Read Hidden Cities for Free Online

figs glistening with water. He had foundthem, he said, dropped in the stable yard in someone’s hurry to be gone. He had washed the muck from them, and they were perfectly good. He thought they should be good, he amended hastily, not realizing that a streak of fig-seeds on his wet chin was giving him away; and did they think there would be a typhoon? Only the sky seemed so dark suddenly, and the wind was turning vicious …
    She hadn’t realized, but he was right. With or without the dragon, a storm was on its way. Li Ton pulled himself to his feet by way of Gieh’s obedient shoulder, and leaned on the boy quite heavily as he started his slow shuffle toward shelter. Dandan held Ai Guo’s crutch for him while he drew himself up, then paced him at his crablike scuttle in the other man’s wake.
    Behind her, at the courtyard gate, she heard voices.
    She turned around and there was Jiao, with a string of men at her back.
    “You, girl—is Mei Feng with you?”
    Dandan shook her head, against the mercenary’s exasperation.
    “Where’s she gone this time?”
    “Down toward the harbor, I think, looking for a way across the river. Looking to find the emperor.”
    “She’ll be lucky if she finds a boat. But—well, we will leave her to her luck. Someone will look after Mei Feng; someone always does. What are you doing with these two?”
    “Right now, helping them indoors before the rain comes. Staying with them, until the emperor decides what to do.”
If the emperor wins his battle
, but that was taken for granted. “They’re my prisoners, I suppose. Can you leave me two men, just for comfort?”
    “I doubt you’ll need them, but—you and you,” picked out with a flicking finger, “follow Mei Feng down to the harbor. When you don’t find her there—and you won’t, but we’d best be sure she hasn’t run into trouble on the way—double back up here and guard these for me. Understand?”
    The men’s grins said they understood entirely. They would be spared the battle, and they had a whole palace to pillage. Dandan wished they wouldn’t leer quite so openly.
    T HEN THEY were gone, all of them, at a run; and here came the rain, a sudden squall that was really only a precursor, a scudding cloud before the storm.
    From the great public courtyard of the governor’s palace, the closest doorway led of course into the great public hall where he held his audiences.
    Not a comfortable place. Not a place for hurting old men to stand, however strange, however bad they were; not a place for anyone to stand whose clothes ran with water onto the polished floor.
    “Where are your quarters?” Dandan demanded.
    “Mine are … in the lower levels. And insalubrious.” That was Li Ton, of course, still almost amused despite his pain.
    Ai Guo only shrugged.
    “Wait, then.” She didn’t know this palace, but palaces, yes, those she knew; and the minds of the men who built them. Somewhere here, behind one of these concealing doors—this one, yes—would be a robing-room. No lord of men would willingly wear his public robes longer than need dictated. Here they were, the governor’s magnificent silks …
    She whistled shrilly down the hall, beckoned hugely.
    Waited by the door there, watching the men’s slow progress. Growing angry.
    It wasn’t either of the men she watched that she was angry with. Not Li Ton the traitor, nor Ai Guo his torturer. It might have been Tunghai Wang, for employing anyone so broken, so cruel, so calm; it might have been the emperor, for being so easy to betray. She didn’t understand it, quite, though it was a cold clear thing, a rushing mountain stream risen up from deep.
    She herded them all into the robing-room, and had them strip:“Come on, quick, before wet and hurt marry into something worse, lung-fever or joint-fever, both. You too, idiot, Gieh. You may be young, but you’re not immune to anything except good sense …”
    When she had them naked she rubbed them dry herself, with