“I think,” Pinmei said, “the emperor was saying that the Luminous Stone is at Sea Bottom.”

Yishan stared at her, a grin growing on his face.

“You’re right!” Yishan said. “That must be where the Luminous Stone—whatever it is—must be! Let’s go there next!”

“But…” Pinmei faltered, “Sea Bottom is just part of Amah’s stories. Could we really go… How could we get there?”

Lady Meng looked up. “I know how,” she said quietly.

CHAPTER

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The snake’s eyes, like deep dark pinpricks, gazed at the Black Tortoise. It stretched toward the tortoise as if longing to embrace it.

The tortoise snapped, and the snake arched back, chastised.

Go to the Sea King, the tortoise ordered, and tell him I need help.

The snake nodded, its tongue flicking with eagerness. Without a sound, it turned and began to slither away with surprising speed.

The tortoise fixed his gaze upon it, cherishing the only relief in that brilliant landscape. He watched the black snake crawl and glide until it became a thin silk thread in the distance and disappeared.

CHAPTER

46

“We need to wait for BaiMa,” Lady Meng said.

They were outside the city gates, safe from view. They had left the House of Wu quickly, Haiyi urging everything from dumplings to furs on them. “I don’t think my masters will need them anymore,” Haiyi had said with a small, mischievous smile. Instead, Lady Meng had traded her fine clothes for the coarse garb of the servant herself, and Pinmei and Yishan had thrown various robes and cloaks over their colorful clothing. Leaving separately, they had attracted little attention, and the gates had been easy to exit, just as Haiyi had predicted.

“The horse?” Yishan asked. “But he was put in the palace stable. Surely he couldn’t…”

But before Yishan could continue, Lady Meng put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. It was a clear, lilting noise, like the sound of a bamboo flute.

In answer came the high whinny of a horse. BaiMa, as if he had been waiting, galloped toward them from around the bend in the wall. When he reached them, he snorted as if laughing.

“I asked Yanna to let him out of the city gates before I left,” Lady Meng said, smiling at their astonishment.

Yishan flung off the borrowed gray cloak and laughed. Pinmei smiled too. Without thinking, she reached to rub the bracelet that was no longer there. Lady Meng saw her.

“I’m sorry you gave away your bracelet,” Lady Meng said. “If I had my jewelry here, I could give you many more—gold as well as jade.”

Pinmei gave Lady Meng a small smile, the emptiness on her wrist heavier than any gold.

“Jade and gold?” scoffed Yishan. “Who needs that?”

And with a flourish, he pulled a thread out of his fraying sleeve and tied it around Pinmei’s wrist. “I present to you this magnificent bracelet of thread,” he said in a playful tone as he bowed. “Wear it with pride, for it is priceless!”

Pinmei laughed. “Stop teasing me,” she said, but the red string did look nice, and her wrist somehow felt less bare. Despite his joking manner, Pinmei knew Yishan had given it to her in kindness, and it made her feel as if she were drinking a warm cup of tea. She smiled.

Lady Meng looked at them wistfully.

“I wish I had had a bracelet like that to give to my husband,” she said sadly.

Yishan turned to Lady Meng and bowed his head. “I wish I could have given him one,” he said.

Pinmei watched the two of them, aware something was being said she did not understand. But before she could say anything, Lady Meng raised her head and said, “Shall we be off, then?”

They climbed onto BaiMa’s back, and Lady Meng urged the horse forward.

“Aren’t we going to the road?” Pinmei asked as BaiMa trotted onto unmarked snow.

“We don’t need it,” Lady Meng said, clicking at BaiMa to start him galloping. “We’re going to the sea.”

CHAPTER

47

BaiMa sliced through the air, the wind making Pinmei’s braid a stroke of black ink on the paper white of the sky. Time and distance melted together in a blur of silver, and when they stopped, she felt as if they had arrived in another world. For before them, glittering with the cold, hard, sharp sparkle of a diamond, was the sea.

“It’s frozen,” Pinmei whispered. “The sea is frozen.”

They stood for a moment in awe.

“This is not right,” Yishan said. “Something is wrong. For the sea to freeze…”

But he stopped, for Lady Meng had slid off the horse. “We will part here,” she said to them.

“You’re leaving us?” Pinmei gasped.

“I am glad to have spent this time with you both,” she said. “But I must find my husband.”

“But then how will we…” Pinmei stopped, embarrassed by her selfishness.

Lady Meng smiled at her and looked at Yishan. “I know,” she said, “how capable you are.” She opened her hand and held it toward him.

Yishan reached deep into his sleeve and fished out his handkerchief, his chopsticks, and, finally, the dark brown mussel. It was tightly closed, with only the smallest indentation as evidence that it had been struck by the arrow. Yishan handed the mussel to Lady Meng.

Lady Meng turned toward the silent sea. The arched frozen waves stretched toward her like yearning arms and, for a long moment, she gazed at them. Then she threw the mussel. As it bounced, it made a clinking noise like a small bell, then became a dark dot rolling in the distance.

“Just follow it,” Lady Meng said, looking at them. “BaiMa will know the rest.”

“You’re not going to take BaiMa?” Pinmei asked.

“No, you’ll need him,” Lady Meng said, “and I will not. And considering where I am going, he would only draw unnecessary attention to me.”

Pinmei tried to picture Lady Meng, refined and graceful, among the horrors of the Vast Wall and found herself shuddering. Lady Meng looked at her with affection.

“Do not worry for me, Pinmei,” she said. “I must follow my path.”