Читать книгу The Secrets of Jin-Shei - Alma Alexander - Страница 21

Tai was not part of the funeral procession which wound its way through Linh-an’s streets when the Emperor and his family were taken to their resting place. She could have been, if she had asked – for a jin-shei-bao had every right to follow a sister to her funeral. But this was too raw still, much too private and too deep a grief to expose it to the crowds in the streets. Tai had thought she could pay her respects her own way, just by being in the throngs on the pavements when the procession passed, but she had been resigned to being unable to see much of Antian’s last journey from within the crowd which would gather in the streets. All of Linh-an would be there, the throng would undoubtedly be five or six deep on the pavements – she would have to bid farewell to the sister of her heart from behind a wall of humanity. But the Gods, who had given her so much and then capriciously took it all away again, seemed to have repented of their whim and now showered Tai with many small gifts as if to make amends.

One was an unexpected friendship begun in the bead-carver’s booth. It had been Nhia, Tai’s neighbour and friend, who had finally formally introduced the two – she had been acquainted with Kito and his father, amongst the many craftsmen and merchants in the Temple’s First Circle, for most of her young life. Nhia had accompanied Tai on one of her Temple visits during the weeks prior to the Emperor’s funeral, and Kito had chanced to notice them, and called out a greeting.

‘We are kept busy,’ he had said, in response to Nhia’s polite inquiry as to his well-being. But his eyes had been smiling at Tai, and hers were downcast, although her mouth curved upwards a little at its corners. Nhia’s eyebrow rose a fraction, and she said smoothly, as though she had noticed nothing at all, ‘I do not know if you have met my friend. Tai, this is Kito, son of So-Xan, the bead-carver. Kito, this is Tai, daughter of Rimshi, the seamstress.’

They bowed to each other.

‘Perhaps you will share another bowl of green tea with me some time,’ Kito said. He had been addressing, in theory, both girls – but since Nhia, for all the length of her acquaintance with him, had never partaken of green tea in the bead-carver’s booth she assumed there was a story behind this tea party which excluded her.

Tai had blushed. ‘I would enjoy that,’ she said, and once more Nhia was excluded.

Nhia passed over the mystery with studied innocent ignorance. ‘Perhaps later,’ she murmured, and was rewarded by both her companions throwing startled glances first at her and then, very briefly, at each other. They had made their farewells, and the girls had passed on into the Temple while Kito pretended to turn back to his work – although both Nhia and Tai were sharply aware of the weight of his eyes on their backs.

‘He gave me the last Ivory Emperor bead,’ Tai had said to Nhia by way of an explanation as they walked away. ‘I saw him polishing the carvings smooth, making the mourning beads, and he gave me a whole one, one he had not yet marred. He gave me my memory back.’

‘And a bowl of green tea,’ Nhia murmured.

Tai blushed again, uncharacteristically. ‘I was crying,’ she said softly. ‘That was …; the first time I cried for her.’

Nhia knew that there had been some connection to the Court, over and above Rimshi’s usual Summer Court duties, but she had not known what – and this sentence was cryptic, to say the least. But she was Nhia, and people trusted her – and Tai, after all, was her friend, perhaps her only friend. And now that Antian was gone, there was no secret any more. Tai raised her head and met Nhia’s eyes.

‘She and I were jin-shei,’ Tai said. ‘This was the third summer that I shared with my heart-sister. And there was so much in those three years, Nhia, so much! I have already lived a lifetime with her. And now she is gone.’

She had still not named a name, but since this was connected to the Imperial Family it had to be one of the two girls lying dead in the Temple at this very moment.

‘Jin-shei?’ Nhia echoed. ‘With Second Princess Oylian?’

‘With Antian,’ Tai said. ‘With the Little Empress.’

Nhia’s step faltered a little. ‘You were jin-shei-bao – to the Little Empress? How in Cahan did that happen?’

So Tai told the tale again, as they sat side by side on one of the benches by the pools of the Third Circle gardens. The tears ran free now, leaving trails on her cheeks as she spoke, and Nhia’s eyes filled in sympathy. She hugged Tai at the end, unsure of what to say to lay balm on the hurt – but she was Nhia, and she was overflowing with the stories and the parables and the wisdom that she had picked up during her years within the Temple’s walls, and now she pulled one from her memory.

‘When Han-fei crossed the Great River and entered the realm of the Gods,’ she began, smoothing away Tai’s hair from her eyes with a motion as tender as a mother’s, ‘he walked far without meeting anyone, and keeping his eyes on the ground, so that he would not offend any being he met by looking at them without their permission. By and by he came upon a beach, and the beach opened onto a great lake, and the lake was dark and still, like a mirror, and beautiful. More beautiful still was the thing which he saw in the lake – glorious mountain peaks, rank upon rank of them, rising majestic and capped with snow, so high that the sky above them was eternally sprinkled with stars. “O, beautiful!” he said, and fell to his knees in worship of it. And a voice said to him, “This is the image, Han-fei, now look up and behold the truth.” And Han-fei looked up, and the mountains were real and stood around the lake in all their majesty and were not offended that he looked upon them, and knew them, and loved them.’ She paused. ‘It may be,’ she said gently, ‘that the thing which you shared with the Little Empress is just a reflection of something greater and truer that will come to you, that she came to you to show you the way. That she was the image on which you must now build your truth.’

Tai suddenly turned and gave Nhia a fierce hug. ‘You’ve always been my friend,’ she said.

‘Sometimes I think you’ve been my only friend,’ Nhia said with a trace of bitterness.

Tai sat back and gave Nhia a long look. ‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘Everybody likes you. People are always asking you what you think. People trust you.’

‘People have never liked me, Tai,’ Nhia said.

‘But you’ve solved all sorts of problems back in SoChi Street.’

Nhia dismissed that accomplishment with a wave of her arm. ‘That’s not the same. People trust me, yes. Sometimes I think people tell me more than they think I ought to know. But that leads away from affection, not towards it! If they know I know all those things about them, yes, they trust me – but they will never like me. Folks never like those who know too much about them.’

‘You’re one of the wisest people I know,’ Tai said sturdily, loyally.

Nhia smiled. ‘That’s because you haven’t met many people yet.’

‘I have,’ Tai said rebelliously. ‘In the Summer Palace …;’

The words sank into a pool of silence that was sorrow. Nhia reached over and squeezed Tai’s cold fingers.

‘I know you have lost something wonderful,’ she said. ‘But you’ve always been a little sister to me, Tai. Sometimes you really were the only person I could talk to. Whatever else happens in either of our lives, I wanted you to know that. It doesn’t make up for the Little Empress, but …;’

‘But I’ve had a real, live jin-shei-bao living next door to me all my life and I never knew it,’ Tai said.

Nhia gave her a startled look. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she began, but Tai turned her hand and laced her fingers through the older girl’s.

‘But I mean it,’ she said, ‘if you wish it.’

For a moment, Nhia could not find the voice to speak at all, and then, when the words did come, they were raw with emotion.

‘I can hardly take the place of the first heart’s sister, of the one who would have been Empress,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be your sister if you want me to be. I would be proud to have you call me that.’

That had been the second gift, another jin-shei, another place for the love that had been Antian’s legacy to be bestowed.

The third gift of the Gods had been even more unexpected.