Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [4]
And in Ch’in…
Vast as it was, the mighty empire of Ch’in was insular, circumscribed by its Great Wall and its outer shores. No one in that inn knew or cared aught about my heritage. I was the foreign witch who had helped free the dragon. It was enough.
“Sit.” Auntie Li showed me to a low table, pressed on my shoulder.
I sat.
She clapped her hands together. Food came—hot, steamed dumplings with spiced pork and a dipping sauce. Noodle soup with green onions floating atop the broth and chicken feet stewed until they were gelatinous and tender. Auntie Li hovered over me, pouring hot water into my teacup whenever it grew low, nodding approvingly as I shoveled noodles into my mouth and sucked chicken flesh from the bone, tilting the bowl to slurp the dregs of the broth.
“You eat like a proper Ch’in woman,” she observed.
I lowered the bowl. “I’ve had practice.”
“Huh.” Her shrewd gaze measured me. “Is it true you seek the twice-born one?”
I paused. “Twice-born?”
Auntie Li beckoned to one of her servers. He bowed and brought a small porcelain jar with two cups. She made an impatient gesture. “Drink your tea, drink it down. Indulge me, child. I will read the leaves for you while we enjoy this wine.”
I downed my tea, leaving the leaves strewn and stranded on the bottom and the sides of the thin porcelain cup. Auntie Li studied them, tilting the cup this way and that. She set it aside and poured a measure of rice-wine for both of us, motioning for me to drink.
“So?” I obeyed. “What did you mean by the twice-born one, Auntie?”
“Born once into life, twice out of death, or so they are saying.” Her brow furrowed. She drank her own rice-wine, then picked up the teacup again and bent her head over it, a straight white line delineating the part in her hair. “Hints of your fate are written here. Do you see? Here and here?”
I peered at the tea leaves. Despite Snow Tiger’s best efforts, I was fairly illiterate when it came to reading Ch’in characters. During that last week I had lingered in Shuntian, she had teased me about it, wielding her long, braided hair like a ticklish brush and drawing characters on my bare skin.
Surely you recognize that one, Moirin.
The memory made me smile. I saw the shape of that character echoed in the pattern of the tea leaves. “Desire?”
“Desire, yes.” Auntie Li nodded. Her forefinger moved, pointing. “But you see here, it lies in conflict with judgment. Does that mean anything to you?”
I thought about it before shaking my head. “No. I don’t know. Whose judgment, Auntie? Mine?”
She shrugged. “I can only tell you what the leaves say. I cannot tell you what it means. Desire in conflict with judgment lies ahead of you.”
“To be sure, it lies behind me.” Raphael de Mereliot’s face surfaced in my thoughts, his grey eyes stormy with anger. Even though there were untold oceans between us, it made me shiver. I had been very young and very foolish. I’d let Raphael use me to summon fallen spirits. If it hadn’t been for Bao and Master Lo, a terrible force would have been loosed into the world. “But that is not a mistake I will make again.”
Auntie Li smiled wryly, refilling our cups with rice-wine. “There are no end of mistakes to be made, dear.”
“Am I making one now?” I asked her.
Her face softened. “Ah, child! I cannot tell you that, either. Do you love the boy? Is that why you seek him?”
A hundred memories of Bao cascaded through my mind: Bao staring insolently at me as I sought to master the Five Styles of Breathing, Bao shouting at me as he drove the demon spirit back, Bao helping Master Lo tenderly to his feet, Bao sporting his battle-grin as he sparred with Snow Tiger.
It should have been simple, only it wasn’t.
I did love him. I remembered the moment I had realized it. When I had first fled Shuntian with the dragon-possessed princess and a handful of loyal ruffians, Bao and Master Lo had gone ahead to lay a false trail. They had been