Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 17

Chueh-min shrugged. "They are our allies against the j.a.panese," he answered. "Politics are eternal. China has been conquered before and will be conquered again: always she rises, China still. Like the Phoenix. Look, do you see the dirigible?" He raised an arm and pointed.

Chueh-hsin turned his head to follow the cascade of teal and emerald and golden electric lights across the sky. The dirigible's side was picked out in a pattern of a phoenix and a dragon-turtle, and Chueh-hsin sighed at its loveliness. His preoccupation was interrupted by Chueh-min's voice, hesitant and almost reverential as he dropped his gaze from the dirigible to its lights, reflected in the broken surface of the bay.

"Did Xiumei really go back to her family?"

Chueh-hsin did not answer directly. He pressed his fist against the center of his breast, easing his breathing. "She was unhappy after you left, first younger brother."

Chueh-min lifted one hand and pointed out over the bay. "Then she's out there now?"

"No," Chueh-hsin said, unwillingly. "I said she wanted to go home. I did not say she did."

"Then where is she?" Chueh-min glanced over, his voice too carefully casual.

Chueh-hsin smiled to himself, knowing that even the bright moonlight was not enough to reveal so slight an expression to Chueh-min. Something must have showed, however, because Chueh-min glanced quickly away. "Where I can keep her," Chueh-hsin said. "Hurry. The moon will set soon, and we are only halfway there."

Chueh-min's shortcut led them unerringly toward the winking lights of the little town at the end of the peninsula. Chueh-hsin followed in his brother's footsteps. They did not speak of Xiumei again.

Chueh-hsin could not say when he first became aware that something was wrong among the mountains. Perhaps it was the faint sallow light that did not fade as the moon set, but seemed to rise from behind the hill to the left as if starlight soaked the earth of its far flank. He laid his hand on Chueh-min's sleeve and turned him toward the light. "Do you see it?"

"Yes," Chueh-min said, and set off in that direction without hesitation, the exhaustion gone from his step as he scrambled toward the spiked crest of the ridge.

Chueh-hsin had no choice but to follow until Chueh-min halted at the lip of a staggering cliff.

There was a valley below, a narrow steep-sided niche between mountains that would be almost completely inaccessible to a man on foot. Gullies and treeless cuts, furred green in verdant gra.s.s, ran down to a ravine that seemed to have only two exits. A worn switchbacked trail ran up a steep incline on the far side of the valley, toward the road which they had abandoned for this more direct route, and from which the valley was shielded by an even higher ridge. On the near side, a rope ladder dangled the height of the cliff face.

Electric torches lit the scene below. Men in dark uniforms hurried-efficient, purposeful as ants-around the site in utter silence. Chueh-hsin caught his breath as if the heavy rasp of it in his throat could carry far enough to give them away.

In the center of the activity, at the bottom of the valley, gilded red and crimson in the light of the torches, slumbered a dragon. Chueh-hsin could see the stout, black cables twined across its back, pinning each five-toed extremity to the ground. Chueh-hsin glanced at his brother, but Chueh-min had eyes only for the scene below. "The Governor must know of this," Chueh-min said.

"As he must know of the other news you carry?" Chueh-hsin could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. In all the truth of it, he did not even try.

"This is the other news I carry," Chueh-min said. "I didn't know it was here already, elder brother."

"The dragon? But he must know, if he's sent all those men-"

"That's not a dragon," Chueh-min said patiently. "It is an airship. And those men are j.a.panese." This time he did meet Chueh-hsin's eyes. And then cursed softly under his breath and yanked Chueh-hsin away from the edge of the cliff, as the bustle below increased. The men threw the dragon's tethers free, and slowly-majestically-the amazing animal rose.

It writhed in the sky like a serpent, its thousand-yard length glittering as it rose. Its throat glowed blue with flame, jaws working like the mouth of a horse champing the bit, and Chueh-hsin could see that it was somehow lit like a paper lantern from within.

"No airship could look so real," he murmured. He might have stood hopelessly and watched its gold, five-toed claws clench and twist on air, but Chueh-min clutched his wrist and dragged him into a staggering run. "They'll bomb the palace from the air."

"Worse," Chueh-min called over the thud of their feet on the gra.s.s, the sporadic rattle of gunfire behind them. They must have been seen when they started to run. "It breathes fire. It's here to destroy the Governor's palace. The people will see the Imperial dragon rise from the mountain to destroy the British overlords. There will be an uprising-"

And worse still, Chueh-hsin thought, hearing the amplified cries of pursuit above and behind them as the gra.s.s lit sharp-edged and white beneath their feet, the dragon-ship's searchlights coming to bear. The j.a.panese will walk into a China already softened by war. Chueh-min stumbled, his sandaled feet sliding on the gra.s.s, pulling Chueh-hsin into the orbit of his arms and rolling with him as they fell. Bullets sang around them: Chueh-min shielded Chueh-hsin in the curve of his arms. And Chueh-hsin curled himself taut around the hard-sh.e.l.led object that jabbed his bosom as they rolled.

Chueh-hsin could never have described what happened after. He lost one sandal as they tumbled down the long, green slope, suffering bruising collisions with rocks and earth. Chueh-hsin gagged at the sound of green twigs snapping, not knowing at first if his own bones had broken or Chueh-min's. The eggs in his sleeve pocket crushed like teacups under a big man's boot. Chueh-hsin fell atop his brother and heard a bubbling groan, spread himself wide across Chueh-min's body to absorb the expected impact of bullets.

The airship slid overhead, gleaming like the moon it eclipsed, silent except for the tremble of wind against its taut, scaled skin, and nothing touched Chueh-hsin at all.

He pulled back and rolled over, amazed, watching that long sinuous body glide by like a living river of gold. And then he heard Chueh-min cough wetly, and heard his brother's slick, soft hiss of pain. "Chueh-hsin." Not so much speech as the bubble of a voice from a great deep.

"Don't talk," Chueh-hsin said. "You're hurt."

"I'm dying. At least one bullet has entered my back," his brother answered, matter-of-factly, and black shining blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. He gasped between each word. "Run to the Governor. Can you run, elder brother?"

"It's no use," Chueh-hsin said. "I can't outrun an airship. And we have no duty here-"

"You owe me this."

"I owe you nothing."

"Your duty as my elder brother."

"As you fulfilled your duty as my younger brother when you went into the pay of the British? Or as you fulfilled it when you f.u.c.ked my wife?" He stopped, appalled at his own bright-edged words, and pressed his hand against his bosom. The turtle-if the turtle had been crushed- He pulled her out, a hard dome of jade no larger than his palm, and tried to see her in the moonlight. He smelled his own sweat, the fermented reek of the thousand-year eggs, the hot red iron of Chueh-min's blood. He held her cupped in his palms, close to his face, turning to the copper moonlight and tilting his head as if, through the darkness, there was any chance at all that he could see a jagged crack marring the green of her sh.e.l.l.

Huddled close within her carapace, she didn't stir, even when Chueh-hsin blew across the opening for her head, to let her taste his breath.

"Xiumei?" Chueh-min said, or tried to say. Chueh-hsin cupped his fingers carefully around the turtle in his palm, and reached out with his other hand to take Chueh-min's.

He looked down, surprised. Chueh-min's fingers lay slack and boneless between his own, and his eyes reflected the moonlight dully, slitted open beneath clotted lashes.

"Xiumei," he said in answer, as if Chueh-min could hear him, and turned his head to follow the inner-lit silhouette of the dragon against the star-scattered darkness above. Fire wreathed its mouth, the mechanical jaw working through what must be some fantastic contrivance. Chueh-hsin dropped his brother's hand and stood, the contracted turtle held up before him like an offering, and imagined he could hear the shouts of terror as the puppet-dragon came down on the Governor's palace.

The turtle lifted her head and watched with her husband as the dragon fell. She blinked tiny, rice-paper lidded eyes in the moonlight, and turned her gaze to Chueh-hsin. "Free me, honored husband," she said, "and I will call my father to put an end to that paper dragon."

Chueh-hsin bit his lip. "Obedience is a wife's duty," he said.

"It is," she answered. "As loyalty is a brother's. Chueh-min saved your life, my husband-"

He watched the incandescent gold ribbon of the dragon turn against the night sky, watched it begin to descend, still dripping fire, upon the tea-shops and the houses near the palace. "Call your father," he said.

"Will you free me, Chueh-hsin?"

"Call your father," he said, and the turtle closed her eyes and withdrew her head into her sh.e.l.l.

"Promise-"

"Call your father." A third time. "I will promise no such thing."

Her sigh was as faint and brief as Chueh-min's pa.s.sing breath. "Honored husband. It is done."

Chueh-hsin tucked his wife into his breast pocket, and lifted his brother's body over his shoulder, and carried them both up the ridge to watch as a k.n.o.bby, jade-dark shape as vast as the island under their feet rose above the gleaming ocean beyond the bay. Its bulk against the greying horizon was nothing but a shadow, the rough shape of a turtle, domed sh.e.l.l and lamp-lit golden eyes. One of its hands broke the surface, five grasping moon-white talons reflecting starlight like a ship's masts carved of ivory. Tendrils streamered from its head and back.

Chueh-hsin held his breath as the dragon-turtle cast a searching glance across the island and rose into the air, its dark k.n.o.bby outline silhouetted against the stars, as unlike the shining fantasy of the puppet airship as a mossy shrine is unlike a paper lantern. Ineffectual flashes of light sparked off its sh.e.l.l, glittered around the puppet airship like fireflies. Their report reached Chueh-hsin seconds later, and he realized he heard gunfire.

His brother's weight hung against his side like a sack of meat, and sticky wetness plastered his robes to his body, but he would not put his burden down. He stood on the ridgeline and watched the airship make a grand slow turn and bear down on the mansion and the town, the dragon-turtle sliding across the sky toward it, just perhaps in time.

In time. After all, in time. There was no contest when they met. The dragon-turtle moved through the airship like a stone through a paper fan, and tore it into burning, drifting shreds, which settled over the town as the dragon-turtle settled back into the sea: in abject silence, once the screams of falling men came to their end.

Chueh-hsin cupped his hands under the turtle's belly and crouched where the waves lapped most gently. He knelt, feeling the sand sucked from under his quilted trousers, the wet cloth salting his skin, and lowered the turtle into the ocean, ignoring the dry, possessive p.r.i.c.kle of thwarted ownership against the back of his throat.

"A turtle that big will never survive in the bay," Mr. Long commented, leaning forward over the basket of his bicycle. "Something bigger will eat her, don't you think?"

"She'll be fine," Chueh-hsin said, watching the jade-green serpentine head emerge for a moment from the foam-honeycombed waves. "She has many friends. They will take care of her." And she will grow as big as they are, one of these centuries.

Mr. Long scratched his cheek with his k.n.o.bby, five-fingered hands. "If you had one wish," he said, "one wish in all the world. What would it be, Chueh-hsin?"

"What have I done to deserve a wish, Mr. Long?"

The tall man's skinny throat bobbed as he swallowed, tilting his head and opening his hands, a disarming, half-embarra.s.sed gesture. "Call it a family obligation. A debt for a debt repaid."

Chueh-hsin knuckled his chest below the collarbone and thought, watching a dirigible drift out over the bay. There were things he desired: Wealth. Fortune. Love. A restaurant where the walls were lacquered red and gilded gold, rather than hung with paper streamers and peeling paint.

He thought of the Governor gone, of the j.a.panese contained. Politics and conquest are eternal, he thought. China is the Phoenix. China consumes whatever is given her, no matter how bitter, no matter how foul, and rises from the ashes whole.

There were things he wanted. Like Xiumei. And there were things he was required to do, and a death to which he owed his life. "My brother back," he said, hating to say it, as the sea wind lifted his hair.

"Done," said the dragon beside him. "He will be waiting when you go home."

Chueh-hsin scowled; Mr. Long dipped his head in benediction and slipped like a turtle into the sea, where he belonged.

Abjure the Realm.

Captain, d'ye see the banners brave.

Floating on the wind?

Fire and folly fear, me boys, Hail and h.e.l.l they'll send.

Riordan limped down the parapet to the next guard post, the soft sole of his left boot hissing on black granite as he hitched along in pursuit of the High-King. A cloak of tatters in colors gleaned from half a thousand fiefdoms swung from the bard's shoulders, but he had left his lute and his harp behind this afternoon. He was unarmed.

Aidan, called the Conqueror, glanced over his shoulder. The High-King frowned when a midsummer breeze lifted Riordan's lovelocked hair and blew it across the bard's face, revealing silver at the temples and the nape of his neck. "You should bind that back," Aidan commented, returning his attention to the amorphous smudge staining half of the eastern horizon, distant beyond the steep gabled roofs of the town. The guard stepped courteously aside to give his liege a clearer view, and one of the white-robed wizards the King kept always in attendance stood inconspicuously nearby.

Riordan followed the gaze. The enemy converging on the caer reminded him of ravens gathering when slaughter was on the wind. In fact, he saw a drift of shapes like leaves swept up in a wind spiraling over the enemy ranks. The harbingers of battle.

A long way off, but coming.

"I've been in wars before, your Majesty." But Riordan produced a sc.r.a.p of thong from his sleeve and twisted it through metal-red curls, obedient to the will of the King.

Aidan's lips curled slightly in a sneer as the bard's gesture revealed a half-dozen golden earrings. The King turned back to the encroaching army, resting his elbows on a stone crenellation. "Do you know what that is, Harper?"

Riordan too leaned against the roughhewn wall, taking the weight off his malformed foot. "An army, your Majesty." Never tell a King he's dull.

Aidan bent forward and spat off the parapet. "The army of my b.a.s.t.a.r.d half-sister the sorceress, Master bard. The undead army of Maledysaunte, the Hag of Wolf Wood."

"Aye, your Majesty."

Aidan shoved himself upright. "The gates of Caer Dun have never been breached. But odds are very good that something will die here today. An old blood debt. And with luck, a wicked woman. I look forward to your songs."

With a final stiff nod, the King turned and stalked away, leaving the crippled bard to struggle after if he cared to.

Captain, d'ye see yon maiden fair That all in black do ride?

That iron sword in her white hand, me lads, An iron heart does guide.

The Hag of Wolf Wood laid a gentling hand on the neck of her immense black stallion, noticing with amus.e.m.e.nt that the dirt from her cabbage patch still discolored her nails. She rode bareback and without reins, her steed restrained only by the sound of her voice and the grip of her thighs. Necromancer snorted and tossed his head, his broad dazzling blaze flashing in the sunlight. Murders of carrion birds-corpse-crows black as Maledysaunte's straight, shining hair; enormous whiskery ravens; white-vested hooded crows-wheeled overhead, drawn by the rotting stench of the sorceress's undead army.

Maledysaunte herself wore sachets of lavender and pennyroyal about her neck, the little pouches dangling over the whitework embroidery on her laced bodice. The rest of her robes-voluminous homespun lawn-were dyed black with sloes, giving her the look of one of her attendant magpies. She crushed one of the sachets, rolling the bag between her fingers to release the scent as she turned her head to survey the army of corpses.

Caer Dun, home of her childhood, loomed on the horizon. The gates were not yet closed for siege, and she smiled despite the colorful wardsigns, invisible to the unmagicked, that were written on the air above it. I'll see you yet avenged, Ygraine, though I d.a.m.n my soul to do it. See how the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d lives in fear of me now? Those are the workings of ten wizards at least.

She sighed, and shifted her sore bottom on the stallion's back. She scrubbed her hands on her thighs as if they were sticky. I've tried, Ygraine. But even I could not breach those defenses. Without a distraction. Without having come here myself.

I never wanted to come back here, or to pay these prices.

Necromancer shook his head hard, shying backward as a rotting wolfhound trotted too close to his feet. What a wand cannot master, the hand must undertake. At least I gave them enough warning to get most of the townspeople away.

"Sorry, old boy," she said to the horse. "I know, they don't exactly reek of sanct.i.ty. But they're all we have."

Patting his withers one-handed, she reached over her shoulder and touched the hilt of the black iron dagger that hung between her shoulderblades, concealed under the fall of a mantle of deepest green. Well, if I fail this time, I won't get another chance.

The thought cheered her.

She touched Necromancer with her small bare heels and he pranced forward, displeased slaver dropping from his lips. His head came up as she turned him south and west, away from the stinking vanguard. She nudged him into a gallop, clinging with a hand knotted in his mane and trusting him not to throw her. He left the dead willingly behind.

She guessed they were about to find out.

Captain, d'ye hear the trumpets brash Sounding the battle call?

We'll charge to the rolling drums, me boys, To the rolling drums we'll fall.

Riordan could have caught Aidan, limp or no limp, but the bard did not hurry as much as he might have. Nigh on fifty years he'd reigned, and he didn't look a day over thirty-five. And after a fortnight in the High-King's court, Riordan was ready to concede that the Hag had a point. Her half-brother was anything but charming.

Still, he was King, and the finest King the realm has ever seen. Witness the peace he enforced from sea to sea.

If Kings were charming they wouldn't need Harpers.

The bard watched the High-King's glossy black curls and cloth-of-gold surcote recede along the battlement, then returned his attention to the field. Teamsters and farmers, wainwrights and coopers and goodwives streamed in through the gates of the caer. A broader river of people fled west across the plains, who perhaps had not truly believed in the Hag's grave-stolen horde until they smelled it.

Riordan shook his head. If he'd a lick of sense, he'd be with that refugee train. Not trapped in a tyrant's summer castle while his evil half-sister rode down.

The warm wind from the east brought a stench of rot. Riordan covered his mouth with one string-callused hand and shaded his eyes with the other, trying to make out some detail of the enemy. Other than the clouds of carrion birds surrounding the advancing ranks, the curious silence and the lack of banners, he could see nothing. There must be a bard here, to tell the truth of it.

It had all the markings of a bleak and epic history, though Riordan had not been born when Aidan and his sister became enemies. The fresh-created King had married his b.a.s.t.a.r.d half-sister's half-sister, daughter of another branch of the same royal line. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d, a half-hour older than the legitimate Prince and touched with the evil eye, had been made a p.a.w.n of other factions, and the King's wife had smuggled her sister out of the caer and been burned for her pains.