Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  Xiulan flashed that daggerlike smile of hers. “There’s nothing common about me, Lee Yeon-Ji.” And just like that, the danger was gone, and the batty eccentric was back. “In seriousness, pacting with a human isn’t the sort of subject one should joke about. The Sanbunas take it especially seriously. I would keep that in mind, considering the, ah, polite company in which you may find yourself as my partner.”

  Annoyance fluttered through Lee. Did this highborn really think Lee didn’t know her taboos? “Right,” she said. “Then how’s about we get me a white crane instead?”

  Xiulan’s laugh was high and pleasing. “There truly is no button you won’t press, is there?”

  Lee shrugged. “Only reason I press a button’s if someone’s dumb enough to tell me not to.”

  The princess laughed again. “Come along, then. I suspect you’ll be familiar with our intended destination.”

  Their intended destination ended up being the shrine of Jiaying the Light-Fingered. Of the thousands of saints canonized by Heaven, Jiaying was by far one of the most popular. Lee didn’t have much regard for the Canon, but if there were any saint for a woman like her to pray to, it would be Jiaying. She was supposed to be patron to thieves and merchants alike, an overlap that more than one person had smugly pointed out like they were the first to notice it. This particular shrine was more a gathering of merchants than thieves, though in Lee’s experience it was hard to find one absent the other.

  The shrine itself was relatively modest: a simple three-story pagoda with an unadorned red façade. Far more noteworthy was the open-air market clustered around it. The stalls nearest to the shrine were more permanent, with wooden roofs, painted walls, and bright electric signs. The farther out they went, though, the more temporary the stalls became. On the edges of the market, the stalls were barely more than saggy tarps stretched across sticks jammed into the dirt.

  The rain had mostly cleared up, and the market began to fill with people as the merchants tried to make up for the morning’s lost sales. The moment the two of them got close enough, Lee was hit by the familiar smells of the place: The crispness of fresh fruit and vegetables. The funk wafting off barrels of fermenting fish. The entrancing aroma of beef on the grill, though the Shang were a soft people who wouldn’t know how to season or spice if their lives depended on it.

  “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Xiulan said as they approached. “Was I correct in my assessment?”

  Lee’s mouth thinned to a line. She had, when she’d been tracking Lefty. After the sun went down, this was the place to throw dice in Jungshao, and Lefty had never been able to resist a tumble of the bones. During a game, she’d learned, he’d talked a little too loosely about where he’d been, and given the wrong person the idea that if he were to disappear, he wouldn’t be missed.

  “Might be,” she said eventually.

  Xiulan patted her on the shoulder. “Rest easy, Lee,” she said. “You’re a free woman again, and the man who imprisoned you is not.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow in gentle amusement. “The man who locked me up isn’t a free woman?”

  “I didn’t take you for a stickler on the subject of dangling modifiers.”

  “Then what did you take me for?”

  “The same reason I took a rat and not a crane,” Xiulan said, as if that was supposed to make some kind of sense. She grinned down at the demonstrative crackle of white energy playing across her fingertips. “Let’s see what we can take for you.”

  After stagnating in a cell, Lee had already forgotten what it felt like to have so much going on around her. If each of her senses were a cup, every single one of them was filling to the brim, and running over. She chided herself. She’d crawled into busier boroughs than this and been able to keep her wits about her. She couldn’t let a mere two weeks in a box dull her edges.

  By the end of the hour, Xiulan had dragged her past every single stall in the place. She’d seen fighting roosters, spirited birds that needed to be caged separately to stop them from tearing one another apart. She’d seen lumbering hogs, with their fierce-looking tusks and ridge-backed hides. She’d even seen red-faced monkeys, who had thrown themselves at the bars of their cages and screeched at her as she passed them by. She saw all kinds of dogs, which never failed to make her happy.

  And yet each time, she kept walking.

  “I understand your reluctance to partner with just any creature,” Xiulan said with strained patience as they left behind a merch who was tending goats. “Shadepacting involves entrusting a piece of your deepest essence to another creature, and so it’s quite naturally in your best interests to be discerning.”

  “D’you always wait this long to say ‘but,’ ” Lee said, “or am I just getting special treatment ’cause it’s my first day?”

  “Nonetheless,” said Xiulan, “at some point, practicality must prevail. You have at your fingertips as fine an array of animals as a citizen could hope for, any of which would be the basis for a mighty, fearsome shade. I implore you: Please pick one.”

  Lee sighed. “You want me to pick the roost—”

  “His tail feathers were a marvel to behold!” Xiulan burst, starry-eyed. “And the ferocity in his pecks! He would serve you well.”

  “And I reckon it doesn’t hurt that the rooster’s one of the nine animals of Heaven’s Menagerie?” Lee said shrewdly.

  Xiulan grew somber. “Given the level of skepticism you’re bound to face, even in my company, an air of respectability will make you that much more difficult to doubt.” Then her glee was back, her one visible eye gleaming like a brown star. “Especially when partnered with so handsome a bird!”

  At the sudden display of enthusiasm, Lee felt a tiny surge of affection for the princess. Carefully, she distanced herself from the feeling. Down, girl, she thought, and wasn’t sure if she was chiding Xiulan or herself.

  Maintaining her cool demeanor, she folded her arms. “You pact with him, then.”

  Xiulan slumped, her white coat making her look like a wilted chrysanthemum. “Would that I could.” Her exaggerated motions and wild mood swings made Lee feel like she was taking a stroll with a cartoon. Lee found it, and her, utterly fascinating. “But even you must be aware that a person can only have a single shade.”

  Lee shrugged. “Sounds like all the more reason for me to be picky, then.”

  “But you do not—”

  “I’ve had bad partners before,” Lee said. “Is it really that surprising I don’t want to just up and jump in bed with another one?” A moment after the words had passed through her lips, she remembered that her companion wasn’t just some random agent of the Li-Quan, but a fully privileged princess of the Shang family. And even if she hadn’t been, she still would’ve been a Li-Quan agent getting mouthed off to by a gutter dog only a few hours removed from death row.

  For just a brief second, she saw a flash of something dangerous in Xiulan’s eye. Her stomach tensed, and she planted her feet that much harder into the ground, ready to run if the inspector rescinded her pardon. She didn’t know how well she’d be able to outpace that rat-shade of hers, but she wouldn’t go back to that cell meekly.

  But then that spark in the inspector’s eye faded. “You’re correct, of course,” she said. “I confess, when one grows up in a situation where she becomes accustomed to instant obedience from everyone she meets, it can make more mundane social interactions difficult to navigate. If these options are unsatisfactory, then we can wait. And when you find the proper shade, I give you my word I will assist you to the best of my ability.”

  At long last, Lee nodded. “Thanks for that.” She hesitated a moment, then sighed. “That said…the rooster back there did look promising.”

  It was worth it just to see Xiulan’s whole face light up.

  “Excellent!” the princess exclaimed. “Once we obtain our newest compatriot, al
l that will remain is to procure the rest of the materials for the ceremony.”

  Lee’s smile blew like a tire over a tack.

  “Ceremony?”

  * * *

  —

  One of the perks of being an agent of the Li-Quan, apparently, was privacy. Lee had spent her whole life in tenement houses and lockups, so she’d barely ever been someplace quiet, let alone someplace where there wasn’t a person within ten feet of her at all times. Even when she stayed at an inn, she’d usually been in the company of a partner or two.

  But once they’d obtained a proper fighting rooster and a few other supplies, Xiulan had herded them to the nearest inn, slapped her badge down on the front desk, and gotten them whisked up to the biggest room—which the stout little innkeeper repeatedly assured them had the thickest door.

  “The real best privacy measure is me,” he said as he threw open the aforementioned very thick door. In the three seconds before he’d caught a whiff of badge, he’d been surly and distant. But that shiny pentagon had brightened him right up, and he’d kept up a running patter the whole way up the stairs and down the hall. “I pride myself on my discretion, see? All kinds of important people stop by here for…important business.” He uncomfortably eyed the rooster in its cage for a second, before slapping on a fresh coat of professionalism. “And no matter what, I never tell anybody anything, Inspector, sir.”

  It didn’t escape Lee’s notice that though the innkeeper was flawlessly polite, he was also treating this as a two-person conversation. She was well used to it by now, but she always noticed.

  “Now,” the squat man went on, “I’ve got a few guests checking in soon, so if you’d just give me a rough idea of how long you’ll need the room…”

  “As long as it takes,” Xiulan said with a perky smile, shutting the door in his face. She turned back to Lee, who had the rooster tucked under her arm and was trying not to feel stupid. “He was serious about that door, at least. It should provide us with sufficient solitude.”

  The room he’d given them was large and sunny, with a wide window covered by thin red drapes. A gaudy red rug was splattered across the wooden floor, its pattern so cluttered it made Lee’s eyes cross. Even the wooden bed frame was lacquered in red, the mattress wrapped in red cotton sheets, and the whole damn thing shrouded in fluttering red curtains.

  Lee glanced down at her own dusty black dress, then at Xiulan’s all-white ensemble. “Don’t think we fit in.”

  Xiulan chuckled, then set down her canvas bag of supplies. Back at the temple of Jiaying the Saint, she’d tried to hand it off to Lee by instinct, but a withering look from Lee had been all it took to set her straight. “The one regard in which we fall short is in our lack of proper ceremonial garb.”

  Lee had never been to a pacting ceremony, but she had a decent idea of what the Shang considered important. “What would it be? Something drapey and red?”

  “Indeed,” Xiulan said. “In my haste to procure us a venue, I neglected to—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish; Lee had already torn one of the red curtains off the bed frame and draped it around her shoulders. “Oh, get over it,” she said when she saw Xiulan’s surprised face. “You’re rich, aren’t you?”

  Xiulan sighed, then nodded to an open scrap of floor. “You may kneel, Lee Yeon-Ji.”

  “Normally when a partner tells me that, we don’t have a chicken with us,” Lee said, but she knelt. She didn’t know what the hell this was all about, but the princess had her curious.

  From the bag Xiulan produced nine wooden incense holders, which she placed in an even circle around the spot where Lee knelt. “Traditionally, a pact is sealed on one’s thirteenth birthday,” she said as she made a second lap to set a stick of incense in each holder. “It’s something of a coming-of-age ceremony for family and friends to attend. Do the Jeongsonese have anything analogous?”

  “Sure,” Lee said as the princess made a third round, singeing each stick of incense with her silver lighter. “One day, Shang decides you’re not a kid anymore, and they start hitting you with grown-up punishment. I was ten.”

  It was a little satisfying to see Xiulan at a loss for words as she finished lighting incense.

  “Why are you doing all this again?” Lee said. She was awash in a cloud of scentless gray smoke. “The Sanbunas don’t bother with any of this.”

  “We are not in the Sanbu Republic,” Xiulan said, paging through a secondhand copy of The Nine Truths. “We’re in Shang, and we will seal your pact in the Shang way.” She arrived at the page she’d been looking for and began to read: “Lee Yeon-Ji, you have chosen the Path of the Rooster, most loyal of Heaven’s Menagerie…”

  Lee’s focus slipped as Xiulan recited from the book—mostly stuff about piety, and fealty, and other kinds of shit that’d never gotten Lee anywhere. But it wasn’t the words that kept her attention elsewhere; it was the rooster, who was ferociously pecking at the bars to his cage. The bird looked fierce, sure enough, but he didn’t look particularly loyal. Whatever ancient Shang had decided roosters meant loyalty, she decided, had clearly never met a dog.

  Xiulan closed The Nine Truths and set it down. She nodded to the cage. “You can let that fellow out now.”

  Carefully, Lee unlatched the cage. The little door swung open, and the rooster stepped out with a rustle of his wings. Lee had to admit, she’d been shallow and mostly chosen him for his plumage. The roosters she’d seen before were usually black or brown, with feathers that seemed to just be there to be plucked. But this bird practically looked as if he’d been painted. His breast feathers were the deep blue of the bottom of a lake, while his impressive cascade of a tail glinted like an emerald in the dark. Their exact hues seemed to warp and shift depending on how the light caught them. Even more than Lee and Xiulan, in the red room he stood out. He began to strut around the circle of incense, neck pumping like a fat little piston with each step.

  “Now, then,” said Xiulan, eyeing the rooster with some amusement. “You normally would have had months of lessons about the mystical aspects of shadepacting, so we will endeavor to make up for lost time in a stunningly expeditious fashion today. As it was explained to me, shadepacting is very much like lifting a car over your head: simple, but not easy. You simply attune yourself with an animal through physical contact, break off a piece of your essence, and graft it onto that animal. In exchange for accepting this piece of your soul, the animal will ask something of you, which you can neither negotiate nor refuse. The pact is sealed by giving it a name, at which point it becomes summonable and banishable when you invoke that name. Like so: Kou!”

  A flash of black, and the rat-shade appeared in the room. Its nose and tail both twitched as it acclimated to its new surroundings. But while it didn’t seem to be that fazed by the rooster, the same wasn’t true in reverse. The bird hissed, puffing up his feathers and brandishing one of its gleaming talons like a knife.

  “Little guy doesn’t take any shit,” Lee observed mildly. “Think I like him already.” She weighed the question on her mind, then said fuck it and asked it: “So what did you have to promise Kou?”

  Lee was beginning to understand that Xiulan could summon up an edge to her smile when she wanted to, and it came out to play when Lee asked that question. Kou cocked his head her way, so his eye with the black windowpane pactmark was staring her down.

  “That,” Xiulan said carefully, “is a highly personal question.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow, arched at just the right angle to suggest a playful challenge.

  Xiulan’s chilliness dissolved into a low, soft laugh. “Another button to push,” she sighed. “Kou, return.” The rat-shade disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, though that only calmed the rooster down a tiny degree. His neck feathers had ballooned his throat out to twice its normal width. His tail, which had before been shaped like a cresting wave, now pointed st
raight up and back, like a shark’s fin.

  Xiulan eyed him. “I don’t believe I helped his disposition much with that little demonstration of mine. Apologies. Still, though, look at the spirit on display here. I think you chose well.”

  Lee considered the rooster. She hadn’t felt any particular attachment to him when she’d first spied him in the merch stall, but if she was going to go on a manhunt across the Tomodanese countryside, he was definitely starting to look like a good ally. “Right, enough out of you,” she said, reaching over to scoop him up. “Let’s get pacted up and get on with—ow!”

  The moment she reached within a few inches of the rooster, he rounded on her and got in a good peck at the back of her hand. She yanked her bleeding hand away and cursed. She needed light fingers and quick hands to survive. If the Li-Quan couldn’t change that about her, then neither would this bird. “Probably a stupid question before I ask it,” she said to Xiulan as her future shade hopped out of the circle and onto the bed, “but in all that reading you did to pick up those fancy words you use, did you ever read anything about how to catch a chicken?”

  Xiulan shifted her weight from one tiny foot to the other. “There may be a few gaps in my education.”

  Lee sighed. “Never forget this was your idea,” she said before diving out of the incense circle and after the rooster.

  She managed to get a good grip on him eventually, though it was hard to stop him from kicking. She ended up having to hold his legs together with one hand as she shoved him under her armpit to keep him from flapping. His head was behind her back somewhere, and he alternated between clucking in protest and pecking in irritation at her dress. “I’m starting to think we haven’t got much common ground.”

  “Pessimism isn’t a quality I set stock in,” Xiulan said, but Lee could see the misgivings in her face. “And you have your grip. That’s important. You need to be touching the creature you pact with. Touch creates a bridge between your souls, and you’ll eventually need to cross that bridge to finish the pact.”