Fox and Phoenix

by Beth Bernobich

  “How do you know?”

  “How else? I went into his stables first.”

  She whistled. A pack pony thudded toward us from the direction of the stables. Yún captured its reins. She hoisted our packs onto its back and fastened them onto the frame, alongside several other packs and bundles. The pony gave a rattling sigh, as if to complain, but when Yún rubbed its neck, it leaned against her. I felt a twinge of jealousy.

  “We can make the next shelter if we hurry,” Yún said. “Where’s your griffin?”

  “He’s not my—”

  A horrible screech made my bones shiver. The griffin reappeared from nowhere and landed on top of the packs, still screeching. The pony swung its head around and snorted at the noisy creature, but it didn’t shut up until Yún laid a hand over its head and murmured something that made the air tingle with magic. The pony shook its head, as though disgusted by the griffin’s behavior.

  Yún handed me the pony’s reins. “Come on. We need to set up camp before dark.”

  “Where? Yún, it’s dark and wet and—”

  “—and there’s a way shelter two li from here, according to the map.”

  The two li felt more like ten before she called a halt. It wasn’t much of a campsite, I realized with a sinking stomach. A wide shoulder of dirt and rocks stuck out from the mountainside. Another, bigger hump, crowned with lots more rocks, loomed over the first one. Someone had built two crude walls out of logs to make a square, and roofed them with branches. Several pine trees huddled close to the entrance, looking as tired as I felt.

  The griffin sailed into the shelter. Yún led the pony inside and started to unload the packs. “At least we have plenty of water,” she said.

  “Very funny,” I said. Then I remembered how her clothes had been as dry and clean as the merchant’s. Now they were wet and filthy like mine. “What happened to your magic, Smart One?”

  “Oh.” She actually looked embarrassed. “I can only do that for a short while.”

  “You were showing off.”

  Her teeth made a white flicker in the gray light. “A little. Come on. We can build a fire and cook something hot. You’ll feel better.”

  I mumbled something about how I’d feel better if someone hadn’t brought a certain griffin, but Yún ignored me. She ordered me to finish unloading the pony while she laid sticks and tinder from the shelter’s wood supply into a neat pyramid. The wood was damp, but between a few magic drying spells and a lot of patience, Yún coaxed a fire to start. Soon we had changed out of our wet clothes and into ones that were merely damp, and the pony was happily eating warm mash.

  One of the gear bags had a neat folding iron cooking grate. Yún set pots of water on the grate, then measured out rice into one and tea into a second one. She even had a packet of dried beef for the griffin, which the horrible beast flung itself upon with screeches of joy. Yún was like a street trickster pulling a gajillion things out of his hat. I nearly expected to see her pull out a monkey next.

  For a while we didn’t say anything. We were both too busy guzzling hot tea in between mouthfuls of rice. My toes and fingers stopped feeling numb, and my damp clothes steamed from the fire. My brain stopped churning around all the bad luck thoughts of the past few days, and I felt more hopeful.

  “So what else did you bring?” I asked.

  “Passports,” she said. “We won’t need them in the mountains, but the Phoenix Empire is different.”

  She rummaged in another pack and handed them over to me—two thin leather tubes with the usual gold-plated caps with electrical magical connectors underneath. One had my name burnt in thick characters along one side. I unscrewed that one and slid the parchment scroll into one hand.

  “Are these real?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” Yún said. “Gan sneaked some of the official seals and connectors. I did the rest.” She shot me a quick glance. “I couldn’t hide that you and I and your mother had left Lóng City, but I didn’t want to let everyone in the palace know where you and I had gone. Just in case.”

  Ah, yes. All those plots and schemes the ghost dragon king had mentioned.

  “About my mother . . .” I swallowed and tried again. “About the tutoring shop. What did you—”

  “Locked and doubled-locked,” she said. “I notified the watch that the shop’s owners were away. I said you’d traveled north, to Silver Moon City, to visit family. Then I bribed the watch captain to patrol twice as often in the neighborhood. That was Danzu’s advice.”

  “You told Danzu?”

  She snorted. “Of course not. He got the same story you told me. He won’t believe it any more than I did, but the shop ought be safe. Jing-mei and Gan promised to check every day, too. They’ll take care of the cats and make sure everything is fine. Oh, and I gave Jing-mei authorization to handle any business emergencies.”

  At that, I nearly fainted. “But, but Jing-mei is an—”

  “—extremely intelligent and capable young woman. Have you actually talked to her since last year?”

  “Um, some. You really trust her?”

  “Completely. So does Hai-feng Lo.”

  I felt as though I’d walked into a magical mirror where everything had turned into its reverse. In the old folk tales, the hero always came up with some clever trick to overcome the problems of talking and fighting and thinking in reverse, but right now I didn’t feel very clever. I just felt tired and faintly queasy at the thought of Jing-mei running my mother’s tutoring shop.

  Mā mī can only kill me once.

  Unless she brings you back to life, Chen said helpfully. Like she did the griffin.

  As if the beast had heard us, the griffin hopped down from its perch and waddled over to Yún. It butted its head against her hand and keened softly. Yún smoothed back its feathers and rubbed the back of its skull. The griffin leaned into the caress, humming oddly.

  The air around me trembled.

  Magic. I could smell it, taste it. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself back in my mother’s tutoring shop, with all the jumble of herbs, sharp-smelling potions, and the ever-present scent of magic. It was as if my mother had left her imprint upon me and the griffin both.

  This creature might be the last spell my mother ever cast.

  I furled the papers back into their scroll, and sealed everything into its leather case. By now I felt pretty stupid. Grateful but stupid. All those things I’d forgotten in my rush to start my journey. If Yún had not decided to chase after me . . .

  “Thank you,” I said carefully. “You were very smart to make these. And to track me down. You didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”

  Yún’s hand stilled over the griffin’s head. “Your mother is my teacher, Kai. And you are my friend. Of course I want to help.”

  Friend. Yes. Well, that answered another question.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  As if by common agreement, we decided it was time for sleep. Yún packed away our passports and other papers, then checked the pony one last time. I laid out our blankets and wrapped myself up tightly in mine. The wind had died off, and the rain had turned to drizzle. Every once in a while, one of the branches of the pine trees shifted, and water cascaded over the shelter’s roof and walls. A soft silvery pattering that would have soothed me any other night.

  The griffin crawled over to me and poked its nose into my face.

  Go away, I thought. You’re dead.

  The griffin sniffed and crawled over to Yún’s side. I lay there, listening to its complaining chirps, Yún’s soft murmur as she soothed the beast into quiet. I told myself I was nervous, sleeping outside, even though I knew watch-demons didn’t patrol any roads outside the cities. It had nothing to do with Yún herself, lying a hand span away from me.

  She’s my friend. I’m glad she’s here. What else could I possibly want?

  It took a long time before I could fall asleep.

  6

  NOT ONLY DID YÚN BRING PASSPORTS AND GEAR, she
also brought maps. Expensive maps, drawn with colored ink on thick parchment, and spelled against rain and rot and mice, just like those used by merchants. She hauled them out one by one—maps of cities and towns and wayside stations, maps that showed highways and side roads and even the tiny goat tracks criss-crossing the wild middle regions, maps for every part of the Seventy Kingdoms. Everywhere except the Phoenix Empire.

  When I asked about that, she shook her head. “We’ll buy those at the border. Just in case someone got curious.”

  “You think someone might?”

  “Yes, I do. Things are wrong, Kai. All kinds of wrong. I think . . .” She sent me a sidelong glance, as though she wasn’t sure how I’d take her next words. “I think we ought to take some precautions.”

  Precautions was a polite weasel-word for “let’s do everything my way, stupid boy.” Ever since Lóng City, I’d kept to the main highways. Yún changed all that. Ai-ya, did she change it. Over breakfast, she laid out a complicated zigzag route, from this side road to that one, up and down the mountains. It was like charting the wandering path of a drunken gargoyle.

  “That makes no sense,” I told her.

  “Just so,” she replied.

  As if that explained anything.

  I told you she was bossy, I said to Chen.

  Chen snuffled. You could argue with her. Explain why she’s wrong.

  She’s not wrong. Not really. Just . . . bossy.

  Chen didn’t even bother to answer me, but I could hear him laughing, oh so quietly.

  Stupid pig-spirit, I thought, not for the first time.

  STILL GRUMBLING TO myself, I helped Yún pack up our belongings. The rain had eased up during the night, but as soon as we set off, it came down harder than before—a steady soaking rain that never stopped for the next ten days. No matter how much I argued, Yún refused to give up her crazy ideas. So up and downhill we slogged through the mud. The mountains turned into great looming walls of granite, streaked and capped by frozen snow, like colossal silent guards standing watch. There were days when the clouds thinned out and we could see patches of sky overhead. Other days, the clouds sank low, and our world turned into a cold, gray, wet mist, and we could hardly tell where the path ended.

  We had just crossed over the pass into Snow Thunder City when sleet started to fall along with the rain. We stumbled onward, half-blinded and numb, until we came to a small inn huddled by the side of the road. It looked more like a jumble of rocks than a real inn, but at least there were stables for our pony, and pots of scalding hot tea waiting for us in the common room.

  “They charge too much here,” I said. I was beating my hands together. Water streamed from my clothes, which had given up their waterproof spells a couple days before.

  “We don’t have much choice,” Yún replied. “We can get more money at the next piaohao. Your mā mī arranged that—”

  She broke off as the serving boy approached with a pot of butter tea. The boy filled our mugs, then held out a hand and announced the price. Twice what we’d paid at the previous place. Ignoring the choking noise I made, Yún counted out the outrageous sum into his palm.

  “You say you serve good curry here,” she said. “How much?”

  He named a sum three times higher than what we paid for the tea.

  I gulped. Yún never flinched. “Two bowls, please. And send a third one to the stables.”

  We’d lodged the griffin in the stables with our packs and pony. The innkeeper had argued at first. He didn’t like monsters under his roof. It upset the customers and terrified the staff. Yún had patiently argued back that there were no other customers, and was he saying that he and his serving boy were afraid of a tiny fluffy creature? Before the innkeeper could invent a new objection, she had pulled out her purse and smiled. That ended the argument. It always did.

  The serving boy apparently didn’t like the griffin any more than his master did, because he scowled when she mentioned the stables. Yún silently added another coin to the pile. The boy grunted, scooped the coins into his palm, and slouched away.

  “Why are you wasting money?” I hissed. We had counted our funds the night before. Even with camping in shelters, we were spending a lot more than we both expected.

  “I want to make sure he gives the stew to the griffin and doesn’t eat it himself. Did you see how skinny he is? He’s like one of those runty trees we passed coming up the trail, the one that had lost all its needles. I wonder if the innkeeper feeds him at all.”

  “I bet he does feed him. I bet he and the old man murder all their customers and eat them. That’s why no one else is here.”

  Yún’s only answer was a snort of laughter.

  We drank down our tea, wincing at its bitterness. Gradually the warmth spread to my toes and fingers. I swallowed a yawn and looked around for our serving boy and the curry. No sign of him or the innkeeper, though I heard a crash and clatter from the kitchen.

  Yún unfolded one of her maps and frowned. She didn’t answer my next question, so I wandered over to the windows. An icy wind leaked around the shutters. I heard a far-off booming, like the dull echo of thunder. Yún said the kingdom’s name came from all the avalanches in the region. We’d have to be careful once we set off again.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Yún and I were still the only ones in the common room. I pulled my talk-phone from inside my shirt. My heart tripped faster as I tapped in the special code for Princess Lian’s talk-phone, the one she had entered herself the year before. Deep inside, I heard Chen snuffling—anxious—but he wisely did not say anything. He knew I’d tried this same number last week.

  A weird hissing noise echoed from the talk-phone. I heard a clicking, then nothing.

  Āi-āi, where are you, Lian?

  “No use,” said a voice next to my elbow.

  I jumped and hurriedly tucked my talk-phone into my pocket. “What?”

  The serving boy jerked his chin toward my shirt. “That. Your talk-phone.” He dumped a tray with my bowl of goat curry on the nearest table. “It’s no use trying to call anyone. We got no magic flux, not until spring.”

  That got my attention. “Why?”

  “Don’t you know? It’s because—”

  “Hēi! Boy!” shouted the innkeeper. “Get your lazy bones over here.”

  The serving boy snapped his mouth shut and scurried away. The innkeeper grabbed the boy’s arm and dragged him to the far corner of the common room, where the two of them squabbled at each other in low tense voices. The innkeeper glanced toward me once—his eyebrows flashed down to a point over his fleshy nose—then back to his hapless serving boy. He hissed something in a wordless undertone, and the boy scuttled away through the kitchen doors.

  Nosy old man, I thought.

  He’s angry, Chen grunted. No, he’s afraid. But I don’t know about what.

  Maybe he thinks the storm will knock down his miserable inn.

  Chen snorted a laugh. Maybe.

  He did a quick fade from my mind, leaving me to my bowl of curry. It wasn’t so bad, I thought, chewing a cautious mouthful. Whoever did the cooking knew a lot about spices. Or they’d bought a package of standard kitchen spells. But then I remembered what the serving boy said about the magic flux, and that meant no spells, pre-packaged or not. I chewed another mouthful, thinking hard. I’d heard how a magic well could go dry, or how a disturbance might alter the currents the flux followed through the air, but how could anyone predict the magic would return next spring?

  I finished my curry and yawned. It was only midafternoon, but the light slanting through the shutters was dim and gray. Outside, the wind blew stronger, keening like a ghost. The inn shuddered and seemed to shrink around me. I cleared a spot in front of me and rested my head on my hands.

  The next thing I knew, someone was shaking me roughly. “Kai! Kai, wake up!”

  I bolted upright and nearly fell over. Yún grabbed my arm and shoved me back into my seat.

  It was pitch-dark outside. We were alo
ne in the common room, which shimmered with an eerie yellow glow from an oil lamp overhead. As Yún turned toward the light, I could see a strange wild look in her eyes. “What is it?” I whispered.

  “The griffin. Come with me.”

  She hustled me through the corridor that connected the inn with the stables. Even though I told myself that nothing could be wrong, Yún’s urgency and the howling of the wind had infected me. My throat squeezed tight as I undid the latch and entered the stall, where we had stowed our animals and our gear.

  Our pony cowered against the far wall, its dark eyes wide with reproach against us and the gods who had brought him to this terrible spot. Between us, a small feathered creature lay motionless in the straw. Next to it was a small smelly heap of half-digested stew.

  My heart stopped at the sight, then lurched into motion again when the griffin stirred. “Did the serving boy—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  It’s not poisoned, Chen said. I would know. So would Qi.

  “Poisoned or not, it’s dying,” Yún said flatly. “Kai, we must leave as soon as possible. The innkeeper tells me there’s a famous magical physician in the next valley, in Golden Starflower Waterfall. It’s nearly on our way.”

  Wind slammed against the stable. Ice water spattered the stall, and more leaked through the cracks between the bowed wooden planks. I opened my mouth, ready to say we should wait until the storm passed, but then Yún laid a gentle hand over the griffin. The beast lifted its head. It opened its beak wide, like a small chick begging to its mother.

  Our little monster.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “As soon as it’s light.”

  “Thank you,” Yún whispered.

  We packed our gear and paid the innkeeper for an early breakfast. At dawn, we set off through the sleet and freezing rain. The innkeeper himself had cooked us a breakfast and gave us directions on the fastest route into the valley. If we took the next fork heading downward, he told us, we could reach Golden Starflower Waterfall before nightfall. From there, he confirmed what Yún’s map told us—that we would have an easy trek along the river road to Lang-zhou City and the border hills, where we could take the magic-powered freight lifts into the Phoenix Empire.