The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (31 page)

“You know a great deal. Um . . .”

“Yes?”

“
Was
the next child in your family actually a boy?”

Next One pursed her lips. “A little prince, and I his servant. Heir to the pig farm. Long may he reign, far away from me.” She sighed, touching Innocence’s head. “That was another world. May your little emperor be a delight.”

Gaunt’s chosen form of delight was jiggling. She took long walks, because staring fish-eyed at the mountainside scenery kept her sane. Bouncing and strolling helped both child and mother, a little. During this period Gaunt learned to treasure sleep episodes of an hour, or half that, or ten minutes. Whenever relieved by Next One or Flybait or Leaftooth, she collapsed. Such sleep did not fully restore her, however, and she lived in a twilight world full of stumbles and drops and misspoken words. At least there were others around to catch her and clean up after her and guess her mumbled meanings. Gaunt learned that the usual Eastern reserve melted like old snow in the presence of a baby. She tried to help with meals, but was at best a camp cook. She tried to help with mending, but had difficulty focusing.

The others shooed her away from chores and encouraged her to hover over the baby, so she did. She nursed, she sang, she drew pictures on her wax tablet, she brought in leaves and stones for him to hold.

One day she found a copper coin of Qiangguo on a path, a pair of dragons on one side, the name of the prior Emperor on the other. She had no idea where it could have come from, so she pocketed it for luck, as it was too small to be safe with the baby.

She thought back to her and Bone’s original plan to raise the baby in a cave near Palmary, he taking dangerous jobs now and then to supplement their supply of stolen coin. She now considered this notion like an account of bizarre gods and heroes written in hieroglyphs and dug up from ancient sands. They had been idiots. This work was hard even with a small army of monks at her back.

“When we get out of this,” she told Innocence, “we will find a real place to settle. I suppose it cannot be in Qiangguo after all. We do not want to be hounded by scowling old men with sticks. We will have to travel, you and your father and I. Perhaps one of the strange islands of the Starborn Sea. Perhaps the meandering Eldshore, or my old home of Swanisle. Maybe we’ll go to a village guarded by a wizard in an upside-down tower, or a town crouched beside a crater, where they salvage stones from the sky. But we cannot do everything on our own, Innocence.”

That night Innocence slept for five hours. Gaunt woke to his cries, feeling more lucid than she had in weeks. It was as though solidity and color had been restored to the world. She nursed him, actually enjoying the sensation, dozing and thinking idly about pleasant nothings—doomed pale princes and shambling dead armies and moldering catacomb-laced castles and fainting damsels who learned how to fight and better regulate their breathing. When feeding was done, she burped and bounced the baby and went directly to Leaftooth.

“I want to know everything,” she said.

Slowly, with the monks’ help, she worked through the temple’s records over the weeks and months. She unrolled scrolls of legend, history, science, magic, philosophy.

“You apply yourself,” said Exceedingly Vengeful Wu one day. “You slump over from your fatigue, yet you keep studying. You do not allow yourself to wallow in misery. I am impressed.”

“Are you in love, Wu?” Next One said.

“Next One,” Wu said, “is exactly what I am talking about. She has nothing better to do than to gossip, stroll the mountain, look after the baby, and cavort with her bandit boy.”

“What is wrong with that?” said Next One. “That is life. I am living. Each moment is a gift, not a stepping stone to the foundation of the Empire of Wu.”

“The young cannot understand. You have never tried to build anything.”

“You are a criminal!”

“Hey,” Flybait called from the next room. “Can you all keep quiet? The baby is sleeping.”

Wu said, “The time will come, when you must choose to join my new order or continue with your meaningless, aimless life. Gaunt has promised that in return for my help she will plead my case with Lightning Bug, to let me escape.”

“Is that true?” asked Next One.

Gaunt nodded, trying to study a scroll about the building of the Walls.

Wu said, “The self-portrait of the sage painter does favors for Lightning Bug, for reasons I cannot fathom. I think he is infatuated. For her he was willing to agree to keep me locked within this painting. As such I must forgo my vengeance upon Lightning Bug, and upon Gaunt, who will plead my case, and, because it was Gaunt’s price, upon Imago Bone, and Eshe of Kpalamaa . . . and you, Next One, and on that worthless lunatic you love.”

“Hey, thanks!” Flybait called.

“Bereft of vengeance, I can only vent my anger upon one individual: the Imperial official named Walking Stick, who began the killing of my old gang, and who by all accounts is a worthy foe.”

Next One said, “I too, have lost a gang, Wu. In this one thing, I know how you feel.”

Wu scoffed. “Again you claim an affinity you have not earned. What was your gang, but mutts and strays? I had at my command a gallant fraternity of the Rivers-and-Lakes! You had gutter trash.”

Next One was in tears, shaking her fist at Wu. “They were people! They were my friends!”

“This is why you remain a child. You give friendship, and love, too easily. You pretend to be stone. But you are grass.”

“Hey!” called Flybait. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.”

“You are even worse,” Wu said. “You are a weed among the grass.”

“Grass bends, Wu,” Next One said. “Stone breaks.”

“You have spent too much time in this temple. You absorb its platitudes uncritically. Gaunt, by contrast, takes what she needs and will apply it to her own larcenous pursuits.”

“Aiya!” Next One said. “You are like the fussy old grandmother of crime! You complain that the younger generation is being crooked
in the wrong way
!”

“It’s enough to make me honest,” Flybait agreed.

“Where is respect for the old?” Wu snarled.

“Where is respect for the young?” Next One shouted.

“Where is respect for a sleeping baby?” Flybait said.

“
Shut up!
” Gaunt screamed.

In the silence that followed, Innocence began crying.

“Leave us alone!” Gaunt bellowed, stomping toward the next room, Flybait rushing through the door to get out of her way.

As she yanked back her robe to feed the boy into submission, she heard the three whisper knowing remarks about barbarians and their inexplicable rages.

One day, fireworks crackled and boomed outside, and colored lights blazed in the nighttime, for it was New Year in the reckoning of the Peculiar Peaks. Gaunt read about explosives, and began making a list of items to pack for the return to her Earthe.

She read works on childcare as well, albeit diffidently. She found it more calming to read about bloodshed than breastfeeding.

Although Innocence was sleeping longer, concentration remained as ticklish as a watery mirror. If he cried in his sleep, it was like a foot stomping upon the puddle of her mind. Just as an image started to clear, down came the foot. And if Innocence was silent, it was not long before she’d run to check if he were breathing. Still, she learned things. And she told Innocence, innocent of the meaning, what she learned. She made stories out of it, and out of her and Bone’s wanderings, and out of the light and mist outside. She told of the Jailer who became Emperor, and how he planned the Walls. She told of the Master Architect’s son and the fox-girl. She told of mermaids who built sandcastles, and bears which hunted men. She told him poems she’d written in alleys, and poems she’d seen scratched on the rocks of this mountain.

Since I painted the Peculiar Peaks

How many centuries have drifted past?

Acquiescing to destiny I fled into wilderness

To live and experience strange liberty.

Few ever visit these heights

Concealed among the clouds.

Gentle grass can be a bed

The indigo sky a blanket.

Let a stone be a pillow;

Let all the worlds crumble and renew.

As she finished reciting this particular poem, bouncing Innocence in the foyer of the many-holed, mist-shrouded temple, Next One came up to her and said something every bit as surprising as
the temple is flying or the moon is knocking at the door.

“Flybait and I are getting married.”

Gaunt just stared. “Oo,” said Innocence.

“You disapprove,” snapped Next One. “I can tell.”

“No, no . . .” said Gaunt, finding her voice. “No! I . . . well, clearly you are fond of each other.”

“Not everyone wants to raise a child without a husband.”

“I—you are pregnant.”

“Yes. Probably. My bloody time did not come. Even if I am not pregnant, I . . .” Next One touched Innocence’s hand. He ensnared her finger.

“It is wonderful,” Gaunt said. “Foolish and mad, perhaps, but wonderful.”

“I do not want to be like Wu, Gaunt—all anger and purpose. I want to be anger and purpose but also laughter. Does that make sense?”

“No. Yes. I do not know. But I am glad for you.” She thought of Bone—not her husband, but longed for like a soldier-groom gone to war. “When will this happen?”

“Well, there is no need for marriage negotiations, because we have no family and own nothing. So that saves time. Indeed, no one here has possessions to speak of, so there need be no wedding gifts. I am supposed to seclude myself in a special bedroom, but there is no place for that in the temple and you need help with the baby. So really there is no reason not to do it tomorrow.”

“May I help in any way?”

“I am supposed to have a good luck woman attend me. She has some minor duties.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“Would you have me use Wu?”

“I see your point.”

“Besides, for our purposes, ‘lucky’ means fertile, and you are definitely that. There are also things for Innocence to do—as the only child here it is lucky for him to be around. Do you think he could flop around on the marriage bed?”

“You have a bed?” The monastery’s rooms were somewhat spare.

“We have a bedroll,” Next One said.

“He might drool.”

“That would probably be lucky too. He can drool anywhere in the marriage house.”

“You have a house?”

“Well, a cave. The sage painter said we could use it. He says it’s been too long since he lived in the monastery and heckled the monks. I think that was the first time I’ve seen Leaftooth look grumpy.”

“This I must see. You have our services as lucky woman and lucky baby.” She thought for a moment and frowned. “I do advise you to find a place for Wu. I recall stories where overlooked wedding guests pronounced curses. Wu may not be able to curse anyone, but her stare comes close.”

“Do not worry. She has a role she’s well suited for.”