HSHENG SAT at a table in a darkened courtyard she did not recognize. The table was very long, seating dozens of people; oil lamps provided the only light. The cloying sweet scent of moonflowers hung in the air; she could see the blossoms and the snaking vines that bore them climbing up the stone walls enclosing the yard. All sorts of food had been placed on the table. Always hungry, Hsheng reached for it but then she saw the meat had maggots in it, the bread was full of bugs, the wine choked with dead moths. No one else seemed to notice; they ate and drank, they laughed. She didn’t know any of them; they were strangers, which was unusual. But after a moment, she realized she was wrong. The man at the head of the table was the Emperor in one of his disguises. He was dressed as a very old man in purple robes and looked like he was asleep.
Thunder boomed, loud and near enough to rattle the bowls on the table. Still no one seemed to take notice. Hsheng looked around. The sky was devoid of light. The flower-clad walls had no doors or windows. Thunder sounded again and again.
“I’ve never had food like this,” the woman next to her said. She had the face of a beetle and was tearing apart bug-infested scrolls of bread as thin as paper.
“I hear the food is from the West,” Hsheng told her. “From Zełtah.”
“Aren’t we at war with them?” a lizard-headed man asked, picking the maggots from a haunch of venison and flicking them up, one by one, on his long, forked tongue.
“That’s why we’re eating their food,” Hsheng replied.
“That’s a brilliant observation,” the beetle-faced woman said. “But why aren’t you eating?”
“I don’t eat food like this,” she said.
The thunder sounded again.
“Hear that?” the Emperor said. He looked awake now, and much younger, but his eyes were empty, like bits of polished white shell. “Listen to that, everyone.”
“I hear it now,” the lizard-headed man said. “I always heard it. From the very beginning.”
“No, you didn’t,” Hsheng said.
“I heard it, too,” the beetle-faced woman said. “But what does it mean? No one knows.”
“You’re all lying,” Hsheng told her. “But I know what it means. It means I have to go.”
* * *
THE ONE thing Hsheng liked less than sleep was being awakened from it. Sleep was a state that was difficult for her to achieve, but, more than that, she found that as she got older it grew harder and harder for her to come easily to complete wakefulness. The fog and illogic of dream, annoying even in its proper place, was doubly a nuisance in that it clung to her in the waking world. It was the muddiness of mind sleep left behind that she despised.
But the same impairment, of course, was her gift and her purpose. Her dreams had meaning, and that they stayed with her helped her sort out what they signified. However unpleasant she found it, it was one of the things the Emperor valued her for. She lay still for another few moments, enjoying the scent of something cooking nearby. Then she rose from her bed, bathed by way of a rag and a basin of water, and slipped on a robe of black cotton. She descended from her small apartment to the courtyard it overlooked, where four children were playing with a feather-trailing-ball and two of her sisters were readying the evening meal. The eldest, Dzhi, looked up as Hsheng came down.
“Sister,” she said. “Did you have a good rest?”
Dzhi had a single streak of silver in her black hair, which was tied back with a bright yellow strip of cloth. The years had sculpted pleasant lines in her face, which showed best when she smiled, which was often.
Hsheng nodded and pretended to swat at her four-year-old niece Qek as she went flying by. “I need to sleep outside of the tower sometimes,” she said.
“Because the dreams are different,” Dzhi said.
“Because I love my sisters and never see enough of their children,” she replied. But Dzhi was right; in the Earth Center Tower, her father the Emperor and Nalzhu, his xual-guardian, were such overwhelming presences they tended to cloud her dreams with their own.
“I don’t see how you can sleep in the day,” her sister said. “Not with these little creatures running about.”
“They don’t bother me at all,” Hsheng said. “And I’ve been sleeping by day most of my life.”
“The nights must be quiet in the tower,” Dzhi said. She sounded a little wistful.
Hsheng nodded noncommittally. Usually the nights in the tower were quiet. Often enough, however, there was a certain amount of screaming and wailing that had to be ignored. Hsheng anticipated she would soon be enduring a season of such racket, as the captives from the war with Zełtah arrived and her father picked his new brides from among them. But she didn’t want to dispute Dzhi’s fantasy of what life in the tower must be like. Dzhi, after a long day running a household and caring for children, must also cater to the needs and desires of her husband. Dzhi didn’t like her husband very much, and Hsheng didn’t blame her or envy her in the slightest.
In the tower her father, the Emperor, was the only man. He did not trust other men near him, and he did not generally like men or care for their company. There were sixty women in the tower. Fifty-nine of them were her father’s wives. The sixtieth was her.
“Will you eat with us?” Dzhi asked.
Hsheng glanced at the pot of stew simmering on the hearth. Her stomach felt flat and empty.
“I would like that,” Hsheng said. “But I’m afraid I have to hurry to see Father.”
Dzhi took her in her arms. “We don’t see you enough, sister,” she said. “Come again soon.”
All of the daughters with male children lived in the Emperor’s Keep, a walled area surrounding the Earth Center Tower—that included wives and daughters. The men married to the daughters were also allowed, but the Emperor’s adult sons lived elsewhere. There weren’t many of those. Her father didn’t like male offspring.
There were also plenty of male guards in the Keep. Most were at or near the entrances to the Keep, either at posts or in their barracks. But there were always four in the outer yard of the tower, and they watched her arrive. She recognized the xi of the guard among them, a burly man named Ruj. His face tightened a little as she approached. When he reached for her, she stepped back.
“You recognize me, don’t you?” she said.
“You are Hsheng, daughter of the Emperor,” Ruj replied. “But you must be searched, like anyone else.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Very sure,” Ruj said.
“If you know who I am, you know I speak for the Emperor. You know I am his instrument.”
“Inside of the tower, maybe,” Ruj said. “Among the women in the tower you are first. But not out here. Out here, I’m the one who speaks for the Emperor. I’m the one who interprets his will. And you certainly cannot command me to do anything, and most especially not to shirk my duty.”
For a moment she did not respond as she struggled to keep her fury contained. Then she bowed her head slightly and lifted her arms.
Ruj began searching her. “Hsheng likes to test us,” he said to his companions. “She wants to be certain the laws are always observed. If I had failed to search her, she would have reported us to her father. Isn’t that true, lady?”
She cocked an eye at Ruj. “We all must take out duties seriously. And we all must know the roles we play.”
Ruj kept his hands respectful. Then he nodded. “You may enter the tower, lady,” he said.
She passed through the stone arch and climbed the stairs until she reached her father’s chambers where she found him on a bench, his head in his hands. He was naked except for a long strip of white cotton cloth wrapped around his lower stomach, legs, and groin.
He had the body of a young man, long-limbed and soft in appearance. He had no wrinkles; his muscles had almost no definition. He moved as if the joints of his arms and legs were only pretending to be normal. Sometimes she expected them to bend in the wrong direction, even though in her many years with him she had never seen that happen. His eyes were changeable, sometimes quick and alert like a falcon’s. Other times they were more like coral beads or holes drilled into a hollow tree. Just now they seemed human, and old, and tired.
The chamber itself was vaulted, windowless, with flowers painted in gold and silver on the curved ceiling. The bench her father sat on was at one of the narrow ends of a rectangular pool. The water glowed from the light of the golden fish that swam in it, fish that were said to have been brought from the Moon World. In fact, the entire chamber—the Earth Center Tower itself—was rumored to have descended from the Moon World in a single piece and settled right here. The fortress and the Empire had grown outward from it. She thought it was possible; she also believed it could be a lie. It could even be something that the elder Hje really believed but that wasn’t true. Her father knew, of course. Of all of the Hje, only he remembered the Moon World. Of all of those living, only he had been born there. He was old. Very old.
And for Hsheng, that was becoming a problem. There were tales of true immortals, but she did not believe them. Everything and everyone grew old, and eventually everything either died or transformed into something so different the result was indistinguishable from death. Her father still looked young, but his mind… his mind was old.
“Father,” she said. “Emperor.”
“I’m here,” he replied. “Is it you, Nalzhu?”
“No,” she replied. “It’s Hsheng, your daughter. I am here in the room with you.”
His gaze wandered around the room, seemingly at random, but when it found her, it came to rest.
“I’ve been dreaming,” he said. “I have trouble sometimes. Knowing when the dream is over.”
“I understand the feeling, Father,” she replied.
“Yes, of course you do. You are my daughter.”
“You mentioned Nalzhu,” she said. “Is he speaking again? Have you heard from him?”
“I thought his power was fading,” her father said. “In the old days, he spoke often. Sometimes he was hard to control. He was willful. But in recent years, he has been silent. He… it seemed like every passing year made him less. As if he was fading away.”
“You’ve told me this before,” she replied.
“It was supposed to be a secret,” he said.
“From the other tower masters,” she said.
“Exactly,” her father said. “You must tell no one. But you must make the tower masters believe that one of them will soon succeed me, do you understand? Some will seek alliance with me. Others will plot against me, and each other. It will keep them occupied. Keep them from noticing.”
“I have done that, Father,” she replied. “Remember? We already spoke of this.”
“And we must invade Zełtah. Find another xual for the tower, one more powerful than the others.”
“The war began this morning,” she said. “Try to remember. You gave the order yourself.”
He frowned, then nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I do remember. And all of this—but all of this, it all—”
His gaze sharpened, and she suddenly sensed intelligence behind it. A mind fully present, his eyes glassy, a viper contemplating prey.
“Something has changed,” he said. “Nalzhu spoke to me. He tells me he is growing stronger once more.”
“Does he?” she said. “Is it true, do you think?”
He nodded. “Yes. It is almost as in the old days. He is pushing again. He wants more.”
“More what?”
“I don’t know. Neither does he. Something is changing, but we do not know what. From this tower, we cannot see. Something prevents us. But you are different, daughter. You were born of this world. Find out, daughter. Discover what is happening, why Nalzhu is suddenly in my skull again. He has filled up the tower and rages against it. I feel power as I have not in many years. This is good. But why? We must know and make certain it continues.”
“Of course. But—you mentioned this just now, but you’ve spoken of it before—once, didn’t you have trouble… containing Nalzhu? Didn’t he once overpower you?”
“Long ago,” her father said. “But I know better now. I know better. As my bones grow brittle and my mind weakens, as the line between light and shadow dims, as power leaks from a thousand tiny holes…” He smiled. “I know better now.”
She put her hand on his and wondered if he had really answered her. Or if he had heard the question she had asked. It seemed like he was talking about something else.
But she knew better than to press it. And her father was right. His power was here, and to leave it at his age was dangerous. But it also limited him.
That was what she was for. The Emperor had many children, but she alone attended him in this way.
“I exist to serve you, Father,” she said. “But you could make my job easier.”
“Yes?”
“You could give me command over the guard. Or at least give me a title equal to the xi. It makes it difficult if I must play at subservience to them.”
“In this tower, your only superior is me,” her father said.
“Yes. But the moment I step outside of this tower—”
“The reason you are subservient to none but me—in the tower —is because I am the only man here,” he snapped. “But it is a fact that you are a woman, and as such you must be submissive to any male Hje. This is not a flexible rule. It is the core of our covenant as a people. You can pass on my commands to men, but you can never command them yourself. You know this. Your wishes are irrelevant. That it might make your life and my life easier is irrelevant.”
She put her head down. It had been a long time since he had spoken so forcefully and with such conviction. She had believed he had begun to waver, and in that she had seen—what? A possibility. A different life than the one prescribed for her. But he was right, wasn’t he? The universe was made a certain way and no other. She was lucky that he had chosen to have only women in the tower. It gave her power she would not have otherwise had. But it had also created illusions she must now overcome.
“I will do as you say, Father,” she replied.
“Do that,” he said. “I will rest. Wake me when I am needed.”