The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (135 page)

The inside of the flying ship
was old and smelled of mildew and rust but it did fly under the skillful hand
of Damaris Ward. And so they sat as stars glittered outside the small windows,
drinking tea and studying maps.

“The Capuchin Council meets
twice a year,” said Fallon. “They are from all over the Eastern Kingdom and
they journey to and from
Lha’Lhasa
, gathering the thoughts and wishes of
the people.”

“The Council won’t be strong
enough,” said Kerris. “We’ll need to speak to the Emperor himself and he’s in
Bai’Zhin
.
They won’t give us troops unless we speak directly to him.”

“But will he listen?” asked
Solomon. “I mean, it’s a good plan but it falls apart if he doesn’t listen.”

“He’ll listen,” grinned
Kerris. “He loves me. I spent many months in his Forbidden City. It’s a perfect
place for Fallon to have the kittens.
Chi’Che
n women are marvelous
midwives.”

His wife beamed at him.

Solomon shook his head.
“That’s great, but don’t believe for a minute that Cece will leave it alone,
not if there’s any chance that there are more ‘monsters’ who can do what you
did in such a short span of time. You trashed the entire Compound.”

“CanShield North is furious,”
said Persis. Her hair was beginning to grow back and it looked like the fuzz of
a new peach. “My director said Paolini wanted all animals in the compounds
exterminated.”

Dell shook his fuzzy head.
“I’m glad I’m not there for that.”

“Well, if you meet the dogs,
you might reconsider,” grumbled Kerris. “That will be the trickiest bit of
diplomacy ever. I’m not sure even Kaidan can do that.”

A lean shape in black
fatigues crossed into the cabin and Jeffery Solomon brightened at the sight of
her.

“Hey, want some tea?” asked
Fallon.

She shook her head. Like the
others, her hair was growing back under her goggled cap, but the tattooed
eyebrows were still remarkable. She had given up the most by helping them and
her conflict was evident. Still, she was there and had piloted the Griffen
without complaint and Solomon realized he owed his life to her as well as the
cats.

“The Forbidden City is a
walled city,” she said. “With a courtyard wide enough for an army. We can land
the Griffen in the middle, no problem.”

Solomon looked at all the
faces.

“We’re making history,
people. These Empires have never seen a human.
We
are the creatures
here, creatures of myth and legend and they might not want us back. Any
thoughts before we take ‘er down? Yes? No?”

He smiled at Kerris and
Fallon, before looking up at Ward.

“Take ‘er down.”

***

The snow had not stopped since
the night of the battle and the Field of One Hundred Stones was thick and
white. They filled the plain and Kirin wished the Ancestors could see this
dragon of a very different kind. They spread out from horizon to horizon, as
far as the eyes could see. Of the Khargan’s Ten Thousand and the Army of
Blood’s six thousand men, only nine thousand survived. Of the seven thousand
horses, six thousand survived. Six thousand horses, and one mountain pony.

He looked at the sight, Kerris
on Quiz, Fallon on yet another horse, a grey this time. He shook his head. He’d
given up counting. She was carrying a wrap of linen and a banner pole, smiled
at him once she’d caught him looking.

“So, um, I was thinking…”

“Yes, sister?”

“I was thinking that we really
can’t use the same banners and flags we did before, right? I mean, not if we’re
one big united army riding under three Allied Kingdoms. It doesn’t really speak
‘Alliance’ if one guy carries a dragon banner and another guy carries a sun
banner and the other guy, well, he doesn’t carry a banner at all ‘cause he and
his people don’t really have banners, right? I mean, most of them can’t even
read or write but they certainly could paint if they had the inkling…”

He opened his mouth, realized
his mistake, closed it again.

“So anyway, I took the liberty
– oh I do love that word, Liberty. It just rolls off your tongue. Liibbeeeerrtteeee…
Liberty, Liberrrttee…”

“Luv?” said Kerris, looking up
at her. “The banner?”

“Oh, yes, right! Well, so I took
the
…Liberty,”
and she winked at him. “To design a new one, one with all
symbols of the Three Kingdoms combined. I mean, it’s just an idea and I’ve
shown it to the new Khan and he likes it and I showed it to a bunch of
Chi’Chen
soldiers and they liked it and well, I’m certainly no artisan but I hear
the monkeys are really good at that. If Bo were here, he could do it but he’s
not and well, we’re weeks away from
Lha’Lhasa
so I thought, well, until
we get there, we could use this new banner. So, what do you think?”

And she blinked at him, the tip
of her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth.

“May I see it?”

“Oh! Oh, hah hah! Yes, yes of
course! Um, here…” It was a long sheet of linen and she unfurled it for him to
see.

“See? The sun is the symbol for
the Eastern Kingdom and the Moon is sort of, kind of the symbol for the Lower
Kingdom so I sort of combined them here, like this…”

And she made motions with her
hands.

“It looks like a Tao wheel,” he
said quietly.

“Yes, that’s what I thought too.
The red is the Yang, the white is the Yin, and here…are the twin dragons of
Pol’Lhasa
,
wrapped around them both…”

She swallowed, looked up at him,
emerald eyes earnest.

“So? What do you think?”

“It’s exquisite,” he said.

“What? Really? You mean that?
You like it?”

“Yes, sister. I like it.”

She sat back on her horse.
“Wow.”

Kerris grinned at him.

“That looks like the scribblings
of the Alchemist’s baby,” growled Major Ursa Laenskaya as she and her husband
rode up on their desert horses. Shar Ma’uul and Jalair Naransetseg followed,
riding together on aSiffh’s sturdy young back.

Kirin grinned.

“So?” he said. “Back to
Sha’Hadin?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Sireth.
“As much as I would love to see
Lha’Lhasa
and the artistry of the
Chi’Chen
,
I believe we need, now more than ever, to be training our people in the Gifts
and the Arts.”

“People are stupid,” said Ursa.
“They need to be trained.”

“And Ursa will train them,”
added the Seer.

“With a stick.”

“When we’ve returned, we will
send a falcon,” said Kirin. “You will make it to
Pol’Lhasa
one day.”

“Promises,” grunted the Major.

Kirin looked over at the yellow
cat with the white hair and eyes like the moon and the blue wolf riding behind
him, hands wrapped around his waist. The owl rode on his shoulder, head turned
almost upside down. Kirin shook his head.

“And you,
sidi?
Are you
taking your Oracle back to
Sha’Hadin
as well for training?”

“No,” he said. It was difficult
to know where he was looking because of his eyes. “But we are leaving.”

“Leaving? Where? Why?”

“Ulaan Baator, you have saved my
people,” said Setse. “But my people must learn to save themselves. The
Chanyu
do not train Oracles. They fear them, they shun them, they make them live apart
as beasts. This must change if we are to help defeat the Ancestors.”

“Defeat the Ancestors,” repeated
Shar, his voice a heartbeat behind hers.

“With the blessing of the Khan,
we are going to cross the Land of the People, searching out Oracles and those
with the Gifts to help make us strong. Then we will find a good place, a safe
place, a place high in the mountains and we will call on the Last Seer of
Sha’Hadin
and he will come and train us all.”

He looked at Sireth. The mongrel
shrugged.

“It’s a good plan,” the Seer
said.

Kirin looked back at the jaguar,
sighed.

“Then I wish you success,
sidi,
sidala.
I look forward to working with you soon.”

“I’m sorry,” said Shar.

“No,
sidi.
You must do
what your Khan asks and your heart demands.”

“No, I’m sorry for, for what I
did.”

Kirin said nothing.

“Actually, I didn’t do anything
and that was the problem. I didn’t
do
anything. I knew what they were
doing and I didn’t stop them. I didn’t say anything. It was Jet barraDunne and
Chancellor Ho, two of the most powerful men in the Kingdom and I was afraid. I
hated myself but I was a coward. And for that, I am terribly, terribly sorry.”

Kirin looked down, released a
cleansing breath.

“In Shaharabic, aSiffh means
forgiveness.”

Shar stared at him.

“You are riding a horse named
Forgiveness.”

The jaguar smiled as tears
spilled from his white eyes.

“Bayartai,
Rani,” said
Setse and she gazed down at her brother. “You protect me all my life. I love
you so much.”

He smiled up at her and Kirin
could see tears there as well.

“
Bi
camd khairtai,
Setse.”
And to
Shar Ma’uul. “Take care Setse. She my life.”

Shar
grinned. “Have you seen her fight?”

Naranbataar
laughed. Setse looked up at the Shogun-General.

“Bayartai, Ulaan Baator. Il
bayarliaa.”

The owl lit from his shoulder as
the desert horse wheeled and loped out of the crowd, her dark hair and his
white flowing together like the tao wheel. Soon, they were little more than
specks on the horizon.

Strange,
he thought to
himself. Yin and Yang were in all things. Perhaps, in a small way, so were Blue
Wolf and Yellow Cat.

“A wife and a noble purpose,”
said the Seer, watching them. “Now, he can be happy.”

Kirin smiled.

“And so, we go,” said Sireth.
“Have you read your letter from the Empress?”

“I have not. No. Why?”

“No reason,” but he grinned and
turned his horse, digging his heels into its side and flying like the wind.
Cats, dogs and monkeys bolted out of his way.

“He thinks he can beat me,” Ursa
snorted. “He is an idiot.”

And she bowed, fist to cupped
palm. He returned it and she spun Xiao on his back legs, leapt off in pursuit.
They two were little more than specks in no time, the party of Imperial escorts
struggling to catch up.

Khan Swift Sumalbaykhan strode
up to the fore. He was wearing nothing to set him apart from any other dog, no
mane of lions, no skulls for armour nor claws around his neck. But he was a
tall man and he walked with authority and Kirin was glad this was not the man
he had to fight on the Field of One Hundred Stones.

“We go now?” he asked as Khanil
Rah glided forward on a night-black mare, the baby in a sling across her back.
She smiled at him and Kirin waited for his heart to lurch, for his chest to
tighten.

It did not.

High on the back of Shenan, the
blood-red stallion, he looked out over the army. There was hardly room. They
seemed to fill the entire Plateau of Tevd

There was a ripple of movement
and soon, a runner broke from the crowd, ran up toward them. Naranbataar pulled
his bow, aimed an arrow at the man’s head but the Shogun-General held up a hand
as the runner dropped to one knee.

“Asalan Zhu!”

“Tiim?” said Kirin. He needed to
begin to speak the language. Of all the things he had needed these last years,
he knew this would be the hardest.

The dog held up an object, scraped
and dented but recognizable and Kirin smiled as Naranbataar took it from the
man, passed it up. It was the kabuto, the hammered bronze helm in the shape of
a lion’s mane. The pheasant feather was bent but the tiny hook remained. He
took it, tucked it under his arm, looked down at the man, and bowed at the
waist, fist to cupped palm.

The dog did likewise and a roar
went up from the nine thousand on the plain. He looked over them all.

“Tell them,” he said to
Naranbataar. “That from now on, they are to be known as the Army of Nine
Thousand Dragons.”

And he placed the helm on his
head, pulling the queue out through the hole at the crown.

The young dog shouted his
translation and the Plateau of Tevd thundered with the voices of cats, dogs and
monkeys. Kirin looked down at his brother on the mountain pony.

“This is only the beginning,
Kirin,” said Kerris. “We have a hell of a lot of work to do.”

“I am beginning to see that,”
said Kirin as he nudged Shenan in the side.

“I mean, the monkeys might not
even want us in
Lha’Lhasa.
It’s a pretty bold move.”

“It was my idea,” said Fallon
and she grinned to herself. “Boy oh boy, do I have big ideas.”

And as the Nine Thousand Dragons
set off into the early morning light of the East, Kirin reached beneath the
plates of the doh and into his sash, slid out the tiny slip of parchment. It
smelled of orange and lotus and Ling.

He unfolded it, read it once and
then again.

His heart skipped a beat and a
rush of cold swept from his head down to his toes. He swallowed, slipped the parchment
back into his sash.

“I am with child,”
was
all it said.

***

It was said that a dragon had
landed in the central courtyard of the Emperor’s Forbidden City in
Bai’Zhin
.

The noise itself first
awakened the sentries, then the servants then the Royal Family themselves, and
it was early morning as Emperor Hiro Watanabe and his four wives and seven
children watched from the balcony as the magical creature lowered itself to the
ground in a rush of wind and flying leaves. It was immediately surrounded by
five thousand of the Emperor’s elite Snow Guard for it was a metal dragon and
no one knew if metal dragons were peaceful and good, or capricious and nasty.
In fact, no one knew anything at all about metal dragons, for such a thing had
never existed. Dragons were fire, water, air and stone but never metal.