Beneath Ceaseless Skies #155

by Tony Pi

  I didn’t wait to see what Nong did; back to my body I flew. Once the archer realized that the tea ploy had failed, he would fire his poisoned arrows.

  How could I stop him? The judge had forbade a flying dragon. A water-horse would need a running start to jump the gap over Market Street, and I couldn’t muster the speed, not off of these sloped roofs. The candy monkey could climb up to the archer, but it hadn’t the strength to hobble him or cut his bowstring.

  Think! What could stop a killer?

  Another killer.

  I needed a tiger.

  Though I loathed the thought of dealing with Tiger, I was running out of time. Only a tiger could leap the distance to the other side of the street. Only the tiger could strike fear into the assassin and strike him down. All I needed was a full vat of water, and the teahouse surely had one.

  The sugar rat in my sleeve was the only candy in zodiac shape I had at hand. Could I make it into a tiger somehow? I’d need heat to make the caramel soft. A kettle of tea would do the trick.

  I took the sugar rat out and inspected it. Stalwart legs, noble ears, blooded eyes: expertly executed in Father’s style. I would have to unmake it to shape a tiger.

  But that felt wrong.

  I was born a Water Rat. How could I sacrifice this, my zodiac animal?

  No. I must stay true to Rat.

  We Rats were supposedly born clever; that was my strength. I thought about all things that embodied rodents. Rats couldn’t fly or leap, but rows of lanterns crisscrossed the streets tonight, and rats could crawl across the lines.

  I had never shaped wine before, but how different could it be from water?

  I dunked the caramel figure into the pot of wine, infusing the brew with sugar and my own blood. I placed the jar under the table, laid down my head, and re-entered a possession trance. As the candy rat, I opened myself to the sensation of drowning, so that I might steep the drink with my senses.

  Grandfather Rat! I called. This small grandson begs you grant his strange request. I need a horde of rats to stop a killer.

  A voice whispered on the edge of my hearing. I know you, ratling Ao. You’ve never called on my aid before, so I will tell you this: born of my sign as you are, I am forbidden to ask in return your help in advancing my own ploys. But another’s schemes....

  I understood. Rat would trade favors with another zodiac spirit. Whose debt would I be in?

  Rest easy, candymouse. Monkey’s a kinder taskmaster than Snake or Tiger, though mischievous. What say you?

  Monkey? Given my recent battle where I had destroyed a monkey made from fire, I wondered if he might hold a grudge. However, I had to trust Rat’s judgment.

  I’d be honored to help Monkey on your behalf, Grandfather, I answered. Thank you.

  Rat’s magic imbued the wine, and with it I conjured a rice wine rat: clawed, tailed, and whiskered.

  I-the-rat climbed out of the pot.

  Astonishingly, I found I could shape a second copy and call it forth as well, then a third and a fourth before the jar was empty. My mind seemed to occupy them all at once, like the yoke of a strange drunken stupor.

  Four wouldn’t be enough.

  My creations scurried through the Plum Season, leaving wet pawprints on the floorboards. A drinker spewed wine from his lips when he saw my rat climb onto his tabletop. I plunged into his companion’s cup and scampered out as two wine-made rodents.

  At other tables, I slid into teacups and doubled my liquid selves. A bold customer stabbed a chopstick through a wine-and-tea rodent, but I simply flowed around it and lashed his wrist with a wet tail.

  Eight, sixteen, thirty-two: my plague of wine-pure and tea-bronze rats now raced across the shop, slipping through the railings on the upper floor to scale the outside walls. I had to cross the lantern strings to the archer.

  Anxious, I looked down at Tan’s contest with a hundred eyes. Thrice, Gongsun seemed on the verge of drinking from his teacup, but then he paused to touch more ink to paper.

  The judge was toying with his would-be poisoner.

  Nong had reached the stage. He must have warned the judge.

  Gongsun shouldn’t be so smug! If he didn’t drink his poisoned tea soon, the archer would strike.

  The high lanterns became tightrope roads. I sent half my rats to clamber north over Medicine Lane, and the rest eastward across Market Street. In my haste, two lost their footing and fell. The first splashed against the cobblestones; the second soaked a fortuneteller who glanced up. Each hit sent waves of hurt rippling through all my copies, and I lost five more.

  Half my rats were halfway across the final chasms to reach the archer, but he had already nocked an arrow to his bowstring. I wouldn’t reach him in time. If only someone would look up!

  The lights!

  I allowed nine tea-and-wine rats nearest the archer to fall into bright lanterns, dousing them. The sudden shadows and the stink of snuffed flames drew many people’s eyes to dart in the right direction.

  Even the archer’s. The moment of distraction threw off his aim. His poisoned arrow sailed through the air and struck Fanmaker Bai’s painting dead center. Surprised, the riddlemaster fell backwards in his chair.

  The magistrate’s men shouted the alarm.

  The archer reached for another arrow as the first of my rats succeeded in crossing the lantern-lines. I ignored the commotion brewing in the street and swarmed him with my pack.

  Startled, the archer tried to shake off my rodents even as we climbed his body. Though he smashed and stomped away some of my creations, I made for his head with the rest. He drew back the bowstring, but I-the-rat scratched his eyes with rice-wine claws. He cried out in pain and loosed his arrow, blind. I prayed it didn’t hit anyone.

  He turned and ran north along the sloped roof, but I clung to him with what was left of my pack. Wine still stung his eyes red. That, along with the tiles made wet from wine from my rats, made the archer slip and lose his footing.

  He tumbled off the edge of the roof.

  One of my wine rats rolled off his ankle just in time, but all the others splattered apart when we crashed into a dumpling stand in the street below. Each undoing landed a dizzying blow to my mind.

  I fought to gather my wits.

  The patrons at the dumpling stand screamed and fled. The archer would never do either again, not with his head bent at that angle.

  I turned away, shaken. I hadn’t meant for him to die. He shouldn’t have run, half-blinded.

  But what of the poisoner? If Gongsun was still in danger, I-the-rat couldn’t help him from here. Time for another host, but which?

  Only the ox and the monkey were close enough to Gongsun to help, but ox was stuck under the stage. It had to be monkey. My awareness searched the vicinity for its shape, found it still on Nong’s tray, and flew inside its body.

  The stage was in chaos. All the spectators had fled, save Madame Tan, who tended to a fallen guardsman, and Fanmaker Bai, who cowered under his table. The two tea servers, wielding their kettles like dragonhead hammers, were battling Gongsun and his sole remaining bodyguard.

  Nong flung three seeds fast at the second server, and one of the missiles found the man’s eye. The accomplice cried out and clamped a hand to his face, but that opening proved a costly mistake. Gongsun’s bodyguard fed him a sword through the gut.

  When he saw his partner die, the poisoner threw down a packet that filled the air with choking smoke. The fumes spread fast and stung living eyes, but not my blood-dotted sight. No one but monkey-me saw in which direction he fled: down Medicine Lane towards the city wall.

  I leapt off the tray onto Nong’s shirt and had started the climb down when a voice chattered in my mind. Sneaky, cheeky, Ao! Rat says you’ve agreed to owe me, in exchange for his favor.

  Monkey, Equal of Heaven! I felt his presence coat me like fur. Why now? I leapt to the ground, finding an acrobatic finesse I hadn’t before. It’s true what Grandfather Rat says. I am here to serve.

 
Then choose to let that man go. He’s born of my sign.

  I stared at the fleeing figure, aching to chase him down so that he would plague the judge no more. Should I follow, or fulfill my obligation to Monkey? He tried to kill a good man!

  It is not for spirits to deem men good or evil, Ao, said Monkey. What gifts we give are yours to wield. We may scheme to keep our wards among the living, but your choices are yours alone.

  I had saved Gongsun’s life and discharged my debt to Snake. If I did as Monkey wished, I’d be free of obligations, yet I’d be letting a dangerous man roam free.

  But then, many would consider me dangerous. All twenty years of my life, I’d been on the run with my father, because of the magic he and I could do. The rich considered us po jianghu scum and those who practice sorcery only worthy of death. Some men would have me killed without question and without mercy.

  I would not be one of those who judged another man without heart.

  Mercy tonight, I offered Monkey, for a man cannot seek redemption if he draws no more breath. But never again.

  Monkey bristled, but agreed. This once.

  I allowed the poisoner to vanish from view but noted his unique features should I see him again: drooping earlobes; left eye wider than the right.

  Your will is done, I told Monkey. But should this man stay with the Ten Crows Sect, the judge may well end him.

  Such is his choice to make. Until next time, Ao.

  Monkey faded from my mind.

  I returned to my body. The upper floor of the tea-and-wine shop was deserted. A rat infestation must have seemed bad for business, even on the busiest night of the fair. Though I no longer felt drunk, my head ached as though I’d actually downed the whole pot of wine. Nonetheless, coils of worry fell away and I breathed easier, for I was no longer beholden to Snake. On the other hand, Rat had sold my debt to Monkey, who had used me to help his man escape. Coincidence, or a conspiracy of spirits? Nong would find me here soon. I’d tell him my side of the tale, but not the full story. No one needed to know I’d granted the poisoner his freedom. That was my own decision to make and my own wrong to right.

  I spied a rat lurking between the bamboo chairs. I glowered but tossed him the rest of my fried melon-seeds. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I asked him.

  The rat devoured the morsels greedily. Silently.

  Copyright © 2014 Tony Pi

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Originally from Taiwan, Dr. Tony Pi earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics at McGill University and now lives in Toronto, Canada. His fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld and Abyss & Apex, among others, as well as twice previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies: “Silk and Shadow” in BCS #11 and “The Curse of Chimère” in BCS #54. “No Sweeter Art” is the second stand-alone tale in this series (following “A Sweet Calling” in Clarkesworld). Visit www.tonypi.com for a list of his other works.

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  BY APPOINTMENT TO THE THRONE

  by Alter S. Reiss

  There’s a rhythm to a kitchen waking up in the morning. The slaughterhouses work at night, and we get the pigs, calves, and turtles maybe an hour after they’re killed and drained. Then the carts pull up: eggs, fruit, vegetables, and so on. Things start slow, but they don’t stay slow. Like most Xac restaurants in Arrat, breakfasts are almost half the business for the Mountain Pine. Xac refugees need a big meal at the crack of dawn, because the jobs they work don’t give many chances to stop and eat.

  Getting up early enough to open a kitchen hurts. Leaving a warm bed before second watch makes your head ache, and you can feel the chill going from the cobbles through your feet and into your soul. When it’s wet on top of the cold, it’s the nearest thing to hell. But once I’m there and I’m in the rhythm, it just moves. I check the carcasses as they come in, kick up a fuss if they try to give us short weight or diseased animals, and then I lift them up, bring them in, and take them apart. Hook and cleaver work for two, sometimes three hours.

  A lot of the Xac refugees working at the Mountain Pine are Sisori, so the hour before dawn, they’ll do their prayers out in the garden. I don’t mind, even though it slows us down when we need to speed up; I’d rather work with people who stop for prayers and stagger through fast days than with children glittering on juice, or gangs, or spirit.

  Just after the Sisori came back from morning prayers one of the dishwashers ran in, bloody and yelling. My first thought was one of the gangs had taken a knife to him. Uncle Cestin owned the Mountain Pine and he paid protection most months, but sometimes not, and gang kids have more glitter than sense. But the washer was bloody, not bleeding, and he was yelling in Xactan about a girl named Meica.

  He’d come from out back, so I went out back. There was a dead girl on the cobbles behind the back door, her guts lying in a tangle between her legs. A couple of the kitchen staff had followed me out, and the egg guy was sitting there in his wagon, trembling.

  “Gods and devils,” I said, in Xactan. I had come over to Arrat when I was eight, so I don’t even think in Xactan much, but there are times when it’s the only language that’ll do. I looked at the staff who had come out with me. “Merinec, Aama, go unload the eggs. Beian, get that washer cleaned up, and then take charge of the kitchen until I’m back.”

  They looked at me like I was insane. “Go!” I yelled, and they went.

  “What do I do?” asked Latan, who was my second in the kitchen.

  I gave a short nod towards the girl, and he went pale. “Get my tools,” I said. “Hook and cleaver.”

  The egg man heard that and started shaking worse. “What is this?” he yelled, also in Xactan, but one of the northern dialects that are almost incomprehensible. “It is forbidden what you do!”

  If he made a run for it, donkey braying and bolting, eggs scattering across the streets, the police would be sure to notice, and we’d all be done for. I went over, put a hand on his shoulder. “We have to,” I said.

  “The police?” he asked. “They are to find criminals.”

  “You have immigration papers?” I asked. “Your family have papers? What about a license for your farm, for the cart? They see a dead Xac, they deport everyone nearby, and assume that they got the killer.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stood shivering in the cold before the dawn.

  “You have, what, two more deliveries to make?” I asked.

  He wanted to leave. He could have left, if he had turned the cart around as soon as he saw the dead girl. Now it was too late. If he ran, and the police got interested in the girl, someone was going to tell them that there had been an egg cart at the scene, and that it had fled. He’d be lucky if he didn’t hang.

  “Yes,” he said. “Two more deliveries. I go to—”

  “Good,” I said. “Latan will go with you, help with the deliveries. He’ll take care of some business at the farm, too.”

  He went paler, turning almost as white as a local. “You can’t,” he said. “There’s no room in the cart for a... they’ll notice legs, arms—”

  Latan came back out. “Are you sure about this, Xan?” he asked, passing me my hook and cleaver. He looked like he was on the verge of vomiting, and I couldn’t blame him. But what else could I do? If the police got involved, we’d all be facing nooses and firing squads, either here or in Xacta.

  “Get him some soup,” I said to Latan. “His cart’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  They went inside, trying not to see what was lying on the cobblestones behind them. Hell, I wished I couldn’t see what was lying on the cobblestones behind them. I wished like anything that it hadn’t happened, and that the police would help when things happened. But it had happened, and I’d seen the way the looks on the faces of the police when they had to deal with Xac. I’d seen people packed into wagons bound for the border after someone knifed a guy two tenements over.

  Call the police in, I get deported along with half the kitchen. Those of us who didn’t g
et a shallow grave five feet from the border might last a year or two in a People’s Committee labor camp. Do nothing, same thing happens. I wished I couldn’t see it, but I could, and I was on the spot. So I got to work.

  The Arratap think that the Xactan neighborhoods are pits of violence, and they’re not wrong. There are gangs, and there are people who’ve run out of hope and gone sour with juice and dust and spirit and wine. But before that day I had never seen a dead person close up. I lifted the girl up with the hook and started working with the cleaver. Bones are bones, and joints are joints.

  It didn’t take long. She was lighter than the calves I had been working with, and wasn’t as solid. I took her apart, wrapped what was left in the rags that had cushioned the eggs, and then the cart was ready to go. Nobody would look twice at a couple of Xac headed to a little patch of farm on the outskirts. There, she’d be bone meal and pig slop, and that would be it.

  I went inside, where the kitchen was filled with warmth and cheerful noise, and told Latan what he had to do. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t argue, and he got the egg man moving. I followed and watched the cart leave.

  I could have let it go there. The first customers were already coming in, and the kitchen was falling behind on the orders.

  I couldn’t do it. That girl was a child, and she had been ripped all to hell, legs spread apart and intestines spilled out between them. I had cut her up and sent what was left of her corpse on its way; no Sisori grave, no Tauki pyre, no nothing. If she had parents, or someone else waiting for her, they’d be in hell, and I was leaving them there. I couldn’t have done anything else. But I had to do more.

  The body couldn’t have been there long; washers and cooks had been coming in, and there were deliveries. Sometimes waitstaff came in early, to pick up a little extra cash working in the kitchen. Or she could have been killed after closing the night before, and just dumped in the morning, or... or anything, really.

  I poked at the rotting bits of cabbage and burdock that had fallen off the cart when the trashmen had made their rounds. The sky was light enough that I could see pretty well. There was blood on the cobblestones, but there was always blood on the cobblestones from the carcasses.