Snow in the Year of the Dragon

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Dell’s blood inside the sac.

  There was no one in the room.

  He didn’t care. He’d be making no small talk until he had answers so he raised a hand to the wire in the back of his head.

  It was gone.

  His heart thudded once.

  He ran his fingers along the scalp line – no incisions, no scar tissue, no hole, no stub. He’d had had a wire since he was a kid, and now, to find it gone was perhaps the most alarming sensation of all. And not just gone, but gone, as if it had never been, and he wondered how long he had been out. He rose to his feet, waiting for the vertigo to subside and his legs to hold. He looked for the door but saw none. Yep, he thought, ArcEye, and scanned the walls for the blue triangle that indicated the exit. Why it was a triangle had always eluded him. Doors were never triangular; always a goddamn rectangle, and he breathed again and again as the fury burned within him once more.

  He breathed it away as he remembered the other quirks of an infirmary. A patient would never be discharged if the room detected an elevated temperature, increased heart rate or rise in blood pressure. No, the only way he was getting out of here was calmly and in control of all his faculties. Inhale deep, exhale slow. Inhale deep, exhale slow.

  He spied the triangle where naturally it would be, pushed off the bed and strode toward it, praying it would slide out of his way and into the wall as it should. It did, and he stepped out of the infirmary into an empty, white corridor. Without his wire, he couldn’t talk to either Ward or Sengupta, and he realized he could be wandering around this god-forsaken compound for days.

  There was a ping in the floor and he looked down.

  A blue light flashed along the bottom of the wall. He looked right. It flashed green. He looked left. It flashed red. He was being herded and he reined in the flash of fury, lest the door close on him and lock him in this room forever.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  He turned right, following the green light down the long, empty hall of white.

  ***

  Long-Swift glared at the pit of bubbling water, its freezing mist rising in the center of the room.

  “I will not go in there,” he growled. “I am not a fish.”

  “You may enjoy it,” said his wife. She sat feeding the baby, cross-legged on the furs. “It is soothing for the bones and the joints.”

  “So is running across a field of wheat, threshing with ala’Asalan as I run.”

  She smiled and pulled the baby from her breast, tucked herself into the linen kimonoh she had been given. Kylan’s tail lashed back and forth and she set him on the stone in front of Naranbataar. Hand, knee, hand, knee, the kitten crawled across the floor towards his dog.

  The Khargan faced two of the Stonelilies, put his hands on his lean hips.

  “Why are we isolated from the others?” he asked in Chanyu. “This is to keep us vulnerable and defenseless.”

  The Chi’Chen woman stared at him, not understanding his words but neither intimidated by his tone.

  “Of course,” said the Alchemist as she began drawing circles on the floor with a small rock. It was like a chalk, leaving scratches of white across the stone. “It is an effective tactic.”

  “It is insulting.” He towered over the women, easily two heads taller than they. “You bring us swamp water and vegetables like we are yaks. Do you intend to starve us before skinning the pelts from our bones?”

  The women said nothing.

  “I wish to speak with the Shogun-General. Tell them this, wife, please.”

  From the floor, she did.

  The women exchanged glances but did not move nor speak.

  “This is useless.”

  He pushed them aside and moved to the door only to find three heavily armed Snow guards outside. They snapped to attention, swords gleaming in the torchlight.

  Long-Swift swore.

  “Give me ala’Asalan,” he snarled. “I will show them how a dog threshes wheat.”

  “Come, husband, and sit with me,” the Alchemist said. “We may talk about the Rising Suns and what they mean for the Army of Nine Thousand Dragons.”

  “You risk war with the Chanyu,” he growled at the Snow, before turning his back on their stern faces. He glanced at his wife. “We are their prisoners.”

  “But we are not in prison,” she said. “Our minds are free and now is the time for thinking.”

  “The Chanyu are not so good at thinking.”

  In a far corner, Naranbataar laughed.

  She smiled.

  “Perhaps we are here for a reason.”

  “What?” he grunted but crossed the floor, settled down in front of her. “What be reason?”

  “Perhaps we are here to change things, to redeem things, to make things right.” She took his hand. It almost dwarfed hers. “Perhaps, we have a destiny.”

  “The Chanyu not believe in destiny. The Chanyu believe in iron and blood.”

  “The Chanyu follow the lead of the alpha. You have a quick mind, my Khan. Sharpen it like a sword, and you will be the mightiest Khargan in the history of your people.”

  He looked down at her drawings on the stone. Circles and triangles, arrows and numbers. He growled to himself. The Chanyu had no formal writing system. It was a world left to oracles and udgans and old women.

  “Sharpen me, Sherah al Shiva, Khanil of the People.”

  Golden eyes gleamed.

  “Of course.”

  And she pressed the stone into his hands.

  ***

  They had lost the sun early, but truth be told, it wasn’t much of a loss. The light had been weak all day, and thin snow had blown sideways against the sheer cliff walls. Thin, pale, cold and hard. That was life in Shin Sekai, she realized.

  Fallon hugged her knees, feeling the war of the cold stone at her back and the prickling spray of bubbling water on her cheeks. There was war in all things. Ursa had taught her that. Ursa and life, and she swallowed the lump in her throat as she watched the Stonelilies bleed her husband as they began to heal him.

  Happily, he had surrendered to their expert hands and they had pried the scabs off the festering wounds, revealing yellow and pink in equal measure. More than a fair share of grey came off too and she wondered how long it would be before his pelt was more white than Chancellor Ho’s. Blood and bile, pus and pucker. Under normal circumstances, she would have been fascinated, but something had happened to make her fear that death and destiny were rising like the moon.

  Life and death, fate without destiny.

  The earth kills everything.

  She was pregnant. She should have been ecstatic but this time, it was different. This time, with death and destiny intertwining like Imperial dragons, she couldn’t help but wonder if Sireth’s vision was really a prophecy after all. Kerris was certain that he would die one day under the crushing fury of his elements, but she, on the other hand, was certain that he would live to see those six children. The Seer had said six kittens; he’d never mentioned a happy, fulfilling life with their father. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been wrong.

  “Ai,” groaned Kerris, and she looked up.

  The Stonelilies had finished their work, having stuffed his wounds with seaweed and tea. Now he sat, arms across his knees and a second bear pelt across his shoulders, looking like he’d lost a fight with a behemoth.

  She scrambled over to him, pressed a hand to his forehead.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve lost a fight with a behemoth,” but he grinned. “Did they bring our clothes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Are you cold?”

  “No,” he said, “But I want to pull the sticks.”

  “Are they in your blue pocket?”

  “The very one.”

  The Chi’Chen had returned their clothing, washed, dried and folded into perfectly neat piles, but the sticks were sitting atop them all, along with his pendants, a pouch filled with sand, and a collection of stones from all over t
he world. The sticks were carefully bound in red wool, and she brought them over, knelt beside him on the bearskin rug. He unraveled the wool and the sticks fell to a jumbled stack on the floor.

  The Stonelilies shook their heads, tutted.

  “Why are you pulling them?” she asked.

  “I have a bad feeling,” he said. He closed his eyes and plucked two sticks with sharp grey claws. He passed them to her. “What do they read?”

  “Nine,” she said. “And Four.”

  “Two numbers,” said Kerris. “Hm.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Nine is eternal. Four is death.”

  “I’ve heard of eternal life, but eternal death?”

  “Welcome to the New World,” he grumbled. “Everything is angry here.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “I, I need to tell you somethi—”

  A horn blasted from the city outside, long and low like a djenghorn. It echoed again and again, followed by a deep thoom-thoom-thoom rising on its heels.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  She frowned, rose to her feet, moved slowly over to the window-wall and peered out over the square below.

  Her blood froze in her veins.

  The wail of the djenghorn, and thoom thoom thoom

  “Kerris-your-name-was?”

  “Love of my life?”

  “Is it too late to go home?”

  “Two years too late, luv. Why? What is it?”

  She turned to look at him, wrapped her arms round her ribs once again.

  “An army,” she said. “Marching into the square.”

  ***

  The room was large and filled to bursting with people, and it took him a moment to deaden their thoughts to a dull roar. All looked up as he was ushered in; all sound fell away, all brushes lowered, parchments pushed aside as the mongrel stepped into the most important place in all Pol’Lhasa.

  The War Room.

  It was designed in a circle, with low desks arranged to follow the curve of the room. Men in robes knelt at the desks, men in armour stood behind, and the smell of ink, sweat and oiled steel was thick in the air. In the centre of the room, a huge mosaic map of the known world decorated the floor. The Upper Kingdom with all of its provinces and cantons. The Eastern Kingdom with the fragile borders along Shibeth, Myarmar, Shiyam and Nam. The Lower Kingdom seemed to disappear north of the Great Mountains, but that was understandable for no cat had been to such terrible places. There was also a great land hinted at south of Aegypt – the land of the Bab’hundi, fierce warrior tribes rumoured to be half monkey, half spider, who lived in trees and ate their own young. But then again, it was only rumour. None who had seen them had lived to tell.

  Beyond that, nothing.

  The large, golden statue of a lion towered over a small wooden seat, strategically placed to guard the woman who sat there. It was as terrifying as it was commanding, with its snarling mouth and katanah claws and it reminded him of another golden lion, one who’d lay down his life to protect the woman in a heartbeat. Lions, it seemed, were forged in nobility and defense and pure, pure gold.

  “You may sit here, sahidi,” came a voice and he looked to see another lion, this one thin and in blue robes. He indicated a space at the curved desk next to him. “Master Long-Lang is feeling poorly, and therefore not present.”

  Sireth smiled.

  “What is your name?” he asked and the room murmured their discontent. Protocol, he sighed. He was always violating some rule or other.

  “Master Yeo Tang-St. John,” said the lion and he bowed. “Minister of Horses, at your service.”

  Sireth bowed, only a little, out of respect for the horses.

  “You are too kind, Master Yeo Tang-St. John, but I prefer to stand. I wish to study the artwork on the floor.”

  And he left his guards then, moved to stand in the middle of the map, one hand behind his back, the other abstractly stroking his bearded chin.

  “It is not artwork, sahidi,” purred a lion in green robes. “It is a map of the Empire. You may have never seen such a thing before.”

  “I would be a terrible thing,” said the Seer. “If I were counseling an Empress and had never seen a map.”

  “Farsight and Vision,” said a Sacred man of orange stripes. “Are distinctly ethereal. Maps are physical things.”

  “On the contrary,” said the Seer. “Maps are abstract representations of geographic perspective and political will. This ‘physical’ is merely an interpretation by the artist, for you see, this map is wrong.”

  “Wrong?” snapped Minister Chow-Chirac. “How can you say wrong?”

  He strode over to Chow-Chirac, bent down to snatch a pair of inkpots from his desk. He smiled and turned, moving back to the map and placing one on the westernmost edge of the Empire.

  “Turak’hee, where we met the first Ancestor.”

  He placed the second pot far, far to the left of the mosaic where there was only pattern and no defined land. In fact, there was likely a good stride between the Kingdoms and this first inkpot.

  “Swisserland,” he said. “Where he came from.”

  There was silence in the room. They stared at him as if he were mad. He wondered if they were right.

  He straightened, clasping his hands theatrically.

  “Sidalord Minister of Horses, where you are sitting is NorAm, another vast land where there are cities and armies of Ancestors rising from the ashes. Who knows where else they may be. Solomon mentioned a place called Lost Railya.”

  “This is impossible,” said Minister Chow-Chirac. “The world is not that big.”

  “I can assure you that it is.”

  “No cat has been to these places you speak of,” growled Minister Ardahvan.

  “I have been to Turak’hee beyond our Shiryian border,” he answered. “And Kaidan himself has been to NorAm.”

  They bit their tongues. Kaidan of the quick smile and the long drink. Kaidan, the ambassador to all nations, He’d been to the moon and back. He’d conquered the virgin, Shagar’mathah. If any cat could cross the world, it would be Kaidan.

  There was the deep, booming chime of a gong and all rose to their feet. A great ebony door swung open and a party of Panthers marched in, holding banners and swords and moving in practiced precision. Next, the Bushona Geisha in their riot of colour, but they hovered at the doorway, not daring set slippered feet into the War Room. They parted like an ocean as Chancellor Ho swept through in robes of blue. And finally, the Empress, dressed entirely in black and red with a headdress of rubies, followed by a small helmed woman completely covered in silver armour. His heart thudded once at the sight.

  There was a rush of fabric as all knees bent, elbows and foreheads touched the floor in reverence and respect, but still, he felt a rush of defiance. He had never, would never, but should. She, if anyone, deserved it.

  She turned to the great golden lion and lit a stick of incense, blew across it to create a thin wisp of smoke. He breathed it in. Pine for focus, cedarwood for strength, coconut for protection. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, Dragon’s Blood Bark, known for male potency and passion. Fitting, he thought, given their situation, but ironic, given hers.

  She laid the stick in the teeth of the lion and turned, meeting his eyes with her own. She was defiant and proud. A dangerous coupling.

  “Rise,” she said.

  They did.

  With Ho on one side and the armoured woman on the other, the Empress took her place at the small wooden chair, lowering herself to sitting and folding her hands in her lap. The room was silent for several long moments before she looked up, blinking those great golden eyes. Ho looked up as well, his expression flat and controlled. He cleared his throat.

  “Today, Esteemed Ministers,” he began. “There was an attack on the life of our most beloved, most serene Excellency, Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu, may she live forever.”

  The silence lasted only a moment longer before the War Room erupted into c
haos.

  After a moment, Ho held up his hand.

  “It was committed by an unknown kunoichi and facilitated by one of the Empress’ own Bushona Geisha.”

  “Who?” asked Chow-Chirac.

  “When?” asked Tang-St. John.

  “Why?” asked Ardahvan.

  “The details are unimportant,” answered Ho. “What is important is the fact that the Empress was saved by the swift and decisive actions of…”

  He cleared his throat once again.

  “By the actions of Sireth benAramis and Major Ursa Laenskaya.”

  The War Council turned to look at him. He could have sworn several of them nodded, although he couldn’t be sure.

  “As a result, the Empress has invoked the right to once again bestow the station of sham’Rai on one of her elite. Major Laenskaya, please step forward.”

  His heart was beating wildly as she removed the snarling helm with a swipe of her arm. Her hair – usually wild and loose about her shoulders – was pulled severely back from her face in a high silver queue. Her face was as hard as a stone.

  He tried to catch her eye. She would not look at him.

  How long could she remain the wife of a priest?

  Ho held up a scroll, began to read.

  “The Tale of Heike says,” began Ho. “That the first Bushona Geisha was a snow leopard with white pelt, long hair, and ghostly features. She was a strong archer, and, as a swords-woman, she was worth a thousand men. She handled horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, her captain sent her out as first soldier, equipped with strong armour, twin swords and a mighty bow, and she performed more deeds of valour than any of his other warriors. While this was written to honour the first Bushona Geisha, it is remarkable how well this also describes our Major Laenskaya.”

  Ursa blinked slowly, naturally said nothing. He wondered if she was as terrified as he.

  “Ursa Laenskaya, you are no longer a major in the Imperial Guard,” Ho continued. “But a living embodiment of Heike, the first Bushona Geisha. And while the Empress already has her own Shogun-General, she sees fit to bestow a similar honour upon you. You will live a life of service to the Empire, to its Empress and to her children for as long as they live. Along with this, you will guard the life of the Last Seer of Sha’Hadin, ensuring that he also may serve the Empire, its Empress and her children for as long as he lives. Do you accept this commission?”