Naamah's Kiss (Moirin's Trilogy #1)

There was a small terrace extending beyond his quarters in the next-to-highest deck and it was there that we met for lessons, Bao spreading straw mats on the wooden planking with his usual alacrity. We sat cross-legged on them.

"Happiness is rooted in misery," Master Lo Feng said in his tranquil voice, his wrinkled eyelids closed. "Misery lurks beneath happiness. Who knows what the future holds?"

I didn't.

I breathed the Five Styles and thought about his words as I cycled through them. Like all the verses he gave me to contemplate, it was deceptively simple. I was beginning to get a better sense of the philosophy of the Way; a sense of how all things were in flux and yet all things were in balance, and one thing gave way to another thing. All things arose from the Way and all things returned to it. But today I couldn't find that point of stillness. I couldn't ponder the future without a very large question plaguing me. "Master Lo?"

"Yes?"

"What ails the Emperor's daughter?"

He opened his eyes. "I have been waiting for you to ask. Are you ready to hear?"

I nodded. "Aye."

Master Lo Feng folded his hands into his sleeves. "Xue Hu was born to Emperor Zhu's Third Concubine. Although he tried for many years with the Empress and many concubines, she is his only child. As I told you, he loves her very much. Although his councilors advised him to adopt a male heir, the Emperor refused to do so. Against their wishes, he named Xue Hu his heir."

"Her name mean Snow Tiger," Bao added helpfully.

"So it does." Master Lo gazed into the distance. "And it suited her. She was a beautiful, fearless child. Emperor Zhu was determined that she should inherit the Celestial Throne. He raised her as he would a warrior son. When I last saw her, she could ride and shoot and wield a sword as well as any boy her age."

Bao nudged me. "Maybe she like to take a concubine."

I ignored him. "What happened?"

Master Lo's gaze returned. "Before I left, a marriage was arranged for her to the son and heir of a feudal lord in the south. All agreed it was a good match and would bring greater peace to the Celestial Empire." He sighed. "According to General Tsieh, the marriage took place as planned eight months ago. That day, the Empire celebrated. That night, Xue Hu went mad and tore her bridegroom limb from limb in the bridal chamber."

My mouth fell open. I closed it before Bao could mock me. "Truly?"

"I fear so." His gaze was somber. "A demon-spirit took possession of her. Every effort was made to drive it out."

"Pao and mirrors?"

Master Lo Feng smiled sadly. "Oh, yes. And many more. Lord Jiang, the bridegroom's father, lent his own great physician to the effort, Li Xiu."

"Black Sleeve," Bao murmured. "Not only physician. Sorcerer. Not so nice."

My mentor nodded with a troubled look. "But he knows much of the spirit world and much of alchemy. When Black Sleeve's efforts failed, Lord Jiang called for Snow Tiger's execution, threatening rebellion in the southern provinces if she were not put to death to avenge his son's murder. That is when Emperor Zhu sent for me. That is all I know."

I exhaled. "Do you reckon she lives?"

"I hope it may be so," Master Lo said. "General Tsieh says the Emperor had a special chamber with iron bars built to hold her." His brow furrowed. "The madness comes upon her when she beholds her reflection, even in another's eyes. When it comes, she knows only unnatural strength and rage. Snow Tiger suffers herself to be blindfolded willingly and grieves over her deed. Blind, she knows herself."

"Oh," I whispered.

It was a terrible tale. My heart went out to the young woman at the center of it and the young bridegroom slain. Stone and sea! "How, Master?" I asked. "How and why? Did she court such a fate like Raphael?"

His shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. "I cannot think the child I knew would do such a thing. And yet I cannot say. Perhaps it is a jealous ghost that haunts her. The Empress ever resented Snow Tiger, and she died some years ago." He looked unwontedly perplexed. "And yet how could Black Sleeve miss such a thing?"

"Lord Jiang's sorcerer no friend to her," Bao muttered.

"There is goodness and wisdom in him," Master Lo Feng admonished him. "Never say there is not. It is present in all of us."

Bao inclined his head, but his eyes glittered.

"Enough." Master Lo struggled to rise, his knees creaking. Bao was on his feet in a flash, helping his mentor upright, tender and solicitous.

"You rest now, Master," he murmured.

"Yes," Master Lo agreed, leaning on Bao. His gaze rested on me. "So. Now you know what we face, Moirin."

"Aye."

I sat in contemplation for an untold period of time. The ship's decks rose and fell, riding the swelling waves. I breathed the Breath of Ocean's Rolling Waves into the pit of my belly and out through my mouth, trying not to think. Bao returned to join me, sitting cross-legged on the mats. He closed his eyes and breathed the Breath of Embers Glowing. In and out we breathed, complementing one another. His knee brushed mine in a companionable manner.

"Snow Tiger," I said.

"Uh-huh." His face was tranquil. "I do not think she is meant to live behind bars."

I didn't think so, either. "So we do….. ?"

Bao opened his eyes. "We do what we need to. We do whatever Master Lo say."

"You said if the spirit Focalor had taken possession of Raphael, it might have been impossible to drive him out," I reminded him. "How is this different?"

He shrugged. "Not a foreign spirit. I don't know. You ask too many questions!"

"I'm just trying to understand," I said reasonably. "Which reminds me….. Bao, do you think you could teach me to speak Ch'in?"

"Which one?"

I blinked. "What do you mean which one?"

Bao looked smug. "Many different language in the Celestial Empire. Which one you want to learn?"

"Whichever is most common." That, I thought, would resolve the matter.

"Different in different places."

"Whatever you speak!" I said in frustration. "Whatever Master Lo speaks! Whatever they speak where we're going!"

"Master Lo speak seven different language from Ch'in. Me, only three." Bao took pity on me. "All right, all right! Stop look like you going to spit! I teach you Shuntian official language. All the scholars speak it."

"Thank you." I was mollified.

Learning Ch'in—or at least the official tongue of Shuntian, which I learned was the capitol city where the Emperor's court resided—was a good deal more difficult than I anticipated. One of the first things Bao told me was that I regularly mispronounced his name in a manner that meant anything from womb to cooking pan to rain shower. He said it for me four different ways, with four different intonations. I could hear the difference, but I struggled to emulate it, let alone retain it.

"What does it mean your way?" I asked after half an hour's worth of repeating the same syllable. "Your name?"

He was silent a moment. "Treasure," he said reluctantly. "Is a common baby-name for a boy."

"Oh." I waited.

"My mother call me Bao." His mouth quirked. "Only thing I keep from those day."

"Before they sold you to the circus," I said softly.

Bao nodded. "When I born after the Tatar raid, they wait to see. Maybe I look like my father or my mother." He shook his head. "I look like the Tatar who"—he made the lewd gesture—"my mother. She want to keep me," he added, his back stiff and upright, shoulders squared. "But it is too great shame for my father. She cry when the contract is stamped and the circus take me, tell me I always her treasure. I remember."

It was an old hurt and a deep one, and I very much wanted to put my arms around him—but his posture warned me not to.

"My mother said something much the same to me, once," I said instead. "And I will never forget it."

"Did she send you away?" he asked. "Across the sea?"

"No." It was my turn to be quiet. "No, it was the Maghuin Dhonn Herself who sent me. The Great Bear my people follow."

Bao understood. "She who make the earth shake when you shout that day."

I nodded. "Aye."

"Why?"

I gazed past him at the unbroken horizon. Sunlight sparkled on the endless rippling waves. Sea, and sea, and sea. Somewhere on the far side of it waited a young woman blindfolded behind iron bars, a young woman who had torn her bridegroom apart limb from limb. What it had to do with me, I couldn't begin to guess. "I would by all that's sacred that I knew. But I reckon I'll find out one day."

He smiled a little. "I think so, too."

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Slowly, slowly, I learned to speak Ch'in. For a mercy, the strange intonations were the worst of it. Once I developed a rudimentary grasp of them and began calling Bao "treasure" more often than I did "cooking pan," it got easier. The structure of the grammar was actually simpler in some ways than Alban or D'Angeline, without a multitude of conjugations to master.

"That how I learn to speak different language while we travel," Bao explained. "Make it simple like Ch'in language. Master Lo, he study D'Angeline until it perfect. I learn just enough of the others."

"What others?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Tatar, Akkadian, Ephesian, some Bhodistani….. many." I was impressed. Bao eyed me shrewdly. "Smarter than you think, huh?"

"To be sure," I agreed.

I learned other things on our journey, too. I learned that Master Lo Feng had served three emperors and claimed to be a hundred and seventy years old.

"That's not possible!" I said in shock.

Master Lo's eyelids crinkled. "There is a reason why my old knees creak," he said tranquilly. "Practice your breathing and contemplate the Way."

During our language lessons, Bao told me more in hushed tones. "Master Lo, he do alchemy once like Black Sleeve. Try to make elixir of immortality." He shook his head. "One day he see is all false. Only the Way is true."

"Is that when you met him?" I asked.

"No." His voice was curt. "That happen much, much later."

As our greatship sailed farther south into warmer climes, I learned that thanks to Bao's acrobatic training, he could juggle, bend his back into a perfect circle, walk on his hands as easily as his feet, and balance with ease on the narrowest of railings, bare toes gripping the wood, traversing it effortlessly, heedless of the drop below. I learned too that Bao had a deep-seated restless streak that was belied by his discipline in practicing the Five Styles of Breathing.

When Bao got restless, he picked fights.

One sunny afternoon, I watched it happen. For the first time since I'd known him, Bao was jittery and ill at ease, unable to concentrate on our meditative exercises. I watched him make his apology to Master Lo Feng, kneeling on the sun-warmed planks, bowing and gesturing to the deck below us where the soldiers were wont to spar with one another. I watched Master Lo Feng nod and lay one elegant, long-fingered hand on Bao's head in benediction.

It seemed there was a standing wager at stake. Bao approached a group of soldiers on the main deck and spoke to them, then waited calmly, leaning on his staff while they laughed and argued among themselves. Coins were proffered; he shook his head and said somewhat in reply. In a little while, two Ch'in women clad in bright silk garments emerged from their quarters, and further discussion ensued, soldiers gesturing back and forth. Standing on the upper deck, I couldn't hear the details, but in the end, Bao gave a broad grin and nodded vigorous agreement.

The women leaned their heads together, whispered and giggled. Neither of them seemed displeased at being wagered. I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.

Master Lo sighed.

"Do you disapprove, Master?" I asked him.

He was silent a moment. "No. It is Bao's nature to fight. He has his own demons to conquer."

"Aye?" I prompted. "His family?"

He glanced at me. "If he wishes you to know more, he will speak of it."

I watched Bao fight two soldiers that day. He was good. He was beyond good. I watched him shuck his loose-fitting shirt and caught my breath. His drawstring trousers clung to his narrow hips, and sunlight glistened on his golden-brown skin. Lean muscles surged beneath it in a complicated play of light and shadow. His dark eyes glittered above his high, wide cheekbones. Stone and sea! He was beautiful.

How had I not seen it?

His face was at once fierce and happy, oddly calm. He moved with careless grace, sandal-clad feet skipping over the deck. The staff was a blur in his hands, darting in and out, striking with both ends. His opponents fell, rolling, clutching their heads, swords dropping from their hands. The other soldiers roared with laughter, mocking them.

Bao bowed, tucking his staff into the crook of his arm.

I watched him go with the women to their quarters, his arms around their waists. He glanced up once to see if I was watching, and I looked away. Master Lo Feng regarded me.

I shrugged. "He's very skilled."

Master Lo nodded. "Yes."

Two days later, Bao brought me a pillow—a real one made of silk and stuffed with soft materials. I was so delighted, I hugged it to me.

"For this, I could kiss you," I said. "Where did you get it?"