muffled sobbing sounds, but then I realized they were coming from Meng Chang, the Captain of Bodyguards. Grief of Dawn tried to open her eyes, but couldn't.
“Tai-tai, are you ill?” she whispered. “Shall I sing to you, Tai-tai? Sometimes the pain gets better if I sing.”
What happened next left all of us stunned and shaken. We had heard Grief of Dawn sing many times, but never as she sang then. She was singing to soothe the pain of the old lady who had taken her in and given her a home and a name, and what came from her lips and her heart was a miracle.
I can't describe it, other than to say it was like Moon Boy's sound magic mixed into the glorious glowing paintings of Prince Liu Pao. There were no words.
I heard pure notes climbing into the sky, brushing clouds aside, shooting past the moon, joining and singing with the brilliant glows of the stars in the Great River, and then lifting to Heaven itself to dance among the gods. The last note hovered, subtly changing pitch and color, and then began to descend to earth. The pure voice drifted among the wonders to be found in the raindrops and rippling streams of spring, and the soft drowsy sounds of summer, and the crisp clean noises of fall. Wind howled and snow fell, but Grief of Dawn was singing of a steaming kettle and boiling pot in a safe snug cottage where an old woman lay warm in her bed. The notes drifted down lower and softer, dissolving into whispering lullaby sounds, and then the last note sank into silence.
“I'm sorry, Tai-tai,” Grief of Dawn whispered. “I can sing no more. It hurts to sing like that, it's beautiful but it's wrong, like stealing.”
Her head fell back. Her heart was still beating, but she was unconscious.
We looked at each other in silence. Then the King of Chao got to his feet and walked back to his chariot. His huge hands separated the pawing horses and brought them to their feet, and he calmed them with pats and soft words. The Golden Girls parted to let him pass to the captain.
Meng Chang was dead. She lay on her face with her hands beneath her and the point of her sword thrusting out through her back. The king pulled the sword out and stopped the blood with his cloak. He picked her up and climbed into his carriage and sat on his couch with the girl's body on his lap. The Golden Girls opened a small chest and took out a white cloth of mourning and draped it over the king's head, and one of them took the reins. King Shin Hu and his Golden Girls rode away without a backward glance, and I never saw them again.
Grief of Dawn was tougher than the Kehsi steel of Hsingchou. Master Li was able to avert infection by making poultices from nasty-looking tree mold, and she clung ferociously to life, but fever made her hallucinate, and I decided that perhaps she was mixing the story of Wolf into something from her own life. In her private closed world she was running with somebody, and it was a desperate race.
“Faster… must run faster,” she panted. “Where is the turn?… Past the goat statue… There's the raven and the river… Faster… Faster… This way! Hurry!… Soldiers… Hide until they pass… Now run! Run!”
She didn't always hallucinate about running for her life, and I remember the startled expression on Master Li's face when she moved restlessly in her bed and said, “Please, Mistress, must I go to Chien's?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “It smells so bad, and the bargemen make rude jokes about ladies, and that old man with one leg always tries to pinch me.”
“Eh?” said Master Li. He walked over and began wiping the perspiration from her forehead. “Darling, what does your mistress want you to get at Chien's?” he asked gently.
She wrinkled her nose again. “Rhinoceros hides.”
“And where is Chien's?” he asked.
“Halfway between the canal and Little Ch'ing-hu Lake,” said Grief of Dawn.
Master Li whistled and paced around the room, and then he returned to her bedside.
“Darling, does your mistress ever send you to Kang Number Eight's?” he asked coaxingly.
Grief of Dawn smiled. “I like Kang Number Eight's,” she said.
“Where is it?”
“On the Street of the Worn Cash-Coin,” she said.
“What do you buy there?”
“Hats.”
“Hats. Yes, of course. And where do you buy your mistress's painted fans?” Master Li asked.
“The Coal Bridge.”
“I suppose she also sends you to buy the famous boiled pork at… What's the name of that place?”
“Wei-the-Big-Knife,” she said.
“Of course. Do you remember where it is?”
“Right beside the Cat Bridge,” she replied.
Master Li took another six laps around the room. When he returned to the bed, he had his hands behind him and the fingers were tightly crossed.
“Darling, when your mistress plays cards, what kind does she use?” he asked.
“Peach-blend,” Grief of Dawn said drowsily.
“And where do her dice come from?”
“Chuanchu Alley.”
“And what do you buy from Yao-chih?”
“Cosmetics.”
“And where do you get rare herbs?”
“Tenglai.”
“What does your mistress get from Chingshan?”
“Writing brushes.”
“Of course,” said Master Li. “And what's-his-name personally blends her ink?”
“Yes. Li Tinghuei.”
“And that lovely courtesan makes pink paper for her?”
“Shieh Tao. Yes, she is lovely,” Grief of Dawn said.
The fever was returning. Grief of Dawn tossed and turned while Moon Boy and the prince tried to soothe her.
“Faster… faster… Where is the passage? Hurry!… More soldiers… Faster… faster… Hurry, darling!… There's the ibis statue…”
Master Li walked over to the desk and sat down and pulled out his wine flask and swallowed about a quart.
“Pink paper from the hands of Shieh Tao,” he snarled when he came up for air. “Painted fans from the Coal Bridge and hats from Kang Number Eight's on the Street of the Worn Cash-Coin. Li Tinghuei personally blends the ink. Moon Boy! Can Grief of Dawn read?”
“About as well as I do, which is not very well,” he said frankly. “Number Ten Ox reads ten times better than either of us.”
Master Li swallowed another quart. “I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore,” he muttered. “She'd have to be able to read Flying White shorthand.”
He jumped to his feet and turned to the prince. “Your Highness, that damned fever will kill her unless we get rid of it, and the only medicine I know of that will do the trick requires the seeds of the Bombay thorn apple. Moon Boy and Ox and I are going out to find one, and in the process we will probably get killed.”
Moon Boy looked at me, and then at Master Li.
“What shall we pack?” he asked.
16
There is no point in dwelling on my emotions regarding Grief of Dawn, but when I lay awake at night I passed the hours by planning for the day when she would be well and Master Li would take her for his wife. The Mings had quite a large shed at the rear of their house. Would they need it now that Greatgrandfather was dead? We could buy it, and I knew how to lever it up and move it over to the shack, and I could fix it up as quarters for me and any
