The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

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       One

      It had been the hottest summer in living memory. The letters that came to the Summer Palace from those left behind to swelter in the Imperial Court in Linh-an were full of complaints about the heavy, sultry heat that wrapped and stifled them until they gasped for breath, the clouds that built up huge and purple every day against the bleached white sky but never brought anything except dry lightning and a distant threatening rumble of thunder. And it was barely the middle of the month of Chanain. Summer had only just begun.

      But there were few left in Linh-an. At the Summer Palace in the mountains, although it was still hot enough for servants with enormous peacock feather fans to take up posts beside the royal women’s beds until they fell asleep at night, one could raise one’s eyes to the distant white-capped peaks and be comforted with the dream of coolness. There was always a breeze in the gardens, too, whispering in the leaves of the dwarf mountain magnolia trees planted around the inner courtyard. It was pleasant to linger there in the early morning, when the bird chorus was just starting up, or in the late afternoon with its long shadows and golden light. The voices of wild crickets mingled with captive ones in tiny wicker houses which hung concealed in the trees. There were cool ponds and fountains where water played over the smooth mottled grey stone brought here from a great distance by a long-dead Empress to grace her gardens. There were white flowers and red ones, some with a golden cast, and some with heavy purple petals making their heads nod in the breeze. And there were the butterflies.

      It was the butterflies that brought Tai there. She was not of the Court, not even of the Court’s retinue; by rights she should have had no real access to the Imperial gardens at all. Imperial life was complicated. Down in Linh-an, the great capital city, the lives of the women of the Imperial Court were governed by endless rounds of etiquette and protocol. There were people to see, petitioners to receive; the higher-ranked princesses and concubines held their own courts, and were expected to grace public ceremonies with their presence and attend to the day-to-day business of their own households. All of this required strict rules about attire and adornment. Summer was the only time when a woman of the Imperial Court of Syai was permitted to appear outside her bedroom without the mandatory hours of preparation and perfection. Here, in the Summer Palace, the Court was on holiday; the women were allowed to wear their hair down, to emerge from the seclusion of their rooms without the heavy ceremonial outer robes, to go barefoot in the gardens.

      And summer was the only time that the ladies had the time to devote to the preparation of the necessary ceremonial garb for the Autumn Court at which they were all to appear to mark their return to Linh-an from their summer frolics. Everyone required a brand-new formal suit of robes for that occasion, and the Summer Palace was always a happy muddle of bolts of sumptuous silks, bright velvets, furs for lining hoods and tippets, and a thousand embroidery hoops with half-finished flowers and hummingbirds.

      Tai’s mother, Rimshi, was always part of the entourage which the Imperial ladies took to the Summer Palace. Rimshi was a sorceress with the needle. She could transform silk and velvet and brocade into lavish robes, and her services were much in demand. Ever since she had been widowed, three years ago now, Rimshi had taken Tai with her to the Summer Palace. Tai had been just six when she had first come here clinging to her mother’s skirts, and had been fussed over and petted and spoiled with sweets and the royal cast-offs from princesses unlikely to be seen in public twice wearing the same suit of Court garb. Tai had a closet full of luxurious robes which her mother carefully re-cut and re-shaped into clothes suitable for her to wear. She was nine now, but she had become so much a part of the Summer Palace gardens by this time that nobody even thought about questioning her presence there.

      She would find an unobtrusive perch in some out-of-the-way courtyard and dream her way through lazy summer mornings listening to the cricket chorus and watching the bright butterflies flutter from flowerhead to flowerhead, contrasting white and blue and violet and vivid orange against the blooms and foliage. One of the gifts that had percolated to her that particular summer, from a bored royal concubine who could not master the art of using them, was a set of coloured chalks and a sheaf of thick creamy rag paper. Tai had loved the idea of drawing the somnolent summer gardens. She was only just beginning to have an idea of how the chalks worked, and her first few efforts were crude and garish, in an attempt to overcompensate from what she was used to, brushes and inks and the cheap thin paper she could get back home in Linh-an. But she was learning, and these dazzling summer butterflies were her favourite subject.

      She was smudging the finishing touches to a surprisingly delicate rendition on a hot, slow afternoon, sitting in the mottled shade of an ancient twisted chestnut with her feet tucked tidily away under her robe and oblivious to everything else around her, when she was startled to hear a voice from behind her.

      ‘That is actually very good,’ the voice observed, a young woman’s voice, sounding at once lofty and warmly approving.

      Tai, who had paused in her work and had been sitting with her eyes tightly closed and her head lifted in a pose of furious concentration, dropped her paper and scrambled gracelessly to her feet. The voice was patrician, aristocratic, and in any event anybody in this garden had to be part of the Imperial Court and it was not etiquette for Tai to be seated in the presence of a woman from the Court.

      The owner of the voice was perhaps only a few years older than Tai, but even in the permissive déshabillé of the Summer Palace there was no mistaking her rank. She wore a light summer robe that left her arms indelicately bare, and they had taken on a golden glow from the sun, but her hair was gleaming and plaited with pearls where it coiled in thick black braids under a wide-brimmed hat which shaded her fair complexion. She was leaning on the trunk of the chestnut tree with one hand, and it was placed with the long-fingered elegance of one trained to grace in every movement. Her eyes were dark, slanted up at the corners, touched up with kohl – languid, friendly, but with a definite glint of imperiousness lurking in the corners together with a hint of irrepressible laughter.

      Tai dropped to one knee, lowering her eyes.

      ‘Oh, don’t,’ the Princess said, waving her up. ‘It’s summer. It’s too hot for protocol. You draw well. What is your name?’

      ‘Tai, Highness.’

      ‘Rimshi’s girl? I think you were presented to me once. A year ago, maybe two. You’ve grown.’

      Tai searched her memory frantically. She had been presented to several Imperial ladies, but one so young? This young Princess could not have been more than maybe fourteen or fifteen herself; that would have made her …; what …; perhaps thirteen when Rimshi had presented her little daughter to her. There couldn’t have been many.

      There weren’t many. There was only one. Antian, First Princess, Little Empress, the heiress to Syai’s throne.

      Tai, who had started to rise at the Princess’s behest, dropped down into the courtesy again.

      ‘Your Imperial Highness,’ she squawked.

      ‘I said, rise,’ said Antian. ‘I recognize your tools. Hsui never could apply the chalk properly. I’m glad she had the sense to give them to someone who would make better use of them. Do you usually draw with your eyes closed?’

      The question was unexpected. Tai blinked. ‘Princess?’

      ‘That’s what made me come here to you,’ Antian explained patiently. ‘I saw you from across the court, and you were alternately concentrating on your art and sitting there with your eyes tightly shut …; and sometimes your hands were moving СКАЧАТЬ