Khailin had accepted the Prince’s token, gritting her teeth. The wedding would take place the following summer, but in the meantime Khailin had done her best to make sure that her betrothal did not interfere unduly with the last year or so of freedom. It could turn out well – it might have been for the best – but sometimes she wished savagely that her body was crippled like Nhia’s was – that a good marriage had been harder to arrange. That she had been given more time.
But perhaps Nhia herself would open a few doors.
So Khailin made sure that their paths crossed in the Temple, that Nhia learned to recognize her face, that they started nodding at one another in passing, that they finally exchanged a word of greeting, and then of conversation. Khailin the courtier had cultivated Nhia with all the precision and cunning of any seeker in quest of favours from a higher-ranked aristocrat or sage.
For once, the things that Nhia was being told were not because someone instinctively trusted her with the information, but rather because this was the information that somebody else wished her to know. Since she had never had to field such an approach before, she had not recognized it as artificial; she had accepted Khailin’s overtures, after a startled wariness that such a one would seek her company, with pleasure. She had found a companion of her own age with whom she could discuss the things that interested her.
They spoke of many things, and Khailin, despite the initial venal motives with which she had approached this relationship, found herself growing to like Nhia. She was surprised by a stab of jealousy when Nhia inevitably spoke of Tai, her only close companion before Khailin herself had appeared on the scene.
‘She is so small and delicate,’ Nhia had said to Khailin as they walked in the Temple, less than a week before the Emperor’s funeral procession was due to take to Linh-an’s streets. ‘She wanted so much to say goodbye, but she won’t even see it, not if she is out in the street, behind the crowds.’
Nhia had not mentioned the exact nature of Tai’s connection with the Imperial family, but Khailin’s curiosity was aroused, and she was nothing if not practised at extracting the information she required.
‘We will all mourn,’ Khailin said. ‘This summer has brought great loss to Syai.’
‘No,’ Nhia said, shaking her head, ‘for Tai it is more.’
‘She spent summers at the Palace?’ Khailin asked. ‘With her mother? You said her mother was the Court dressmaker?’
‘Rimshi is the seamstress, yes – and she has taught Tai well, too.’
This was straying too far into minutiae. Khailin brought it back to the Palace. ‘How old is she now – she is a few years younger than you?’
‘Eleven,’ Nhia said.
‘A few summers at the Palace, and she is but a child. It’s been a tapestry to her, a living dream. I can see why it would be hard to let go.’ But then Khailin had suddenly trailed off, her eyes becoming thoughtful. Her family was part of the Court, and she and her sister, although they did not attend the social occasions at the Imperial Palace frequently, attended often enough for someone like Khailin to pick up on Court undercurrents. And one of those undercurrents, in the past year or so, had been a connection forged by Antian, the Little Empress. The Princess who had been killed in the summer’s earthquake.
Tai had wanted to say goodbye.
For Tai, the mourning was more than that of the land for its anointed.
‘But I can understand,’ Khailin said, taking a chance. Putting two and two together and coming up with a conclusion that was tenuous but of which she was suddenly very certain, she made her voice sound compassionate and deceptively assured. ‘It would be hard to come to terms with such a loss. Losing even just a friend to a calamity like this would be difficult. A sister …;’
Nhia’s head had come up sharply, but she said nothing for a moment, watching Khailin’s face. Khailin allowed her features to soften into a small sad smile. ‘There was talk in the Court. The Little Empress and a companion she had taken to spending time with. That was your Tai, was it not? I thought I heard mention of jin-shei.’
‘Yes,’ said Nhia after a pause, ‘they were jin-shei.’
‘But that should be enough to ensure that Tai is given a place of honour, if only she spoke up that she wished to be there.’
‘You don’t know her,’ Nhia murmured. ‘She was First Princess Antian’s jin-shei-bao, but she would never take advantage of …;’
She might have manipulated Nhia into offering up the confidences, but the sudden brightness that crept into Khailin’s eyes was genuine. ‘I have never had one,’ she said. ‘I have never had a sister who understood me, who knew me. Yan does what our lady mother tells her to do, without looking right or left – if she were told to walk off the edge of a cliff she would do it and never question why. She would go into the marriage they have planned for me, and be utterly content with it, as she would be content with everything.’ She glanced at Nhia, and veiled her eyes, suddenly afraid of showing too much of her emotion. ‘If I were to die,’ she blurted, unable to keep the words under control as firmly as her features, ‘there would be nobody to mourn me.’
‘Your parents …;’ Nhia began, but Khailin cut her off with a sharp motion of her hand.
‘Nobody,’ she said with conviction.
‘I would be sorry,’ Nhia said after a pause.
‘As you are my friend?’
‘Yes, as I am that.’
‘Would you be my sister if I asked you?’
‘Are you asking for jin-shei?’ Nhia said, suddenly sitting very still.
It had not been quite what Khailin had intended. Her emotions were still high, though, and even as they washed over her and made the blood rush into her cheeks she was also thinking, with a rational part of her mind, that this was what she had wanted, exactly what she had wanted, when she had set out to draw Nhia into her circle. For jin-shei sisters, it would be easy to twine lives and fortunes together – and Nhia could be the only thing left to Khailin, the only source of knowledge, of that power that she needed to keep within reach if she were to remain herself and whole. It would not be the first jin-shei bond which had been born out of a more prosaic need rather than of a purity of heart – but even those, according to Khailin’s mother’s stash of jin-ashu literature, were overcome by the power of the vow. However it began, it always ended as a powerful binding. Someone would care. Someone would be required to care.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Nhia reached out hesitantly and took her hand. ‘If you wish it.’
Khailin felt a weight she had not known she was carrying slip off her heart, and she sat up a little straighter, leaving her hand in Nhia’s for a moment.
‘Tell Tai,’ she said abruptly, ‘that she is welcome to watch the procession from the balcony in my family’s house. They will pass along our street.’
That had been the third gift.
Instead of trying to find a way to see past the shoulders and the elbows of the crowds in the street, Tai and Nhia had ascended the spiral staircase in Khailin’s home and had stood on high, Linh-an’s crowded, mourning streets below them, and the three of them had watched the Imperial funeral procession from Khailin’s balcony.
First came the drummers, their instruments fluttering with white ribbons, beating a slow marching pace. They were followed by the carts piled high with the offerings for the dead. The first few carts carried the intricate copies manufactured in paper and papier-mâché of the items the dead would require in the afterlife – there were three life-size sedan chairs, draped in cloth-of-gold; an intricately painted and folded miniature paper carriage complete with figures of horses, intended