Alma Alexander - The Secrets of Jin-Shei

Tai stood at the edge of this devastation, eyes wide with shock. If Antian had been out here …;

She tried calling, but her voice seemed to have died in her throat, and all that came out was a soft wail. But the sound seemed to have triggered some response, for the broken stones sighed and whimpered and a familiar but very weak voice replied.

‘Who is there?’

Tai’s first reaction was a rush of relief, a fierce joy, the sheer euphoria of hearing that voice at all. And then that soft voice dropped, fading into almost a whisper. ‘Help me. ’

No! screamed Tai’s mind. But she stifled it, tried to cling to the happiness she had felt a bare moment before, batted at the sudden rush of tears with the back of her hand. Almost unwillingly, not wanting to see what lay beyond the ruined balcony, not wanting to know the inevitable, Tai crept carefully forward towards the edge, peering over.

Just out of arm’s reach, on a ledge of broken flagstone caught on a rocky protrusion on the mountainside, lay Antian, the Little Empress. One of her long braids had curled on her breast in a long black rope, like a living thing that had come to comfort her; the other had slipped down her shoulder and now hung over the edge of her resting place, swinging out into the chasm below her. She held a hand – always graceful, still graceful! – to her side in a fragile kind of way, as though she was trying to staunch a wound with no strength left to do it with, and indeed there was a dark stain that was spreading into her robe underneath her fingers. Her hand was smeared with red; so was her face, with a gash on her forehead oozing a thin stream of blood into the corner of her eye and down her temple and another graze red and bleeding along the line of her jaw. One of her legs seemed bent at an unnatural angle.

But her eyes were lucid, and she tried to smile when Tai’s face appeared over the edge of the ruin above her.

‘Don’t move,’ Tai said, her voice catching a little. ‘I’ll go get help.’

‘Wait …;’

But Tai was already gone. There had been something about Antian that she could hardly bear to watch – a kind of brightness, an aura that was more than just the first fingers of the dawn’s golden glow, an otherworldly light that told her that Antian had already taken that first irrevocable step into the world beyond, the world of the Immortals.

Tai skidded into the courtyards, panting, her eyes wild, her feet bleeding from scratches and gashes delivered by the broken cobblestones she had stumbled over in her haste. There were people in the courtyards now, but only a few of them were actually moving about or doing something constructive. Bodies were laid out in the garden, and a handful of bloodied survivors had been taken to a sheltered area where one or two servants, themselves bandaged and bleeding from scratches or hobbling on makeshift crutches, tried to tend to them. Someone was crying weakly for water. Somebody else was weeping, a curiously steady sound, as though she did not know how to stop.

A young woman in a white robe streaked with dust and blood was leaning over a woman’s body, gently probing with long fingers, but even as Tai watched she straightened with a sigh, closing her eyes. Her expression told it all.

Her face was familiar, underneath its coating of grime, and Tai fought her own panic and fear to dredge the name from her memory – this was someone who could be useful – who was it – she knew her, it was precisely the person she had come looking for …;

Yuet. The name swam into her mind, followed by another – Szewan – the healer woman who had tended Tai’s mother that spring. Yuet had tagged at Szewan’s heels. Yuet was the healer’s apprentice.

Szewan was in Linh-an. Yuet was here. Yuet was the healer.

Tai ran to the older girl and snatched at the sleeve of her robe.

‘Come! Oh, you must come! It’s Antian – it’s the Little Empress – she needs your help.’

The young healer turned her head, blinked in Tai’s direction for a moment, the words not sinking in. Then, as she parsed the sentence, as she realized what had just been said, she sucked in her breath.

‘Is she alive?’

‘Yes. Yes! Hurry!’

Yuet drew a shaking hand across her forehead. ‘The Gods be thanked for that, at least!’ She showed no sign of having recognized Tai, although they had met several times during the spring, but right now Yuet would have been hard put to recognize her own mother. All she could see was the death all around her, the death written in the broken women they were scrambling to dig out of the ruins, the despair written in the faces of those who had come to the call for help, themselves bruised, cut, bleeding. The death written in the toppled mountain that had annihilated everything.

The Emperor and the Empress were both dead. The rescuers digging in the rubble of the Palace knew that much already. Oylian, the Second Princess, they had not found yet – and that could not be a good sign. And now, this …;

‘Take me to her,’ Yuet said, turning away from the body at her feet and starting out towards the ruined Palace.

‘This way!’ Tai, who had not let go of her sleeve, tugged her away and across the gardens.

Yuet stopped, confused. ‘Where is the Little Empress?’

‘She was on one of the balconies …; out on the mountain.’

What little colour was left in Yuet’s cheeks drained away. ‘What in the name of Cahan was she doing there? When this was all coming down?’

‘We were supposed to meet at the balcony this morning.’ Tai pulled at Yuet’s arm. ‘Hurry!’

Yuet followed, frowning, until her eyes suddenly lit briefly with recognition. ‘You’re from Linh-an, you’re her jin-shei-bao. ’

‘Hurry.’ Tai seemed to have forgotten every other word she ever knew. All that was beating in her heart, in her blood, in her mind, was hurry. The broken doll on the ledge below the balcony, that was just the shell of Antian – but if they didn’t hurryhurry hurry the shell would melt and shred in the mountain winds like a cloud and disappear for ever …; and this was Antian, the Princess who laughed, who cared, who loved, who would be Empress one day …;

Yuet had the presence of mind to snag a relatively able-bodied male servant on their way to the balcony, surmising – rightly – that Antian would have to be extracted out of some unspeakable wreckage before she could be helped. But that hadn’t prepared her for the devastation of the mountainside when the three of them finally emerged onto what was left of the little balcony. Yuet gasped, her hand going to her throat.

‘She survived this ?’ Yuet said breathlessly.

Tai had run to the edge of the chasm. ‘Antian? Antian, I’m here. I brought help.’

The manservant reached out and scooped the struggling Tai out of harm’s way, and peered carefully over the edge himself.

‘We would need rope, I think,’ he said.

‘There is no time for that now.’ Yuet had approached and was gauging the distance between herself and her patient. ‘I think there is space enough. Lower me down, and then go fetch a rope and another pair of hands to help you. This will need doing gently. Dear sweet Cahan, she is still alive. Princess? I am coming down to you.’

Antian whispered something, very softly, and Tai thought she heard, No, it is too dangerous. But Yuet had already grasped the manservant’s wrists with her hands, and he had wrapped his own fingers around her wrists and was trying to judge the most stable spot to lower her down on.

‘I don’t think there’s a good place,’ Yuet said at last. ‘There’s no time, there’s no time ! Lower me down there and go get help!’