Jade Fire Gold(3)

“Yingma says she misses you. I spoke up, you know, told Old Pang your grandmother was sick.” Li Guo’s smile vanishes. “But he wouldn’t listen.”

I didn’t expect him to. The innkeeper became the only successful businessman in this shanty town from his shrewd attention to profit, not through concern for his workers.

Li Guo presses something into my hand. Copper coins. I shake my head and hand them back. He opens his mouth but closes it once I give him a look. We’ve been friends long enough for him to understand. I won’t take his money. Not when he and his father need it just as much as I do.

He sighs and drops the coins into his trouser pocket before pulling out a red apple and offering it to me. That I snatch immediately. Apples are my favorite and fresh fruit is hard to come by in the desert. Juice dribbles down my chin as I bite into it, the sweetness rich on my tongue. This would have cost him a fortune, but I know he probably stole it from a passing merchant.

Truth is, when you live in a dry husk of a place with nothing to offer but shelter for the night at the sad little inn, you learn other ways of getting by. I’d give anything to run from Shahmo’s endless heat, its flatness, its bland expanse of beige with hardly any green in sight. Only Li Guo knows of my desire. I can’t tell Ama. After all she has done for me, I would never be so ungrateful.

We make our way toward the communal wells at the edge of the town. The streets empty out, and my thoughts go as dismal as the faded shop fronts around me. I think back to when we were children in our tiny village. When we stood shoulder to shoulder reveling with laughter, cloistered in our bubble of naivete, safe in the knowledge that we had nothing to lose.

We were wrong. There was everything to lose.

Two years ago, that bubble burst. Li Guo’s brothers returned from the wars in urns, one after the other. The Empire didn’t even have the decency to send bodies. His mother died of grief, never knowing if the ashes in those burnished ceramic jars belonged to her own children or their fallen comrades, wondering when her last son would be sacrificed for another man’s ambition.

And Li Guo was left alone, struggling to find a way to keep himself and his father alive.

“Do you think the war with Honguodi is truly over?” I say.

Shahmo nestles on the safest route west between the barren desert and the toxic salt lakes. Even though we’re hundreds of miles away from the capital, we get news from travelers cutting through. And recently, all everyone can talk about is the new peace treaty that was brokered between the two nations.

Li Guo replies, “Seems so. All the trade routes are open again.”

“For now.” This peace won’t last. Seems to me we are always at war with some nation or another. “What do you know of the new crown prince? Is he as blood thirsty as his father?”

“He’s young, barely sixteen, I hear.”

I roll my eyes. “To think our fates are to be decided by some spoiled brat on the Dragon Throne.”

“The empress dowager will probably rule in his stead until he comes of age. Can’t say I’m glad about that. We need an emperor, a firm hand at the helm, not someone soft or a pushover—ow!”

Li Guo rubs the spot on his arm where I punched him.

“What makes you think the empress dowager is a pushover? Besides, maybe that’s exactly what the Empire needs: a woman’s touch. Measured and thoughtful, none of that war mongering nonsense,” I retort.

“Maybe,” he concedes. A wistful look crosses his face. “Remember how we used to talk about going on an adventure? About exploring the world beyond this town?”

I shrug like I don’t care. But try as I might, I can’t stop the images of paintings flitting through my mind. Paintings I’ve seen at the inn and along the streets for sale. Paintings depicting cities of vibrant color, impossibly tall mountains cloaked in mist, snowy caps touching the sky, valleys where meandering rivers run through narrow rainbow-colored canyons. Images that whisper of untold adventures, of wondrous creatures, of new lands to explore and delicious food to eat.

I remember the conversations I’ve eavesdropped on at the inn, how my ears perked up whenever they revealed something about the world outside this pathetic town, how my heart lingered on what-ifs.

“Now that the war has ended, we could leave,” says Li Guo. “I know you want to.”

“Only if war doesn’t return. Besides, where would we go? I can’t do anything,” I mutter. “Can’t even keep a job.”

He drapes an arm around my shoulders, his other hand sweeping the horizon. “We could go anywhere—west, south—try our fortune in the eastern cities or even the capital. I’ve learned some carpentry skills from my father. I could get a job, and you could learn a trade, too. It’ll be fun. An adventure, like we always said.”

The gnawing at my chest changes from worry to longing. But I can’t abandon the woman who saved my life.

It is a blood debt I must pay.

“I can’t leave Ama,” I say in a small voice.

“We can wait until Grandma Jia gets better.” Wild hope shines in Li Guo’s eyes, like it did when he was a child. I want to protect it, to keep it from extinguishing. But I tell myself the sooner he accepts the truth, the easier life will be for him.

“I don’t want to leave anymore. If you do, then you should. Don’t wait—because if you wait, you’ll spend your whole life exactly where you are now.” I hold Li Guo’s gaze, hoping he can’t read my lies as well as he used to. Telling myself that the sooner I accept the truth, the easier my own life will be.