Fox and Phoenix (14 page)

“Yes.”

One small word, as cold as an entire blizzard.

Chen didn't even bother to say anything. Deep inside, I felt his presence, but nothing more. Maybe he didn't understand girls either.

In spite of our not exactly speaking to each other, we were awake and ready long before dawn the next day. One vendor had opened his stall early, and from him, we bought a hot breakfast, which neither of us felt like eating. As soon as the royal watch opened the doors, we left.

Crews of workers had cleared away the snow our griffin had not melted with his magic. More snow trickled down from the leaden clouds, but already patches of a silvery sky showed through, and a faint sunlight glittered off the remaining ice and snow. The magic flux ran stronger, too, because the lifts were running smooth and quick, taking us up to the highway in moments instead of hours.

We headed south in cold and determined silence. Three hours later, we reached a point where the highway split into five different directions. One large black stone pillar marked the main highway south. Three smaller tracks looped back toward Snow Thunder City and other points east. The fifth one wound up the mountain slope to the next narrow goat trail heading almost directly west.

“South?” I said.

“No. East.”

“Won't they expect us to head east? I mean—”

“West then. I don't care.”

I glanced over. Yún glared back, tight-lipped, her eyes unnaturally bright.

“West,” I said. “Sounds good to me.”

The pony whuffed horse-curses under its breath, but didn't balk, even when the goat trail vanished into an expanse of bare rock. Hours later, we'd gained a point high above the same highway. Yún called for a stop, and I wasn't going to argue.

We rubbed the pony down and fed Yāo-guài dried beef. I pulled off my boots and massaged my feet. How many weeks since I'd left Lóng City? Five, at least. Maybe six. I'd lost track through all the storms. Meanwhile, Yún was staring over the edge of our cliff at something far away. She'd found a new way to ignore me, I thought. Then, she gave a muffled exclamation.

“What is it?” I asked.

She motioned for me to be quiet.

I crept quietly to her side and peered over the ledge. The cliff dropped straight down to a jumble of snow-whitened rock and dirt and scrub below. It was hard to make out anything in the patchwork of gray and brown and the bright glare of sunlight on snow. I wiped the tears from my eyes and stared harder.

Then I saw it. The highway marker we'd left three hours before. A few spots along the highway itself were visible farther along. But what snagged my attention were the five black figures circling around the marker.

Yún rummaged in her pack and took out a long round cylinder fashioned out of a dull gray metal. Both ends were capped with glass lenses. Brass rings circled the cylinder all along its length. There was a whiff of magic and science about the thing. She set the glass against one eye and aimed its other end at the stone marker. With her free hand, she twisted the brass rings, then hissed with satisfaction.

“May I see?” I whispered cautiously.

She shot me a glare, but handed me the cylinder.

It took me a few tries, but all of a sudden, the stone pillar leapt straight at me, large and crisply clear. All its markings were as easy to read as if I stood right beside it.

Without warning, a dark brown shadow blotted out the pillar. I jumped.

“What is it?” Yún asked quietly.

“I can't tell yet.”

With more trial and error, I found the black pillar again. Adjusted the brass rings until the pillar seemed to recede into the distance. Another blur obscured the pillar, but only for a moment. Then a second one blocked my view. Without taking the lens from my eye, I twisted the smallest brass ring just a hair.

And saw a dark brown face staring upward.

I yelped, nearly dropped the cylinder. Yún grabbed for it, but I yanked the device away and hunkered down to try again.

Of course the man below didn't see me. It was only an illusion that his gaze drilled into mine. Still, my heart was thumping hard and my hands shook as I adjusted the lens to draw back a few more feet.

Five men stood around the black pillar. They were dressed in gray woolen cloaks with hoods, over leather armor. One man pushed his hood back and adjusted his steel helmet. They were pointing at the stone pillar and the different roads leading away.

Silently, I handed the cylinder to Yún. Waited for her to make the same discovery I had.

These were not bandits. And I would bet the rest of my reward from Princess Lian they weren't soldiers from Golden Snowcloud. They were mercenaries. Assassins, Yún had called them. And they were looking for us.

Someone wants to find us,
I thought.
To stop us.

If they had magic, they could. The ancient wizards could see through all the roads of time, according to my mother's lessons—past or present or even the possible futures. Cold crept over my skin. It had nothing to do with the winter winds scudding down from the mountain peaks.

Chen?
I kept my inner voice to a whisper.

Through Chen's eyes, I glimpsed a raven, a giant rat, a scorpion, and other, stranger creatures I couldn't identify. They weren't magical—there were few humans with those beasts as their companion spirits—but ones that made me think of foreign lands, far away from these mountains.

Yún laid down the cylinder. “Not good. But not so bad.”

“What are they doing?”

“Going the wrong way,” she said. “Qi is distracting them with a false trail.”

But her tone was plainly unhappy.

“Why is that not good?”

“Because whoever sent these men probably sent more.”

Right. Like those mercenaries we'd already met.

A dozen last week. Five here. No, wait. There had been six, counting the thief in Golden Snowcloud. The number six teased at my memory. Weeks and weeks ago, when we were ordinary apprentices, Mā mī had given us a lecture about the magical properties of numbers. Some of those properties were genuine, some the heartfelt delusion of certain practitioners. The key to dealing with any opponent, she said, was to tell the difference.

“Six of them,” Yún murmured. “Twice six before.”

So she had noticed, too. “We should go,” I said.

And for once, Yún didn't argue.

It took us three days, battling unnaturally fierce winds, before we crossed that pass. Neither of us had the strength to bicker with the other. If the griffin hadn't nipped us bloody, we might have forgotten to feed him. Six more days creeping along foot-wide paths brought us to the final pass, where the mountains spilled outward into the plains.

I paused. So did Yún. Seeing a chance to rest, our pony dropped its head and blew out great steaming gouts of breath into the chilled air.

All my life, I'd lived with soaring walls of stone around me. The skies reached up toward infinity, but left and right, with hands outstretched, you always felt as though you could touch the next mountain, not so very far away. All that had vanished. Before me lay an impossible stretch of brown and gray—so flat, I felt as though I'd lost my balance, and I was falling sideways.

Well, not exactly flat. The land undulated toward the horizon, interrupted here and there by rivers and their valleys, fringed by thin stands of trees. Farther north, a line of blue hills rippled outward toward the horizon. In the other direction, gold mottled the brown fields. Beyond that, I could just make out a few blotches of dark green, and some larger, darker spots that might be cities.

It was the Phoenix Empire.

W
E TOOK AN EASY ROUTE DOWN THE LAST MOUNTAIN slopes. Our goal was Silver Hawk City, a neutral territory that sprawled between the foothills and the plains. Old-time legends said its first ruler was a bandit queen who got tired of fighting for her gold. She retired from the road, promoted all her sergeants, and negotiated fearsome treaties with the Seventy Kingdoms and the Phoenix Empire. All the caravans that passed between the mountains and the empire paid a road tax, a water tax, a guard tax, and taxes on anything else the queen could imagine, as well as high tariffs on all their goods. In return, Queen Bao-yu and her descendents ensured the highways and railroads remained well maintained and peaceful.

The last mountain pass had left us all exhausted. Even our ill-tempered pony had turned docile. Yún didn't argue with me, but she also wasn't talking much, except to mention necessary things. We'd left snow and sleet behind. The rains had slacked off to a drizzle, and we trudged through a blanketing gray mist. Luckily the roads were good. Our goat track widened to a regular highway road, marked with white painted stones touched with magic flux, which glowed like lamps in the fog.

We reached the border of Silver Hawk City by late afternoon, only to find a wall of soldiers armed with electric stun guns guarding the gates. They waved us off to one side, where we joined a never-ending queue of caravans, mule drivers, trappers on foot, and even a string of camels laden with goods. Neutral or not, Silver Hawk City guarded its borders. No one passed in or through without showing papers and paying their tax. We stood in line, passports in hand, for hours, while our pony stamped its impatience and our griffin stalked up and down the lines.

“How much longer?” I grumbled. “It's almost dark.”

Yún sighed like the wind. “Soon.”

“You said that last hour.”

“Kai, shut up. I can't—”

“Next!” called out the guard.

We shambled forward, one cranky pony, two humans, and a dead stuffed miniature griffin, recently re-restored to life. The snow and sleet had died away in the southern passes, but rains had overtaken us. We were damp to our bones, our clothes stank of mildew, and even Yún couldn't do more than scowl and shove our papers at the guard.

“Kai Zōu,” he said.

I grunted.

“Yún Chang.”

Yún waved a weary hand.

“Anything to declare?”

With a squawk, Yāo-guài materialized in a cloud of sparks.

“One magical creature,” the guard intoned. “Special tax and form A401-3 . . .”

Yāo-guài rose onto his hind legs and trilled loudly.

“
Shī
,” I told it. “Hush!”

The griffin trilled louder. Was it my imagination or were there syllables and stops in between those clear high notes?

“What's wrong?” Yún whispered.

“I don't know.”

Chen?
I asked.
What's going on?

A brief pause followed before Chen replied.
I'm not sure. But there is something strange here.

What kind of strange?
No answer.
Chen! Say something!

With a
pêng
and a
p'ong
, two distinct presences crowded into my mind—Chen and Qi. Dizzy, I sat down in the dirt. Yún staggered and grabbed the pony's neck; it started back, snorting and whuffing. The mists around us had turned thick and dark, and my ears buzzed with magic. The griffin's trills pierced through, loud and emphatic.

Go on ahead,
said a whistling voice.
We have something we must investigate.

Yún's voice doubled with mine. We both sounded frantic.

Magical
, Qi said.

Something I've never seen before
, Chen said. Then he added,
It won't take us long—a day or two at most. Don't worry. We'll find you along the road.

Then they were both gone, more completely than if their bodies had vanished. Inside my thoughts, Chen's last words echoed weirdly, like a ghost's unearthly prediction. “Yún?” I said, uncertainly.

“I'm here, Kai.”

“What do you think?”

“Application granted,” the guard said crisply. “Transport fees paid at the next station.”

“But—”

We had no time to discuss the situation. Two much bigger guards hefted us to the nearest counter, where a wizened scribe laid out the fees we owed: entry fee, overnight residency, stabling fees, import fees, and an even larger sum they claimed was an estimated magic usage tax. Yún handed over the sum, in spite of my arguments. Once we had our stamped visas and receipts, the guards chivvied us through a pair of gates and into the city.

“Now what?” I muttered to Yún.

“We . . . we find a room and wait?”

She didn't sound all that certain herself, but she was right about one thing. We couldn't stand in the middle of this muddy road for long.

We headed down the road, into the main settlement of the kingdom. The only settlement. Hundreds of people jabbered at each other in different languages and dialects, all mixed together. Everywhere was the stink of magic and grease and steam. And soldiers. Hundreds and hundreds of soldiers patrolling the streets, or marching in drills in fields outside the city, next to the garrison. Holding tight onto our pony's lead, we threaded our way through the chaos and took rooms at the first inn we could afford.

Once we had our pony settled, and our bags stowed, it was evening verging on night. Chen and Qi had not returned. Yún and I sat in the common room to plan our next move. We'd ordered a large pot of a strange new drink, supposedly imported from lands across the sea. The drink was strong and face-scrunchingly bitter. I spooned in a helping of honey. Tried it again. Bleh, still horrible.