Heart and Soul (43 page)

“If you think I’d think that, I wonder that you’d mention it,” Jade said, casting an eye at Nigel and wanting to bring the conversation about, as soon as possible, so he could remove that cloak. The poor man must be boiling.

“Well, I mentioned it,” the magician said, “because I think the history of China goes back further, much further, than even our people believe. I think that the realm of weres was unimaginably long, before even Yu the Great, and that perhaps there were other losses and restorations.”

Jade thought of what Nigel had said about the Chinese civilization being so old, and sighed. Perhaps they were so old that they were far ahead of other people only in the sense that all peoples would follow this endless cycle of rebirth and death and rebirth again. She hoped it was time for another rebirth. She also could see, as Nigel had said, that if this were the case, adopting Western ways and manners without examination would only result in importing the errors of a yet younger culture. She would have to—she supposed—remain by Wen and advise him, after he took the throne.

Perhaps Wen’s sojourn through the underworld had enlightened him and caused him to grow, but she would not and could not believe he could have thought of everything. No human could think of everything. Which perforce must mean that Jade’s destiny was to stay in China in her brother’s court, and to supplement his thinking and his discoveries with her own, thereby making it more likely that the new dynasty would indeed be a new rebirth.

Since she’d never expected anything else—indeed, never wanted anything else—she was shocked at the wave of grief that washed over her, and she looked down at her hands, flat on her lap.

“But you didn’t come to me for my political wisdom, nor even my historical one,” the fox-man said. “So perhaps you’ll tell me why you did come.”

She told him. “I was given a poison by the Tiger Clan, which occluded my power and prevents me from changing shapes. I hope you have an antidote.”

“Is that all? You do not need the best pharmacy in the fox world for that.”

“It is not all.” Raising her head, she said, “The ruby of power already has a holder, and one from which it cannot justly be separated. That holder must go with me when I go to the rivers.”

“Ah,” the fox-man said, and looked toward Nigel. “I presume that your companion is disfigured beyond the help of the pill of Ten Thousand Efficacies?”

She nodded once, and cast a look about the garden, to make sure that not only were there no servants lurking about but also that no windows overlooked their situation. Then she turned to Nigel. “Mr. Oldhall,” she said. “If you’ll forgive me…”

Reaching over, she tugged the hood of his cloak down, and for a moment, away from others like him and back in the country where she’d spent her life, she was almost startled by the shining strangeness of his hair. It looked even paler to her now—not just that blond her mother called platinum, but truly light-on-ice pale, as the oracle had said. And his skin looked more marblelike than human—though that marble would have to be very rosy to match the color of his cheeks.

He looked at her and undid the cloak’s clasp at his throat, quite casting it aside, to reveal a shirt so soaked in sweat as to have become transparent and display—as though the shirt were no more than rice paper—an expanse of muscular chest. She looked away from it and at the fox-man, who did not look in the slightest shocked.

“You see,” she said.

“Indeed I do,” he said, and frowned a little, looking at her. “But being a foreign devil is not an illness, so how do you expect me to cure it? It might be an unfortunate condition, but…like being born anything else undesirable, such as a were-fox, it is something that cannot be changed and must be endured throughout all of the sufferer’s life.”

Jade was quite sure he was baiting her. Oh, not trying to get her to incriminate herself, as such, but in the way of foxes, playing the word game until she explicitly told him what she wanted, so that he could be sure she knew what it was he could offer. And also so that he didn’t add to the growing legend of Fox Clan deception, she thought, by revealing to her powers she didn’t already know he had. She wondered if the tigers were right and the foxes were playing a double game, also.

And perhaps they were, though it seemed unlikely, since they had so much invested in Third Lady—so much of their familial connections and their thoughts, and so much of their own ambitions. Without them, she thought, Jade would never have come here and Third Lady would never be in the underworld.

The corollary would seem to be that this could be a trap, but if you turned the thought around and looked at it another way, you realized that the truth was, by remaining in the Dragon Boats, they would have been open and vulnerable. Wen could not have lasted much longer, and many more people would start to notice his problems now that, bereft of Zhang to run everyday administration, he would have to rely only on Jade. Though it smarted to realize, Jade was unblinkingly aware that many in the Dragon Boats refused to receive orders from women. As did many in the were-clans in the world at large. They would want Wen to give his orders, which Wen could not do. The whole thing could never have lasted more than a week before a revolt killed Wen and installed Zhang on the throne. She was sure Zhang was waiting for just that.

Even with only one ruby, if he were the heir to the Dragon Throne, she was sure the English would lend him their support. It wouldn’t be the first time—from what her mother had told her—that they thus manipulated the affairs of other countries, so as to establish one of their vassals in power.

As for the ruby, if Jade had not gone on her quest and interfered with Zhang’s plans, he’d surely have come back and gotten the stone from Nigel. Nigel had been valiant. He’d fought very well, and twice he’d repelled Zhang and denied him total victory. But Nigel was wounded and weak, and Zhang hadn’t been. And Nigel could not change into a dragon, whereas Zhang could. There would have been no contest, and Zhang, instead of nursing the wounds inflicted by a fellow dragon—which Jade had to presume was what he was doing—would now be in control of the two rubies and ready to claim his reward.

No, if the Fox Clan were playing both sides, they were the worst fools in the history of mankind for having thus created their own opposition. She sighed and said, “Third Lady has told me, long ago, that you have a potion that changes the appearance of a person for some days. And, depending on how the potion is calibrated, it changes it in very specific ways. She says the Fox Clan gave such a potion to the foreign devil Marco Polo, when he came to visit our land, and also that the people who stole the secret of silk from us bought the potion from the fox people, and thus could penetrate China unpunished. And leave again unpunished.” She looked at his face, immobile, like the face of a player who will not give anything away to his opponent. “Besides, you must know I heard all the tales growing up, and I know that the foxes have always had a way of changing appearance.”

At long last the fox-man nodded, then narrowed his eyes at her. “Would you also,” he said, gesturing toward Nigel, “want your companion to understand what we say? Or would it be better for your plans, and perhaps for him, if he doesn’t know?”

“Understand what we say?” she asked, in some puzzlement. “How is that possible? Does the Fox Clan, then, have some medicine that teaches language? How amazing that would be, to make all of humanity speak the same language,” she finished, ironically, wondering what kind of deception he was trying to play on her.

But he only looked grave. “It is not a teaching pill. Indeed, if those were possible, then my people and I would make a fortune from those who wish to take the civil service examinations. The only way to learn something—a language, a poem or a skill—is to study it and purchase the knowledge with the toil. But this is different. What the pill does, if someone is available who has the ability, is give the one who takes it the ability to—in a limited way—experience the thought of the other. To…borrow part of his or her brain. It’s a form of the Six Taste pill,” he added, as though defending himself from unspoken accusations. “And you’d both have to take it.”

“But…” Jade said, looking at Nigel and thinking how much easier, indeed, the whole thing would be if he not only looked Chinese but could also speak the language. “How much of my thoughts would he be able to penetrate?”

“None consciously,” he said. “Only the words would come to him, as come the words of his mother tongue.”

“But there would be more to this link than that, would there not?” she asked, suspicious and all the more hesitant because something in her was exulting and calling for the link, demanding that she accept it. That she let herself be linked to Nigel Oldhall.

The fox-man shrugged. “There have been no credible reports of anything else,” he said.

Jade frowned, fairly sure that was fox-speak for the fact that there had been reports otherwise. But, after all, she was supposed to trust him, was she not? She had to or she would never accomplish anything. And the voice within her that had been screaming to her to allow this link was joined by a far more practical side, which pointed out that without it, should they become separated, Nigel would be at the mercy of his surroundings and have less ability than a deaf mute to ask for directions or receive them; to enlist help; to rescue her if needed. Because a deaf mute, at least, knew the society if he’d grown up in it. While Nigel would be wholly lost.

“How far away does the link work?” Jade asked.

“As long as you’re both in the world of the living, you will be linked,” he said.

“What?” she said. “Forever?”

“Yes, but only where the Chinese language is concerned,” the man said.

And while the eternity of the link should have made her decide against it, it perversely made Jade want to do it. Nigel would go back to England and she would stay in her brother’s court. They would never see each other again. But if he ever found the need to read or speak in Chinese, then it would be her brain he would be accessing, and their minds would be linked, however ephemeral the tie.

It would be both a guilty link and an innocuous one. And something he need not ever know—or not ever understand fully. She nodded. “Get the pills, then,” she said. “The one to change his appearance, and the one to establish the link.”

“And the one to get your dragon powers back?” he asked.

“Of course. How hard is it?” she asked.

The fox-man laughed. “Not very. The tiger potion is very clumsy.”

TAKEN AT THE FLOOD

Judge Bao gestured for documents and files, which
were all brought to him by creatures that looked like humans made entirely of shadow. It made Third Lady want to smile, imagining them as the perfect functionaries, who spent eternity working in archives until they disappeared completely, save for their shadows. And then she frowned, wondering whether this
was
what happened to perfect functionaries once they died. It might be preferable to the Pool of Filth, but she didn’t think she wished for that as an eternal fate, either.

The judge rustled the documents in his lap, looking at one, then at the other, and uttering many deep-thinking ums. Then, looking at Third Lady, he said, “It is highly irregular, you know, to keep the soul of the living here in the underworld. But these lawsuits are very convincing.”

“What do they allege?” Third Lady asked. “If I may be permitted to inquire?”

The grave face, looking more human at a distance, half smiled at her where she stood, some distance in front of his feet, holding Wen’s hand.