The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

faces, servants to take care of their needs; cups, fans, musical instruments, writing tablets, a paper replica of the Imperial Diadem, all meticulously crafted, created, painted, ready to be set to the flame as the bodies of the dead were given to the fire, the ashes of all these necessities mixing with the ashes of the dead, taking form in Cahan where they would have need of them. These carts – and there were a number of them, each carefully compiled for each one of the four dead – were followed by others, bearing ingots of gold and silver, draped with white banners inscribed with prayers and blessings and others extolling the virtues of the departed, and then still more, glowing with shimmering white candles, bearing plates and bowls laden with stacks of ceremonial honey cakes, pomegranates and peaches, and flasks of rice wine.

      It took a long time for this all to pass by, but finally a long sigh out in the crowded street heralded the arrival of the first of the four bodies in the procession.

      Grief had set Tai’s shoulders as she watched the four caskets pass by, each placed on a cart drawn by a single white horse and piled high with white flowers – some real, some artificial silken creations. The horses paced slowly, each led on a rein by an Imperial Guardsman cloaked in white, each cart surrounded by an honour guard – twelve Guardsmen for the Emperor and for the Empress, six for the Little Empress Antian, four for Second Princess Oylian. Behind the last cart, Oylian’s, walked the remnants of the Imperial Court.

      They were led by Empress-Heir Liudan, walking alone, her feet in simple rope-soled sandals, robed in a plain white cotton gown. Her hair was dressed in two long looped braids, and banded with white ribbons; she wore no make-up, her eyes untouched by kohl, staring fiercely in front of her as she paced behind her sister’s cart. She looked neither right nor left, seeming to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of another, her head held high. She had never looked more regal.

      ‘She always wore formal dress, even in the Summer Palace,’ Tai murmured. ‘She was always so – so royal. Now she looks …;’

      All three girls looked closely at Liudan as she walked in Linh-an’s streets to lay her family to rest, and each of them saw a different thing.

      Khailin saw the future Empress, the high royal pride of the small tilted chin, the nobility of carriage and posture. Nhia saw past all that, looking deeper, and saw flickers of fear beneath the haughtiness. Tai saw her through a beloved ghost, and saw the loneliness, and the pain, and that same sense of loss with which she had once looked at Tai herself when she had first believed that Antian was turning away from her.

      And Liudan saw nothing, heard nothing, walked in white silence behind her dead, her spirit a fierce emptiness, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with her life’s destiny.

       Six

      Yuet, the healer’s apprentice, had watched the procession of the dead from the window of her room, on the top floor of the home she shared with her mistress, the healer Szewan. Her view was not quite as good as Tai’s but she too had been watching Liudan walk behind the biers, and she was remembering the conversation she had had with Tai in the stables of the shattered Summer Palace. I will help you keep your promise.

      Liudan walked alone, isolated even in this tragic procession, her eyes bright and burning in her pale face. Watching the girl, Yuet was painfully aware how prescient Antian, the dead Little Empress, had been. Yuet’s path had crossed with Liudan’s several times in the halls of the women’s quarters, on the occasions that Szewan the healer had had to visit the Third Princess or her sisters during some childhood complaint. Yuet and Liudan had never spoken directly; Yuet had always been in Liudan’s presence as Szewan’s assistant and helpmeet and had been expected to be at hand to help Szewan with whatever she required, with her head bowed and her eyes downcast. But even under those circumstances Yuet had formed a clear impression of the girl. Liudan had always had the knack of appearing to be proud and strong and self-sufficient, but she was still vulnerable and dependent on others, more so now, in fact, than she had ever been before. She was an Empress in waiting, but she was still a child.

      Officially so, in fact. Many of Liudan’s contemporaries had already had their Xat-Wau rites by the time they reached her age, but Yuet knew that Liudan herself had still not started her monthly cycles, and had therefore still not reached an age at which girls were ceremonially taken across the threshold from childhood to womanhood. Yuet herself had been fourteen years old when her own Xat-Wau ceremony had taken place, so it wasn’t unheard of – but Yuet was unimportant, a healer’s apprentice, and her passage into adulthood had not been something upon which the world had turned. In Liudan’s case, her status as a minor child meant a formal regency until such time as the Empress-Heir could be properly taken through her Xat-Wau rites.

      Yuet had not had time to watch Liudan in the procession for long before someone came knocking on the door of the healer’s house with a screaming child who had fallen and fractured her wrist while perched on a high windowsill trying to see the carts and the mourners. It had been Yuet who had had to deal with the patient. Szewan was getting old, arthritic and half-blind. These days she preferred to act in an advisory capacity, and leave the actual work of administering treatment and medicines to her young apprentice. Many patients had stopped asking for Szewan altogether, and simply called for Yuet’s services. Szewan had been talking for some time about officially retiring and passing her practice over to Yuet completely, but there were still some clients – the older people, who had spent their entire lives under Szewan’s ministrations, and a large portion of the clannish Imperial Court families – who still insisted on at least having her present while Yuet swabbed, bandaged, and concocted poultices and draughts. By the time Yuet had set the child’s broken wrist, immobilized it with a splint and sent the patient and her mother on their way, the procession was past and all that was there to be seen was over.

      The crowds were thinning, some streaming to the place of the burning where all the paper offerings would be displayed on and around the four pyres before the whole thing was set alight; that spectacle would draw many witnesses. But for the city the show was over, and the mourning was about to begin.

      Liudan and the rest of the Imperial Court would return to the Linh-an Palace in sedan chairs, via a less circuitous route, out of the crowd’s eye, once the immolation ceremonies were over; and once they did so the business of governing Syai would become an issue that would occupy the high-ranking ones in the Palace for some time to come.

      I will help you keep your promise, Yuet had told Tai. But, as she cleaned up after her patient, Yuet found herself wondering how she could have possibly made such a rash statement. Tai had been jin-shei-bao to the Little Empress – but that was where the connection to the Court began and ended, and Yuet was certainly in no position to further that connection. She herself was still officially a healer’s apprentice – a journeyman, to be sure, and more and more independent, but nonetheless still coasting on Szewan’s own reputation where the Court was concerned. She certainly had, and would have in the future unless things changed rather quickly, no intimate access to Liudan herself except in Szewan’s presence, and certainly no means to procure such access to someone like Tai. Perhaps Tai could have used the jin-shei connection to gain entry into the Court itself, but Liudan would be very careful with her favours and allegiances right now, especially during the regency period, and the fulfilment of Tai’s promise, a promise doubly binding because it had been asked by a dying woman and in the name of jin-shei, seemed bleakly improbable.

      Szewan had come to the window briefly to peer at the procession but had not stayed long.

      ‘My hands are hurting me terribly,’ she said, rubbing her swollen, arthritic knuckles. ‘I’ll take a poppy draught and retire to bed for a few hours. You can handle anything that comes up.’

      ‘I’ll make the draught,’ Yuet said.

      Szewan grunted in assent, reaching out to draw the shutters closed, trying to keep the worst of the heat out of the room.

      She had already divested herself of her outer robe and had slipped in under the thin sheets in