by Sarah Zettel
Chen, who of the three had seen what was coming, snatched a satchel off a peg on the wall and bolted for the kitchen. Kyun looked at Mae Shan, looked at the door, and retreated to the barracks.
Airic, however, drew himself to attention.
“I am a city guard,” he said. “It is my duty to stay.”
Mae Shan had no time to argue, and was not sure it was her place to do so.
“Keep a fire burning,” she said. “Let the smoke be a signal to your officers that someone is still manning this garrison, but keep the door barred and the windows shuttered and do not try to go into the street. If you would serve your city, keep the weapons here out of the hands of the mob. If you do not think you will be able to do that, destroy them.”
He bowed in salute to her, his face serious and more than a little scared. In her heart, Mae Shan wished him well, and she hurried into the barracks.
Tsan Nu was up and on the edge of the bed.
“You heard, mistress?” asked Mae Shan. She peered through the slit in the shutters. The street outside was still quiet, but the thunder of the mob was becoming audible.
“Where will we go?” Tsan Nu asked in a small voice.
“First we get safely out of the city.” Mae Shan ripped the blanket off the bed. “Then we decide.”
“But the devils will be able to catch us if we go outside the walls.”
“The mob will take us if we stay inside,” replied Mae Shan. “Look out, tell me what you see above.”
Tsan Nu clambered up on the bed and peered out the window, craning her neck to get the best view of the sky.
“They are still fighting,” she said. “The devils and the Heart’s ghosts. I think the devils have a few more banners, but I can’t tell. The smoke is very thick.”
Listening to her, Mae Shan realized there was only one place to go that might possibly be safe.
“Come, mistress.” She held out her hand and Tsan Nu jumped down and took it. The child looked frightened.
“If my father were here, he could walk us to safety,” she said. “He is a powerful sorcerer.”
“I know, but we cannot wait for him.” Mae Shan pulled the girl along gently to the armory. “Fortunately, my mistress is not the only one who has a sorcerer for a relative.”
“You?” Tsan Nu looked stunned, and Mae Shan smiled briefly.
Kyun was still in the armory, rolling pikes and knives into blankets. They weren’t going to be able to carry all the bundles he had made, but she didn’t stop the boy, who looked on the edge of tears. He needed something to do.
Instead, she plucked one of his blankets from the pile and spread it out on the floor. “My uncle, Lien, is also a powerful sorcerer. He will give us shelter in his summer house.”
If he’s there. Heaven itself doesn’t always know where Uncle Lien keeps himself.
“Tsan Nu, there will be bows and quivers of arrows in that cabinet. Bring one of each,” Mae Shan said as she pulled a spear and a poleax from their racks and laid them on her own blanket. Tsan Nu trotted over with a bow and a full quiver and laid them beside the other weapons. Mae Shan wrapped them swiftly and discarded the idea of binding them with leather straps in favor of a length of rope hanging from a hook on the wall. Looking poor and as if you had nothing of value to steal was an advantage now. Again she thanked the Goddess of Mercy that she and Tsan Nu were in nightclothes for there was no time to disguise themselves. She tied the girl’s nightdress off with an additional length of rope to help disguise the fineness of the fabric. The cloth slippers she had risked them both to get were now on her feet, but they were scuffed and rumpled enough to pass casual inspection without comment.
“Bring two of those bundles,” said Mae Shan to Kyun. “We’re going now.” She slung her own bundle across her shoulders with a knack she remembered from her younger days and took Tsan Nu’s hand again. “Chen! Now!” she called as she strode toward the door.
Chen appeared. Two bulging satchels and four sloshing bottles hung on his shoulders, making him look more like a peddler than anything else. Mae Shan relieved him of one bottle and one satchel. She shoved them under her anonymous-looking blanket roll.
“As soon as we get onto the soldier’s road, we run,” said Mae Shan, leading them up the stairs. “Keep together. If we become separated, we will meet on top of the Hill of Last Rays at sunrise tomorrow. If you cannot get there, do what you can to get to your families. If we meet the mob, do what you must and no more. These are the ones you are sworn to protect.”
Sworn to whom? We took our oaths before the gods and the emperor, and the one has killed the other. Mae Shan pushed the thought aside. Like Kyun, only movement kept her mind steady.
“Airic, open the door.”
The boy did and Mae Shan ducked through, keeping tight hold of Tsan Nu. She did not look back to make sure the trainees followed.
Like the Heart, the doubled walls of the city created a second tier of roads running above the ordinary streets. The only way to reach them was through garrisons such as these, and when the mob remembered … Mae Shan could only hope Airic would find someplace to hide.
The air outside was hot and harsh. Smoke instantly wrung tears from her eyes, and ash settled hot against the backs of her hands. Seven Generations Street ran east-west, with the soldier’s road running parallel to it, so they were able to run straight down its length. Chen ran with the back of his hand pressed against his mouth, almost doubled over by his burden. Kyun jogged, his sweat smearing the ash that had already settled on his face. From his wide eyes Mae Shan knew he had noticed the shouts and the crumbling, crashing, tearing sounds getting closer.
Tsan Nu stumbled constantly over the slightly uneven stones because she would not look where she was going. She kept her attention fixed firmly on the sky and the battle her sorcerer’s eyes saw there. Mae Shan wanted to tell her to stop that. The reminder that there was something worse happening than fires and mobs tore at what calm she still possessed, but she said nothing. If that battle came to earth, they would need to know that too, if only so they could pray.
At the next corner, they found the mob.
Seven Generations crossed the Street of Winter’s Shelter, a place of modest homes and gardens. The street was plugged tight with bodies. Some screamed to be allowed through, some laughed as if insanity had already taken them. Gates had been flung open and household goods were tossed from hand to hand or trampled underfoot. People ran in and out of houses, as if in frantic search for some lost, precious thing. Some leapt and clawed at the walls, trying to reach the soldier’s road overhead. First one woman, then a man squeezed free of the surging crowd and raced down the street, the mob spreading out behind them to claim new territory.
Where were they going? What did they think they were doing? Were they just trying to get out, get to the walls, like she and her charges were, or had the realization that the heart had been cut out of Hung-Tse driven them all mad?
Both were probably true, but that truth did her no good right now.
“Don’t stop!” Mae Shan pulled Tsan Nu closer and ran on.
The world flashed past; red roofs, dark bodies, white faces, and the constant noise. Here and there, some managed to boost each other onto the soldier’s road and run. Mae Shan raised no cry. Let them think that’s what we have done.
“Something’s happening!” cried Tsan Nu all at once. “Some of the demons are breaking away. They’re flying toward us!”
Mae Shan scooped Tsan Nu up into her arms and she ran faster. She didn’t know what else to do.
I accept my death as ordained. I humbly ask forgiveness for my transgressions. I stand by my duty until my breath is done. I …
“They’ve gone past!” reported Tsan Nu wonderingly. “It’s as if they’re headed for the gates too.”
“Is the girl mad?” cried Kyun. “What is she talking about?”
“Save your breath!” shot back Mae Shan, mostly because she did not wish to waste hers in explanations.<
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Kyun mopped at his forehead and kept on in silence, but his gaze was more and more drawn down to the streets. Mae Shan glanced down too. If the streets had been full before, they were packed now with people shoved together until there was no room to move. What was happening?
Ahead of them, a group of men pushed a young woman up on their shoulders and she scrambled up onto the soldier’s road. They called out to her, but she only turned and ran. Another woman, her baby tied tight to her breast, climbed over heads and shoulders as if wading between stones. Mae Shan strangled a frustrated cry.
“Chen! Kyun!” She pointed to the floundering woman. They stared and for a moment she thought they might disobey, but they ran to the battlement and together reached out, dragging the woman out of the mob’s reach. She babbled her thanks, incoherent in her fear and relief, clutching her wailing baby to her. Behind and below her, hands reached up and shrieks for help tore through the air.
Chen and Kyun looked to Mae Shan.
“We need to get ahead of it,” she said. “Find out what’s happening at the gate.” Where are the other soldiers? What’s happened to them?
And so they ran on. The woman and her baby ran beside them for a ways, but soon fell behind. Mae Shan hoped she did not fall back down into the streets.
“Do you still see those demons, Tsan Nu?” she asked, hoisting the girl a little higher in her arms. Tsan Nu only shook her head. To her surprise, Mae Shan felt no relief.
At last, she was able to see the outer walls and the Left Gate. The outer portals had been flung wide open, but the inner stuck fast. The screams of the mob became a deafening roar as people hammered the ancient iron-bound wood with their bodies, trying desperately to break it open. They pushed each other up to the tops of the walls in an attempt to scramble over, but they slid back down, helpless.
Mae Shan slowed to a stop, appalled. Chen and Kyun stopped beside her, wiping their faces and eyes, and trying not to look down below.
“What is this?” Mae Shan croaked. “Where is the guard?”
Tsan Nu buried her head against Mae Shan’s shoulder. “It’s the demons. The ones that flew ahead of us.”
The screech and roar of the thousands of voices was deafening, more the sound of a storm than of humanity. Mae Shan had to shout to be heard, even by Tsan Nu. “What are they doing?”
“They’re holding the gate shut. They’re on top of the walls and pushing people back down.” Tsan Nu shook in her arms. “They don’t want anybody to get out, for when they win.”
Mae Shan did nothing but hold Tsan Nu close for a moment. The child should not have to see what she did.
And what about the children down below? The crowd surged back, then forward as they tried to batter the gate open.
“Mistress, is there anything you can do to get the gates open?”
“No! I can’t!” But she pressed her face harder against Mae Shan’s shoulder and trembled, and Mae Shan remembered her younger brothers making such refusals when they truly meant “I won’t.”
Swiftly but gently, Mae Shan set Tsan Nu down on her feet and crouched in front of her so the child could easily look her in the eye.
“Is there anything you can do, mistress? You must tell me if there is.”
Tsan Nu screwed up her fists, her face paper-white with fear. “I can’t! The demons are down there! They’ll feel it and they’ll come get me!”
Mae Shan swallowed. “Tsan Nu, you must do whatever you can. We are the Heart of the World here, you and I. We must serve. You are the one with the power to do this, as I have the power to protect you while it is done.” She did not say, “And if there are devils on the walls, they may knock us over into the crowd, and then what?” The child was on the verge of panic as it was.
“You can’t even see them, how can you fight them?” protested Tsan Nu.
“Because I am a soldier,” replied Mae Shan. “Is there something you can do? Can you open the gate as you did the grating?” The noise buffeted her like a physical force. She imagined red-faced demons from the pantomimes standing on top of the walls laughing and jeering at the terrified crowd.
Tsan Nu was silent for a moment. “It’s bound in cold iron. I can’t break that.” Mae Shan’s heart sank. “But I can break the beam holding it shut.”
“What do you need?”
“Something to write on. Something hard that can break.”
Mae Shan looked around helplessly for a moment. Then, she looked to the red tiles on the gatehouse roof. “Trainee Kyun, bring me a roof tile. Immediately.”
“But what do I write with?” demanded Tsan Nu as Kyun saluted. “I don’t have any ink.”
Mae Shan suppressed the urge to shout at the child. She cast her mind about. Then she cried. “Chen, we need ash and embers. Quick!”
To their credit, the trainees moved with speed and without question. Kyun ran to the guardhouse and used the hooked blade of his pole arm to loosen three tiles. From the corners and edges of the battlement, Chen scooped up handfuls of gritty ashes along with flakes and splinters of charred wood. Mae Shan unslung one of the precious water skins and dampened the little pile, mixing the crude, lumpy ink with her hands.
Tsan Nu saw the idea and picked up a splinter. As soon as Kyun returned with the tiles, she thrust the splinter into the black puddle. But something made her look up, and whatever she saw sent a shudder through her.
“You promise you won’t let them hurt me?” she asked in a small voice.
In answer, Mae Shan straightened up and pulled her spear from her bundle and held it over her head in a gesture she knew the boys would recognize. “Trainee Kyun, Trainee Chen, form up!”
The boys dropped their bundles, grabbed their long-pole weapons, and pulled themselves to attention behind Tsan Nu.
Mae Shan stood before them all. “Raise hands!” she cried, lifting her free hand up to the height of her shoulders.
These were the exercises every soldier was taught, meditations of motion that held the basic movements of weaponry and hand fighting. These were the same moves Mae Shan had used to keep herself awake through the long night. With all she had seen and all Tsan Nu said, she was ready to believe the much told tale, that this dance was handed down from the gods themselves so the first emperor could teach the great heroes and they could drive the forty thousand companies of devils back from Hung-Tse and make it into the Sacred Empire. Surely it would hold off a few dozen demons from a tiny girl trying to save what was left of the city.
If nothing else, it would keep them all from being paralyzed by their fear.
Mae Shan moved slowly, breathing, relaxing her muscles, letting soul and spirit flow, concentrating on the precision of each movement, raising the spear, sweep, stab, step to the side, kick, kick again, pivot, stab, step back, circle the spear, switch hands, sweep back, stab again. Concentrate. Don’t speed up. Breathe evenly down to the belly. Step, step, stab, sweep aside, pivot, kick, stab again, turn …
She caught sight of Tsan Nu, staring openmouthed past her.
“You’re not doing magic,” she said. “But they’re scared. They’re jumping up and down and yelling at each other.”
Concentrate, concentrate, Mae Shan schooled herself. Turn again, sweep out, raise the spear, stab left, stab right, kick …
Whatever was happening in that invisible world, Tsan Nu seemed to gain confidence. She dampened her splinter and began drawing faint grey markings on the glazed tile that Mae Shan could only hope were enough for her art.
Don’t think of that. Concentrate. Step back. Breathe.
Tsan Nu began to sing. Her voice was high and clear, a young girl’s confident soprano, calling out the spell language of those with the spirit gifts.
Concentrate.
Mae Shan focused on her movements, on the rhythm of her breathing, on the sweep of her spear, its position, that it was level and straight at the correct height for each move. From the corner of her eye, she saw Chen and Kyun fall into closer time with her. Somehow,
Tsan Nu’s singing made the shrieks of the crowd easier to dismiss, as if the girl were pushing the world back with her clear voice.
A fresh wind brushed ash into Mae Shan’s eyes. She blinked hard, but did not allow herself to pause. She stepped forward and slammed down the butt of her spear, as if at a fallen enemy, then swung the spear high and pivoted on one heel to stab behind her, pivoted again, sweeping out above her head.
In front of her, the ashes were dancing.
It was a silhouette of some strange creature, all smeared in ash. It had five horns and huge, clawed hands. Through the hollows where its eyes should have been, she could see the crowd battering hopelessly at the gate, as if the ashy shadow contained them all and laughed at what it saw.
Mae Shan’s movement faltered. The ash demon’s mouth gaped wider and it danced closer, hopping and spinning madly from one foot to another, in what Mae Shan realized was a parody of her own movements. Oddly, she did not find it in her to be afraid, only affronted at this thing’s rudeness.
“Lieutenant …” said Kyun, his voice shaking.
“Concentrate!” cried Mae Shan, trying to keep her hands from tightening on her spear. “Keep moving!”
To her relief, Tsan Nu’s song did not falter. The ashen demon twirled and swung its arms out, and Mae Shan drew herself back up to attention, and began the sequence once more.
The ash demon’s mouth stretched out in fury, and the wind rose again. A cluster of embers blew up from nowhere and brushed Mae Shan’s arms. Pain sparkled across her skin. She did not pause. She did not look. The ash demon danced before her in silent rage, but it did not press past her to where Tsan Nu knelt, singing her spell and capturing that song in the words she painted with the char of ruined homes.
Sweat poured down Mae Shan’s face, and her sleepless night weighed on her like iron chains. She saw the mob through the swaying, spinning form of the demon before her, heard their screams, heard Chen’s and Kyun’s breathing grow ragged, even as she heard Tsan Nu’s song grow hoarse with effort. They would not last much longer, and what then?
The demon leapt closer, as if sensing the doubt creeping into her thoughts. Keeping just beyond the sweep of Mae Shan’s spear, it drew its sword, miming her parry for parry. She could see the blade’s keen edge outlined in grey ash and for a moment her breath faltered. The demon threw its head back, its mouth gaping in triumph.
