Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart Page B

wound.
    This stopped Gray. The gleam left his eyes, and he dropped the injured hand to his side. “It is nothing,” he said. “I cut it when I was moving the crates into the hall in the library. It is not serious.”
    Li Du took advantage of Gray’s momentary distraction. “It has been a long evening,” he said. “I will go now.”
    To his relief, Gray moved aside, allowing Li Du, finally, to pass him. But he had only taken several steps when instinct compelled him to ask a question. He stopped and, half turning, said, “Where did you go during the story?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI saw that your place was empty. I thought you might have gone to speak to Pieter. You left around the time he did.”
    â€œWhy do you ask that?” Gray snapped. “Why does it matter?”
    â€œI was only curious. I did not mean to offend you.”
    As before, Gray controlled his temper quickly. His eyes met Li Du’s, and after a moment’s deliberation, he smiled. “I had an assignation with one of the young women provided for the occasion. But I have always considered such matters my own private business.”
    â€œOf course,” said Li Du, politely. Gray’s smile, almost a leer, chilled him.
    Li Du went into his room and closed the wooden doors. They scraped heavily against the frame, and the iron handles clanged. Nicholas Gray’s words remained in his mind. What matters is that the tribute pleases the Emperor . He meant, of course, that this was what mattered to the Company. Li Du frowned and stretched his tired legs. A man had died that night. If anything mattered, it was nothing to do with jewels or clockwork or the Emperor’s opinion of these cold things.

 
    Chapter 6
    Li Du awoke from a troubled sleep to the sound of his door closing. There was no one in the room, but the trail of steam rising from the teapot on the desk told him that a servant must have slipped in quietly and filled it while he slept. It was a conventional courtesy, but this morning it made him uneasy. The wisps of steam spread and hung in the air like wraiths.
    He sat up, gathered his robe tightly around his shoulders, and shuffled to the desk. The air held the blue cast of early morning, but he could see through his latticed window a slash of golden light across the far side of the courtyard. He shivered, feeling that he occupied, in this dim and silent room, a remnant of the night that would soon be burned away. He prepared and drank his tea, then began, with practiced assurance, to pack his belongings.
    When he was ready, he emerged from his room onto the shaded veranda. He could feel the cold marble through the soles of his shoes. The door to Pieter’s room was open, the sun now shining directly into it. On the opposite side of the courtyard, still in deep shadow, the door to Nicholas Gray’s room was tightly shut. As Li Du crossed out of the shade into the sun, he looked up and was momentarily blinded by the white brilliance that poured over the roof. He turned away from it, and stepped into the room that had, until recently, been occupied by Pieter van Dalen.
    There was no one there. The body had been taken away. In the corner there was a small pile of saddlebags, and on the desk a worn stack of books. Li Du picked up the top volume and opened it to its title page, on which dark-inked cherubs held aloft a map of China, its northern boundary defined by the sketched crenellations of the Wall. The area around the capital was a dense fabric of cities and rivers, meticulously labeled. The southwest provinces, in contrast, were a blank expanse. There was no mark for Dayan—only the tentative tracing of the Golden Sand River. A province, Li Du was reminded, still largely uncharted by the empires of the West, or by the Chinese empire that claimed to govern it.
    He turned to the next page, where the author, Athanasius Kircher, explained in passionate language the need for