toward the door. "If the princess will show us to Lady
Feng's apartment?"
Wei Dao frowned in confusion, then turned to lead the way out of the room.
Halfway to the door, she suddenly stopped. Her fore- head was slick with sweat and her face was sick with fear. "This is not right. I cannot show others into Lady
Feng's apartment."
"Then I shall." Behind her veil, Ruha allowed herself a small smile. "I know the way, as I'm sure you remember."
As the witch moved to step past, she saw Wei Dao's hand drop toward her sash.
In the next instant, two of Hsieh's guards lay on the floor holding their bloody throats, and Wei Dao was leap- ing through the air, slashing at Ruha's throat with her ov/njambiya. The witch twisted her body to the side and reached out to meet the assault at the wrist, but the princess's reflexes were as quick as lightning. She circled the blade beneath Ruha's blocking arm and reversed it, driving the tip toward her victim's heart as though she had been fighting withjambiyas all her life. The witch saved herself only by falling to the floor and madly flail- ing her feet in a desperate attempt to trip her attacker.
There was no need. Moving with a deliberate grace that appeared almost languid, Hsieh slipped behind the princess. He clamped one hand over the wrist of Wei
Dao's weapon hand, then shot his other forearm around her throat and brought it up under herjawline so hard her feet came off the ground.
Wei Dao's eyes bulged and her tongue appeared between her lips. She flung her head back in an attempt to smash her captor's nose, but Hsieh simply tipped his face out of the way. The princess made a brief, rasping attempt to breathe, but the veins in her neck were being pinched shut by the mandarin's arm, causing her head to run out of blood long before her lungs ran out of air. Her face turned a shocking shade of purple-gray, and the Jam – biya slipped from her hand. Her eyes rolled back in their
sockets; then she stopped struggling and began to spasm.
Hsieh dropped her at a guard's feet. "Greatly unex- pected. I am most curious to see what we find in Lady
Feng's chamber."
Ruha could not take her eyes off Wei Dao's unconscious form. During all her training with the Harpers, she had never seen a woman move with such deadly speed and grace. Had she not seen the ease with which Hsieh dis- abled her, the witch would not have believed anyone-especially a one-eyed man of Hsieh's age-could move more swiftly.
"Minister Hsieh, I thank you for my life," Ruha said.
"You are a man of many hidden talents."
The mandarin smiled. "In Shou Lung, we long ago learn wisdom of being better warriors than those who guard us." He turned to Yu Po and gestured at Wei Dao.
"Bind princess well and take her to apartment. Inspect her chambers to see that she is… safe."
Yu Po bowed, then began issuing orders in Shou. As
Hsieh's guards scurried into action, the mandarin selected a half-dozen men to accompany him, then led the way up an immense staircase to the second story, where he astonished the palace sentries by allowing
Ruha to use her wind magic to open the door to the Third
Virtuous Concubine's apartment. The minister scowled at the macabre frescoes that decorated Lady Feng's antechamber, then followed the witch through the dress- ing closet into the bedchamber.
Ruha went straight to the corner and pulled Lady
Feng's writing desk from the wall. When she did not hear any scratching or whining on the other side of the secret door, she began to fear that Wei Dao had done something with Chalk Ears. The witch took a deep breath and, won- dering how Hsieh would react if it turned out she could prove neither Lady Feng's indiscretion nor her abduction, pushed open the hidden panel.
The secret chamber looked as though a whirlwind had erupted inside. The worktable in the center of the room
had been swept clean of its cauldrons and balances, which now sat upon the floor amid a knee-deep jumble of books and broken glass. Heaps of severed bat wings, blackened fingernails, and silk-wrapped spider eggs were scattered everywhere, often coated by stripes ofrainbow- hued dusts and powders. One of the cabinets had even been pulled over and now lay broken into two splintered pieces.
Save for a sleeping cushion, sandbox, and two silver bowls containing untouched supplies of food and water, there was no sign of Chalk Ears. Although the jagged shards of glass had been broken out of the window through which Ruha had escaped, the casement itself remained open and not repaired.
"Is this what you bring me to see?" Hsieh asked.
"No. What I brought you to see is gone."
Ruha could almost see what had happened. After she jumped through the window, Wei Dao, or some other guards, had tried to capture Chalk Ears. The familiar had panicked, and the ensuing struggle had destroyed
Lady Feng's laboratory. In the end, the little creature had escaped through the broken window, and the princess had elected to leave it open in the hope that the beast would return.
The witch picked her way across the room. "I had hoped to show you Lady Feng's familiar." She picked up the red sleeping cushion. "But I fear Chalk Ears has fled."
"Chalk Ears? Perhaps you mean Winter Blossom?"
Ruha held her hands about a foot apart. "It was a little creature that could have been a cross between a monkey and a raccoon. I found it here when I-" The witch stopped short of admitting what she had been doing in Lady Feng's chambers. "It looked like it had not eaten for a week."
"He," Hsieh corrected. The mandarin waded into the room and kneeled beside the familiar's lair. "Winter Blos- som is male lemur-though I think Eye Biter is better name."
The VeUed Dragon
Ruha caught herself staring at Hsieh's silken eye patch and looked away. "Winter Blossom is more than a pet to Lady Feng. Had she departed the Ginger Palace willingly, I doubt she would have left him behind."
Hsieh sighed heavily. "But familiar is not here."
The mandarin waved his guards into the room, and
Ruha's mouth went dry. She glanced out the empty win- dow pane, already summoning to mind the same wind spell she had used to escape Wei Dao, then swallowed her fear and told herself not to panic. The guards arrived and arrayed themselves around Hsieh, at the same time blocking the witch's path through the window.
Ruha squatted beside Winter Blossom's silver bowls and waved her hand over the contents. "The familiar escaped after Lady Feng's departure, or these would not be full. Wei Dao hopes to lure him back."
Hsieh met Ruha's gaze. "I do not doubt what you say. If
Lady Feng takes Winter Blossom, she takes his bed." He picked up the lemur's sleeping cushion, then tossed it to a guard. "So, where is Lady Feng, and why does she not take familiar?"
"I told you-she was abducted."