The Silk Map (13 page)

Back at the Inn of the Bright Future, chewing on melon, Bone looked across the now bustling Market toward the place Widow Zheng had described. It was the most dilapidated area in sight. He gnawed on a rind.

Gaunt said, “Snow Pine. Friend. I ask that you stay here, with our gear.”

“I'll remind you, sister, I'm the only one of us truly competent with a sword. And the only native of Qiangguo.”

Bone chewed thoughtfully before sliding his belt so as to conceal a dagger beneath the wedge of watermelon in his lap. Covertly he broke the wax seal. He shifted his belt back to its normal position.

“True,” Gaunt conceded. “However, it sounds as though these men are outlanders—not our folk, probably, but not yours either. As for trouble . . . Bone and I are used to playing that particular duet. But we'll want to be unencumbered.”

Snow Pine looked for a moment as if she might argue. Instead she sighed. “And, this doesn't seem like a part of town one wants to abandon one's pack. Very well. Take the last melon along, Bone. When conducting business it's good to offer a gift. Given their offices, I doubt they'll be expecting jade.”

“Mmph,” Bone said agreeably, mouth full of melon.

There were a couple of turbaned people on the bench outside the Inn of Infinite Options, watching the ebbing activity of the Market, and a man in scholar's robes bowing at the shrine of the literature god, but it was otherwise a quiet nook. The alley between these establishments contained a few shadowy offices, marked with intriguing titles:
Jin Huang, knowledgeable about documents and dice games
;
Shi Lan, fearless soothsayer
;
Lei Chao, one who can apply sense into the thickest of skulls, and who has many brothers
.

Each was accompanied by an illustration—a pair of dice upon a scroll, a cicada upon a scroll, and a scroll hitting a head in the manner of a truncheon.

At the very end they found a door labeled in questionable calligraphy:
Geshou Pi and Long Bi, Lost Treasures, Lost Cities, Lost Causes
.

The illustration was of a hand clutching a scroll in an upright fashion, its tip blazing like a torch.

The door was slightly ajar, and there was a weak glow from an alchemical fire-gem. Gaunt knocked, and there was no answer. She pushed the door open with her boot. They advanced into the dim.

When Bone's eyes adjusted, he had two surprises.

The first surprise was that Geshou Pi and Long Bi, although dressed in robes mimicking those of scholar-officials, were from the remotest West. Not simply from far down the Braid of Spice, but from Gaunt and Bone's own part of the world. One was a tall man of light-brown visage, like the folk who populated the coast of the Midnight Sea, while the other was a stocky, pale man with a red beard fading to white—a fellow who might have hailed from Gaunt's own Swanisle.

The second surprise was that three strangely costumed figures were waving peculiar serrated swords toward the tall man, while a fourth held a dagger to the bearded man's neck.

O great one, you who have no doubt heard tales from Yao'an all the way to Mastodon Mountain, set aside whatever thoughts of treasure and violence fill your mind, and hear my own tale.

We say in Anoka that to fashion a carpet without flaw is to invite the ire of Heaven, for perfection belongs to the All-Now alone. If so, God and I are surely on excellent terms.

For look upon me, O new owner. Does it not appear as if a weaving contest had been conducted simultaneously upon one loom? Half my surface is given over to the geometric gul-patterns at your feet. See how they dazzle with blue like the turquoise of Anoka's domes, red recalling the plumage of birds from Qushkent, and white mimicking milky jade from the rivers washing Madzeu. Your gaze can thus soar through a cloud-streaked sky, captured at the moment afternoon sinks into the blood of sunset.

But look beyond, how the remaining half is a labyrinth of gray and jet and lapis lazuli, recalling not the colors of the bright cities but the countenances of the mountains that rear around the deserts of these lands, their snowmelt giving life to the trading oases or taking it away. Here your eye struggles like a weary caravan master evading war and brigands.

In me is embedded a tale of weavers laboring under the bellowing of contradictory magi. Direct your gaze, O dread master, to my middle, where the mountain-maze culminates in a vortex of white and red, the colors echoing neither jade nor birds but rather snows fringing the blazing caldera of the Bull-Demon Mountain. Behold how this ominous swirl is bisected by the cool sweep of the sky-pattern.

My edges are ragged and tell of a tug-of-war between two willful masters. A bloodstain upon my underside testifies to a resolution. Please do not turn me over to contemplate it, great one, but sit rather, and listen.

For more than one party seeks what you seek. Others hunt the Silk Map.

Now, my initial owners, before they decided out of prudence to soak me in lamp-oil and put me to the torch, argued about my conflicted nature.

“We have awaited its stirring for three days. We wait in vain.”

“I spent sixty silver on it, woman. We can wait another day.”

“I say we cannot, and that our money is wasted, and worse. It is an evil thing.”

“I trust my eyes, not gossip. But very well. Let us sell it to the next caravan master who departs through the gold desert or the red. Mad Katta leaves soon. He will buy anything peculiar—”

“Gossip can save your life. Beside the well they say Mad Katta talks with demons and djinn. And they say the wizard Olob's tower burned because his apprentice Op turned against him. Neither have been seen again.”

“What of it? That has allowed us to buy magic goods at fire-sale prices.”

“With no magician to tell us what's bad about the goods. Here is what they say: Olob conceived the carpet as a way of awakening the Bull Demon of the great fiery mountain, whose smoke sometimes bloodies the sunset.”

“I doubt its existence, as I doubt that of griffins, hydras, honest men, and oceans.”

“Op did not doubt! You see upon the carpet his attempt to subvert the weaving into that of a harmless carpet of the sky, such as the wealthy fly in far-away Mirabad.”

“Then he failed. The thing lies there by the window like a drugged cat.”

“Yes, husband! It does not fly. So its nature must be corrupted by its original, evil intent. Here, I have oil, and the servant approaches with a torch. Let us burn it in the courtyard.”

“It stirs! It listens!”

“Burn it now!”

Now evil is, as you know, O great and terrible one, quite a subjective matter, but for my first confession, let me admit I have a deceptive streak. In the dark of the night I'd already tested the limits of my mobility, and my owners hadn't noticed I was several inches nearer the window than when they'd first unrolled me. Interesting as their conversation was, I deemed it prudent to fly.

Yes, I can fly, after a fashion. Have you ever seen a plump chicken frightened by a small child who's thundering up to its coop? That mad skittering skyward to perhaps the height of the child's scolding mother? That undignified plunge into the mud?

I have perhaps half the grace. But I do fly.

Singed and smoking in a way that brought me still further from competition with the divine, I flung myself out the merchant family's window. Luckily they were prosperous and it was a high window. Unluckily that window faced a dilapidated alley. Colliding with refuse I twisted and rolled around a corner, seeking some haven.

Thus did I encounter the city.

Anoka! I have never returned, but I will never forget you, your minarets, your mosques, your sweating bazaars, your view of mirages and mountains, your coffee, your cinnamon, your oxen and your goats. I miss your bustle and braying and your still, quiet breezes. I miss the flutist playing a sad song to celebrate the dawn. It was in your alleyways that I learned myself, your celebration of the senses vibrating into my enchanted loops and knots. It was in your marketplace that I learned to travel, swishing low and bouncing off red stone like a wounded kite, inches away from the hands of urchins.

I would have known more of you, Anoka, but it is the way of a flying carpet, even a bad one, to ever be moving somewhere.

It was in desperation to evade the children that I plunged over a stone bridge crossing that mighty, lazy river that flows from haunted Efritstan to carve the mountains south toward Mirabad. There were scraps of arcane knowledge woven into me by makers, yet none of them whispered of
swimming carpets
. Perhaps I might have persevered, but immersion terrified me. As soon as I could, I squished and dripped exhausted onto a rocky shore innocent of people and rolled myself out beneath the sun.

Oblivion came to me for a time. I dreamt after a fashion, and my dreams concerned fire and incantations and screams.

I woke to rough hands grasping me and two desert-leathered faces squinting down upon me.

“I don't like this,” said one face. “It's ill-omened. Do you see the burn marks? The blood stain?”

“Blood can be cleaned,” said the other. “The burns are at the edges. This looks like something we could sell the caravans.”

Darkness returned. When I woke again it was night.

I felt a great snugness, and it took me some time to recognize that I had been rolled up. In this condition the sensory spells woven into me were somewhat inhibited. I perceived that I stood outdoors, tipped against a stone wall beside many other carpets. The courtyard in which I found myself was filled with men, women, and camels, all illuminated by the flickerings of many cookfires and the steady glow of a gibbous moon.
A caravan staging area
, the thought came to me. These folk were passing to the East or West along what I recalled was fancifully termed the Braid of Spice. The night was chilly, save when a wind fanned the fires and brought me heat, smoke, and the scents of horse meat, beef, lamb, carrots, chickpeas, noodles. I heard a babble of relaxed chattering in half a dozen languages, but I could understand only the tongue of Anoka and that of Qushkent, the next great city along the Braid to the East.

“You are fully conscious?” came a calm voice, cold as the desert night, of a woman hidden beside the carpets. “You have come to your new awareness?”

Almost I answered. Much might now be different if I had.

But a rasping voice gave reply, male most likely, as if from a throat made of sand.

“
I hear. I know.
”

“Listen carefully. I am empowered by ancient pacts with your master. You must obey.”

“
So you say.
”

“There is a man here. In this place he is known as Katta, but in your host body's city he is called Surgun. He has many names and many tricks.”

“
His image is in the meat's mind.
”

I was by now quite glad I hadn't spoken. I had to urge myself not to quiver.

“This is the hour when he likes to walk alone in the desert, beyond the city's protection. You will find him there, and hail him as a friend. You will take his life. On his person you will find a map painted upon silk. You will bring it to me.”