The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ getting off scot-free,’ she said sharply. ‘We’re holding you back this autumn. You’re ready to go up a level, but you obviously need to learn more about strategy and prudence. So your cat has cost you advancement, this round.’ She saw Xaforn’s stricken face, and allowed herself to smile. ‘For what it’s worth, it is my own considered opinion that it won’t matter one whit, and that you will be the youngest Guard to be inducted into the Imperial Corps. But it will be a year later than you hoped. Xaforn, I don’t want you to learn the wrong lesson from this. I am proud of you. We are proud of you. You understand honour; now you must start learning to weigh when and how it can best be defended. You could have come to me with this and I would have done something about it – I like torture no more than you do.’

      ‘But the cat would have died,’ Xaforn said softly.

      ‘Maybe,’ JeuJeu said. ‘And maybe not. And maybe both it would have been alive and you would have had your promotion. And maybe you’d never have known what it was that you really believed in.’ JeuJeu’s smile turned a little wry. ‘Truth? I don’t know that I would have done any different. I’ll see what I can do for you, for my part. You may go.’

      Xaforn left, her thoughts churning. She found herself utterly ambivalent about the cat, the bully, her actions. Her gut told her she had done the right thing; her reason railed against her having risked anything at all that would have harmed her sole focus, her chance of belonging, of being Guard – full Guard, part of that family – as soon as she could make that happen.

      That cat.

      The damned cat had survived. The odds had been against the kitten, just as they had always been against Xaforn achieving impossible goals. Xaforn was not blind to the irony of this. She was suddenly curious to see how the cat was doing – but that would mean, of course, going into the family quarters again. Where Qiaan was.

      ‘I might as well get it over with,’ she muttered. ‘I should probably never have meddled at all.’

      Xaforn wore such a fierce scowl as she came through the archway and into the inner compound that perfectly innocent children instinctively sidled out of her way, avoiding the sense of being somehow at fault which circled around Xaforn just waiting to find a target to land on. The scowl only deepened when she emerged from the passageway leading through into the inner garden surrounded by the mews where Captain Aric lived, and found Qiaan seated on the grass, a straw hat on her head, and another on the ground beside her which had been made into a nest of sorts where, now, a black kitten with white-edged paws curled up asleep. There were a dozen children there, some playing knucklebones, others acting out domestic dramas with rag dolls or attacking each other furiously with wooden swords, a few of them keeping an eye on the kitten and waiting for it to wake up and enchant them with its antics.

      The damn cat had become a celebrity.

      Xaforn’s scowl deepened even more when a few of the noisier children lapsed into silence, watching her progress across the yard. A couple of the small faces registered alarm.

      ‘Don’t be scared,’ said Qiaan, who hadn’t turned to look but somehow knew that the children had become wary. She was supposedly addressing the children, but her voice had been pitched for the visitor. ‘She’s just come to see Ink.’

      ‘Ink?’ Xaforn repeated, blindsided by the fact that the cat had survived long enough to gain a name.

      ‘One of the little ones said she looked like somebody had been holding her by the paws and dunked her into a pail of ink,’ said Qiaan, with a straight face.

      Coming closer, Xaforn noticed the paper smoothed over a wooden board in Qiaan’s lap, and a small bottle of ink, the writing kind, beside her on the grass. ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘Drawing her,’ Qiaan said, turning the board.

      ‘It isn’t very good,’ Xaforn said tactlessly, studying the brush-and-ink rendition.

      Qiaan shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It’s only for me.’

      Xaforn, somehow always on the defensive with Qiaan’s particular brand of passive resistance, sidestepped. ‘I suppose it’s better than I could do.’

      The kitten chose this moment to stretch and yawn, revealing sharp, delicate and somehow impossibly feral needle-like teeth. It opened one eye, just a narrow slit gleaming green in the black fur of its face, and then both, giving Xaforn a guileless, wide-eyed stare.

      Captivated, Xaforn reached over a finger.

      ‘Careful,’ said Qiaan, ‘she …;’

      The kitten began purring softly, butting its head against Xaforn’s fingertip.

      ‘ …; scratches,’ Qiaan finished, and then grinned. ‘Well, look at that.’

      The cat was a tangle of conspiracies. Xaforn flushed, snatching her hand back. ‘I just wanted to make sure she was all right,’ she said.

      Qiaan smiled again at the ‘she’. Xaforn and the cat continued looking at one another warily. Still smiling, Qiaan picked up the narrow brush lying by the inkwell, dipped it into the ink and sketched out a few letters of script beside the cat picture. She blew on the ink gently to dry it, and Xaforn’s attention switched back to her.

      ‘Here,’ Qiaan said, picking up the paper and handing it to her visitor. ‘You keep that.’ Her eyes were veiled behind long dark lashes as she added, ‘Although it isn’t very good.’

      Xaforn took the paper automatically as it was thrust at her, and her face settled back into its scowl.

      ‘What’s this?’ she said, staring at the letters Qiaan had put onto the page.

      Qiaan started to answer, and then stared at her. ‘You don’t know, do you? And how could you?’

      Caught in an inadequacy, straight after having been pilloried for being far too good at what she did, Xaforn flushed darkly. ‘Perhaps I didn’t need to know.’

      ‘Jin-ashu,’ Qiaan said. ‘The women’s language.’

      Taught from mother to daughter. Rochanaa had done her duty by this, at least – Qiaan knew the script of the women’s language, the secret language. But who had there been to teach foundlings like Xaforn? Qiaan stared at the other girl, curious and oddly astonished by this discovery. Did none of them know it? Were all the female Guards who had come here as foundling babies illiterate in this secret that the women of Syai had cherished and passed down from generation to generation for a thousand years?

      She could not believe that. So much of her world was built on its existence.

      Or was it just Xaforn herself – did Xaforn slip through the cracks, so intent on belonging to the Guard that she never learned how to belong to herself and her heritage?

      ‘It says “Ink”,’ Qiaan said, her voice completely free of sarcasm or mockery, the twin weapons with which she often faced the world. She picked up the brush again, dipped it into the ink, sketched out a new set of letters on a shred of paper which had been lying underneath the sketch she’d handed to Xaforn. She handed over this, too, without a word to the other girl. Xaforn took it, stared at it.

      ‘So I can’t read it,’ she said. ‘So?’

      ‘It СКАЧАТЬ