Alma Alexander - The Secrets of Jin-Shei

For a ghastly moment Tai thought her grip was slipping, that Antian’s silk-clad shoulders would slide from her fingers and that she’d have to watch her fall, all the way down, all the way into that river she had once watched flowing into the sunset and thought golden. But something gave her the strength and she managed to get Antian anchored on the edge of the solid remnant of the balcony. Then, miraculously, other hands arrived and somebody took up the slack, supported Antian’s body where Tai could not reach, helped lift the Princess up and lay her gently down against the wall of the balcony. Someone reached over and helped Yuet scramble back up; Tai, all of whose attention was on Antian now, heard something break and go tumbling down, crashing and crumbling against the mountainside, and a part of her shuddered at the sound, but that was all in the background.

Antian’s lips were white with pain; the pad against her side was soaked with her blood. Yuet herself looked like she had been stabbed in the heart, a dark red stain spreading across her robe, as she came to kneel on Antian’s other side.

‘They brought a stretcher, Highness, if we can just get you …;’

‘You have done,’ Antian whispered, ‘what can be …; done. Tai …;’

She tried to lift a hand, but it barely cleared her abdomen before falling back weakly. Tai reached for it, weeping openly.

‘What is it, Antian?’

‘Do …; something for me …; jin-shei-bao. ’

‘Anything,’ Tai said. ‘You know it.’

Antian’s eyes closed. She squeezed Tai’s hand, once.

‘Take care of her,’ Antian said, almost too softly for Tai to hear. ‘Take care …; of my sister.’

A rush of white noise roared in Tai’s ears as Antian’s lifeless head rested on the arm which she had slipped underneath the nape of Antian’s neck as support. For a moment she could not move at all. She felt like the entire Palace was coming down in ruins all over again, only this time she was inside it, deep inside it, and it was all falling on her and around her and burying her with the pain. It took Yuet several tries before she could get a reaction from her, but Tai eventually became aware that the older girl had her by the shoulder and was speaking to her in a gentle voice.

‘Tai. Tai. Listen to me. Look at me. Look at me. Good.’ Tai had raised her eyes, her pupils dilated with shock, her face stark. ‘I have to go back to …; they will take care …;’ Yuet’s voice faltered for a moment, and then she seemed to change her mind, come to a different decision. ‘No. You go with them. Take the Little Empress back to the summer house in the garden. Make sure she is tended with honour.’

Tai stared at her, swallowed what tasted like bitter aloes. ‘I will.’

‘I will look for you, after. I have to go and take care of …; of whoever is left up there. I will come for you. I am relying on you.’

‘I will do it,’ Tai said, getting to her feet.

Yuet could see that she was not entirely steady as she stood beside Antian’s body, and did not feel happy at leaving her alone – her healer’s instincts told her that what Tai needed right then was someone to cling to, a warm blanket, something hot to drink, all the things needed to stave off shock. But all this was the healing of the mind. She was not physically hurt, and there were others out there who would need Yuet, who might be pulled out of the rubble half-alive, whose lives Yuet could save.

Yuet looked up at the waiting servants. ‘Take the Little Empress to the summer house.’ She hesitated; all hands would be needed, but she could not just leave Tai alone. ‘One of you,’ she said, ‘stay with her and with Tai. And somebody find Tai an outer robe.’

‘Yes, sai’an. ’ The man who had gone for help bent down and gathered Antian’s body into his arms, very gently, as though she was a precious porcelain doll, and waited for Tai to lead the way. Tai turned away from the edge of the ruined balcony without looking out to her river again. She walked past Yuet without a word, almost without any sign that she was aware that the healer stood there.

‘I shouldn’t leave her alone,’ Yuet murmured to herself as the servant bearing Antian followed the younger girl into the garden.

But already she could hear the screams and wails, the pain and the terror that was waiting for her in the rubble of the Summer Palace. The voices drew her; for a moment she forgot about Tai, she forgot about Antian whose life’s blood she wore on her own robe. There were other lives.

The morning had fled quickly. They put out two of the smaller fires but the biggest one, the one that had started deepest in the ruins, quickly spread out of control. Thick columns of black smoke rose into the innocent blue of a flawless summer sky, and orange tongues of flame added to the day’s gathering heat. There were survivors – but few, so few, and the lines of bodies covered with sackcloth grew.

Yuet was perched precariously on the edge of a hole she and a few other able-bodied survivors had been excavating into the rubble, chasing down an elusive sobbing cry they had thought might indicate someone alive down there, when the first aftershock hit the mountain. The pile of debris that Yuet had been standing on tilted, nearly throwing her into the hole, and then settled at a different angle, a different slope. When the panicked shouts had settled down, they could no longer hear the voice they had been following in their attempts at rescue, and Yuet had called her team of aides off.

‘It’s useless, look, it’s all fallen in down there.’ She looked up and out across the debris, wiping sweat and dust and drifting ashes out of her eyes, and straightened up as she met the eyes of Antian’s little jin-shei-bao. ‘You? What are you doing here? Are you all right?’

‘I want to help,’ Tai said, her voice trembling just a little. She wore a borrowed gown, at least two sizes too large for her, and looked pitifully small and young and fragile.

‘Wait there a moment.’ Yuet scrambled down from her pile of rubble and came to stand next to Tai, lifting her chin with one hand, peering into her eyes. ‘You should be lying down somewhere and …;’

‘Please,’ said Tai, ‘I cannot. Let me help.’

Yuet hesitated. ‘There is little that you can do.’

Someone shouted out, a shout that held gladness; Yuet looked up. A senior servant of the women’s quarters, his tunic torn and his face and arms scratched and sooty, came scrambling over at a trot, carrying something in his arms.

‘It’s a miracle, but he is still alive,’ the servant said, offering Yuet a bawling baby swaddled in a torn silk wrap. ‘I don’t think he is hurt, even; the crying is just fear and hunger.’

Tai intercepted the child, cradled him in her arms, and he stopped crying, blinking up at Tai’s face with a puzzled expression and teardrops caught on his long dark lashes. ‘Shhhh,’ Tai said, rocking him gently against her. ‘Shhh, it will be all right. It will be all right.’

The ground trembled again under their feet, and Tai could not suppress a cry, clutching at the child, who whimpered but did not resume his desperate wailing.

‘Where did you find him? Are there …; ?’

‘No,’ said the servant, dropping his eyes. ‘Only that one. His mother is dead.’

‘Are there other children?’ Tai asked.

Yuet nodded. ‘Maybe half a dozen or so. From swaddling babes like this one to six- or seven-year-olds. They’re in the outer wing.’

‘I know it,’ Tai said. It was the wing where she and Rimshi had always stayed when they were at the Summer Palace. ‘I will take care of the children.’