four

Well, what? Should I just sit quietly with all the other women—”

“Mei Feng, he doesn’t have any other women.”

“With his mother, then. Does anyone think I should sit there in the women’s quarters with his mother and just wait to hear news, eventually, when someone dares, someone deigns to sail across the strait and bring it to us?”

“Yes, of course. That’s what everyone thinks you should do. Everyone who doesn’t know you,” Jiao amended hastily. “They’re going to be disappointed, then, aren’t they?” Disappointed was hardly the word for it. Surprised, astonished, outraged: those came closer. But only the people who didn’t know her, and why should she care about them? Jiao did understand, entirely. Which was why she had bribed the jade ship’s captain with promises of imperial favor hereafter. Those promises could yet turn out untrue—when the emperor found out about this, he might be angry to the point of executions—but they had been made in good faith, and Jiao was easy about them.

Besides, she had left broken promises in her wake before, and men dead because of them, and had never yet been haunted by vengeful ghosts.

She said, “His mother will likely think you’ve dressed up as a man and sneaked aboard with the soldiers.”

Likely, everyone would think it. Mei Feng still kept her hair cropped boy-short—the Son of Heaven liked it, apparently: though that might only be because he had no experience of long hair, or because he liked her however she came, or because she liked it herself and therefore so did he—and she was infamously more at home with sailors than with courtiers, and had wickedly seduced the emperor into spending weeks and weeks in the forest with a camp of unschooled fighters. Where else should they look for her now, but among those same fighters on their way to war?

Jiao still thought she would look better with the soldiers. Not all of them were men, though the women were almost entirely among the emperor’s personal guard, where Mei Feng dare not go. Jiao was an exception; Mei Feng might have tried to be another. She looked far less comfortable, more out of place here in a cabin, with a flurry of more or less reluctant women.

Which Jiao very carefully did not say to her, because no good ever came of that kind of honesty. Instead, she said, “When the time comes to take the girl on deck,” when the dragon comes was what she meant, “will you be staying down here out of sight?”

Oh, the glare! That was what she’d worked for. She didn’t need the words that came with, the torrent of denial, “No, I will not be staying down here out of sight! These are my responsibility,” with a nod sideways to the two girls, the big one and her younger sister who was so very much in charge, “and when we take them up to outface the dragon I will be going with them, standing with them, whatever may come of it. And …”

And actually that was when Jiao left the cabin, grinning as soon as she dared, as soon as her back was turned to the still-ranting Mei Feng.

LANDSFOLK HAVE no place on deck when a ship is leaving harbor. Jiao knew that better than most. Down, then: down to one of the holds, where these ships had ferried load after load of jade, year after year. Raw jade and carved jade, jade-dust and polished jewels: the air down there was heavy with the memory of stone.

The memory of stone and the presence, the immediate presence of men.

Too many men, packed too close. If the ship could carry its loads of stone, surely it could carry this load of bone and muscle; but this hold could not contain them. They were too nervous to be kept in the dark, swayed to a rhythm they couldn’t read, jostling one another as they slipped and snatched. Men couldn’t be stacked like jade, stored until wanted. They would be fighting soon; there would be blood and deaths before they ever crossed the strait, perhaps even before the dragon came.

It was the dragon, of course, they were afraid of. Regardless of goddesses and magic children, regardless of imperial promise and imperial risk. They had likely all bought amulets and charms that offered immunity from dragons, and still none of them would actually believe it until they saw her veer away, plunge into the sea, miss all the fleet entirely. Stowed away down here, of course they could see nothing. They stood or sat or squatted in the dark and waited to die, and were afraid and edgy and flung about by the sea’s heedlessness—where was that goddess when Jiao wanted her, to settle her waters down?—and any minute now, there would be trouble.

It was a hatch that Jiao flung open, so that she was gazing down into the mass of men. The fall of lamplight showed her a rise of hopeful, upturned faces. For the moment, she had their attention; a sudden toss of the hull or a careless elbow and a snarled curse would seize it from her.

She sat on the edge and let her legs dangle, booted feet just a little above their heads. Any other woman would be taking a chance: a fuck would do as well as fighting, to distract them from their fears. If the fuck was an effort, if the woman screamed and struggled, all the better. But these men knew her, or at least they knew who she was. No one down there would touch her without an invitation.

Which only added salt, of course, to her goading.

“Well, look at you,” she said, her voice pitched to carry to the farthest corner of the hold. “Packed like fish in a jar. Are you comfy down there, lads?”

A few voices called her down to join them, but the effort was half-hearted.

“Steady, now. If I had time, I’d take you all—but not all at once, and trust me, there is not time enough to give each of you the attention you deserve. A hero deserves a hero’s portion.”

A voice asked about Yu Shan, his heroic qualifications. She frowned, and reached as though to close the hatch; a dozen voices forestalled her, and there were sounds of a scuffle below.

“Ohé! Stop that, you let him be … Is that the man who doubts Yu Shan’s … capacity, is it?”

A mumble from the man himself, any number of others more assertive: yes, this was he, the fool, the disparager.

“Well. This is the hero who’s prepared to fight Yu Shan, is that right? To prove a man is better than a boy? Don’t you lot knock him about, that’s not fair. He needs to be fit when he faces my boy …”

A gale of laughter, all but drowning out the man’s humiliated, desperate pleas: no, he didn’t mean that, he didn’t mean anything, he didn’t want to fight Yu Shan …

“I don’t suppose you do. I don’t suppose any of you do. You’d need to, though; you’d need to best him first if you wanted to bed me. I’d insist on it. Tell you what, though,” she went on, in the face of their sullen silence. “Rather than fighting him, why not fight with him? Prove yourselves better, outpace him, outslaughter him? He’s only a boy, after all. And not a warrior.”

She let them ponder that, until, “We can’t fight with him, he’s with the other fleet!”

“He is, he’s with the emperor. So let’s race them to Santung, get there first, be in the city before they are. Then you can fight side by side when he arrives. You can do me a favor, show him how to use a blade, teach him some tricks maybe; he’s not stupid, but he’s no use with a tao. All he’s got is strength and speed, and he stole those from the emperor …”

While she bantered, the shift and sway of the hull had changed beneath them. They must be out in the open strait now. There would be less work on deck, less urgency, more tolerance for passengers. And a far greater chance of dragon. Almost a certainty.

Men like to see the thing that’s like to kill them.

She said, “Meantime, we’ve a long night to get through. What say we get up on deck before the light goes and the rain comes, before the rest of you ugly types spill out of the other holds? There’s no sleep tonight, and no one’s going to mind if we burn some lamp oil, so long as we keep out of the way. I’ve a flask, and so do half of you; and you’re all holding cash, and a curious yen to lose it to me in a game that I can’t possibly be any good at, being a woman and all …”

They had a ladder to climb, but few of them troubled to use it. Jiao backed away, and the hatch-rim was suddenly aswarm with hands as men leaped up and hauled themselves out. It was the best she could manage, one squad pacified and brought to hand; one squad that would fight with her all the way, watch her back, die with her if necessary. Not die for her, perhaps, not yet. That too might come, if the fighting turned bad.

If they ever came to fighting.

First, there was still the dragon.

And then—if they weren’t all eaten or drowned—she could play these men all night, bond them to her like a pirate crew, land-pirates.

And come the morning there would be fighting, war. That would keep her busy.

AND NONE of it, nothing of it could substitute for Yu Shan, or squeeze him out of her head. He lurked in her blood as much as her mind’s eye, his absence a constant dull ache that had her rubbing her arms although she was not cold, a hollowness in the air that had her always looking around although she knew he was not there.

It would not kill her; it would not even distract her when there was work to be done, fighting or ducking dragons or bonding with her men. Nor would it leave her, ever.

It felt, just a little, like the way he said he felt in the absence of jade. Needful, hungry, unsatisfied.

She was too old for this, and far too wise. And here none the less, caught somewhere between desert and desperation, a lack in her body and a yearning in her head.