Fox and Phoenix

by Beth Bernobich

  “I left some by the bathtub.”

  I eyed the griffin. She was right. Yāo-guài looked pretty shabby. No palace guard would let us inside with him the way he looked. Swallowing my grumbles, I captured him and stalked down the hall.

  The bathroom was more like an extra-large closet, completely filled with a gigantic iron tub. A small sign listed the invocations to use for turning the water on and off, and adjusting the temperature. More magic, I thought uneasily, and of a kind I never expected to find outside a royal palace. You couldn’t use up magic flux, according to my mother, but you could wreck the currents by sucking away too much at one time.

  Pretty soon I was too busy wrestling with a very uncooperative griffin to worry about magic or its misuse. By the time we finished with our baths and got back to the room, Yún and Quan had laid out breakfast. There were bowls of rice and curry, and a stack of yeasty cakes. Quan must have nipped out to an early market, I thought, as I gobbled down a handful.

  Quan watched as Yún fed bits of rice and beef to Yāo-guài. “You say he was dead?”

  “Dead and stuffed,” I said. “My mother bought him from a wandering junk man.”

  “Interesting,” Quan murmured. “There are some odd qualities about the magic, almost as if someone had cast several spells at once. Would he let me examine him?”

  “Try it,” I said.

  Quan and I exchanged pleasant glances. His eyebrows lifted, clearly suspicious, but he held out two fingers to Yāo-guài.

  The griffin gently nibbled at the offered fingertips. Its eyes gleamed and it snapped.

  Quan jerked his hand back and sucked on his fingers. He studied the griffin with increased respect. “I see where you got the name,” he said. “Little monster.”

  Yún chuckled. “It’s the fish oil on your fingers, I think.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.” She gathered Yāo-guài into her arms. “Now, what about Lian? We need to talk to her right away. Kai has a talk-phone, but we’ve had trouble using Lian’s number.”

  “And I bet the wizards here spike the lines,” I added.

  “They do,” Quan said. “Let me think.”

  He rubbed his bitten finger absentmindedly, as though he were running through a dozen or more possibilities. Like a doctor making his diagnosis, I thought. Or a spy figuring through which plans would work and what to do if they didn’t.

  No, not a spy. A nobleman used to courts and intrigue.

  “We could send a message,” he said at last. “By hand is best.”

  “A courier?” Yún asked.

  “No. I have some friends I trust.”

  He brought out a writing kit and paper. For a moment, he frowned at the paper, then brushed a note swiftly and sloppily. The message, which he showed to us both, told Lian that a friend in Lóng City had sent her a gift she had long desired in her heart. If she wished to accept the package, she should arrange for the messengers to be admitted to the palace. I also noticed he didn’t sign the message.

  The note went to a child in the courtyard below. Thereafter, Quan told us, it would make its way across the city to a certain trusted runner inside the palace.

  “What if you can’t trust this runner?” I asked.

  “I can. She won’t say anything. I know her.”

  Yún’s eyebrows lifted. “Another cousin?”

  “I have several,” Quan said mildly.

  His answer did nothing to ease the anxious twinges in my stomach, but I couldn’t argue without giving away our news for Lian. And no matter how friendly he was, I couldn’t quite trust him. Once we reached Lian, we didn’t have to.

  Two hours later, the reply came back: Bring me the package at once, please. I will make certain the gates open to you. Lian.

  The trip took an hour by tram, in between stops and transfers and blockages. Quan had politely insisted on coming, even though Yún insisted back—not quite so politely—that it wasn’t necessary. Most of the time, I pretended to doze in my seat, but I was watching Quan from half-closed eyes. Something had changed. He wasn’t the stiff, cautious young man we’d first met. He looked nervous, and that made me nervous, too.

  The tram jerked to a halt in the middle of a crowded square. At the north end, a high wall stretched the entire width of the plaza. Behind it came a series of huge buildings, fat towers, and skinny towers, all of them capped with gold-plated roofs shaped like fancy pastries. From everywhere at once came the strong, taut sense of magic. Those were no ordinary protection spells. Those would pluck any thought of danger from my mind and crisp my body to ash before I could even clear my throat to work a spell or plan a misdeed.

  The palace.

  Quan tapped my arm, recalling me. “This way.”

  He took us along the wall and around the corner to a smaller gate flanked by dozens of guards. All of them were dressed in sober gray. All had the imperial insignia of a blazing phoenix embroidered over their chests, and the usual assortment of stun pistols and daggers. Several, those with gems above the insignia or embedded in their ears, carried long curved sabers.

  Quan approached the senior guard and bowed. A flash of electronics from the guard’s eyes told me our images were being recorded. Nervously, I shifted on my feet until Yún hissed at me to keep still. Quan was talking to the guard, but his voice was too low for me to make out the words. Then I heard the words “gift” and “package.”

  The guard beckoned us to approach. “Show me this gift,” he said.

  “It’s a magical beast,” Quan said smoothly. “Apprentice Yún?”

  Yún took the griffin from inside her shirt and let the guard examine him. Yāo-guài hissed and ruffled his feathers, but allowed the guard to look him over, only snapping once when the man lifted his tail.

  “Very well,” the guard said, returning the griffin to Yún’s arms. He flicked open the talk-phone on his wrist and spoke some nonsense words. Coded instructions, I guessed, because a runner appeared almost right away.

  First, we had to stop inside a small stuffy room, where more guards recorded our faces and fingerprints. After that, the runner took us through a small set of doors into a very plain corridor—a service passageway, from the looks. Gray stone walls. Gray stone floors. The air felt warm and close, as if we were a hundred li underground. A series of lamps overhead slowly rotated on their stems, following us as we passed by.

  The corridor ended in an empty room with low ceilings and a railing around its three walls. The minute we stepped inside, a door slid shut behind us. None opened in front.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Magic lift,” Quan said.

  “But we’re—”

  The runner pressed a series of buttons on a small inset panel. Abruptly my stomach dropped to my toes. I lurched sideways, just in time for Yún to lurch into me. Quan and the runner had both braced themselves against the wall.

  One sudden stop. Another lurch toward the side. My ears were buzzing from all the magic, my insides were crawling up through my throat, and all I wanted to do was pound on the door and scream for someone to let me out of this hideous trap.

  With another whooping change of direction, the magic faded slowly away, while it felt as though the room was sliding slowly across a level surface. I swallowed my stomach back to its proper place. Yún didn’t look any less unnerved than I did. The wretched griffin, however, was chirping in excitement.

  The same doors slid open to reveal another corridor.

  “Did we actually go anywhere?” I croaked.

  “Quite a distance,” Quan said. “Up five floors and across half the palace.”

  To my relief, he wasn’t laughing at either of us. The runner had that blank servant’s expression that said he’d tell the story later to his friends. Probably with lots of exaggeration and jokes about the poor mountain peasants from up north.

  “This way,” Quan said.

  “You say that a lot,” I growled.

  Yún smiled queasily, as though she
hadn’t recovered yet. “Slowly, please.”

  We followed the runner past several large courtyards filled with blossoming trees, along a sunlit gallery, through more halls and chambers. Finally, we stopped before a small set of doors, decorated with tiny enameled panels depicting folk tales of the mountain kingdoms.

  The runner touched a wall panel of silver webbing. Soft chimes sounded from within. Very quickly, a woman in the emperor’s livery opened the door. “The princess expects you,” she said, gesturing for us to enter.

  We came into an airy, six-sided entryway. I only had time to take in the silk hangings; the miniature fountain carved from a block of jade, with more jade figures set all about its rim; and a scent that reminded me of mountains and home, before a voice called out. “Kai! Yún!”

  Lian ran toward us. She hugged Yún first, me next. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said fervently. “I’ve missed faces from home. I missed yours.” She hugged me again, so fiercely it left me breathless. My throat contracted as I realized we would be bringing her no good news from that home she missed so much.

  A musky scent tickled my nose. A fox-shaped shadow glided past us. Jun, Lian’s fox-spirit, circled us once and paused, her nose pointed toward the doorway behind us. Her muzzle wrinkled into a snarl.

  Abruptly Lian drew back. Her gaze traveled past us to Quan. All the joy vanished from her face. “You,” she said. She drew up stiff and straight, once more the cold, remote princess I remembered from the first time we met.

  Quan flinched. “Your Highness.”

  “You did not write that note,” Lian said. “I know your handwriting. Or were you lying with your brush? The way you lied to me before, with words and deeds.”

  “Lian, I wasn’t lying. I—”

  Jun cut him off with a growl.

  “Go,” Lian said coldly. “Thank you for bringing my friends, but go.”

  Quan’s face flushed. He swept into a deep bow, his manner as formal as Lian’s. Without another word, he backed out of the entry hall. Jun flickered out of sight, back to the unseen world of the spirit companions.

  Lian waited, her hands pressed together in front of her chest, until the outer doors closed. She released a long breath and turned to us, her expression still remote. “I apologize for such rudeness,” she said. “It was . . . he was . . .” She dismissed whatever she was about to say with a swift sweeping gesture. “Never mind him. Tell me why you’ve come to Phoenix City. I’m quite, quite happy to see you, but it’s so strange.”

  Yún glanced at me. I opened my mouth, but my voice died inside my throat. After a long moment of silence, Lian stared from Yún to me, then back. “The message said you had news,” she whispered. “What is it, Kai?”

  There was no way except the straight one.

  “Your father is ill,” I said. “They believe he is dying.”

  12

  LIAN STARED AT ME. “MY FATHER? DYING?”

  A woman popped into sight from behind a painted screen—another servant dressed in the emperor’s livery. She bowed quickly and vanished through a doorway. I heard the susurrus of voices in another room, the hiss of slippers over bare tile, as those other servants withdrew to some farther set of rooms. The gossiping had started already.

  Lian’s expression seemed to close in on itself, as if she was thinking the same thing. “Please,” she said, “come with me. We must talk more.”

  She swept through the arched doorway, her robes gleaming like a waterfall of blue and silver. Yún and I glanced at each other, then hurried after her.

  Lian took us without pause through a series of exquisite rooms. Watercolors hung from the walls. Fantastical creatures built from wire and priceless gems curled around the lamps overhead. And everywhere, just where you might want to sit, were benches covered in brilliant silks of jade and indigo. It was like walking through a fairy-tale treasure house.

  I’d hate it here, I thought. Nowhere to kick off your sandals and get comfortable.

  Not exactly nowhere. Lian brought us to a small room, off what looked like her bedchamber. Here were several enormous stuffed chairs, the kind where you could curl up and take a nap. Or sit and read. Or just talk with friends. Oh, and there were books—shelves and shelves stuffed with them. A wide desk occupied one corner, with more books and a few papers scattered over its polished surface. I saw a brush and inkwell, a sheet of paper half-filled with writing. She must have been at work when we arrived, I thought.

  Lian paced back and forth between the window and the desk. She swung around, her face no longer blank, but alive with a fierce determination. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

  Yún and I glanced at each other. Yún nodded. You first.

  Right. The ghost dragon king had appointed me the messenger. With a few stops and starts, I gave Lian the story from the beginning, from the trade negotiations, to her father’s sudden collapse at a banquet, to the rumors of plots and machinations at court. Lian nodded a few times—her father must have told her about the negotiations months before—and frowned when I mentioned the rumors. When I told her how the court wizards and physicians were unable to cure the king, her lips thinned into a sharp line.

  “Why did no one send word?” she demanded.

  “They claimed they did,” Yún said. “They said you never replied.”

  “I received no message. Go on.”

  I finished up with my mother’s disappearance and the ghost dragon king’s commands, then Yún took over. She told Lian about our arrival in Phoenix City and how we met Quan. The moment she mentioned his name, Lian’s eyes narrowed. “He is an opportunist,” she said, her voice going low and dangerous. “He used your innocence to pretend you needed him.”

  “He was not entirely wrong,” Yún said slowly. “We’ve encountered some odd . . . coincidences.”

  She named them: the bandits who weren’t really bandits; the thief in Golden Snowcloud; the strange magical disturbance in Silver Hawk City, on the edge of the Phoenix Empire. “Chen and Qi went off to investigate, and they haven’t come back yet. That’s strange, too.”

  “Coincidences,” Lian began.

  “Yes, but there have been too many of them,” Yún countered. “Magical and mundane. Kai didn’t say before, but he tried a dozen times or more to call you with his talk-phone. He couldn’t. The network said your number no longer existed.”

  “And don’t forget about the magic flux,” I said. “Snow Thunder City had none at all. A boy told us it would come back in the spring, but that makes no sense.”

  “It might be connected with the crisis in magic flux shares,” Yún said.

  Lian waved her hand abruptly. “The magic flux doesn’t matter. What matters is that I go back to Lóng City at once.”

  She clapped her hands. Dozens of servants in the emperor’s livery swarmed into the study. A flurry of complicated commands followed—instructions for collecting belongings, fetching trunks from storage, a summons for scribes and runners, and orders to her own maids to lay out her best and most formal robes—then all the servants streamed off in ten directions.

  Lian turned to her desk and pressed a series of buttons. The surface split in two; a very sleek calculor machine rose into the air. She tapped the keys. The vid-screen (made from a strange plastic web) glowed a moment, then its background went dark, except for the image of a man’s pale face in the center.

  The man bowed. “Your Highness?”

  “I request an interview with His Imperial Majesty. An urgent matter.”

  “Of course. I will inquire.” He didn’t look surprised. These rooms were spiked, then.

  The man consulted another screen off to one side. He tapped a few keys. “His Imperial Majesty will receive you in the Emeralds-of-Heaven audience chamber in half an hour. You may have ten minutes of his time. Does that suffice, Your Highness?”

  “A more than generous allotment,” Lian said. “Thank you.”

  She switched off the calculor and returned th
e machine to its slot. For a moment, she did nothing but stare into the distance, as though Yún and I were invisible.

  (As though she sat alone on Lóng City’s throne.)

  At last, she gave herself a shake. Her mouth twitched into the barest of smiles. “My presence here is different from most other students’. The emperor specifically invited me to stay at his court. I cannot leave unless I petition him. But there is no need for you to concern yourselves,” she said, as Yún started to rise. “Stay here and rest. I shall have the servants bring you refreshments.”

  She clapped again. More servants appeared from nowhere to receive orders. Once she delivered them, Lian herself vanished through a side door, trailed by a dozen maids.

  “She’s very upset,” Yún whispered.

  “Upset, or angry?”

  Yún eyed the doorway where Lian had disappeared. “She is like her father,” she said in soft voice. “Very proud. Which means she would hate to hear me say such a thing.”

  A collection of servants arrived with trays, bearing tea and pastries stuffed with magic crabmeat. From the next room, we could hear Lian’s raised voice. More servants hurried between nearby rooms, fetching piles of clothing, from brilliant emeralds and ruby to sober-hued grays and darkest indigo. Others flitted around with brushes and combs and jewelry boxes. Watching them, I forgot to eat, except when Yāo-guài pecked at my hands.

  Sooner than I expected, Lian reemerged from her dressing room. She wore layers of shimmering robes, ivory and emerald green and black, with gems at the sleeves and all along the hemline. More gems sparkled from her hair, which she now wore in a complicated arrangement. “This shall not take very long,” she said.

  She swept out the door, leaving a faint cloud of jasmine perfume in her wake.

  “Very proud,” I whispered.

  “Shī,” Yún said, hushing me. “She worries about her father.”

  Remembering how my mother had grieved for my father, I shut my mouth on any comeback. Yún was right. Lian would not show any tears or anxiety in front of us, never mind the rest of the world. Āi-ᾱi. Now I wished I had broken the news more easily, instead of blurting it out, but my words were like kites on broken strings, swooping away from all recall.