Vu Côn’s words shimmered, in the darkness. Hunger. Desire. Folly.
I don’t care. Let me have this, please. Just this thing. One night. One moment of breathing that belongs just to me. And, reaching up, Yên drew Vu Côn to her, and drank in all of her to slake her thirst.
SEVEN
Threads of Fate
Yên woke up to an unfamiliar presence. For a bare, panicked moment, she thought she’d opened a gate again, that whatever lurked behind the threshold was in her room. And then she remembered, and the cool, soothing languor stole over her limbs again.
She lay in the crook of Vu Côn’s arms, pillowed on wet scales. Cold had seeped into her hair, a tingling, pleasant sensation.
“You’re awake,” Vu Côn said. She lay with her head on Yên’s lacquer pillow, the points of her antlers barely resting on the sheets, the rest of her body spread, serpentine coils taking over the entire bed. Her gaze was still far away. “Last night...”
Yên took a deep trembling breath, found herself braced for unpleasantness. “It was wonderful,” she said, trying to still the shaking of her body.
Vu Côn’s clawed fingers trailed in Yên’s hair, gently untangling knots. “I hadn’t done this in a long time.” Her voice died away, no longer old or severe, but full of a terrifying, childlike wonder.
Since Vu Côn’s husband had died. Yên closed her eyes. The water from Vu Côn’s body seemed to have crept into them, a stinging pain she couldn’t blink away. “It was worth it,” Yên said. So many questions, so many unsaid things. She was free now, free to leave the palace, to return to her village. To Mother and her duties. To the elders. She could take the book with her, continue to work with it until she mastered the magic. Until she could avoid accidentally opening gates—
No, she wouldn’t think of the gates, or of what waited for her on the threshold.
“We do need to talk.” Vu Côn sounded regretful. She bent toward Yên, kissed her lightly on the lips, sea salt and cold, tight air, and a faint aftertaste like algae.
Yên said nothing, merely waited. It had been wonderful, and yet it changed nothing. Not to who they were, not to what they’d done. She might be free, but she was still a poor scholar, and Vu Côn was still a spirit in a palace, so immensely beyond Yên, the idea there might be more than one night was presumptuous. Vu Côn was so brusque and so accustomed to getting her way, so unthinkingly arrogant that she’d never consider Yên as more than a passing fancy, a toy she could have. They could have that night, and more besides, but it would never be more than an affair. Yên had her own duties, her own life.
And then there was the matter of whatever the twins were up to, of Gia Canh and the hospital and the sleepers’ room.
When Vu Côn did speak, it was nothing Yên expected. “Your mother is a healer. You used to assist her. You must have basic knowledge of the five elements and the flow of khi in the body.”
“Yes,” Yên said, cautiously. Was this about the hospital? Was she meant to help there? A covert way to let her know Vu Côn already knew about the twins’ experiments? But Vu Côn’s face was drawn, taut with something almost like grief.
“Have you taken your pulse lately?”
The implications were obvious. Yên said, “I leave that to people who know what they’re actually doing.”
“Humor me,” Vu Côn said. It would have been an order if her tone hadn’t been so bleak. And then Yên remembered she was free.
Yên sat up. Moving away from Vu Côn felt like tearing herself away from the numbing, reassuring cold into suffocating dryness. She laid a hand on her pulse. Under her fingers wasn’t the regular throbbing of a human heart, of blood shifting from liver to heart, from veins to arteries. It was faint and crumbling like dry rice cakes put in the mouth, disintegrating into stale dust as soon as the tongue touched them. Her duong and âm were still in balance, but they felt curiously loose, not tied to each other as they should have been, as if a slight gust of wind, a slightly stronger-than-usual breath, were going to be enough to send them both tumbling into nothingness.
On her wrist, Vu Côn’s words shone. Blazed, more strongly than ever. Protecting her, Vu Côn had said. Making sure she had time to master the magic. But that wasn’t all they were doing, was it? A fist of ice was tightening around her innards. She withdrew her hand from her wrist, took her pulse again. That same fluttering, irregular feeling. Every moment felt like a struggle, every moment wondering if it would finally flounder and stop.
“I’m ill,” she said, slowly, carefully. Which was...no, not impossible, because everyone fell ill, because of course she was, else why the medicine Vu Côn was giving her, or the words on her skin? “It’s serious.”
Vu Côn had pulled herself up. She was naked still, her long hair streaming behind her, halfway to a mane of hair and greenish algae, her skin soft and pliant. Yên ached to lose herself in it, knew that she couldn’t, not anymore. “I’d need to examine you to know. In my office.”
Unbidden, a memory: Vu Côn, standing on the threshold and handing her Mother’s message. Remembered a hand as inert as stone brushing her skin. “You’ve taken my pulse already, haven’t you? How long have you known?”
Vu Côn shook her head. “I wasn’t sure when you developed the magic. Those things just don’t happen to adults. It meant you’d caught a virus somewhere. The magic is in your genes now. It’s unlikely healing you would remove it. But the virus is still raging in your body.”
“And you never told me?” She shouldn’t be yelling. She shouldn’t be so angry, except that here it was: Vu Côn deciding on what was best for her, thoughtlessly, not even realizing what was wrong with that. Like the words on her wrists, except that these had been to keep her out of immediate danger, and this was just denying her the truth. Just watching her dance near the abyss.
“I had it under control.”
“That’s not the point!” Yên struggled to breathe. “I want to know, not to be protected like I’m a five-year-old child!”
Vu Côn drew herself up, eyes blazing. Her antlers grew two sizes larger, sharp enough to transfix Yên, and matters would have been very different if someone hadn’t knocked at the door, the sound echoing in the deathly silence.
They knocked, again and again, getting increasingly frantic. “Teacher? Teacher? Are you here? Please.”
Yên and Vu Côn stared at each other for a fraction of a second. They both dived toward their discarded clothes. Yên slipped on her tunic and trousers as the knocking went on. “I’m coming!” Behind her, Vu Côn was rising, clothed in scales and whirlwind and the murkiness of algae. When Yên threw open the door, Vu Côn was one step behind her.
It was Thông, disheveled and out of breath: their flowing, embroidered tunic hanging askew, with the sleeves of their under-robe peeking out from the brocaded ones. Their gaze moved from Yên to Vu Côn, taking in their own disarray. A brief, eyebrow-arching moment before they remembered what had brought them there. “Please,” they said. “He has Liên. He—he says we owe him, that he wants to get out of the palace—” They breathed, slowed down, but all the words came out in a jumble. “He’s all pain and anger, and I don’t know how to stop him!”
“Who?” Vu Côn asked, but Yên already knew the answer.
* * *
“Tell me again.” Vu Côn’s voice was icy cold.
Yên clung on for dear life. She and Thông were riding on the back of Vu Côn’s huge serpentine form, zooming through a corridor, pillars rushing by in a thunder of vermillion wind. Vu Côn’s spines rubbed against Yên’s fingers every time she banked.
In Yên’s mind, her spell for finding the twins ran, again and again. Blood. Bone. Threads. Fated to meet again. The youngest. She’d amended it to find only Liên; otherwise, she’d have been overwhelmed by the proximity of Thông, who was sitting next to her on the dragon’s back. The answering tug was so weak, she couldn’t even pinpoint a direction.
“I’ve already—” Thông’s voice was small and slight.
“—told me that you decided to try healing someone on your own, and then when that didn’t go right, decided that I didn’t need to know and you could fix it yourself?” Vu Côn’s growl threatened to unseat Yên.
Yên said, “I was going to tell you.” She fought back the urge to cough. She felt increasingly lightheaded and exhausted from the exertion of clinging to Vu Côn’s back.
Vu Côn growled again. “You’re not the one who has to apologize.” She banked again as the corridor made a sharp turn.
Thông said nothing. They weren’t in full dragon form, presumably because Vu Côn wasn’t about to allow it. Though now that Yên thought about it, the twins were reluctant to shift shape at all. They’d playfully take on dragon attributes, but she’d never seen them as she’d seen Vu Côn: huge and serpentine, all sharp edges and spines and claws.
Around them, the walls receded, and the room with the sleepers shimmered into existence. The huge, ornate doors, and ahead, the ring with the infinitely receding beds; the single empty one with its controls glowing in the darkness. It shimmered, as if it weren’t quite there.
“The bed isn’t here,” Thông said, quietly. They sat on Vu Côn’s back, ramrod straight, though their discomfort seemed more embarrassment and fear. “We’re halfway there.”
“There’s no one here,” Yên thought. Liên. Flighty, fearful Liên. “When did he take her?”
“I don’t know,” Thông said. The same hint of panic in their voice she’d heard back at the door, alien and frightening. Thông seldom panicked. “He struck me unconscious as he left. He must have thought Liên would be more tractable....”
“Breathe.” Vu Côn’s voice was calm and controlled, like a skin stretched taut over a drum moments before it broke. “When did you come into the stasis room?”
The ghostly bed rushed at them. On either side were sleepers—human, or human-shaped, with creases under their eyes and skin blackened by burns, hands resting by their sides, fingers slack, nails tinged with the faintest blue, eyelids pale and closed. They were odd and unnerving. Yên suddenly realized it wasn’t because of their shape. It was because they didn’t move. Because their chests didn’t rise and fall, because they showed no sign of reacting to the dragon’s presence, because they didn’t look like they were sleeping.
Thông said, finally, “It was the end of the bi-hour of the Cat.”
“Half an hour,” Yên said, aloud. Vu Côn’s spines were digging wounds into the palms of her hands. “They can’t have gone far.” She forced herself to breathe. Her mind seemed to have scattered. Still no answer from the spell, and breathing hurt. This time, the cough came unbidden. She swallowed but nothing seemed to ease the constriction in her throat.
Sick. She had no pulse, or close enough.
Vu Côn rumbled again, under her. “I’ve warned you not to over-exert. You’re—
“—ill,” Yên snapped. “Yes, I know.” And there were so many things about that they needed to discuss, but now was not the time.
“Mother,” Thông said. “I could—”
“Yes,” Vu Côn said. She didn’t sound happy. After a silence that went on for far too long: “That’s not up to me. But I trust you to make the right choices.”
“Do you?” Thông asked, and Vu Côn had no answer.
Yên remained silent. It sounded far too large for her to wade into without knowledge.
“She can’t open the gate,” Thông said. They took a deep, shaking breath. “Only you can.” That last clearly to Vu Côn. “He’ll kill her.”
Yên felt the shudder that went through Vu Côn’s body. “There has to be a way....”
“There is,” Thông said. Their gaze was distant, their laugher bitter. “We’ve already breached so many rules of decorum. We might as well go on as we have started.”
It made no sense to Yên.
Thông drew themself up. As they did so, their entire shape seemed to shift and lengthen and change, scales flowing up from their hands to their face, the bare outline of antlers shimmering into existence, their hair streaming in the wind, covering Yên and Vu Côn in glistening darkness. “Show me,” they said, and their voice was like thunder, making the entire palace shake, and Vu Côn buckled, as if in pain, below Yên. Yên’s hands tightened, and still she started to slide down, her stiff fingers betraying her. Thông spoke again, and the vermillion pillars around them bent inward. Vu Côn screamed, and it was clearly pain this time, twisting in Yên’s entrails until it seemed to be her own.
“Take me to where my sister is,” Thông said.
A rumble. The pillars shook and cracked, with a sound that rolled away from them in both directions. The entire corridor sagged, as if all the bearing structure had come down. Cracks spread through the pearlescent walls, through which a bright, blinding light shone: that same yellow one Yên had seen in Vu Côn’s room, except ten thousand times harsher, the fire that would end the world.
Steps appeared in the corridor, but on all four sides, growing larger and larger as they led away from the walls, the space between them leaving less and less margin for Vu Côn to squeeze through. They were going to be crushed.
“Child,” Yên said, to the towering shape of Thông. A coughing fit stopped her.
Thông looked at her, and smiled. It was...almost familiar, gentle and amused, and yet something with it was so completely, jarringly wrong. “It’ll be fine,” they whispered.
Ahead, the stairs had joined, forming a vertiginous braided corkscrew, an impossible geometry that refused to coalesce into anything meaningful.
“Show me,” Thông said, again in that voice that seemed far larger than it had any right to be. This time, the tremor in Vu Côn’s body was barely perceptible. Yên couldn’t feel anything: Vu Côn’s protective spell, perhaps? All she could think of was Liên, was that time was running out.
Thông laughed, a sound that shook the corridor again. Slowly, ponderously, the stairs moved, opening up like a flower, revealing the liquid silver shape of a mirror in their center. A door. It rippled, as if to an inaudible rhythm. No, not inaudible. Yên heard it now, rising through the invisible pillars: a song as hesitant and pure as a child’s tune, and as hauntingly familiar.
She didn’t have time to ask herself what it was, because Vu Côn, without a word, raced toward the opening. Silver rushed to meet them all, the door growing larger and larger, each ripple the size of a tsunami, and everything flashed black.
A moment—a stretched, painful heartbeat when she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move—when she saw a dim shadow in the distance, growing larger: the silhouette she’d seen bending by her bed, the sheer, unending malice, and Vu Côn’s words burning on her wrist, trying to keep it at bay....
No.
Please, no.
And then time snapped back into place like a pulled rubber band, and the world rushed back to fill the void. She was on her knees in the dirt, coughing and coughing and coughing, struggling to breathe. And then it passed, leaving her almost too weak to stand.
She had to.
Because the other thing she could feel was the tug in her gut, rising now, unbearably familiar. Liên. She was close enough to Liên.
She pulled herself up, shaking. Neither Thông nor Vu Côn were anywhere she could see. And... She glanced around, but the malicious presence she’d felt in between the gate and wherever she’d landed wasn’t there, either.
She was in a sphere, like the library: a huge, translucent room with curved walls, rising slowly towards a dizzyingly faraway closure. Except that instead of pillars, the spheres held trees. They were sharp, skeletal networks of wires planted on the inner surface of the spheres, climbing upward as the walls did, dotted at regular intervals, a strange and distorted grid that almost made sense—bad imitations of life, shapes thinned and cut until they lost all substance and all semblance of pleasantness. Vanisher trees.
It didn’t matter. Yên set off at a shaky clip, going in the direction of the tug. It rose as it h
ad, previously, a sharper and sharper pain in her heart, a growing constriction in her lungs. Hard to tell, anymore, what was the sickness, what was the spell.
Blood. Bone. Threads. Fated to meet again. The youngest one.
She was going deeper and deeper into the forest, into the gardens. Trees rose all around her, swimming into sight, a devastation of cutting edges and unnaturally thin branches. Here and there, a few slender tree shoots looking similarly elongated and thin, sharp edges with nothing of life to them, no lichen, no fungus, no moss.
Blood. Bone. Threads. Fated to meet again. The youngest one.
Liên.
Breathing hurt, and her legs wobbled, and she was going to be sick, but she was the only one who seemed to be anywhere close, and there was no time. Around her, the trees tinkled. The noise should have come from the glass spheres that hung levitating a finger’s breadth from the branches—fruit, or liquid, or both—but it seemed to well up from the heart of the skeletal trunks.
The ground curved up. Yên was on the inside of the spheres now, clinging to what should have been the walls—don’t look down don’t look down. The voices had fallen silent, and the air was now oppressively hot. Not good. Yên pushed herself harder. The ground between the trees was now strewn with saplings. She wove her way through them, acutely aware the smallest of them would transfix her feet through the soles of her shoes with the same ease as a spear. Her lungs burnt, her legs wobbled. She wasn’t going to hold on for much longer.
And then she rounded a clump of trees into a clearing scattered with saplings, and saw two shapes. The pain of the spell flared up, and died. Yên remained upright, but it took all she had.
There.
One of the two shapes was Liên. She lay on the ground, unconscious, with a bruise spreading across half her face, the scales scattered across her left cheek turning dull and lusterless. The other had to be Gia Canh. But when he straightened up and turned, dragging Liên with him like a limp doll, wrapping his hands around the curve of her face, Yên barely recognised him.
In the Vanishers' Palace Page 11