The Silk Map (68 page)

“There is a person on the mountain below,” Steelfox said.

“Can you see who?” Snow Pine asked.

“No. I can send Qurca closer—”

“No,” Gaunt said, heart pounding. “We can't let Deadfall escape. We can come back. Agreed?”

Snow Pine nodded.

“I am in command,” Steelfox said, “but so be it. Haytham? Northwing? May we move faster?”

“You'll have everything I have,” gasped the shaman. “But I'll warn you, that's not much more than I am giving you now.”

“I will seek an appropriate air current,” said the inventor, “but I can promise nothing. It is in the All-Now's hands.”

Their pace increased. Peaks rushed by like waves on the ocean. Gaunt remembered bearing Innocence in her belly across the waters when they'd first come to the East, what seemed so long ago.

She saw him. She should not have been so certain, but she was. “It's Innocence. Only him.”

No one answered.

Perhaps Deadfall's peculiar power was waning. Perhaps Northwing's spirits were kind and Haytham's deity merciful. They were gaining.

She saw him clearly now. He turned. She could not hope that he would recognize her, but she opened the flap of the tent and shouted his name.

She saw him stare.

She saw him shake his head.

“Go, Mother! We are done! Live your life, the life you abandoned me for! I will have mine!”

“No, my son! I love you! I will never abandon you!”

“Go back to my father! I left him with Jewelwolf on the mountain!”

“Left him—there was only one! Did you not see what happened?”

“Why would I stay? I have a world to see! I am done with them, and you!”

He raised his arm and gestured imperiously.

A shockwave of wind hit the balloon. The craft careened off course, and Haytham cursed as fire from the cauldron ignited the structure of the ger. The Charstalker was still trapped, but its eyes flashed triumphantly. As Haytham strove to control the magic of the cauldron, Snow Pine, Steelfox, Katta, and Dolma swatted the fire with blankets.

“Innocence!”

But Innocence did not speak. It was Deadfall who answered, “Begone!”

“Deadfall!” Katta called out. “Hear me! You hated being a broken thing! But you were more whole then than now! Remember who you were! That carpet would never have caused such pain! Bring the boy back!”

“You never knew me.”

The carpet flared with red light, and the Charstalker within the cauldron screeched and shot through the air to enter Deadfall's fabric.

As though freshly empowered, the carpet shot horizonward.

The balloon began to descend.

Gaunt stood staring through the ger's entrance. The carpet was disappearing into the clouds.

Steelfox stood behind Gaunt. “I will do a thing for you, Persimmon Gaunt, that Karvaks rarely do even for each other.”

She whispered to her falcon and bade it fly past Gaunt into the clouds. Soon falcon and carpet and boy were gone.

“Can you see them?” Gaunt asked.

“Wait!” hissed Steelfox. “Help me save my vessel.”

It was as if she watched herself from a distance, as she helped the others save the ger. The heart of her was still out there.

When the fire was truly out, and the plummeting balloon was merely filled with choking smoke, Steelfox gasped, “I do not sense Qurca anymore, Gaunt. I commanded him to follow at all costs, except to return once a year to my mother's ger. You are my sister-in-arms, and I swear by Mother Earth and Father Sky, if your son can be found, we will find him. But it will not be this day.”

Gaunt shook. It was too much. To find, to lose, all in the span of an hour. It was too much.

Steelfox embraced her and Snow Pine too. Gaunt sobbed the anguish of the journey and its bitter end.

Dolma, of all people, stopped her.

“This is not the end of the matter,” she said.

Gaunt mastered herself. She remembered her vision of her son accompanied by figures resembling the Fraternity of the Hare. And yet she saw only regret in Dolma's eyes. “You are right.” She looked at her comrades. “We should go back for whoever is on the mountain.”

“That is not possible,” said Haytham. “We lack the necessary lift. All I can do is make our landing survivable. Our hot air dissipates, and we have no means of securing another Charstalker.”

“We do,” Gaunt said. “There is more than one such within this blade.”

She sent another burst of fire from blade into cauldron, even as Haytham shouted, “Wait!”

The new Charstalker's eyes were full of feverish triumph as it shot forth from the cauldron, back to Bull-Demon Mountain. The felt around a portal caught fire, but this time the crew was well-prepared.

“The cauldron is damaged,” Haytham said. “It can still contain a fire but not bind a Charstalker.”

A memory nagged at her of black birds and eyes like sunbursts.

She searched for and found the black feather she'd carried all the way from Five-Toe Peak. She tossed it into the cauldron.

“What is that?” Dolma asked.

Snow Pine answered, “It's a feather from a thing of power. Maybe it can let us rescue who's on the mountain. Or . . . just maybe it can let us catch up to the carpet.”

“Which is it to be?” Steelfox asked.

Gaunt did not answer but released another Charstalker. It shrieked its way back out of the cauldron and roared out the front flap, leaving smoldering edges. “Not again!” wailed Haytham.

But the suncrow feather erupted into a crazy tangle of heat and light.

Snow Pine was first out of the smoking ger once it hit the summit, to the accompaniment of Haytham's imaginative cursing. She was unsure of her footing, but a madness drove her on. Steelfox was only steps behind her.

The wife of the new Grand Khan stood nearby, coolly regarding her saviors.

“Sister,” said Jewelwolf. “I trust you are well.”

Steelfox slapped her.

Jewelwolf smiled, wiping blood from her lip. “I will forgive that. I will admit my conduct has been lacking. I will seek my mother's forgiveness.”

“Not mine?” said Steelfox.

“Your own behavior is hardly above question. It will be an interesting meeting.”

“If you ever return,” put in Snow Pine.

“I decline to speak to scum of Qiangguo.”

“This scum is my friend,” said Steelfox.

“That hardly improves matters for you,” said Jewelwolf.

“I would think instead of your own situation, princess,” said Gaunt, having caught up.

“Ah, the Western witch.”

“I believe you stand near a precipice, in more ways than one. You can surrender to us. Or, despite all Steelfox's fully justified pleading on behalf of her beloved, loyal sister, you may find yourself on a sudden interesting journey.”

Jewelwolf grunted. “I surrender, of course. Deadfall has betrayed me. He has taken my prize and my bronze mirror. He may even hope to replace me among the Cardinals of the Compass Rose.”

“And he took the scroll, of course,” Gaunt said, “within which Bone has surely gone.”

Jewelwolf smiled. “No, Persimmon Gaunt. I have the scroll, and your husband is dead, hurled off that very cliff.”

Gaunt reeled, looking over the edge below them. Snow Pine gripped her arm. “Butcher,” Snow Pine said. “You will do no more harm. Give us the scroll now.”

“Very well. I—” Jewelwolf reached to her belt. “What? It's gone?”

“I don't suppose, princess,” Snow Pine said with a look at Gaunt, whose lips were twitching, “it was with you right before the thief Bone left your august presence?”

The curses of Jewelwolf echoed through the mountains, braiding with the maniacal laughter of Persimmon Gaunt.

It had been an interesting experience, falling into the mountain crevasse swift as a brick with the scroll clutched to his chest—then transitioning into the world of the scroll and drifting down to its otherworldly mountains as gently as a leaf.

He'd almost wanted to do it again. But there were more satisfying tasks at hand.

As the balloon returned to Xembala, Steelfox thanked Northwing and Haytham for perhaps the hundredth time. “You are getting good at this,” she noted, for they adroitly maneuvered the balloon through the mists beside the volcano of the Bull Demon.

“Not good enough to enter that crevasse,” Haytham said.

“No,” Gaunt said, voice full of desperate hope, “but the scroll will be found. The journey of a thousand li begins with opening one door.”

“Speaking of openings,” said Katta, “who do I see exiting the mountain down there?”

“It's Quilldrake!” Snow Pine said. “And Flint,” she added more gruffly.

The treasure hunters were at first nonplussed to find the Karvak balloon blocking their path. Then Quilldrake attempted jauntiness.

“It is delightful to see you,” he said, putting down an armload of stony cocoons.

“Oh, shut up,” Flint said, doing likewise. “There is no recovery from this. It was a foolish plan.” He looked at Snow Pine. He spread his hands. “Loyalty to my business partner overcame my good sense.”

Snow Pine said, “Yes. I suppose it is always difficult to have more than one partner.”

Flint could only stare. Snow Pine turned away.

“‘Shut up,' he says,” Quilldrake was saying. “After all I've done for him. And for you, Snow Pine, and you, Persimmon Gaunt! We had always intended to share the bounty with you. You provided most excellent cover, combating the adult Iron Moths while we crept among the larvae and stole some cocoons. Is this not the prize necessary to seal your bargain with Lady Monkey?”

“You are not lying,” Gaunt admitted. “But things have changed.”

“They have?” Quilldrake pressed. “So you no longer need to seek your magic scroll, to find your children?”

“No—” Gaunt swore. “Yes! Yes, we still need to find the scroll. Is the fragment of Lady Monkey still here?”

Snow Pine said, “Gaunt. If we seek her, we will find the adult Iron Moths. We will need to bargain.”

“Are you agreeing with Quilldrake and Flint now, that we should steal these cocoons?”

Snow Pine looked at Flint again. “Was that not always the plan?”

The women, mothers of lost children, turned to Steelfox.

It astonished the Karvak princess to find that they trusted her—not a mother, not kin, not long ago an enemy.

She sensed her sister's gaze upon her as she said, “We Karvaks have a deserved reputation for raids and conquest. But we also deserve a reputation for trade, and honor. I will represent your interests as an envoy from my people to Xembala and all its inhabitants. I have experience in such things.”

“You have no right!” snapped Jewelwolf.

“This can also be a thing we bring before the Grand Khan, his council, and his Supreme Judge,” said Steelfox. “All of whom have sworn to follow the path laid down by our father, who valued trade as much as conquest. And who mistrusted all dealings with sorcerers and demons. For now, it stands.”