“I’m confused.” Farid tried to put an edge to his voice, but sounded pitifully like a child. “And frustrated. Where are we?”
“This is the site of my village,” she said. “I know you do not understand. But, please, trust me for a day longer.”
“Tomorrow we move on,” Farid said, conceding that twilight was not far off under the perpetual darkness of the swamp’s choking canopy. He could not see the moon through the trees but knew it was growing larger each night. Time was ticking away. “You take me to O’oa Tsetse. I’ll buy you a cup of tea. We’ll forget about this, yah? Otherwise . . .”
Tóu Mǎ retrieved a satchel of tea stamped with an apothecary logogram from their things, followed by Farid’s copper kettle.
“Tea?”
Farid scowled. “You don’t want to know what ‘otherwise’ is,” he said, as if the threat had landed where he’d thrown it. “Tomorrow,” he said. “And, yah, please brew me some of that.”
A moment of silence passed as Tóu Mǎ tinkered with the kettle.
“Tell me about this nameless village of yours,” Farid said, biting back his sarcasm. He did not want to be berated again. “Your family.”
Tóu Mǎ met his eyes. If she was searching for sincerity, she must have found it, for she began speaking. “It has a name. It’s just that this modern world has forgotten it. When good spirits still lived in these mountains, it was called Tt’Hsiung.”
“Your family lives in . . . Tt’Hsiung?” Farid struggled to wrap his tongue around the name. It sounded beautiful on her lips; like a rockslide on his.
“My sister is there. The rest of my family is dead.”
Grim, Farid thought. He was surprised to realize his genuine interest in hearing her story. Mercenaries didn’t last long if they took a liking to their employers. Easier if you didn’t care. Safer.
“Our father raised us,” she said, pensive. “Until he was drowned by Tseng Aa scum.”
“And your mother?” Farid risked.
A dark look passed over Tóu Mǎ’s face. “She left the village when I was young. After my father passed, Hsiu Mei, my uncle adopted us. He was the leader of Tt’Hsiung, but no loving father. Greedy. A bully. He owned the village—then he owned us, too.”
Tóu Mǎ glanced past Farid, as if the shadows behind him were a window to her childhood. Her shoulders slumped momentarily—then she straightened, fierce and proud.
“Hsiu Mei’s chains were too much for me. I wilted in his care. My sister found kinship—a mutual obsession with the dark magics of the Beiqing Bog witches, one of whom served my uncle as counsellor. She was beautiful, and strong in every possible way. Terrifying.
“As I broke my back as a labourer, lifting Tt’Hsiung on my shoulders, my sister dabbled further into the witch’s magic. We drifted apart. The villagers loved me in a way they could not love my sister or uncle, but it did little to prepare me for what was to come.”
Farid reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, then thought better of it.
“My uncle died,” Tóu Mǎ continued. “He was not a healthy man, it came suddenly. The whole village suspected murder, but no one had the courage to say it aloud. Myself included, I’ll admit. My sister assumed leadership of our village.”
“She killed him?” Farid said. He’d meant it rhetorically, so was surprised when she answered.
“No. The Beiqing Bog witch killed my uncle. Hsiu Mei was obstinate in his old age. My sister proved a more loyal apprentice.”
Farid grunted. There was doubt in her voice, as though she fought to convince herself of what she said.
“My sister disappeared, along with the witch. We held a funeral for her, but no one believed she was truly dead. By blood I was the next in line for leadership, and I was popular. I took up the responsibility but was crushed by its weight. I was a not a good leader, Farid.”
“Better than your uncle.”
“I was young, and hated what I’d seen from my uncle and sister. And so, so angry.”
“Seems unjust, unfair,” Farid said.
“Someone once told me that invoking fairness in this world is a fool’s game.”
“This witch took advantage of your weakness, and now rules your village,” Farid said, piecing together the most painful part of the tale.
“Something like that . . .” Tóu Mǎ trailed off. She wrapped her arms around her drawn knees. Her red-rimmed eyes were wet.
“I had a sister,” Farid said. He did not speak of her very often. She was from a life he had left behind long ago, but still lived inside him every day.
“Qin?”
Farid chuckled. “No. Qin’s a friend, a coconspirator. My sister was Liaqat. Lia. She died when I was very young. We were orphans of the great dye pits of Atan-Shah.” Tóu Mǎ shook her head, indicating that she did not recognize the name. “She fell into one of the dye pits one day, working early in the morning. She drowned.”
Tóu Mǎ brewed tea; Farid brewed silence. A moment later, Tóu Mǎ handed him a scalding tin cup. The tea was sweet and nutty—much like the qaf that Qin drank by the barrelful. Not many Islanders took to the Djeeman drink, but Qin had adopted it as she would a child. Sequestered away in O’oa Tsetse, deep in the heart of the archipelago’s largest island, Qin would be dying for a cup of qaf right now. Farid made a mental note to tell her of this tea.
“I am sorry,” Tóu Mǎ said after many moments of silence. “It is not easy to lose someone who is a pillar of your life.”
“Those wounds heal,” Farid said, though he knew it wasn’t true. The words weren’t coming out quite right. Slurred. Slow. “I fled to the clergy after she died. They abandoned me, too. And here I am.”
Sudden tingling started at the tips of Farid’s fingers, toes, and tongue. It spread rapidly from there. His mug dropped to the ground, splashing the remaining tea across his boots. His chin bobbed to his chest; he collapsed, sprawling on the ground before the tingling had reached his chest. He fought the darkness, but lost.
He woke in a village unlike any he’d ever seen.
A wooden building filled most of his vision, but his ears recognized the bustle of a waking village, oddly devoid of voices.
He rolled from his back to his right side, propped up on his elbow. The butt of his pistol dug painfully into his side. Fetid swamp lay between the slats of the wooden walkway.
The same swamp as before? Farid wondered.
What made more sense? A village appearing from nowhere while he slept, or that Tóu Mǎ had drugged him—he remembered tea spilling across his boots—and kidnapped him?
Couldn’t she have spirited me to a bed instead of an alley? He thought as he struggled to his feet, soreness setting in after his fight with the kō-dan.
Leaving the small back street, he gasped, unable to help himself. Villagers were everywhere, eerily silent as they moved through the clockwork motions of their lives. They were like men and women found in any village across the archipelago, except in place of human heads they had those of animals. Work horses, hounds, hunting birds; every manner of beast one might expect to find in a human settlement. Shoulders stooped, eyes downcast—an aura of depression loomed over the villagers. Even the buildings were in shambles.
Farid pressed himself back into the shadows. No one stepped out of line. Farid was reminded of Qin’s moye automatons: mechanical beings who moved and behaved like crude humans. He was troubled by the lack of children, who can be found in even the most despicable corners of the world—bright little points of light among the darkness.
Fear clawed at him. He could hate and dismiss the emotion all he wanted, but the burning in his stomach and his unsteady hands spoke only one truth.
He again left the alley, but this time melted into the clockwork flow of villagers. He followed a crow-headed man carrying a questionably wet-bottomed sack. Nearby, a bull-headed vendor gestured madly at a donkey-headed client. Farid scanned the storefront signs, hoping to find some clue to Tóu Mǎ’s whereabouts. He couldn’
t read most of them—too faded, or marked with unrecognizable words.
The crow-headed man passed through a large square lined with stalls and shops. Farid stopped to peer down a wide street at what was assuredly the warlock’s seat of power. He ducked into an alley which offered a good view of the mansion. Perched atop a broad hillock, it was larger and more splendid by far than any other building in the village—a monarch watching its people with baleful eyes. Red-enameled clay tiles swept down from the roof’s highest peak to its gilded corners. Unspoiled waters flowed from under the building, tumbling down the hillock to mingle with the swamp. The entirety of the mansion was enveloped by a malevolent indigo miasma.
“She is in there,” said the first voice he’d heard since waking.
Farid spun, pistol drawn in a flash. All that stood between the speaker and a face full of lead was Farid’s itchy trigger finger. His moye ti hissed softly, steam pouring from its vents as the fire djinn responded to Farid’s alarm.
Tóu Mǎ stood in a nearby doorway. He could see the map’s tube clipped to her belt, but she was a step too far to grab at it and run.
“Wu-jiu?” Farid said, breath accelerated. He holstered his pistol. Loosely.
“Wu-jiu. The warlock. My sister.”
“Sister.” Farid rolled the word across his tongue. Many secrets lived in the red-rimmed eyes of Tóu Mǎ. She stared at him aggressively.
“And I thought my family had a history . . .” Farid muttered. He thought of Liaqat. Would he want her back if it meant she’d be monstrous? “Who is she? Who are you?”
Tóu Mǎ glanced at her sister’s dark mansion. She gestured for Farid to join her in the shadows. He tried, but the ambient light of his fired-up moye ti was a dead giveaway. Doubt about Tóu Mǎ’s allegiance flared as he considered this revelation. He stamped that thought down before it became unwieldy.
Tóu Mǎ’s voice was barely a whisper. “Now that we’re here, it hardly seems fair to be set on this path to fratricide . . .”
“Someone once lectured me on fairness in this world,” Farid said. “Isn’t she the bad guy?”
“She was good. Once . . .” Her words trailed to ghostly ether.
Farid remembered the innocent days of his youth—long sequestered in the library, distracted by the wind-chime laughter of younger initiates play-fighting outside. When he still thought of himself as purely good.
“Wu-jiu returned two years after she disappeared,” Tóu Mǎ said in a rush. “Without the witch. She had changed. You could see dirty magic in her eyes. Being a fool, I ceded my position to her, claiming it was her right. I was scared. Her return to power made my uncle look generous—she was efficient in her brutality. Callous. Not at all the sister my father raised.”
Tóu Mǎ sagged, weakened by her story’s next turn.
“One winter day she summoned the village to gather here.” She gestured at the square that Farid had just left. “I carried a stolen butcher knife and watched from her side as the crowd gathered. Terrified. They stilled as she raised her hands. At first, it was only those closest who started gagging—choking, as though invisible hands held their throats. Blood spilled from their mouths. They died, and my sister used the power of their death to swell her magic. That choking death swept through the crowd one by one. She killed everyone. Except me.”
Farid shuddered, horrified by the image building in his mind. Of the enemy he was hired to defeat.
Tóu Mǎ continued, “The adults rose from their bodies, not as flesh and blood, but as the Yoo-in. Disfigured spirits bound by her blood magic. The animal heads are Wu-jiu’s idea of punishment—to show them that they are nothing more than animals. Chattel.”
Farid glanced out at the villagers milling in the square. Silent. Lost.
“I attacked her.” Tóu Mǎ choked on the memory. “The blow was clean, sliding between ribs into her heart, but it could not destroy the evil within her. She struck me down like the others. Next I knew, I stood among the Yoo-in, but solid where they are ethereal. She spared me the humility of a new form, but she reminds me, every day, that I am her beast of burden. No better than a work horse. We cannot rest while she lives.
“Now, I travel these Islands at her command, seeking men to amuse her—hoping in my heart to find someone with the power to destroy her. You must put an end to it!”
A shiver crawled up Farid’s spine.
“We need to go. Before she realizes that I’ve returned,” Tóu Mǎ said. She abandoned the doorway and darted off towards the mansion. The map was still secured at her belt. Farid followed reluctantly.
With each step, the sunlight around them lost strength, giving way to the purple twilight of Wu-jiu’s magic. Tóu Mǎ disappeared into the shadows behind a small door meant for household staff. Farid hurried after her. His moye ti sputtered and spilled light as he reached out to grasp the door handle. A silent word of reassurance from Farid tempered the djinn, but its discomfort was clear.
Through the door was a small foyer stacked with chairs and other dusty paraphernalia. There were no footprints, though Tóu Mǎ had passed through the room only seconds earlier. There were two doors to either side of Farid and one across from him, slightly ajar. He drew his pistol and stepped through that door into an open courtyard.
Plum trees and wildflowers covered the courtyard wherever they found root—from the sunset tipping finally into night, to a blooming bruise, to light thistle. A fountain in the likeness of a woman, naked and fecund, with the wings of a great crow, dominated the middle of the garden. Purple ivy explored its intricacies; small grapes nestled in its vines. An urn in each hand poured water into the basin below. Despite the blanket of darkness outside, sunlight filled the courtyard.
There were djinn everywhere. Flora djinn nestled in the flowers; stone djinn, still as statues; breeze djinn, barely noticed; water djinn splashing playfully in the fountain. Farid had not seen so many in one place since leaving his home country.
A hint of movement to Farid’s left. He spun, summoning the djinn’s magic, and his moye ti became a flaming fist. Two women sat at a silk-draped table. Between them cooled a ceramic teapot. Tóu Mǎ was wearing a green silk robe, with thread-of-gold dragons winding languidly up her arms to disappear behind her shoulders. Back straight, her hands were clasped politely in her lap, and no signs of travel marred the robe’s perfect lines. Her familiar red scarf bound her hair, at odds with the elegance of her robe.
Across from Tóu Mǎ, marked by those same melancholy eyes, was her sister.
Wu-jiu was slender where Tóu Mǎ was strong. A wry smile revealed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and mottled yellow-and-brown teeth. Her hair was an obsidian waterfall cascading down her back, brushing at the low-scooping back of her violet robe.
The warlock lifted a teacup to her lips and sipped. “Welcome to my home,” she said after a moment, unsurprised by Farid’s sudden appearance. She had the same light voice as her sister.
Farid saw now that the garden was sprinkled with broken and abused moye. From ancient jump boots, as old as the technology itself, to an enormous insect-like exoskeleton, he was in the midst of a peerless archive of the technology’s history. Qin would kill to get her hands on it—to study it even for a single day. A single hour. Suddenly, the panoply of djinn made sense. His fire djinn quieted, and the flame engulfing his arm flickered and died.
Farid shivered under Wu-jiu’s hungry gaze—measuring his flaws, weighing him against those who had come before. It was the same look he’d given countless women from Djeema to Linden. Farid was being judged, and he did not like it.
“My sister has a fine eye,” Wu-jiu demurred. “You will make a fine husband.” She stood, unfolding gracefully from her chair like a crane. “Or a plaything. My last husband proved . . . fruitless.”
Tóu Mǎ would not meet his eyes. She stared straight ahead as though drugged. She was not a traitor, Farid realized. She was a prisoner.
“I’m here to kill you,” Farid said. And get that map, he
thought. He levelled his pistol at the warlock, its worn sandalwood grip a familiar comfort. The fire djinn, eager to meet its magic against the warlock, enveloped the moye ti in flame. Farid felt its power surge through him. The other djinn in the garden suddenly stilled, eyes drawn to Farid and the summoning of his magic.
“Try, bridegroom,” she said. “As others have tried.” Her words were a challenge. Her eyes swept over the moye ti scattered about the garden. They spoke of a hundred moye who had tried before. A hundred dead moye.
With a flourish of her hands, Wu-jiu summoned an eldritch magic. Her eyes disappeared behind a smear of impenetrable shadow broken only by two points of amethyst light. An ethereal skull formed in each of her hands, violet flame pouring from gaping jaws. She raised an arm, and one of the skulls exploded towards Farid. Age might have claimed his back, but his trigger finger was still greedy—the crack of his pistol reverberated through the garden and the bullet ripped through the skull.
Wu-jiu’s assault was ferocious. More skulls whipped by Farid, super-heated air screaming as they passed within inches of ending the battle. One connected with his pistol, shattering its wood grip and melting the barrel. The djinn absorbed the flame, protecting Farid from further harm, but he was winded. He leaped to put the fountain between him and the warlock.
In the wake of chaos, the silence was deafening. Petals fell to the floor. Even the djinn were still. Tóu Mǎ remained seated at the table, statuesque.
Three heartbeats, then a wave of purple flame erupted from Wu-jiu’s raised hands. The explosion consumed the airborne petals, burning them to ash. The djinn fought to contain the surge of magic. Farid closed his eyes until the light died. When he opened them Wu-jiu was gone.
Catching on a moment too late, Farid spun to face the warlock, who towered over him, face twisted by a sickening grin. Her head was wreathed in purple flame. He had just enough time to gaze into the shadows where her eyes should have been before her fist slammed into his chest. He flew head over heels into the fountain. Water flooded his moye ti, extinguishing the magic and forcing the djinn to retreat to its otherworldly home. Farid came up spitting, choking on the sickening ichor that covered the water. His keffiyah was wrapped dangerously over his nose and mouth. He ripped it off and threw it aside.
Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 24