by Jeff Wheeler
“It’s already wasted,” Echion said with a smirk, seeming to enjoy her rage. “Befouled by the waters. But she’s wounded. Now we chase the doe while she bleeds. It’s almost over.”
“I want to be the one to devour her,” Xisi said. “Her gifts would be useful to me.”
“Do you not already have enough ways to torture me, Wife?”
“There are never enough,” she shot back spitefully. “Every moment bound to you is a torment. I must find what solace I can.”
He glared at her. Bingmei hoped they were so fixed on each other that they wouldn’t realize their quarry was so close and so vulnerable.
“You agreed,” he said. “You accepted this willingly.”
“That was before I understood that immortality with you is a curse. When the Reckoning comes—”
“Do not speak of it!” Echion screamed at her, his face livid. His hand shot out, fingers hooked like claws, as if he intended to rip her heart out of her chest.
What was the Reckoning? Bingmei leaned a little closer, intent on listening. Anything that struck fear in the heart of the Dragon Emperor could only be to their benefit.
Unafraid, Xisi stepped closer to him. “You cannot hurt my body, Husband. I cannot be wounded.”
He was breathing fast, his face a mask of anger. “Speak not of it,” he warned.
“Are you genuinely worried that a pale salamander of a girl might defeat us?” Xisi said, her voice tinkling with laughter. “Don’t lose your nerve, Echion. We can postpone the Reckoning for another thousand years. And then another.” She held up her hands, gesturing at the giant pillars of stone surrounding them. “Until these are nothing but piles of sand and this valley is a desert. We will find her. And kill her.”
“You should have killed her in Fusang!”
“It prolongs the game,” Xisi said mockingly. “Sihui will fall. You are piqued because you don’t like losing. I will confess that this generation has proven a trifle more . . . devoted than the warlords we’ve faced in the past.” She stepped even closer, her voice like silk, and lifted a pointed finger toward his chin. “How many have we defeated over the eons, you and I? Were any as cunning as our combined wills? Even the empress you once served? I suspect the phoenix came to rue the day she overthrew Sajinau and accepted your allegiance.”
Bingmei watched in growing revulsion as the two gazed at each other. Xisi’s finger claw, the very same one in which she’d hidden the butterfly, was close enough to trace the line of Echion’s throat.
Echion suddenly grasped her wrist and wrenched it away from his neck.
His voice was hard, venomous. “If I thought for a moment that you were really trying to seduce me, I would eat a butterfly and kill myself.”
Her face twisted with rage. She tried pulling her hand away but couldn’t. He squeezed harder, but there was no look of pain on her brow. She spat in his face.
“Let go of me,” she snarled.
“If only I could,” he said with a bark-like laugh. “But we are entwined, you and I. Irrevocably. That is what we agreed to back when I was nothing more than a counselor. Surely your betrayal was greater than mine. The empress lifted you up from being one of a thousand concubines, yet you were ever so eager to steal her empire. If the Reckoning comes, I won’t be the only one to suffer the consequences. We must prevent it from happening. Whoever finds the girl first, let us agree she must be killed. She cannot be allowed to fulfill the prophecy. We cannot allow the phoenix to return. It doesn’t matter which of us claims her power. Are we agreed?”
Bingmei hungered to understand what they meant, but it was hard to think clearly. The loss of blood was making her faint. Her eyelids began to droop.
“Let go of me!” Xisi said, struggling again.
“Are we in agreement?”
“Yes!”
Echion released her wrist. She tried to strike his face, but he stepped out of range. She didn’t rub her wrist, for there was no pain.
“You are so cold when I touch you,” he said with malevolence in his voice.
“The coldness within me came from your betrayals. If I have the winter sickness inside me, it is you who put it there.”
He gave her a mocking look. “We will rule for another thousand years. I will see my designs fulfilled this time. The world will kneel before the Iron Rules. Even you, wraith wife.”
“I’ve already knelt before you, Husband. And not even that satisfied you. Play your games. Prolong your dominion until the deserts of Namibu are fertile. When I grow bored of it, I will kill you again. Then I will rule for a season alone.”
Echion gave her a spiteful look, but still he smiled. “You will try. Your empires always collapse so quickly. Mine are the ones that last.”
“Did you say something? You’re like this brook, always babbling on and on.”
“You grow tiresome. Begone.”
Bingmei felt her eyes shutting. Her fingers began to tingle. Blackness took over.
Bingmei awoke to the sensation of drowning. Water rushed into her mouth, into her lungs, and she began sputtering and coughing. Unable to breathe, she panicked and tried to move, but her side seared with pain.
“Quiet, quiet!” came the murmured words.
She opened her eyes and found Quion holding a flask in one hand, cradling her shoulders with the other. It was dark, but the sky was streaked with the rainbow lights of the Woliu directly overhead.
She sensed the dragons then. Hundreds of them.
She and Quion were nestled in the trees still, hiding from the hunters. Her entire side burned with pain, and the skin felt unnaturally tight.
“Did I stop breathing?” she whispered to him.
“No. You were very weak, though. I stitched your wounds closed.”
“My back,” she said, stifling a groan.
“There were claw marks all across your side, your back,” he said. “After Xisi and Echion left, I got to work. You’ll have scars, Bingmei. I’m sorry. It’s the best I could do.”
“I don’t think scars will matter very much,” she said. “I won’t have them for long.” The quiet sound of the stream was soothing, but she heard distant shrieks in the skies as the dragons continued hunting. The snow leopard lay nearby, eyes closed in rest, head cradled on its paws.
She gingerly sat up, wincing as she did. He had sewn her wounds closed with thread and needle. It was so painful, breathing hurt. She lifted part of her shirt and saw the ugly red gashes, revealed by the light of the Woliu.
“I’m glad you weren’t awake for it,” he said apologetically. “It would have been very painful.”
“I’m glad too,” she said. “Thank you.” Only then did she notice she was wearing a different shirt. It was the red one, her favorite. She gave him a quizzical look, and he turned his face away.
His embarrassment smelled of ginger. She breathed it in gratefully, relieved the horrible stench was gone. Even if it had required Quion to change her. “Is there any food?” she asked him.
He nodded and rummaged in his pack for some of the peppery dried meat. She was ravenous and quickly tore it into strips small enough to chew. Some of the awkwardness lifted, the silence between them becoming more companionable, and an owl broke the stillness as it landed in a tree near them.
Bingmei gazed through the trees at the stream where they’d seen Echion and Xisi confront each other.
“Did they keep arguing after I passed out?” she asked.
“I don’t know when you passed out. But they both transformed into dragons and flew away to continue searching for us.”
“Did you hear all that they said?”
“I was more worried about staying alive than listening in. I just wanted them to go away.”
“I think it was important,” Bingmei said. “Echion wasn’t always a king. It sounded like he was an advisor to the king of Sajinau, like Jidi Majia. But then all the kingdoms came under the authority of the empress of Fusang, and he served her. From what Xisi said, the empr
ess was the phoenix. That must have been when Echion bonded with the dragon, because he somehow stole the throne, with Xisi’s help.” She rubbed her bottom lip, thinking. “That tree with the butterflies. You heard what Xisi said about it giving them immortality. I don’t understand it—the butterflies are poisonous—but the tree had something to do with it.” She clenched her fist. It was so frustrating not knowing the full story. “You heard what they said about the Reckoning, didn’t you?”
“They both seemed terrified of it, but I don’t know what that word means.”
“It is a business term. The reckoning happens at the end of the trading season. When a merchant tallies up all his earnings and debts. The process is called the reckoning, and it will reveal if he’s made or lost money. Whatever agreement Echion and Xisi made to achieve immortality must have included something about a reckoning.”
“Or maybe that they’ll only stay immortal until something happens. An event.”
Bingmei nodded to herself. “Maybe until the phoenix comes again. Based on what Xisi said, she and Echion are both affected by the poison of those butterflies. They’ll become mortal if they eat one of them. They’d revive again just the same, but maybe we should go back and get a couple.”
“No,” Quion said firmly. “I lost my mind in there. Neither of us should go back.”
Although Bingmei wanted a weapon to use against the dragons, something told her Quion was right. There was a deep wrongness to that tree, and they’d been lucky to escape it once. The second time, they might not be so fortunate. Besides, the tugging of the phoenix shrine was pulling her in a different direction.
It struck her that Echion had told Xisi they needed to stop Bingmei before she bonded with the phoenix. What, exactly, did that mean? Was she supposed to sacrifice herself so the phoenix could come back to life? A life for a life?
She knew there was a stone sarcophagus inside the phoenix shrine. She’d seen it in her vision. What lay within it? A great bird? A person?
Or was it empty and waiting?
Shulian’s words echoed through her head. And yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also. That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
Would she fall dead, stabbed by Echion’s sword, into the waiting tomb?
A trickle of fear went through her heart, making it pump faster with worry.
She let her breath out slowly, willing herself to calm down. To accept her fate, whatever it might be. Echion and Xisi had enslaved and murdered countless people whose souls were now trapped in the endless streets of the Grave Kingdom.
She did not wish to die, but if her sacrifice could free them, it was worth it.
With that thought, she heard the cry of a night bird. It was a sound she hadn’t heard before. A mournful sound. A beautiful sound. The cry pierced her heart, and she began to feel.
CHAPTER NINE
The Weight of Tears
When her family was murdered, Bingmei’s heart had closed like an oyster, and it had remained closed ever since. But something about the mournful song of the night bird, joined by the chirp of crickets, wrenched it open. Tears welled in her eyes and burned trails down her cheeks.
“You’re crying,” Quion said in something like wonder.
He tried to reach for her, to comfort her, but Bingmei wasn’t ready to be comforted. She wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face there, weeping from her innermost depths. It was like an abyss had opened up. Her tears were for her lost family, for her father, who would never see her perform a perfect set of moves, for her mother, whose sweet cinnamon-porridge smell had lulled her to sleep when she was a girl. For her grandfather, whose quonsuun lay in ruins. For Kunmia Suun, whom she felt she’d failed. She even cried for Lieren, who had died during the mission in which they’d acquired the Phoenix Blade. He’d been Marenqo’s friend—a thought that made her cry even harder, for Marenqo was likely dead too. How she missed Marenqo’s teasing, his fondness for tasty food. Would she meet him next in the Grave Kingdom?
She cried for her bond sister Mieshi too, for the friendship they might have shared if she’d trusted the other woman with her feelings. Grief was not just for something lost. It was also for missed opportunities.
The scent of her own sorrow washed over her as she wept. She could also smell Quion’s confusion, his sympathy, his care, and that fishy smell that was uniquely his. Embarrassment roiled inside her. But somehow, it wasn’t so awful having him see her like this. It would have been worse if it were—
Rowen.
This next wave of emotion felt like a knife piercing her heart, and she gasped from the shock of it. There’d always been a connection between them, but she’d shut away her feelings inside that oyster. Now they lay exposed, and she realized how deeply she cared for him. She’d hidden the feelings for fear of rejection, fear of loss, fear of being unworthy. And so she’d pushed away the man who loved her, the man she loved in return.
The pain stabbed her, again and again, especially when she remembered how open he’d been with her. How bravely he’d revealed his heart. He’d felt the connection between them from some past life, and instead of dreading it, he’d sought to deepen it.
Her breath came in little gasps between her tears.
There was room in her heart for him. There was plenty of room. It tormented her that she couldn’t apologize to him. Beg for his forgiveness.
“What have I done, what have I done?” she whispered, groaning. She’d left him to die. For all she knew, he was gone, already banished to the Grave Kingdom like his brother before him.
“What’s wrong, Bingmei?”
Quion’s voice was so plaintive, so worried, she finally lifted her puffy eyes to look at him. “It hurts so much.”
He winced. “The scars?”
“No,” she said, touching his arm. She swallowed, trying to wrestle her emotions and failing. Tears continued to course down her cheeks as she touched her fingers to her thumb and tapped her chest. “In here,” she choked. “It’s what I’m feeling inside. How do people bear it?”
The love she’d suppressed for Rowen was overflowing now. She was struck with the memory of how King Zhumu had suggested a match between Rowen and the gorgeous princess Cuifen. The memory sizzled in her mind, and another pang struck her heart. She finally understood why she’d been so averse to the match.
“I’m such a fool,” she moaned.
“I don’t understand,” Quion said, shaking his head.
“No, you wouldn’t. Don’t feel bad. I smell emotions every day coming from everyone around me. The stink of dishonesty. The lemony smell of greed. Love and hate, despair and hope, they all have different smells . . .” She paused, swallowing, struggling to master her composure. “When I was younger, I hated it. I learned to keep my own feelings inside so I wouldn’t have to smell them too. But there’s something about that night bird’s song. The sound it made just . . .” She sniffled. “It cut me open. And now all my emotions are running loose. Why did it happen? How could the cry of a bird break my heart?”
Quion looked at her, nodding in understanding. “My father liked to play a little flute. Sometimes the notes would take ahold of him. Music makes us feel, Bingmei. When I hear a flute, I think of him. And I still grieve that he’s gone.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “We’re all acquainted with grief, Bingmei. It means we’re still alive.”
She looked at him. “No, it doesn’t, Quion. I’ve been to the Grave Kingdom. They still feel there. Only it’s worse. It’s more desperate. I think our emotions are tied to our two souls. But they are tied to them with knots Echion and Xisi have learned to twist and tangle. They can bring a person back without any emotions. That was what they did to Zhuyi.” Her bond sister, who’d died at Fusang, had been brought back to serve Xisi. Only she wasn’t herself—she had her memories but not her compassion.
He pursed his lips and stared at her for a moment, deep in thought. “I suppose that means emotions are important, then.”
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It was strange, but talking with him had begun to soothe her. The floodwaters were starting to recede. When she heard the night bird’s call again, it didn’t sound as haunting.
She rested her ear on her forearm, gazing up at the stars, which appeared in swarms of milky light. The emotions were still there, and still strong, but they weren’t so raw anymore. Even her feelings for Rowen.
She closed her eyes, sinking deep into herself. This time, she found the thread more quickly than before, pulled taut in the midst of her deep, complicated feelings for Rowen. Biting her bottom lip, she felt along the thread until she reached his presence.
The two companions had begun walking through the overgrown terrain beneath the night sky, still lightened by stars and the colorful streamers of the Woliu, now behind them. Bingmei leaned on Quion for strength, but any pressure against her side brought agony. The snow leopard followed them in gloomy silence. Although it seemed to have overcome its own injury from the battle with the dragon, every once in a while, Bingmei saw it stagger in pain.
Then she sensed the dragons coming.
They pressed on, weaving through the thickly forested floor of the valley, passing huge columns of rock that loomed above them. They were deep in the gorge now, led by Bingmei’s connection to the phoenix shrine. Lights from the drifting colors crept closer to them as the night progressed. Soon the sun would rise, and they’d have to take cover again. The long walk had exhausted her, and blood loss had also taken its toll. She began to stumble as she walked, kept upright only by Quion. When they attempted to climb over a mound of sharp stones, she fell, cutting her hand on the stone. She breathed in and out, trying to stifle the pain.
“Maybe we should rest a bit,” Quion suggested, panting.
“We’re so close,” she whispered, looking ahead into the darkness. Glancing back the way they’d come, she could see the streamers brightening the sky, dancing between the fingerlike peaks of stone. Even in the dark, she saw the wind shake the trees that grew on top of most of the columns. She could hear the distant shrieks of the horde of dragons. “We have to keep going.”