by Laurence Yep
“Then please call me Scirye,” the Kushan girl said and, knowing the etiquette that the court demanded on formal occasions, “at least when it’s informal like this.” When she tried the door, though, it was locked. “Get his keys,” she said, pointing at the Questioner.
Wali yanked the ring of keys from his belt. “There must be fifty of these things.”
Booted feet were pounding rapidly toward them now. It would be a death trap to be caught between the locked door and the defenders.
“Then start trying them,” Kat urged. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the key right away.”
Suddenly Kles’s body began to jerk in Scirye’s arms and he began to make gagging noises.
Scirye looked down, worried. “Kles, what’s wrong?”
With a final cough, a slender white object fell out of Kles’s beak and into his paw. He held up the otter charm. “It’s smaller than the fish I used to swallow, but not nearly as tasty.”
Leech recognized the otter charm. “But I saw them take it.”
Kles winked. “Correction. They took away the pouch with a chess pawn in it. They couldn’t see my paws making the switch as my lady held me because I had my back to them.” His throat sounded a little sore after spitting out the charm. “Let’s see if it works like we think.”
“You clever thing,” Scirye said as he climbed onto her shoulder.
As Kles wiped the charm on his fur and handed it to her, the Amazons shifted to either side, though they looked skeptical.
Putting one hand to the handle of the door, Scirye pulled. There was a click within the lock and the door began to creak open.
Relieved, Kat turned to her comrades. “Ha, leave it to Nishke’s sister to find a way out.”
There was a roar behind them and a bullet pinged off the metal. The Amazons turned and fired several shots at the guards in the corridor who ducked immediately behind the corner.
The Questioner and the two Wolf Guards crawled on their hands and knees toward their comrades, shouting, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”
“Inside!” Scirye yelled and ran into the chamber. As Leech followed her, he couldn’t help wondering if Bayang was all right.
29
Bayang
“Here you go, hon,” Momo’s voice said. “Have some water.”
Bayang’s eyelids fluttered open to see a badger’s head the size of a hill. “How did you get so big?” she asked groggily.
Badik’s laugh boomed in her ears like thunder. “We’ve stayed the same. You’re the one who shrank—thanks to a potion the vizier gave our friend here.”
Blind with rage, Bayang threw herself toward her enemy … only to slam against iron bars. She couldn’t help crying out at the shock, as if lightning were coursing through her. Instinctively, she backed away only to hit more bars and receive more shocks.
“You can’t escape, hon,” Momo whispered. “There’s a spell on the cage so it’ll hurt everytime you touch it.”
As she stood absolutely still on her hind legs, Bayang became aware of the painted metal bars that arched above her until they were welded to a circular plate at the top. The cage itself was suspended about the height of an adult human so it must be hanging from a chain.
“Drink up. You must be thirsty,” Momo urged. She was holding a porcelain cup as large as a cauldron in her giant paw. From it was a straw the size of a sewer pipe that she had extended through the bars.
The shock made Bayang’s lips feel half-frozen as she slurred her words. “The las-s-st dring you gave muh knocked muh out.”
Suddenly, Momo was jerked upward. The cup crashed on the floor and the straw whipped through the air.
Badik looked as large as a green, scaly mountain as he held the struggling badger in his paw. “She gets nothing before I kill her.”
The badger’s paws thudded harmlessly against the iron band around the dragon’s chest, her claws rasping over the metal surface. “I didn’t sign on for any murder.”
“My dear girl,” Roland almost purred, “my contracts always have some fine print.” The tall man with long blond hair was lounging in a chair in a khaki coat, jodhpurs, and boots. “You should have been more careful about agreeing to help me.”
Momo gave up fighting and dangled like a furry sack. “Humph. And what would have happened to me if I’d said no?”
Roland chuckled. “You would have disappeared, but at least your conscience would have been clear—if that’s what’s so important to you.” He took a sip from a goblet and set it down on a small table next to Pele’s charm, which they must have taken from Bayang. “As for myself, I find consciences overrated.” He jerked his head at Badik. “So kill Bayang and be done with it.”
Badik’s claw pointed at his scarred face. “No. She has to suffer for what her clan did to me. Her death is going to be slow.” Years ago, Badik had invaded the territory of Bayang’s clan and had only been driven out with great cost to both sides.
Roland made an exasperated sound. “We almost have the world at our mercy and you worry about some petty little revenge?”
Badik dropped Momo unceremoniously. “She will suffer as I have suffered.”
A muscle twitched angrily on Roland’s jaw. “Oh, very well, but it will have to wait until we come back with the arrows.” It was more of a command than a statement.
Bayang’s speech was improving fast as she woke up. “You won’t get away with kidnapping me.”
“On the contrary, I already have.” Roland waved a hand toward two large battle axes dumped into a corner by a fireplace. Each was about a yard long, and though the wooden shafts had been decorated with designs in gold and silver inlay, the blades themselves were of old steel that still bore nicks in the blades from battle. “The vizier has made everyone think you’ve taken those little trinkets.” He pretended to wash one hand with the other. “The vizier helps me get what I want, and in turn, I help him get the imperial throne.”
Does Leech believe I deserted him? Bayang was so furious that she felt like she could have bent the bars, but she remembered the spell in time and remained where she was.
“Koko trusted you,” Bayang said indignantly to Momo.
Roland steepled his fingertips. “Then he was a fool just like the rest of your pack.”
On his finger was an archer’s ring. Carved out of bone, a large triangle stuck out from the ring’s side. It had belonged to Yi the Archer, whose bow had destroyed dangerous suns and monsters alike. Scirye’s sister, Nishke, had died trying to prevent Badik from stealing it. Around his neck was the necklace he had stolen from the goddess Pele, destroying an entire island in the process. The string was the bowstring for Yi’s powerful bow, and the staff leaning against his chair was the bow itself, which he had taken from a powerful animal spirit of the Arctic.
Bayang had to know the reason why Roland had caused so much misery. “Why do you want Yi’s bow? Are you trying to get richer?”
“My dear, I have more money than I could ever spend.” Roland laughed. “Power is far more precious than money.”
“But you already have that,” Bayang objected. “You meet with the leaders of the world.”
“True,” Roland admitted, “and for a while I was content to pull their strings, but puppets are such imperfect tools. They either fail to do what I want or even refuse willfully.” He took a walnut from a bowl and cracked it between surprisingly strong hands. He picked through the broken shell for the nut itself. “But when I have Yi’s bow, everyone will do exactly what I tell them to. And I’ll straighten out this troubled world. Wouldn’t you like a world where everyone’s at peace and things run perfectly?”
“It would be your peace and your perfection.” Bayang frowned.
“But of course.” Roland popped the shelled nut into his mouth.
“And why is the mighty Badik listening to a mere human?” Bayang demanded from the other dragon.
Badik polished a claw against his chest. “Because I share the same ideas of peace
and perfection. Roland will take the land and I will take the ocean.”
“Who’s the fool now?” Bayang snorted. “He’s too greedy to ever share power with you.” She added with a nod to Roland, “Or Badik with you.”
Roland looked at her shrewdly. “You won’t be able to stir up trouble between us.”
No, Bayang thought to herself, not while you have a common goal. But I probably won’t live long enough to see you fall out with each other.
Suddenly shouting came from the other side of the door, and then a sergeant in the white uniform of the vizier’s Wolf Guard burst into the room. Every one of the whiskers of his black beard was bristling. “You are his lordship’s guests, sir. You can’t let these mongrels set up an altar to that … that abomination!” He jabbed a finger through the now open doorway at a makeshift altar in the hallway. A small portable statue of a many-armed goddess stood on one foot as if dancing, and the corpse of a chicken lay at her pedestal. Despite the heavy incense, Bayang caught a whiff of fresh blood.
In front of the altar were several Indians with quilted vests. Long pieces of cloth had been wound around their waists and legs so that they looked as if they were wearing baggy trousers.
Bayang had always taken a professional interest in other assassins so she recognized the yellow sash encompassing their stomachs. They were thugs, worshippers of the goddess of destruction and renewal, Kali. Once a thug had slipped the sash around the necks of his victims, he would grip the wooden cylinders on either tip and strangle them. Woven from the thread of a certain type of giant rare spider that lived in the Himalayas, the silk was tougher than steel.
In the past, bands of thugs would join caravans and even wedding parties and massacre the whole lot. The thugs claimed they killed in honor of the goddess they worshipped, though the loot they kept for themselves.
Roland looked amused. “Sergeant, Kali is as old as any of the deities you worship, and as for mongrels, Kushans are as much Greek, Indian, and Chinese as they are steppe nomads after two thousand years.”
As the sergeant spluttered, one of the thugs in the hallway bowed and announced to Roland, “Master, the trucks are loaded and ready.”
“And the lyaks?” Roland asked.
“They have sent word that their raiders will reach the griffin lands soon,” the thug said. “It won’t be long before the griffins will be too busy to notice what is going on in the City of Death.”
“Excellent.” Roland rose from his chair and picked up a furred cap and coat. “You can play with your toy when we get back, Badik.”
Badik rudely shoved the sergeant out of the way. “I don’t see what the rush is,” the dragon complained. “The vizier is taking care of the brats.”
“Because there are too many mountains for a plane or a roc to land in,” Roland snapped, “so we have to drive the equipment in. And that takes longer.”
“What are you doing to my friends?” Bayang demanded.
Roland paused on his way out and smiled maliciously. “It’s all so delicious. When the vizier radioed me that you were arriving at the citadel, he had planned just to delay you. But I told him to kidnap you for my friend’s pleasure and to take custody of those pesky children.”
Bayang swallowed her pride. “Let the young ones go,” she begged. “They’re harmless without me helping them.”
“Those pests have interfered with my plans once too often.” Roland slapped his hat against his leg as if he were swatting some flies. “No one gets away with that. So as a sign of his goodwill, the vizier will take my revenge upon them. By the time he’s done, they’ll welcome death.”
With a desperate roar, Bayang threw herself at the bars, grasping the iron in her paws and trying to pry them apart. The pain wracked her body but she kept on trying until she felt the blackness coming.
As she slumped backward, her last thought was of the hatchlings. How would they survive without her?
30
Scirye
As soon as they were all through the doorway, Oko threw herself against the iron door and slammed it shut behind them—and not a moment too soon. Bullets spanged off the iron.
There was a little window on the iron door and Oko fired two shots through it. “The rats are scuttling back out of sight again.” She chuckled. “I bet those toy soldiers out there have never been in a real fight before.”
They were standing in a circular room some fifty feet in diameter with thirteen doors spaced evenly around the walls.
“These must be where they held the prisoners before questioning,” Kles said in a hushed voice.
Māka started to pirouette slowly. “So much blood. Rivers of it pouring and pouring down into the dark.”
And such was the power of suggestion that Scirye thought she caught a faint whiff of it clinging to the stones.
Tute nudged Māka with his shoulder. “Keep your imagination to yourself.”
But Māka continued to turn in a daze until she stopped and faced the seventh door, which was directly opposite the entrance. “There. There the screams soaked into the floor with the blood.”
“Blood and screams,” Kles mused. “That sounds like the torture room.”
“Yes, torture,” Māka murmured. “So much evil.”
Tute shoved his friend a little harder. “Snap out of it.”
Māka started to stagger backward, but Scirye caught her arm.
“Does this happen often?” Scirye asked the lynx.
He shook his head. “This is the first time I remember.”
After a moment, Māka straightened and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know what got into me.” She gave Scirye a smile of thanks for catching her.
Koko shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to have to sit in one of these cells listening to another prisoner being questioned.”
No one pointed out the obvious: If they were re-captured, that would indeed be their fate. But it had to be in everyone’s mind. Scirye tried to control her own trembling fingers as she tore a long strip from the expensive blue silk of her robe, fashioning a belt into which she tied the otter charm.
She thought of her mother and sister when they’d been battling Badik the dragon, trying to stop him from stealing the precious ring of Lady Tabiti, a treasure of her people. She had to be calm. She introduced her friends to the Pippalanta. Then, swiveling, she surveyed all the doors. “Are those all cells or is there another way out of here?”
“Not that I know of,” Kat said. “What next, lady?”
Scirye was surprised and pleased that the Pippalanta were now looking to her to solve the problem as they had once looked to her sister. She just wished she had a solution.
“Quiet.” Tute stood frozen, except for his ears, which turned this way and that, the tufts at the tips twitching.
“What—?” began Koko but shut up when Tute drew back his lips in a snarl that exposed his fangs.
When the badger fell silent, the lynx went back to listening, his ears rotating rapidly trying to pick up the strange noises only he could hear. Finally, he pointed his muzzle toward the third door from the entrance. “Yes,” Tute whispered, “there’s definitely someone inside that cell. But the Questioner said that we were to be the first prisoners to be questioned here in a long time.”
Kat nodded to the door through which they had come. “But that’s supposed to be the only entrance.”
“Which means whoever’s behind there has another way in,” Wali said.
“And out,” Tute grunted.
Leaving the Pippalanta to guard the entrance, they followed as silently they could while Tute stalked toward the mysterious sounds. The powerful muscles on his shoulders and legs rippled beneath the hide. Though the lynx was only as high as Scirye’s knee, his compact body was heavily muscled. Scirye would not want to be his prey.
As Tute paused outside the wooden door, Scirye thought she heard crunching noises. Tiptoeing next to him, Scirye put her hand to the door while her other hand clasped the otter charm. The lock clicked at
her touch and she yanked the door open.
Koko’s eyes widened and he sniffed the air loudly. “Hey! Potato chips!” The tubby badger charged past the startled lynx and dove into the room. “Dibs!” he hollered.
There came a high-pitched squeal of terror and indignation, and the sound of Koko thrashing about with someone.
Scirye sprang into the room, ready to save her friend from a life-or-death struggle. Instead, she found Koko lying on the floor of the cell, hugging a green bag of chips like a drowning man clutching a life preserver. With his other paw, he was fending off a foot-high akhu.
Koko squinted as he asked, “Fenimore, is that you?”
31
Leech
“Ah, good sir,” the rat said in accented but good English, “Pärseri has a third cousin by that name who lives in America.” Despite his friendly tone, the ratlike creature kept trying to reclaim his bag of chips. “How is he?”
Koko nodded. “Fenimore told me he had a big clan. He’s doing fine on Alcatraz—that’s a prison on an island in the San Francisco Bay where only the worst criminals get sent. Fenimore said the food may not be top notch but at least the garbage cans are full and there’s no competition.”
“Pärseri’s heart overflows with joy and such moments are rare in this wretch’s life,” the rat said and dipped his head politely even as his paws flailed for the bag.
“My name’s Koko.” He nodded at Leech and the others as he held off the rat. “These are my buddies.”
When Pärseri finally noticed them, he sidled over toward the bench, trying to block their view, but Pärseri would have needed to be as big as a hippo to screen all the food packed under the bench—candy bars, boxes of cookies, corned beef in tin cans, jars of pickled pigs’ feet, and a whole ham.
“There are so many thieves about nowadays, and this place was always deserted, so I thought it would be safe to store my supplies here.” Pärseri wrung his paws. “But apparently not. Might Pärseri ask what you’re doing here in his chambers?”
