Spirit Hunter (16 page)

Lord Fang waved him away. “No, Jin. That will be all.”

Swiftarrow was surprised to see the fat servant bow again and begin to speak. He was truly concerned at seeing the untasted food. “You must eat, master. Starving yourself won’t bring her back.”

“Enough, Jin.”

“What of the young master?” Jin asked, undeterred by Lord Fang’s chilly reply: either he was a courageous man, or Lord Fang a kinder master than Swiftarrow had supposed. He did not miss the edge of disapproval and scorn in Jin’s voice, though, and realized he was not meant to.
I am the child of a mere concubine in a house grieving for a wife.
And clearly she had been a well-loved mistress.

Lord Fang sighed. “That will be all, Jin. In future, ensure that my devoutly religious son has the repast he needs before noon. Now go: I wish to be disturbed no more.”

Jin bowed his way out of the room, and Lord Fang did not speak again until the sound of his footsteps had faded.

“Jin’s family have served this house for five generations. His father served mine; he serves me.” Lord Fang shook his head. “And yet, in these damnable times, no one is to be trusted, and most particularly not one’s servants, nor those of one’s friends.”

“Yes, your lordship,” Swiftarrow said, quietly.

“Speaking of loyalty, remember that you do not belong to the Tribes,” Lord Fang went on. “When you visit Lord Ishbal’s camp, I trust, Swiftarrow, that a misguided sense of kinship will not lead you to anything that would bring disgrace upon this house. Swear to me that you serve only the Empress.”

Swiftarrow met his father’s eyes. “I swear it.”

“I pray,” said Lord Fang, “that you are not foolish enough to lie.”

And Swiftarrow said, “Of course not.”

I
crouch atop the wall, ready to leap. The Forbidden Garden spreads out below me, a tangle of shadowy trees and whispering bamboo stirred by the night breeze.

The Tribes are scattered further than you, a girl stolen from so far in the west, might suppose.

White Swan told me to go to the city wall in the Eastern Quarter.

Glancing over my shoulder, I catch sight of the moat, silvery in the moonlight. I shiver in my wet clothes, shuddering at the memory of long waterweeds tangling between my toes as I swam. I did it, though: I got out without rousing Eighth Daughter, who is always so restless and talks in her sleep. I crossed the shadowy great hall, barely stirring the silken drapes as I passed (though Red Falcon’s painted wolves and tigers did seem to watch me, somehow).

I land in the alley, barefoot, breathless.
The jump was further than I thought. But I’ve not hurt myself, at least. If I’m found out here with a shattered ankle bone there will be trouble.
I glance up at the sky, shivering. It’s a clear, cold night. I would have given my right hand for a way across the moat without swimming, but I dared not cross the bridge. It is Red Falcon’s turn to guard it this night, and I’m not fool enough to think I’d get past him.

The lamps in the marketplace still burn, throwing out pools of buttery light, but most folk are at home, warming themselves by the fire. Only the foolish and the desperate venture out in cold like this after the eighth bell. I leave behind the raised voices and walk till I’m away from the market, keeping to the shadows.

I skirt the southern wall of the West Palace. My wet hair sends trails of ice-cold water down my back. A man in a hooded cloak hurries by carrying a basket full of squawking chickens. The streets here are thick with Gold Bird Guards: gangs of armed men marching about to keep the peace.
Time to start running again. I must be quick. What if Eighth Daughter wakes and finds me gone? Will she think I’ve gone to use the privy, or will she wait and see if I come back?

There is little sense in fretting over that now.

I run, darting from shadow to shadow, thinking of nothing save the shadows themselves. I am one with the darkness, one with the streets: no one can see me.

I smell standing water and here it is, beyond the roadside ditch, behind a line of leafless pear trees: the canal. Red Falcon told me it had been made to bring wheat into the city by water. If I follow the canal to the east, I’ll come to the Xingqing Palace and, at last, to the east wall of the city.

Lamp-lit boats work their way west towards the palace warehouses, and I hear low voices, even a woman singing softly as I pass the nearest boat. They’ve a fire alight on-board; I smell hot broth and frying meat. A family living on the water.
Oh, how I wish I were in the saddle, riding with Shadow back to camp, guided by bright fire-glow in tent doorways and the scent of smoke. But that will never happen again.

I hear the flapping of silk flags again, more than I can count.
When I round this corner, the wall of the Xingqing Palace shall rise up before me. Here we are.
The hall’s tiled roof juts out above the wall. Leaving the palace at my back, I run south past a row of old silk warehouses. They’re guarded, of course, but that’s no matter: I’ve no business with silk-thieves. The East Market’s on my left, closing up for the night now. Lamps are going out all along Ironmonger’s Row. The night’s alive with clattering and shouting, and there’s a small crowd gathering around the fires by the East Market pond. Someone is selling hot wine.

At last, I reach the wall of Chang’an: a great mound of earth, towering far above my head. Easy to climb. There’s a tangle of mulberry trees here, good cover. There are people talking nearby but I can’t quite make out the words:
curse it!
More guards. It’s a gate, closed now for the night, but guarded still. Four men lounge around a fire flickering in an iron bowl.

“Feel’s like rain’s on the way,” one says, wrapping a heavy cloak tight about his shoulders. “I don’t like this clammy air. Always gives me a pain in the shoulder, it does.”

“Best have another drink, then, friend.”

They pass around a cup of steaming ale.
I’m not here, O guardsmen, you can’t see me.
I’m tired of climbing walls this night. Maybe I should just go out by the gate? What a fine test of my skills. If Autumn Moon knew about it, she would be proud. I grin to myself in the darkness: if Autumn Moon knew what I was doing now— But she does not know.
None of them will ever find out.

I smell kumis
. I smell it for the first time since the Gathering, all those moons ago. The T ’ang do not drink kumis: just ale, wine and tea.

This can only mean one thing:
there are tribesfolk near here, and lots of them.

My head’s afire. Are they friends or enemies? With the Empress or against her? What are they doing so close to the city? At the Gathering, a man said he’d heard rumours some of the eastern Tribes were loyal to the T ’ang – but never did I think to find a camp rammed against the walls of Chang’an. I must get on the other side of that gate. Letting out a long breath, I run closer, burning with the thrill of it: the gate-guards must be able to see me now – I’m only an arm’s length from the nearest one.
But they just don’t.
I could go anywhere, I could do anything and no one would be able to stop me.

Closer, closer.
I smell the guards’ breath – they have all been eating spiced pig-meat. The stink of ale hangs about them like a cloud.
I’m not here, I’m not here; don’t look at me.
This gate is latched from the inside with a heavy bar. Without a sound, I lift it – it’s heavier than I thought. One of the gate-guards has started to hum a marketplace song, out of tune. But they’ve still not seen me, and now they shan’t. I push the gate softly, softly, making a gap just large enough for me to slip through. That’s it: I’m out. I’m out of the Forbidden Garden and out of Chang’an.

Behind me, the gate-guards begin to argue over who left the latch up.

“I thought I heard something,” one of them says, and I freeze where I stand, just in the lee of the great city wall. There’s movement, footfalls; they’re getting up to have a look around.

“Nothing.” The other voice is scornful. “You grow right wary of shadows, friend.”

I hear a soft thud as they close the gate, a clank as the latch is drawn down, and I smile in the darkness.

Fools.

I turn towards the light, and now I see what White Swan was talking about, out here beyond the city walls. I do not only see it; I smell it: a swathe of tents, pale like mushrooms in the moonlight, dotted with firelight, and the sharp, sour-milky scent of kumis heating above campfire flames. I hear voices, words I understand, all flowing together smoothly like a river, so smooth and easy; it is not like trying to unravel the speech of the T ’ang. “Bring that water over, friend” … “Did you see how my brother went with the new yearlings?” … “Are you hungry, my dear?” … “Curse your eyes: that’s my drink you’ve kicked over” … “Pour yourself another then” … “Come, see what I did with that bridle.”

I must make sure to stay hidden in the shadows: I’m wearing T ’ang clothes and these folk shall know me as a stranger. The warm sweetness of horses drifts on the wind: here they are, tethered among a stand of dusty, stunted trees near one of the streams that passes through the east wall and feeds the canal in Chang’an. Most of the horse-kind are sleeping but some are not, and I taste the colour of their minds, the shape of their thoughts: the coolness of river-water, the hissing rush of wind through branches. There’s a hot flicker of wariness; a mare turns to look at me, and I reach out with my mind, calming the horses.

I’m one of you. Be easy, my dears.

At least I still have this skill, even though I have not seen my wolf-spirit for day upon day, night upon night, and I cannot leave my body any more.
Oh, Shadow
. My face is wet with tears. Where is he now?

I leave the horse-kind behind, coming closer to the cluster of tents. Squatting down by the trunk of a mulberry tree, I watch, breath caught in my throat. A stout woman ducks out of her tent, a deerskin-wrapped baby strapped to her back. She’s holding a flask and dips a finger into the neck, flicking milky-white kumis to the north, south, east and west, making her offering to the spirits before everyone drinks.

I stare in horror:
she has no spirit-horse.

She stops and looks up at the cloud-smeared night sky before ducking inside again, and I hear her saying to some unseen companion, “There’s rain coming before dawn, you may be sure of it.”

What could she have done to wound her soul so dreadfully? She looked so fat and kind. And the baby? He had no spirit-horse, either.

A strange, cold feeling sits about my shoulders. There is something wrong with this camp, with these people. Why are they here in the shadow of Chang’an when all anyone can talk of up and down the Road, and even within the city itself, is the Empress’s longing to crush the Tribes and turn us all into wall-dwellers?

A baby with no spirit-horse – how could he have so badly wounded his soul? He cannot even stand on his own two feet.

A gaggle of children squat by a fire a few paces away. Again, no spirit-horses: children and babies with no souls. They are poking twigs into the flames, whispering amongst each other, giggling. I shiver. I must go closer. I want to wander among the tents. I want to smell the night-meat brewing, and listen to talk of horse-kind and hunting.

What are they doing here? What are they doing clustering about the walls of Chang’an, these broken, soulless people?

Keeping my head down, I slip past a group of men with long, braided hair talking in voices so low I can scarce hear what they’re saying. They have no spirit-horses either. They pass me in a wave of stale kumis-breath. They’ve come from a tent much larger than all the others: it must take half a day to get the frame up. Why would anyone bother, only to take it all down at the next shift of camp? A man stoops on his way out of the huge tent, striding off to piss among a stand of spindly trees, and I see the glow of firelight coming from within before the tent-flap swings down again after him. Thick white clouds curl from the smoke-let in the roof, coiling up towards the night. The wondrous thing about a tent is that it has no true walls, and any fool can listen to what’s being said inside. All I need to do is wait.

I’ve been crouching so long my legs feel as if they are on fire. But I cannot make myself move: just listening to the river of Horse Tribe voices coming from within the great tent is like drinking sweet water after weeks in the desert. There must be a great crowd of folk in there – I hear the thundering beat of their hearts and it sounds like a herd of horses galloping across hard ground; one moment I snatch a thread of talk about someone’s young son and his first day in the saddle, the next someone else is speaking all hushed about a woman, and now there’s a burst of laughter. Another person quite near where I crouch is talking about the rising cost of silk coming out of Chang’an and how the merchants further down the roads aren’t much liking it. All the while, I smell the sharp kick of hot kumis, and every now and then, I catch the scent of mutton cooked over the fire. My mouth fills with spit: oh, how I long to eat good food again.

“Hush yourselves,” calls a rough voice. “The Highest One speaks, Son of the Sky Father, Lord of the Horse Tribes.”

A quick, hot thrill runs through my body, right down to my bare toes.
Son of the Sky Father? Lord of the Horse Tribes? What man dares make such claims?

Quiet falls within the tent till I hear nothing but men drawing breath and the pounding of their hearts. The sounds of the camp around me seem louder now: a dropped iron pot clanging on hard ground, the cry of a fretful child.

“Men, your lord Ishbal speaks. It has come to our ears that the Horse Tribes of the west have been caught up by rebellion.”

Lord Ishbal. I’ve heard that name before. Where?

There’s a burst of muttering among the gathered men, louder, of course, among those closest to me.

“Well, of course they were? Did he not send men to fight them?” I hear someone say. “I don’t know why we stay crouched up against the city walls like a motherless lamb looking for a teat to suck, not when there’s the whole of the steppe to roam.”