The Silk Map (7 page)

“I will not thank you, Monkey,” said Gaunt, “but I acknowledge a bargain.”

“Ha!” said the Sage. “You ladies are equally curt, in the manner of your own lands. How droll! And you, Mister Rat, I see that gesture you're making! I'd make one right back, but my hands are occupied.”

“Why,” Bone said, “I was merely scratching my nose, something you, alas, can never manage.”

The Sage snorted, but there was less humor in the sound. “Begone, wanderers. I find you less amusing now. But a deal is a deal.”

Maybe it took a woman of Qiangguo to hear the threat in that voice. Snow Pine took Gaunt and Bone's hands and led them back to the tunnel, a cold sensation over her heart.

The return to the doorway proceeded in silence; at least the snoring did not resume. The mountain descent was businesslike, for none of them wanted to dash their hopes by dashing themselves on the rocks. At last they reached the third marker, which was fortunately free of angry xiezhi or agitated suncrows.

Although they'd arrived from the east, from here they could just as easily proceed north, toward the commencement of the Braid. The same monsters would greet them either way.

They faced the path in silence.

Gaunt felt no hope at that moment. But she was used to living with no hope. If it came to a choice of no hope while moving, and no hope while standing still, she would move.

Bone's mind flitted among endless plans. If the Sage's bargain did not play out, why, at least they'd be closer to the West and the world he knew; there was a wizard he almost trusted, a pirate he was nearly friends with, a mermaid of his acquaintance . . . schemes pranced like xiezhi around the abyss in his heart.

Snow Pine silently told the ghost of her husband, wherever he might be:
I won't forget. Everything I do, everywhere I go, it's a way of saying, I won't forget
.

Bone broke the silence. “What's that saying? The journey of a thousand li begins with one step?”

“The proper drubbing of a proverb-quoter,” said Gaunt, “begins with one kick.”

Snow Pine snorted. “There's another saying, that reading ten thousand books isn't as useful as traveling ten thousand li.”

“I suppose we'll find out,” Bone said.

“I hope not,” Gaunt said. “I fear I've only got nine thousand in me.”

They walked north, and in that moment became the three newest travelers, following the thousands who'd gone before, who gambled everything on the Braid of Spice.

After the trio had departed, the Great Sage whistled.

A three-legged crow with fiery eyes landed on her head.

“Bring a piece of me to where the trail will be darkest,” she said. “Whether it adds shadows or light, we shall see. Gah, that tickles.”

The crow pecked at the Sage's head until it held in its beak a dark, crystalline hair. Without a sound it flapped away, and the Sage sneezed her farewell. She didn't like suncrows much, but they and she had a deal going, and by now she'd remembered a little bit of a dream that concerned Snow Pine, Persimmon Gaunt, and Imago Bone.

Sometimes crazy monkeys have to stick together.

Lady Steelfox cast her falcon toward the dawn and aimed her bow toward the south. Blue seeped into the sky over the dew-spattered green of the steppe. She imagined for a moment she was sighting at the city of Yao'an, so many weeks' travel beyond the grasses and the deserts, and her pony snorted as if reproachful of such youthful whimsy. Lady Steelfox grinned. Such a shot would have been impossible even for Qiangguo's mythical Archer Yi.

And yet
, she thought,
there might soon come a time when Qiangguo's cruel wall-builders consider me nearly as great a legend—if my pet inventor's tricks work as planned.
Thoughts of the future took wing like raptors as her eyes spied movement in the green.

A grasshopper twitched. She let fly an arrow.

The insect flew as well, but she'd anticipated its departure, and her shot bisected it.

Steelfox dismounted and sauntered leisurely to her kill. It was ungrateful to waste Mother Earth's food, so she popped half the insect into her mouth and crunched away.

A voice came murmuring upon the wind, as though a woman spoke from deep within a well.
You are surely improving, Lady. Though why you choose such bizarre targets, I do not know.

Steelfox had trained herself not to jump when the shaman projected her words in this manner. “Haytham ibn Zakwan ibn Rihab,” she replied, “claims he was once marooned upon a remote continent. He dwelled in peculiar pointed
gers
nearly as narrow as trees. He hunted vast buffalo on vaster alien plains. He smoked strange leaves that he hopes to cultivate upon our own continent. He says those foreigners and we Karvaks are much alike, though personally I cannot see why. But they did teach him that a good archer should practice by shooting grasshoppers, because if you can manage to shoot a grasshopper, surely you can shoot a man.”

Steelfox searched the four directions for the shaman as she spoke.

To the south lay only the green steppes of spring. To the west lay more of the same.

To the north was her encampment, a row of thirty-six gers set in an east-west line, with five great wheelships rising behind, their sails bearing symbols in vertical script proclaiming the five elements. The fire-aspected sail belonged to
Redwind
, Steelfox's flagship, and it always pleased her to see it. Steelfox beheld much to make her proud. But no shaman.

To the east, obscured by dawn-glare rose the Great Khatun's temporary court, with the gray and white slopes of Mastodon Mountain rising beyond, feeding a meandering river that separated the two encampments. Steelfox could glimpse animals that way, but no nearby people.

Her falcon shrieked overhead, warning her of someone's approach. That was good, because apparently this morning Steelfox was perceptive as a rock.

Half that Mirabad madman's stories come out of his fever dreams
, came the shaman's distorted voice,
and the other half out of his ass. If I hadn't seen his inventions for myself . . .

“Yes,” said Steelfox, shutting her eyes so she might touch her falcon's mind.

There was a moment when her thoughts, normally a disciplined herd, dispersed like a thousand wild horses. But she mounted one and rode it to the mind's horizon.

She was nine years old, and her father clutched her hand in his and placed it upon an egg the color of fire. “From the time Earth and Sky became two beings,” Father said, “and learned both loneliness and love, our family has had the privilege of knowing animal minds. The talent is double-edged, as are all gifts. You may only choose one mind at a time, and each will mark you forever. Are you certain?” Father sounded so serious, but Steelfox had no fears. Despite her name, and despite the Karvaks' history with horses, it was the clouds, not the grasses, she longed to know. She nodded—

And in the next terrifying moment she was screaming, for she was trapped inside a shell . . .

Steelfox broke through the memory and all at once she was in the here-and-now and looking down upon herself, a little Karvak princess with her crown of black hair worn high and shiny with animal fat, in her thick, sky-colored tunic coat with its long drape and heavy sleeves: a drop of black-flecked blue in an ocean of green. The tiny woman shivered. The family gift gave her Qurca's perceptions but only a sliver of the mind that commanded them. Thus what was natural for him always disoriented her, for a time.

But only for a time. Soon she thrilled with the perceptions of the circling peregrine, swiftest of all beasts. Qurca was on his way to becoming an old bird, and she sensed a trace of stiffness in his wings, but he was agile yet. The steppe opened up before their eyes, a vastness of green to rival the immensity of blue above. Qurca noted slopes human eyes would miss, and burrows of ground rodents, and the occasional black of the sky-stones one found here and there in these lands. She would have to inform the Great Khatun of a few meteorites her smiths could harvest.

Far to the southeast was a temporary interruption of the green: a fleet of wheelships coming to greet the Great Khatun. They were at least an hour off, and Steelfox couldn't discern their insignia, but it was good to have this warning.

She coaxed Qurca to spy the land nearer at hand and soon spotted her quarry, a tiny human figure fording the river at an angle that placed it within the dawn-glare for little Lady Steelfox.

Qurca made an irritated shriek. Morning was a hunting time, and Steelfox was acutely aware of the movements of field mice far below, animals to which as a human she'd been oblivious. Qurca was too disciplined to stoop and slay, but she could sense his desire, a tension as great as any human ambition or lust. That he denied his appetite for her sake showed dedication that could shame a Karvak. She released him to his hunt.

A woman once more, she saw a bolt of feathers snatch a mouse from this world and fly to a place of feeding. She turned east and smiled. “Haytham's creation is a marvelous way to travel, shaman,” she teased. “Better than wading through icy rivers!”