Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

someone's hand to hold when her ritual was done. "You did very well," said Qing-jao. "It was easier for me to concentrate on the tracing, with you in the room."
    "I think I fell asleep once, Qing-jao."
    "Perhaps twice. But you woke when it mattered, and no harm was done."
    Wang-mu began to weep. She closed her eyes but didn't take her hand away from Qing-jao to cover her face. She simply let the tears flow down her cheeks.
    "Why are you weeping, Wang-mu?"
    "I didn't know," she said. "It really is a hard thing to be godspoken. I didn't know."
    "And a hard thing to be a true friend to the godspoken, as well," said Qing-jao. "That's why I didn't want you to be my servant, calling me 'holy one' and fearing the sound of my voice. That kind of servant I'd have to send out of my room when the gods spoke to me."
    If anything, Wang-mu's tears flowed harder.
    "Si Wang-mu, is it too hard for you to be with me?" asked Qing-jao.
    Wang-mu shook her head.
    "If it's ever too hard, I'll understand. You can leave me then. I was alone before. I'm not afraid to be alone again."
    Wang-mu shook her head, fiercely this time. "How could I leave you, now that I see how hard it is for you?"
    "Then it will be written one day, and told in a story, that Si Wang-mu never left the side of Han Qing-jao during her purifications."
    Suddenly Wang-mu's smile broke across her face, and her eyes opened into the squint of laughter, despite the tears still shining on her cheeks. "Don't you hear the joke you told?" said Wang-mu. "My name-- Si Wang-mu. When they tell that story, they won't know it was your secret maid with you. They'll think it was the Royal Mother of the West."
    Qing-jao laughed then, too. But an idea also crossed her mind, that perhaps the Royal Mother was a true ancestor-of-the-heart to Wang-mu, and by having Wang-mu by her side, as her friend, Qing-jao also had a new closeness with this god who was almost the oldest of them all.
    Wang-mu laid out their sleeping mats, though Qing-jao had to show her how; it was Wang-mu's proper duty, and Qing-jao would have to let her do it every night, though she had never minded doing it herself. As they lay down, their mats touching edge-to-edge so that no woodgrain lines showed between them, Qing-jao noticed that there was gray light shining through the slats of the windows. They had stayed awake together all through the day and now all through the night. Wang-mu's sacrifice was a noble one. She would be a true friend.
    A few minutes later, though, when Wang-mu was asleep and Qing-jao was on the brink of dozing, it occurred to Qing-jao to wonder exactly how it was that Wang-mu, a girl with no money, had managed to bribe the foreman of the righteous labor crew to let her speak to Qing-jao today without interruption. Could some spy have paid the bribe for her, so she could infiltrate the house of Han Fei-tzu? No-- Ju Kung-mei, the guardian of the House of Han, would have found out about such a spy and Wang-mu would never have been hired. Wang-mu's bribe wouldn't have been paid in money. She, was only fourteen, but Si Wang-mu was already a very pretty girl. Qing-jao had read enough of history and biography to know how women were usually required to pay such bribes.
    Grimly Qing-jao decided that the matter must be discreetly investigated, and the foreman dismissed in unnamed disgrace if it were found to be true; through the investigation, Wang-mu's name would never be mentioned in public, so that she would be protected from all harm. Qing-jao had only to mention it to Ju Kung-mei and he'd see that it was done.
    Qing-jao looked at the sweet face of her sleeping servant, her worthy new friend, and felt overcome by sadness. What most saddened Qing-jao, however, was not the price Wang-mu had paid to the foreman, but rather that she had paid it for such a worthless, painful, terrible job as that of being secret maid to Han Qing-jao. If a woman must sell the doorway to her womb, as so many women had been forced to do through all of human history, surely the gods must let her receive something of value in return.
    That is why Qing-jao went to sleep that morning even firmer in her resolve to devote herself to the education of Si Wang-mu. She could not let Wang-mu's education interfere with her struggle with the riddle of the Lusitania Fleet, but she would take all other possible time and give Wangmu a fit blessing in honor of her sacrifice. Surely the gods must expect no less of her, in return for their having