Fox and Phoenix

by Beth Bernobich

  The chief wizard observed our approach. “I hope you have not misjudged the importance of interrupting me,” she said mildly.

  Our wizard bent low. “A matter of a magical disturbance, Your Honored Worship.”

  “Ah. That.” She beckoned him closer and they conferred. Her expression never changed, but at the end of two minutes, she nodded briskly. “Good enough. Leave them with me.”

  “Your Honored Worship—”

  “I am not in danger, Captain.”

  Though her voice was low, he snapped back with a salute. “Of course. I just—”

  “—wished to articulate your concern. Good. You have done so. Now go.”

  She dismissed the wizards with a flick of one tiny prune-hand. Once the door closed behind the men, she turned to us. “Sit.”

  There was a bench in front of her desk. We sat. Yāo-guài wriggled in my arms. His eyes were brighter than before, almost alive. I tightened my hold and prayed to all the gods in heaven that he would behave.

  The chief wizard studied us a few moments with an unreadable gaze. “You possess an interesting creature,” she said. “He was dying when you brought him here, no?”

  Yún nodded mutely. Her anger had drained away. She looked shaken and her wounds were probably bothering her. I wanted to take her away and let her lie down to rest, but when I made the slightest movement, Yún shook her head.

  “Hmmmmm.” The woman hummed, as if trying to recall a song. “You haven’t trained him very well.”

  “We didn’t know how,” I said, irritated.

  “Not a good excuse.” She hummed again. Yún’s expression eased, and her cheeks flushed with better color. “Now then. About this matter of theft and attack. You admit the creature nearly killed someone.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No more excuses.”

  I swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her face wrinkled with a passing smile. “And no more false modesty. You were both furious with our wizards. Can’t say I blame you. They are pompous fools. However, they were right to bring you here. We must guard our tranquility, especially when our kingdom is barricaded under the mountain. So I will question you both. And you, you will tell me the truth.”

  “About everything?” I burst out.

  She tilted her head. Her ancient eyes narrowed to black slits. “Have you something to hide?”

  I gulped. “Um, a little. Nothing bad.”

  Another smile, like the shadow of a brighter one. “I doubt that. However, I concede your argument. My duty to ensure tranquility does not give me the right to frolic through your thoughts and memories with abandon.”

  The image of this tiny old woman frolicking anywhere had me snorting. I tried to stop myself and went into a coughing fit. Yún thumped me on the back—harder than she needed to. I subsided into hiccups and wiped the tears from my eyes. “Sorry.”

  The woman wheezed. “Also doubtful. I can see on your face that you are seldom truly sorry. One day you must learn to speak honestly and from your heart, or you will regret the wasted years. So, the questions.” She held up a hand. The air stirred around us, settling into a deeper and denser silence than before. “You have the features and accent from the mountains north of us. You have been traveling several weeks, then. Is this the first trouble you’ve encountered?”

  I opened my mouth. Felt my tongue squeeze into new and uncomfortable shapes. Yún was massaging her throat, her expression unsettled. She worked her jaw as though testing her ability to speak. “No,” she whispered. “A few days ago. Bandits—” Her throat spasmed. “Assassins. Soldiers. Not bandits.”

  The woman nodded. “Who sent them?”

  “We don’t know. We-we guess but we don’t know.”

  “Are they dead, these not-bandits?”

  “Yes. Died in an avalanche.”

  “Hmmmmm. More and more interesting. And now a thief breaks into your belongings.” She turned to me. “Have you done anything to attract such attention?”

  “Yes,” I said. “No. Nothing wrong.”

  “Everything right,” Yún said.

  “You work for yourselves?”

  “For our—for the—” Yún struggled not to speak. The griffin whistled and keened in distress. The woman waved a hand, and Yún slumped into her chair. “Perhaps that detail is not necessary. I can decide later. Tell me this, however. Does your work have anything to do with Golden Snowcloud? With our king or our kingdom or anyone else here?”

  No, and no, and no. We traveled south. To the Phoenix Empire. To bring news to a dear friend. We answered a dozen more disconnected questions—none of them as nosy as I had feared. I was just beginning to relax when the desk beeped. The chief wizard touched a metal plate and the door hissed open.

  A guard hurried to the chief wizard’s side and whispered in her ear.

  “When?” she said sharply.

  “Moments ago. No more.”

  “And those fool wizards could not prevent it?”

  “They tried—”

  She dismissed the excuse with a gesture. “Never mind. I shall attend to the matter myself.” Her attention swung back to us. “What would you say if you learned that thief died? Not from his wounds, but from magic?”

  I stared. Yún did the same.

  “Someone,” the chief wizard said, “did not wish us to question him.” She tapped her fingers against her desktop, clearly distracted by the news. Yún and I shifted nervously. All I could think was that no matter who was to blame, they’d sentence us to jail for the man’s death and we’d never get to Phoenix City to find Lian.

  “I see only one solution,” she said at last. “You brought these troubles to our city, therefore you must take them away. You must leave Golden Snowcloud tomorrow morning and no later. If we detained you, we would only draw more violence upon ourselves. Better if you take it away with you.”

  “You can’t throw us out into a storm. Hospitality says—”

  “There is no more storm.”

  “What?”

  Yún and I spoke at the same time.

  “You had no idea?” She stared at us a moment longer. “An even stronger reason to send you away as quickly as we might,” she murmured. To us, she said, “Your griffin extinguished the storm with its magic. Now do you see why you must go?”

  I was too shocked to argue. Yāo-guài? Our little monster? Yún appeared equally shaken.

  The chief wizard shook her head. Ran a hand through her wispy hair. Her fingers were like small brown sticks. How many of her enemies underestimated her, thinking her old and weak and fragile?

  “I wish I knew more about the reason for your journey,” she said, “but that is not my concern. Now, before you depart, let me remove the spell for truth. You might find it inconvenient.”

  She spoke a word. I had the sense of a cloak falling away from my skin. Yún touched her throat. Her color had improved in the past few moments.

  “You will find your injuries trouble you no more,” the chief wizard said. “You will also find the shopkeepers more accommodating. And when the gates open tomorrow morning, they will open earlier than usual. That is not a kindness, you understand. The easier you equip yourself, the faster you leave Golden Snowcloud. You should make good time before others notice your departure,” she added.

  Her attention dropped to the desk and a stack of papers. Yún released an audible breath. Relief? Despair? I could hardly tell how I felt myself.

  No time to wonder. The guard laid a hand upon my shoulder and pointed to the door. We were dismissed.

  9

  WE SPENT THE REST OF THAT DAY REPACKING, repairing, and generally refitting for our journey.

  It wasn’t a happy time.

  “I don’t care what magic spells that old wizard worked. You should rest,” I told Yún, once we returned to our rented stall. “Watch over Yāo-guài, and let me take care of everything.”

  “No.” She snapped off the word.

  “But you’re—”
/>   “I’m fine. Great. Never better.”

  She faced away from me, just the curve of her brown cheek visible, framed by wisps of black hair. Her shoulders were hunched high and stiff, and she’d wrapped her arms around her chest, like chains around a treasure box. Whatever words came rising up in my thoughts would be the wrong ones, I could tell.

  I just wanted to do the right thing. And I am sorry. I am.

  “Shall I go to the piaohao?” I asked.

  “If you like.”

  It took a mighty effort not to stomp away, cursing. Instead, I blew out a breath (quietly) and counted to a hundred. “I would like that. And would you like to pack our gear?”

  “Yes.”

  One small word, as cold as an entire blizzard.

  What did I do wrong? All I did was kiss her. Twice. I thought she liked kissing.

  Chen didn’t even bother to say anything. Deep inside, I felt his presence, but nothing more. Maybe he didn’t understand girls either.

  In spite of our not exactly speaking to each other, we were awake and ready long before dawn the next day. One vendor had opened his stall early, and from him, we bought a hot breakfast, which neither of us felt like eating. As soon as the royal watch opened the doors, we left.

  Crews of workers had cleared away the snow our griffin had not melted with his magic. More snow trickled down from the leaden clouds, but already patches of a silvery sky showed through, and a faint sunlight glittered off the remaining ice and snow. The magic flux ran stronger, too, because the lifts were running smooth and quick, taking us up to the highway in moments instead of hours.

  We headed south in cold and determined silence. Three hours later, we reached a point where the highway split into five different directions. One large black stone pillar marked the main highway south. Three smaller tracks looped back toward Snow Thunder City and other points east. The fifth one wound up the mountain slope to the next narrow goat trail heading almost directly west.

  “South?” I said.

  “No. East.”

  “Won’t they expect us to head east? I mean—”

  “West then. I don’t care.”

  I glanced over. Yún glared back, tight-lipped, her eyes unnaturally bright.

  “West,” I said. “Sounds good to me.”

  The pony whuffed horse-curses under its breath, but didn’t balk, even when the goat trail vanished into an expanse of bare rock. Hours later, we’d gained a point high above the same highway. Yún called for a stop, and I wasn’t going to argue.

  I’m tired of arguing. I’m tired of this trip. I just want to find Lian and go home.

  We rubbed the pony down and fed Yāo-guài dried beef. I pulled off my boots and massaged my feet. How many weeks since I’d left Lóng City? Five, at least. Maybe six. I’d lost track through all the storms. Meanwhile, Yún was staring over the edge of our cliff at something far away. She’d found a new way to ignore me, I thought. Then, she gave a muffled exclamation.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She motioned for me to be quiet.

  I crept quietly to her side and peered over the ledge. The cliff dropped straight down to a jumble of snow-whitened rock and dirt and scrub below. It was hard to make out anything in the patchwork of gray and brown and the bright glare of sunlight on snow. I wiped the tears from my eyes and stared harder.

  Then I saw it. The highway marker we’d left three hours before. A few spots along the highway itself were visible farther along. But what snagged my attention were the five black figures circling around the marker.

  Yún rummaged in her pack and took out a long round cylinder fashioned out of a dull gray metal. Both ends were capped with glass lenses. Brass rings circled the cylinder all along its length. There was a whiff of magic and science about the thing. She set the glass against one eye and aimed its other end at the stone marker. With her free hand, she twisted the brass rings, then hissed with satisfaction.

  “May I see?” I whispered cautiously.

  She shot me a glare, but handed me the cylinder.

  It took me a few tries, but all of a sudden, the stone pillar leapt straight at me, large and crisply clear. All its markings were as easy to read as if I stood right beside it.

  Without warning, a dark brown shadow blotted out the pillar. I jumped.

  “What is it?” Yún asked quietly.

  “I can’t tell yet.”

  With more trial and error, I found the black pillar again. Adjusted the brass rings until the pillar seemed to recede into the distance. Another blur obscured the pillar, but only for a moment. Then a second one blocked my view. Without taking the lens from my eye, I twisted the smallest brass ring just a hair.

  And saw a dark brown face staring upward.

  I yelped, nearly dropped the cylinder. Yún grabbed for it, but I yanked the device away and hunkered down to try again.

  Of course the man below didn’t see me. It was only an illusion that his gaze drilled into mine. Still, my heart was thumping hard and my hands shook as I adjusted the lens to draw back a few more feet.

  Five men stood around the black pillar. They were dressed in gray woolen cloaks with hoods, over leather armor. One man pushed his hood back and adjusted his steel helmet. They were pointing at the stone pillar and the different roads leading away.

  Silently, I handed the cylinder to Yún. Waited for her to make the same discovery I had.

  These were not bandits. And I would bet the rest of my reward from Princess Lian they weren’t soldiers from Golden Snowcloud. They were mercenaries. Assassins, Yún had called them. And they were looking for us.

  Someone wants to find us, I thought. To stop us.

  If they had magic, they could. The ancient wizards could see through all the roads of time, according to my mother’s lessons—past or present or even the possible futures. Cold crept over my skin. It had nothing to do with the winter winds scudding down from the mountain peaks.

  Chen? I kept my inner voice to a whisper.

  No. No magic.

  Can you tell where they come from?

  Too dangerous. Their companions are watching for us, too.

  Through Chen’s eyes, I glimpsed a raven, a giant rat, a scorpion, and other, stranger creatures I couldn’t identify. They weren’t magical—there were few humans with those beasts as their companion spirits—but ones that made me think of foreign lands, far away from these mountains.

  Yún laid down the cylinder. “Not good. But not so bad.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Going the wrong way,” she said. “Qi is distracting them with a false trail.”

  But her tone was plainly unhappy.

  “Why is that not good?”

  “Because whoever sent these men probably sent more.”

  Right. Like those mercenaries we’d already met.

  A dozen last week. Five here. No, wait. There had been six, counting the thief in Golden Snowcloud. The number six teased at my memory. Weeks and weeks ago, when we were ordinary apprentices, Mā mī had given us a lecture about the magical properties of numbers. Some of those properties were genuine, some the heartfelt delusion of certain practitioners. The key to dealing with any opponent, she said, was to tell the difference.

  “Six of them,” Yún murmured. “Twice six before.”

  So she had noticed, too. “We should go,” I said.

  And for once, Yún didn’t argue.

  It took us three days, battling unnaturally fierce winds, before we crossed that pass. Neither of us had the strength to bicker with the other. If the griffin hadn’t nipped us bloody, we might have forgotten to feed him. Six more days creeping along foot-wide paths brought us to the final pass, where the mountains spilled outward into the plains.

  I paused. So did Yún. Seeing a chance to rest, our pony dropped its head and blew out great steaming gouts of breath into the chilled air.

  All my life, I’d lived with soaring walls of stone around me. The skies reached up toward infinity,
but left and right, with hands outstretched, you always felt as though you could touch the next mountain, not so very far away. All that had vanished. Before me lay an impossible stretch of brown and gray—so flat, I felt as though I’d lost my balance, and I was falling sideways.

  Well, not exactly flat. The land undulated toward the horizon, interrupted here and there by rivers and their valleys, fringed by thin stands of trees. Farther north, a line of blue hills rippled outward toward the horizon. In the other direction, gold mottled the brown fields. Beyond that, I could just make out a few blotches of dark green, and some larger, darker spots that might be cities.

  It was the Phoenix Empire.

  10

  WE TOOK AN EASY ROUTE DOWN THE LAST MOUNTAIN slopes. Our goal was Silver Hawk City, a neutral territory that sprawled between the foothills and the plains. Old-time legends said its first ruler was a bandit queen who got tired of fighting for her gold. She retired from the road, promoted all her sergeants, and negotiated fearsome treaties with the Seventy Kingdoms and the Phoenix Empire. All the caravans that passed between the mountains and the empire paid a road tax, a water tax, a guard tax, and taxes on anything else the queen could imagine, as well as high tariffs on all their goods. In return, Queen Bao-yu and her descendents ensured the highways and railroads remained well maintained and peaceful.

  The last mountain pass had left us all exhausted. Even our ill-tempered pony had turned docile. Yún didn’t argue with me, but she also wasn’t talking much, except to mention necessary things. We’d left snow and sleet behind. The rains had slacked off to a drizzle, and we trudged through a blanketing gray mist. Luckily the roads were good. Our goat track widened to a regular highway road, marked with white painted stones touched with magic flux, which glowed like lamps in the fog.

  We reached the border of Silver Hawk City by late afternoon, only to find a wall of soldiers armed with electric stun guns guarding the gates. They waved us off to one side, where we joined a never-ending queue of caravans, mule drivers, trappers on foot, and even a string of camels laden with goods. Neutral or not, Silver Hawk City guarded its borders. No one passed in or through without showing papers and paying their tax. We stood in line, passports in hand, for hours, while our pony stamped its impatience and our griffin stalked up and down the lines.