Sharon Shinn - Gateway

Xiang hunched an impatient shoulder. “Fine. You would do better to lie in your room and sleep, but go let birds dump their excrement on your head, I don’t mind. But I need Aurora ’s help. You must go alone.”

“Thank you, Aunt. You are very good to me.”

Xiang made an annoyed sound and turned away.

Kalen was hovering just inside the front gate at the aviary. She could not run to him and fling her arms around his neck, as shewantedtodo;instead, she nodded at him coolly and walked on by, and he fell in step behind her. The driver had told Daiyu he would wait out front with the car until she was ready to go home again, so she and Kalen had to exit by the back entrance. Even once they were outside, she could not take his hand as they negotiated the crowded streets. She had worn the plainest of the clothes that Xiang had given her, but even so, Daiyu was dressed like the daughter of a wealthy family. Beside her, Kalen looked more than ordinarily unkempt. It would be bad enough if someone saw them together, but she could always claim she was paying a cangbai laborer to perform some task for her. Less easy to use that excuse if she was clinging to his hand, smiling in a wide and foolish manner, appearing to be half in love with the boy.

Or wholly in love.

“I’ve missed you,” she said when they were far enough from the aviary that it seemed safe to talk. “I thought about you a couple of nights ago when I heard the river bell. Did you find any qiji stones when you went out?”

“Two,” he said. “Small ones, though.”

He sounded indifferent, but she was instantly concerned. “Are you worried about running out of money?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’ll be all right.”

“But-”

He looked down at her with an odd, sweet smile. “There are other things that worry me more right now.”

He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. “I know,” she said softly. “Sometimes I can’t think about anything else but what happens when I go back to St. Louis.”

“Well,” he said, “you haven’t left yet.”

They were some distance from the aviary before Kalen finally hailed a trolley, having let at least three others pass by. This one was more battered than most, its wooden seats worn and stained, its motor loud and doleful. The clientele was exceptionally grungy. Daiyu was even more conscious of her expensive, finely embroidered shirt, her silk trousers. Most of the other riders ignored her, but one older heiren woman watched her for the next ten minutes with a look of sullen resentment.

“This is our stop,” Kalen said, and they hopped off in a truly disreputable part of town. Daiyu couldn’t even guess where it might correspond to any part of St. Louis. It was worse than Kalen’s neighborhood, where the residents at least tried to maintain- what amenities were still in place. Here, there were almost no whole buildings standing; the shells of wood and brick structures made an erratic skyline against the glaring sun. In some spots, weeds and shrubbery partially obscured the rubble of fallen houses. Other lots were completely barren, littered with trash and glittering piles of glass.

Yet children ran playing through the streets, and women paused in their endless tasks to share news and heartache. Campsites set up among the shattered foundations and fabric hanging from the ruined windows proved that vagrants and squatters called even this desperate vicinity home.

“Are you afraid?” Kalen asked her.

She shook her head. “I wish I was wearing something else,” she said. “A shirt like this just mocks their lives.”

“Turn it inside out,” he suggested. They ducked behind the half wall of a fallen house and he stood with his back to her to offer added protection from curious eyes. The embroidery was scratchy against her skin but she felt a little less conspicuous as they moved forward again. Casually Kalen took her hand, and casually she allowed him to keep it.

Another five minutes’ walking took them to an intersection where four large buildings apparently had once stood; even their hulking ruins were impressive, gray and heavy and throwing long silhouettes of welcome shade. A small crowd had started to congregate in those patches of shadow. Daiyu could hear a voice proclaiming excited, angry sentences before she got close enough to see the speaker or make out the words. She noticed that the crowd was made up of more men than women, more cangbai and heiren than Han, but it was still a pretty broad mix.

She edged around the back of the crowd, Kalen a reassuring shape beside her, until she could get a good look at the speaker. He was standing on a chair, and his head and shoulders were visible above the mob. His face was long and a little narrow, framed by neglected shoulder-length black hair. He had the build of a muscular man, but the gauntness of someone who had missed a lot of meals for a long time. While they watched, he raised his hand above his head in a hard fist and spoke with passion.

“That’s Feng,” Kalen murmured in Daiyu’s ear. She nodded andlistened.

“Bad enough that he has quarantined the northwest provinces, effectively condemning every living soul above the Maiwei River to death,” Feng was shouting. “Bad enough that he has made it a felony offense to help an individual infected with zaogao fever. If your mother is dying, you cannot go to her! If your sister is sick, you cannot fetch her! If your father is starving, you cannot cross the Maiwei and bring him food. But no one else can either! He has closed the roads, he has cut off the supplies. Everyone in the territory will die!”

Appalled, Daiyu stared up at Kalen. “Is that true?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How does he know?”

He shook his head and shrugged again, his expression sad.

Feng was bending down to pass out stacks of paper to the people in the front of the crowd. “Look, these are copies of the official order that was sent out a week ago, signed by Chenglei himself, to stop all aid at the Maiwei River. The last shipments of food and medicine went out eight days ago. Nothing has been sent across the border since.”

The crowd began to shift and murmur, growing more disturbed. The papers were scrutinized and handed around. One copy made its way to the back row with surprising swiftness, and Kalen plucked it from someone’s hand. He bent down so he and Daiyu could study it together. It was a bad reproduction of what looked like an official document, decorated with a river-and-dragon device that Daiyu guessed was the city seal of Shenglang. The wording was complex, and she had a much harder time translating written than spoken language, but it indeed appeared to be an order to terminate supply shipments to the northwest provinces.

It was impossible to tell if the document was authentic.

Deeply troubled, Daiyu looked up and began listening to the rest of Feng’s speech. “Did you know that Yazhou has passed a resolution to send relief to the northwest territories?” he demanded. “We are the richest country in the entire world, we have the most sophisticated medicine, and yet foreigners are crossing the entire ocean so they can take care of our people! These sick and starving people are not cangbai or heiren-these are not the people Chenglei despises. These are Han! People with whom he shares a bloodline! And yet he will let them die because it is too much trouble to keep them alive.

“If he does not care about the sick and suffering of the outer coasts, who will he choose to ignore next? Who else will die because he is selfish or careless? Will he decide that the heiren are too impure to live? Will he decree that they all must die? Will he place restrictions on the cangbai-deny them access to money and property?”