A tiny telescope rested on the window’s ledge. Luce picked it up, parting the gold silk curtain to peer outside. The telescope was heavy and cold when she held it up to her eye.
She was in the center of a great walled city, looking down from a second story. A maze of stone roadways connected crammed, ancient-looking wattle-and-daub structures. The air was warm and smelled softly of cherry blossoms. A pair of orioles crossed the blue sky.
Luce turned to Bill. “Where are we?” This place seemed as foreign as the world of the Mayans, and just as far back in time.
He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but then—
“Shhh,” Luce whispered.
Sniffling.
Someone was crying soft, hushed tears. Luce turned toward the noise. There, through an archway on the far side of the room, she heard the sound again.
Luce moved toward the archway, sliding along the stone floor in her bare feet. The sobbing echoed, beckoning her. A narrow walkway opened up into another cavernous chamber. This one was windowless, with low ceilings, dimly lit by the glow of a dozen small bronze lamps.
She could make out a large stone basin, and a small lacquered table stocked with black pottery vials of aromatic oils that gave the whole room a warm and spicy smell. A gigantic carved jade wardrobe stood in the corner of the room. Thin green dragons etched into its face sneered at Luce, as if they knew everything she didn’t.
And in the center of the chamber, a dead man lay sprawled on the floor.
Before Luce could see anything more, she was blinded by a bright light moving toward her. It was the same glow she’d sensed from the other side of the Announcer.
“What is that light?” she asked Bill.
“That … er, you see that?” Bill sounded surprised. “That’s your soul. Yet another way for you to recognize your past lives when they appear physically different from you.” He paused. “You’ve never noticed it before?”
“This is the first time, I think.”
“Huh,” Bill said. “That’s a good sign. You’re making progress.”
Luce felt heavy and exhausted all of a sudden. “I thought it was going to be Daniel.”
Bill cleared his throat like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. The glow burned brightly for another heartbeat, then snapped out so suddenly she couldn’t see for a moment, until her eyes adjusted.
“What are you doing here?” a voice asked roughly.
Where the light had been, in the center of the room, was a thin, pretty Chinese girl about seventeen—too young and too elegant to be standing over a dead man’s body.
Dark hair hung to her waist, contrasting with her floor-length white silk robe. Dainty as she was, she seemed the kind of girl who didn’t shy away from a fight.
“So, that’s you,” Bill’s voice said in Luce’s ear. “Your name is Lu Xin and you lived outside the capital city of Yin. We’re at the close of the Shang dynasty, something like a thousand BCE, in case you want to make a note for your scrapbook.”
Luce probably seemed crazy to Lu Xin, barging in here wearing a singed animal hide and a necklace made out of bone, her hair a wild and tangled snarl. How long had it been since she’d looked in a mirror? Had a bath? Plus, she was talking to an invisible gargoyle.
But then again, Lu Xin was standing vigil over a dead guy, giving Luce don’t-mess-with-me eyes, so she seemed a little crazy herself.
Oh boy. Luce hadn’t noticed the jade knife with the turquoise-studded handle, or the small pond of blood in the middle of the marble floor.
“What do I—” she started to ask Bill.
“You.” Lu Xin’s voice was surprisingly strong. “Help me hide his body.”
The dead man’s hair was white around his temples; he looked about sixty years old, lean and muscular underneath many elaborate robes and embroidered cloaks.
“I—um, I don’t really think—”
“As soon as they learn the king is dead, you and I will be dead, too.”
“What?” Luce asked. “Me?”
“You, me, most of the people inside these walls. Where else will they find the thousand sacrificial bodies that must be buried with the despot?” The girl wiped her cheeks dry with slender, jade-ringed fingers. “Will you help me or not?”
At the girl’s request, Luce moved to help pick up the king’s feet. Lu Xin readied herself to lift him under his arms. “The king,” Luce said, spouting out the old Shang words as if she’d spoken them forever. “Was he—”
“It is not as it appears.” Lu Xin grunted under the weight of the body. The king was heavier than he looked. “I did not kill him. At least not”—she paused—“physically. He was dead when I walked into the room.” She sniffed. “He stabbed himself in the heart. I used to say he did not have one, but he has proven me wrong.”
Luce looked at the man’s face. One of his eyes was open. His mouth was twisted. He looked as if he’d left this world in agony. “Was he your father?”
By then they’d reached the huge jade wardrobe. Lu Xin wedged its door open with her hip, took a step backward, and dropped her half of the body inside.
“He was to be my husband,” she said coldly. “And a horrible one at that. The ancestors approved of our marriage, but I did not. Rich, powerful older men are nothing to be grateful for, if one enjoys romance.” She studied Luce, who lowered the king’s feet slowly to the floor of the wardrobe. “What part of the plains do you come from that word of the king’s betrothal had not reached you?” Lu Xin had noticed Luce’s Mayan clothing. She picked at the hem of the short brown skirt. “Did they hire you to perform at our wedding? Are you some sort of dancer? A clown?”
“Not exactly.” Luce felt her cheeks flush as she tugged the skirt lower on her hips. “Look, we can’t just leave his body here. Someone’s going to find out. I mean, he’s the king, right? And there’s blood everywhere.”
Lu Xin reached into the dragon wardrobe and pulled out a crimson silk robe. She dropped to her knees and tore a large strip of fabric from it. It was a beautiful soft silk garment, with small black blossoms embroidered around the neckline. But Lu Xin didn’t think twice about using it to mop up the blood on the floor. She snatched a second, blue robe and tossed it to Luce to help with the mopping.
“Okay,” Luce said, “well, there’s still that knife.” She pointed at the gleaming bronze dagger coated up to the hilt with the king’s blood.
In a flash, Lu Xin slipped the knife inside a fold of her robe. She looked up at Luce, as if to say Anything else?
“What’s that over there?” Luce pointed to what looked like the top of a small turtle’s shell. She’d seen it fall out of the king’s hand when they moved his body.
Lu Xin was on her knees. She tossed down the sopping bloodstained rag and cupped the shell between her hands. “The oracle bone,” she said softly. “More important than any king.”
“What is it?”
“This holds answers from the Deity Above.”
Luce stepped closer, kneeling to see the object that had had such an effect on the girl. The oracle bone was nothing more than a tortoiseshell, but it was small and polished and pristine. When Luce leaned closer, she saw that someone had painted something in soft black strokes on the smooth underside of the shelclass="underline"
Is Lu Xin true to me or does she love another?
Fresh tears welled in Lu Xin’s eyes, a crack in the cool resolve she’d shown to Luce. “He asked the ancestors,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “They must have told him of my deceit. I—I could not help myself.”
Daniel. She must be talking about Daniel. A secret love she’d hidden from the king. But she hadn’t been able to hide it well enough.
Luce’s heart went out to Lu Xin. She understood with every fiber of her soul precisely what the girl was feeling. They shared a love that no king could take away, that nobody could extinguish. A love more powerful than nature.