The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

danger of doing herself damage from it.

      There was an awkward moment of silence in which Tai would not raise her swimming eyes to look at him and he sat back helplessly, at a loss as to what to do next.

      ‘Are you all right now?’ Kito inquired at last, as she cradled the nearly drained tea bowl between her hands. It would have been impolite to ask, they did not even know each other’s names, but Kito had always had a high degree of empathy for people and some part of Tai’s pain had reached out and touched his own spirit. He found himself wanting to do something to help, anything, but not knowing the cause of it could not do anything to alleviate it.

      Tai understood his reluctance to ask, but felt that she owed him an explanation for bursting into tears upon catching sight of him at his work.

      ‘It’s …;’ she began, but her voice was still thick with the tears. She swallowed, hard, fighting back a new wave of weeping. ‘The Ivory Emperor’s beads. You were …;’

      Kito glanced back at his abandoned task. ‘Yes,’ he said, and his voice was oddly gentle. ‘I am making the mourning beads. And after that I will have to make the regency beads. For the Empress-Heir is still too young to be raised to the throne, and we do not know yet what the next reign’s bead is going to be.’

      Liudan. In all the time since she had nursed her grief for her lost jin-shei sister, Tai had given little thought to the promise she had given as Antian lay dying. Take care of my sister, she had said. Liudan. The angry one.

      The Empress-Heir. The Empress to be.

      ‘But how can I do that?’ she gasped, out loud, answering her own thoughts. How was she to fulfil her last vow to Antian? Liudan had never given Tai the time of day. She was three years older, proud, wounded by too many things Tai could not heal – and yet Tai had promised to take care of her.

      ‘Pardon?’ Kito said, startled.

      Tai finally raised her eyes, and there was gratitude in them, and a warmth of what was almost affection. She got to her feet; Kito unfolded his long adolescent frame and rose also, accepting the tea bowl she handed back to him.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, and even managed the shadow of a smile. ‘You have helped.’

      She is beautiful, Kito thought, irrationally, the thought having just swum into his mind from the Gods alone knew where. A part of him scoffed at it, because there was nothing of beauty in Tai’s flushed cheeks and eyes that were red and swollen from first the unshed tears and then the ones that had come out in a torrent of released grief. But there was something in that half-smile that was luminous.

      She bowed to him, formally, her palms together and her fingers laced, and stepped away, about to leave the booth.

      ‘Wait,’ Kito said suddenly, instinctively.

      He reached into the bin of the carved beads he had been working on, took out a whole one as yet unmarred by his ministrations, and folded Tai’s hand around it.

      ‘They will not,’ he said quietly, ‘all be destroyed.’

      The smile on her face lit up her eyes, just for a moment; her fingers closed tightly around the bead. Tai nodded her thanks, backed away, escaped through the outer gate into the streets of Linh-an, leaving Kito staring after her with an expression of astonishment.

       Four

      Tai was not part of the funeral procession which wound its way through Linh-an’s streets when the Emperor and his family were taken to their resting place. She could have been, if she had asked – for a jin-shei-bao had every right to follow a sister to her funeral. But this was too raw still, much too private and too deep a grief to expose it to the crowds in the streets. Tai had thought she could pay her respects her own way, just by being in the throngs on the pavements when the procession passed, but she had been resigned to being unable to see much of Antian’s last journey from within the crowd which would gather in the streets. All of Linh-an would be there, the throng would undoubtedly be five or six deep on the pavements – she would have to bid farewell to the sister of her heart from behind a wall of humanity. But the Gods, who had given her so much and then capriciously took it all away again, seemed to have repented of their whim and now showered Tai with many small gifts as if to make amends.

      One was an unexpected friendship begun in the bead-carver’s booth. It had been Nhia, Tai’s neighbour and friend, who had finally formally introduced the two – she had been acquainted with Kito and his father, amongst the many craftsmen and merchants in the Temple’s First Circle, for most of her young life. Nhia had accompanied Tai on one of her Temple visits during the weeks prior to the Emperor’s funeral, and Kito had chanced to notice them, and called out a greeting.

      ‘We are kept busy,’ he had said, in response to Nhia’s polite inquiry as to his well-being. But his eyes had been smiling at Tai, and hers were downcast, although her mouth curved upwards a little at its corners. Nhia’s eyebrow rose a fraction, and she said smoothly, as though she had noticed nothing at all, ‘I do not know if you have met my friend. Tai, this is Kito, son of So-Xan, the bead-carver. Kito, this is Tai, daughter of Rimshi, the seamstress.’

      They bowed to each other.

      ‘Perhaps you will share another bowl of green tea with me some time,’ Kito said. He had been addressing, in theory, both girls – but since Nhia, for all the length of her acquaintance with him, had never partaken of green tea in the bead-carver’s booth she assumed there was a story behind this tea party which excluded her.

      Tai had blushed. ‘I would enjoy that,’ she said, and once more Nhia was excluded.

      Nhia passed over the mystery with studied innocent ignorance. ‘Perhaps later,’ she murmured, and was rewarded by both her companions throwing startled glances first at her and then, very briefly, at each other. They had made their farewells, and the girls had passed on into the Temple while Kito pretended to turn back to his work – although both Nhia and Tai were sharply aware of the weight of his eyes on their backs.

      ‘He gave me the last Ivory Emperor bead,’ Tai had said to Nhia by way of an explanation as they walked away. ‘I saw him polishing the carvings smooth, making the mourning beads, and he gave me a whole one, one he had not yet marred. He gave me my memory back.’

      ‘And a bowl of green tea,’ Nhia murmured.

      Tai blushed again, uncharacteristically. ‘I was crying,’ she said softly. ‘That was …; the first time I cried for her.’

      Nhia knew that there had been some connection to the Court, over and above Rimshi’s usual Summer Court duties, but she had not known what – and this sentence was cryptic, to say the least. But she was Nhia, and people trusted her – and Tai, after all, was her friend, perhaps her only friend. And now that Antian was gone, there was no secret any more. Tai raised her head and met Nhia’s eyes.

      ‘She and I were jin-shei,’ Tai said. ‘This was the third summer that I shared with my heart-sister. And there was so much in those three years, Nhia, so much! I have already lived a lifetime with her. And now she is gone.’

      She had still not named a name, but since this was connected to the Imperial Family it had to be one of the two girls lying dead in the Temple at this very moment.

      ‘Jin-shei?’ Nhia echoed. ‘With Second Princess Oylian?’

      ‘With Antian,’ Tai said. ‘With the Little Empress.’

      Nhia’s step faltered a little. ‘You were jin-shei-bao – to the Little Empress? How in Cahan did that happen?’

      So Tai told the tale again, as they sat side by side on one of the benches by the pools of the Third Circle gardens. The tears ran free now, leaving trails on her cheeks as she spoke, and Nhia’s eyes filled in sympathy. She hugged Tai at the end, unsure of what to say to lay balm