a chance at catching up with him. His expression, as usual, betrayed nothing. I was starting to wish that my Talent was in mind reading and not visions after all, since it seemed the only way to figure out what the lords of the Ke-Han were thinking, but velikaia of such Talent were never allowed at talks such as these, for obvious reasons. My particular Talent would have come in very handy if these talks were less diplomatic—or if they needed to be coaxed along some—but until then I was compelled to keep things under wraps. A pity, since it tended to make my head a very complicated place. “Perhaps another day, I might take you to a more fitting theatre.”
“That one didn’t seem so bad,” Alcibiades said.
I made a note to take him aside later and point out that not everything was a slight at commoners, and therefore at him. I had no idea what provoked him to be so contrary all the time, but I felt certain that if I didn’t come to the root of it, it would poison all our fun in the capital. And I couldn’t have that.
“I thought we might begin at one end of the alley and work our way back along the other,” Lord Temur continued thoughtfully. “There is a great deal to see, and I would not like to think I’d neglected any small detail.”
The artists’ district was arranged much like a market in Volstov, with wooden stalls crowding in on one another and lining either side of the street. Some had the same colorful banners that I’d deduced doubled for shop signs, but others were simply bare, with nothing but wind charms and little mascots of folded paper nailed to the supports.
We stopped first at a booth that featured no signs, only a wind charm made of glass, which tinkled merrily in the breeze that whispered down the street. I thought that I recognized the shapes in it from the patterned robes worn by one of the warlords attending our diplomatic talks, but I wasn’t certain. We hadn’t brought up the topic of the Ke-Han wind magic yet, if only because it would surely bring all minds around to the broken outline of the dome, still a gaping wound in the perfectly crafted city. I’d learned in our intensive course predating our arrival that the Ke-Han did not specialize in wind but rather all four elements. They took their magic from the land itself, and perhaps the only reason we were so familiar with the wind aspect of their skills was because it had been the one we were confronted with most often. Perhaps there was something particularly easy about that one element to harness. Or, perhaps because of the dragons, they’d had enough of fire to last a lifetime, and earth was too dangerous an element to toy with high in the mountains.
Then again, I reflected, that had rarely stopped our soldiers, or so the stories had told me.
It was doubtless still a wound in the hearts of the people, as well. As it was more a symbol for the people than anything else, it was something best left out of negotiations completely, though it was the subject first and foremost on everyone’s mind.
A man dressed in short robes and leggings hurried up to the front of his stall, as if drawn by the fall of our shadows over his beloved artwork. The artist’s fingertips were stained with ink, as though he’d just been working on a new piece when we interrupted him. He wore a thick white cloth wrapped around his forehead, to keep the hair out of his eyes, and when he saw his customers were two foreigners and a lord from the palace, he stopped short, jerked to a halt by an invisible chain.
“Welcome,” the artist murmured, eyeing us warily. “Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with.”
“What did he say?” Alcibiades had the decency to lower his voice when he nudged me about it.
“He said, don’t lick the drawings, they’re made with lead paint.”
I saw Lord Temur give me a puzzled look out of the corner of his eye, and I offered him my most winning smile. It would never do to be the only man with a sense of humor in all of Xi’an. I would have to work much harder at being winning.
This particular artist’s specialty seemed to be women in teahouses, for each picture featured a beauty