Snow in the Year of the Dragon

by H. Leighton Dickson

  The female raised her hand like a greeting and the jian flinched, but to her credit, didn’t cut anyone in half. Solomon raised his hand in the same manner, nodded. Slowly, the female reached around to the nape of her neck and suddenly, he knew.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “God-damn shit on a triple dog stick.”

  “Seven…”

  And he pinched the wire at the nape of his neck.

  “My name is Jeffery Anders Solomon, Super Seven of SleebLab 1, Kandersteg, Switzerland.”

  The female spoke. It was a language he had never heard before, out of a mouth that could not form the words but the wire translated effortlessly.

  “I am so relieved to meet you, Jeffery Anders Solomon, Super Seven of SleebLab 1,” said the female. “I am Angela Garcia Castillo, Super One of the SuperPit SandFields. Greetings, and welcome to SleepLab 3.”

  ***

  Both the morning sky and the steppes of Tsaparang were the colour of blood. It was a palate broken only by a swath of snow on the distant plain. Setse’s cries echoed across the mountain as she called for her lover, but there was only the lonely howl of the western wind and the crackle of ice in the sun.

  It had snowed overnight and the bodies had frozen, making the path over the rocks treacherous and grim. Some rats still survived, legs twitching, teeth chittering, and they dispatched them immediately with dagger, ax and stick. Crows were everywhere, prying bits of charred flesh from the ice. Ravens, too, large, ominous and powerful. She was grateful for them all. Spring would be a bloody horror if it weren’t for the birds.

  Down below, Tuuv Saranagal hunted between the chorten, searching for some sign of the Yellow Cat. She couldn’t find it in her heart to feel grateful. If he had welcomed them into Khumul that very first night, life would have been different. They would still have had Nergui and Zorig, Sev and Houlun and the baby. They could have been safe and warm and fed and comfortable, but then, they may never have gone on to Tsaparang. Tsaparang, she had to believe, was worth it all. There had to be hope for the training of Oracles, else all was lost.

  She sighed, looked over her shoulder at Balm. He had been searching but half-heartedly, and she knew he was hiding something. He had wakened the rats, and so was responsible for all deaths in the last day. But there was no guilt in his manner, no shame in his face. She wondered if he felt anything at all for his part in the slaughter. Shar had been wrong to want him dead, but she had been wrong to let him stay. So ultimately, she was the one responsible. She had so much to learn.

  If the children didn’t need her, she’d take her own life after she took Balm’s.

  He didn’t see her, then, as she picked her way over the rocks. His foot was on the squirming form of a rat, and he plunged the bonestick into it, closed his eyes as it thrashed and died. Taking pleasure in death throes was the sign of a Necromancer.

  She slipped the dagger from her boot. Throat first, then heart. If he was a Necromancer, she did not want him coming back.

  She lunged.

  Later, she would blame the crows for they took to the sky in a burst of black, but really, she knew it was all on her.

  His bi-coloured eyes opened as the dagger sliced toward his neck but he staggered backwards, the bonestick blocking the blade with a chuck.

  “What?” he cried. “What are you doing?”

  She cursed her ineptitude. This should have been clean.

  “You!” she snarled. “You woke the rats!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  You woke the rats to prove that you could!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Necromancer!”

  He tripped over the rocks and fell backwards, dropping the stick and covering his face with his hands.

  A child, she snorted. How could she kill him? How?

  “Please,” he moaned. “I’m sorry…”

  “You play with forces you don’t understand,” she hissed. “But refuse to learn from those who know!”

  She could hear footsteps behind her. Tuuv Saranagal, climbing the rocks.

  “You killed Zorig and Raal and Sev! Sev, who was braver than you will ever be! You have no place among the Oracles!”

  “Please. I’m sorry…”

  She snatched the stick from the ground, gasped as it shot ice through her palms.

  “No,” he begged.

  Kill him, it whispered. Plunge me into his heart and you will be free

  “Bones speak?”

  She took it in both hands, stared at the intricate weaving of bone and hair, sinew and tendon.

  Kill him and all will be yours

  “Bones speak to Oracles?”

  She brought it down swiftly across her knee, the crack piercing the morning like a scream.

  “Noooo!” Balm wailed and he curled himself into a ball of pelt and bone and scraps of trembling cloth. He was just a skinny boy, she realized, a skinny boy born with the curse of being an Oracle.

  “Bones do not speak to me,” she growled. “I will not hear them.”

  And she flung one of the halves, sent it clattering across the rocks. It was snatched up by a raven and carried off over the plains. The other she held for a moment. The end was tipped in red.

  “Shar?”

  She ran her hand up the splintered length, stretched her fingers above the bloody point. Fought the crippling wave once more as the Oracle sight descended.

  “Bones… this bone…” She looked up. “You killed him?”

  “He was there…” The boy pointed toward the lintel of stone. “But he’s gone…”

  “There’s no one there,” said Tuuv. “But there is blood.”

  “Where is he, Balm? Tell me or I will kill you with this stick and let the crows have you.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know!

  Just then, the owl swept over her head.

  She looked up.

  “Silence, where?”

  The owl circled above her once, twice, three times, before sweeping around the mountainside to disappear against the rock.

  She looked back at the femur in her hand.

  Bones speak to Oracles…

  “I know where he is.”

  And she scrambled back up the mountain the way she had come.

  ***

  It is dawn on the road to Agara’tha and five men in black robes stand in a rock cut, examining the bodies. Four Imperial panthers, impaled by spikes of shattered wood, their bodies charred from explosive heat. A palanquin is in pieces, almost unrecognizable from the fragments left behind, but how it was destroyed is a mystery. Alchemists are fond of their mysteries, but this is another matter entirely.

  The man they have been sent to find is not there, but others have been. The golden dragons have been removed, as have the polished ebony and fine fabrics. Tracks lead off from the road through the snow, some of them dotted with blood.

  A man kneels to scrape both blood and snow into a glass jar, swirls it until it melts and becomes pink. He drops a green stone into the jar. The water becomes inky and indigo blue. He rises to his feet and slips it into a satchel at his waist.

  “Notify the Chancellor,” he says. “The palanquin has been located but the Last Seer of Sha’Hadin has not.”

  “We will find him, sahidi,” says one man. “And we will show him how we welcome traitors in Agara’tha.”

  “He wishes to step into the boots of the man he killed,” says another. “Untouchable and Brahmin. It is an abomination.”

  “Your brother will be avenged, sahidi,” says the third.

  As they draft the parchment, the first man removes his hood to stare into the light of the rising sun. He is a tiger whiter than the moon, with eyes the colour of ice and hair like spun snow. Lor barraDunne, instructor at the School of One Hundred Thoughts and Acting Mage of Agara’tha.

  The parchment is finished and a kestrel is produced from folds of black silk. It chirrups in the cold morning air.

  “Where
are you, mongrel?” Lor barraDunne asks the mountains. “And what have you done?”

  The mountains have no answer for him. The kestrel is released and soon becomes nothing more than a speck in the red sky on the road to Agara’tha.

  ***

  “Where is my War Advisor?”

  Ursa scowled, looked at the ground. Pillows. There were pillows everywhere. Pillows of silk and pillows of linen, pillows of wool and pillows of exotic, dyed skins. The Empress did not set bare foot upon floors.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  “The journey to Agara’tha is not long, I am told. He should have been there last evening.”

  “Yes.”

  The Empress reclined in bed, a mongoose around her neck. The Bushona Geisha surrounded her, cooing and fussing and refreshing tea as needed. The room was thick with incense. Dragon’s Blood Bark, if she was not mistaken.

  “You would tell me if he desired to abdicate his responsibilities, would you not?”

  “He would never—”

  “He is proud as a storm and changeable like the wind. Why should I believe otherwise?”

  “He is loyal to the Empire. More loyal than you know.”

  “I will ask you to enlighten me,” she said. “But not now. I am fatigued, and told I must not leave this bed if I wish to keep the baby.”

  Ursa’s head snapped up.

  “Baby?”

  “Yes,” said Ling, and she stroked the mongoose with an ebony finger. “It seems the Golden Lion has bestowed a second miracle.”

  Ursa’s heart thudded in her chest as slowly, the Empress raised her golden eyes.

  “Almost as if it were a twin of the first…”

  A cricket with the heart of a dragon. Indomitable.

  “A twin,” Ursa repeated, letting the word find a home on her tongue.

  “Perhaps miracles come in pairs.”

  “It is the Magic of the Great Golden Lion,” said Ursa.

  “Magic.” The Empress smiled. “Yes, Magic.”

  Ursa swept her icy eyes over the riot of colour surrounding the Empress.

  “The first uniforms are ready,” she said. “Make sure you attend the armoury for your fittings.”

  As one, they stared at her.

  “Tomorrow at the latest. You will be dismissed if you don’t.”

  They fluttered and fussed but did not protest.

  She looked back to the Empress, bowed, fist to cupped palm, and turned to leave. She paused for a moment, threw a glance over her shoulder.

  “Does the Chancellor know?”

  “About the second baby?”

  “Yes, about the baby.”

  Ling glanced at the Geisha – from Plum to Jade, from Yellow to Teal, from Red to Orange to Pink. They shook their heads, shrugged.

  “It appears not. Why?”

  Ursa smiled wickedly.

  “I would like to tell him.”

  She left the room under the stares of the Bushona Geisha.

  ***

  She found him in the Court of Teeth and Claws, digging through the cavern once filled with rats, and quietly working his way through the bones. He tugged them from the rock, and tossed them into stacks along the dark stony walls, separating leg bones from arm bones and spines from ribs. He had piled skulls along a far wall – tsaa buga and crows, dogs and bears, even what looked to be cats and monkeys. Leg, arm, rib, skull. Leg, arm, rib, skull. It broke her heart to watch him work.

  Shar Ma’uul was no longer Shar.

  With pelt now white as the snow, Yahn Nevye could in truth no longer be called Shar Ma’uul. Shar Ma’uul meant Yellow Cat, and there was nothing yellow about him anymore. White hair, white eyes, and now white pelt marbled with jaguar rosettes, he was as unearthly a creature as she had ever seen. Now, he was Shagaar Ma’uul.

  To her, he could only and ever be Shar.

  “Shar,” she said quietly.

  He turned.

  “Setse.”

  And he smiled before turning back to the bones. His brown robe was torn between his shoulder blades, with dark stains across his back. Beside her, Tuuv frowned but said nothing.

  “I’ve been wrong,” Nevye said while he worked. “So very wrong. I’ve been thinking of the Oracles as cats, wanting to train them the way I’d train my people, but Oracles aren’t cats. They’re dogs. It doesn’t work that way.”

  Leg, arm, rib, skull.

  “Shar, come and rest.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. Do you remember the Needle, Setse? Do you remember the Storm?”

  Horror doubled. She would never forget.

  “They traded in eyes, but not only eyes. They worked in bone.”

  “Bones speak to oracles,” she muttered to herself.

  He turned and smiled once again.

  “Yes. Bones speak to oracles,” he said. “That’s because Oracles are Necromancers. I know that now.”

  “No,” she said, but she knew in her heart it was true.

  “You were right. I do owe my life to Necromancy, and I am sensitive to its voice. That’s why I keep dying and coming back. It’s a sign.”

  He wiped his now white hands on his robes, crossed the cavern floor towards her.

  “Maybe I keep coming back to show us that death is not wrong? That bones and eyes and skulls and blood are not forbidden, just unknown, arcane, powerful…”

  “We should burn them, Shar.”

  “No, Setse. That’s the wrong way. I know this now.”

  And he grasped her hands, pulled them to his chest. She could see the blood against the brown, saw where the bonestick had gone in and she cursed Balm once again.

  “Some of these bones are so old, the power in them so strong. We will bring the Oracles down here and they will choose and they will make bonesticks for themselves. It is the true path, the only path for Oracles.”

  There must be hope or this journey is worthless.

  She squeezed his hands.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Today, you must rest. Come up to the temple. There is food and warmth and peace. The children will be happy to see you.”

  “The children?”

  “Doshan and Alagh and the others.”

  “Sev?”

  “Not Sev. She died, remember?”

  She tugged his hands.

  He gazed back at the bones but allowed her to lead him up to the pillared temple without a struggle.

  But for the first time in a very long time, she couldn’t hear his voice.

  ***

  The fire leapt high in the Square of Frost Flowers, sending yellow sparks up to the dawn sky. Kirin watched them float up, up, up, sparkling along the gleaming walls of the Nine Peaks Mountain. They looked like spears thrust up to the sun, spears of glass and steel and lichen and earth, and he wondered if they had indeed pierced the heart of the sun. Perhaps that’s why the light was so weak here. Perhaps more than rebellions died in the New World.

  He was tired.

  He had overseen the settlement of the Nine Thousand Dragons and the River of Steel. Over ten thousand men and horses on the Chi’Chenguan Way. The Xióngmāo had proven their worth once again, quietly yet persistently bringing barrel after barrel of rice and plums, cart after cart of hay and grasses. No tea, not yet. He wasn’t sure if all the tea in Shin Sekai could slate the thirst of this army.

  The Celestial mountain gate was gone, destroyed in the blink of an eye by the Breath of the Maiden, along with most of the Snow sent to kill the army on the other side. The Maiden was home now, strapped securely across Kerris’ back as he stood watching the flames. Fallon stood next to him, cheeks streaked with tears and hugging a young bear in her arms.

  Naranbataar was dead.

  From the Capuchin Council to the Rising Suns to the unnamed, unknown creatures of the frozen cases, the Xióngmāo had brought all manner of corpses into the Square, laid them carefully to form a solemn funeral pyre. Torches quickly did their work and the light was like a beacon, drawing all r
esidents of Shin Sekai out from hiding. The barefoot monk stood quietly, also watching over the Square of Frost Flowers with an uncertain authority. The Emperor was not present, having ridden for weeks since leaving Bai’Zhin, and Kirin had no faith that the monk would be allowed to serve in this new city. Only one of the Capuchin Council still lived, but Kirin was certain that his body would be added to the pyre before the end of the day. Whether it would be a private or public execution was the remaining question. It was, and always had been, the Way of Things.

  It was a strange, somber time, and Kirin felt oddly detached as Long-Swift Sumalbaykhan marched up to the fire. A half-dozen men followed him, carrying the body of Jalair Naranbataar.

  The Khargan halted beside the Shogun-General but the men strode up to the fire as if daring it to burn their pelts. They did not pause but swung the body high on to the peak, causing the mound to sizzle and sag as it fell.

  Fallon gasped and buried her face into her husband’s chest.

  Kirin frowned.

  “The Chanyu do not perform death rituals?” he asked. “No prayers to the Moon or dedications to the Great Grass Plains?”

  The Khargan did not look at him.

  “It was not good death,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Kirin.

  And now the Khargan did turn.

  “The Khanil is not well,” he growled, ears laid back against his skull. “You should not have brought the boy to her.”

  Kirin said nothing.

  “You were wrong, Shogun-General, Great Lion of the South. You do not know us, and you do not speak for us. Never do this again.”

  Kirin let the words flow over him, let them spear him in the heart of Bushido.

  “There is still peace between our people?” he asked after a moment.

  “Still peace, but no friendship.”

  The Khargan leaned in.

  “And stay away from my wife.”

  And he pushed away from the pyre and left the Square. The flames leapt a little higher at his passing.

  Honour

  “The Emperor will address the people tonight,” said Kerris as he poured the sakeh for his brother. “He will make them understand. He’s good that way.”