Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [11]
“I don’t think he knows,” I said. “Not really.”
She nodded. “He is searching for an answer for which no question exists.”
I smiled ruefully. “That sounds about right.” Feeling the weight of strong emotion in the cloistered room, I changed the subject. “How did you learn the scholar’s tongue? You speak it well.”
“From my grandfather.” Yingtai stroked her daughter’s hair. “A long time ago. I taught Song as much as I remember.”
Song cast a sharp glance toward Hui, who was surreptitiously stuffing the second to last of the sweet bean-cakes into his mouth. “If I were a boy, I would sit for the examination one day!”
He sputtered a defiant, unintelligible reply. Auntie Ai cuffed his head absently and snatched the plate away, offering it insistently to me. I took the last sweet out of politeness, the jade bangles around my wrist tinkling as I reached for it.
“Oh!” Song touched one of the bangles. “So beautiful! May I see?”
“Of course.” I extended both arms. Her slender fingers danced over the polished stone bracelets. “That one is the exact color of the reflecting pool beneath White Jade Mountain, where the dragon gazes at himself,” I said when she paused over my favorite, a vivid translucent green bangle. “The very place where we freed him. Princess Snow Tiger chose it herself.”
“And this?” She pointed at the bangle next to it, a deeper, more intense shade of green.
“That’s called Imperial jade.” I touched another, a pale milky-white bangle with cloudy patches. “This is leopard jade. And this, this red one is said to bring luck. Which is your favorite?”
Song contemplated the six bangles I wore with great seriousness. “This one,” she said at length, touching a clear, pale green piece with honey-colored highlights. “It looks like a river in sunlight with fish swimming in it.”
I worked it free. “Then it is my gift to you.”
Auntie Ai’s eyes bulged, and she hissed in urgent dialect.
“No, no!” Bao’s mother said in protest. “It is too much!”
I ignored her. “Pick one for your mother,” I whispered conspiratorially to Song. “Which one do you think she would like?”
“Moirin.” Hui tugged at my sleeve, glancing over his shoulder. “Ah… Auntie Ai does not think you know how much those are worth.”
I ignored him, too. “Which one?”
One by one, Song walked her fingers over the remaining five bangles that hung from my wrists, slow and deliberative. “I think Mother would like this one that looks like the dragon’s pool,” she said somberly. “But it would be wrong to take it from you. So I choose this one.” She touched the bangle of Imperial green jade, glancing up at me. “The one that is the color of your eyes.”
I smiled and began to work it loose. “A very good choice.”
“No!”
I pressed the jade bangle into Yingtai’s resistant hands. “Bao came to you penniless, didn’t he? If he had stayed, if he had not fled, the Emperor would have rewarded him generously for his service. Please.” I folded her hands over the bracelet. “Accept this small token.”
Bao’s mother shook her head. “Ang Shen will insist—”
Song flinched.
“I will speak to him,” I said. “I will tell him that if he sells these bracelets to drink and gamble, it will bring such a curse down upon him that he will reckon his life has been paradise before now.”
Hui stared at me, his eyes stretched wide. “Can you do such a thing?”
“Of course,” I lied. “I am the Emperor’s witch, am I not?”
Tears filled Yingtai’s eyes. “You cannot understand what this means.” She turned the bangle in her hands. “A jade piece of such quality, a gift from his Celestial Majesty’s own hands… Moirin, it is enough to provide Song with a dowry to marry well, better than I ever dared to hope for her.”
I smiled at her. “Then I have done a better