The golden shaft was aimed right at her heart, and with a shock that paralyzed emotion, I realized that Grief of Dawn was dead.
“Who could have done this?” the king whispered. “None of my girls shoots wildly.” His huge head lifted. The Golden Girls bowed before his gaze, all but the captain. Her eagle eyes were defiant, but it was like trying to stare down the sun. Her eyes fell and her lips quivered. A tear slid down her cheek.
“Meng Chang, were you in so much pain?” the king said gently. “You should have come to us, my child. Jealousy is a terrible emotion. It transforms pinpricks into great gaping wounds, but there was no need for jealousy. That we loved Grief of Dawn did not mean we loved you less.”
Master Li had knelt beside Grief of Dawn. His head jerked up in astonishment. “I don't believe it, but she's still breathing,” he said.
My heart jumped like a speckled trout.
“If she survives this, she'll last until Mount Yun-t'ai falls on her,” Master Li muttered.
His hand moved to the arrow shaft as though to pull it out. “No,” the king said sharply. For the first time he was looking at me, and for the first time I realized that one of the girls’ arrows had hit the fleshy part of my left thigh. The point was sticking out in the air. It was wide and flaring, and to pull an arrowhead like that back through the body is to kill the wounded person.
I snapped the head from my arrow and drew out the shaft and tossed it away, and then I ran up to Grief of Dawn and snapped off the feathered end of the arrow in her chest. I held my breath as Master Li slowly pushed the shaft down. My hand was beneath Grief of Dawn's back, and finally I felt the point bulge against the flesh. The head broke through, and I pulled the arrow completely out.
Grief of Dawn still breathed. Master Li neatly bandaged the wound. I thought Grief of Dawn was making 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?”