She pointed at the bodies behind them. “Anyone unlucky enough to find out how I fight can’t reveal anything.” Then she drew her eyes closer to his. “And anyone unwise enough to say a word will find out how I fight.”
“I wasn’t planning to betray you.”
“Are you coming with me, then? Out here, your elegant clothes won’t take long to engender more greed.”
“I don’t know where you want to take me. Where I need to go is back to Japan.”
“Not happening,” she said as she resumed walking. “Whoever you crossed in Liuqiu doesn’t want to see you.”
“It makes no sense! I saved the king!”
That made her stop. Very slowly she turned back to him, not sure how to take that news. “What do you mean exactly?”
“The king of the Ryūkyūs was near death, but I arrived just in time to save him.”
“How?” Her voice had acquired an urgency that he, in his indignation, didn’t perceive. “How did you save the king? How did you know what to do? How sick was he?”
“It was the will of the Heavenly Lord.”
That turn of phrase knocked at a door in her memory. “The Portuguese speak like that. Are you saying you can beseech their god?”
As soon as he nodded, she searched within her clothes until she drew out a wooden badge with words carved in black ink. “You’re coming with me. Your arrival in this town has become a matter of state.” She resumed walking, holding him by the arm in a practiced manner he recognized as difficult to wiggle out of.
“Why? What do you want with me? Who are you?”
She showed him her badge again. “I work for the Eastern Bureau, and that means you’ll do as I say.”
“What’s an Eastern Bureau?”
“The Emperor’s secret police. I’ll have to send a letter to the capital, advising they stop whatever they’re doing, which should buy us some time while we get there.”
“Won’t you tell me what’s happening?”
Without stopping, she replied, “I received a message today. The Emperor of China lies on his deathbed, and you seem to have a talent for saving sovereigns. You and I are making a visit to the Forbidden City.”
Night, September 29 (Gregorian), 1620
Beijing
Secret police agent Ma Xiaobo, operating under the guise of Ma Liang, was summoned to the office of her superior after her botched attempt to smuggle an unallowed foreigner into the Palace of Heavenly Purity by using her authority as a member of the secret police to sneak by the closed gates of the city. At every level, the Eastern Bureau was managed by government eunuchs, but here the officer in charge of the institution—Wei Zhongxian, Chief Eunuch of the Great Ming—was the superior of all her superiors, responsible for thousands of spies across the empire and, in every way that mattered, the most powerful man in China.
She bowed and sat before him, waiting for him to speak first. As far as she recalled, they had only rarely spoken directly to each other, when she’d had to deliver a message of a sensitive nature in the capital. Most of the time, he was busy enough chasing traitors in the complex of administrative buildings that formed the Forbidden City. The way he stared at her across the desk was unmistakable: he had more serious matters to think of, and she should be prepared to offer an acceptable excuse to merit his attention.
“Agent Ma Liang, I have just wasted hours of work reviewing your assignment history. The picture that this office has of you is that of an efficient, resourceful, and loyal member. Did we miss a side of you that you were hiding until now?”
“Your reports on me are accurate, Chief Eunuch.”
“I should hope so. Inaccurate information is the bane of any government, but unreliable officers are worse. In view of your impeccable record, how do you explain the irresponsible lack of judgment that drove you to risk execution tonight?”
“I found a man who can save the Emperor’s life.”
“The Emperor has medics whose job it is to do that.”
“Chief Eunuch, you know better than I do that the personnel in the palace are not wholly on the Emperor’s side.”
“The Emperor has guards whose job it is to uncover traitors.”
She refrained from pointing out that even the Embroidered Guard could be compromised. She needed to focus on helping her own case. “Every guard in the palace knows that I’m not a traitor and I wouldn’t do anything against the Emperor’s life.”
Wei was breathing loudly by now. “Have you lost your memory? Just five years ago, a court eunuch helped an assassin enter the palace. Didn’t you pause to consider how it would look for you to do the same?”
“But it’s not the same.”
“The soldiers who have orders to shoot invaders don’t know that. Who even is this barbarian?”
“He’s a diplomatic envoy from Japan.”
“I know that. Don’t waste my time telling me things I know. My informants in Liuqiu have written to me about his audience with their king.”
“Then you must know he tended to his illness.”
Wei dropped silent. He quickly regained control of himself and replied, “The reports didn’t mention that. What does an ambassador know of remedies?”
“He’s not a medic,” she replied. “That’s a good thing, actually; there’s no risk of him poisoning the Emperor.” She knew how to stress the right words to make the implication clear. Among the rumors that their office had gathered about the Emperor’s illness was that court pharmacist Li Kezhuo might not be making his best effort to keep him alive.
“If he’s not a medic, what’s he supposed to be able to do?”
“He will pray.”
Wei chuckled. “Are you serious?”
“This man follows the doctrine of the Jesuits. He can use the help of their god to save the Emperor.”
The eunuch closed his eyes with firmness, a gesture he often used when presented with nonsense. “The fact that the Eastern Bureau gets to ignore judicial procedures doesn’t mean we get to ignore Confucian rites. Invoking barbarian gods is not the way we do things. Maybe you haven’t had a chance to speak to Jesuits, but I have. They love to tell stories of miraculous healings, none of them true. How do you intend to cure the Emperor with a false teaching that has been banned from Beijing?”
Xiaobo considered her reply. She was a servant of the Great Ming, but she was also a Hui, a Muslim. The main reason, which she’d never admitted out loud, why she’d been willing to go so far for Hasekura was that the god of the Jesuits was the same as the god of her people, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. If she succeeded at steering the events so that the Emperor would owe his life to her god, then the one true faith would have an opportunity to be more respected in the empire. But the Han had their own gods, and wouldn’t hear of any other. In the end, she appealed to the simplest of arguments. “In this past week, the king of Liuqiu hasn’t died, has he?”
Wei had no idea, but only gave a dismissive huff. The question had placed him in a difficult spot. It would have been unthinkable for him of all people to admit ignorance, but that meant he had no plausible rebuttal. On second thought, it dawned on him that giving Liang permission to go ahead with such an outlandish proposal could help quench much of the tension that was sure to erupt if, in fact, the Emperor ended up dying. The royal family would be happy to scapegoat an ignorant barbarian and even a naïve servant of the empire if it spared them a chain of fratricides. “Very well,” he said with a blank face. “It may even raise the Emperor’s spirits to see such a spectacle. Proceed.”
Outside Wei’s office, Hasekura Tsunenaga stood in waiting while his rescuer endured interrogation. The Emperor’s condition, as far as they knew, had not changed, but again, he had no one to ask. He could tell that the exquisitely dressed soldier in charge of watching him during Xiaobo’s interview, a member of the prestigious elite force known as the Embroidered Guard, had ten thousand questions to ask him, which would have to wait until she returned, if she returned.