Portal of a Thousand Worlds Page 17
This was the most interesting day she had experienced in half a year. She had forgotten how to handle such excitement. By the time she had been escorted to her new quarters in the Summer Palace, she felt drained and battered, haunted by troubles which she must not discuss with anyone. That her inadequacy might be the cause of so many terrible disasters! More than anything, she wished she had someone she could talk to. But her attendants certainly included spies who would report everything she said to the Empress Mother and Chief Eunuch.
And what sort of a night was she facing? If Absolute Purity was still drugged with opium, then she might be able to stretch out on the great imperial bed and sleep until dawn. At least he would not smell quite so vile, but when he woke up and found himself in an unfamiliar place, he would have hysterics. His body would crave opium and he would not know what he wanted or how to ask for it. She nibbled some food and tried to rest, but she kept thinking of the ocean of bad news she had overheard in the Great Council. The Good Land was in dire trouble and the Emperor was an overgrown baby. Could the Empress Mother continue to hold it together? And what could Snow Lily do to help?
The warning summons arrived before sunset, earlier than usual, but her usual maids followed the normal procedure of bathing and scenting her, painting her face, and pinning up her hair. The entry ritual went exactly as it had in the main Winter Palace—she stepped into an antechamber guarded by six eunuchs. But there was change, for she recognized none of them.
The one in the grandest robes bowed to her. “If it please, my lady, I have the honor to be Joyous Diligence, His Majesty’s Keeper of the Hours.”
She nodded. She did not like the look of him, and certainly not the unmistakable eunuch smell of him, but that was hardly a rarity. “The august Son of the Sun is alone?”
“Absolutely.”
“And how is His Majesty’s mood this evening, honorable Keeper of the Hours?”
The eunuch smirked unpleasantly. “Buoyant, I should say.”
That sounded highly unlikely, but if it was a joke at her expense, the other five guards showed no signs of understanding it. She walked over to the other door, shed her robe, and turned around so they could see that she was carrying no weapons. She was long past being embarrassed by being observed nude, at least by eunuchs. Joyous Diligence opened the door for her, followed her along the corridor, and saw her through the second door, which he closed behind her. She heard the lock turn. He probably locked the first door, also—or perhaps the corridor was guarded all night—she did not know.
The antechamber was unfamiliar, of course, but in the fading light, it seemed no less sumptuous than the quarters she had become accustomed to. If anything, she decided, it was even grander, with lacquered furniture, silk screens, and three huge windows facing southward over the Summer Park. Yellow everywhere.
Now she must find Absolute Purity and await His Majesty’s pleasure, which was usually, “Lily sing!” but tonight might be only the snores of a drug-induced coma.
There were two doors to choose from. She guessed right and stepped into the grandiose imperial bedchamber. As she closed the door, she was astonished to see Absolute Purity standing at the windows, staring out. All his absurd state vestments had been removed, and no doubt safely stored away in a vault somewhere, but he was wearing a loose robe of ornate gold silk. She had never seen him in anything like that before. The evening attendants usually left him in diapers, which he often removed before morning.
She froze as she registered the length of the queue dangling down his back. That was not the Emperor and no servant would ever be dressed like that.
With a cry close to a scream, Snow Lily spun around and fled. She raced across the antechamber and pounded her fists vainly on the surface of padded golden leather.
“You are Snow Lily, of course.”
She peered around nervously. The man had followed her and was standing in the bedroom door. The man! He spoke with a deep voice, neither the raucous screech of a eunuch nor the childish babble of the disabled Emperor. He held a bulky golden cloth in one hand. He tossed it toward her, letting it collapse on the floor.
“Drape yourself. We have to talk.” He turned away and disappeared into the other room.
Trembling, she hurried to the discarded sheet and did as he had said. A man in the imperial bedroom with the imperial concubine? The eunuchs were not going to come and rescue her before morning, obviously. Even if they did, even if the stranger never laid a finger on her, she was a corpse walking.
Talk, he had said.
He probably meant much more than talk.
But then she recalled the extraordinary events of the morning, and the Empress Mother’s cryptic remarks about redoubling efforts. Was it possible that Snow Lily was about to meet the real Emperor for the first time? Had the last half year been all a terrible hoax, some sort of test?
Trembling, she went back to the bedchamber.
He again had his back to her, but he was sitting on a chair near the windows. She waited a moment. He continued to stare at the park outside and the first stars. She closed the door.
“Ready?” he turned around and smiled. “Sit there.” He pointed to a divan.
Again, she obeyed, trembling. In her entire life, she had never been alone with an unaltered man. She had never even spoken with one who was not a close relative. There was some terrible conspiracy afoot, for no intruder could possibly have broken into the palace without help. A real man! She was going to be raped, ruined forevermore, put to the death of a thousand cuts as a traitor to her Emperor.
The man was close and facing her, but not too close and not quite straight on. He had a powerful, masculine face, broad, not flabby. He was a young man, but a large one—about the same size as Absolute Purity, of course, and his smile was intended to put her at ease, however insincere it might be.
“The old she-dragon didn’t warn you she had changed her plans, did she?” he said. “That’s typical! She is a viper. But I assure you that she smuggled me in here—the Empress Mother herself. Nobody else could have done that, now could they? Chief Eunuch wouldn’t dare. They’d melt him down for soap.”
“You’re pretending to be the Emperor?” New eunuchs on the doors, new servants in the Summer Palace. Only the Empress Mother could be behind such an outrage; no one else could hope to carry it off.
He shrugged. “It sounds crazy, I know, but you must have noticed that nobody ever looks straight at the Emperor, not ever? Even if they don’t have their faces in the dust, kowtowing, even if they’re speaking to him, they don’t look him in the eyes. Most people see him only at a distance or behind a veil. I proved it today. She had me preside over a meeting of the Great Council. I thought I was headed for the death of a thousand cuts, but all I had to do was sit there like a temple idol and … What’s wrong?”
“I was there! I sat beside the Empress Mother and watched you!” It had been him. She remembered watching his eyes moving, and they had been this man’s eyes. She had thought that poor Absolute Purity was doing very well with the opium in him. What a fool she had been!
He grinned wider than ever. “And even you didn’t notice? You? His concubine!”
She felt herself blushing scarlet. “I expected … I assumed …” And the Empress Mother had been waiting to see if she would ask who that was up there, pretending. If the imposter could fool her, he could fool anyone.
He was grinning. “Most people see only what they expect to see, most of the time, and if his own mother wasn’t complaining, who were you to? … Am I right?”
Oh! It had all been some sort of a test? A cruel test of … What? Loyalty? That overgrown child had been a hoax all along. How could she have ever believed? She slid off the chair to her knees and bent her face to the floor.
“Don’t!” the man said sharply. “Sit where I told you. That’s better. I am not the Emperor. You know that.”
He smiled as if he approved of her progress. “That’s a complicated question. Or it’s a simple question with several answers. I have no family, so no family name. My friends always used to call me Horse, because I’m big and not too smart. The she-dragon called me ‘Butterfly Sword.’ That’s a joke, too, because a butterfly sword is a large knife intended to be hidden in a sleeve or a boot. Meaning I am a concealed weapon, and no one must bring a weapon into the Great Within.”
Especially his sort of weapon. “Why? I can see using you as a puppet in public. Explain to me exactly why she smuggled you in here.”
He bit his lip and looked away. The mirage Emperor dissolved into a grandly robed, very large young man. An Emperor could never be embarrassed.
“Please don’t make me spell it out, sweet beauty,” he told the window. “When the old Emperor Zealous Righteousness died back in the Year of the Firebird, Junior Empress Jade Star contrived to get herself named co-regent, and over the next few months, she poisoned off all the other cos until she was the only regent. She also poisoned every possible rival to her infant son, all conceivable heirs. Then she settled down to enjoy running the Good Land, but her son is now of age and ought to be reigning in his own right. I gather he can’t.” He fell silent, leaving the story hanging.
“And he can’t father an heir, either,” Snow Lily said bitterly. “You can … er, Your Majesty?”
“Just call me Horse.” He nodded. “Yes, I can give you a child. She made sure of that. That doesn’t mean I have to do it tonight. And I swear I won’t force you, not even to please the she-dragon. If you don’t want to cooperate, then she can pull another concubine out of the closet easily enough.”
“And poison me to silence me?”
“Sorry.” He pulled a face. “I didn’t want to frighten you, nattering about poison. I suppose it would be possible, although you are no real danger to her. Who could you tell and who would believe you if they weren’t in on the plot already? The old witch obviously likes you, so maybe she’d just post you to the far end of the palace and forget about you.”
Snow Lily felt as if the world was spinning, with her on it. She clutched at the one encouraging thing he had said. “Why do you say she likes me?”
“Because she let you have first chance at”—he grinned shamefacedly—“at me. She told me just today that she had decided to take that risk. You had earned it, she said. She has other girls waiting, girls who have never met the real Emperor.”
“But it would be treason!” Snow Lily wailed. “You’re supposed to father a child with me so the Empress Mother can pass him off as the true heir to the throne? Then what happens to me, and you, and her real son?”
The young man who insisted on being addressed as Horse turned his head slowly and fixed her with a hard stare. She felt her face flaming hot, but she endured his scrutiny because she thought that was what he must want of her. He was not hard to look at himself. An unaltered man! A young and large and strong-looking, virile man, and she was supposed to accept him as her husband.
“When this assignment was first explained to me,” he said at last, “I was told that I would never be seen in public and all I would have to do was perform like a stud horse. I was told that when I had successfully completed my assignment, I would be given a sinecure job very far away. Then I was told that I bear so much natural resemblance to the true Emperor and his father that my role is to be expanded to include the odd public appearance. I was told that the real Absolute Purity would carry on playing with his dolls or whatever it is he does between meals and naps. I was told that the concubines I was to, er, service, would believe I was the genuine article. But finally, today, I was told that you would know otherwise. …
“Frankly, I believe almost nothing I have been told. The one thing we can be sure of is that the she-dragon will see that she has another twenty years or so in power. She hasn’t ruled too badly in the past.”
“Not badly?” Snow Lily was reminded of something beyond her own troubles. “Weren’t you listening to all the reports in the Great Council? Floods, famine, eclipses, omens, riots?”
“Horrible, wasn’t it?” The imposter sprang to his feet and strode back to the darkening windows. “I wanted to leap to my feet and scream at them all to do something to help those poor people—send food, send building materials to replace the lost homes … I am supposed to be Emperor and I am utterly helpless.”
He sighed. “I’m sure she planned all that for a purpose. Why reveal such a catalog of disasters? Was she warning me not to try and steal the throne? Was she warning any ambitious prince that there’s enough trouble already without any unrest in Sublime Mountain? Some of the mandarins in the background were horrified, so maybe she was distracting them from looking too critically at my face. Next time, of course, they’ll remember me, and believing in me will be that much easier. When the Empress Mother plays chess, she moves every piece on the board, so they say.” He fell silent, studying the heavenly worlds.
No matter what he said, Horse was not stupid, Snow Lily decided.
She felt stupid though. She was paralyzed. What should she do? Why didn’t somebody tell her what to do? Never in her life had she ever had to make a decision. Her mother, her father, the eunuchs in the palace, the Empress Mother—all her life she had followed orders without question, and now she was being left to make up her own mind on a matter of high treason, life and death.
“You would be a very important person if you were the next Empress Mother,” Horse told the stars. “Of course, the she-dragon would keep all the power, but stay loyal to her and you should do very well for yourself. All you need is a son.”
“And then I will have done all that is required of me. And you will have done all required of you.”
He spun on his heel, came striding straight to her, and—just before she panicked—dropped on his knees to stare hard at her again.
“And what happens then, do you suppose?” he growled.
“We die. Both of us. And the real Emperor … is …”
Was already dead or very soon would be. She started to cry. She buried her face in her hands. Her face paint would be all smudged and horrid. She was going to be murdered.
Suddenly, the divan rocked and a very large arm went around her. She stiffened in terror, but nothing more happened.
“I don’t know what to do!” she whispered.
“I do, but I am not exactly an unbiased adviser,” Horse said. “All in favor, please rise. Too late, already risen. …” He pulled her tighter against him. He was very strong. He smelled pleasingly musky—an intriguing scene … nothing like Absolute Purity or the eunuchs.
“Would you like me to help you decide?” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes.”
He pulled her in even closer, using both arms, tucking her head against his shoulder. “We’re both in this together, you know. And if we don’t do as she wants, we’re liable to die together. If we cooperate, we may have a chance. You are incredibly beautiful. I expect all the boys … No, I suppose not. But you are certainly beautiful enough to be an Emperor’s prize jewel. Tell me about yourself, beautiful Snow Lily.”
“Me? But, Your Maj— Why do you want to know about me?”
“Because I do.”
She squirmed into a more comfortable position, her head against his chest. “My father is descended from a daughter of Emperor Tenacious.”
“That’s your father. What about you?”
“Well, so am I.” She tried to collect her wits. Why did this man care about her background? “My father is a captain of a ship. I mean we were not really, truly poor, but my mother had more children than servants. And my father decided I was pretty enough to be a concubine, so when I was twelve, he took me to the School of the Sublime Arts, and they agreed. And last year … My parents wrote me a letter saying that C
hief Eunuch had sent Father a lot of money, and if the Emperor favored me … Are you going to make love to me?”
She was remembering those naked people she had been shown, the frantically active young men and the girls making such extraordinary noises, sounding as if they were in pain, but not behaving as if they were.
“I hope so,” Horse said, “but not until you tell me you want me to. We have the whole night ahead of us. Lots of nights. I’m in no hurry. Are you?”
“Not yet,” she murmured. It was wonderfully comforting, being held like this. She had not realized that men could be gentle. “Soon, maybe. If I bear a child by you, then Chief Eunuch would pretend it was the Emperor’s and First Mandarin would send my father a lot of money, wouldn’t he?”
“A huge amount, I expect, especially if it’s a boy. And probably give him an important job, maybe a title. Your brothers will prosper, too, if you have brothers.”
Snow Lily sighed happily and cuddled closer. Everything was going to be all right. “Keep talking, Your Majesty.”
“Horse.”
She sniggered.
After a long moment she said, “This is nice. What happens next?”
The Marble Ship was a gazebo on a promontory in the largest of the artificial lakes in Sublime Mountain, but it was built in the shape and size of a sternwheeler riverboat, so that it seemed to float on the water. It was one of the jewels of the Summer Palace and a fine place for viewing theatrical performances or hosting large banquets, although the food would always arrive cold. It was the Empress Mother’s favorite picnic place, where she could hold informal meetings without the eunuchs eavesdropping. Never before had she been able to use it so early in the year as the end of Hare Moon, but the weather continued to be remarkable. Unfortunately, while astrologers were always ready to declare bad weather a bad omen, they rarely had a good word to say about fair.