Conclusion. Exception. Enigma. Exception. Exception. Exception…
Chapter Thirty-Three
Silver swung, dangling from the line. She saw the man, the very large man, draw the bow back to his ear. That bow is like a small tree. He is huge, she thought, gauging the ground and her landing spot. She had no time, so one spot was as good as another, she reckoned as she released the handle she had clamped to the line, unclipped her harness, and dropped.
She collapsed and rolled when she hit. Feet, then bend the knees, tuck forward and rolled, absorbing the shock as much as she could on her back. She threw her arms wide to smack the ground, trying to minimize the shock to her back. It helped, she thought, wincing. A little. She rolled again and then scrambled to her feet.
The Archer had not loosed, but he had her in sight. She was sure that, while he might not have risked missing her as she dangled from the line, there was no way he could miss now, not with that range. She decided, after a moment, that if he wanted to spear her with that arrow, he would have done it by now. She rose from her knees slowly, hands wide. I am unarmed, see?
“You okay?” The huge man with the bow called down to her, from where he stood on the ridge above her. He had a big, bushy beard and bald head the size of a basketball, she figured. The man must be eight feet tall, she thought. He is a giant…
She had known giants, of course. She had known several men who were much bigger than their smaller brethren. There had been Huklehuk, the chief of the Old Ones tribe she lived with for a while at the edge of the ice, watching it inch forward every year, watching it scrape away the world. He had been massive, broad of chest and with massive, long arms. He had been a Neanderthal, in modern parlance, so not so tall as this Archer, but built like him. Huk, she hadn’t thought of him for many years. She smiled up at the Archer.
“Just a little scuffed,” she said, not moving. His arm did not waver. He had much experience with this bow. She doubted she could draw it, and she had been an accomplished archer in her time. She knew bows and knew archers. This man was an archer, so if he wanted to shoot her, he could shoot her if she was in his range. “You speak good English.”
“I grew up in Vegas,” he said. “Henderson, actually. We just always said we lived in Vegas, because nobody knew where Henderson actually was.” He gave her a long look. “You ever been to Henderson?”
“I was in Vegas just last year,” she said. “The blimp helps.”
“That so?” He said. He peered at her. “What’s it like, these days?”
“Kind of a shithole, sorry,” she said. “Not much to see. A few people around, scratching out a living. Place is still a bit hot I think.”
He nodded. “Place was always a shithole,” he said. “I hated Vegas.” He eased the arrow forward, slowly. He held the arrow in his right hand, inspecting it. He looked down the shaft at her. “You going to give me trouble?”
Silver had rather liked Vegas, but stayed silent about that. “Not sure what you mean,” she said. “I came down here to talk.” She lowered her arms. “OK if I come up?”
“Sure,” he said, and waved her on up. “Come on up. We’ll have a Bible reading.”
She walked up the slope carefully, taking her time. Thirty minutes could be a long while, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay that long. “I assume you know who I am?”
“Silver,” he said, grinning down at her as she approached. His teeth were very large and made her think of ice cubes. Not the icebox kind, but the little square ones you got from industrial, bagged ice. Used to get, she reminded herself. Unlikely to see those again. “We got word of you. Heard that you shot up somebody’s boat.”
“A misunderstanding, I am sure,” she said, nodding in acknowledgment. “I can make restitution.”
The big man snorted, leaning on his bow. It was massive, as thick around as a soda can. “He don’t want that, Miss Silver.” The smile had left his face. “I know that lunatic, from way back. He’ll want his pound of flesh.”
“Just Silver, please,” she said, smiling. “I’ll keep my pounds of flesh, thank you. And your name?”
He smiled back, seemingly genuine. “Where did my manners go? First person I meet from the old country in, well, forever, and I spaced it…I am Sergeant Jack Lawson, USMC, reservist. Everybody calls me Tiny, which isn’t really that cool of them.”
“This is the rest of your unit?” she said. “You’ve been here since the War?”
He nodded at her, slowly. “Not this lot. These guys are locals. They tolerate us.” He sighed. “Yep, just about. Left here when everything went offline. Watched it all happen.” He smiled.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I wasn’t here.”
He chewed on that for a few minutes. He looked away from her at his horsemen. They were, as far as she could tell, native Chinese. They looked like hard men, like some bands she had known, known even in this part of the world. These men could be descendants of those men, of Yun and Peng-lo, their faces leaped into her memory, the smell of their campfire, drinking fire-wine from the local village. What Yun hadn’t burned, she remembered. What she hadn’t burned, since they’d been with her. These men could be their long-removed sons.
Or hers, she thought. She had a family in China once; she knew. She had lost those faces to time. She just had blurs and glimpses of them. She didn’t even know their names now. She felt her heart speeding up as she thought of them. Had there been a baby girl, dancing and laughing with delight? Had that really happened? She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
Lawson gave his men some terse orders. Set up camp, the clearing up ahead is good. Make a fire, please. A large one.
“You needn’t make the fire too large, captain,” she said to the man, whose eyes went wide when she spoke to him. “I’m not staying long.”
Lawson laughed. “They told us you spoke Chinese. Come on, let’s have a chat, shall we?”
She didn’t move. If Carter did what she had asked, he would bring the Dutchman around in twenty-five minutes. She wanted to be close by when he did. This massive archer Lawson and his crew of hard-bitten rangers looked dangerous. Still, she had come down here for information.
“Let’s talk here,” she said. “I’ll start, is that OK?”
Lawson spat, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Where I come from, refusing a man’s hospitality is considered rude.”
“Where I come from,” Silver said cheerfully, “men learned to deal with that sort of thing.” She smiled. “Look, I don’t want to go into your camp. I just want to send a message to your leadership.”
His eyebrows, massive, bushy things, raised at this. “Leadership? Why not send it yourself? That thing probably had a radio in it, I’m guessing.”
She shrugged. “I want it to come through you.” She looked at him evenly. “I want to arrange a meeting with the leaders of your unit.”
He winced. “You want this, you want that.” He shook his massive head, scowling down at her. “I don’t carry your messages, lady.”
“So,” she said, “I’ll be off then.” She started walking off, back down the slope she had come up.
“Hold up. You’re not going anywhere,” he said. Then, as she didn’t slow, “Wait.”
She stopped, turned, looked back over her shoulder at him. “Yes?”
He sighed, looked away. “OK,” he said. “What’s this message you want to send to Command?”
She faced him. “I want to meet them. We have a lot to discuss.”
He considered this. “Where are you from?”
“Here and there,” she said. “Places.”
“You from off-world?” he asked. “Nobody ever came back, far as I know.”
Interesting. She shook her head. “Afraid not,” she said. “Can you send my message?”
He pursed his lips. “I can,” he nodded. “I can tell them.”
“From here?” She didn’t want to go anywhere with this crew and was regretting leaving the airship. Carter could
just kite off somewhere. She would skin him if he did, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.
He nodded. “I can.” He unstrung his bow, bracing the massive thing against his shin and leaning his weight into it with a practiced ease. She watched, fascinated.
“You make this bow yourself?” She asked, as he began storing it in a leather case, a long tube of supple leather.
He didn’t look at her. “Think somebody else can draw this bow?” He turned to her. “You want to try it?”
She laughed. “There is no way.”
“You shoot?” he asked, glancing at her.
She nodded. “I’ve shot a bow,” she said, shrugging. Probably more times than you have, Mr. American Giant.
He nodded. “Yeah, I made it. Took a while to figure out the right wood, the right shape, the right fletching. Took a long while, but I got it down.” He carefully secured the bow case to his saddle. He rummaged in a saddlebag, came up with a metal case. Aluminum, it looked like. A camera case, she would have called it. He squatted in the dirt, set the case next to him on a rock.
“This was back when we realized resupply was never coming.” He opened the case, looked up at her. “You can sit, this will take a few minutes.” He began assembling items in the case. He took out a blue plastic radio and unfolded a crank handle from it. It looked absurdly small in his massive hands, but they were dexterous. He plugged in a few wires. She sat.
“We were in the caves back then, when I decided on the bow. Harris, he had these books on his tablet, medieval knights, and battles and stuff. A few of them were about this priest who became an archer, or he grew up an archer. That was it I think…he became a priest later, or something. Anyway, it was all about how the longbow ruled the battlefields of Europe until guns came along. Great books.”
“You learned how to make that bow from a novel?” Silver asked.
He frowned a little at the tone of her voice. “They were good books, you know. Learned a lot from them. But no, I learned to make the bow by trial and fucking error. The hard way.”
She nodded. “Bet that took a while,” she said, smiling at him slightly. Keep him talking, don’t overdo it.
He scowled at her. “A long while. A very long while.” He shrugged. “You know Morse?”
She nodded. “I do, pretty well. Been a while since I used it regularly.”
“Nobody used it regularly since the nineteen sixties, I’m guessing. Where are you from, really?”
“Like I said—” He held up his hand, cutting her off.
“No, really. I’m asking. Where are you from?” His voice, rough and gravelly to begin with, had taken on a low bass note.
She looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged, a movement of her neck more than her shoulders. “I don’t know, really. It’s a hard question to answer.”
“I’ve got all day,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “I think you don’t. I think your ship is doing a loop, going to pick you up not too far from here, is that right?”
She was silent.
“So,” he continued, “before we go much further with this, why don’t you tell your new pal Sgt. Lawson where you are from and what you’re doing here in China?”
“I’m here,” Silver said, “trying to find somebody.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lawson said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Li watched, frozen. Uncle was silent, having stopped talking to her as soon as the spider approached. Li had heard of such things as a child, black spiders as tall as a man that stalked the ruined city late at night, hungry for stray children. Like the witches. The fear she’d felt as a child had flooded back over her when she saw the thing, when it had flowed across the courtyard towards her, whining and clicking. She had almost wet herself.
Up close, she realized what it was. She felt a different fear. A machine. It moved, walking on its six spindly yet powerful legs, like a huge spider, yet it was not a living creature. There was writing on it, faded and chipped. The spider was a thing like Truck.
And yet Truck was alive, in his way. Before Uncle had tamed him, he had been very much alive. Truck had been dangerous and went where he wanted to, for whatever Truck-like reasons Truck had. He was alive, but not living. This spider was like that.
Uncle, she thought, had spoken to Gold in the language they shared, the English. His voice had been strange and thick. Then he had gone quiet. Li did not speak English, other than the few words Gold had taught her, so she couldn’t ask, and didn’t want to call attention to Uncle. Uncle had told her to keep him hidden from the soldiers as best she could, so she tucked him down to the bottom of her bag and looped the strap around her shoulder, so she wouldn’t be parted from him. Not easily, she thought, steeling herself.
Gold had beckoned her down from the cage, and they had followed the white-haired woman with the pale skin and blue eyes, the well-dressed man the woman had called Emperor, which was a word Li had caught as she had shoved him forward, into the keep. The spider had hissed and followed; the steel-shod tips of its claws clacking on the stone in a staccato rhythm that made Li’s skin crawl.
Inside, it led them past many guards and soldiers, who watched them curiously. Surprised, Li noticed there were women and even children among them, who chattered to themselves but hung back behind the rest. They feared the spider, maybe. She didn’t blame them.
The courtyard had a meeting place, a raised platform, knee-high off the ground. There were wooden benches on it and a central table. Also, a tall board with something painted on it. This was a map, Li knew, having seen maps before, but this one was bigger and more detailed than any map she had ever seen. She went up to it, looking at it. Li couldn’t read the words, but it looked like it marked many places. She recognized Chinese writing.
There was other writing on the map too. Long straight lines and angles and loops. English, she guessed. A figure stepped up behind her. It was the Emperor, and she felt ashamed at her dirty dress and filthy hair. He looked at her, his eyes seeking hers.
“Where are you from, child?” He asked, softly.
She hung her head, fear and shame at her poverty in such a place, with such people. She felt far from home and wanted to go back to be with Truck. It might not be so good to leave him alone. She looked at Gold, who sat on the bench, talking with the woman.
“Changsha,” Li said. I am from Changsha, she repeated to herself without speaking. She looked up at him, then looked down again. He stood very close to her.
Without asking, he reached out to touch her, his fingers brushing her chin. She froze. He raised her chin to bring her eyes up to meet his again. He did not look bad; she thought. He might be handsome enough, but there was something missing, she felt. He looked at her, but what was he seeing?
“I,” he said, “rule in Changsha. I rule in all of China.” He glanced down at her, taking in her dirty bare feet, her ragged dress. He gestured at the map. “All of it.”
Li squirmed away from his touch. There was an emptiness in him, she felt. She had rarely been so sure of anything in her life. His robe, she realized, smelled of rosewater, but underneath it was a rank musk. It made her want to cough.
Gold spoke, and Li realized she had been watching as Shen spoke to her. She addressed her words to Warren, the pale foreigner.
“She says she will give the girl your balls as a purse,” Warren said to Shen. “Leave her alone.”
Shen looked at Gold with a cold disdain. Then he grinned. “My apologies,” he said. “I was simply curious about one of my subjects. I meet so few of them.” This last, Li felt, was aimed at the pale-eyed woman.
Warren snorted. “Lucky for them,” she said. “Or maybe, lucky for you.” She glared at Shen. He snorted, gave Li a withering glance, and stalked from the room.
Gold motioned Li to come and sit beside her. Warren watched her, and again Li felt shabby and dirty. The woman was clean, clean in a way Li had never seen. In camp, you could wash, but clothes never got as clean as this
woman’s shirt. There were crease lines straight as an arrow on her sleeves. An emblem was sewn on one shoulder, blue and red and white. Stripes and stars. This looked older than the shirt, reused.
The woman spoke to Gold, in their mutual language. Gold laughed, nodding. Li smiled at this. It was good to hear Gold laugh. She usually brooded or muttered to herself. Even in her sleep, she seemed to seethe.
Warren indicated Li. Gold smiled at the woman, but there was nothing friendly in that smile. She shook her head and answered. Warren turned to Li.
“Where did you two meet?” she asked Li.
Gold’s hand, not quickly, not hurriedly, but deliberately, came out to touch Li’s lips. She shook her head at Warren. Spoke.
“You don’t speak Chinese,” Warren said to Gold, in that language.
“A little,” Gold said. “Learning. Few words.”
“And yet, this girl? And you?” Warren made a gesture, two hands coming together, fingers meshed. Li felt her cheeks warming.
Gold stared at Warren for a long time. Then she spoke at length. First, pointing at Li, she made a flat chopping gesture. Then she waved around the room. She spoke more, then waited for Warren to respond. She smiled at Li and placed her hand on her knee. Her palm was warm.
Warren nodded, amused. She answered, sounding apologetic. Then she spoke at length. Looked at Li. Spoke again, a question. Gold nodded.
Warren turned to Li. “You are from Changsha, from a group there who dig in the old city?”
Her Chinese was fluent, no trace of an accent. Li nodded. “Yes,” Li said, barely above a whisper.
Warren nodded. “No need to be afraid,” she said. “I will not hurt you. You’re safe here.” Li watched her face. No trace of a lie there, her smile seemed genuine. It crinkled her eyes. Li looked at Gold.
Gold nodded, motioned towards Warren. You can talk to her.
Gold's Price Page 17
