by Zoe Marriott
“Banner-breakers,” he said, “had the ability to sense qi and to manipulate it in order to create illusions. These illusions, also called seemings, masks or shadows were woven from the fabric of our own energy, just as an ordinary weaver used silk or cotton to create new cloth. The thin energy constructions warped perception, causing people who looked upon them to see, or not see, what the banner-breaker wished.”
“But only what they see?” I had asked. “Not what they hear, or feel, or taste?”
He nodded, pleased, and I felt a flare of pride. “Very good! Yes. But vision is usually enough. My teachers told me: people believe their eyes, but often they see what they wish to see or what they believe they should see – not what is truly there. There are a few exceptions. Other banner-breakers or those skilled at the manipulation of qi. Children can sometimes be impervious to illusions, because they don’t yet take the nature of reality for granted. And, occasionally, those whose minds have been stretched or unbalanced through great trials in life, or desperation or illness. Those whom the world might call mad. When using illusion, beware such people above all else.”
They called the Leopard mad. But it was foolish to call men “mad” simply because they were brutal. Some might have called my mother mad, for what she had tried to do – and yet she was the gentlest creature alive, and had never tried to hurt anyone in the world but herself…
A muffled thud from the other side of the clearing brought my arms down from their final pose and my eyes open.
“Patience, Yulong,” I called, then stopped, noticing the lightness of my voice. The tincture was wearing off. I must apply it again before I broke camp today. I swallowed reflexively.
My father’s horse responded to my words with a high toss of his dark mane and a blustery snort, kicking his back hoof against the tree trunk where I had tethered him the night before.
“Spoiled, is what you are, my fine warhorse.” I stepped over the cold remains of last night’s campfire towards him. Grasping the halter with one hand and gently smoothing the other over the snowy white blaze on his forehead, I murmured, “No oats this morning.” He flicked his ear at me. “Bear up, friend. You want to make your father proud, don’t you?”
Yulong’s father, Tianma, had been my father’s last great warhorse. He had survived the Battle of the Thousand Steps by simple luck: Father had been forced to leave his mount at the top of the steps in order to lead his troops down on foot. In his retirement, Tianma had gone on to sire many fine sons for the Hua family stables. Yulong was his very last progeny, and my father’s favourite mount. He was as well trained as any young, untried stallion could possibly be – and, like me, he had grown up in the shadow of a parent who had achieved the status of legend. I loved him dearly.
He whuffled at my hair. I allowed it, but jerked back when he attempted to playfully nibble on my ear. “Man-eater! You can’t be that hungry!”
I patted him on the shoulder, pulled off his blanket and untethered the short rein that had held him overnight, leaving him on a long halter rope. He brushed by me eagerly on his way to the little rill that crossed by the far end of the clearing, and I left him to forage for his own breakfast. The sounds of his splashing and whinnying kept me company while I swiftly washed, refolded my belongings and stuffed them into the saddlebags. Then I had a choice to make. Tincture before or after breakfast? On the morning I set out I had chosen after – and nearly vomited.
Before, then.
There was a hidden pocket in my left saddlebag. It contained a carved ivory flask filled with murky brown fluid – a mixture of dried herbs extracted in alcohol. Most of these herbs were easily gathered in the countryside, and the alcohol could be any kind, in a pinch. My father made sure I knew the recipe, but he’d had this generous flask made up for me by the herbalist in town before I left. It was traditionally added to boiling water to create a steam that, although noxious, helped to clear congested lungs. It had saved my father’s life on at least three occasions. But it took a toll. After using it his throat was left raw, and his already deep voice became a husky rasp.
I poured a tiny drop of the liquid into a cup of water, nerved myself up with a deep breath, and then tipped it into my mouth, gargling it for a bare second.
It was enough. The tissues of my mouth, tongue and throat caught fire, and as I spat the tainted water out, I retched and then coughed uncontrollably, gasping for air. My stomach clenched and churned, abdominal muscles quivering.
It was several minutes before I got my breath back. My throat still burned and my breath still whistled, but when I swallowed I did not choke. I rinsed my mouth and was able to take a small gulp of water.
“Yulong,” I said, experimentally. It felt like I had tried to drink boiling vinegar, but my normally light, feminine voice emerged in a low, manly sounding growl that seemed to vibrate through the top of my chest and lungs. It was a novel sensation. If not for the suffering required to achieve it, I might even have found it pleasant.
Thank the heavens I only have to do that once every three days…
The handful of dried venison meat, dried apricots and nuts that were earmarked for my breakfast stayed in their wrappings. Maybe later. Or … maybe not. That was all I’d eaten for three days, after all. Thoughts of warm, soft, steamed rice, soup dumplings and sweet bean-paste buns drifted through my head, and I sighed.
The sky was yellow and blue now. I called a damp and smelly Yulong out of the stream and rubbed him down with handfuls of grass, then heaved my saddle on to his back and loaded up, pleased to see that my hands hardly shook at all, even if my guts did writhe.
According to the map appended to the red-sealed scroll, I should reach the army’s training camp before midday today.
I ran light mental fingers over my shadow mask. Unless I focused on it, I couldn’t feel it there any more; I had been wearing it during all my waking hours for the last three days of travel and for the two days of preparation before that. At this stage, it took less effort to hold it in place than to walk in the dainty silk slippers that were part of my usual attire.
There was nothing I could do about the sleeping hours, though. A banner-breaker must be conscious to shape their qi into the form of an illusion: it was an exercise of will, not a spell from a storybook. But real shadows and uncertain firelight would help to hide me during the nights. Anyway, in manly clothes, with my hair in a topknot and any hint of cosmetics scrubbed away, there was little to mark my appearance as strikingly different from those of the young men I would be surrounded by. No one would be looking out for signs of deception. Slim, round-faced young men were hardly an unknown sight. There was no reason to expect any trouble. No reason. None at all.
I stepped away from Yulong and slumped gracelessly on to a mossy rock.
My hands clutched at each other, tightening and releasing as if they had minds of their own. They were shaking now, all right.
There must be a saying from Father’s books that would help to calm me. I searched my mind frantically and found only emptiness, a frightening white void, filled with incoherent What Ifs. What if someone recognized me, the real me, somehow? What if someone checked the records and found the discrepancy in birth dates and became suspicious? What if I made some terrible error – something only a real man would know about? What if someone spied on me and told all the rest, what if, what if, what if…
What if I’m not good enough to make this work?
I didn’t have my father’s knowledge, his experience or his skill. Yes, there was some natural, base proclivity within me for disguise and concealment. But larger illusions of the kind that an army banner-breaker would be called upon to produce remained beyond me. As soon as I attempted to manipulate the qi outside myself, something went wrong. I became uncertain and even frightened. My attempts at large-scale illusion, halfway formed, would suddenly darken and shrink, and my father would turn to discover that I had once again vanished, no more than a patch of shadow against the wall of the wu kwan.
/> It was as if the very strength of my affinity for self-concealment prevented me from doing anything else. As if my ability knew my secret: that somewhere within, I was still just a child, frozen with fear in the dark.
I fumbled in my pocket and withdrew a small bronze hand mirror. It was about the size of my palm and etched finely on the back with graceful flowers – peonies, orchids and hydrangeas. It had been mine since I was small, a rare and treasured gift from my mother, who had been given it by her grandmother. I had not yet managed to come up with a plausible reason why a male, let alone a trainee soldier, would carry such a thing on his person – everyone knew that men did not indulge in vanity – but I had been unable to force myself to leave it behind, or even to hide it at the bottom of my saddlebags.
I needed it.
Angling the reflective surface just so, I gazed into my face. My new face.
I forced my lips into a small, reassuring smile. The mask echoed the movement. Perfectly. There was no delay in my reactions now, no expression that was stiff or unnatural, no artificiality perceptible to a human eye. This face looking back at me seemed every bit as real as my own.
In fact, the strangest thing of all was how little difference I found between illusion and reality. I had expected a male version of my face to strongly resemble my father or Da Xiong. Instead I looked … like myself. Like my mother, more than anyone. Her warm, hazel- and gold-flecked eyes, expressive, strongly marked brows, wide cheekbones, slightly short nose and long upper lip.
True, this nose was a little broader than the one I was born with. The chin was rather squarer. The skin was a tad more tanned and coarse. There was the hint of a bulge in the line of my neck, and a shadow both there and on the lower jaw that might have been dirt or an inexperienced young man’s imperfect attempt at shaving. These changes were undeniable, almost overwhelming to my eye.
It was still, undeniably, me.
I shivered, breathing out slowly. What was it about this boy version of me? Something in his eyes, the way he returned my gaze so straitly. I felt as if he knew something. Something I didn’t.
You’re being ridiculous.
Of course my own face, subtly altered, still resembled me. There were practical reasons for it to be so. If my mask slipped or I was caught for a moment without it, it would be next to impossible for anyone to consciously mark the difference in the few seconds that it would take me to weave it anew. And a less radical disguise meant less overall effort to create and hold it in place.
But.
But.
But looking at this face calmed me. Every time. Leached away my doubts and fear and replaced them with this new feeling that I could not quantify. As if I were on the verge, not of danger and possibly death and dishonour, but of some wonderful adventure. As if I were good enough.
This face looked right.
Yulong’s velvety nose dropped gently on to my shoulder – and deposited a long, foamy streak of half-chewed grass over the boiled leather scales of my brand-new armour. With an indignant yelp, I shoved his face away and began trying to clean up.
The mirror went back into my pocket, and soon we were on our way.
“Help!”
I stiffened in the saddle. Yulong flicked his ears as he drew up short, dancing in place.
“You heard it, too?” I muttered, turning my head this way and that in an effort to pick up the distant voice’s direction. There was nothing. My ears captured only the shifting music of leaves and birdsong that filled the golden morning.
My father had advised me to avoid the main roads; they were dangerous for everyone with the Leopard at large, and since the conscription of this region could not be a secret, the rogue general might have set ambushes along the route specifically to take young soldiers unawares. But that didn’t mean the woods were necessarily safe either.
Best to keep moving quickly and get to the camp.
I tapped my heels to Yulong’s sides to urge him back into a canter. He tossed his head sideways and scraped insistently at the packed dirt path with his hoof.
“Yu—” I began between gritted teeth.
Before I could finish the word, a gust of wind from the west carried the voice to me again, this time with startling clarity. “Help! Someone, please – down here! Help!” Male and young – cracked, hoarse with strain or fear or exhaustion.
Yulong let out a quiet whinny.
I bit my lip. Oh, curse it. I dismounted, pulling the reins over the horse’s head to lead him off the path into the trees. “If this is an ambush,” I muttered, “I hope you know you’ll never taste oats again.”
The trees were tall and ancient, closing overhead like the living roof of a green-gold temple as we brushed through the sparse undergrowth, both of us – if Yulong’s swivelling ears were any indication – listening intently.
“Down here!” the voice cried out, nearer now. It didn’t sound like the voice of a bandit.
“That could just be good acting,” I whispered to Yulong.
The young man shouted for help twice more before we broke through into a wide clearing of tall meadow grasses. I made to step forward; Yulong baulked again, jerking me back so hard that my shoulder popped in protest and I let out a cry of pain. My riding crop, clutched in my left hand, flew from my grasp.
It fell into the tall grass a foot or so from the tips of my boots. There was a metallic clang – and then a sharp SNAP that made the hairs all over my body stand up straight. A circle of grass gently slipped down, as if scythed.
Comprehension rushed over my skin in a tide of hot and cold prickles, and my heart surged painfully against my sternum. Great Dragon and Phoenix. One more step – one more – and—
“Look out for the traps!” the voice yelled, frantic. “If anyone is there, look out for the traps!”
I breathed in deeply and patted Yulong fervently in thanks. My hand shook. So did my voice when I shouted back: “I heard you! I can’t see where you are! Are you hurt?”
There was a moment of silence, then a raw sound like a cough or a laugh or a sob. Maybe it was all three. “I – I’m in the ground – there’s a pit, with spikes. But there are traps up there, bear traps, they’re all around. I was trying to avoid them, that’s how I fell in. Be careful!”
Spikes? I swore under my breath. A sunny, inviting-looking meadow like this, pocked with bear traps and pits… There could only be one explanation. Oh, the Leopard was clever. Horribly clever. He knew that cautious travellers would avoid the roads. So he made the woods and meadows close to the camp into death traps for them instead.
It could have been me in that pit, or another like it further on. If I’d kept travelling, oblivious, it probably would have been.
“Are you still there?” the boy called.
That made me start guiltily. “I’m here!” I shouted, trying to make my voice firm and reassuring. “I’m – I’m trying to think how to get to you. Hold on!”
My hands were still shaking, but there was no time to dwell on What Ifs now. I must only think: what would Father do? And I knew the answer. Someone needed my help, and I must give it. I rubbed my hands hard over my face, wiping away the panicked sweat on my brow and upper lip and making my mask buzz under my touch.
I could do this.
Yes. I would do this.
After backing Yulong up a few paces, I tied him to a sturdy tree branch. There was a coil of rope in my saddlebags. I pulled it out and tied it in a loop around my waist. Then I took my father’s – no, my – knife from my belt, hacked a slim tree sapling off near the root and stripped the small shoots and leaves from its sides.
“I’m still here!” I called out. “Don’t worry. I’m coming for you!”
Another small silence. Then a ragged: “Thank you.”
What else might be needed? I couldn’t think of anything. All right.
I sheathed the knife, took a firm hold on the end of the sapling, which had now become a stout staff, and carefully moved forward into the meadow. My firs
t step brought me to the trap that my riding crop had set off. The crop was a mangled ruin, snapped in two by the vicious, rusted teeth of the trap’s mechanism. If those teeth closed over a man’s leg, he would lose the leg, and almost certainly his life, too.
Tightening my grip on the staff, I bent my knees and swept it in a wide arc through the grass. At the very edge of the arc, there was another metallic clang as the tip of the staff hit a new trap. But this time the trap did not snap closed. Not enough pressure. I used the staff to shove the trap sideways out of my path, tipping it on to its side – and now it did snap shut with that same terrible sound. I flinched, drew in a slow breath and straightened.
“That’s one more trap out of the way!” I called, hoping I seemed cheerful rather than manic.
“Good?” the boy called back, not sounding entirely sure. “Please be careful!”
I knew he was probably mainly worried about his potential rescuer dying before they could reach him, but still – the concern was warming. “I’ll be there soon.”
Stepping gingerly into the slightly flattened grass I had cleared, I swept the stick again. Nothing. Another step. Another sweep. A SNAP that sang up my arm. I jerked back, nearly falling, and dragged the trap with me – fixed around the end of my staff. Planting my boot against the brutal curve of corroded metal, I wrenched the stick sideways. With a crunch, it came free, leaving the last four inches of wood still caught in the metal teeth, oozing green sap.
“Still safe?” the boy asked. He was closer now, more speaking than shouting.
“Still safe,” I confirmed, taking a moment to brush back the stray strands of hair that had plastered themselves to my damp forehead. “You? Are you all right down there?”
“Oh, fine,” he said, dry as dust. “Enjoying the shade.”
I let out a snorting laugh and heard him echo it shakily.
