Sui-Tsai had found him! He was being chased through a dark jungle in the dead of night. Sui-Tsai was shouting for him to stop. There was shouting and pounding; someone screamed, but it wasn’t Sheiji. He was caught! Sui-Tsai held his arm in a fierce, iron grip. Sheiji struggled, but the grip held tight. Now Sheiji screamed and a hand clamped over his mouth.
“Vua, quiet!”
Sheiji awoke from his dream in a sweat. His host in the city of Kan-Yu was beside him, pressing a rough hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. But it seemed as though the dream continued. Above his head, Sheiji heard shouting and the sound of splintering wood. A woman screamed.
“Vua, you are betrayed,” his host whispered in a panic. “You must fly from here, young Swan. In the west wall of the city behind the tanner’s house is a sewer drain. You must squeeze through that and meet me in the jungle behind the tree that looks like an ‘H.’ You can’t miss it.”
“Where do I go next?” Sheiji asked. He was already up and dressed.
“No time,” his host replied. “I’ll tell you at the tree. Now hurry, Vua. I’ll distract the soldiers and you slip out the back door. Go!”
Sheiji and his host fled up the stairs. Sheiji darted to the back door while his host ran to reinforce the door against the soldiers. The door swung inward and Sheiji’s host was knocked to the floor. Sheiji ripped open the back door and slipped out. He turned only once and what he saw made him sick. His host lay face down on the floor, blood welling from a dagger wound in his back. With a wail, the wife knelt beside him and fell on his lifeless body as another soldier cut off her head.
Sheiji fled: through the dark streets, past a yowling cat, past an indifferent beggar trying to get some sleep on the rough, cold pavement. He followed his nose to the tanner’s shop and, as his host had said, found the sewer drain. It ran off into a man-made lake outside the city gate. The drain was just big enough for Sheiji to squirm through.
Without regard to his own cleanliness—he had hauled manure after all—Sheiji stuck his head through the drainpipe and shoved his feet against the cobblestones. His shoulders stuck and his tunic tore on the rough stone of the pipe. Sheiji winced as the stone grated his shoulder.
Then his shoulders were through and he wormed his waist and legs out. With a splash, he landed in the dirty lake. He thanked the gods for being the youngest prince and thus having had the freedom to learn to swim with the city children in the Genji River. He did a somersault in the water for joy at being alive and swam to the shore.
He lay dripping in the moonlight for a long moment, catching his breath. There would be no meeting at the tree and no directions to the next house. Sheiji panicked. How was he ever going to get to Jiwu now? He had no directions, no friends and no food or water for his journey.
“He couldn’t have gotten out,” said a gruff voice, alarmingly close to Sheiji. “The gates are closed and the walls are too high to climb, even if a kinglet could climb.”
“The General told us to search out here and I’m not about to disobey his orders,” replied a second man in a melodic voice, too pretty for a common soldier.
Sheiji looked around and spotted the two men near the wall. From their position, they shouldn’t be able to see him, but if they really meant to search, Sheiji would be discovered in an instant.
“What about the sewer?” asked the second man.
“No. Too small,” replied Gruff Voice. “Come on. We’ve had a look around; we can tell the General that he’s not here.”
The second man hesitated, but agreed after a while and followed Gruff Voice. Sheiji sighed and scrambled to his feet.
“Halt!” cried Gruff Voice, “There he is!”
Sheiji didn’t even turn around. He tore off toward the cover of the jungle ten yards away. He heard the clatter of men in armor behind him and the two soldiers hollered for reinforcements. But Sheiji, with the benefit of being dressed in his weightless black tunic, gave him an advantage over Sui-Tsai’s soldiers; fully armored in their white livery with the purple lotus emblem on their breastplates, and lugging curved swords at their waists.
Soon Sheiji could no longer hear the clangs and angry shouts behind him. The only sound was his own labored breathing. He sat with his back against a tree to rest. He didn’t dare sleep for fear that the soldiers would catch up with him eventually. But despite his best efforts, his eyes began to droop and he fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of soldiers and traitors and blood.