Free Dragonwall by Troy Denning Page A

your knowledge of your quarry.” The realization that Ting understood him so well made Ju-Hai uneasy. An exotic plant was the only gift that would disarm him so easily. “You are forgiven, my dear. Come over to the belvedere, and we will talk.”
    “Thank you, Minister.” Ting smiled and followed Ju-Hai to the small, open building at the edge of the goldfish pond.
    While the servants placed the chairs and poured the tea, Ting picked up the jar Ju-Hai had left on the white table. “Trigrams?” she asked curiously.
    “A bauble I sometimes toy with,” the minister replied, looking away from the jar with practiced nonchalance.
    Smiling playfully, Ting turned the jar over and spilled the sticks. “Tell me what they say.”
    Ju-Hai gave Ting’s gift to Shei Ni for safekeeping. When he looked at the circle of sticks, he half-smiled in amusement. The minister did not need stick magic to tell him what the trigrams had revealed. “The pattern of the sea,” he said. “You are always shifting and impossible to predict. This makes you a powerful enemy and a dangerous friend.”
    Shei Ni and the servants finished their work, bowed, and left the garden quietly.
    Ting peered at the sticks, then looked at Ju-Hai flirtatiously. “Is there nothing of love in those patterns?”
    The minister chuckled. “Not for me to read.”
    Ting stepped closer. “Perhaps you should look again.”
    Ju-Hai backed away and took his seat at the east end of the table. After a long sip of tea, he said, “Surely you did not wait all afternoon simply to dangle your lascivious web before an aging man?”
    The beautiful mandarin sighed in exaggerated disappointment. The game between them was an old one. For fifteen years, Ting had been making herself available to Ju-Hai, and for fifteen years the Minister of State had deftly avoided an entanglement with her.
    “I have been waiting much longer than one afternoon,” Ting replied, taking her seat at the other end of the table. “But you’re correct. I have little hope that you’ll come to your senses today. I’ve come to apologize for this morning’s mistake.”
    Ju-Hai nodded, but remained silent. Now that they were discussing political affairs, his mind had shifted into an orderly, critical thought process. He hoped his silence would force Ting to disclose the true reason for her visit.
    Ting lifted her teacup to her lips. After a small swallow, she continued speaking. “Of course, I don’t really know what my mistake was.”
    Ju-Hai smiled, relieved that the Tigress did not know his greatest vulnerability. After a short pause, he answered Ting’s half-spoken question. “That should be obvious.”
    Ting frowned at her mentor. “It isn’t.”
    “It is a foolish wolf that growls at its master,” he said. “By suggesting that someone within the Mandarinate brought the barbarians down upon us, you have made many powerful enemies.”
    Ting’s eyes narrowed. “True, but to anger you, my blunder must have threatened you personally.”
    Ju-Hai smiled at his disciple with as much warmth as he could gather. “I’m disappointed, my dear. Don’t you realize how fond of you I am?”
    Ting smirked, then her eyes grew soft and she ran a painted nail around the rim of her tea cup. “Why do you never show it?”
    “I do,” the minister responded. “I have watched over your career very closely.”
    The seductive mandarin sat up straight. “To what purpose?” she asked. “What have you gotten out of helping me?”
    Her soft expression had become as hard as stone, and Ju-Hai knew that this question came from her heart. “What I have gotten,” he answered, “is a capable administrator who serves the empire well. That is the only payment I expect or have ever asked.”
    Ting rolled her eyes in disbelief. Like so many other servants of the state, a lifetime in the imperial bureaucracy had exposed her to such corruption and self-serving incompetence that she automatically discounted such