Heart and Soul by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

said. She would have liked to deny it, but it was so. Because as she had thought, if she—that is, if Wen’s power had failed to make the boats fly, then the Dragon Throne would have devolved upon Zhang, the descendant of the younger line. “But if it was…”
    “If my lord doesn’t find another supplier, and I don’t think he will…for he is, you see, in general, aware that what he does is a bad thing and a betrayal of his rank and birth…if he doesn’t find another supplier, then he will surely end by recovering from…from his dreaming.”
    “That,” Jade said, “would be a very good thing.”
    “Yes. Oh, yes,” Third Lady said, and yet the eyes she turned to Jade looked haunted. “My only fear, my lady, is what that will do to the Dragon Boats.”
    “What do you mean?” Jade asked.
    “Well, I have seen what happens to people who get so far in the dreaming as my lord, your brother. And it is very difficult for them, painful even, to cure themselves of their need for opium. What happens, then, when his magic is thrown into turmoil by his recovery? What happens to the Dragon Boats?”
    Jade opened her eyes wide. “I don’t know,” she said meekly.
    “No, and neither do I,” Third Lady said. “And that’s something I, myself, intend to ask the Oracle of Bone.”
    Jade squirmed. “I’ve heard…that is, I know what the Oracle of Bone is. Or at least, I am aware of its existence and have read about it, but…”
    “But?”
    “But I always thought it was something a little…shameful? Something that should not be done?”
    Third Lady shrugged. “As to that,” she said, leaning slightly on her rudder and causing them to execute a gentle arc toward mountains that looked like a dragon asleep under the hills, “how can the daughter of the dragons avoid consulting the sleeping dragon?” She grinned suddenly, irrepressible, a more natural expression than she’d ever shown before. And then, as though feeling it was a great faux pas, added, “Milady, truly, this is the oracle of our kind, the priesthood composed entirely of weres. We ask the will of heaven and the mind of the Jade Emperor. But we ask it by intercession of the tortoise and the white tiger, the red bird and the dragon. Our noblemen—or rather, the foreign noblemen that rule over our people—might think this shameful. But this is the religion of the people of China, the people who came out of the Earth, the nine sons of the first dragon—our people, milady. What remains of the belief in our dynasty.”
    And Jade, whose ideas on this were all confused—having learned from her father a lot of the more cultured beliefs of Chinese noblemen and from her mother that all Chinese belief was superstition—felt guilty for being out with a fox shape-shifter at all, much less out and searching for an ancient oracle that her people shouldn’t even consult.
    But Third Lady inclined her head at Jade’s silence and steered the boat carefully toward a dark cave that seemed as though it were the mouth of the mountainous sleeping dragon. As they approached, Jade could see fires burning within the cave, and she frowned a little, but said nothing as Third Lady pulled out one of the oars and used it to row against the motion of the boat, thus bringing it down slowly, gently, onto what would be the tongue of the dragon, had the cave been its mouth.
    There were fires burning around the edges of the cave, Jade perceived, though those looked more like braziers built in heavy dragon-shaped iron pots than open fires. Next to each of the braziers stood a person—Jade thought a young woman, but it was hard to tell, as the glowing coals cast more shadows than light.
    Third Lady stepped out of the boat first, and threw her cowl back, extending her hand to help Jade climb from the boat. Jade pulled her own cowl back, feeling suddenly vulnerable and defenseless, as Third Lady announced in a ringing voice, “I am Precious Lotus, the third wife of the True Emperor