The Secrets of Jin-Shei

Four

Xaforn shared a dormitory room with three other Guard foundlings. She had a utilitarian relationship with her room-mates – she did not have anything much in common with any of them. She had both given and received bruises from sparring sessions with all of them, but they shared the space amicably even if Xaforn didn’t join in with the giggles and the compound gossip the other three girls were prone to. The single Guard members were given to transient and shifting flings with others in their cadre, and Xaforn’s room-mates always seemed to know who was attached to whom any given week. Xaforn did not particularly care to know, and had developed a habit of generally tuning out specific conversations, those spiced with heavy doses of titters and whispers. But gossip was also a mine of information about the general day-to-day lives in the compound and Xaforn did not dismiss everything that found its way into her room through her chatty bunkmates.

She was sitting on her bed fixing a broken sandal barely a week after the incident with the kitten when a comment involving ‘cats’ found its way past her defences, and she lifted her head fractionally, starting to listen without giving the least impression that her attention was suddenly on things other than the half-completed repair job in her lap.

‘ …; adorable,’ one of the girls was saying. ‘It must be only a few weeks old, and it must have suffered something terrible, there are still marks on it where it had been tortured.’

‘Where did Qiaan get hold of it?’ asked another.

‘She won’t say, she says nothing of where she found it or how she got it,’ the first one said. ‘But I think it’s going to make it. She still feeds it four, five times a day; it suckles on her finger like a baby, An told me.’

So. The kitten lived. Xaforn bent over her sandal, obscurely pleased at the news. She made a mental note to keep an ear open for news of it – of her – her lips quirked again, remembering Qiaan’s quiet insistence on that point. She toyed briefly, as she had done a number of times already in the past week, with the idea of visiting the cat – the cat, not Qiaan – and then dismissed it, as she always did, staunchly resisting the impulse. There was nothing for her in the inner compound, with its teeming children, its squabbling women, its families, its cats.

She muttered a soft curse under her breath. The kitten’s tiny, vulnerable face, the delicate suckling on Qiaan’s finger, the scrabbling little wounded paws …; Xaforn jabbed a repair hook too deeply into the rope sole of her broken sandal, annoyed at the kitten’s insistent hold on her mind’s eye. She had interfered because two of the torturers had been Guard, damn it all, not because she was a bleeding heart for waifs and strays. She didn’t care what happened to it, after. She didn’t. She could swear she didn’t. She was glad the little thing had clung to life, but she’d tried to dismiss the creature from her orbit and she had every intention of forgetting about it. Especially now that she knew it had survived.

But the cat incident seemed intent on coming back to haunt her. The day after she had overheard the conversation about the kitten’s well-being, Xaforn was summoned into her cadre leader’s presence.

‘Is it true?’ JeuJeu, the scarred veteran in charge of training for Xaforn’s group, demanded without preamble as soon as Xaforn came into her cubicle.

Somehow Xaforn didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. She clenched her teeth. Qiaan – Qiaan probably told them everything.

‘It was Guards who were torturing it,’ Xaforn said, with a touch of defiance.

‘Guards,’ JeuJeu repeated blankly.

‘There were four of them, and two were Guard trainees,’ Xaforn said. ‘This was not …; honourable.’

JeuJeu was betrayed into a grim smile. ‘You took on four older boys on behalf of a half-dead street cat because what they were doing was not honourable? For the love of Cahan, Xaforn. Did you know who the boys were?’

‘Just the Guards,’ Xaforn said.

‘The others were far more important,’ JeuJeu said. ‘The one you landed in the House of Healing for five days was the son of a City Councillor. His father was not pleased.’

‘The City Councillor’s son is a bully and a fool,’ Xaforn said trenchantly. ‘He was told by the others –’

‘Yes?’ JeuJeu prompted when Xaforn came to a grinding halt. When Xaforn remained stubbornly silent, JeuJeu heaved a deep sigh and sat back in her chair, stretching her legs out before her and crossing them at the ankles. ‘I’ll tell you, then,’ she said. ‘The others told your target that he shouldn’t mess with you. He didn’t listen. He paid for it.’

‘Am I in trouble?’ Xaforn asked warily.

JeuJeu laughed, a sharp bark of a laugh, betraying amusement but not mirth. ‘Oh, a great deal of it,’ she said. ‘You broke so many rules that it would probably take me less time to enumerate those you did not break. There are people out there exceedingly angry with you, who won’t forget your name in a hurry. But you took on an adversary against the odds – they were bigger and there were more of them – and you did it on a matter of principle.’ JeuJeu shook her head. ‘Yes, I’d say you’re in trouble. But I also dislike interference with Guard matters, and they were in the compound. So technically they were in our jurisdiction. And it was our cat.’

Xaforn, who had kept her eyes down, stole a look at JeuJeu’s face at those words. The damn cat had become a symbol, somehow.

And it hadn’t been Qiaan who had squealed. It had been that malicious bully with his flabby muscles and soft belly. Once he had recovered enough to whine, that is. Xaforn allowed herself a small smile at that thought.

JeuJeu caught it. ‘Don’t look so smug, you aren’t 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 says jin-shei,’ Qiaan said, suddenly a little unsure of herself, of the impulse that had made her offer this sacred trust to the one person in Linh-an who apparently had neither knowledge nor appreciation of it.

Xaforn may have been ignorant of the secret language; she could hardly have grown up female in Syai, foundling or not, and not be aware of the existence of the jin-shei sisterhood itself. But this was a female mystery, a women’s secret, and it was something that Xaforn had dismissed as irrelevant to the life she chose to lead.

‘What use do I have for that?’ she said, raising as shield the brashness and the roughness of her warrior training – the male attributes thrown up to parry the insidious attack by the softness of the feminine in her, ruthlessly suppressed since she had taken up weapons and chosen to learn how to kill. ‘And what’s in it for you? You, of all people, and me?’

‘Do you think there are no jin-shei sisters in the Guard?’ Qiaan said. ‘You are ignorant, then. This is every woman’s heritage, be she princess or the lowest urchin in the beggar guild.’

‘The beggar women know jin-ashu?’ Xaforn said sceptically. ‘I don’t believe it.’

Qiaan shrugged. ‘The beggars may be largely illiterate but their women will have enough jin-ashu to communicate with someone like me,’ she said. ‘You can believe it or not.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Xaforn said abruptly, coming to her feet.

‘You can choose to accept it, or not,’ said Qiaan. ‘But jin-shei is not something that can be unsaid. You have the paper.’ She glanced at the kitten, which was contemplating the twitching of its own tail with a hunter’s deep concentration, and smiled. ‘We share the cat. And someday – jin-shei-bao – there may be a better drawing of the cat. And you can write her name on that yourself.’ She met Xaforn’s eyes, squarely, without flinching. ‘Or your own.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Xaforn repeated, backing away. Her eyes slid off Qiaan, lingered for a last moment on the kitten, and then she stalked out of the courtyard, her shoulders hunched.

‘Temptress,’ she muttered as she departed, clutching the drawing of the cat, trying not to let her eyes stray constantly to the mysterious symbols on the paper. Letters. Writing. Language. Sisterhood …;

‘Coward,’ Qiaan responded.

Xaforn had to clench her teeth against the sudden urge to laugh out loud.

Five

Nhia had started out thinking of the Great Temple of Linh-an as a deliciously confusing maze, a labyrinth, a box within a box.

To the child that she had been, the place was enormous, layered like a lotus flower, and full of mystery. Its outer walls were whitewashed with lime, like some of the poorest houses in the city; its three massive gates, cut into this white expanse, were old and scarred wood and had no air of holiness or even magnificence except maybe for their immense size. But they always stood open – except for one single night of the year on the Festival of All Souls when the Temple was closed to be purified – and they were gateways to a constant stream of worshippers hurrying in and out.

Nhia, who had practically grown up on the Temple’s doorstep, knew the outer rings of the Great Temple intimately.

The First Circle, running right around the inner perimeter of the whitewashed walls, was primarily taken up with Temple vendors and the stalls of diviners and soothsayers – and Nhia claimed the acquaintance of most of them, at least by sight. Some had been there for as long as she had been coming to the Temple – old Zhu, and his incense booth so meticulously devoted to one particular scent a day (‘It only confuses the customers when you show off everything you’ve got,’ he had confided to Nhia once, nodding sagely); the Rice Man, whose name she had never learned but whose family of eight children and their ailments and joys Nhia and her mother had known for years; So-Xan the yearwood bead-carver and his young son and apprentice, Kito.

Trestles within individual booths were neatly laid out with such merchandise as incense sticks suitable for individual deities or specific prayers, bowls in appropriate colour or pattern, flasks of rice wine or tea, grains of rice or of corn and powdered dyes. When Nhia was a curious toddler only just starting to lisp questions – before life had made her mother taciturn and edgy – she had demanded explanations for all of these mysterious offerings and paraphernalia.

‘Why yellow bowls, Mother? Why only thirteen grains, Mother? Why tea and not rice wine, Mother?’

‘Yellow bowls for Lord Sin, because he is Lord of the East and that’s where the yellow sun rises. Thirteen grains because of the thirteen lessons of Ama-bai. Tea and not rice wine because the Sages are lower than the Emperors.’