The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (22 page)

When his horse’s prodigious strength ebbed, he gave her into the care of a guard-tower, for though Walking Stick would kill coldly and efficiently for the Empire, he had yet to mistreat a horse. The soldiers were only just recovering from their astonishment when Walking Stick leapt into the air to continue his journey alone.

While night reigned and the River of Stars blazed overhead, he marshaled his chi to the task of haste. His legs frequently took him off the Wall, and when he descended he sometimes employed his staff to push off and fly further ahead. Long experience and the occasional watch-fire kept him from plunging off the fortification in the dark. He needed speed. Even with this Imperial highway and his skills, he might not catch Imago Bone.

He remembered Lightning Bug, dancing away from him atop a moonlit bamboo forest, taunting him with the fact of the barbarians’ escape. And indeed, he deserved it, for letting old anger and jealousy and lust trick him into following her deep into the wilderness, away from his true duty. It had taken all the discipline of a Garden warrior to bow to her then, and to silently slip through the woodlands back to the Wall. There he commanded a contingent of troops to travel downriver, and before the breath was entirely out of his mouth, he was racing for Riverclaw.

Lightning Bug might think him in retreat, but he could anticipate Imago Bone’s next move. Alone in a strange country, the urban thief would seek a friend. More, he would yearn for rooftops and alleyways. He would run to the city like a horse to its stable.

As the grey pre-dawn silvered the clouds and Riverclaw’s towers rose ahead Walking Stick slowed, for though his talents were no secret, it would not be well to announce his coming to every tower and hovel and riverboat. He merely ran at a pace that would swiftly exhaust a lesser man. Now he was recognized, tattered or no, and soldiers bowed before him. The Blue Heavenwall was nearer at hand, and between it and the Red lay a region of cheap homes and iniquity, the inevitable refuse of cities. Ahead lay the mighty ramparts of the Purple Forbidden City, where the “heads” of the Walls converged, lofting the emperor’s citadel skyward.

Soldiers waved him through iron gates and between stone guardian lions (every tenth of which bore an animating enchantment). He paused at the guard post beside the great stairway to inscribe a message upon a scroll—a single character, “Come.” He instructed a soldier to seek the foreign district, and when the youth hesitated, his commander barked, “It is the will of the Garden, boy. You will be remembered now, one way or the other. Best make the memory a good one.” Walking Stick bowed a little to the commander, a little less to the soldier, and leapt up the stairs.

Though the Forbidden City contained multitudes, it was nonetheless spacious, its huge buildings as separate as ships at anchor on a calm stone sea. This was by design of the Garden, which insisted on bringing some of nature’s serenity to the heart of the Empire, to soothe the stormy hearts of rulers. It also made it possible for Walking Stick to avoid the prattle of the noble brats and servants and eunuchs who were an inevitable part of Imperial life, and a key reason why Walking Stick kept finding errands elsewhere. He strode past many such, who whispered and tittered at the state of his clothes. From time to time he rapped his staff on the white cobblestones, the echoes resounding through the complex, and enjoyed the silence that fell.

He might have seen to his appearance, but that would be a concession to triviality. And something in him wished to display what Lightning Bug had done to his heart.

His steps brought him to the Windwater Garden, a place near the palace with an inconspicuous high wall of the same rock as the cobblestones. There were greater gardens in the Forbidden City, the Earthly Paradise of the nobles and the Meditation Pools of the officialdom. Those gardens invited observation, but this one was invisible save from a high balcony of the palace visited only by the emperor and his inner circle. Access was only via the palace or through a back gate guarded by wulin masters who were also master gardeners. They recognized Walking Stick as he passed through, giving him no acknowledgment. Had they not recognized him, he would have been assaulted by rake and pruning shears, in a fighting style he had helped develop himself.

Once within the garden it was as though he retraced his journey, for there was a path mimicking the Red Heavenwall, and another imitating the Blue. Forests appeared beside them as miniature trees. The Ochre River was a gurgling stream. Cities were stone pagodas, and Riverclaw was a rocky platform with a chair for the Emperor, a pond at its back for the sea.

The Windwater Garden was a map of the Empire, and Walking Stick stepped lightly upon it. He sat cross-legged at the right foot of the Emperor’s seat, and waited.

A breeze blew past, and clouds sped swiftly overhead. He noted the passage of a red-winged hummingbird to and fro in the vicinity of “Riverclaw.” To his knowledge, such a hummingbird had never been seen in the garden. He watched it carefully.

After a time the gardeners brought the woman to him. He did not turn his gaze. The hummingbird flew above the nearby stream, as if searching for something. He said, “You have been instructed, as to the singular honor done you?”

“I know of this place,” said Eshe of Kpalamaa. “I will not so much as sneeze.”

“Please sit.” The gardeners faded into the garden. The barbarian sat.

“Betrayal, even for a good cause,” Walking Stick said, “forever marks the betrayer. Do you understand?”

“Is the superior man loyal to people?” said Eshe. “Or is he loyal to the Way?”

“Very good, very good. But for the Garden, the Way and the people are inseparable. The Way does not ignore the truth of conflict among individuals. I may be loyal to one master and you to another, and our conduct may be impeccable, yet if our masters are enemies, so we are enemies.”

“Yet if your master brings down my master’s house, and betrayal offers me a chance to preserve what remains, where lies the Way? A similar problem I confronted when I beheld dragons on Persimmon Gaunt’s belly.”

“You speak glibly of the Way, yet you are the product of foreign lands and foreign ideas. I do not blame you for this but it also impedes my trust.”

“Bluntly, then, Walking Stick. To my eye, your Way seems like law bereft of love. Talk of betrayal and conduct and loyalty is all very well, but without love it is a dry riverbed—structure without life. And like water in a riverbed, love’s passage makes changes. The law cannot be the same thing season after season. At times the law breaks hearts, and at times the river must flood. Out of love for them do I betray Gaunt and Bone.”

“Barbarian gibberish. What you call ‘love,’ and insist upon as an axiom, can just as easily be whim. Immaturity. Rash animal impulse.”

“If you think me no better than a beast, then why am I here? I can go elsewhere to snort and stomp.”

“I have lost Persimmon Gaunt. She has failed to understand the honor the Empire’s chi has bestowed upon her. I believe she or Imago Bone may come to you seeking protection.”

Eshe’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed.”

“Her child may or may not have been born, and it is the child that most concerns me. Ensure its passage into the Forbidden City and you will be well rewarded.”

“I seek no reward for myself.”

“The Empire will look favorably upon your superiors.”

She hesitated. “And Gaunt and Bone?”

“I cannot promise their safety, for they are barbarian rogues. I can promise forbearance. This means more than any assurance of protection from a lesser man.”

“I believe you. When do you expect Bone?”

He had lost the hummingbird, but now he noted a pale ant riding a leaf downstream.

“Perhaps very soon. You must excuse me. Remember our words.”

He left the shocked Eshe behind and departed the garden with two steps and the crack of his staff.

A small tremor shook the city, and he would have to answer for it later, but haste was indicated.

Just as he cleared the garden wall the hummingbird circled him once, but he had no time to consider the portent, nor who might witness his leaping passage toward the Ochre River.

“I have seen too many barbarians of late,” Exceedingly Vengeful Wu told Gaunt while preparing buckets of water, rags, and slim blades carved with rough but ornate handles suggesting tigers and carp and horses. Gaunt tried not to look at these. She lay upon a cot, propped by pillows and wracked by periodic pains through her middle. She gazed out through an oval window graced by a leaf-whispering branch growing through the skylight. Wu continued, “I do not mean to complain about you personally, Persimmon Gaunt. But the Emperor is allowing too much outside trade. It brings strange folk and strange ways.”

“You are a traditionalist?”

“Indeed. Organized crime is sometimes the last bulwark of decency. I don’t suppose you came on the same ship as a pale, mongoose-like man, and a very dark and powerful woman?”

“I have seen people matching that description,” Gaunt answered. “You must understand, that where I come from very dark people are not so odd, and pale people crowd the land like trees.”

She pointedly studied the forest. Outside, sun-lit blobs of cloud crossed a thick mass of blue-grey storm front, looking like ice islands sliding through a dark sea. Below, the pine trees of neighboring peaks speared up against the featureless canvas of nimbus, as though the mountains guarded the edge of this world. And who knew, perhaps they did.

“Wu,” she said, as if simply following her own trail of thought and not trying to divert Wu’s, “who lives on the other mountains?” For she had glimpsed other pagodas and even other travelers on the paths of the other peaks.

Wu grunted. “A vexing mystery. Even to the artist’s self-portrait. No one from this peak has ever reached another and returned to tell of it. The paths proceed downward through wreathing mists as far as anyone here has traveled. I myself once descended for three months, living off berries and honey, and neither reached nor sighted flat land. If there is commerce between peaks it must be by way of the cloud-dragons we sometimes sight, but such we cannot tame. Indeed, they can be a menace.”

“Dragons . . .” Gaunt mused, thinking of the one that had savaged the
Passport/Punishment
. Thinking of it made her shiver, but that was better than thinking only of her fears and pains. A new contraction seized her, and she breathed long, slow breaths until it passed. The true labor, Wu had said, hadn’t commenced, and might not for some time. Gaunt needed distraction. Even conversation with Wu would do.

“Do you know something about dragons?” Wu asked her. “One had been sighted now and again shortly before my downfall, out there in the world. A dragon unlike any seen in living memory. Might you know of it?”

“It?” Gaunt said. “I couldn’t say. I do know something of dragons, however. At least, the Western kind. They are articulated, brassy. With guts of fire like the volcanic mountains. Hatched from shooting stars, they are in immature form like embers spat from a bonfire, floating on the breeze. Later they bore into this world of Earthe, leaving fires in their wake, seeking and enriching the world’s heat as
candlewyrms
. Emerging from volcanoes with an encrustation of metals, they become
arkendrakes
, and settle in various places around the land. Often they nest among the carcasses of their ancestors, sleeping among jeweled hides and bones. For this reason folk imagine them hoarders of ill-gotten gain when in fact the only human loot they claim is from dragon-hunters.”

“You are surprisingly well-informed. Yet you have seen no specific dragon of late?”

“No. But I would say something more of them generally. It’s said they have two fates, if not slain: to grow in solidity and immensity until they take on the characteristics of a mountain, rumbling occasionally in their mineral sleep . . . or to mate. For it is little known that all Western dragons are male. In search of females, some go East. And I have heard that those who find a mate never return.”

“Ah, there your sources are correct, Persimmon Gaunt. Know then, that even as your dragons are linked to fire, earth, and metal, so ours are allied with water, earth, and air. They are yin to the others’ yang. They hatch when meteors plunge into the sea, and the calls of their elder sisters bring them to our shores. As youths they are currents, then spring skyward as forks of lightning, and in their full majesty they are serpents of cloud. In maturity they are cloud-shouldered forests . . . unless they mate. For mating with their male counterparts brings storms of mad ferocity, in which eggs of cloud are quickened by sperm of fire and shot into the encircling night, whence they become the nearer stars.”

Gaunt thought of what disadvantages came of mating, as a contraction came over her. She winced and breathed, and when the latest pain passed, said, “Are these storms dangerous to humans?”

“Indeed. In antiquity these storms wracked our shores, breeding typhoons and raising volcanoes. For the mating of dragons, the
Dragonheat
, destroys the lovers.”

“You of the East know much that we don’t.”