The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  ‘Boats!’ Ming Xao’s voice tilted with wonder. ‘I have never been on a sea, nor even on water. Boats! And you build such craft?’

  ‘I do. Since I was very young.’

  ‘Have you sailed?’

  ‘Aine, yes. Mostly the Wester Sea from Veniche to Oighear Dubh. Do you know of those places?’

  ‘I do. Traders would return with maps and books. The Lady Ibo will tell you I am…I should say I was an energetic map-collector. I would dream of Veniche and Pymm and the seas west and east and I am quite overcome to think I shall see Veniche in a very few hours.’ At last he seemed happy, animated even and Belle was glad. ‘You said you were travelling when you met Nicholas. Were you on business?’

  Poli shifted Belle very slightly and she tried not to make a sound, even though her shoulder pained, ferocious claws ripping her apart. She tried to divert herself, wondering if Poli was in fact more uncomfortable with the question than with her weight in his arms.

  ‘Not business, no. It was all very odd, even now, eldritch perhaps. I was planing the planks of a galliot and all of a sudden, I looked up. Out over the laguna, far into the hazy distance, and I felt I needed to just up and go, that for the moment the boatyard must manage without me because I needed to journey. It wasn’t like you, to secure information, or to give myself a holiday. It was something that burrowed into my very being, calling my feet to turn in a certain direction. I call it Fate, other folk might not. But when the coincidence expressed itself, I knew it was Fate most definitely.’

  Go on…

  ‘I am intrigued,’ said Ming Xao.

  ‘I journeyed into Trevallyn overland, finally pitching up at Orford during the Stitching Fair. Don’t worry, you will discover all these places and events yourself in time. But anyway, I discovered Nicholas in the middle of a drunken brawl and dragged him away before he was beaten to a pulp by a partisan crowd. And that was when Fate stood watching, hands behind back, swinging up and down on self-satisfied toes. Nicholas’s face reminded me of someone and when I finally discovered who, it was as if I had literally been manipulated like a puppet to arrive at that very moment in time.’

  Belle lay in Poli’s arms as he told Ming Xao of the connection between he and Nicholas. She felt drawn deep into the whole saga, amazed at the way life plays such games. If she had any energy at all, she would have said she thought they were all merely playthings of Others, Celestials in particular. As it was she let Poli talk on, her pain almost a far-off echo as she lived and breathed his adventures.

  Finally she moved, a guttural little groan escaping, like the grumble of a disgruntled dog.

  ‘Isabella, you are awake?’

  He looked down, his eyes meeting hers, and the desire to hate him for hurting her, to abhor his seemingly brash manner diminished in that moment. Instead, she saw a part of what Nicholas admired and was glad he was her cousin’s friend in adversity.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Pain?’

  ‘Not so much…’

  ‘Ah Isabella,’ he sighed and dropped his chin onto her head. ‘Nico? We will stop for a moment. Have you got water? Belle’s thirsty.’

  They settled her again in Poli’s arms, wrapping her against the onset of the midnight chill. Nico held water up to her lips and she swallowed, dry as the parched Amritsands. Chi stood by and her eyes met Belle’s and without saying a word, Belle knew that her body was losing its fight, that the Gandong Lotus root was burning its way along every blood vessel.

  Kitsune, if you can hear me, help me. Let me return to my mother. Please. I need to be with my mother…

  Catching Chi’s eyes, she realised her plea had been heard by the Weaving Maid. She just wished with all her heart it had been heard by the Fox Lady. She hated the pressure she placed upon everyone, that they worried on her behalf, trying so hard to get to Veniche.

  ‘Nico,’ she said, making her voice as strong as she could. Subterfuge was all – if she pretended she was stronger they might all be happier, lighter. She didn’t want this journey to be a funeral march. ‘Why Veniche? So far from the Orchard.’

  ‘The Gates of Færan, Belle. We can pass through and be in the Orchard in a day. Faster.’ He rubbed his hand over hers. ‘Better. Just think. Two days, Belle and you’ll be with the family!’

  ‘You know where the Gates are?’

  He nodded, somewhat diffidently she felt.

  ‘Nico! So much to tell me.’

  The look on his face reminded her of old times when they had shared such secrets and she could almost believe he thought she was feeling a little better.

  ‘Oh Nico, a day or so and we shall see them! I am so excited!’

  And she was, but it was a feverish excitement, brought on of injury, illness and fear, and they must not know. So she did her best and would continue to do so.

  She had nothing to lose.

  Wasn’t she going to die anyway?

  *

  As Ming Xao walked around to the other side of his horse to mount up, Poli whispered in Isabella’s ear.

  ‘You play acted with Nicholas.’

  She pulled back and grimaced at him.

  ‘You did,’ he continued. ‘You want him to think you feel better…’

  She freed a hand from beneath her wrappings as Nico handed Ming Xao the flambeau before mounting himself. The effort of moving cost her dear but she climbed over the agony, diminishing it by the very act of ignoring it. She laid her fingers on Poli’s arm and squeezed.

  Keep my secret, the grip implied. For me, for Nico and for Ming Xao.

  Poli frowned. She squeezed again.

  ‘Alright,’ he whispered and then grinned. ‘But only because I like you.’

  ‘Insufferable man,’ she muttered as he clicked the horse on to follow Ming Xao’s torchlight.

  The black hours of night might have been unmitigated tedium, but Belle decided to engage with Poli and Ming Xao. It served to disengage her own thoughts which leaped about like a hare in a hound-pen.

  ‘Mr. Poli, you must visit the Han one day. A man who has journeyed as far as you, needs to see this place. It is simply like nothing you know.’

  ‘I think it’s better if you and your friends call me Poli, as everyone I know does. Even Nicholas. There are many folk who think I’m not worthy of a title of any sort. Not everyone is perfect you know.’

  Perfect? You think I wonder why people don’t see you as the perfect embodiment of a man? Please!

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What would I like to see if I went there? What is it about the Han that you remember best?’

  ‘Oh, for me it is the gardens. They are so beautifully ordered – such havens of peace. The First House garden sustained me when I was distraught – the trees are hung with paper lanterns that are lit at night with small bells placed through the trees and they tinkle with the most sublime harmony. The paths are covered in white quartz pebbles which weave and bend like little rivers among artfully arranged rocks and shrubs.’

  She looked into the darkness, seeing Lu trotting along the paths with a lacquered tray piled with porcelain bowls.

  ‘The food is extraordinary,’ she continued, pushing away at the memory of hatred and disgust in Lu’s eyes at the Han gates. ‘You will never ever taste anything so fresh and aromatic. Don’t you agree, Ming Xao?’

  He looked across at her, the flames of the flambeau dancing on the lens of his spectacles.

  ‘I have nothing with which to compare it, Ibo.’

  ‘And then,’ she continued as blithely as she could manage, ‘there are parks with old men and their caged singing birds. Oh! And the moving meditations – orchestrated motion with hands or swords, even fans. Truly magnificent. One could watch it for hours.’

  ‘One wonders then, Isabella, why you bothered to leave.’ Poli’s voice was not scornful, merely ironic.

  She looked down.

  For one reason…

  ‘My family.’

  ‘Yes,’ s
aid Poli. ‘Of course.’ Patting her arm with his free hand, a gesture of unexpected and total understanding.

  He surprises me from all angles.

  She lapsed into quiet, leaving a gaping silence in the night air that swiftly filled with horses’ hoofbeats and the creak of saddlery. The odd nightbird cried – a hollow sound – and here and there crickets purred and clicked. Poli and Ming Xao withdrew into their own thought rooms and shut the doors and she was lost – the pain biting so hard she thought she would scream.

  ‘Pain again?’ Poli murmured. ‘I can feel your body tensing. Belle, this can’t continue.’

  She shook her head but said nothing, just collapsed a little more into the circle of his arms, almost as if such an action allowed him to soak up her agony like a sponge.

  ‘Good,’ he said in response to the loosening of her body.

  Good? No Poli, just too tired to fight it.

  ***

  Nicholas let hope creep in.

  At last.

  Belle had seemed stronger. Excited. The flambeau he carried, the twin of Ming Xao’s, flared a little as his horse jogged sideways having stepped on a broken branch, a harsh crack in the nightly silence. Amber eyes flickered on the outer edge of his vision but as quickly disappeared. The Lady Chi’s leading rein tightened as her horse sidled from the sound and he mindspoke to her.

  ‘We pass through a grove of spindly trees and the horse stepped on detritus, nothing to be alarmed about.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But the horse twitches near the wither and seems nervous and I can smell something, a dog perhaps?’

  Nicholas sniffed and faintly on the damp air of night he caught a whiff of an animal.

  Dogs?

  ‘You could be right. We are not far from settlements I think.’

  ‘You sound more at ease, Nicholas.’

  He gave a small laugh.

  ‘Did you hear Isabella’s voice? She seems less frail. I am so relieved…’

  ‘You love her.’

  Surprised, Nico replied.

  ‘Of course. We are family, but more than that, she and I have been like twins. To lose her would be to lose half myself – the half that matters. I am nothing without her, my lady. She will tell you I was always the follower.’ Despite relief at Belle’s apparent improvement, his shoulders tightened – a familiar feeling. ‘With Isabella gone, I came to rely on anyone to lead me forward – Phelim, Gallivant and more lately, Poli. I…’ he stopped.

  ‘Were you going to say you might as well have been blind?’

  Perceptive.

  ‘I was but I thought twice…’

  ‘I am not so sensitive about my disability you know.’ Chi Nü spoke softly. ‘Rather there seems little point. Better to learn how to handle it and get on. Nicholas, I think you need to examine what decisions you have made lately, what you have achieved. I think you will find you have been much more than a follower.’

  Visions leaped at breakneck speed through his mind: the nix, the Lake of Shifting Mists and his parents, the passage through the Færan Gates in Veniche, the Vale of Kush, the burgeoning familiarity with the mesmer.

  ‘You are quite adamant.’

  ‘Because you do yourself harm,’ said Chi, ‘by believing yourself less than the next man.’

  He blushed and was glad she wanted to keep talking because it was so long since he had been able to communicate like this with anyone – even if it was only mindspeak. His attention was caught by a movement alongside, but hidden by the dense forest growth, then another, and on the other side as well.

  What?

  ‘You see something?’

  ‘I am not sure. Are you alright?’

  ‘I will tell you if I am not, but the horses seem on edge. Are they tiring?’

  ‘Perhaps. Chi Nü, you say I lessen myself by my thinking but so much has been coloured by what I am. But you see, they say that what I am, my muteness and Belle’s disappearance are all connected. That Isabella’s kidnapping may be because of a connection with me. Sometimes I can’t help myself thinking…’

  ‘As if you could see beyond the curtain? I understand the dilemma. As if you had a skin you just can’t shed.’

  He cast a glance sideways.

  She knows, she understands.

  In the light of the flambeau, her black silk hair shone, luminescence danced off the planes of her cheekbones.

  How can anyone have such perfect eyes?

  And even though she could not see him looking at her, her mouth tipped up and her lashes feathered down with coyness. He found he was charmed by her and continued.

  ‘You are the only person who really does understand then. I remain forever guilty for being Færan, for being cursed, for being connected to Isabella. And as to finding one’s place, the place where one really belongs, it is like the search for Isabella. The difference being that I found Belle, I doubt I shall ever find my true place.’

  ‘Does that disturb you?’

  Chi’s comments and questions had the knack of flying directly to the heart of the matter.

  ‘Not now I have found Isabella. It goes part way to mitigating what I have felt. That I am the reason she disappeared.’

  ‘I think that whilst there might be a connection, I doubt it is because of you she disappeared. More likely because of her, you became mute. It is something that must be investigated at some point so that you have answers. But Nicholas, what if you hadn’t found her and what if, Aine forbid, she now dies? Your place shouldn’t be dependent on any one person. Attachments like that are doomed. One needs to be content within oneself, the rest follows naturally.’

  Nicholas weighed her words and kept them close. Guilt dissipated fractionally, enough to ease his heavy load. And of course she was right. Hadn’t he always envied Belle’s contentment with herself.

  What? The contentment that you always considered overt pride.

  Vainly he tried to swipe the thought away before…

  ‘Ah, but she has no pride now,’ Chi broke it. ‘The Han dismantled it. What you see now is pure courage. It was not pride or vanity that made her run from her captors. It was love for her family, for you. But not only that, she encouraged Ming Xao to reach for his dreams and she also saved me… Nicholas, something is wrong!’

  Her horse shied and barged sideways, Nicholas’s own snorting and laying ears back. He grabbed the lead rein and held tight, mindspeaking, ordering Chi to hold firmly to the pommel. In the undergrowth, the amber eyes tracked alongside, closer, a visceral rumble in throats underlining a threat. As he tightened his own grip on the flambeau a bone-melting, blood-freezing howl sounded ahead of them.

  ‘Wolves, Nico, wolves,’ yelled Poli as another baying cry filled the air, more and more adding a bloodcurdling chorus. ‘Do something!’

  Nico waved his arm with the flambeau, a frantic sweep, thinking only of flame. A circle of fire spread rapidly, encircling the companions, a barricade between them and the pack that had formed outside. Snarls ripped through the forest, dismantling courage, building fear.

  ‘Nicholas,’ Belle called out. ‘Nico!’

  I’m here, Belle. We’re all safe, he wanted to call to her.

  The horses bunched together, trying to rear, to break away, terrified of the flame and of the hungry beasts beyond.

  ‘Truth, my friend,’ Poli spoke above the wolf call. ‘If the horses bolt, we’re dead meat, all of us. It’s fight or flight and I can’t see us surviving outside the fire. Can’t you mesmer the wolves dead?’

  Nico gritted his teeth.

  ‘He says, no,’ said Chi Nü, holding tight to her saddle.

  I do not know the Death Mesmer…

  ‘Aine, Nicholas, now’s not the time to dissemble,’ shouted Poli.

  ‘He is not,’ Chi Nü’s voice lifted, an authoritative note creeping in, perhaps the tone of the Celestial that she had been. ‘Do you not think he would if he could?’

  Ming Xao jumped off his unsteady mount, throwing his flambeau into the
fire, pulling off his quilted upper robe and flinging it across the horse’s eyes and ears, trying to soothe the animal, speaking to it, wrapping the reins twice round his hands – a dangerous move if the horse bolted.

  ‘Nico!’ Poli yelled, trying to hold his horse steady and keep Isabella safe in his arms.

  For the first time ever, Nicholas heard genuine fear in Poli’s voice, underlined by the crackle and roar of soaring flame and the rabid howl of the wolves.

  ‘He cannot,’ shouted Chi Nü as her horse reared high and she clung to its neck. ‘Kitsune!’ she cried.

  *

  The flame died in that moment.

  No, No!

  An ivory gleam flattened the searing heat like a rainstorm. The wolves’ eyes glittered and the massive teeth shone in the light. Grey hackles rose and the wolves lowered themselves, their haunches bunching ready to spring. The horses were blind with panic and Nicholas realised all their lives hung by a thread that thinned with every passing second.

  He raised his hand.

  There must be something…

  But a lithe white shape sprang in front of the group, a growl emerging from its throat. It prowled around them, corralling them, staring at the wolves, lips drawn back over teeth, its tongue rolling as the growling continued, never ceasing.

  The animal, a white fox, continued its purposeful circling, searching for something, and the wolves backed away from its presence with dropped shoulder and cautious eye. They left one wolf to the fore, a silver-coated male pocked with scars and whose height made the fox look like a kitten. It fixed yellow eyes upon the fox, its wide snarl exposing incisors like stakes but the implacable white creature, lacking any fear, walked back and forth – taunting, teasing.

  ‘Kitsune!’ The word exploded from Chi Nü and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘She is here and we must go immediately! Leave her to do what she must, she is giving us time.’

  ‘But the rest of the pack, they’ll chase us if we run!’

  Nicholas’s frantic caution was not lost on the Celestial, her horse dancing as if wanting to begin a race.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Poli urged, unaware that the fox was anything Other. ‘Belle, sit astride, you have to, we need to gallop. Ming Xao, hurry, mount up!’ Belle flung her leg over the front of the saddle, Poli’s grip encircling and tightening as her glance remained fixed on the white fox. ‘We’re flying into the dark unknown. Literally. You have to trust to the Fates, Belle.’