ways to live? Growing out their hair and learning to farm, learning to barter, learning that the world outside the wall was different and difficult but not impossible at all.

She said, “You are welcome here, Jung. You have made a brave journey to where your duty lies,” and oh, when did she become so formal? She sounded like a shadow-empress in a puppet-play, mouthing phrases while the real action went on behind her, where she couldn’t see. What the young man needed was a hot bath and a hot meal, clean clothes and a place to sleep, a place to call his own. Perhaps a hug. She couldn’t hug him, but she could at least arrange the rest. “Master Hui here will see to all your needs and comforts, and the emperor himself will see you tomorrow. But the child? Did you find him on your way, and take him up as charity?” For sure, the palace could take in one more boy—but this boy looked broken. Was he deformed, perhaps, or simple-minded? Something held him slack and heedless in Jung’s arms.

“No, lady. I carry him for Old Yen.”

“And I for the Li-goddess,” her grandfather grunted, just as swift to deny the child.

“Grandfather? A temple offering?” Sometimes a family had a diseased or crippled child and could not cope, would leave it to the nuns to raise and nurture. “Why bring him here?”

“Not … that. Not quite that. Mei Feng …”

He seemed stranded, on this difficult shore of words. She tried to help: “Did you find him in Santung?”

“The child, yes. In the temple. Not Jung, he found us later. But we brought the child here because we must, because he already belongs to the emperor.”

What was he saying …? It seemed as though she ought to know, but her only reading of it made no sense. This boy was small and thin and apparently crippled, but far from a baby; he couldn’t be the emperor’s child. Unless Chien Hua had been—well, precocious. And dishonest with her. Perhaps his mother had encouraged him? Emperors notoriously found it difficult to sire children. Supposedly the jade in their bodies poisoned their seed, so that a woman’s body could not nurture it. A wise woman, a dowager empress might well think that an early grandson would be a boon, treasure stored in heaven.

If her boy were old enough, and willing. If the babe were healthy. Perhaps it had been deliberately left behind, abandoned …?

Mei Feng still didn’t believe it. He would have told her; she would have learned it in his touch, that he was not new to the pleasures of his bed, her body. He certainly wouldn’t have lied.

She said, “I don’t understand. How—?”

How does this boy belong to the emperor, my emperor, my Chien Hua? Grandfather, be plain …

Perhaps he tried to be, but something overwhelmed him.

“By law,” he said. “As Jung does. Unless, unless he belongs to the goddess now. Mei Feng, we saw the dragon, but she kept us safe …”

“One thing at a time, Grandfather,” or they would all of them get utterly lost. She seized the gnarled strong rope-rough hands that were fretting at her gown, snagging the silk as they tried to make her see what he had seen, what he lacked the words to say; she held those hands tightly in her own, realizing suddenly how soft her own were becoming, how little use she would be now on the boat; she said, “What law—Oh. Oh, no …”

Unexpectedly, it was Hui—who had claimed, of course, not to be listening at all—who cleared matters up, brisk and kind and declaratory: “I think the little one must be a eunuch, lady.”

So did she, now, at last. Had rain and unhappiness made her stupid, or was she always this slow? Perhaps you didn’t need to be clever to sail a boat and net fish, net an emperor in a fog …

Her grandfather was nodding, and so was Jung. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. But how could …? Was it an accident?” Boys were castrated deliberately, even by their own parents, to win a place for them in the Hidden City, where they might rise and rise; but surely not in time of war, of rebellion, when the emperor had fled the palace …

Her grandfather was shaking his head. “It was … not an accident. A terrible thing.”

Something so terrible, he didn’t want to say. It must have been something of war, then; she knew that appalled him. Very well. No doubt Jung knew, and could be induced to tell her later.

She said, “Never mind. He belongs here, to us. That is enough. My women will take care of him; the emperor’s own doctor shall see him immediately. Hui, will you attend to that?”

“Of course, lady.”

“Good, thank you. Jung, would you prefer to be with the other eunuchs,” make friends, make a place for yourself, “or to stay with the child for a time?” Be fussed over yourself, no doubt, pretty young man with taking eyes; be better fed and sleep more comfortably, avoid other duties for a while …?

He said, “Please, lady, I would like to stay with the child.” Sensible young man with taking eyes—but Jung went on, “He is … special to me, to us both. He saved our lives, I think, on the water.”

“It was the goddess who saved us,” Old Yen said flatly. “The child is her vehicle, no more.”

“It is enough,” Jung retorted. “Without him—”

“Without him, I would not have sailed; but he was the goddess’s promise, her word in flesh, her doing.” Which was a grim thing, seemingly, from the way he tried to flinch back from his own words.

“Wait,” Mei Feng said, almost desperately. “Jung, can you tell me what happened?”

“Not properly, lady. I was late to this story, as your honorable grandfather has told you; I only saw the end, when the dragon came again.”

“Again?”

It was one word and she dropped it like a stone; she could almost not bear the weight of it.

Jung bowed his head, her grandfather lifted his to meet her eye to eye. “I had seen her at the Forge, before. When the pirate Li Ton had charge of my boat and me.”

Bewildered, she could only repeat, “The Forge?”

“Yes.”

“Why would—a pirate—take you there?” There had been a beacon on the Forge, she remembered, smoke still rising in the dawn before the dragon was seen to rise and plunge and rise again. Again and again. Before the bodies began to float ashore, before all the wreckage arrived.

“We were sent.”

“Grandfather …”

“We didn’t know what it meant, to set a blaze on the Forge-top that night. We had no choice anyway, he would have killed us if we refused—but we didn’t know about the fleet.

“We did that, yes, we built the beacon, under the pirate’s orders. The doctor and his niece, the boy in chains and me. We built it and burned it, and come the morning we saw the rebel fleet on its way to Taishu.”

She wished, she really wished he would stop talking now. It had been so hard to see him started, and now he dug his own grave with every word, he built the scaffold on which he would be tortured first. Hui was listening. Whatever was said here, it would be repeated to the empress; and to have in her hand the names of those who fired the beacon, that was power she would welcome. Power she would use. Mei Feng could not see, now, how to save her grandfather’s life.

“But, but that was a good thing in the end,” she said desperately. “Because the dragon rose and destroyed the fleet …”

“She did. Because the boy broke his chains, and hers.”

Mei Feng shook her head. Again. This story kept leaving her suddenly stranded, just when she thought she understood. “It was the monks who kept the dragon chained, you always told me that.”

“It was; and it was a survivor from the Forge who chained the boy, trying to echo their work. He managed, barely, for a time. She stirred, she was seen, we saw her; but she could not rise. Until the boy Han broke those chains. Then she was free, and any boat abroad on the water was in danger.

“She sank them, she sank them all; and then she came to the Forge. To kill us, I think, but she could not. She was not so free after all. The boy prevented her, and so we were allowed to sail away.

“The pirate made us sail to the mainland,” where something happened, it seemed, that Old Yen did not want to say; “and then he walked us into Santung. He wanted to speak to Tunghai, I think. He thought the doctor might bring him there. But there was … trouble, and the doctor died, and the pirate was arrested; and I, I was sent by the goddess. With a message. For the dragon …”

“Sent by the goddess? Grandfather …” She had never questioned his devotion, although she’d never really shared it. When she was a small girl, trips to the temple were fun, whether they involved tramps along clifftops or the tight fascinating streets of the big cities, Santung or Taishu-port. Smoke and bright colors and chanting, a moon-cake for the goddess and a moon-cake for herself: it was a treat to go, and an extra treat to go with Grandfather. By the time she understood that her father and uncles and most of their neighbors weren’t so devoted, that most other sea-captains either didn’t follow his heartfelt rituals at all or else did so in a perfunctory and dutiful manner—well, it didn’t matter. Most other sea-captains weren’t such good sailors either. That was what did matter by then: the kick of the living deck beneath bare feet, a taut rope and a batten-sail trimmed to catch the wind exactly, salt water and salt air and the heave and rush of the sea. She watched her grandfather and learned from him. And never quite learned his faith, but never quite learned to match him either at the steering oar or in his simple read of tide and weather: where the fish would be running, where drift would carry the boat, where to marry the two. It seemed … fair.

But this, now? He was old and strained and anxious; perhaps his mind had finally toppled over, from dedication to obsession? If he went to speak to the goddess, and actually heard her talking back to him …

He was nodding emphatically. “Yes. The Li-goddess sent me. She spoke to me: once in her little temple on the headland west of Santung, and then again in the city.”

“She spoke to you. How did she do that—through the priestess?” There was no priestess in the abandoned temple, as far as Mei Feng knew; they used it as a landmark more than a place of prayer. Grandfather liked to go up there sometimes, but she used to stay in the boat.

“Through the children,” he said. “There are refugees everywhere, and damaged children, mutes. She uses those. She used this poor boy,” a gesture to the silent child, “everyone heard him. Everyone in the temple. She spoke to the pirate, but it was a message for me.”

He sounded, she thought, entirely mad. She didn’t want to look at Hui, because his face and eye would confirm it. She didn’t want to speak, because her voice would give her away. Even mad, he would still understand her. He always had.

A silence fell, but only briefly; then the eunuch Jung lifted his head again, from where he had been smiling down at the unresponsive child.

“I wasn’t in the temple, lady,” he said, “but I believe the old man is right. The dragon would have drowned or swallowed us both on the water today, but something stopped her. She was enraged, but something stopped her, and calmed the waters. I thought it was the boy. Old Yen says it was his goddess.”

“It was the goddess. These are her waters, and she will not tolerate the dragon free. She used the children to say so. To me. It was my task to say it to the dragon. I thought, I thought she meant I should sail back to the Forge and tell the boy Han that we had left there. Let him tell the dragon. But the dragon was watching the strait, of course; and she saw us abroad and came for us, and …”

And, poor old man, he must have been terrified. Who would not be, confronted by the demon of all their early terrors? Every child on Taishu grew up with tales of the dragon beneath the sea, and how she was chained. Every fisherman’s child feared the day when she would rise. Just as inland children feared the night and what lay in holes beneath the earth, creatures of darkness, sea-children feared creatures of wind and water and storm. Dragons, that is to say: and the one dragon in particular, their own, the one they knew to be there.

After a long lifetime sailing above her head, listening to the monks’ great hammer pounding chains like a guarantee that she was safe in her prison below, he had heard its recent silence with dread. Mei Feng understood that. He was a man of faith: he couldn’t believe in the goddess but not in the dragon, or in the benevolence of one and not the malice of the other. How he had found the courage to sail deliberately into that maelstrom, where the one must be pitted against the other, she couldn’t imagine.

“She rose up from the sea, from the goddess’s own waters. I didn’t know what to do, except what the goddess had told me. So I cried the message up to her, before she could eat us. And I did, I did wonder if the goddess would be done with us then, if she would allow the dragon to … But of course not, she wouldn’t treat me so …”

He still didn’t sound entirely certain, Mei Feng thought. Something had shaken him. Not in his faith, but in his ardor, perhaps, or his tender regard. Something he had seen, and had not loved.

Never mind. She said, “So did the boy,” this wordless child in his utter absence, “did he speak to the dragon, is that what happened?”

“No, no. I had to do that. I had to speak to the dragon,” which had clearly been momentous, and she really wished she could have been there to see him standing in his frail boat and bellowing in his great sea-voice at a creature that could swallow him as easily as she breathed.

“And, what then, did the dragon listen to you? To the goddess, I mean, to her message?” This was how to get him telling stories, she had learned it long ago: ask the right questions, and let him find the answers one by one.

“She did understand me, I think, but she was … infuriated. She meant to kill us anyway, for sailing on her waters, but now she wanted to break the boat around us first, let us watch our own deaths coming …”

“So what happened?”

“They’re not her waters,” and he sounded almost smug in his goddess, almost as he used to. Mei Feng was still sure she could hear a difference in his voice. More awe than worship? Something. “She was furious, but she couldn’t touch us, the goddess wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t come close to us: the water wouldn’t carry her, and if she tried to fly she fell out of the air, and even the splash of her falling, even the wave from that never reached us. We might have been floating on a different sea.”

“He says it was his goddess,” Jung said softly, “but I think it was the boy. He has been like this all the way,” slack in the eunuch’s arms and slack apparently in his own head, staring in mute disinterest at whatever fell before his eyes, “except just then. He didn’t speak, not to the dragon; but he was alert and sitting up suddenly. He watched the dragon, his eyes followed her everywhere—and as the old man says, she could not come near us.”

It wasn’t quite a quarrel between Jung and Old Yen, whose hand had saved them, but it veered close. Mei Feng knew where she stood; she did want the boy to be more than a puppet, but nothing would allow it. He offered a convenient body where perhaps the goddess needed one—her spirit was too diffuse to work against the physicality of the dragon, unless she could be physical herself?—and so she used him. And then slipped away again, and left him as he was. Discarded, still ruined. Perhaps hurt a little more, damaged beyond recall. She was too big, and he too vulnerable …

Raped girls and mutilated boys, the lost and silent might be easier vessels for a goddess to inhabit than stubborn women and strong-willed old men. It was unbearable, but it might also be true.

Mei Feng said, “It is a wonderful story. My lord the emperor should hear it; he likes to know of his servants’ adventures, and he needs to learn more of the goddess. And the dragon. He is in council now with the lady empress his mother and the generals, but Ping Wen will—”

“Wait,” Old Yen said, startling her. “Ping Wen?”

“Yes. He is …” What was he, exactly? Chief of the council, governor of the island? Something, certainly, more than one general among the rest. He sat on her own little footstool in the emperor’s absence, and spoke in his name. He was the second man on Taishu, she supposed, in this new dispensation: almost the first, given that the emperor was something more than a man, afflicted with godhood.

“I know what he is,” Old Yen said urgently. “He is a traitor. The emperor must not trust him! Nor you, you must not. He will betray us all.”

“What? Grandfather!” She did not like Ping Wen, had not liked—or, indeed, trusted—him even before he hatched his plan for war and seduced her proud and gullible lord with it, but still … “You must not say such things! Really, you must not.” Ping Wen was a proud man himself, and not at all gullible; he might have as many ears in the palace as the old woman did. And pay them better. “How could you know this, anyway?”

“I was there,” he said. “Here, in the palace, in the throne-room. It was Ping Wen who put the pirate in command of my boat and sent us to the Forge, to light the beacon.”

She shook her head slowly. “No …”

“Mei Feng, it was.”

She didn’t disbelieve him, exactly: she was only bewildered. How could her grandfather have been here at the palace, taking orders of any kind from General Ping Wen? With a pirate? Nothing made sense, except perhaps his accusation. She hadn’t lived long in the court, but it was long enough to believe that traitors could be anywhere.

Even in the empress’s entourage, there could be traitors. There must be. Ping Wen would have his ears there above all, to learn what the old woman was saying, thinking, planning to do. Just as she would have her ears as close as possible to him.

Mei Feng glanced at the old eunuch Hui under his umbrella, and trusted him not at all.

Hui put a finger in his ear, miming rain and deafness. Well. She could trust that or not, it made no difference. He had heard, and he would use it as he chose. There were perhaps people who would poison him, sooner than let him speak; she was not one of those. Besides, she had no poisons.

Old Yen was urging her to warn the emperor, to have the general arrested, everything sensible and safe and impossible. She had advocated so much against Ping Wen these last days, she had so fallen out of favor with her lord already, he would not listen to her; and she couldn’t thrust her grandfather forward as a clear and unbiased witness. His open confession before the throne that he had helped to build that beacon would mean his death, unequivocally.

She was baffled, helpless; she needed an ally, and found unexpectedly that she had one.

If she could trust him.

Hui said, “Lady, I may have rain in my ears, but not yet in my head. If your honorable grandfather will tell us all that he knows, perhaps I can find a way to alert those who should be watchful of his majesty. It ought not to come from you, nor from my own mistress.”

No, indeed; the empress was in worse odor with her son than Mei Feng was herself. Those two were probably still arguing across the throne-room floor. While Ping Wen watched and listened and said very little, because the emperor was saying it all on his behalf. Digging the pit himself, perhaps, in which Ping Wen meant to trap him …?

Hui had lived all his life as a palace servant, at the heart of court. If anyone knew how to raise suspicions where they would do most good, he would be that one.

She would need to trust him. That was hard. The second lesson of palace life was that everyone needed a network, allies and servants and spies; the first lesson was to trust none of them.

And then there was Jung, listening. Too late to send him away, far too soon to trust him.

She took a breath, took a step, walked into conspiracy.

Said, “Yes. Grandfather …?”