by JY Yang
“I’ll go,” she said. Beside her, Akeha reacted with consternation, imperceptible to all but her. She squeezed his arm.
As children in the Grand Monastery, they had perfected a way of speaking directly through the Slack. Akeha looked fiercely into her eyes, and she quieted her mindeye to listen.
She’s dangerous, he said. Watch where your feet land. Try not to die on me.
Don’t be an idiot, she replied. Of course I’ll be careful. But she thought that it was the advisor who should be careful.
Chapter Ten
THE ADVISOR’S RESIDENCE STOOD in the middle of a massive paved courtyard, surrounded by gold-embellished white walls. The tops of trees could be seen within the compound walls: graceful swoops of willow, spikes of cherry blossom, heavy boughs of tamarind. The door, thick and red and punctuated by round gold studs, was guarded by a man and a woman in quilted Protectorate armor.
Mokoya followed Silbya’s unwavering path. The woman had not spoken on their trip up here, a sealed vessel from whom Mokoya could glean nothing. Mokoya had spent the time mouthing the First Sutra under her breath in a vain attempt to keep her heart rate steady.
“We are expected,” Silbya told the guards. The woman tugged on the Slack to open the doors.
Gravel paths forded thick rich soil. Peony bushes bloomed amongst the trees. The red arch of a wooden bridge graced a fishpond, where a pair of palm-sized terra-pins sunned themselves. At the end of the garden stood the advisor’s house, dark timber columns supporting a peaked roof threaded from corner to corner with carven dragons.
It looked and smelled like home.
Mokoya entered the advisor’s receiving chamber to the sounds of strife. A voice, fortified by the arrogance of youth, rang out: “You can take your false concern and put it up your own behind.”
Princess Wanbeng and Tan Khimyan were locked in verbal battle at the center of a cavernous room decked with shadows. Hanging trees and thick vines climbed golden frames that lined the chamber. In the back a fine silver mesh caged swooping flocks of birds and a sleek pile of breathing, growling fur: a tiger, eyes yellow, paws huge and idle. A hand thrust into a slash in the wires would never emerge again.
“Princess,” said Tan Khimyan, “your lack of decorum will not serve you well in Chengbee.”
“Good, because I’m not going to Chengbee.”
Wanbeng had the solid, corded look of a person who spent her days running and climbing. The child in the framed pictures had grown into a formidable young woman. Her hair was gathered high in an efficient bun, and she wore a closed, disdainful expression.
And there was Tan Khimyan, the woman Mokoya had imagined as identical to her mother. The reality was deflating. A small, pale-skinned woman with narrow features, she was not half as physically imposing as Mother. Worse still, she lacked the Protector’s presence, instead appearing to be overwhelmed by her ornate surroundings, like a child playing at being important. Disappointment set in. Contempt, even.
Tan Khimyan said to Wanbeng, “My dear child, think of your poor father. This is his wish for you.”
“I care nothing for his wishes. When Mother was dying, did he care for mine? No, he did not.”
Tan Khimyan sighed. “As you grow up, you will come to find that you should treasure your father’s intentions. He means the best for you.” She looked at Mokoya, the first acknowledgment that she had seen her guest. “I’m sure the Tensor here agrees.”
Mokoya raised an eyebrow. “Best intentions? My own mother bore me because she owed the Grand Monastery a blood debt. Are those the best intentions you mean?”
Wanbeng smirked. Seemingly emboldened by Mokoya’s statement, she said, “Here is what I think of my father’s best intentions.” She pulsed through water-nature. Glass shattered; on the long workbench that occupied the left side of the chamber, fragile objects cascaded to the ground. Boiling vessels, pipettes, and jars of chemicals burst into glittering fireworks. A hundred thousand weapons with which to cut the skin, to impale the self.
Tan Khimyan’s face went tight, and Mokoya watched her knuckles press through the skin of her hands. Weak, she thought. Mother would eat her alive. No wonder she was expelled from the city.
It had been years, and still her mother’s way of thinking crept through her mind like an elusive, fleeting specter. She shivered.
“Don’t waste my time again,” Wanbeng said, and she spun on her heel to leave.
“Silbya,” Tan Khimyan said, her voice straining against spikes of emotion, “come clear this up.”
The woman obeyed without a word. Tan Khimyan turned to Mokoya, and her face shifted into a diplomat’s smile. “My apologies, Tensor. Come, let us retire to a more civilized location.”
Tan Khimyan vanished into the shadows on the right. Mokoya stepped after her, but when she glanced back, she saw Wanbeng brazenly lift a small jade carving from one of Tan Khimyan’s display shelves and pocket it.
She admired the girl’s boldness, at least.
Tan Khimyan took her to a large study lit by silk-screened windows. A carved desk and tall-backed chair in matching rosewood lorded over the middle of the room. The desk hosted a tea set, an inkpot, brushes, and a pile of scrolls, arranged into a neat pattern with religious precision.
“Would you like some tea, Tensor Sanao? I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while now.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course.” She made her way around her desk and picked up the teapot without waiting for Mokoya’s answer.
Tan Khimyan dressed her shapely form in finely fitted silk. Her hair, sculpted to arboreal intricacy, glittered with the insectile weight of jewels. Mokoya had almost forgotten the fanciful ways women in the capital were expected to paint their faces, the rouge for the cheeks and lips, the stone-ink in place of eyebrows. She didn’t appreciate this reminder.
“Children these days,” Tan Khimyan remarked. “More like wild horses than civilized beings. Wanbeng’s been a thorn in her father’s eye for quite some time now. She is of the age to further her education, but she is reluctant to leave the provincial lands she grew up in. She will come around. She is a sensible child, after all.”
Mokoya noticed the cushion on the floor in front of the desk. Two ovals on the shiny surface of the fabric had been worn gray by the knees of countless supplicants. “I don’t expect you to kneel, of course,” Tan Khimyan said. “That’s for the workers. You are different.”
“How magnanimous of you.” Mokoya wasn’t sure the sarcasm in her voice came through.
“I always thought it a pity that I was not an advisor in Bataanar when you last visited,” Tan Khimyan said, as she washed the teacups. “We could have met then. But of course, many things have changed since that time.”
Mokoya met her prattle with a wall of silence. She did not take the teacup when it was offered to her, and Tan Khimyan put the cup away with a peeved expression. She was so easily pushed.
Mokoya said, “Did you summon the naga to the city?”
Tan Khimyan sighed and settled on the edge of her desk with the weight of a brocaded curtain. “You’re a plain talker, I see. All right.” She crossed one knee over the other. “In the interest of honesty, I shall tell you: I did not.”
Mokoya snorted.
“You may find it hard to believe. But this is true. I had a hand in creating the beast, but someone else is controlling it.”
“So you admit to creating the naga?”
She shrugged. “I see no point in concealing that fact from you. Yes, Tensor, I admit it. I was part of the group in Chengbee that created this naga.” A dry, humorless chuckle followed. “It was what caused my exile from the capital, after all.”
Mokoya wasn’t buying it. “If you’re not the one summoning the naga, who is? Who else knows it exists?”
“Who, indeed?” The silky way she said it insisted she had an answer.
Her posturing was starting to grate on Mokoya’s nerves. “Speak plainly.”
“Think a little, Tensor, and the answer will become clear. You’ve met her.”
Mokoya squinted. “Who, Wanbeng?” Sarcasm masked panic: she didn’t understand Tan Khimyan’s insinuation, and a fear of losing the conversation’s thread swelled in her.
Tan Khimyan exhaled and capitulated. Mokoya’s unintended feint had worked. “I speak of Swallow.”
“Swallow?” A name? A bird?
Another deep sigh. “This coyness benefits neither of us, Tensor.” As cold water filled Mokoya’s spine like river water, she said, “Everyone’s seen the Quarterlandish girl who fights by your side. It’s hard to miss someone who rides a naga mount.”
Swallow. The name was wrong, and the pronouns were wrong, but Tan Khimyan was referring to Rider. Rider, who lay unconscious in a tent outside the city. Rider, who had the ability to draw unwarranted smiles out of Mokoya.
Tan Khimyan stood and began a circuit of her desk. “I brought you here to warn you of her duplicity. I can tell Swallow has wormed her way into your good graces. But you must not make the mistake of trusting her, as I did.”
Mokoya shifted weight between her feet, not sure what to do with her hands, which had begun to prickle as if insects writhed inside her fingers.
“You may not know her very well, but we were together for many years. I took her in, I sheltered her, and I protected her in the capital. For all that, she betrayed me. That’s the kind of person she is.”
“Betrayed you?”
“She was the one who reported our experiments. Did she not tell you?”
No, of course Rider had told her. Things slipped her mind so easily these days. Mokoya folded her arms to hide the fact that they were shaking. “I have only your word that she’s responsible.”
“Ah, Tensor. I wish I had proof to offer you! But the fortunes are not so kind. All I have is circumstantial evidence.”
Mokoya took the bait: “What evidence?”
“A few months ago, my chambers were broken into. All my notes about the experiment went missing. They are everything someone would need to control the naga. The guards saw no one come in or leave. And they’re quite thorough, my guards. Silbya would know if the compound was breached.” She looked seriously at Mokoya. “Now, can you think of anyone you know who has the ability to travel from place to place without being detected? Someone who can bend the Slack?”
Mokoya’s pulse accelerated. “Any thief with the right skills could have broken into your quarters undetected. Your so-called evidence means nothing.”
“But it’s Swallow. I’m sure of it. It could be no one else.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
All attempts at posturing had fled Tan Khimyan. What remained was iron-jawed determination and a refusal to look away from Mokoya, who found the fish-spear attention unnerving.
“Listen, Tensor,” Tan Khimyan said. “I know we have no reason to be friends. Certainly your brother, for all that we have clashed, would have set you against me.” With broad strides, she closed the gap between them, reaching for Mokoya. “But Bataanar is my home now. And I will not see it destroyed.”
Mokoya took a step back, away from the woman’s grasping hands. Colorful emotions burned through the arm hidden by her cloak.
“Look through her belongings. Find what she has stolen from me. That’ll be all the evidence you need.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they do this?”
“Swallow? She seeks revenge, Tensor. She would see me utterly destroyed. It was not enough for her to have me turned out of my life and my home. She will plague me into the grave.”
Mokoya thought of the night they’d spent together, recalling Rider’s strangeness and intensity, tempered by great curiosity and great warmth. She had believed in that warmth, had found comfort in it, had briefly relied upon it as a fount of human compassion. When she tried to picture them bearing the kind of grudge Tan Khimyan was accusing them of, her mind stumbled over the jagged incongruity.
The woman studied Mokoya’s reaction. At least she had stopped trying to touch Mokoya; she had realized it would end badly. “You still don’t believe me, of course. But you have known her only briefly. I suspect you’ll learn better.”
Mokoya thought, You can’t even use the right pronouns for them. You don’t even know their real name.
And then: How do I know that I know their real name?
She shivered. Was she sure she knew Rider better than this woman did? Would she be willing to bet Bataanar’s fate on it?
* * *
When Mokoya left Tan Khimyan’s residence, the distant, rational part of her mind said she needed to find Akeha and Thennjay. But her feet were already taking her down the narrow path back through Bataanar, back through the suffocating heat, back through the staring, distrustful crowds. All of it—the noise, the shoving, the smells of sweat and cooking—came in through a thick filter. They were sensations being picked up by someone else’s body, in which she was only a guest.
She dutifully put one foot in front of the other and kept breathing.
The tent city was prefaced by Bramble’s sloping form. The naga rested on the cooling sand with Phoenix tucked under one blue-and-yellow wing. The raptor jumped up in a flurry of delight when she saw Mokoya, but her excitement dampened as Mokoya stroked her nose. She knew something was wrong.
“Shh,” Mokoya said, as Phoenix pressed her massive head into her hands and whined.
Bramble growled and rustled her wings, watching Mokoya carefully. The naga was less skittish than she had been before—Phoenix’s presence seemed to calm her down. It was a pity. The two of them appeared to be getting along so well.
Rider was alive, awake, and crouched over something when Mokoya entered the tent. They jumped up, and a flash of emotion—shock or guilt, or both—crossed their face. “Mokoya.”
The tent looked like a typhoon had hit it. Someone had brought Mokoya’s belongings in from the desert and left them in haphazard clumps. Boxes and small bags lay around, and they all looked like they had been opened. A stack of journals sat on top of the box Mokoya had put them in. Anger tore through her gut. “Have you been looking through my things?”
That look of guilt again. “Yes. No.” Color flushed through Rider’s pale cheeks. “The crew brought your things in—there was a flash storm in the desert while you were in the city. We wanted to make sure nothing had water damage.”
If truth had a shape, her words fit its boundaries. A wash of petrichor had weighted the air outside, which she had mistaken for oasis smell. Heavy clashes of slackcraft could, and often would, disrupt weather patterns.
Still the sense of violation remained. “You read my journals?”
“I did not.” Their brows furrowed. “I would never do such a thing without your consent, Mokoya.”
One of the capture pearls sat by itself on top of an upturned crate. Mokoya frowned at it, and Rider noticed. “Mokoya,” they said placatingly, reaching for her arm. Their fingers froze an inch from her skin, as if they were afraid to make contact.
“You looked through that one,” she said.
“I—” Their shoulders cramped into an apologetic shape. “I was merely curious—I wanted to study the technique behind it. I did not know they contained your personal memories. I am sorry, Mokoya.”
Heavy browns and greens swirled in the belly of the capture pearl like swamp water. Mokoya knew which it was by sight. It contained her last argument with Thennjay, captured for posterity: the Grand Monastery in the grip of a heat wave, Phoenix showered by dying cherry blossoms, Mokoya tying her scattershot possessions to the raptor’s back.
“Stay? With a man who’s given up on our daughter?”
“Eien is dead, Nao. She’s gone. You have to accept that.”
“She’s gone, but we haven’t lost her.”
“Phoenix is just a copy. Nao! She’s not going to bring Eien back.”
Pulling on the reins, ropes biting into her skin. “Good-bye, Thenn.”
“Mokoya?”
She blinked. The capture pearl was gripped in her shaking hands, even though she had no memory of picking it up. The vision of Chengbee in the dying summer faded from around her. She felt like a chunk of time had been ripped from her, leaving a hollow in her body.
Rider looked afraid, but whether they were afraid of Mokoya or afraid for her, she couldn’t tell. “I apologize, Mokoya. If I had known, I would not have touched it.”
Mokoya’s fingers spasmed as she put the capture pearl back down. She had to force words through the clot of tension stoppering her chest. “Why does Tan Khimyan call you Swallow?”
Rider’s eyes widened. “Have you met her?”
She let the frost in her manner answer.
Rider intently surveyed the mess on the ground. “That was the name she gave me. She disliked the one I have.” They fidgeted like they wanted to tidy away the chaos, but didn’t dare to. “What did she say about me?”
“She said you were the one summoning the naga. She said you stole her notes. She said you’ll destroy Bataanar in your vendetta against her.”
Rider froze, then moved away so that Mokoya couldn’t see their reaction. Quietly they said, “So that is the story that she has woven, is it? Ah, Khimyan.”
The words were tainted with a filamentous tenderness Mokoya couldn’t parse. They turned back around. “How disappointing. I was not expecting this from her.”
“Are you denying this? You’re telling me she’s lying?”
“What part of that story sounds true to you?”
Mokoya folded her arms. “Whoever stole her notes broke into her compound without alerting the guards. It sounds like something you’d be capable of doing.”
“I would be capable of doing?” As Rider repeated her words, Mokoya realized how harsh they sounded, but it was too late. They had already left her mouth like a cloud of poison gas.
The guilt must have made its way to her face, because Rider said, “You are not to blame, Mokoya. After all, you know very little of me.” Hesitantly, they moved closer to her. “What can I do to ease your suspicions? Would you like to examine my belongings? It would prove I do not possess what she accuses me of taking.”