‘Can you hold on to that, Princess? Just so that it doesn’t move?’ She lifted Antian’s almost lifeless hand and placed it over the makeshift pressure pad. It was not going to help. Nothing was going to help, but she might as well try.
Antian’s hand landed with her usual grace. ‘I’ll try,’ she said weakly.
Yuet looked up.
Tai straightened. ‘I’m here. What do I have to do?’
‘I will try and lift her. Can you reach down for her shoulders? Oh, what are we doing?’ Yuet said, aghast. ‘We’ll all be down there in pieces in a minute!’
‘I can do it,’ Tai said. ‘I can do it!’
‘We’ll kill her,’ Yuet whispered despairingly, looking down at the girl at her feet.
Antian’s eyes opened again, and there was a shadow of a smile in them. ‘You cannot do that,’ she whispered. ‘It is out of your hands.’
Yuet was seventeen years old. She had had her Xat-Wau ceremony nearly three years before; she had been first apprentice and now assistant to Court Healer Szewan since she was seven years old. She was good. She saved lives. And right now all she wanted to do was bury her face in her hands and weep for the pity of it.
All her choices were doomed here. Antian was right. Yuet could not kill her – because, except for these last few breaths of pain, she was already dead.
‘Help me,’ Yuet said to Tai, waiting on the ledge. She checked the tie on the pad, made sure it was as secure as it could be, lifted Antian’s slender body as gently as she could. Antian let out a soft sob of pain and Yuet winced; she could feel the blood from Antian’s side seep warm and wet into her own robe as she held Antian against her body; she cradled the Princess for a moment, shifting her grip, and then slid an arm along her back, laying Antian’s spine against the long bones of her own forearm, straightening the Princess’s body as much as she was able. ‘Just keep your hand there, Princess,’ she said, anything, just to keep talking, for Antian to hear voices. ‘Stay with us. You …; what is your name?’
‘Tai. I’m Tai.’
‘Tai – catch her under the shoulders – gently, gently – slowly. Have you got her?’
Antian’s shoulders were on the edge of the broken balcony, her head lolling sideways. Tai had both hands under her shoulders, trying not to pull on the wounded side, using her arm and shoulder to keep Antian’s head from lolling down onto the stone. ‘I have her,’ she gasped, straining. Antian was a small-boned girl with a fragile build, but she was a dead weight in their arms right now, her eyes tightly squeezed, her face a mask of pain, her breath coming in short sharp gasps.
For a ghastly moment Tai thought her grip was slipping, that Antian’s silk-clad shoulders would slide from her fingers and that she’d have to watch her fall, all the way down, all the way into that river she had once watched flowing into the sunset and thought golden. But something gave her the strength and she managed to get Antian anchored on the edge of the solid remnant of the balcony. Then, miraculously, other hands arrived and somebody took up the slack, supported Antian’s body where Tai could not reach, helped lift the Princess up and lay her gently down against the wall of the balcony. Someone reached over and helped Yuet scramble back up; Tai, all of whose attention was on Antian now, heard something break and go tumbling down, crashing and crumbling against the mountainside, and a part of her shuddered at the sound, but that was all in the background.
Antian’s lips were white with pain; the pad against her side was soaked with her blood. Yuet herself looked like she had been stabbed in the heart, a dark red stain spreading across her robe, as she came to kneel on Antian’s other side.
‘They brought a stretcher, Highness, if we can just get you …;’
‘You have done,’ Antian whispered, ‘what can be …; done. Tai …;’
She tried to lift a hand, but it barely cleared her abdomen before falling back weakly. Tai reached for it, weeping openly.
‘What is it, Antian?’
‘Do …; something for me …; jin-shei-bao.’
‘Anything,’ Tai said. ‘You know it.’
Antian’s eyes closed. She squeezed Tai’s hand, once.
‘Take care of her,’ Antian said, almost too softly for Tai to hear. ‘Take care …; of my sister.’
A rush of white noise roared in Tai’s ears as Antian’s lifeless head rested on the arm which she had slipped underneath the nape of Antian’s neck as support. For a moment she could not move at all. She felt like the entire Palace was coming down in ruins all over again, only this time she was inside it, deep inside it, and it was all falling on her and around her and burying her with the pain. It took Yuet several tries before she could get a reaction from her, but Tai eventually became aware that the older girl had her by the shoulder and was speaking to her in a gentle voice.
‘Tai. Tai. Listen to me. Look at me. Look at me. Good.’ Tai had raised her eyes, her pupils dilated with shock, her face stark. ‘I have to go back to …; they will take care …;’ Yuet’s voice faltered for a moment, and then she seemed to change her mind, come to a different decision. ‘No. You go with them. Take the Little Empress back to the summer house in the garden. Make sure she is tended with honour.’
Tai stared at her, swallowed what tasted like bitter aloes. ‘I will.’
‘I will look for you, after. I have to go and take care of …; of whoever is left up there. I will come for you. I am relying on you.’
‘I will do it,’ Tai said, getting to her feet.
Yuet could see that she was not entirely steady as she stood beside Antian’s body, and did not feel happy at leaving her alone – her healer’s instincts told her that what Tai needed right then was someone to cling to, a warm blanket, something hot to drink, all the things needed to stave off shock. But all this was the healing of the mind. She was not physically hurt, and there were others out there who would need Yuet, who might be pulled out of the rubble half-alive, whose lives Yuet could save.
Yuet looked up at the waiting servants. ‘Take the Little Empress to the summer house.’ She hesitated; all hands would be needed, but she could not just leave Tai alone. ‘One of you,’ she said, ‘stay with her and with Tai. And somebody find Tai an outer robe.’
‘Yes, sai’an.’ The man who had gone for help bent down and gathered Antian’s body into his arms, very gently, as though she was a precious porcelain doll, and waited for Tai to lead the way. Tai turned away from the edge of the ruined balcony without looking out to her river again. She walked past Yuet without a word, almost without any sign that she was aware that the healer stood there.
‘I shouldn’t leave her alone,’ Yuet murmured to herself as the servant bearing Antian followed the younger girl into the garden.
But already she could hear the screams and wails, the pain and the terror that was waiting for her in the rubble of the Summer Palace. The voices drew her; for a moment she forgot about Tai, she forgot about Antian whose life’s blood she wore on her own robe. There were other lives.
The morning had fled quickly. They put out two of the smaller fires but the biggest one, the one that had started deepest in the ruins, quickly spread out of control. Thick columns of black smoke rose into the innocent blue of a flawless summer sky, and orange tongues of flame added to the day’s gathering heat. There were survivors – but few, so few, and the lines of bodies covered with sackcloth grew.
Yuet was perched precariously on the edge of a hole