Spirit Hunter (17 page)

“Because our fathers came here, that’s why, and they were not fools: sometimes it’s best to stay close by your enemy. Better to have him in sight than not.”

A hush falls, and that so-called Son of the Sky Father speaks once again: “Our kinsmen in the west have been unwise. Hearing of our noble Empress’s desire to bring justice to the Roads they met in a Gathering a handful of moons back, hot with talk of rebellion—”

The Gathering.
At the back of my mind, I see the running children, the woman lying face-down in her own blood. I see Shemi, dead, killed with no weapon in his hands.

Stop thinking of it. Stop it.

That’s where I had heard the name: by the talk-fire at the Gathering:
Lord Ishbal has become the Empress’s pet? Come, that can’t be true.

But it
is
true.

“Now, more than ever, we must prove our loyalty to the Empress.” Lord Ishbal lifts his voice – oh, how I’d like to get a look at him. Traitor. “Soon the time will come to hunt down those foolish enough to resist her might. In return for our safety these last twenty years, the Palace asks for our help. We will join with the Empress’s army and ride west. We shall find those of our kind foolish enough to resist and wipe them from the face of the earth that the Horse Tribes may never be shamed again.”

I can’t breathe. I pay no more heed to the rumble of voices within the tent now. General Li’s half-breeds at least had T ’ang mothers or fathers, no clan to call their own. This is much worse: tribe plotting against tribe.
Filthy cowards
. They should be white-hot with rage over the massacre at the Gathering: the lives of their own people were stolen, their corpses left to rot with none of the rites, their souls left to wander with no shaman to guide them to the World Below. And yet this Lord Ishbal is planning to ride out against his own kind.

I lean forwards on my hands, fighting the urge to be sick. My head spins: I’m dizzy. What am I going to do?

Did White Swan hope I would hear talk like this when she told me to come? What was she trying to tell me? I must go to her, back to the House of Golden Butterflies. Is she trying to stir up rebellion? White Swan and Swiftarrow – two half-bred children abandoned by their T ’ang father. Reason enough for White Swan to hate the Empire. Wait.

There is someone here.
They crash into me, pushing me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. Choking, lying breathless on my back outside the tent, I feel cold steel at my throat. I can’t see who has me – I’m caught by the Running Wolf trick, helpless with my shoulders and legs pinned to the ground. It’s another Shaolin – it has to be – but who? I catch my breath at last. Who is it? They conceal themselves too well. Red Falcon? Hano again? Was I followed tonight? I am gripped hard by the wrists, knees digging into my thighs, and it hurts so much. All the T ’ang words I know fly from my mind like swallows fleeing an eagle. I still hear fires crackling away in the camp, folk moving around, making ready for sleep, a man whistling – I wager he’s on his way back to the tent after checking his horse-folk one last time. All those people, going about their lives, not knowing I’m about to die out here.

I’m not fool enough to cry for help.

“Please stop!” I whisper in my own tongue. “Please!”

“You.”

It is Swiftarrow. He gets up, hauling me to my feet, dragging me away from the tent.

“What are you doing out here?” Each word falls from his lips like a cold stone. “It is not safe. Did Autumn Moon send you?” His eyes are narrowed into glittering slits. He is truly angry.

I stare at him: his spirit-horse has gone. What terrible thing has he done to kill his own soul? Or are my powers spilling out of me like rice from a split sack?

“I might ask the same of you,” I hiss at last, wrenching my arm from his slackened grip. “You swore to me that you would never betray the Tribes again, yet here you are spying for the Empress! What are you planning now? Did you not hear what that filthy traitor in there said? How many innocent children will die this time?” Tears spring to my eyes and I turn away, not wanting him to see.

“Did you truly think it was so simple?” Swiftarrow demands, furiously. “Wicked T ’ang hunting down the free and noble Horse Tribes? Don’t be a fool. Lord Ishbal’s folk have served the Empress these last twenty years and been well paid for it, too.”

“It is wrong.”

“Ah, everything is so easy for you,” he hisses. “Right and wrong are as different as gold and mud. In the time of our grandfathers, the Horse Tribes looted and burned every trader-inn they could find, every T ’ang city. How many innocent folk lost their lives then, do you think?” He turns and spits on the ground. “Things are scarcely ever as they seem, Asena—”

“Who’s there?”

We both freeze at the cry, turning in the same instant. A woman holding a bucket stands less than twenty paces away.

“Is anyone there? Hie! Hie! Rani, is that you? What are you doing there? Rani? Who is there?” The woman’s voice lifts, edged with fear. If we don’t get away from here now, Swiftarrow and I will both be caught by the traitor Lord Ishbal.

Without another word, without a sound, we run.

I
t is cold in this chamber. Red Falcon has lit the black iron brazier but its flames wink at me from the other side of the room, far from the open shutters I sit beneath. Eighth Daughter and I sit very still, hunched over the low table, eyes fixed on our work.

We are learning the art of making false beasts.

It is a strange kind of magic. I gaze down the length of the chamber at the banner hanging from the furthest roof-beam. It is covered with writhing animals, birds in flight, all painted by Red Falcon. But when I dip my brush at last into the pot of black ink, I make nothing but a meaningless smudge on the silk. I think of Shadow, and how we used to gallop together across the grasslands at sundown, my hands gripping his pale mane. Yet it is no use: my memory of him won’t flow down the paintbrush. My mind is crowded with what I saw and heard last night. I shall never forget what Lord Ishbal said. His words rattle about in my skull like pebbles shaken in a dish:

Soon the time will come to hunt down those foolish enough to resist the Empress’s might. We will join with her army and ride west. We shall find those of our kind foolish enough to resist and wipe them from the face of the earth that we may never be shamed again.

What am I to do? Why did Swiftarrow lie? Why bother swearing to me he would not betray the tribes again when it’s clear he is? If Swiftarrow and White Swan have kin among Lord Ishbal’s clan, I suppose he might have been visiting them. Yet why slither around outside the tent like that? It does not tally. I can’t stop thinking about his spirit-horse: gone. Utterly vanished. What does it mean? We scrambled up and over the city wall side by side, but the moment my feet touched the street, I saw no more of him. Very likely, he had no more wish to be caught by the Gold Birds than I.

Just as I was starting to believe that Swiftarrow is less rotten-hearted than I thought, I have been proved wrong. Once again, I hear Mama’s voice as if she were next to me:
Why are you so disappointed, my girl? You know he is a rotten apple. Why wish him otherwise?

Never mind Swiftarrow, I must find a way of stopping Lord Ishbal.

Red Falcon stands only a hand span away, gazing out of the window at the shaded pools and secret corners of the Forbidden Garden. Like all Shaolin, when at rest Red Falcon scarcely moves at all. He doesn’t even twitch a finger. What does he see in the world that I cannot? I will never find such peace.

Helpless, I stare at the pale square of silk spread out before me. Someone has come in: the chamber has grown a heartbeat warmer with the heat of another body. I peer sideways from the tail of my eye: it is Autumn Moon, speaking very fast and quiet to Red Falcon. She is looking at me, and so is Red Falcon. Eighth Daughter glances across at me, a question in her eyes. I shrug, just a tiny lift of my shoulders.
I don’t know.

Have they found out where I went last night?

I look away. I don’t want Eighth Daughter drawn into a mess of my making. Autumn Moon turns from Red Falcon and looks at me. “Come,” she says. She is riled about something, and I pray she has not found out where I was.

Autumn Moon walks so fast I must run to keep up with her. I sift through my head for the right T ’ang words. It’s much harder to speak than it is to understand. “Why me? Where to?” I ask her.

Autumn Moon shakes her head. “I do not know why,” she says, sharply, “but the Empress wants you.”

I stare at her, frozen to the ground. On the far side of the courtyard, silk banners flutter and flap and the creatures painted on them seem to move of their own will: pouncing tiger, leaping monkey.

“You do right to be afraid,” Autumn Moon says. “Ah, the Shaolin should never have come to Chang’an: we should have stayed well away from this place. Come – since we are the Empress’s playthings, we must obey her summons.”

She opens the gate and I follow her through it.

My blood burns with the thrill of it, hotter than a draught of fiery kumis searing down my throat on a winter night. Revenge is in my sight like the deer fleeing a hunter in the forest.

The Empress has invited death into her chamber.

My forehead rests against the wooden floor as I bow, kneeling before an empty stool: the Empress has not even graced the room, and yet Autumn Moon and I must abase ourselves on the floor like worms. The smell hits the back of my throat, and I have to steady my breathing as if I were meditating in the courtyard, otherwise I shall be sick. It’s a mingled reek of ancient, oiled cedar floorboards and camphor.

What was that? Footfalls on a creaking wooden floor. Someone approaches the chamber. Still on my knees and bowing low, I see nothing but the grain of the polished wooden floor, but I can hear Autumn Moon breathing beside me and the steady drumming of her heartbeat. I take courage from her stillness.

Has the Empress found out that I was creeping around the camp? Am I to be punished? Surely such a matter would be far below the Empress’s concern. What can she want with me?

Don’t be such a coward, girl,
I tell myself.
I
t makes no difference what the Empress wants. How are you going to kill her?

I am a fool: I ought to have made some excuse to Autumn Moon and gone to the cook-room for one of Hano’s knives. A little knife would have been easy to tuck into the wide silk belt of my trousers, hidden beneath my tunic. If I leapt for the Empress like a tiger, I doubt Autumn Moon would stop me. But killing Her Imperial Majesty shall be no easy task. This chamber is surrounded with hidden guards betrayed to me by the sound of their breathing. One of them even breaks wind. They will cut my throat without thinking twice about it, and I don’t want to be stopped before I have succeeded.

Now I know of Lord Ishbal’s treachery, it is more important than ever to kill her. The Empress’s death will send a crack running through the Empire, breaking it open like a barrel of rotten salt pork. Hordes of Imperial sons, daughters, nephews and nieces will swarm through this palace like maggots, poisoning, stabbing, accusing, betraying, all battling for the favour of a weak, bed-bound Emperor. Then no one will have a thought to spare for the Roads, and the Horse Tribes shall be left alone to ride the steppe. Mama and Aunt Zaka will be safe from the Imperial army, even if I never see them again.

How long are we to wait? I can’t help thinking of a tale Eighth Daughter told me as we swept the courtyard eight nights ago: Lady Wu Deng was married to the Empress’s middle brother. Lord Wu Deng was convicted of treason and his head cut off with a sword beneath the willow tree in the marketplace. Lady Wu Deng pleaded her innocence, a claim most of the court could well believe, given that she lived most of her life breeding long-tailed goldfish at her home in the country, twenty days’ ride from Chang’an. But Lady Wu Deng starved to death in a bamboo cage kept in a grove of cherry trees within this very palace. They said the Empress showed great mercy, Eighth Daughter told me, because Lady Wu Deng was able to watch cherry blossom falling from the trees as she died.

So, yes, I am afraid
.

Wait, what’s this? Footsteps.
The Empress is coming.
The door opens and closes; cold air rushes across the floor: I feel it even through my padded winter tunic. There’s a slight scraping sound as her weight drops on to the stool – she’s not a heavy woman. I expected to hear the whisper of embroidered robes but I didn’t: she must be lightly clad. She has come alone, too. No advisors, no gaggle of chattering courtiers, just the Empress herself.

She speaks a word I don’t know – her voice is low, quite easy on the ear – and I feel Autumn Moon’s light touch on my forearm. We are to rise. I sit back on my heels, head still bowed. Low, wintery sunlight slants in through the open shutters, glancing off Autumn Moon’s shaven head.

“So we meet again, Horse Tribe girl.” The Empress sounds as if she is close to laughter. “The barbarian child who runs faster than a deer and moves quieter than a shadow.”
Is she mocking me?
“Has she done well?”

Autumn Moon bows, palms pressed together. “Your Majesty, Asena’s mind is unquiet and restless: she has not yet found the peace true Shaolin seek.” She shrugs. “However, her other skills are excellent, especially for one so late in coming to us. Most join the temple much earlier in life.”

“Look at me, child.” The Empress speaks so softly, so gently, but if I were to disobey I’d be dead before sunset. She has the power of a god. What was that tale I heard about her, back on the Roads? The Empress commanded her garden to flower in the first month of the year, when all was frozen and cold mist hung on the air. By morning, the peonies had opened.

I am afraid of the hatred uncoiling within me: if I look at this woman I shall fly at her and choke the life from her body. Not yet, not yet. There are too many guards.

Still staring at the floor, at the swirling grain of the cedar boards, I draw in a long breath and release it. Finding calm, I look up.