Arturo Serrano - To Climates Unknown - An Alternate History of a World Without America

“Your reports on me are accurate, Chief Eunuch.”

“I should hope so. Inaccurate information is the bane of any government, but unreliable officers are worse. In view of your impeccable record, how do you explain the irresponsible lack of judgment that drove you to risk execution tonight?”

“I found a man who can save the Emperor’s life.”

“The Emperor has medics whose job it is to do that.”

“Chief Eunuch, you know better than I do that the personnel in the palace are not wholly on the Emperor’s side.”

“The Emperor has guards whose job it is to uncover traitors.”

She refrained from pointing out that even the Embroidered Guard could be compromised. She needed to focus on helping her own case. “Every guard in the palace knows that I’m not a traitor and I wouldn’t do anything against the Emperor’s life.”

Wei was breathing loudly by now. “Have you lost your memory? Just five years ago, a court eunuch helped an assassin enter the palace. Didn’t you pause to consider how it would look for you to do the same?”

“But it’s not the same.”

“The soldiers who have orders to shoot invaders don’t know that. Who even is this barbarian?”

“He’s a diplomatic envoy from Japan.”

“I know that. Don’t waste my time telling me things I know. My informants in Liuqiu have written to me about his audience with their king.”

“Then you must know he tended to his illness.”

Wei dropped silent. He quickly regained control of himself and replied, “The reports didn’t mention that. What does an ambassador know of remedies?”

“He’s not a medic,” she replied. “That’s a good thing, actually; there’s no risk of him poisoning the Emperor.” She knew how to stress the right words to make the implication clear. Among the rumors that their office had gathered about the Emperor’s illness was that court pharmacist Li Kezhuo might not be making his best effort to keep him alive.

“If he’s not a medic, what’s he supposed to be able to do?”

“He will pray.”

Wei chuckled. “Are you serious?”

“This man follows the doctrine of the Jesuits. He can use the help of their god to save the Emperor.”

The eunuch closed his eyes with firmness, a gesture he often used when presented with nonsense. “The fact that the Eastern Bureau gets to ignore judicial procedures doesn’t mean we get to ignore Confucian rites. Invoking barbarian gods is not the way we do things. Maybe you haven’t had a chance to speak to Jesuits, but I have. They love to tell stories of miraculous healings, none of them true. How do you intend to cure the Emperor with a false teaching that has been banned from Beijing?”

Xiaobo considered her reply. She was a servant of the Great Ming, but she was also a Hui, a Muslim. The main reason, which she’d never admitted out loud, why she’d been willing to go so far for Hasekura was that the god of the Jesuits was the same as the god of her people, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. If she succeeded at steering the events so that the Emperor would owe his life to her god, then the one true faith would have an opportunity to be more respected in the empire. But the Han had their own gods, and wouldn’t hear of any other. In the end, she appealed to the simplest of arguments. “In this past week, the king of Liuqiu hasn’t died, has he?”

Wei had no idea, but only gave a dismissive huff. The question had placed him in a difficult spot. It would have been unthinkable for him of all people to admit ignorance, but that meant he had no plausible rebuttal. On second thought, it dawned on him that giving Liang permission to go ahead with such an outlandish proposal could help quench much of the tension that was sure to erupt if, in fact, the Emperor ended up dying. The royal family would be happy to scapegoat an ignorant barbarian and even a naïve servant of the empire if it spared them a chain of fratricides. “Very well,” he said with a blank face. “It may even raise the Emperor’s spirits to see such a spectacle. Proceed.”

Outside Wei’s office, Hasekura Tsunenaga stood in waiting while his rescuer endured interrogation. The Emperor’s condition, as far as they knew, had not changed, but again, he had no one to ask. He could tell that the exquisitely dressed soldier in charge of watching him during Xiaobo’s interview, a member of the prestigious elite force known as the Embroidered Guard, had ten thousand questions to ask him, which would have to wait until she returned, if she returned.

Not knowing Chinese made the wait more disturbing to him, because the corridors in the Eastern Bureau were a meshwork of whispers, swarmed with finely robed officials who never looked ahead as they walked but instead exchanged quiet nods and cryptic gestures on which millions of lives depended. Hasekura, who in his homeland had occupied a rather modest position in the apparatus of government, felt tiny amid the flow of messages whose consequences bore more weight that his individual fate. Not even the courts in Madrid and Rome, where the world was being run, had had such a disconcerting effect on him.

One eunuch walked directly toward him and addressed him in Portuguese. “You come from Liuqiu?”

Hasekura didn’t reply immediately, as much because he was surprised that anyone in Beijing wished to talk to him as because his Spanish only allowed him a limited grasp of its sister tongue. He glanced at the guard assigned to him, hoping that his unspoken request for permission to converse would be understood. Upon hearing the barest of grunts, he decided to take that as encouragement. “That is true,” he said in a very slow Spanish that had no assurance of being understood. In any case, the eunuch smiled and proceeded to ask more questions. Their exchange dragged for a long hour, during which Hasekura retold who he was, whom he served, where he’d been and what work he’d done there, and how badly he needed to be given passage to Japan. He didn’t know who this man was or why he’d been sent to probe him, but for the past week he’d been so desperate for a helpful pair of ears that he jumped, unthinking, at the chance to make his case before someone who might be in a position to arrange for his trip home.

Only after their talk ended and the eunuch left did it occur to Hasekura that the Chinese government shouldn’t have known to send someone who spoke Portuguese.

Xiaobo exited Chief Eunuch Wei’s office looking slightly less worried. Hasekura thanked God that she was still alive. She greeted him, then spoke to the guard in Chinese. “What’s the word around the palace?”

“Your letter stirred everyone’s nerves.”

“As it should.”

“You’re lucky that it jumped from regional office to regional office until it reached me.”

“Then it did its job,” she replied with unconcealed pride.

“Don’t gloat,” he warned. “Lady Zheng has heard of this, and to put it mildly, she’s not happy.”

Xiaobo’s smile faded. Lady Zheng, the previous Emperor’s favorite concubine, the mother of a failed pretender to the throne, and the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Embroidered Guard, was the main reason why Xiaobo didn’t get a moment of rest in protecting the Emperor, or her true identity.

“You have to be careful with whatever it is you’re planning. It’s no small matter to have brought a barbarian into the Forbidden City.”

“I intend to take him to the Emperor,” she whispered.

The guard’s face lost its color. “How are you going to pull that off? Every minister will oppose it.”

She smiled quietly. “You will help, of course.”

He began to protest, but held himself. It was technically true that the Eastern Bureau had the authority to enlist the Embroidered Guard for tasks pertaining to the protection of the empire. Xiaobo, who even to this closest of allies posed as the eunuch Liang, took her leave and signaled Hasekura to follow her.