The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

curiosity.

      Khailin had peered out of the sedan chair’s curtains just as the bearers had started to turn into the courtyard, and caught a glimpse of the painted symbol on the left-hand pillar of the gate. Happiness. Indeed. Her current rather sour mood saw that sign only as a vague mockery today.

      She caught a glimpse of a figure on a pedal cart moving slowly away under the trees at the back of the courtyard, and her eyes narrowed a little at the sight of the cart’s occupant. For a moment it could have been anybody, any one of a thousand thin Linh-an waifs, clad in homespun, features shaded by a huge straw hat. But even as the sedan turned and started to bear Khailin out of sight of the cart and the figure on it, even as she clutched at the sedan chair’s curtains and peered intently at the disappearing cart, the girl on it fumbled under her chin and lifted off her hat, raising her face to the trees, giving Khailin one brief but adequate glimpse of the features she had committed to memory earlier that day at the Temple.

      Could it really be this easy?

      The little ugly God in the Second Circle was going to have a good fat offering the next time Khailin found herself at the Temple, if indeed this was the same child who had spoken with the Sage Lihui. Khailin scrabbled out of the chair almost before the bearers set it down, drawing a lazy reproof from her somnolent mother.

      ‘Khailin, when are you going to learn that a lady –’

      ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ Khailin said in swift, automatic and thoroughly meaningless apology, and raced into the house.

      The thick walls of the pagoda made the air inside soothingly cool after the hot streets, but Khailin didn’t stop to enjoy the change. She skidded around the entrance hall and past the curved staircase leading up to the second floor, and through the door under the stairs, carefully painted to make it practically invisible in the wall, into the back hallway and the servants’ quarters. A woman bearing a tray with delicate porcelain cups on it danced out of Khailin’s way, whisking the tray aside before Khailin smashed into it. A half-closed door further along the corridor stood ajar, giving Khailin a glimpse of a noisy, crowded kitchen. She nearly ran down another servant, this one bearing a neat bundle of laundry in a white linen bag. At the end of the corridor, a lacquered red door led outside – the back door for deliveries and for the servants’ quarters, the door which opened out into the back courtyard. Khailin flung it open, but emerged with a degree of calculated, stately slowness, not wanting to erupt outside looking like she was chasing demons. She was in time to see the back of the cart bouncing away around the corner of the house, with the girl, now wearing her hat again, bent over the steering bar. Seeing just the narrow childish back topped by that gigantic hat like some sort of exotic mushroom …; it was hard to be certain …; but a sure instinct of recognition made Khailin smile to herself.

      It was a simple matter after that to find out who the girl was and what she was doing at Cheleh’s house. Less than four hours had passed since Khailin had first set eyes on her in the Temple.

      She made a mental note to find out just who the little ugly deity was.

       Nine

      ‘We are here because of jin-shei,’ Rimshi said to Tai as they sat up late, talking, on the night that Antian’s gift and invitation had arrived from the Little Empress.

      ‘I know,’ Tai said, reaching with delight for one of her favourite fairy tales, the one that had been lived, had been real. ‘You were jin-shei-bao to one of the concubines, and she made the rest of them come to you for their Court gowns …;’ Tai had heard the story many times before but never tired of hearing about it – the story of Xien, her mother’s friend and jin-shei sister, the only child of a poverty-stricken family from the warrens of Linh-an whose bewitching dark green eyes and lotus-blossom skin Rimshi had been instrumental in bringing to the notice of the Imperial agents, and who had been raised to the Imperial Court to be the Emperor’s own love. Xien had never borne the Emperor any children, but she had been a beloved companion for years before a wasting disease took her when she was far too young. The Emperor had mourned her, and the Court had missed her; but by the time she was gone Rimshi, the companion of Xien’s childhood and her jin-shei-bao, was an essential without whose lavish and meticulous adornments on their garb the ladies of the Court felt incomplete and underdressed.

      Now Tai had followed in her mother’s footsteps and had gained a sister in the Imperial Court of Syai – but a sister of far higher lineage than Rimshi had ever aspired to.

      Tai knew about jin-shei, the theory and the protocol of it, but now it had suddenly leaped off the pages written in neat rows of jin-ashu, had taken a real physical shape from the ethereal words of her mother’s early stories. It was real now, it was hers. She had asked, in feverish excitement, what she had to do in response to the note the Little Empress had sent with her gift of the red leather journal, and Rimshi had instructed her to send a return message bearing the same words. It was Rimshi herself who took this reply back to the Palace, that same evening, and Antian had received it from her hand with a smile.

      ‘Tell her that I will look for her in the gardens tomorrow,’ she had said.

      ‘I will, Little Empress,’ Rimshi said, bowing.

      It was sealed, thus. Tai had been too keyed up to even think about going to bed, so Rimshi had made them both some green tea and they sat up well past Tai’s usual bedtime, talking about the magical day.

      ‘How do I talk to her? What do I call her?’ Tai had been in and out of this Court for years, tagging at Rimshi’s heels – but it had always been as someone who was there as an adjunct to somebody else. Someone whom the Court found necessary. A child, who ought to be invisible, addressing nobody and making sure that she was not observed by anyone long enough to be addressed. Now, it would be different …; or so Tai imagined. In all the tumult she had forgotten that she knew how to talk to this Princess, that she had done so already on the lost little balcony that morning.

      ‘She will not wish you to be too formal with her, now that you are her jin-shei,’ Rimshi said. ‘She wanted a sister and a companion, not a servant or a slave. She has enough attendants; she wants a friend.’

      ‘But I don’t know …;’

      ‘Hush, Tai-ban. You have to sleep this night. It will come right in the morning. This is the beginning, that is all – the liu-kala of your first jin-shei bond. It is barely born, in its first age, it cannot be expected to do all and know all.’

      ‘But it isn’t her first, is it?’ Tai asked.

      ‘I do not know; this is something that you will find out. This is how the circle grows – if she has other sisters in jin-shei she will tell you about them. They then may become your own, through her, if you choose to pledge with them – or they will remain your jin-shei-bao by proxy, a sister of a sister. But that is something that lies between you and your jin-shei-bao and concerns nobody else at all. I know of this one, now, because I am your mother, and it is still my task to know – but once you are of age, and that is not too many years in the future, this is something that is yours and yours alone. I probably will not know who your jin-shei sisters are when you are eighteen or twenty. I may not even know how many there are in your circle. And that is the right and proper way.’

      ‘Eighteen?’ Tai said, settling back into her pillow, suddenly sleepy. ‘That won’t be for a long time.’

      Rimshi stood over her, smiling, for a long time after she had fallen asleep, her dark hair spilled over the pillow. But her eyes were too bright, and the smile was a little sad; a whole tangle of emotions were filling Rimshi’s mind and heart. She was proud that Tai had been chosen for a tie so deep while still so young – and by no less a personage than the Little Empress herself. But there was also a fear, the fear born of her own past. The story she had never told Tai, who had idolized her father and was still mourning his loss.

      Rimshi