Dragon's Cage

by Daniel Potter

  "Come back here you little-" A branch whipped her hard in the mouth, she bit down and snapped it off with her teeth. The blow knocked her off the path onto her knees. The little weasel dashed out of the grove and towards a tall figure standing in the gateway to the park.

  With a Spoo, Yaki spat out the half inch thick stick from her mouth and stood. Pressing the back of her hand against her lips, she found no trace of blood, although her teeth hurt. Sheathing her sword, she walked toward the figure, if she decided he'd have to kill him, she'd extend the sword through the sheath while his back was turned.

  The weasel circled around the figure, hiding behind his legs as she emerged from the grove, picking errant sticks out of her hair. He scooped up the little creature and waved. "Good to see you again." He bowed deeply as Yaki approached.

  The long sweep of his arms finally brought to mind his identity and as he pulled himself back up she recognized the thick glasses and prominent nose. Yaki schooled her face into a pleasant day smile. "Well, this is surprise Gama. Good to see you again."

  His adam's apple bobbed, Yaki had failed to recognize him at first because he wore a completely different outfit, discarding robes of the Scripts Academy for a gray workman's jacket and deep blue skirt. He wore the shirt he had purchased from the embroiderer with the fox peeking out among near his navel. "You ran away before I could thank you for saving my life. I-I feared you might be a ghost."

  Yaki laughed, "No need to be worried then. I'm flesh and blood." She pulled her hand out of a leather gardening glove and waggled her fingers. "And you're welcome. Call me Determined Badger Song," Pairing the common trades post family name with something deceptively tribal was not a temptation she could resist. Yaki smiled through her ruined makeup, like a Court lady gone feral. I'm afraid you've found me in a less than presentable moment. It’s been a... trying day."

  He half bowed again. "Formally gives his name." "Are you well? I mean, forgive me Lady, but one doesn't carry a medical crystal for no personal reason. My, sister tells me that Deathwalkers usually have an ailment."

  "Deathwalker?" Yaki crooked a brow. "Is that I am?"

  His face turned ashen, "Sorry, it’s not good word in Golden but it’s what I have. It’s not always a bad thing."

  "Really? Deathwalking sounds like a hazardous profession." Yaki purposely sidestepped the question of her aliment.

  "When you walk with a Death, it’s always a burden. My Shaman said here it’s a double curse."

  Yaki shrugged. "You're welcome for your life, may it be happy and long." Yaki began to withdraw. "I still have a lot of work to do here before I move on. I wish you a good evening."

  He made no move to say good bye or leave, instead he stepped forward, fidgeting. "I can help you. Whatever you need."

  Yaki looked back through the garden, through the network of bare branches she could see Grandmother Willow swaying backwards and forwards, a clear nod. She turned back to Gama and smiled through her grimace. "If you want to help me. I need an escort to the next Bottom's Ball." Yaki cursed herself as she said it. You were supposed to be a good deed but here I am mining you like mother.

  He brightened. "Oh course. It be my honor to escort you." He seemed relieved. "I will commission a carriage to pick you up tomorrow afternoon.

  Tomorrow!? Yaki squeaked internally but kept her face composed. "I will meet you back here tomorrow afternoon then.

  "You are staying nearby?" His eyes wandered the garden, perhaps looking for a bed roll or something.

  "Near enough." Yaki's stomach burbled unhappily. If she let him watch her eat he'd really be convinced she was some sort of street urchin princess.

  "Can I escort you home?" He glanced at the sun. "The enshadowed will be coming out soon." His concern was cute but somewhat insulting.

  Yaki laughed, "Go home Gama, my web is tangled. I won't have you figuring me out in the space of a single hour. I will be here and presentable tomorrow. That's all you need to know." Although it will take all day to find a dress.

  He actually blushed as he looked away. "Sorry, I am prying. It’s not often that a woman springs out of the woods to save my life."

  "I'll try not to make it a habit." Yaki said. "Have a good evening."

  "Dook!" The Weasel agreed from the little cage.

  Gama held the cage up to eye level. "You're not coming tomorrow. You have go back to Toad."

  "Dook." The weasel barked happily.

  Gama bowed to Yaki, "Till tomorrow web weaver."

  Yaki watched him go. As soon as stepped out of the frame of the Torii a wind stirred up. "You are not as alone as you think granddaughter." A voice of rustling leaves whispered.

  "You let him find me." The words came out more accusatory than she intended.

  "There is only good and curiosity in his heart. He would have found you without my help, just as your father will if he pays attention." Grandmother Willow whispered.

  "He's not my father." Yaki spat back round on the tree.

  Grandmother Willow said nothing more, simply stood there acting like a perfectly mundane tree.

  Yaki's stomach on the other hand complained like it had been possessed by a demon. Food would have to happen before she finished her gardening. Food had to happen before anything now. Her table manners would be a serious problem at the Bottom's Ball.

  Chapter 16

  Yaki took a brief break from her gardening to sate her appetite on scraps begged from street stands as they close up shop. Then she was back in the grove, while Grandmother Willow had been tended, massive amounts of work remained. While she focused on the work, whether pulling weeds or reassembling the smashed shrine, the searing ache in her chest faded. It was like being back home on the Fox Fire, tending Julia and the rest of the engineering team, minus the yelling and the competition. As the stars came out, she hung sun crystals from the spindly branches to give her light.

  Hooded figures gathered at the entrance to the Grandmother's Willow's garden as the night stretched. Yaki could feel their curious eyes on her as she cut away branches swollen with fungi and piled the path with the corpses of the weeds. She worked until her arms and back ached, until she hissed with the sharp pain of blisters pressed against the rough insides of her cheap gloves. It was tempting to crawl beneath Grandmother Willow's branches and sleep as she had a few precious few summer nights as a child. But she should probably go make sure that Guro hadn't bled to death.

  The mad eye shined down from the sky. The only bit of the moon that had survived Coyote, it appeared randomly, as if it hid from enemies the rest of the time. Yaki left her sun crystals hanging in the branches as she made her way to the gateway. Two Enshadowed covered their eyes with their hoods. One might still be considered a man but the second was hunched and no hood no matter how deep could hide the long rat like muzzle.

  All three waited as Yaki dug into her pockets for coins. Her fingers found a single iron wood dime. She drifted towards the rat man and held the coin out to him. She'd worked with Murray for over a year without sprouting a tail of her own. The crystal touched were not contagious. Focusing a smile on all three of them she spoke the address of the house Guro had rented.

  Clawed fingers plucked the coin from her fingers and held it the end of his nose and gave it curious sniff. The rat man went still for a moment before his head snapped to the left, bringing a shining black eye to bear on her.

  The other one held out his hand. Yaki flashed them a grimace and held her palms open to indicate she had no more coin to give. His hand lowered for a moment and for a brief moment thought they would accept her meager offering. Instead he planted his feet and flipped his hood back. Dark eyes set in a face beset with cancerous soars, some scabbed from cauterization, others waiting their turn. Yaki sucked in air through her teeth. How long had he been suffering, it certainly didn't look like he had he long left. Medical crystals banished wounds and diseases but corruptions of the flesh tended to accelerate.

  "My apologies, my coin is short but allow m
e to deliver a message into the light." Yaki offered.

  The man opened his mouth but the ratman's cackle cut him off. "Hee Hee! No fear no fear. Just as her mother dear. I smell her hand and hand with the monkey man!"

  Yaki gasped, that was impossible! It been weeks and she'd had baths, and wounds!

  "Simon!" The cancer ridden man hissed at the ratman.

  "She spoke the words, she gave us leave!" He tossed the coin at his fellow and bared his four yellow incisors. "I bare a message and it for her!" He threw back his hood, revealing his rodent shaped head and the light danced in his black eyes. He spoke in the corner of his muzzle, keeping the rest of his muzzle sealed. "See me. See me! Simon I am. For no one else sees Simon. Simon is sick of his cloak. Sick of the rules. Sick of the sick. For Simon is not sick. Simon is a rat. Friend of the monkey man he is. Take him! Take poor Simon. Simon will sail for you! No matter how much your insides smolder. No matter how close Death pads behind. Simon will sail!"

  "Enough! Stop chittering Simon," The cancer man hoisted his shovel and the Ratman skittered backwards, falling on all fours, a long tail escaping out of the bottom of the cloak.

  "Simon does not chitter, he is not squirrel!" He hissed.

  The cancer man let out a heavy breath and lowered his shovel. Simon seeing some unknown signal, stood back up onto his hind legs and pulled his hood back over his head, swallowing all his features except his nose.

  By the time the pair turned back to her, Yaki had managed to pulled most of shocked expression off her face but couldn't pull her gaze away from Simon. The fact that he had figured out her identity from a mere sniff had her heart clanking in her ears. "I hear you." She managed to say in a flat, ritualized tone.

  With a gesture the Cancer ridden man ushered Yaki into the darkened streets. It was a different world, the street lanterns where all out. The buildings seemed to loom into the streets, casting the packed earth in shadows deep shadows that made it difficult to track the location of the enshadowed that led her. The priests preached that to travel among the enshadowed would lead one to walk their road. It was they who determined who had to don the black robes and informed their kin to mourn them as if dead. Surely, if a priest witnessed the steam that rose from her skin, she too would be handed a black robe and banished from the sight of the sun.

  She watched closely as the tall enshadowed led her down the hill. He walked with a pronounced limp but it did not slow his pace. Meanwhile Simon seemed to flow through the darkness, unseen and unheard, his eyes occasional catching glints in the light of the mad eye.

  The night streets belonged to the enshadowed. They moved in packs of three to twenty, the smaller groups sweeping the streets of a day's dust and debris, while the larger groups labored under the light of crystal lamps to dig up bad sections of the roads and repair them. Nor was Yaki the sole unhooded traveler on this night. They passed nearly a dozen groups of escorted men and women.

  Together they arrived in the middling, the neighborhood where Guro had found them rental space. The shadows ease here, the building becoming squat and sprawling compared to the tall squashed together buildings she had grown up in. This was a home to o those in transition. Either those on their way up from the warrens surrounding the Docks or those on their way there from the more prosperous areas. Plain and unadorned two and three story box like houses built around central cook fires. Soiled white paper shades covered flashed into the pale light of the mad eye. Walking its streets, Yaki's memories floated with smoke and ash. The entire neighborhood had burned twice in her lifetime. All Airships, civilian and military strained to haul water from the river to dose the conflagration. It had brought life to a halt at the finishing school. Teachers and Students alike had clustered around the balconies to watch. Nobody had even said a word when Ishe returned several days later covered in ash and soot.

  The enshadowed drew her down a narrow side street there they were all compelled to walk single file. A doubt for her safety among these men cause Yaki's hand to curl around her sword hilt. The back alleys were convoluted and Yaki soon ran out of fingers to track the lefts and rights. Right as Yaki opened her mouth to ask if tall man had gotten lost, he stopped at a breach in the wall they had been walking by and gestured into it. The gap turned out was an open gate in the thin narrow wall. Beyond it lay a small plot of land in the middle of it squatted a small, maybe two room house. A single light glowing behind a paper shade. A squat shape of a shrine stood off the path up to the house. In the still night she could hear snoring drifting from it.

  It certainly fit the description of what she had wanted. The only question was... was that Guro inside?

  Yaki advanced down the path and felt the cold prickle of attention of on her skin. Stopping at the shrine she squinted into its dark cubbies before pulling forth a glow crystal. The illumination found her a dusty can of matches and one stub of a candle. Lighting it, Yaki muttered a brief prayer of welcome and thanks. The prickle changed to warmth. Whomever snored away inside had not endeared himself to the Kami of the house. A whisper of hinges and Yaki caught the gate closing, the enshadowed nowhere in sight.

  The steps squeaked as they bore her weight up to front door.

  "Psst." The rat man movement was Yaki's only hint that he stood besides the door. He jammed something into her hand even as she flinched. It crinkled. "Tell it to find Simon and Simon will come." He whispered and then darted across the lawn, moving up and over the wall with ease. He could be useful, but she doubted anyone else would think so. Murray had been the only Crystal touched on the Fox Fire. Could there be a threat to the Ratman's knowledge too? Get me out of here or else? She shook thoughts out of her head. In the morning she would ponder it.

  Praying that she had the right house she opened the door and stepped through. There beneath the glow of a crystal, slumped the sleeping figure of Guro, a tipped over bottle of Saki laying at his feet. A small first aid crystal had been strapped to his hand but his neck was a mass of clotted blood. On the table a long narrow crystal sat in an open metal case.

  The snoring had stopped and the light glinted wetly in the slits of nearly closed eyes. "Eh, found your way hooome." He slurred, "Thought ya be lost."

  "I don't get lost in Golden Hills." Yaki felt herself sour in Guro presence. "How's my sister?" Yaki stared at the communication crystal.

  Guro smirked and closed the metal case with a snap. In place of a keyhole, a small crystal had been set onto the lock. He thrust it deep into his own backpack. "She is alive and unharmed."

  "I want to talk to her." Yaki said, stepping closer.

  He waved her off toward the back of the house, where two sleeping mattresses lay. "Go to bed Princess. Even the Lord slumbers now. He keeps his bargains and he will not harm a her so long as progress is made. He is curious how a day spent gardening furthers things."

  Yaki doubted that Guro would know what a kami was if one hit him between his legs. "Where'd the mistress and bowing go?" Yaki asked.

  He shrugged, "The Lord reminded me that while you are a wonder and are beautiful, your sister and your mother are traitorous bitches. That makes you, despite that master work of the Lord in your chest, still a traitorous bitch."

  "You really want to antagonize me Guro?"

  He shrugged. "I've just been thinking lots."

  "Does pickling your brain make that easier?" Yaki jeered.

  "That’s for stopping thinking. Your sister thought herself clever but the Lord was smarter. That’s the way it works. In nine generations everything my ancestors thought of was tried. They all died. So many died."

  "Fortunately, I'm not related to you." Yaki settled for making a rude gesture in the thug's direction before busying herself with gathering up the mattress.

  "That’s not the point. The points is that you need to focus on getting the quicksilver. There is no other way out. Stay on his good side. Become a Cog."

  "You didn't tell him my threat did you?" Yaki lifted the mattress from the floor and began to drag to the arc
hway that separated the two halves of the house.

  "No. It’s a stupid threat that would backfire." He grinned abruptly, "Which you should thank me for by telling me what your sister likes."

  "What?" Yaki blinked, what little bit of mask she had been presenting shattered.

  He leaned back and fold his arms behind his head. "I told you, I've been thinking. Since you hate me and you're probably barren with the Lord's heart in you. So therefore, if I want to father the strongest tenth generation then I'm better off wooing your sister."

  Yaki closed her open mouth with the click of her teeth. "No. Just no." Yaki pulled her mat into the other room and slammed the door between them closed.

  On the other side Guro chuckled as he staggered toward the remaining mattress.

  Chapter 17

  Yaki woke up with a howling stomach and the taste of bile in the back of her throat. In her dreams she had seen Ishe beating her fists on the iron bars of a cage while pale gray eyes stalked the blackness beyond. Fortunately, Guro had stocked the pantry with various vegetables and packages of dry noodles. She ate them all raw, not tasting any of it. Her stomach swelled as the hunger pains subsided and only then did real thought kindle in her brain, accompanied by the dull heat of cursed heart in her chest.

  The house was as simple as she had thought the night before. One half where Guro had slept, contained a sleeping space and a desk with a few chairs. The other had the kitchen and a larger table to sit eight people. The backyard contained a pump and an outhouse. It had the lingering scent of an elderly resident and the structure sagged slightly as if tired. Yet it seemed sound and the layers of grim yielded to Yaki's fingers. Not that Yaki had time for cleaning. She restocked the shrine and drew small dogs on in the corners of the white paper shades, they animated and wagged their little ink stroke tails as they began to patrol their new territories.