The Hand, the Eye and the Heart Page 23

  One of the cabinet ministers, a frail old man, hit his knee with his fist. “What are you implying?”

  The emperor’s gaze could have frozen an inland sea. “Very well, for those who are struggling to keep up, I shall make it plain. There is a traitor at court. Someone who has enjoyed the very highest levels of my trust, and has had access to the most highly protected military secrets. In short – either someone who is here now, or one of their intimates.”

  “Your Majesty!” the Duke of Yang protested. “Surely the Leopard has placed spies among the servants and low merchants and grasping commoners who throng the palace – a dozen potential sources of information—”

  Another man interrupted. “Yes! To accuse us is really—”

  “After forty years of loyal service. After having laid down my sons’ lives, and my grandsons’ lives, in the defence of this nation…” one of the generals said sadly.

  The emperor showed no reaction to her servants’ indignation and outrage. She must have expected it. She leaned over and whispered in Wu Jiang’s ear. He blanched visibly, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed, but he nodded.

  “Gentlemen!” he shouted, his command voice rising over the discontented babble. “While you have been here, each of your houses, offices and properties, including properties belonging to your sons and other dependents, have been subjected to a thorough search.”

  Several of the more vigorous men leaped to their feet – and then froze as the servants and outriders whose presence I had wondered at earlier sprang into motion, weapons appearing in their hands as if by magic. I pressed myself warily back into the shelter of the fountain’s edge, keeping my hand from the hilt of my sword with an effort.

  Yang Jie cast me an inquiring, anxious look: Did you know about this?

  I shook my head vigorously, trying to convey Are you joking? with my eyebrows.

  It was suddenly very clear that the pleasant courtyard picnic had been a mere pretext to get all these powerful men here, off their guard and away from their supporters and staff. Now they were surrounded by servants loyal to the emperor only. A trembling silence fell over the courtyard.

  “Are you listening now? Good.” The emperor stood, majesty sweeping into place around her like an invisible robe. The dappled early morning light played over her, waves of light and shadow, applause from heaven. I drew in an awed breath, unable to take my eyes away even to see Yang Jie’s reaction.

  “Sit!” the emperor snapped at the two men who had remained on their feet. They collapsed back into their seats – puppets whose strings had been mercilessly severed. “Unless this treason is rooted out, the empire will fall. So let it end now. If you have a vestige of honour left, you will speak up. Who is the traitor?”

  They were all trapped here. They knew it. Like a volatile mixture of elements poured into a bottle and placed in a fire, a reaction was now inevitable: one of them must reveal themselves. They might make a break for it, attack, or confess, but whoever it was must do something…

  And yet the silence stretched on. And on.

  Behind me there was a faint whistle – and a hollow thud. I turned in time to see one of the armed servants fall, an arrow in his back.

  A black-and-gold arrow.

  I screamed, “Ambush!”

  Wu Jiang’s hand blurred up and snatched another arrow from the air less than an inch from the emperor’s face. She yelped, jerking back. Wu Jiang caught her shoulders and pushed her forcibly to the ground. I seized the crown prince, who was closest to me, and flung him down myself, covering his body with my own as a hail of the black-and-gold arrows turned the sky dark.

  There were screams and yells all around me. Ageing voices took up the cry: “Protect the emperor! Hold the line! Protect the emperor!”

  Beneath me the boy shrieked and squirmed, beating at my armour with tiny fists. I held on, my whole body cringing in anticipation of the impact of an arrow. My armour was light, made for riding. It would deflect a glancing blow from a sword or knife or a nearly spent arrow, but not a direct hit. And I was protecting the crown prince. At least half of the enemy arrows must be aiming for my charge – for me – right now.

  But the piercing blow did not come.

  There was a meaty thud, a choking sound of pain – cut off by a wet gurgle – and then a dead weight fell heavily across my back and shoulders. Li Xian’s outraged struggling faded from my awareness.

  Yang Jie.

  Please. Anything but that. Anyone but him. Please, please—

  Someone called my name. It was Wu Jiang. With one hand, he toppled Yang Jie’s limp form carelessly from mine, then reached down to drag both me and the crown prince upright.

  I caught a glimpse of Yang Jie’s still face, the vivid red splashed across his white skin, the arrow that should have pierced me bristling from his armour, his back—

  And I was screaming, screaming, screaming, wordless cries torn from my throat, my own fingernails clawing at my face and hair, tears spilling down my cheeks, screaming, No no NO, and Yang Jie’s name, but he didn’t move, he didn’t answer, Yang Jie—

  “Hua Zhi!” Wu Jiang shouted in my face. “Look at me!”

  I snapped back to find my hands hanging limp at my sides and my teeth closed so tightly over my own bottom lip that I had drawn blood. My eyes were dry. Wu was having to hold me upright as I sagged in his grasp. The moment of insanity had been in my head.

  I felt myself turn numb and remote, distant, as I had once before, after killing Captain Lu during the ambush on the camp. Brushing the Young General’s hands away, I made myself stand upright. Li Xian was sheltering, on his knees, against his mother’s side. Black-and-gold clad men were flooding from the trees, dozens of them, quickly overwhelming both the armed servants and the elderly men of the war cabinet who had formed a square around the emperor and her son at the fountain.

  General Wu spared one moment for a searching look at my face, nodded in apparent satisfaction, and turned to the emperor. He drew his sword. “We have to go.”

  “Inside?” The emperor’s eyes burned in her face, but her hand, where it clutched at her little boy, was steady.

  “It’s not defensible. There are too many of them. We have to split up, try for the horses, and run for it.”

  I saw her bare her teeth, as if against a mortal blow. “Take him.”

  “Your Majesty—” Wu Jiang began.

  The Duke of Yang, his long beard sodden red, fell back into the small clear space around us. He staggered past me, caught at the edge of the fountain – leaving a bloody handprint – and crumpled, landing by the emperor. Li Xian let out a cry of shock. The line of men defending us contracted. We were running out of time.

  The emperor grabbed the front of Wu Jiang’s armour with her free hand, somehow managing to shake his massive frame. “You take him! Get him out of here alive, or I will flay the skin from your bones, do you understand me? Take him – now! And don’t look back!”

  Wu Jiang spared another look at me, this one boiling with fury and frustration. “Protect the emperor, Hua Zhi. Try to lose them in the trees – I’ll get Li Xian out and bring help. Just stay alive until then!”

  I nodded, wordless, as Wu Jiang reached for Li Xian with his spare arm. The boy screamed. “No, Mama! No!”

  The emperor got to her feet, her head lifting proudly. The feathers glowed blue in her hair. “Hush, my son! Be brave. Go with your cousin and do whatever he says.”

  “Head for the hunting lodge but run past it – you’ll throw them off,” Wu Jiang said to me. He lifted the crown prince and held him against his side. The boy threw his arms around him, sobbing. “I’ll go over the fountain. Three, two—”

  One of the servants in the line of defence shrieked in agony as an enemy fighter slashed him. His voice drowned out Wu Jiang’s – but I saw the movement of his lips as he formed the final number. And I saw him whisper, “My orchid.”

  Then we were breaking in separate directions with our two precious charges.
I hurdled Yang Jie’s body – Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look – helped the emperor over it, and then dragged her towards the house as the enemy fighters surged forward with battle screams, slaughtering the last of our defenders.

  “Laying hands upon the Daughter of Heaven is a capital offence,” the emperor panted matter-of-factly as I pushed her bodily up on to one of the covered porches and then heaved her down again on the other side.

  “You may execute me later, Majesty.” I let go of her, my knife leaping into my hand as I caught the reins of the nearest horse – a tall bay that snorted and bucked, reacting to my barely suppressed panic and the smell of blood on me. I didn’t bother trying to untie the reins, just sliced them. It would make controlling the animal more difficult, but we had not a moment to spare.

  I turned to help the emperor mount. She was already throwing her arm over the saddle, flinging herself up in an ungraceful, scrambling rush. I shoved my knife back into my belt sheath, grabbed for the other half of the reins, dangling free, and leaped into the saddle before her.

  “Please hold on to me, and keep your head down,” I said, as politely as possible, furiously denying the urge to turn in the saddle, to look back and see what was happening behind me.

  To seek one last glimpse of Yang Jie.

  What if I was wrong, what if – what if he still lived – what if—

  No. He is gone.

  I could not survive if I let myself cling to that false hope. And I could not, would not risk turning and unseating the emperor. Yang Jie was gone. He was gone and now, somehow, I must go on.

  I felt the emperor’s arms go around me in a bruising grip. Holding one half of the reins tightly in each fist, I wheeled the animal sharply about. Then I let the horse do exactly what it had wanted to do since the screaming and fighting began: gallop headlong into the trees.

  Twenty-four

  he thin branches of the white and black trees whipped at our heads as the horse careered wildly through the narrow avenues between the trunks. I dragged at my shadow face, desperately trying to find the focus and power to extend it, to force the threads of my qi to flare out and hide all of us.

  My hands wavered and darkened before my eyes, disappearing against the horse’s hide and then shimmering back into existence. But the horse’s straining shoulders and flying mane remained stubbornly visible.

  “You’re a banner-breaker?” the emperor cried, a note of hope in her voice.

  “Barely!” I replied, too preoccupied to feel either shame or anxiety at the admission. “I’m trying…”

  I pushed again, a low grunt of effort punching out between my teeth as I tore the threads of energy away from my skin, mentally forcing them out around me in a crackling corona of colour and light. For an instant, I felt the emperor and the flying horse enveloped by the mantle of my gift.

  The threads snapped back hard enough to make my vision blur and my head sag on my shoulders. I slid dangerously on the saddle – only the emperor’s sudden fierce pinch on my arm kept me from fainting.

  It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work.

  I could hide myself. But not the emperor and not our mount.

  Father could vanish this horse in mid-flight, turn the emperor’s red-and-gold riding outfit into a mere shadow, and faze our pursuit without breaking into a sweat. If my father were here, the emperor would be safe already. But he wasn’t here.

  The emperor only had me.

  “I can’t hide us! I can’t do it, I’m sorry!”

  “We can’t outrun them,” the emperor shouted, despairing. “Not on a horse carrying two.”

  “I know,” I shouted back. “We have to find a place to hide you.”

  “Veer left!” she screamed into the scale armour at my neck. “Past the lake!”

  She knew the park – I didn’t. I had no choice but to trust her judgement. I hauled on the left part of the rein, struggling to control the animal as the flat, grey mirror of a small lake came into view. More trees, thick, bushy green cone shapes that offered better cover, flashed by on either side.

  “There!” the emperor shouted. “On the right!”

  There was a small cluster of buildings by the edge of the lake – a brightly painted gate, towers, a little temple.

  “What is it?”

  “A play village, for my son! His favourite game is The Ghost is Coming.”

  A hiding game – so there would be potential places to conceal her, though many of them might be obvious, meant for a child. And the little village was so very bright and obvious, out in the open. It was the first place that they would look. I hesitated. What if there was a better hiding place further on?

  I didn’t know how close the enemy was. But I knew they would be following as fast as they could, and we probably didn’t have much time before they sighted us. The horse was beginning to tire; we were slowing down. Even among all the trees, once they glimpsed us, all it would take was a lucky crossbow bolt to end this. We had to find cover before we were spotted.

  I made the choice quickly, steering the horse towards the tiny fake village. Halfway there I drew the animal to a halt.

  “What are you doing?” the emperor demanded.

  “They’ll be following the horse’s tracks. If we can send it off in the other direction and make our way to the play village on foot, they may continue to follow the horse and not realize we’re not on it for a while – or at least divide their forces to cover both possibilities.”

  Not that we have much more chance against thirty of the Leopard’s soldiers than sixty… I could see she knew this from her expression as I helped her down from the panting horse. But instead of pointing it out, the emperor surprised me by quoting: “Deceive the Heavens to cross the Ocean…”

  These were the teachings of a noted general from a generation ago. Girls and women were not allowed to read such books. But my father had allowed me to study them, and I supposed that an emperor would be another exception to the rule. I nodded. “Exactly.”

  She set off briskly, but with a slight stiffness to her gait. I turned the animal away, tied the reins up on its neck so that they would not tangle or trip it, and gave it a hearty slap on the rump. It let out an indignant whinny and broke into a tired trot. That was the best I could do. I hurried after the emperor, afraid of losing sight of her among the thick tree cover.

  By the time we reached the eerie ghost-town quiet of the mock village, the stiffness of her walk had become a decided limp. Long strands of hair were unravelling from her elaborate coiffure, tangling with the precious pearls of her headdress, and the silk of her riding outfit was stained and torn in places. She leaned tiredly on the painted lintel of the fake temple for a breath, then straightened with a grimace.

  “Do you know of any particularly good hiding places here?” I asked tentatively, made more uncomfortable by her obvious discomfort and dishevelment than I think I would have been if she had been stark naked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve never visited this place with him. I only had it built.”

  Then it was up to me. I turned in a quick circle, assessing the buildings that clustered around a small village square, and finally picking the third largest house, on the reasoning that it would have more possible hiding places than one of the small ones, but would be less obvious than the temple or the miniature version of a local governor’s house. I led the way, the emperor trailing wearily behind me. The small door, though unlatched, required both of us to duck to enter. Inside the house was mostly bare, thick with blown dirt and debris, and evidence of animal inhabitation. It smelled dry, but fusty. If Li Xian had ever played here, it had been a while ago.

  The emperor made a small sound of disgust.

  “The state of disarray is good,” I reassured her. “It means our presence here will be harder to discern. One moment.”

  Quickly I began to sound the walls and floor. Two obvious hiding spots – a cupboard and a false wall next to a hearth – I discarded immediately. In the next room, t
hough, I discovered a place in the floor that made a slightly hollow echo when I tapped it with my foot, as if one of the planks did not fit properly. Using the tip of my knife, I pried up the loose plank, and discovered a generous crawl-space under the boards. It had the same footprint as the room above, meaning there was enough room for both of us to hide. Best of all, if I could hold the plank firmly in place once we were beneath it, there would be no way to tell that any such hiding place existed at all.

  The emperor made another noise of disgust at the sight of the small hole in the floorboards. “Oh no – not in the dirt. Isn’t there anywhere better?”

  I ground my teeth together, then went to the window. The back of the house looked out over the woods we had just escaped from. I stared at them, wishing for Wu Jiang’s spyglass. If there was no sign of pursuit then we could perhaps afford to move to another building and—

  There was a glint of metal in the shade under the thick trees. Then another. I sucked in a sharp breath – then let it out as a foul swear word when I saw our horse, that damned horse, at the lakeside, leisurely bending its head to drink. It hadn’t run at all, simply trotted out of my view and made itself comfortable. It would lead the Leopard’s men straight to us.

  I spun around to see the emperor staring at me, all traces of petulance wiped from her face. “What is it?”

  “They’re here, and they know we’re here. Get in the floor now, Your Majesty. Hurry.”

  She scrambled down into the hole and I went after her. My boots hit moist earth with hardly any sound, and I reached back, caught the trick plank with one hand, and flicked it into place overhead with a thud.

  In the stingy trickles of light that spilled through the gaps between the floorboards, I rifled through my belt and found the four delicate paperweights – smooth, white pebbles, oblong and only a little thicker than my fingernails, their tops engraved with the four opening lines of a famous poem – that the Young General had given me weeks ago. Hastily, I wedged the weights into the narrow spaces on each side of the loose plank, hoping they would help to prevent the betraying hollow noise I had observed if – when – someone else walked over the floor.