by Sean Stewart
The old man in red looked at him contemptuously. “Boy, you can’t even remember the things your father has tried to forget.”
The man in gold looked past Water Spider to his father. “‘Things that are done, it is needless to speak about,’” he said gently. “‘…Things that are past, it is needless to blame.’”
But Floating Ant said, “The boy is right.”
Twists of paper curled and twisted between the coals in the little stove. Surviving scraps still huddled in the corners, spotted with ink. There was a great deal of ash. “These were poems,” Water Spider said suddenly. He looked at his father in shock. “You have been burning your poems.”
His father laughed. An old sound, like twigs rubbing together. “I did not think you of all people would be concerned.”
“This was your life!” Water Spider tried to reach into the stove and pluck out one of the pieces of paper, but the heat was too fierce. He looked around for a pair of tongs. “This is ridiculous. Take them out. How many did you burn?”
“Only the bad ones.”
“How many, Father?”
“All of them.”
Water Spider looked at him in horror. For some reason this seemed worse than what was happening in Chinatown, worse than Pearl’s furious refusal. He felt like a little boy. He wanted to cry.
His father patted him awkwardly on the hand, and shuffled back into the kitchen. “I will make that tea.” Water Spider sat before the fire, devastated. With every breath, every movement, tiny ripples of air shuddered inside the little stove. His father’s life smoked and trembled.
The old man dressed all in red silks said, “Floating Ant has been a warrior, a poet, a husband, a father—What have you done, hey? Boy?”
Water Spider’s father washed out the teapot and returned it to the table with a spoonful of dry tea inside. When the kettle began to sing, he poured the water into the pot. The scent of tea stole through the room, pungent as crushed herbs, light as a summer breeze. When it had steeped, he poured a cup for his son.
“Thank you, Father.”
“Easy now, Spider. My old heart cannot withstand too much filial piety all at once.” Floating Ant watched his son drink. After a while he looked around the room. “Ah, what a group of terrible old men we are now, ah?” In his beautiful recitation voice he began to chant.
“I heard the old, old men say,
‘Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.’
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
‘All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.’”
Water Spider felt his father’s old fingers against his cheek. “Are you crying then, Spider? Well, that’s one good thing. If you can cry at a poem, there is hope for you yet…But as for the Shrouded Ones, they—”
“They are dead,” said the man in gold. Water Spider’s father blinked. “Tragic,” the man in gold continued, sadly shaking his head. “Wan Lu was slain by a demon seven years ago now. Or was it eight?”
“Eight,” the old man in red said seriously. “And Jimmy Kwong died of drink a year after that, wasn’t it? Under a cherry tree. They found him covered in blossoms.”
“Oh, did they?” Floating Ant said.
“And of course, poor Wei Ping!” The man in gold sighed and shook his head. “Gored by oxen, you know. Tragic, tragic.”
One eyebrow rose on the face of the laconic man in black. “Gored by oxen?”
“Trampled too,” the man in gold said solemnly. “They didn’t have the heart to show the body at the lying-in. Just propped a picture of him in front of his urn.”
“I…hadn’t heard,” the man in black said. “How melancholy.”
“Now cut this out,” Floating Ant said.
“So it seems you are left with only one choice,” the man in red said to Water Spider.
“Oh no,” Floating Ant said.
Water Spider looked around, bewildered. The man in gold smiled. “After all, you do know a man who served the Emperor.”
“Oh no you don’t!”
“Who has fought—and vanquished—many demons in his time.”
Water Spider blinked, and looked at his father. “Him?”
“No!” Floating Ant said indignantly. “Not me! The Emperor is dead, and I am no soldier. I am a poet.”
The man in black looked to the little coal stove, where the ashes danced. “Not anymore.”
“You?” Water Spider said, looking at his father. “You have bested demons? But I thought you were the one who ran…”
“I did.”
The man in gold said, “Remember, Carnegie was but the last battle in a long war.”
Water Spider reached out to his father. “If the Shrouded Ones are gone, then you are my only hope. Jen’s only hope. Please. He is very young and terribly profane. You would like him. Please.”
His father stood with his eyes downcast.
“You can take life by the haft or by the blade, old friend,” the man in red said to Floating Ant. “But take it you must.”
Water Spider’s father looked up with hunted eyes. “I cannot.”
Water Spider sighed, and stood. “You must do what seems right to you,” he said. “I will not question your decision. Thank you for the tea, Father. I will be going now.”
“Going? Going where? You said yourself you have nothing to go back for.”
“I told you, there is a man of mine I swore to rescue. If there is no help to be found, I must try the thing myself.”
“You! Don’t be ridiculous, Spider.” His father snorted. “You have spent your life on the wrong side of Hastings Street for such a business, boy. Writing edicts will not help you now.”
Water Spider smiled. “‘If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.’”
“If you must quote, pick someone who could write,” his father snapped. He rocked back and forth on his heels. Then with a snarl he crossed the room and pulled a coat from a hook on the wall. “If you had sired a child, I would have let you go, you fool.”
“Yes, Father.”
“But here you stand, threatening to end my line by throwing away your own ridiculous life. Idiot.” He belted the coat around his waist, old fingers shaking.
“Yes, Father.”
“And children are better than poems, ah? Ever read Municipal Gallery Revisited?”
“No, Father.”
“Well, you should.” He jammed a small black hat over his bald head. “What’s wrong with you, then? You like boys better in your bed?”
Water Spider colored. “No, Father.” The man in gold was smirking at him.
His father held out his hands expectantly.
“What? That is, how may I serve you, Father?”
“The sword, child,” said the man in red. “Give it to a man who can put it to some use, will you?”
“I don’t have to take insolence from you,” Water Spider snapped. He schooled his features and unbuckled his ancient blade. “Only from him.”
He belted the sword around his father’s narrow hips, and then, gently, placed his hand around the pommel. Floating Ant’s fingers curled blindly around the grips, sure and instinctive as a baby’s fingers closing around its mother’s offered thumb. Water Spider examined his father, a funny old man in a tattered raincoat, with an ancient sword slung by his side. “Any stirring last words, honored progenitor?”
His father opened the door. “Oh, be quiet,” he said.
Chapter
Sixteen
The flight back from the Southside was a long one for Raining and Lark and Wire. The helicopter’s top speed wasn’t much above a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, and they had to stop twice at ancient gas stations to tap extra fuel. Wire managed all that, talking with the helicopter. Raining stayed inside, stroking Lark’s hair.
She decided to make Nick’s pyre on a certain hilltop clearing in the heart of the wood. She meant to do the thing immediately, even before sleep. The Southsiders believed that John Walker took their dead naked into the North Side, and there they stayed in the bitter cold with nothing but what was burned in offering for them. She would hurry back to her house to collect pictures of herself and Lark, and a lighter, and a knife, and thick socks and underwear and a woolly hat of her father’s, who would not grudge it. She didn’t know if only things that burned would cross through the fire, so to hell with it, she would put everything on and let the fire take what it could. And she would bring Lark with her, because she owed him that, too.
It was almost seven o’clock in the morning by the time they made it back to Vancouver. Dreary day had broken; the clouded grey sky over the Forest was weeping. The helicopter received instructions from someone in Chinatown about a good landing place, a grassy open area less than a block from Wire’s apartment. The chopper had no difficulty landing, and wearily they climbed out.
Seconds later Southside infantrymen charged from cover, jumping out of doorways and rolling from beneath abandoned cars. There was a burst of railgun fire, over so fast that all Raining could see was a line of steam smoking in the air. The chopper’s rotors clanged to the ground like four steel petals blown from a flower.
“Holy shit!” Wire said.
“Mom!” Lark yelled. “The copper breaked!” Raining grabbed her hand.
A soldier walked out to meet them. “Captain Ranford. Sorry if we caused you undue alarm,” he said unapologetically. “We’re in a hurry this morning. We are looking for Emily Thompson and we’re hoping you can help us find her.” Another soldier came up behind him, a tired-looking man in a rumpled dress uniform. Intelligence, no doubt.
“You blew up the helicopter,” Raining said. “That’s my husband’s helicopter. He went all over the place in it, salvaging things.” She found she was crying. “You broke it.”
“It can be replaced, Ms. Chiu,” said the Intelligence officer. Ms. Chiu, she thought, not Mrs. Terleski. This fellow knew something about her. “I’m afraid we very much wanted you not to run away again. The Mandarinate is cooperating with us on this, Ms. Chiu. That’s why their people had you set down here. If we can just stay calm, I think we’ll see that working together is in everyone’s best interests.”
Lark pouted, dragging on the hand that Raining held. “Mom, I’m hungry. Is it break-tast yet?”
Raining kept her eyes on the Southside officers. “Later, sweetheart.”
“When is it going to be later?”
“Look, we’d love to stay and chat, but we have a job to do,” the Southside captain told Raining. “According to your people, Emily landed about three hours ago. We found the place where she left the water and tracked her to a path at the edge of the Forest. She went down it. We want you to help us find her.”
“Emily Thompson is nothing to me,” Raining said. “You know where the path is. By all means, go and get her.”
The captain grunted. “Very kind, I’m sure. But Major Oliver here has suggested that we had better have you with us. You will help us search.”
“Mo-om, is it later yet?”
“Not yet,” Raining said.
Wire was looking very worried.
“All right, Captain.” Raining tried to keep her voice level. Remember those computer familiars, she told herself. The Intelligence man would have one that was very good at telling truth from half-truths and lies. “Take however many men you feel you need, and follow me.”
The captain gave his orders.
“Eight men?” Wire said incredulously. “You need eight men to go down a path and find one girl who’s supposed to be on your side?”
“We may need to split up and search. And, unofficially, shut the fuck up. Ma’am.”
Raining cut in before Wire, furious, could get herself in any worse trouble. “Let’s go, shall we? My daughter needs to eat and go to bed.”
“Ms. Chiu, where is your husband?” Major Oliver said gently.
The grey sky wept and wept. “On the North Side,” Raining said. The Southside soldiers flinched and glanced at one another.
Major Oliver nodded. “Yes. That makes…I am very sorry.” He turned to Captain Ranford. “It’s my guess that going into the wood could prove dangerous, even with Ms. Chiu. I suggest—” He hesitated. “I suggest we take her daughter into custody while she is in the Forest.”
“You sister-fucking son of a bitch!” Wire yelled.
“Shut up, Wire.”
“How can you—”
“Please,” Raining said. She looked at Ranford. “You can’t take my daughter.” She spoke as calmly and steadily as she could. “That isn’t right. I told you, listen to me, Emily Thompson means nothing to me. You can have her. You can have her with my full cooperation. But don’t take my daughter.” Major Oliver started to shake his head. “Listen to me! Ask your familiar! Am I lying? I’ll do what you ask, goddammit!”
“Major?” Ranford said.
The Intelligence man looked away from Raining. “It’s not just her. It’s a matter of motivating the Forest itself. We believe the Forest is a Power, like the North Side. We think it has the interests of this family at heart.” He looked at the captain. “I really think it would be safest this way. For the men. That is my considered opinion.”
“Your opinion!” Raining tried to make her voice sound less hysterical. “Listen to me. The Forest doesn’t think like that.” She looked back and forth between the two men. “You want the truth? Here’s the truth. Anyone who comes into the wood with me under threat is not coming back. That’s the truth, all right? Spare your men. Spare yourself.”
“This solicitude is late in coming,” Captain Ranford said. “Arnott, you’ve got kids, right? I’m putting you on the little girl. You’ll stay out here under the command of Major Oliver until relieved.”
“Mommy, you’re hurting my hand,” Lark said.
“How am I supposed to explain it later?” Raining said, her voice rising. “I’ll come out of the wood tomorrow, alone, to get my daughter back. What will I say? How will I convince your people that I tried my best?”
“I guess you’d better not come out alone,” the captain said. “Wilson, Conrod, your teams are with me.”
“No! You don’t understand—”
“Ms. Chiu,” Ranford said, “shut the fuck up. And that’s for the record.”
Corporal Arnott stepped forward apologetically. “I’m awfully sorry about this, Mrs. Terleski. I knew Nick a little, back in Compulsory. I promise you I’ll take good care of the little one.”
“You had better, mister.” Raining did not release Lark’s hand. She looked at Major Oliver. “She’s the daughter of my House. Whether I am dead or alive, there’s no bolthole in hell that will save you if anything happens to her.”
The Intelligence man nodded gravely. “I understand.”
Lark’s little face began to crumple. “Mo-om,” she wailed.
“Do you hear me?”
“Pay no attention to her, Major. Let’s get moving.”
Major Oliver said, “I hear you.”
Wire stepped forward. “At least let me stay with Lark. She knows me. I volunteer to come with her.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Major Oliver said gratefully. “I think that would help both Ms. Chiu and her daughter. Not to mention me.”
Wire looked at him with loathing. “Go lick a cat’s ass, you toad.”
Raining knelt in the wet grass and cupped her hands around Lark’s little face. The streaming rain had soaked them both. Lark looked back at her unhappily, her bangs slick with rain, her black eyes wide and solemn. “Sweetheart, I have to go with these men for a little while. I need you to go with Wire and Corporal Arnott and Major Oliver here until I get back. Can you do that for me?”
Lark sniffed. “No.”
“We have to.”
“No!”
<
br /> Raining hugged her very tight. She wanted to hold her forever, but she could not bear the thought of soldiers pulling them apart, so she ended the hug before Ranford could get angry.
“Mom?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Even you’ll come back next day, won’t you?” Raining nodded, unable to speak. Lark looked gravely at the soldiers preparing to go into the Forest. “But not them, right?”
“No,” Raining said. “Not them.”
Lark and Wire stayed behind with Arnott and Major Oliver. Raining set off into the wood with Captain Ranford and his men.
The day was dark with rain. The trees towering around them were many times as thick and tall as the scrawny little things the Southsiders were used to. Any coastal wood would have been a revelation to them—and this Forest was awake as other woods were not. The air was heavy with its green power. The Southsiders were very professional, but Raining could tell they were edgy. Telling them they wouldn’t come out alive probably hadn’t relaxed them, either. Southsiders tended to think of themselves as rational people, but in Raining’s experience they were as superstitious as anyone, and more scared of the unseen for denying it.
They went quickly, following Emily Thompson’s trail. Raining felt badly for the girl. She had not failed to notice the lack of her usual stumpy good humor, or the traces of bruising around her eyes. But nothing that could happen to Emily—nothing—was worth Lark’s life. Or even the lives of these toy soldiers and their despicable captain. She could not imagine what earthly reason the girl could have had for coming to the Forest.
Raining reminded herself that Emily was in her twenties now. She was a woman, not a girl anymore. Raining was finding it increasingly difficult to take any woman seriously if she didn’t have children.
“You’re smiling,” Captain Ranford said suspiciously. “What are you thinking?”
“That it is hard to take men seriously under any circumstances at all.”
“You’re very humorous, for a woman whose husband has just died.”