Heart and Soul (17 page)

From the doorway, Joe coughed, just enough to catch Nigel’s attention. “If you could make your way downstairs, Enoch, we shall serve you and the lady some tea, and you can speak there.”

Realizing that he’d been making his chaperones stand in order to continue chaperoning them, Nigel clutched his walking stick and nodded. “I can make my way downstairs.”

DREAMS

Third Lady had watched her sister-in-law depart.
She’d not told anyone because these days everyone knew Red Jade was the true power behind the throne, and if it were known she was gone from the boats it would only cause panic.

Third Lady didn’t want panic. She was scared enough herself. She had read how to conduct her husband to the underworld, and how to behave herself there, so as to return with him. She had collected several rolls of paper cash, of the sort used at funerals, because she knew they were the currency of the underworld. They weren’t real cash, of course, just paper, printed with a value. The traditional amount of cash to purchase a tomb from the gods was 999,999 strings of cash, and that was the value she took.

And now she stood, fearful, outside her lord’s room. On either side of the door, guards watched her with a jaundiced eye while she hesitated.

At last she advanced boldly toward them, and bowed. “I would like to see my lord,” she said, “if you would announce me.”

In almost any other household, this would be thought too bold, for a wife to come visiting her husband who had not requested her presence, much less for a third wife to go disturb a husband who had not requested her presence. But Third Lady often found herself coming to Wen’s room. It was, after all, almost the only way for her to spend time with him, since he never visited her—or his other wives, in fact.

She would often come and play mah-jongg with him while he dreamed his opium dreams, or else recline next to him and touch him, and derive what comfort she could from that. How strange her fate, that she should have fallen so in love with a man who did not love her at all—who loved nothing but his dreams.

But she thought of what the oracle had said. That if she took him to the underworld and back, she could win his love. She hoped the oracle was right. Suddenly, the fact that it was reputed to be an infallible oracle was not enough, and she wished she had more concrete proof in her hands. Perhaps the foreign-devil mind was contagious.

She tried to look self-possessed and convinced of her right to enter her husband’s chambers. The door guard gave her a narrow look, but probably credited her with no worse intentions than a wish to conceive the future emperor.

He opened the door and went in. She heard him kneel—a rattle of arms—and address Wen. She heard Wen reply, in a slow, dreamy voice. She was not sure what they said. Then the guard came back out and stood aside, leaving the door open to her.

She went in and caught a glimpse of Wen on his bed, holding his pipe. And she knelt. Normally, when she came to visit him like this, she would simply lie down beside him and enjoy his company. But now he was the emperor, and that changed things. She knelt and rested her forehead on the floor. “My lord,” she said, “I would like the pleasure of your company.” And then she remained like that, her forehead on the floor.

“Precious Lotus?” Wen said, as if puzzled. Then softly, “You may approach,” either in the tone of one who had just remembered the protocol, or in the tone of a man moved by her presence.

She didn’t know which, so she rose slowly from her position and looked up at him. He lay on the sumptuous bed that had been his father’s, with its gilded frame and its multicolored silk pillows. In his hand, he held his opium pipe, with its carved jade stem, and—at the moment—a dark metal bowl.

Kneeling by the spirit lamp used to cook the opium was one of the younger members of the Dragon Boat clan, a boy maybe fourteen or fifteen years old and, from the look of him, probably one of Zhang’s by-blows. That didn’t surprise Third Lady. It would make sense for the minister to want his own son amid those who administered opium to the emperor. How else to make sure that Wen was still smoking it, and in dosages sufficient for him to remain ineffective?

Now that Zhang was gone, the opium might no longer be coming in, but there would still be plenty of it—enough to ensure that Wen would stay in his dreams a while longer. And disaster loomed once he stopped. Third Lady wondered exactly how much he’d been smoking. She knew that sometimes opium withdrawal—particularly sudden—could be fatal.

She counted the balls of dark amber opium rolled on the tray, waiting their chance at being heated and inhaled. There were five, which seemed to be rather a lot to be ready for a single smoker. How addicted had Wen become? She remembered that she’d once heard the story of a great friend of her father’s, who was an opium addict and who usually smoked in his library. When he’d given up the habit, for months afterward they kept finding mice dead behind the bookcases, from withdrawal.

Kneeling beside the bed, she looked into her lord’s eyes. His pupils were small as a speck of dust, and they shouldn’t be. Not for someone who had been an addict as long as he had been.

She felt the attendant’s curious gaze on her as she bent her head toward where Wen’s elbow, resting on his pillow, supported his head. She looked up a moment to see Wen, too, looking at her—not so much with curiosity as with soft compassion, as though he knew well how much she loved him and how useless it was.

As a fox shifter, she had the power to attract all men. That was why she had become a singsong girl, because it was easy to entice men and bend them to her will. But no one had told her she could lose her heart, too. And though her clan was known for various forms of sorcery and magic, from witchcraft to herbal potions, Precious Lotus had left her father’s home long before she was learned enough to be able to deal with this.

But she had read the manuscripts in the records boat. She knew where the entrance to the underworld was and how she could attain for herself and Wen the sort of unconsciousness that would allow their souls—or at least her soul and his mind, since his soul was already held in the underworld—to roam free while their bodies were unconscious and safe aboveground.

Also, she had studied all the legal cases that could be brought against Wen or his family. And she had memorized a long list of witnesses, including the various ancestors, whom she could call for help.

Third Lady should have felt as prepared as she could be, and as confident as anyone would when facing the world of the dead, and the perils of the supernatural. What she didn’t know if she could do was convince Wen to follow her to the cave where she might then be able to put her plan into action.

And without his following her, without her taking him to the underworld, there was a good chance he would die of withdrawal or that the turmoil wrought on his magic by the withdrawal would do harm to the Dragon Boats.

“Milord,” she said.

He fumbled at her hair with his hand and it felt as if he couldn’t quite coordinate it.

“Milord, Lord of the Dragon Throne,” she said.

“What is it, Precious Lotus? What do you need, my fox-fairy?”

Because of the magic inherent in her clan, Precious Lotus knew that her people often got called fox-spirits or fox-fairies, but she’d never heard those words from her husband’s lips. And looking up, peeking like a child afraid to face an adult fully, she saw him looking down at her, a loose, sloppy smile on his well-shaped lips. He looked amused and loving, but then he usually did look loving, particularly when he’d been smoking.

“Has anyone frightened you?” he asked in sudden alarm, perhaps catching the fear behind her eyes. He set his jade pipe down slowly and frowned at it, as if he was trying to think of something. Probably, Third Lady thought, trying to remember how many pipes he’d smoked.

He looked past his wife’s shoulder and spoke, clearly to the boy who was waiting to heat the opium. “You may go to your boat. Come back in half an hour.”

And then, as Precious Lotus heard steps retreat toward the door, Wen said, “You may speak to me, you know that. You may always speak to me.”

She rose a little, and kissed his cheek, and said, softly, “I want you to come with me.”

“Come with you?” he asked, sounding a little alarmed, as he always did when anyone asked him to leave the boat, or his opium dreams.

“Only…only for a moment,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

She realized that if she told him the truth—if she told him he needed it and she was doing it on his behalf—she’d be spurned. But the concern in his eyes as he looked at her was quite obvious. And she thought, against all logic, that he always seemed concerned for her, even in his confused state. In fact, he’d been so attracted to her that his strict father had thought it worth it to secure her as Wen’s wife. And even now, Wen seemed to care for her.

She was a fox-fairy. Men who fell in love with her were supposed to be malleable in her hands. It was only because she loved Wen so much that her charm had failed her. And because she loved Wen so much, she could not allow it to fail any longer.

Looking up at Wen, she made her eyes as pleading and full of sorrow as possible. “I have a great need of your protection, milord. You see, I have been threatened.”

Even through the haze of opium, which confused his mind and clouded his senses, and normally made him utterly indifferent to anything outside himself, Wen reacted. He sat up with what was, given his state, remarkable quickness. “Threatened!”

“Yes, milord.”

“Who dared?” This was spoken through clenched teeth, and it gave her great hope that wherever Wen’s soul was, it was already attached to hers.

“Some members of the Fox Clan,” she said, wildly improvising. “They…they have somehow caught wind of my…maiden state.” She blushed prettily as she said it. “And they believe you mean to repudiate me and, therefore, they want to marry me to someone else in advance of your repudiation.”

He looked stricken. And also guilty. “It is the opium,” he said, and hesitated. “You see…”

She knew that the smoking of opium often robbed gentlemen of their virile powers. And she’d not meant to reproach her lord, only to make him come with her. “I know, milord,” she said. “But there is this place, this sacred cave where…Well, it is said that there…you could remedy the situation.” She blushed again, partly from speaking of these matters and partly from her guilt at deceiving him. “If you come with me for just one night, you can save me from being torn from your arms.”

Wen frowned slightly. His long, sensitive fingers toyed with the jade stem of his opium pipe. “Are you sure you wish me to, Precious Lotus?” he asked, in the tone of an insecure child.

“Milord! How can you ask that?”

“Well…it is all to nothing, you know…I might not be able to sire an heir, in that one time, and…and if I die, as is likely to happen soon, what will you be left with? Perhaps it would be better for you to be married to someone else before that happens.”

Third Lady felt as if her heart were being wrung within her. She felt the color flee her face. “Of course,” she said, “if you don’t wish to…If you’d rather I weren’t your wife at all, if our marriage was all the doing of your illustrious father, and you, yourself, would rather not be linked to me—”

“No,” Wen said. “Our marriage was the one thing—That is, my father purchased your contract at my earnest entreaty. I know you’re only my third lady, but in my heart you always have been the first.”