The Secrets of Jin-Shei

‘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 (#ulink_9689ae73-a205-5fcc-9378-1782f6a9d198)

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.’

Nhia was to remember those times with a pang of regret. It had been years since she had asked her mother a question like that. Years since she had expected a reply from her.

Other stalls in the outer cloister housed the makers of carved yearwood sticks, or sold funeral arrangements, preparation of the paper effigies of the things the deceased needed to take with them into the next world, amulets or talismans, marriage and betrothal tokens, or – slightly clandestinely, because the Temple officially frowned on these – low-level alchemical potions guaranteed to increase fertility, virility or long life. Ganshu diviners elbowed one another for space here, their clients waiting in patient queues for their turn inside the screened booth where the diviner performed his or her work.

An open corridor cut across this cloister from each of the three gates, and led through into the courtyard. Beyond a narrow strip of grass rose a clay wall with three arched openings in line with the three gates; it was painted a ghost-blue, a colour which was almost white except for the wash of blue that made it look like the sky of Linh-an in the full blaze of the summer sun. The wall surrounded a perimeter precisely one flagstone wide around the next level of the Temple, the Second Circle, a building painted the same colour as the wall around it, itself boasting an inner cloister surrounding an open court. But this cloister was clear of anything requiring an exchange of money. It was two storeys high, with an open balcony above the lower cloister. The entire inner wall of the building, on both floors, was a catacomb of wall alcoves and niches, with space for incense and offerings; each niche held an image or a figurine before which some devotee was praying with a fragrant incense stick smelling of cinnamon or flower essence or rain grass in one hand and a bowl with precisely counted rice grains in the other.

Many niches were empty, their own particular deity yet to appear. These were the Later Heaven deities and spirits, the lesser Gods, the spirits of Rain and Thunder and Wind and Fire, Tsu-ho the Kitchen Spirit of Plenty, Hsih-to the Messenger of the Gods, the Syai Emperors of old, and the Holy Sages. This was the place of propitiation, of honouring the Wise, of paying respect to the Great, of asking for advice. Nhia would sometimes drift past the niches with supplicants (sometimes more than one, companionably sharing a deity’s time and attention and often the offering) and absorb the whispers going on around her – whispers asking for help, giving thanks, telling the Kitchen God of the success of a particular feast which was held in the midst of plenty and humbly giving him credit.

‘Please, Rain Spirit, our fields are parched and drying, we humbly come to ask …;’

‘I offer rice and grain in humble gratitude, for my son has found a good bride …;’

‘O Holy Sage, who knows of these things, I come to ask for guidance, for the examinations are near and this problem is too great for me to understand …;’

‘Holy Hsih-to, Messenger of the Gods, please help me make my husband stop being angry at me – for I did not mean it when I said to him …;’

‘Help me, Hsih-to, for my mother-in-law is driving me distracted …;’

These were the simple questions, but they were also the most fundamental ones, the ones lives were built on – and the shrines were open, and there were few secrets. This was the backbone of the Way, the little things that, left unattended, would grow into catastrophes – but which were still small enough, human-scaled enough, to belong to these lesser Gods and spirits and for which the greater deities were not to be disturbed.

For more, for greater miracles, the three arrow-straight corridors leading from the outer gates pierced this Circle full of incense and whispers. Within the inner courtyard of this Second Circle stood another building, this one painted a darker blue, the blue of an autumn sky. Its inner cloisters, also on two floors, were quieter, more sparsely populated. Here, in the Third Circle, there were fewer niches, and the Gods in them were the lower deities of Early Heaven – Cahan, the Spirit Paradise. Here resided Yu, the general of the Heavenly Armies; Ama-bai the Great Teacher; the Rulers of the Four Quarters – Kun, Lord of the North, Sin, Lord of the East, T’ain, Lady of the West and K’ain, Lady of the South. These were the weavers of human fates, the first deities in the tiers of the Heavens with real power over lives, dreams and destinies. Nhia’s astrological antecedents had been complicated – she had been born between two Quarters, and her mother had made offerings to both Sin and K’ain, making sure that she left no stone unturned when she came to pray for Nhia – but it seemed that the in-between children were neither Ruler’s responsibility and Nhia’s mother’s prayers had fallen in the cracks.

It was more expensive to come here than in the Second Circle, for the deities of the Third Circle had their own attendants who tended to the offerings and the lighting of candles and incense sticks so that all was harmonious and acceptable. There was no companionable sharing of Gods and altars here. People came to the Third Circle with a purpose.

Another level deeper in stood the Fourth Circle – not a round building like the others, but a three-sided, three-storey structure. Each of its three sections, all three floors of it, was devoted to one of the Three Pure Ones, the rulers of the Three Heavens of Cahan – the Shan, the I’Chi, the Taikua, the realms of Pure Spirit, Pure Energy, Pure Vitality. The building was painted a darker blue, inside and out, and inside its many candles and lanterns gleamed like stars. The place was full of silence and mystery, and Nhia loved to lose herself here sometimes, when she had hoarded enough coppers to buy an offering rich enough to allow her into this Circle. The inner garden, separating the Third from the Fourth Circles, had scented flowers, and meditation areas with golden sand raked smooth and granite rocks placed as focus for a supplicant’s thoughts. The altars in the Fourth Circle were carved in smooth marble or covered with costly golden silks, tended by special attendants clad in blue and gold and sworn to each deity’s service. There were secluded alcoves where those who came to honour these deities could withdraw after making their offering to the acolytes, and commune in private with the God they had come to revere.

The three straight corridors passed through this quiet, holy place too and finally entered the heart of the Temple – a midnight-blue tower standing in the middle of the inner court of the Fourth Circle, the home of the Lord of Heaven. The worshipper entered this place barefoot, leaving shoes outside the gates, for this was holy ground. Nine small altars ringed the centre of the Tower, three to each gate; these were followed by an inner ring of three larger ones, one per gate, where oil lamps always burned to signify the presence of the God. Beyond these, three steps on a marble platform, was the altar of the Lord of Heaven where the Emperor himself came to sacrifice for Syai’s well-being on the eve of every New Year – an altar where a holy fire burned in a central bowl and cast a flickering light on the carefully arranged offerings tended by one of the three Tower priests. High above, reachable by a catwalk that clung to the walls of the Tower well away from the altar, hung the gigantic brass bell which was rung by the priests every day at noon.

A complex place for a complex faith, an orderly set of beliefs on which heaven and earth were made, a creed which assigned everything to its perfect, particular place.

Nhia had been brought there for the first time when she was a babe in arms, barely born, perhaps a week old – her mother had brought her in, purchased amulets, purchased potions, offered her child and her child’s troubles to the deities of the Second Circle and begged for deliverance. But Nhia’s twisted leg and withered foot did not go away. The child crawled a lot later than most children did, unable to put any weight on the crippled limb; she had not walked until she was almost four years old, and even then it was with a pronounced limp. By that time her mother had progressed to the Third Circle, entreating for salvation from higher authority – but no amount of incense or rice wine helped, and ganshu readings were inconclusive.

The Temple was a daily stop, and more often than not Nhia was required to accompany her mother the supplicant so that she could show the Gods just what they had to do for her. Any other five-year-old or six-year-old or seven-year-old, and as the years wore on Nhia reached and passed all those milestones, would have started pulling the Temple apart stone by stone from sheer boredom. Nhia was different. Her physical disability focused her mind on things others might have missed, and even as a very young child she was an acute observer and an astute interpreter of the throngs of humanity she saw parading in and out of the Temple every day. By the time she was ten she had taken to coming to the Temple by herself. She would strike up conversations on the theology of the Way with some of the younger and more indulgent acolytes of the outer Circles, or some of the older ones willing to indulge an interested and precocious child. It was all couched, as much wisdom of the Way was, in ancient tales and fables. There were many, but there was one which most of Nhia’s Temple friends always returned to in the end.

‘When the evil spirits tricked Han-fei into raiding the Gardens of the Gods …;’

‘I know, I know,’ Nhia would interrupt when this sentence was offered to her. ‘He picked too many of the plums from the Tree of Wisdom, and could not carry them, and had to leave all of it behind when he was driven from the Garden by the angry Gods. I know, sei, I know. The plums of wisdom should be taken one by one and savoured. But I would still like to know …;’