I paused, thinking I’d heard a soft exhalation from Yún, but she didn’t stir.
Keep going, I told myself. Half a spell can wreck things. “So,” I said. “So I did everything wrong. You’re my best friend. You’re someone I trust and need and want. And not just as my friend. I . . . I do care, Yún. Very much. And it scares me.”
Dead silence outside. Inside, my pulse thundered in my ears.
(She hates me.)
(She’s laughing at me.)
Silence was the most eloquent answer the poets always said. I guess I got mine.
I was about to creep away, when Yún reached up to touch my cheek. “Kai. Don’t go.”
My heart seemed to stop. For a moment, neither of us spoke, neither moved. All I could think was how soft and warm her hands were and why had I spent so many months shoving her away when I all wanted was to hold her tight against me. Then Yún shooed away a protesting griffin, and I was sliding down to press my body against hers. Our mouths fumbled around before we matched up into a long, hard, tooth-clicking kiss.
The taste of honey, the warmth of fire, the zing of magic.
“I love you,” I whispered.
(Was that really you?)
(Yeah, me.)
(Say it again. Before she thinks you were lying.)
“Yún, I—”
The outer door crashed open. The next moment, Quan was shouting for us to grab everything now, now, now! Lian had already snatched up her blanket and was stuffing it into her pack. Yún shoved me away and buttoned up her shirt. The griffin launched himself into a flurry of dust and feathers and high-pitched screeches.
“Can you quiet him?” Lian asked. The moon had risen high enough that its light flooded our room. Her hands were shaking. Her eyes bright and wide with terror.
“The emperor’s soldiers?” I asked, breathless.
“Hundreds,” Quan said. “Soldiers, mages, and trackers.” He scooped the pots into his pack. Kicked dirt over our dead fire. It wasn’t enough, I knew. Not if trackers made any search of this village. But it was the same kind of panicked thoroughness that drove all of us to pick up every bit of gear or clothing, even as Yún tried to capture the frightened griffin.
She snatched at him blindly and captured one leg. Yāo-guài screeched even louder and raked her with his claws. Yún let go with a yelp. Yāo-guài zoomed through the window and vanished in a glitter of magic.
“Yún.” I dropped to my knees next to her.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you aren’t.” I ripped a length of cloth from my shirt and bound it around her bleeding arm. “You need washing and a healing. Can you manage until we reach a safer place?”
Her gaze swept up to meet mine. “Of course.”
“Hurry,” Quan hissed.
We grabbed our packs and ran. The soldiers came from the direction of Phoenix City, Lian told us. She and Quan had detected the first questings from the mages, then heard the tramping of many, many horses. But we had to assume they’d sent out sweepers and trackers in a great circle.
“How did they track us?” Yún whispered. “The smugglers?”
“Not Feng,” Quan said shortly. “Maybe you were followed.”
“No,” Lian said. “That’s impossible. We—”
She stopped. “Yún. Kai. Your medallions.”
Of course. Those medallions came from the emperor’s wizards.
We ripped the medallions from around our necks and hurled them as hard as we could toward the invisible soldiers. Then we took off again with Quan in the lead. A full moon emerged from behind a mass of clouds to illuminate our path. We could see the rough ground, the patches of tall brittle grasses, all limned in silver. The moonlight meant we could run faster without stumbling, but it also meant the emperor’s soldiers could spot us more easily.
A voice shouted behind us. I felt the sting of magic. Quan immediately angled toward the northeast, toward a great black shadow on the ground that swayed back and forth. Trees.
We dived into the forest. The thick tang of red pine masked our scent. The thorny underbrush meant we had to creep as slow as worms, unsnagging our clothes from the thorns, testing before we set any weight upon a hand or knee so we didn’t give away our position. Quan led us lengthwise through the thicket to a dried up streambed, and motioned for us to drop one by one into its not-so-comforting depths.
Once down, we jogged, doubled-over, until the ground rose to meet the plains again. Quan motioned for us to stop. I fell to my knees, gasping. Āi-āi. Surely the soldiers would overtake us. Then Yún leaned against me—just a moment, but enough that my courage flickered high.
“Now what?” Lian asked.
Quan stared ahead, across the gray-lit fields and open plains. “There,” he said. “More trees.”
I squinted. Moonlight flickered over the open ground ahead of us. Then I saw the feathery outline of Quan’s trees. The breeze carried the scent of pine toward us. It would cover ours from the trackers, but what about the mages?
(We can’t play hide-and-seek all the way to the mountains.)
A thundering of hooves yanked my heart into my throat.
“Run!” Quan said.
Yún gripped my hand and hauled me to my feet. Lian and Quan reached toward each other. One kiss and they scrambled over the rise and to their feet. Yún and I followed a heartbeat later, pelting toward that small speck of shelter. We can’t make it, I thought. It was over a li to the trees. The soldiers would cut us down long before we reached them.
And then . . .
Light exploded in our faces. Something small and feathered struck my chest. I lost my hold of Yún’s hand and tumbled backward. Blinded, I tried to fend off whatever monsters had attacked us. Claws and beaks snatched at my hands. I felt like I was wrestling with a bundle of wind. Someone was shouting—Yún. I wanted to tell her to shut up, remember the soldiers, when my vision cleared.
I froze.
The griffin sat on my chest, its flat black eyes two inches from mine.
“Yāo-guài?” I whispered.
Kai! Kai, wake up!
I knew that voice.
Chen?
A loud grunt echoed inside my head. A wonderful stink of piggy odor rolled over me. Of course it’s me, said a familiar voice. Wake up. We don’t have much time.
I shook my head and looked around for my friends. Saw Yún with eyes rounded with amazement. Saw Lian rapt in some secret conversation. Faintly, as though veiled by the layers of worlds, came the flicker of a tall thin crane, a sharp-toothed fox, a blaze-bright creature that I recognized as a phoenix. (Quan? A phoenix?)
Oh, but what stopped my heart was the sight of a smoke-gray mountain cat, her tail switching around in barely contained impatience. The cat spun around and glared directly into my eyes, her own like pale moons on a spring night.
Nuó? I whispered.
My mother’s companion spirit gave me a familiar snarl. I winced and shrank into myself.
Meanwhile, Chen was nattering in my ear. We were trapped in the spirit plane, he said. The emperor’s doing. Nuó freed us. That horrible griffin led us to you.
You’ve wasted enough time, Nuó growled. We must take them through the gates.
What gates? I shouted.
The gates to the spirit roads, Yún whispered. Qi told me.
I had no chance to demand any answers. My stomach did a hideous hop-skip. Something strange stuck claws into my brain, or at least that’s what it felt like. My eyelids fluttered open, but the sight was too horrible to bear—a gulf of inhuman proportions opened below my feet, lit by fire. I clamped my mouth shut at the stink of sulfur and a strong metallic scent that reminded me of magic and blood and intense fear.
A hand pressed over mine. Yún. I knew that shape, that exact degree of warmth. My panic eased to a more bearable level.
Chen’s voice whispered inside my skull, Do not be afraid. I won’t let anything hurt you.
Even Nuó?
He laughed uneasily.
Even Nuó.
Liar, I said.
More laughter, this time Nuó’s. Shut up, boy. And follow your pig-creature.
I felt a tug deep inside my gut. I sensed a large heaving mass next to me—Chen had materialized in his largest form yet, and his shoulder loomed above my head. Instinctively, my hand reached out and clutched the stiff sharp bristles of his chin. Chen grunted in protest, but did not jerk away from me. Trust me, he whispered.
I always do.
Night and the plains outside Phoenix City vanished. So did Yún, Quan, and Lian. There was only me and Chen, and the faint musky scent of Nuó, just ahead. I could hear the steady padding of her feet over stone. Follow, follow, follow, said their rhythm. Chen’s hooves clicked next to me as I trotted through a dark tunnel. Shadows sprang up beside me. Bright sparks appeared and vanished. Monsters flitted past—ghostly creatures that expanded and shrank and spread out like a living cloud. The stink grew less and less. A new scent overtook it, one of snow and mud and a plethora of smells I could not catalog, except to say I knew them well.
Impossible, I thought.
We are on the spirit roads, Chen grunted. Nothing is impossible here.
I opened my mouth to argue—so glad that I had my spirit companion back to argue with—when a blast of wind choked my mouth. Surprised, I fell forward into a deep drift of snow.
17
BLIZZARD WINDS SHRIEKED AROUND ME. IN ONE instant, my face went numb, and a deep ache penetrated my ears and into my brain. I blinked—tried to. My eyelashes were stuck to my face. I rubbed them free with one frozen hand. My brain clicked over into the realization that we were in the middle of a snowstorm, in the mountains, in the pitch-dark depths between midnight and dawn.
Stand up, Chen urged me. You’ll freeze.
Too late, I snapped. But it was so, so good to hear Chen’s voice.
A hand closed over my shoulder and hauled me upright. Quan shouted into my poor abused ear that I must start walking. I know, I know, I thought. Gloves, but no boots. Our cloaks too thin for the dagger-sharp mountain winds. I pulled my collar high and tugged my knitted cap over my forehead. Snow had already slithered into my shoes and soaked my socks. We would die in minutes unless we found shelter.
Then another body lurched into mine. “Kai. Oh, Kai, you’re safe.”
Yún pulled me into a tight hug. I clutched her even closer. We were both babbling, It’s you, you, you, you, while our spirit companions grunted and roared and shrilled at us to stop the love-talk and march, dammit.
“Quan? Kai? Yún?” The wind snatched at Lian’s voice.
“Here,” Yún said. “All safe.”
“I have Yāo-guài,” Lian said. “Quan?”
“Here.”
We leaned close, head to head, our arms linked together, our hands tucked into our sleeves, creating a small bubble of temporary warmth, while around us the storm pummeled the mountainside. Yāo-guài poked his head out from Lian’s shirt, ruffled his feathers, and dived back inside. Lucky monster, I thought, shivering. This close, I could sense Yún’s crane-spirit, Lian’s fox, and the shimmering phoenix that belonged to Quan. Overwhelming everything was the presence of Nuó, my mother’s mountain-cat. A tremor passed through all the other companion spirits, the humans as well. Only then did it occur to me that my mother must have sent Nuó to us.
Where is she? I demanded.
Safe, the cat grumbled. Safer than you.
Then why did you dump us here in a blizzard, you stupid piece of flea-bait?
Nuó hissed. Shut up, stupid boy. Forget your mother now. Follow me to the light.
Her presence vanished from my brain with a loud pêng. A wave of musk whipped around me, jerked my attention away from the circle of my friends. I lifted my head—a blast of wind hit me in the face. My eyes blurred with tears that froze immediately, but I’d caught a glimpse of Nuó’s figure striding away, the snows parting to either side, like soft cake split by a knife.
“Ai! The light!” Yún shouted. “There! I see it!”
She pointed upward and to the left, in the direction where Nuó had vanished.
The light was hardly more than a smear of dirty yellow, flickering in and out between the streamers of snow. I rubbed my hands over my eyes. Now I could see another smear of light close to the first one. Could it possibly be a shelter?
A squawking, gabbling noise broke out next to me. It was Lian and the griffin.
Lian cursed and struggled. She looked as though she were wrestling with her clothes.
“Stop it, you wretched little monster—”
Yāo-guài broke free and soared after Nuó. Glittering magic trailed behind the griffin, like clouds of golden sun motes. The magic illuminated a series of broad cat-prints in the snow.
Quan and Lian were already trudging ahead, bent against the bone-freezing wind. Yún gripped my arm hard and dragged me after them. But it wasn’t fast enough. My hands were stiff inside my gloves. Pinpricks of fire ran through my veins. I could tell the fire would soon fade into numbness and frostbite. Half a li, I told myself, staring at the beckoning light. Less than that. I ordered my body to keep going, but my feet felt disconnected from my legs, two clumsy lumps of nothing.
With a dozen more painful steps, the blurred lights sharpened into rows of bright squares. Around them, I could make out the outline of a sizeable building.
Relief sent me staggering ahead of the others to the inn’s heavy wooden door. My useless hands fumbled at the latch. No good. Then a warm animal breath curled through my hair and down my neck.
Allow me, said Nuó.
She pressed one great paw against the door. The latch shattered into bits. The door banged open so suddenly I fell into a heap. The next moment Yún, Lian, and Quan spilled over me. We untangled ourselves and crawled toward the stone hearth, snow dripping and melting from our clothes as we went.
“Ai-ya! Who are you? What are you?”
A small round man charged through one of the side doors, waving both hands in circles. He was dressed in a gown and slippers. His hair was gray and pulled back into a tight, old-fashioned queue.
“Out! Out!” he shrieked. “I have no room for beggars!”
Yāo-guài swooped in from nowhere. The innkeeper shrieked even louder. He snatched up a fire poker and swung it around his head. Yāo-guài dodged the poker. His shrieks were even louder than the innkeeper’s, and the griffin was throwing off sparks of magic. Yún and I dragged each other to our feet.
“Yāo-guài! Stop it!”
Yāo-guài soared up to the ceiling and clung to a wooden crossbeam, scolding us all furiously.
Quan laid a hand on the innkeeper’s arm. “Honored sir . . .”
The innkeeper shook off his hand and waved the fire poker in our faces. “Hai! Beggars! Thieves! Begone! I have spells against you.”
“But honored sir, the laws of hospitality . . .”
This was going nowhere. Apparently, Lian thought the same thing. She stepped in front of Quan, her expression the same haughty look I remembered from our first meeting. “You will give us shelter,” she said. “Or you will answer to my father the king.”
“Liar,” the man breathed. “Silly wench, to think I’d believe—”
Another door crashed open, and a new person stalked into the room. He was short. Dressed in an extravagant silk robe over an even more extravagant woolen dressing gown. All along the border and hem were stitched spells for warmth and comfort, and as the robe swirled around, magic flux glittered from special threads woven into the cloth. I was so amazed by the man’s clothing, I didn’t even bother to look at his face or really listen to his voice as he delivered a grand tirade about the noise.
“It’s annoying enough that I’m trapped in your miserable inn until the storm breaks. Now you think to entertain me with arguments in your common room. Who these people are—” He swept his arm around, as if to take us all in, and his voice squeaked to a stop. “Kai?” he bleated.
It was the bleat that r
ecalled me.
“Danzu?”
Danzu glanced wildly from me to my companions, from the griffin to Quan to Yún. When he got to Lian, his eyes stretched wide open and he made a noise as though he had rocks in his throat. “Your—I mean—”
“We need a private room,” Lian said calmly.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Right away.” He rounded on the innkeeper, who’d watched this whole exchange with flapping lips. “You. I want a private room with a fire. Hot tea. And I mean scalding. Soup and blankets and dry clothing. And two chambers with hot baths. Right away, or I shall report you to my uncle and the rest of the merchant’s guild.”
I couldn’t tell what discombobulated me the most—Danzu giving orders like a merchant king, or the innkeeper bowing and babbling and running to obey those orders. Soon enough the inn’s servants herded us into a spacious private chamber with a roaring fire, dry clothes, and a vid-screen piping soft pre-recorded music. Two more chambers had been made ready, their bathtubs brimming with steaming scented water.
We took turns soaking until feeling returned to our fingers and toes. In the meantime, Danzu had sent word to the kitchens. More servants appeared with platters of barley pilaf, flatbread stuffed with lamb’s meat and spices, and pots of fresh tea. Danzu hovered over us—Lian in particular—asking if we were warm and comfortable, assuring us that he would beat that miserable innkeeper if we were not satisfied with our meal. He had changed from his robe and morning gown into an equally elegant tunic and trousers. Now that we weren’t frozen and dying, I finally realized how strange it was to find him outside Lóng City, away from his new street gang.
Suspicious, I stared at him. “What are you doing here any way?”
He coughed delicately. “Business.”
“Oh, right. Street rats and smugglers always prance around in blizzards—”
“I am not a smuggler—”
“Quiet!”
That was Yún.
My mouth snapped shut. So did Danzu’s. Old habit dyed into our skins.
Yún glared at us. “Stop fighting. Stop acting like stupid brats. Okay?” She exhaled slowly, as though her own temper weren’t so calm. “Good. Now. Danzu, tell us why you’re out here. Better, tell us where here is.”
Fox and Phoenix Page 19