three

Yu Shan watched the emperor discard the long yellow of his robe, watched him pull the rippling green of the armored shirt over his head, stone on skin—and felt a shiver of longing, a physical twitch in his own skin, as though it yearned to carry that weight again.

His tongue touched the little nub in his mouth, where flesh had overgrown his stolen splinter; his hand reached to his neck, where beads of jade lay openly against his throat. Those were gifts of the emperor, both the beads themselves and license to wear them: a sign of his generosity, a sign of his possession. I own your life, they said, that is truly my gift to you, and it was true. Actually, though, privately, Yu Shan thought that his life belonged to the stone. He thought it always had.

At his side now stood his clan-cousin Siew Ren, who thought his life belonged to her. She always had, it seemed. Once, she had taken him for granted; now she took him as a birthright, fiercely.

Jiao was elsewhere, on another ship. Yu Shan might have preferred yet one more, all three of them apart, but they went where they were told to go. Obviously the emperor’s own sworn guards—Siew Ren among them—would sail with the emperor. Jiao swore loyalty to no one. If half the guard thought of her as captain, that was strictly unofficial, unacknowledged by the emperor or herself. As witness, she was not here. If she were asked, she would say she went where she chose to go, where she could be most use. It wasn’t true, of course, but she might somehow manage to believe it.

Yu Shan would sail with the emperor, then, because the emperor would not let him out of his sight today. Siew Ren would sail with the emperor because she was sworn not to let him out of her sight. If that kept her at Yu Shan’s side too, it was a happy chance. For her. The eunuch boy would sail with the emperor because he belonged to the emperor and the goddess both together, and their claims could not be divided. The girl belonged to the goddess alone, and would sail on an old jade ship at the head of a second fleet.

If the goddess could speak through separate children in separate temples, she could surely protect two separate fleets. They thought.

No one knew, of course. No one even knew for sure that it was the children who guaranteed the protection of the goddess. When they spoke in her voice, it had been in the old man’s presence, both times; perhaps he was the lucky charm, the object of her interest.

Jiao was sailing on the jade ship with the girl.

Yu Shan looked, and couldn’t even see her. There was a pack of soldiers at every rail on the high-sided junk, a swarm of sailors clinging to her masts and rigging. Jiao might have been anywhere, on deck or above; she might have been with the girl, wherever she might be, on deck or below.

Was he turning to look for her, or turning away from the emperor, not to watch him in the wonder of that shirt, not to feel the hunger of it in his own yearning skin?

He didn’t know. Neither did Siew Ren, but she probably had suspicions. Her hand slipped determinedly into his, I am here and you are mine.

Best not to argue; easiest, perhaps, if it were true. Certainly he could pretend things were that uncomplicated. For a while, for a day or two, till they met up with Jiao again.

On the quayside, Mei Feng was kowtowing formally to the emperor. Here at last was something truly easy: to fail to hide a grin at the sight of it, to wonder conspicuously how long it had been since she’d done that. To feel Siew Ren’s nudge in his ribs and know that at last they stood in entirely the same place again, thinking entirely the same thought.

THE EMPEROR left Mei Feng on the boards of the wharf there, and came aboard Old Yen’s boat. That in itself was a procession, and a procession must needs be met; Siew Ren left Yu Shan’s side, and went to join those who ushered him watchfully into the cabin. When she took on a duty, she took it seriously. She’d been happy, he thought, in their valley with their people, happy in her prospect of him; now that she’d left it for his sake, and found him not the prospect that she’d thought, she needed something other to make sense in her life. Her little touch of jade made a potential soldier of her; training and enthusiasm and determination vindicated it. And a reason to be close to the emperor kept her close also to Yu Shan, whom she would not give up.

There was a sudden flurry of movement on the dockside, as the moorings were cast off. Of course the emperor would lead his fleets to sea. Besides, every captain else meant to follow Old Yen, so long as there was a dragon in the sky. Not all had sailed across the strait and back, to see the dragon defied; not all who had seen it believed entirely that the eunuch boy had warded her away; there was not a captain in either fleet who would stray far from Old Yen’s wake this crossing. It might have been the boy, and the girl might have that same magic, but who knew? It might all be the goddess’s kindness to her favorite fisherman. Best stay close, press at his stern, one fleet all the way …

All around the harbor, then, ropes were flung from wharf to deck, boats jostled for space, men cursed as they tried to ply poles and oars until they could get out to open water and the wind. What magic the fisherman had, Yu Shan didn’t know; perhaps it was only that other captains gave him space, for his own sake or the emperor’s. One way or another he found room for his steering oar, he found a current that gripped the keel, he even found a wind to fill a sail and draw him neatly out of harbor.

Everyone else on deck was looking forward to the sea or upward to the sky, anxious about the dragon or the war to come, or both. There was only Yu Shan looking back at who was left behind them.

The great jade ships took longer to unmoor, or else their captains were wise enough to wait until a waterway was clear. Or …

Yu Shan was, perhaps, still looking for a glimpse of Jiao. That ship above all seemed to be lingering, as though the captain waited for something specific. For someone …?

The emperor’s farewell party had paraded back toward the palace. His mother had disappeared from her balcony. There was only Mei Feng left, suddenly very small and alone despite the eunuch who stood with her.

They seemed to be walking the wrong way, farther down the wharf. Then they disappeared behind the bulk of the jade ship. Yu Shan watched sailors scurry about her decks; when he glanced back to the wharf, there was a eunuch, scurrying off alone.

No certainty that it was the same eunuch, they all looked alike in palace dress at a distance. No certainty of anything, but Yu Shan was smiling to himself as he turned away from the rail, as he looked to see where Siew Ren had gotten to, whether she might be willing to put up with him.