Hidden Cities Read online

  Praise for

  MOSHUI: THE BOOKS OF

  STONE AND WATER

  BY DANIEL FOX

  Dragon in Chains

  “Fox captures the foggy mysteries of feudal China in exquisite style with this rich fantasy series opener.… Fox’s concisely elegant style mirrors the light brush strokes and deep colors of ancient Chinese paintings, finely balancing detail, emotion and action. Where many Western authors try and fail to capture the nuances of Chinese culture and mythology, this melodious tale quietly succeeds.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Daniel Fox tackles his material (loosely based on the myths and history of Old China) with a combination of insight, innovation, and sheer command of language that transforms it.… Now I’m waiting for the next book, with all the impatience of a dedicated fan!”

  —Locus

  “Dragon in Chains is a compelling blend of high-stakes action, well-drawn characters who I really cared about, and a gorgeously painted landscape. This is the kind of fantasy I love to read.”

  —KATE ELLIOTT

  “Intense passions and wild imagination … a mythic China intimately imagined.”

  —A. A. ATTANASIO

  “A rising star … With talent like Fox’s, the future of fantasy is in good hands.”

  —TANITH LEE

  “Fox masterfully weaves multiple story strands into a smooth braid.… A rousing fantasy adventure.”

  —BookLoons

  “Daniel Fox’s poetic prose … makes even the mundane seem marvelous.… Definitely a novel—and a series—that should be on every fantasy reader’s radar.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  “Fox is a lyrical writer whose greatest strength is evoking the mood and feel of a place—Taishu feels as solid and real as the chains that restrain the titular dragon.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Jade Man’s Skin

  “Brutal, brilliant, complex, and startlingly clear all at once, this series does a magnificent job of taking the reader into a culture, a time, a place that most of us have never considered.”

  —JAY LAKE, author of Pinion

  “[Builds] on the brilliantly subtle groundwork laid in 2009’s Dragon in Chains … Readers who enjoyed Fox’s delicate descriptions and leisurely prose will be thrilled to find more of the same, along with greater depth of story as the numerous characters are pulled together by schemes and destiny.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fox’s love of all things Chinese shines through this sequel to Dragon in Chains, which should appeal to fans of Asian-themed fantasy such as Lian Hearn’s Across the Nightingale Floor and Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds.”

  —Library Journal

  “This is both a stand-alone story and an excellent continuation of Fox’s previous novel. Set in a richly detailed, feudal, Asian-style empire, the plot revolves around rebellion, betrayal and bonds.… All told, it is a tale that’s hard to put down until the last line.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  BY DANIEL FOX

  Dragon in Chains

  Jade Man’s Skin

  Hidden Cities

  Moshui

  THE BOOKS OF STONE AND WATER

  Hidden Cities is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Fox

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey,

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon

  is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fox, Daniel.

  Hidden cities / Daniel Fox.

  p. cm. — (Moshui: the books of stone and water ; bk. 3)

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52433-1

  1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6106.O96H53 2011

  823′.92—dc22

  2010042070

  www.delreybooks.com

  Cover design: David Stevenson

  Cover illustration: © Robert Hunt

  v3.1

  A book without a dedication

  is like a kiss without salt.

  Or something.

  Nuff said.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Part One - To Ride the Dragon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two - A Tiger’s Lost Song

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Three - Too Wide a Sea

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Four - Walls of Water

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Five - Cities of the Heart

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Six - Dragonfire

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About the Author

  one

  id he think she was angry, before?

  Well, yes. He did think it, and he was not wrong. He had felt the slow stew of her anger, fed over centuries in chains below the sea; he had seen the sudden flare of it when she was suddenly free, when she destroyed a whole fleet of men and ships for their impertinence, abroad upon her waters; he had endured the storm of it when she found herself not so free after all, when she raged through the typhoon.

  He had faced her in her fury more than once, eye to eye and far too close.

  He still thought he had never seen her quite this angry, and entirely at him.

  LITTLE THING, you promised.

  There were proverbs Han knew, teaching people how very foolish it was to make promises to a dragon.

  I know I did. She loured above him, where he stood too close. I did promise, and I am sorry. I had not meant for this to happen.

  She knew that, she was in his head.

  Because she was in his head, she must know this too: that there were just two things he would not willingly relinquish, out of all the world. Despite all terror, and all betrayal. Tien was one of them, and actually this was the other: this constant grinding oppression of scale, this teetering always on the edge of a catastrophic fall. This revealed savagery, this terrible landscape, eternal wrath, this dragon.

  He had tried to free her once, and failed. Her chains—or were they his chains?—were more than simple iron, and not so easily cut. He had promised it again, and meant it truly. And had betrayed her anyway, and now he could not free her anywhere this si
de of death. She was written on his skin, in some spell-crafted liquor more potent than mere ink. And that was Tien’s doing altogether, and what he knew the dragon knew, and …

  I will eat her. If I cannot eat you, little thing. Which they had absolutely established by now: not eat, not drown, not crush or starve or dement him into suicide, no. I will eat your vicious girl instead.

  No, he said. You will not.

  You cannot always keep her close. You cannot always watch her.

  Right now he did not want her close. But, I don’t need to, he said. The dragon was in his head, overwhelming; he was in hers, mortal and tiny and insignificant. She was written on his skin, and she could not close him out. If you go near Tien, I will know. I will not let you harm her.

  Betrayal made no difference, apparently. He was no more free than the dragon; he could still not relinquish Tien.

  He couldn’t even match the dragon’s anger. Tien understood about sacrifice, where he kicked like a rabbit in a snare. She would have sacrificed herself without a thought. Seizing an opportunity, she had sacrificed Han instead.

  He knew. He had been there, helpless under her hands.

  He was always helpless, it seemed, except when it came to dragons.

  She said, You have to sleep, little thing. Little mortal thing. While you walk in nightmare, I will kill your girl and everything you care for.

  No, he said. I don’t believe you can. A part of me rides with you, that doesn’t need to sleep.

  His body was the least of him, it seemed to him these days. Like the paper of a book: fit for writing on, but not itself the words. Not the idea, not the book itself. Not Han.

  If that was true of him, of course it must be true of her too. If her body was a vastness, a sodden hulk that reared above him like the stormclouds of her temper, her spirit was immeasurably greater.

  He felt the grip of it, and slithered free like a pip between two fingers.

  He felt the mighty weight of her mind bear down on his body, cramping and cruel; he rolled writhing in the mud, all pain, all overwhelmed.

  But still there was that little part of him that huddled in her head, watchful, untouched. And no mud could smear those words that Tien’s needle had driven into his skin, words for sleep and stillness, that he could spill like ink into the turbulent waters of her will.

  THE PAIN was unbearable but Han bore it anyway, with something close to patience, till it ebbed. Then he dragged himself shudderingly into the stink of her where she lay slumped and barely aware, sullen and seething, a storm in a bottle.

  He sat on one great sprawled foot and stared into the slit of her eye, and even that deep shimmering jade seemed clouded; and he shook his head and said, You can’t. However you come at me, however you hurt me, the words will overrule you now. This isn’t something we can break. Either of us.

  Not till I die, he said, and my skin rots and the words rot with it. Not till then. You’ll just have to wait.

  You can do that, can’t you? he said. Just wait. Another sixty, seventy years. You’ve waited centuries.

  We can find a way to live, he said, for one puny mortal lifetime. The two of us together.

  You might enjoy it, even, he said. Once your temper cools. It’ll be like nothing else.

  When you swim, he said, you’ll still have to swim alone; but we can learn to fly together.

  And he walked up that unresisting leg, high onto the spine of her; and settled himself like a man astride a roof ridge and loosed her mind from the weight of his words, clinging on grimly with nothing more than his hands now as she rose.

  two

  ometimes Mei Feng got confused, a little, and thought she was the empire, the Hidden City of his heart.

  Never more so than now. Now it was almost true.

  Her poor feet were sore, from too much running on hard stony roads after too much pampering. She lay in a luxury of cushions, and her boy—no, her man, father of her child-to-be—Chien Hua sat with her poor sore feet in his lap and his imperial fingers smeared with a camphor-scented balm, stroking them down Mei Feng’s tender soles until her toes twitched. He smiled, and pressed his powerful imperial thumbs into the balls of her little feet until she gasped, until she closed her eyes and fell back among her cushions and groaned softly in an agony of pleasure.

  There was the touch itself, the simple physicality of it, shivers of delight. Riding that like a mage on a serpent came the greater pleasure, whose hands they were. That he was willing to do this—no, better, devoted to it—unbuttoned her from the inside out. This was how they ought to be: kind and careful with each other, intimate and demanding, robust and certain sure.

  It was the seedling child in her belly that had brought him back to her. The assassin had helped too, at least a little, but it was the child mainly. Being proved right was negligible against being proved fertile, carrying his baby.

  She might tease him with that later, scold him for it, but she didn’t truly care. He was who he was, what his mother had made of him. He had dynasties in his blood, written on his bones. Mei Feng loved him regardless.

  And now—well. He was lord of all the world and lord of her too. Lord of her body. And she was pregnant with his child. His hopes all lay in her. Which meant, yes, she was the Hidden City for this little time at least, under his hand. All its walls and palaces and people her skin, her belly and her blood. Her feet in the emperor’s lap.

  She wiggled her toes for his attention, and smiled with a greedy contentment as his astonishing eyes came sliding sideways to find hers.

  “Press harder,” she murmured, “lord of my feet. You don’t need to be so careful, I won’t break.”

  Which was nonsense, of course. He had jade in his bones as well as dynasties. He was the Man of Jade, impervious apparently to steel blades. He could tear her simple fleshly body between his hands like a well-cooked chicken. He knew that, and had always been too cautious. Now he was tentative almost beyond bearing, unless she goaded him.

  “Mei Feng, you’re pregnant …”

  “I am.” The doctor they had found might be a fraud, but his girl seemed competent and was sure. Which was enough for Mei Feng, who had been sure enough already. Between the two of them, they had convinced the emperor. His mother would want more surety, but she was the other side of a storm-tossed sea. “Still, I am pregnant in my belly, not my feet. Work harder, idle majesty,” and she slipped one foot free of his loose grasp to poke him in the ribs with it, to make him squirm and splutter.

  Tonight she would make him less careful of her belly too, less careful of her altogether. She was not suddenly made of paper, and she meant to persuade him of it, physically and at length. It had been too long.

  For now, his close attention to her feet was enough. It seemed to stand for everything she lacked. Perhaps he understood that; he gripped the errant foot more firmly and worked it between his thumbs until she was the one who was squirming.

  “Mmm—yes, lord, like that, exactly …”

  Her feet were sore, or had been; they were mending beneath his touch. Her heart had been sore too, and was mending too. His touch, his smile, his constant tender services were the best medicine for now. Later they could lay words down like dressings, make promises like stitches to bind open wounds. Better, they could trust the deeper talking to their bodies, oaths sworn in heat and hunger, sealed in satisfaction.

  Later.

  Now, though: now the last whisper of the dragon’s typhoon still lashed the walls, rain and wind together. Coming and going, men let the weather in. Even so, Mei Feng had refused to move from here. Even in this strong windowless stone warehouse, even with his most lethal guards around him, one assassin had come close enough to test a blade on the emperor’s bare unprotected back. The blade it was that broke, she’d seen the shards. That needed thinking about—and testing, perhaps, with needles: his body, her exploratory fingers and fine needles jabbing, jabbing—but in the meantime she’d keep his precious green-tinged skin as safe as she could ma
nage. Which still meant here, until someone gave her better reason to move on. Built to keep his jade secure, for now it held only the one piece, original and best, the Man of Jade, her own …

  Holding her cup below her chin and breathing steam because it smelled sweeter than the rank dank air, she watched the doctor and his girl make their way among the injured. No proper cots: men lay on the wet floor, except where their friends had raided godowns for timbers, pallets, bolts of silk, anything to soften the hard time of their waiting.

  Left to himself, she thought the doctor would not be going anywhere near those common soldiers. Afflicted as he was, though—well. She watched his girl lead him from one makeshift bed to the next. Even from distance, it was clear which one of them had the knowledge and the confidence to use it. The girl lifted off rude dressings and examined wounds, asked questions, diagnosed, prescribed. The doctor, who should have been her master: he carried the bag of medicines. And nodded, stroked his beard, for all the world as though he tested and trusted his young apprentice.