by Cindy Lin
Tora stiffened. “The harbormaster’s leaving his station and dismissing the Guard. He must be off to the teahouse for midday meal. Should we try for the pen now?”
“Is it on him?” asked Usagi. From where she stood, more than two hundred paces away, she saw the harbormaster closing the doors to his shed but couldn’t see much more than that.
Narrowing her eyes, Tora nodded. “He’s sticking it in the back of his belt, just as he has for the last three days. He’s consistent, at least.”
“Perfect.” Nezu rubbed his hands and flashed a grin. “I think we’ve watched and waited long enough.”
He and Tora lifted their poles onto their shoulders, balancing their baskets of decoy parcels. They waited for Usagi to pick up her own baskets, then followed her off the pier. They hurried after the official with his tall winged hat. Usagi kept her eyes on the wide cloth belt where he’d stashed the pen. The harbormaster lumbered toward the main thoroughfare, where shops, teahouses, and taverns had sprung up to offer goods, food, and drink to the countless crews coming through Port Wingbow. All throughout the port were Guard patrols, swaggering in pairs, or small teams of armored men, crunching along streets paved in crushed shells.
“Okay, Rabbit Girl,” said Nezu. “You know what to do. Be quick before he gets too far away—there’ll only be more of the Dragonlord’s men around at the teahouse.”
Taking a deep breath, Usagi nodded. She could hear the harbormaster jingling a few coins in his hand. Several of the gold mon he’d gotten that morning, it sounded like. She was half-tempted to try for them, too, but shook off the impulse. They were here for one thing only.
Boldly, she trotted after the harbormaster. “Honorable sir? Your Excellency?”
The harbormaster’s belly bulged over his belt like a giant steamed bun. He frowned at her, his large jowls drooping. “Yes?”
Usagi held up a small drawstring sack. “Did you drop this, sir? I found it on the dock.” She shook it and it jingled. The harbormaster’s eyes grew keen and he stopped, giving her a fake smile.
“Why yes, I believe I did,” he said heartily. As he reached for it, he lurched forward and nearly fell onto Usagi. She threw her arms out to steady him, just as Tora piped up.
“Oh! My apologies! I didn’t see you, sir!”
Red-faced, the harbormaster turned. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” he bellowed. Usagi saw the glint of the pen poking out of his belt. Tora hadn’t managed to nab it when she bumped into him—she’d only dislodged it. Spit and spleen. Usagi was going to have to get it herself.
Nezu began alternately scolding Tora and apologizing to the harbormaster. Tora bowed her head, flicking a glance at Usagi.
Heart pounding, she reached for the pen. The harbormaster half turned, and she snatched her hand back. His long billowing sleeve flapped in Usagi’s face as he gestured in the direction of the docks. “I am the master here, and we do not suffer this kind of incompetence gladly!”
Tora dropped everything and got on her knees. “Please, sir! It was an accident!” She pressed her forehead to the ground at the harbormaster’s feet. Pawing at his robes, she began to wail. “Forgive me!”
“What are you doing? Don’t touch me!” He kicked and Tora ducked. The pen slid higher out of his belt, gleaming.
Now. With a swift movement, Usagi nicked the pen and shoved it into her tunic.
“Sir?” She jingled the small cloth sack. “You said this was yours, sir?”
He turned his attention back to Usagi and took the sack. “Yes, it’s mine,” he grunted. He glared at Tora and Nezu. “Get out of here, before I call the Guard on you.”
Taking up their loads, they thanked the harbormaster profusely and scurried away. Usagi bowed slightly and backed away. “Have a good day, sir.”
As she turned and walked rapidly after Tora and Nezu, she could hear the harbormaster impatiently tearing at the knots holding the sack closed. Nezu steered them down a busy side street. “Do you have it?”
With a grin, Usagi patted herself. “Right here.”
“Gods’ guts!” The harbormaster cursed behind them. “There’s no money in here!”
Usagi quickened her pace. “He just discovered the nails.”
“No running,” Nezu warned. “Just act normal.”
“My pen. Where’s my pen?! Oi!”
“And now he knows the Pen of Truth is gone,” said Usagi, clutching her tunic and hunching her shoulders.
Tora glanced back. “He’s coming this way.”
“Come back here! Guard! After those porters!”
Looking over her shoulder, Usagi saw the harbormaster with several Guard, pointing at them. “He’s sending the Guard after us.”
“This way,” said Tora. They ducked around a corner—and ran straight into a wall of tall, beefy armed men. It was a full squad of Guard.
“Flying fireballs,” groaned Nezu. “We’re trapped!”
Chapter 2
Escape From Feather Island
EIGHT SCOWLING GUARDS BLOCKED THE way, with more coming up to join them. They stared at Usagi and the others suspiciously. A few of them reached for their swords, while others swung their firecannon off their shoulders.
“Run!” said Nezu. Ditching their baskets, they took off at a sprint.
A shout went up. “After them!” An alarm bell began to ring insistently, answered by other bells across the port. The burst of clanging pierced Usagi’s eardrums. Dropping her walking stick, she doubled over, clapping her hands over her ears. Nezu and Tora stopped and grabbed her.
“Don’t worry about me!” Usagi shook them off.
“We’re not,” said Tora briskly. “But you’ve got the pen.”
Usagi laughed in spite of herself. They had the Pen of Truth at last! There was no way she was going to let the Guard catch her. Steeling herself against the clanging of the bells, she picked up her stick and sped off, leaving Tora and Nezu to scramble after her. The three of them raced through the streets, dodging everything and everyone crossing their path, as more Guards responded to the alarm and joined in the pursuit.
“I thought you said not to run,” she shouted as they dashed down a small lane away from three Guards.
Nezu flashed a grin. “Plans change.” He vaulted over a wheelbarrow pushed by a porter.
“Watch out!” cried Tora. An ox cart blocked their way as it trundled down the narrow lane. It was piled so high with crab cages, each crammed full of snapping, clicking crabs, that its cargo nearly grazed the shop signs hanging from the storefronts flanking the street.
Usagi didn’t even stop to think. With a bounding leap, she launched high into the air. As she sailed over the cart, she caught the astonished stare of a woman hanging nets to dry from a second-story window. “My stars! Zodiac powers,” the woman gasped. Usagi gave a little wave.
“A freakling!” shouted the pursuing Guards. “Alert the Dragonstrikers!”
Boils and blisters, Usagi swore silently. The Dragonstrikers were searching for the Twelve Treasures too. As the Dragonlord’s elite forces, they were far more skilled and fearsome than the Guard. And now Usagi had given herself away—she wasn’t supposed to be using her animal talents so openly, but she’d forgotten in the moment. Nezu was going to be furious.
Landing neatly in front of the ox cart, Usagi turned to see its driver standing beside his team of oxen, his mouth agape. She gave him a sheepish smile. The cart jostled a bit, and then Usagi heard howls of pain. “My nose!” bawled a Guard. “Get these crabs off me!”
Squeezing their way into slivers of space on either side of the cart, Tora and Nezu scuttled through and joined Usagi. “We set some of the crabs free to slow the Guards down,” said Tora, smirking. Her headwrap had gone missing, and her unruly dark locks had sprung free.
But Nezu’s usual grin was also missing. “Rabbit Girl, that was unwise.”
Usagi grimaced. “Plans change?” she offered.
He shook his head and hustled them out of the
alley. They didn’t get very far before another group of Guard spotted them and gave chase. They tore through the streets, swerving around sailors and fishermen, winding about merchants and dockworkers, turning corners at the sight of a helmet or firecannon, veering around barking dogs and wagons pulled by plodding horses, till they were spit back out onto the harborfront.
Wildly, Usagi looked about. The Guard were coming from all directions—except for the docks ahead. “That way!” she shouted.
They careened down the main pier, dodging porters and stacks of cargo as the shouts of the Guard and the pounding of their boots neared.
“Now what?” panted Tora. “We can’t just jump into the water!”
Nezu reached for the belt at his waist. “Yes, we can.”
Usagi stopped him. “Wait—I hear something.” She looked around. A voice was calling from the end of the dock.
“Over here!” It was the harbormaster’s daughter, waving frantically from the deck of a ship. “You’ll be safe up here!”
Usagi started toward the ship. “There’s a place to hide!”
“With her?” Tora fretted. “Her father’s the one who’s after us.”
“I’ve got a good feeling,” Usagi said firmly, and ran up the gangplank.
With a sigh and a grunt, Tora and Nezu followed. The little girl looked at them with wide eyes. “This way,” she whispered, and scurried to the door of the hold. She held it open. “It’s empty—the crew won’t be loading till tonight.”
Usagi smiled at her and began to climb in. She looked up at the others, who stood unmoving on the deck. “What’s the problem?”
“She’s not going to lock us in, is she?” Tora demanded.
Nezu flashed a grin at Ji. “We appreciate the offer, but some of us aren’t comfortable in the dark.” Tora snorted and he elbowed her.
“You don’t have to go in there if you don’t want,” Ji said in a small voice, rubbing her dirt-smudged nose. “I can make the Guard go away.”
Crossing her arms, Tora hunkered down by a stack of barrels. “That sounds good to me.”
Exasperated, Usagi climbed back out. “The Guard are getting close. If I hear them set one foot on the gangplank, we’re going down into the hold.”
“Wait here,” said Ji. She went to the ship’s stern, which was tied in at the dock, and crouched below the railing so she couldn’t be seen.
Then Usagi started. Her own voice was coming from the direction of the pier—but she wasn’t talking. Nezu and Tora looked at her as if she’d sprouted another head—then Nezu’s voice answered, as if they were both somewhere down on the dock. Nezu put a hand to his throat, eyes wide.
“This way! Bring the pen!” called Tora’s voice. But Tora’s lips hadn’t moved. Usagi stared at her.
“Are you . . . ?”
Tora shook her head. “It’s not me!”
Nezu pointed. “It’s her!”
Out of sight of the Guards swarming on the docks, Ji was throwing her voice—or rather, the voices of Usagi, Tora, and Nezu—so that it sounded as if they were far from the ship. She cupped her hands around her mouth and imitated them, their three voices moving farther down the pier. Usagi listened with astonishment, watching tensely as the little girl called out an entire decoy conversation. “Quick, get off the pier! . . . The Guards think we’re on the ships! . . . To the Rat’s Run!”
“They’re headed for the bridge to the mainland, those little sneaks,” shouted a Guard, and the heavy footfalls stepped away from their ship. Usagi’s shoulders loosened as if a wire between them had been cut, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Ji peered out over the docks, watching for a long moment. Then she smiled.
She returned to their huddle, face aglow. “I told you I’d get rid of them.”
“You certainly did.” Usagi beamed at her, then introduced the little girl to the others. “Ji is born in the year of the Rooster.”
Nezu flashed a grin. “And what an animal talent that was! Thank you for getting the Guard off our tail.”
“I’ve met Rooster younglings with powers, but I’ve never seen that,” marveled Tora. “Have you been doing it long?”
“My rooster crow?” asked the little girl. She pinched her bottom lip, thinking. “Since last year, I guess. It started in the summer. I was making seagull sounds at first. It’s lots more fun trying to sound like other people.”
“Does your father know you can do that?” asked Usagi.
Ji shook her head. “If he did, he’d hand me over to the Dragonstrikers for coin. I’ve seen him sell off other younglings.” She glanced around. “He also doesn’t know that I can do this.” Furrowing her brow, she snapped her fingers, and a flame appeared between them.
“Spirits!” said Nezu. “You’re a Fire Rooster!”
The little girl snapped her fingers again, and the flame disappeared. “I guess so. I can’t do anything more than that, though—nothing like the way you caught that fish.” She smiled shyly at Nezu.
He nudged Tora with his elbow. “Talented and observant.”
“If you practice, I’m sure your gift of fire will grow,” Usagi told Ji. The sight of her conjuring fire struck Usagi with longing. Uma had been so proud of her elemental gift. Usagi thought of her face, alight in the glow of a flame in her hands, then straightened and pushed the memory away. Her sister was lost to her now.
A black-tailed seagull flew to the railing and nuzzled Ji’s ear. “Say hi, Nabi,” Ji cooed, stroking its feathers. A second gull circled over their heads before swooping down and landing on Ji’s shoulder. “Neko, are you jealous?” she teased. The two birds had wingspans that dwarfed Ji’s scrawny frame, but she giggled as they preened her hair with their long beaks. She turned back to Usagi and her friends. “It’s nice to be around others who aren’t afraid of zodiac powers.”
“That’s because we know there’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Tora briskly. Shading her eyes, she squinted up at the sun, which was well past its midday peak. “It’s the hour of the Ram. We’d better get out of here while the Guards are off our trail.”
“Except now they’re swarming all around Rat’s Run,” said Usagi. “How are we to get off Feather Island and back to the mainland if they’ve got the bridge surrounded?”
“We’ll just wait until dark and sneak over,” Tora said.
Nezu grinned. “Why do that when we have a bridge of our own?”
Usagi regarded the belt Nezu wore. “I don’t think the Belt of Passage can bridge a gap that wide.” On her first mission as the Rabbit Heir, she’d gone to track down the lost Treasure with Nezu and Inu, the Dog Heir. They’d found it in a remote valley, in the form of a small footbridge that spanned a deep ravine. It had been hidden there by Horse Warrior Mori the Seventh, the very last Warrior to wear the belt. The bridge had silver-capped posts and a wooden deck bound with leather and trimmed with horn inlay. When they’d located the buckle underneath and unhooked it, the bridge had transformed into a belt. It had been wondrous to behold.
Groves of trees lined the ravine the belt had bridged, so Usagi had laid her hands on one particularly large banyan tree and coaxed it into stretching its tangled, thick roots across the gap, weaving them together until a living bridge had formed. “Spirits,” Nezu had said, impressed. “Now the local villagers can still get to their hunting grounds, and we can return the Treasure to its rightful place. That’s the best work with your wood gift yet!”
“You mean second-best,” Inu had corrected. “Or have you forgotten how she freed us from an underground prison in the Dragonlord’s compound?”
Usagi had gotten to wear the Belt of Passage all the way back home to Mount Jade.
Looking at the belt now, she thought of the ravine where they’d found it, and shook her head. “The bridge to the mainland is a hundred times longer than the one in Godsbridge Valley. There’s too much water between Feather Island and the rest of Midaga.”
Nezu shrugged and winked. “Good thing it’s more than just a bridge,
then.” He removed the belt at his waist and tossed it over the side of the ship. Usagi gave a startled shriek. Tora quirked an eyebrow at her.
“My heart stops when he throws it away like that,” Usagi confessed.
With a chuckle, Nezu glanced into the water. “Don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere yet. Look!”
They all peered over the side of the boat, Ji on tiptoe. The belt floated on the surface of the sea for a few moments, then began to expand, rippling and twisting as if it were a dried sponge soaking up water. Within seconds it had transformed into a long, low boat. At its stern was a wooden horse head with a flowing mane, flared nostrils, and teeth bared in a warning scream.
“Now that’s a sea horse!” said Nezu with satisfaction. He flashed a grin at Ji. “Thank you, Rooster Girl, for your help.” He threw a leg over the railing, preparing to jump down into the boat. “I’ll go first, and Usagi, you help Tora.”
The little girl tugged at his sleeve. “Wait! Could I go with you?”
The Rat Heir paused. “You don’t even know where we’re going.”
“Anywhere would be better than here,” Ji said. She twisted the hem of her tunic with dirty, calloused fingers, her eyes wide and pleading.
“Won’t your father miss you?” asked Usagi.
“And send Guard after you?” added Tora. Her hand strayed to the slashing scars that covered one arm, tokens from an old encounter with the Guard.
Ji’s gaze dropped to her feet. Rubbing her nose, she left more smudges of dirt on her face. “He’s not really my father—he just took me in when I was little. He always says I should be more grateful. But he doesn’t much care for me. All he cares about is how much work I can do and how much money he can get.”
