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Jiao, who should bring them before the emperor as soon as might be. Where was she going? Why, to the emperor, of course, tosave his life from traitors. Why couldn’t she take the men herself? Because they would be too slow, she had to go
now
, see her go, pell-mell away in hopes of a boat across the river …
    Dandan stood and watched her go, felt herself abandoned one more time, felt the anger stir and start to rise.
    It was an old friend, almost. Dependable. She was beginning to understand how some people lived so constantly angry at the world.
    Thought she was.
    Didn’t know how thin, how weak and selfish it was, that discontent that she called her anger.
    Not until she turned and trudged in at the gate with the boy Gieh at her heels, wondering just how the two of them were supposed to search a whole palace and all its grounds for two particular people—whom Mei Feng had not of course described, in all her heedlessness and hurry—when there would no doubt be dozens, maybe hundreds of people here taking shelter from the war, hiding in whatever darkest cubby-hole they could.
    Perhaps the boy and she should wait right here in the courtyard for Jiao. Especially as this errand was really Jiao’s in any case, Dandan only the messenger.
Take these people to the emperor
, yes; no harm, surely, in letting it be Jiao who sought them out as well?
Find these people, and take them to the emperor
. Yes …
    Except that here they came, two men finding themselves, finding Dandan and the boy. Looking for them, perhaps. There must be some urgency that would bring them out squinting into the sun, as if they had lived long in the dark. Something that would pull them toward the gate when one was twisted and broken and needed a crutch to shuffle himself along, while the other stood straight enough but even so could barely keep up with the first.
    Dandan watched their slow and painful progress and broke all too soon, long before she thought she should.
    She hurried across the courtyard to prevent them. “No, no, please. Look, here is a bench, sit, sit. Both of you, just sit down. Do you want water? Here …”
    The boy Gieh had her bottle. The two men—both of them gray-haired and grizzle-bearded—seemed glad enough to sit, to drink, to pass the bottle between them and then have the boy run to fill it again. He would have gone to the fishpond in the courtyard there if she hadn’t snapped at him to go find a well or a kitchen cistern. Food too if he could do that, if he could sniff it out.
    Meantime she had a handkerchief, a square of silk that she could dip into the fishpond to wipe the scouring sweat from the old men’s faces. The breeze was cool up here and clouds were blowing in but even so they sweated, as though they shared a fever.
    She thought she knew already what they did share, nothing so easy to treat. Nor so easy to catch. One man certainly could pass it to another, but only over time and only with care and concentration, deliberately, an act of will.
    She thought they hurt, deeply and consistently. She thought they had
been
hurt, deeply and consistently. This wasn’t the kind of hurt that comes from birth or accident; nor the kind that comes in war. As a precursor of war, perhaps, or in its aftermath, but not from stabbing or slashing or crushing, not from blades used in anger or terror in the heat and confusion of battle.
    No. She thought both these men had been hurt methodically and slowly and with intent. She thought they had been tortured.
    Really it wasn’t—or at least it shouldn’t be—a surprise. Of course Tunghai Wang tortured prisoners. He was a traitor and a rebel; no doubt torture would be commonplace to him. No doubt these were loyal supporters of the emperor. She still didn’t see why Mei Feng wanted him to meet them quite so urgently, but that wasn’t important quite yet.
    She introduced herself in the simplest way she knew: “Please, my name is Dandan. How may I serve you?” She had her