Heart and Soul (18 page)

“Then, milord, let us not worry about the future or if you should die, or if you might not leave an heir. The future might come or not, but I don’t think I can survive another day after being torn from your arms, and I beg you to prevent it.”

He sat up slowly and put his feet down, hunting for his slippers. She found them and gently put them on his feet. They were loose. He was much too thin, his dreams robbing him of substance, as though they were translating him to another reality.

“Now?” he asked her. “We’d better go now, then.”

A MAN WITH HAIR LIKE ICE

“And so,” Jade said, lowering her head, “you see,
Third Lady’s oracle was proven right in telling me where to find you.” She looked at her hands and at the dark, polished table. She held a teacup, though the tea didn’t taste anything like what they drank on the boats. Indian tea, they’d told her. It wasn’t unpleasant so much as completely different. The teacups themselves looked rather like the ones Mama had bequeathed her, only with rather more roses. “I don’t know what to do about the rest. The…jewel and all.”

She looked up and saw a circle of their faces staring at her. There was the man with hair like light on ice, as well as the couple to whom this house belonged. They had sent their daughter out of the room, though Jade wasn’t sure why, and she’d seen the woman give the man a significant glance when Jade had explained that Third Lady was her brother’s third wife.

But Mr. Jones just looked very seriously at her, and listened to her whole tale, and now sat with his hands held together on the table, just like Jade’s mother had taught her to hold her hands when praying.

Jade didn’t know what to think. That this man was the son of Mama’s friend was very odd. Somehow, those people of whom Mama spoke had always seemed to Jade like fairy tale characters, people she would never meet. And though her mother had taught her English, as well as the manners of a young English woman, Jade had never thought she would get to use either.

Also, as far as Mr. Jones was concerned, she had always thought that people with almost colorless hair looked odd, but she didn’t think he looked odd at all. Oh, he didn’t look like the men she had grown up with. But he didn’t look ugly, either. He looked, she thought, like something quite different.

When her mother spoke of her youth in England, Jade had always imagined the people as looking Chinese. She knew that this was wrong, since her mother looked nothing like the Chinese people. But she could only fill that dreamland with people she knew. Now, for the first time, her mother’s stories became populated with different people—people with hair like light on ice, straight noses and angular faces.

He looked at her, very grave. His eyes were blue—pale blue like the mid-day sky. “And what if I say I will not accept your partnership in finding the other jewel?” he asked. “You are asking a great deal of me, to trust an almost unknown. When you say that wakening the rivers of China and restoring your dynasty to its throne will not destroy the rubies, how can I be sure you have not deceived me?”

Jade bobbed her head up and down, less of a bow and more of a gesture of sympathy. “I understand I am asking a lot,” she said. “But I am…you see…” She shook her head in despair at her own clumsy words. How much the people in the Dragon Boats would laugh at finding Lady Jade so tongue-tied. “You see, my family lost the throne many generations ago. Or at least not the real throne, but dominion over the land. And I’m not going to pretend they might not have deserved it,” she said. “I…My father never spoke of it, but I have gathered, from other legends, and from things that aren’t said in those legends, that those people who could shape-shift and who were the users of magic often subjugated people who could not shape-shift to their whims. When we lost the dominion over the land to invaders—again this is not said, but I have always understood it—the general population rose up against us. We lost the Mandate of Heaven.” And then it occurred to her that he probably did not know what she meant by that. “What I mean is that—”

“You lost your right to rule,” he said slowly. “I gather some of what that means, from my voyages to China, and I…I have read a lot.”

She nodded. “Yes. But now, after all these millennia, the Mandate of Heaven is changing. Those who occupy the Dragon Throne—the usurpers—aren’t even Chinese, but a foreign dynasty that imposes its will upon us. And my people…You know how things stand. We have lost wars to the English. So many of us have taken to opium dreaming, and the country is in disarray and often falls into famines. I believe,” she said, and meant it, though she’d never thought of it in such terms before, “that Wen would make a better emperor than the current rulers. I believe that there is a very good chance he’ll rule well. And we are connected to the land itself, you know. The dragons are the spirits of the rivers.” She spoke quickly, aware that she didn’t make much logical sense, but hoping that Mr. Jones saw beyond the logic of her case.

He sighed heavily. “My instinct would be to say I simply want the jewel back, and that I will take it to Africa where it belongs. That I do not belong in the midst of Chinese dynastic politics, dragons or not. That I do not have anything to do with your Mandate of Heaven…”

He stopped, and she looked up at him, hopefully. “But?” she said, sensing something unpronounced in what he’d said.

He shrugged. “But how do I recover the jewel from a Chinese were-dragon without your help? There are a hundred places he could be in China where no white man will be allowed to go—which reminds me, I don’t know how I would go there even with you, but that’s something else—and there is the fact that he might very well be in league with the English queen and her army. I cannot alone prevent the ruby being taken and used. And it is quite possible that, despairing of getting the second, they might decide the first is enough for them, and that they will use it the way Charlemagne did. So we are in a race against time.”

His eyes, fixed on her, were clear and cold and full of calculation. “You have told me all about your people, even about the piracy—”

“Your race against time,” the man whom Mr. Jones called Joe said, “is actually dependent on what the English are willing to do to reward this man, Zhang. I would guess they have so far refused to pay him off and demand he find the other ruby as well. Hence…”

“Hence the visit of one Captain Corridon,” Mr. Jones said. And then, to Jade, “Someone who demanded that Joe give him the ruby, without so much as the courtesy of explaining why.” He paused, a frown creasing his brow and making him look very grave and severe. “The thing that I wonder about is whether there is some way we can disguise me…”

“There is,” Jade said, dredging from her memory an almost forgotten legend, and hoping that it was correct. “There is a magical draft the Fox Clan has, which can make a man look like another man. It is possible it could make you look Chinese.”

For a moment the frown increased, and the man looked absolutely thunderous. Jade remembered how the people among whom she had grown up regarded being compared to foreign devils as a grave insult. She wondered if it would go the other way. She had gathered, from things her mother had said, that the English, just like the Chinese, considered themselves the pinnacle of humanity, around whom all other races must cluster and bow, as younger siblings to an elder son. She wondered if the man felt it would be an insult to look Chinese. The idea filled her with equal parts dismay and anger.

But before she could say anything, he spoke. “Well, it would be a way of disguising me,” he said. “And of my disappearing from where the English will look for me.” He looked at her, and the frown increased, but she could tell now that it was a frown of thought, as though he was trying to do something deep within his mind and reality struck him as a bother. “Of course, how will we disguise you? I mean, I presume that Zhang knows what you look like, and that he has his own resources within China?”

Jade frowned. “My…power signature is the harder thing to disguise, as it ties in with all the rivers of China, through my dragon ancestors. It is possible to disguise it somewhat, to make me seem only like a Chinese noblewoman, but I have to use my foreign magic to do it.” She looked up as an idea occurred to her. “Though you probably can help me with that.”

This seemed to amuse him. “I probably can. But you still sound concerned, as though this would be a doubtful endeavor.”

“Well, it would be,” Red Jade said. “The oracle said I should go and wake the rivers and if that’s the case…”

“Yes?”

“My power will not stay disguised for long. It is simply not in the nature of it to do so.”

“You mean the rivers will remove the disguise?” he asked.

She nodded, relieved that he understood. “It would be,” she said, “like…going to visit relatives while wearing a big hat that hid your features. Your relatives would pull it off to see your face. It is also possible,” she admitted, “that I cannot wake the rivers, even with the power of your ruby, while my power signature is disguised and thus not allowed to resonate with the river dragons. My power might be needed to wake them…”

“Like seeing a familiar face, yes,” Mr. Jones said, still in that tone of odd amusement. “But that would mean only that you’re momentarily unmasked and that we could disguise you again afterward.”

She considered this, then nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know if there might be other difficulties. You must remember, I’ve never done anything like this.”

This truly seemed to catch his sense of humor, because he chuckled deep in his throat, and said, “Then we are even, since I have never done anything like this, either.” He gestured with his hand. “All of it. I have never flown carpetships, or…or gone about not making use of my parents’ fortune or their connections. I have never carried rubies of power between continents. I’ve never…” He shrugged. “I never thought I would have any adventures, you see. Just that I would stay in England all my life and have some boring job.”

“Would you rather have stayed in England with a boring job?” she asked, trying to understand what he was saying.

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I think so. But then I think not. And then, today, I would have died if you hadn’t intervened.”

She shrugged. “Zhang has less power than I. He only wants to be of the Imperial line, but he is not, actually. Still, the fact remains that I do not know if I can prevail,” she said. “I’ll have to ask you to trust me, but I can’t promise victory.”

He gave her a disturbing smile. “You’re telling me you can’t predict what will happen and that it will be a wild adventure?”

She tried to guess what the smile meant. “I don’t mean…That is…”

He shrugged. “I don’t expect guarantees. For the last six months my life has been unscripted and wild anyway. However, I wish I had some way of judging your intentions.” He looked apologetic. “Not for myself, you see, but for the safety of the jewel that is…the last piece of power holding the world together. It’s not my opinion only that should count.”

They looked at each other a long while, locked in that dilemma. How could she prove to him what her intentions were? Truth be told, she wasn’t even absolutely sure her intentions were what he would consider good or right. Most of all, she wanted to protect her people. Unlike Zhang, she would not risk the rest of the world for her ambitions, but if the choice were between making the other nations of the world happy or making her people happy and putting her dynasty in power again, then she might very well choose her people over the rest of the world.

She pushed the now-empty teacup away and set her hands on the table, folded. “I don’t know how to show you proof of my intentions. I don’t know what I can do to show you that I do not wish to steal the jewel and strip it of its power…or give it to the Queen of England.”