Chương 110: Chapter 108

I stretch out my arms to the sides as I am being inspected for the third time in less than a quarter of an hour by my mother, who, planted in front of me, goes over the entire ensemble with her gaze as if expecting to discover in my attire some invisible defect that justifies canceling the outing.

It is the first time in this whole life that I am wearing clothing so simple, since it is, according to what Lianhua has explained to me, exactly what the daughter of a family of merchants with a certain status but without pretensions would wear, someone well-off enough to go out for a stroll on the main street and anonymous enough that no one would turn to look upon seeing her pass by.

Beside me, Xia wears an outfit similar to mine and Lianhua, in whose arms I am at this moment, wears the most sober of the three outfits, in dark brown, and curiously seems to be the only one of the three on whom the clothing fits as if she had been wearing it her whole life.

"Wen", my mother tells me as she stretches out her hand to smooth a nonexistent wrinkle on the collar of my outfit.

"Remind me once again where you are going to be moving about." I summon up all the patience available and reply to her in the same tone I have been using since the first time she asked me the same question quite a while ago.

"Down the main street, Mother", I reply.

"We will advance along it toward the entertainment district and there we will spend the rest of the day, and if we get hungry, we will eat at one of the stalls or restaurants in the area."

"And under no circumstances are you to separate from Lianhua, or from the escorts who are going to accompany you", she continues as if she had not heard me and were simply ticking off points on a mental list.

"Under no circumstances", I repeat to her mechanically.

"And no secondary streets that aren't perfectly lit and busy, no alleys, and certainly no approaching the lower neighborhoods that are near the western wall", she continues.

"I wasn't planning to do that either, Mother", I reply gently.

"If I wanted to get into trouble, I assure you I would not do it on the first incognito outing of my life." My mother allows herself a small sigh upon hearing me, one of those that has a touch of amusement, and then takes a step back to look at me from head to toe again with an attention that is beginning to resemble less that of a mother and more that of a general reviewing a formation before combat.

"And if any problem arises, no matter how small", she adds.

"Lianhua decides, not you. She does."

"Mother", I protest.

"There's no need to repeat that either. We have already discussed it three times."

"And we will discuss it a fourth if necessary", she replies with that unappealable firmness she reserves for the few occasions when the negotiation is officially closed.

"If Lianhua tells you to stop, you stop. If she indicates that you change streets, you do it. And if she decides that the outing has ended, you return. Is that clear?"

"It is perfectly clear", I reply without arguing, because I know how to recognize when it is better not to fight a battle.

"Lianhua decides everything." My mother nods again, but the unease that has been accompanying her since we began preparing to leave earlier doesn't go from her face, and she runs a hand across her temple as if she were mentally ordering the points she still has yet to cover before letting us leave.

And then, just when I am beginning to think that we have already finished with the battery of warnings, my mother brings her hand to her clothing and, with a sudden movement, takes out a small object and holds it in the palm of her hand so that I can see it.

It is a seal carved in jade of a green so dark that in the dimness of the study it almost appears black, with the handle topped in the figure of a phoenix perched with its wings folded and the smooth base covered by a red silk casing that right now is closed with a small knot. And I don't need to be told what it is, because despite never having seen it, I recognize it instantly.

"Mother", I begin to say, but she raises a hand to silence me before I can continue.

"Take it", she tells me as she hands it to me with the same firmness with which she has repeated the instructions to me.

"It is your official seal of Zhāohuán. Until you reach the age of majority you should not be able to have it, so I give it to you only just in case, and I sincerely hope you do not have to use it." I accept the seal with both hands, as is proper, and for an instant I am surprised at how heavy it is for its size. The jade is cold and smooth under my fingers, and the weight feels strange to me, not in itself but because of everything it represents.

"With that seal, and with the authority you have as Zhāohuán over the city guard, you can take command of any patrol and order from them whatever you need", my mother continues as she observes me.

"I don't want to frighten you, Wen, but if for any reason, however improbable, things were to go awry, it is better that you have a way to ask for formal help by being able to demonstrate who you are." I lower my gaze toward the seal and, for a couple of seconds, I allow myself to weigh it in my hand as I think about everything that the simple fact that my mother has decided to give it to me means.

It is a gesture that goes far beyond the routine warnings and that tells me, without need of words, exactly how much it still worries her to let us go out.

"Don't worry, Mother", I tell her finally as I store the seal in a small pouch I carry.

"Things would have to go quite wrong for me to have to resort to this. I remind you that I plan to stay on the main and nearby streets, it's not as if I were going to wander through the most sordid neighborhoods of the city."

"I know that", she replies, and by the way she says it I realize that it is not exactly me she is trying to convince.

"But I cannot help being worried." As she pronounces those words she stretches out her hands again and finishes adjusting some folds that clearly need no more adjusting, and despite my being in Lianhua's arms and my mother's reach for doing this kind of thing being rather limited in this posture, she manages to go over the lapel of the outfit, the collar, the two sleeves, and finally, the knot that closes the small pouch I carry crossed in a bandolier and where I have just stored the seal.

When she finishes, she steps back barely a pace and lets out a final sigh as she moves fully away.

"It is better that you leave before I change my mind and force you to stay", she tells us with a mixture of firmness and resignation. I nod and tell her what I have been waiting to say for almost half an hour.

"Then it is time to get going", I tell her. Lianhua, however, doesn't move yet. Before turning toward the door, she looks at my mother and speaks to her in the tone she reserves for professional matters.

"Guifei Xiang", she says.

"If you will allow me, I wanted to add that both the Jin Wei and the Nei Wei who are going to accompany us are both veterans who have already carried out more escort tasks while incognito than most of their colleagues combined. Following your indications, the outing will be calm." My mother looks at her for an instant and then nods with a small, almost imperceptible gesture, which nevertheless seems to loosen a bit of the tension she had accumulated in her shoulders from the start of the morning.

"Very well", she replies simply. Lianhua returns the nod with one of her own, equally small, and only then does she turn around with me in her arms. Xia falls in beside us in silence and the three of us leave the Pavilion through a small side door that leads, not to the main courtyard of the Pavilion as would be usual, but to a series of narrow corridors that run along the rear portions of the buildings of the Imperial Palace and that are reserved for the maintenance staff.

These corridors are completely different from the ones I am accustomed to traveling, since they are much less adorned and in their state it can be seen that they are much less of a priority than the wide corridors and zones traveled by officials and nobles. We advance in silence as Lianhua walks with a firm but discreet step and Xia, who normally would be the first to comment on anything she sees, seems to have understood without need of being told that this is not a situation for speaking out loud.

Along the way we cross paths with a few people, all clearly service personnel, who travel the corridors in haste carrying baskets, packages, or various utensils. They barely dedicate a glance to us as they pass, and the one they dedicate is brief and disinterested. I suspect that glance is more for seeing some girls in an area where they aren't usually seen than for having recognized me, but none of them gives us a second look, and after two corridor intersections we stop running into anyone.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. After several turns the corridors begin to slope slightly downward and finally open into a wider area, a sort of plaza that is attached to the base of the outer wall of the Imperial Palace, and in the center of the plaza, awaiting us, there is a man and a woman of middle age.

Both wear outfits very similar to ours, in earth tones and of functional cut, with nothing suggesting that they belong to the army nor much less to the personal escort corps of the imperial family. If I had seen them on the street I would not have given them a second look, and I suppose that is exactly the point.

The man is tall and sinewy, with a weathered face and attentive eyes that move discreetly examining the access points to the antechamber even while he waits, and the woman, somewhat shorter, has that apparently relaxed posture that all bodyguards seem to have regardless of what world they come from. Upon seeing us arrive, the two greet Lianhua with a bow.

"Zhāohuán Wen, Ling Xia", Lianhua tells us as she turns slightly so that I can see the two escorts well.

"May I introduce you to Jiang Yi and Shen Qingwan. They are the escorts who will accompany us during the tour through the Imperial Capital." The two bow again, this time toward me, and they do so with an unmistakable formality, the kind reserved for the members of the imperial family, which clashes in a particularly comical way with the common-folk attire they are wearing.

"It is an honor to be in your service, Zhāohuán", Jiang Yi says with a contained but clear voice.

"We will fulfill our mission with all diligence, Zhāohuán", Shen Qingwan adds. And upon hearing them, I briefly weigh what they are doing and I cannot help a small smile escaping me, because if our objective is to pass absolutely unnoticed through the Capital, this is precisely the opposite of what we need.

"I thank you for the formality", I tell them with a smile.

"But if we are going to pass for a normal family strolling through the city, the last thing we need is for you to refer to me formally every time you have to say something to me. While we are outside, it is enough for you to call me Wen. Any other way of referring to me would be too strange given the situation."

The two escorts lift their gaze toward me after listening to me and, for a moment, their faces, which until then had been the professional and serene faces typical of veterans, take on that particular expression that people put on when they don't quite know whether what they have just heard is an order, a suggestion, or a small joke they don't quite get.

Behind me, I hear how Lianhua lets out a minimal sigh, that short and professional sigh I know well by now and which is the closest thing to a protest she allows herself when we are in the presence of outside people. But no one says anything, neither the escorts, nor Lianhua, nor Xia, who has remained a step behind observing the scene with a mixture of attention and discretion very uncharacteristic of her.

"If everything is clear", I continue, deciding to drop the subject before the pause stretches on longer than it should.

"Can we go?"

"Yes, everything is prepared", Jiang Yi replies after an instant.

"If you would follow us, please." The two escorts turn around and guide us toward one end of the antechamber, where the wall is interrupted at floor level and there appears a narrow passage, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, closed by a heavy reinforced metal door that has all the look of having been designed to resist any attempt to force it.

Jiang Yi takes a key from inside his outfit, a large and solid key without any kind of adornment, and inserts it into the lock, after which the door yields with a metallic click as it opens toward the interior of the passage. Once it is open, the five of us cross through in order, and as soon as the last one has crossed, Jiang Yi closes the door behind us and turns the key again. The passage, once the door is crossed, turns out to be longer than it appeared from the other side.

The walls are of unpolished stone, the ceiling is low, and the lighting comes from a few lanterns placed at calculated intervals, enough so that one can see where to go but not so many that the place would seem welcoming. We advance in silence until we reach a second metal door, identical to the first in appearance, and Jiang Yi repeats the same process so that we can cross to the other side. And even so, the corridor still continues beyond.

We travel the corridor until, finally, it ends in some narrow stairs that go up to a small door. Jiang Yi goes up first, opens the door carefully, listens for a moment, and only then does he make a signal downward for the rest of us to follow.

Going up with Lianhua carrying me in her arms is a somewhat more laborious operation than for the others due to the narrowness of the staircase, but she manages and after an instant all of us are in a small, dimly lit room whose walls are lined with shelves loaded with packages wrapped in paper, bundles of fabric, and stacked boxes.

It is clearly a storeroom, and from the arrangement and the dust that accumulates in some areas but not in others, it is clear that it is a storeroom that functions as such and at the same time is the cover for the passage we have just abandoned. We leave the storeroom through a door that gives onto the rear of what turns out to be a shop, one of those that seem to sell anything one can imagine, from fabrics to kitchen utensils passing through decorative figurines.

At the back of the establishment, beside the counter, there is a man of a certain age attending to a customer, and upon seeing him Shen Qingwan directs at him a brief and silent nod of assent. The man returns another nod equally brief and turns his attention back to the customer he has before him without dedicating to us either a word or a second look, which confirms without need of explanations that this is exactly routine, not something improvised for us.

We leave the shop and the morning light of the capital strikes me fully for the first time in my life without being filtered by the curtains of a carriage. The street we are on I do not recognize at all, which doesn't surprise me either since adding up all my outings over the past years I will have seen barely four or five different streets and always from the interior of a moving carriage.

Taking advantage of the fact that Lianhua has stopped for an instant so that the escorts can check the surroundings, I turn my head a bit to look at her.

"Lianhua", I tell her with a volume barely above normal.

"What's first?"

"We will go first to the main street to look at the shops that are on it", she replies without hesitating.

"As we advance along it we will be approaching the entertainment district, where we can spend the rest of the day as planned." I nod upon hearing her, satisfied, and then I turn my head toward Xia, who walks beside me with that mixture of curiosity and discipline she is trying to maintain.

"What do you think of the plan, Xia?" I ask her.

"After all, it's your outing." Xia blinks a couple of times, clearly surprised that I am asking for her opinion, and then her face lights up with that contained excitement she puts on when something truly enthuses her.

"It seems perfect to me, Wen", she replies.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of performances there are in the Imperial Capital." And with that response we set off. Jiang Yi and Shen Qingwan walk slightly apart from us, at a distance short enough to intervene in an instant and to appear to be a group of five but at the same time maintaining sufficient distance to give us some privacy.

At first glance, I suppose, we look like a well-off family taking a stroll, with a handmaiden carrying one of the girls in her arms, the sister beside her, and the parents following them a couple of paces behind. The shop district, once we arrive at the main street, turns out to be everything I remembered from my outings in the carriage but multiplied by the difference made by walking among the people instead of passing over them.

The smells mix, the noise is constant, the vendors announce their merchandise without rest, and the people buy, haggle, and converse with that energy characteristic of a market that functions well. Xia and I enter several shops as we advance. In a fabric shop, Xia is fascinated with some colored ribbons that cost barely a few coins and we end up buying her three. In another shop of small carved wooden objects, I find a simple comb with a bird carved on the handle that I like enough to buy for myself.

None of the purchases is expensive, none draws attention, but above all, we make them simply because I feel like it.

The entertainment district appears shortly after turning a corner of the main street, and soon we see a group of shadow puppeteers performing a story I remember having read about a crane and a fisherman, after that a small improvised theater piece on a corner with two actors who make the audience laugh with an absurd dialogue between a magistrate and a peasant, and next several street musicians with various instruments.

And here I cannot help paying a certain attention because there is a small part of me that was hoping to hear, at one of those street stalls, the unmistakable chords of the piece I played at my birthday.

But none of the musicians seems to have decided yet to dare with that rhythm, which draws from me a small internal disappointment that I quickly soothe by reminding myself that there is still my father's birthday yet to come, and that after that, who knows, perhaps the next time someone goes out into the street to play they may dare to play something that even the Emperor has heard.

But we continue the stroll and we see that there are also several animal tamers exhibiting their trained creatures, small monkeys that do somersaults, a dog that distinguishes colors, and a couple of birds that pick up coins from the ground and deposit them in a small basket. Xia is fascinated with all of them and I let myself be dragged along by her enthusiasm more than I would admit out loud.

Between performance and performance, we stop to eat at a small open-air stall that sells some bowls of noodles with broth and small fried snacks that smell much better than what one would expect from a street stall. Lianhua, who is still carrying me in her arms, manages to feed me sitting on a bench beside the stall while Xia makes good account of her bowl with her habitual voracity and Jiang Yi and Shen Qingwan eat at the table next to ours without losing sight of us at any moment.

The food is simple and delicious, so much so that when I finish the bowl I tell Lianhua, without thinking too much about it, that I want a second helping, which causes Xia, for some reason, to look at me with an expression of absolute triumph.

And thus, between music, performances, food, and minor purchases, the afternoon passes without my barely realizing it, until at one moment the light begins to take on that warmer tone that precedes sunset, and beside me I hear how Lianhua leans down barely and speaks to me in a low voice.

"Furen", she tells me.

"It is time to return." I sigh upon hearing her, although the truth is that I had been suspecting for a while that that moment was near, and I cannot help adding a comment that is at once for Xia and for myself.

"It's a shame", I tell her.

"And above all it's a pity that we probably won't be able to do this again."

"It's true", Xia adds beside me in a tone more subdued than the one she has maintained throughout the afternoon. I give one last look around me, at the performances that can still be seen in the distance, at the stalls that are beginning to gather some of the more perishable items, at the people walking unhurriedly enjoying the end of the afternoon, and then I look back at Lianhua.

"I suppose that once is enough", I tell her with a small smile.

"It is time to go home." And with that, the group sets off on the return. Xia walks beside us a couple of paces behind, with that slight reluctance characteristic of someone who knows that the fun has ended, and I let myself be carried in Lianhua's arms while I try to engrave in memory all possible details of this afternoon, knowing that it is probable that it is the only one I will live this way.

But we are about to turn the corner that takes us to the main street when the sound of an explosion booms throughout the entire area, so loud and sudden that, for a second, it seems to me that it has hit me physically. And I have barely enough time to register that the sound comes from the building beside which we are passing, barely an instant to turn my head, barely a second to contemplate, paralyzed with horror, how that building collapses on top of us.