Snow in the Year of the Dragon Read online

  The Empress struck back.

  Grumbles from the Geisha.

  A jab to the belly followed immediately by a slap to the ribs.

  “This is not fighting,” said the Empress. “I will not continue.”

  “Good,” said Ursa. “You will die sooner, little cricket, and the Empire will fall to Ho.”

  Another jab. The Empress swung around, hands up in guard stance but Ursa knocked them easily away. Batted her chest, her arms, her shoulders, all the while the Bushona Geisha moved and grumbled, a blur of colour along the edges.

  “I thought you were Dragonborn,” said Ursa.

  “Do not speak to me about Dragons!”

  “You are small.”

  She pushed her and the Empress staggered back on her slippered feet.

  “You are pathetic.”

  She yanked a tassel so that the crown slipped on her forehead.

  “You have no honour.”

  And she slapped the monarch across the face.

  There was silence in the Room of Dancing Cranes.

  With a cry, the Empress launched herself forward, claws extended, slicing at leather and armour and pelt. Ursa whirled, deflecting the lunge easily and spinning to catch the Sacred woman from behind. It was like holding a dervish, all claws and fury and raging black silk. But the snow leopard was skilled and the Sacred woman was not and Ursa held tight her until the struggles slowed.

  “I have honour,” the Empress snarled. “I am honour.”

  “Honour will not keep you alive,” Ursa hissed into her ear. “You have forgotten your true birthright and have believed a lie.”

  “My birthright is to rule this Kingdom!”

  “Your birthright is more than your crown,” said the sham’Rai. “It is your claws.”

  The Empress grew still.

  “You have forgotten that you are not only an Empress. You are a cat. You are a hunter. You can fight. You can kill.”

  “I wanted to,” she whispered. “I wanted to kill you.”

  “Good,” said Ursa. “You are the Empress of all cats. Do not forget what makes your people fierce and strong and dangerous. Find pride in our heritage.”

  The woman nodded.

  “More than cat,” Ursa went on. “You are Cat and Dragon. Nothing can match your fury. You slay with a word. You crush enemies with a glance. You breathe fire and cities are turned to ash and you feast on the marrow of their bones.”

  Ursa released her, slowly spun her around to face her. She pushed the War Crown back into position and took a step back.

  Fist to cupped palm, she bowed.

  Slowly, warily, the Empress bowed back.

  “End of Lesson One,” said Ursa.

  And she turned and left the Room of Dancing Cranes. The air slowly returned to the room.

  ***

  “Level Six is the only level still under ground,” said Reedy as the sterile, white hydraulift descended. “The Qore has it fully automated.”

  “The Qore?” asked Solomon. “What the hell is the Qore and why is it fully automated?”

  “So many questions,” smiled the man. “You boggle me. One at a time, please.”

  It was as if the man had practiced the art of ‘wise and long-suffering.’ His eyes, wrinkled and heavy-lidded, gleamed with wry humour; his words slow and carefully chosen; his smile practiced and patient. But behind the eyes, Solomon saw fierce intelligence. Between the lines, volumes left unspoken. Behind the smile, a knife. He couldn’t help but think that to trust this man would mean more sacs filled with blood.

  Solomon took a deep breath.

  “What do you mean, fully-automated? My zoologist was killed by someone in C-SAS gear.”

  “Ah, yes. That was one of the First Line,” said Reedy. “Our soldiers, protectors and caretakers, with specialized anti-bio gear. Without the gear, no one goes on the surface.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, roos for one,” he said. “Like the ones that bit and ultimately killed your friend. Dillies, to mention another. Come right up from under the ground and swallow you whole. Although the C-SAS gear couldn’t do much about that…”

  His words drifted off for a moment.

  “Then there’s sandflies the size of your fist that come in swarms and devour the flesh right from your bones. Kuri, too. Meanest creatures you ever met. They used to be people, once upon a time. They dip arrows in snake venom, so even if you’re grazed, you’re dead. They’ve trained scorpions to hunt for them, scorpions the size of goats. There’s nothing good left in the natural world, now is there?”

  Solomon frowned. It was possible, probable even, that life would have evolved very differently in the time since he’d gone under. Humans were gone and not for the first time, he wondered if they were meant to stay that way.

  “What do you mean ‘Kuri used to be people’?”

  “Just what I said, Doctor.”

  “You’ve had a lot of experience with life on the surface, it seems,” said Solomon.

  “As much as I care to. The First Line records everything and the Qore analyses it.”

  Solomon bit his tongue. Just play the game, he told himself. Play the game, find Ward and Sengupta and get the hell back to the Griffen.

  “Ok, how about the Qore?” he asked. “What’s that?”

  “The Qore is the Qore,” said the man. “It runs the entire facility. Never shuts down, never loses power.”

  “How?”

  “It powers itself,” he said. “It’s a quantum device, so it surely has to do with subatomic particles.”

  “Surely,” said Solomon.

  “I’m only a caretaker, Doctor,” he said. “Not a physicist.”

  There was no bump or lurch as the hydraulift halted its descent, only a friendly ping. The lights turned blue then and the air smelled of ozone. Reedy turned his heavy-lidded eyes on him.

  “Decontamination,” he said. “The lifts serve many functions here in Dreamtime.”

  “Are those also controlled by the Qore?”

  “Indeed, Doctor. Everything is.”

  Finally, the doors slid open onto a wide expanse below them. They stepped out onto a metal catwalk, and immediately Solomon felt cold rush down his spine to his knees.

  The sub-chambers, deep, high, and wide, gaped like a mouth that had taken too many punches. Iron-graphene pillers were buckled and many levels had collapsed inward. Polymer-strand webbing blocked most of the rows and rubble lay in mounds against the remaining walls. Cryounits, empty and upended, looked as if they had been cannibalized for parts.

  There was a flash of movement on the lattice floor below, and a man-sized bird bot stalked into view. It swung its odd-shaped torso as it moved, sweeping the area with an arc of blue light before clanking down the corridor beneath them.

  “Counter measures, Doctor Solomon,” said Reedy. “Because of the dillies.”

  “The things that come out of the ground?” He was growing weary of this game.

  “Mutated Australian crocodiles that have adapted to the dunes and sand of the outback. Burrowed their way through the rock and trashed three levels.”

  Solomon looked up at him, incredulous.

  “Oh, I do know how that sounds, sir,” said Reedy. “But we lost over half of our subs to them before the Qore was able to prepare the counter measures. That’s kept them out now, for the most part. We get a bit of a reprieve over summer because they’re most active in the winter.”

  “Are they cold-blooded?”

  “They are, sir. Here in Australia, the summers are unnaturally hot and the dillies hibernate deep in the earth. It’s autumn now, and they’ll be waking soon, hence the tampers. They hate the tampers. We learned that the hard way.”

  Solomon remembered the Griffen’s landing – the tamp fuses and the tremors and the mech-suits swinging their cannons.

  He released a long-held breath.

  “So you lost half,” he said. “Are the ‘counter measures’ enough to protect the rest?”
r />   “The ‘counter measures’ don’t protect the rest, Doctor.” He blinked slowly. “They protect the First Line and the Qore. We’ve moved the rest.”

  “Moved them? Dammit, that’s not the protocol.”

  “Isn’t it?” Reedy smiled again, but without his eyes. “Isn’t it our duty to protect the subs at all cost?”

  “It’s the duty of the supers, not caretakers. And how are you a caretaker, exactly? There were no ‘caretaker’ positions when I went under. Where and when did you get here?”

  “So many questions,” said Reedy. “They do boggle me so. I did say that earlier, didn’t I? We do have caretakers, of which I myself am one. Which one of your other questions would you like me to answer?”

  Solomon stared at the man. Tried to imagine him without the age spots and the wrinkles and the wild silver hair.

  “So where did the subs go?” Solomon asked.

  “With the exception of the First Line?”

  “Yes, Matty. With the exception of the First Line.”

  “Would you believe me if I said the Wheels?”

  “The Wheels,” murmured Solomon. It was beginning to make sense.

  “’Behold, as I looked at the living beings, there was one wheel on the earth beside the living beings, for each of the four of them. The appearance of the wheels and their workmanship was like sparkling beryl, as if one wheel were within another.’”

  Reedy smiled slowly at him.

  “It’s from the Bible,” he said. “Ezekiel, I believe.”

  “You put the subs in wind turbines?”

  “They’re not wind turbines, sir. They’re cryo-wheels.”

  It took a moment to realize what the man had said. The field of turbines, massive and otherworldly, was filled with sleepers. A thousand lives silently spinning their dreams away across the Australian outback. Living Beings within the Wheels.

  Solomon shook his head, feeling like the time in CD Shenandoah when he’d put the Plug over the wire and the information had overwhelmed his conscious mind. Only this time Reedy had the wire, not him. He looked up.

  “How old are you?”

  “No older than you, Doctor.” And now he leaned back onto the railing. “But I do understand your sentiment. Dreamtime is exhausting.”

  Suddenly, all around them, the blue lights changed to red, pulsing bright to brighter but emiting no sound. A quiet, controlled alarm. Reedy touched the wire at the back of his neck.

  “We should get back to Qore,” he said calmly. “There’s something amiss outside.”

  Roos. Dillies. Kuri. Subs. This Dreamtime was a nightmare of secrets and screens. Wheels within wheels. Monsters and half-truths and Matty Reedy, a master of the game. But Jeffery Solomon was a patient man and he would play the game until Ward and Sengupta were free. If Reedy was telling the truth, and they were not already dead. That was by no means certain.

  “Doctor?” called the caretaker from the lift. “Shall we?”

  Solomon joined him and the doors slid shut on the counter measures and the dark.

  ***

  It was hard not to smile at the sight. Weary from an exhausting day of play, three children under the age of two slept in a huddle of arms and legs and tails and yellow silk. In the Imperial nursery, four women sat on embroidered cushions, watching them.

  “Sleep,” said the Seer. “It is a blessed thing.

  “It comes so easily to the young,” said the Empress.

  “‘To be in bed and sleep not,’” began the Seer, “‘To want for one who comes not; to try to please and please not. These are the worst things in life.’”

  “Petrus used to say that,” she said. “He was a wise man.”

  “He was a friend.” Together they watched the kittens through a screen of painted bamboo. “As is the mother of these kittens.”

  “Fallon Waterford-Grey,” said the Empress. “Kirin has spoken of her. She is a good match for our Kaidan?”

  “They seem happy,” he said. “He is Fire. She is Wood. He burns brighter because of her but she is not consumed.”

  “Soladad was the name of your daughter,” said the Empress, golden eyes fixed on the three slumbering forms.

  “Yes,” said the Seer softly.

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Are you?”

  “I am.”

  “Then change it. Change the Way of Things.” He looked at her, glorious and majestic in her War Crown and black silk. “Only you can.”

  She said nothing and he could see the thoughts wheeling behind her eyes.

  “I need time,” she said finally.

  “Perhaps I can give you that,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  Now she looked up at him.

  “It involves a small amount of deception,” he continued. “And I am not the best of liars.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” she said. “Will Chancellor Ho approve?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Then I do.” She raised her chin. “How will you do it?”

  “Magic.”

  “You do not believe in magic.”

  “There’s a time for every purpose under heaven.”

  A quirk of her lips and she turned back to the window glass. He wondered if she ever felt the urge to take her daughter under her wing, tend her herself the way other mothers did, or if she preferred to be free to lead councils of state and oversee the running of an Empire. He still knew so little of her. Her heart ran deep and secret.

  “If I manage to conjure you this time,” he began. “I would like to ask permission to journey to Agara’tha.”

  “You are my War Advisor,” she said.

  “And the best way I can advise you is from a place of solitude and focus. This is not that place.”

  In the mound of sleeping kittens, a grey striped tail lashed. A dream. He hoped it was a sweet one.

  “Besides,” he went on. “Agara’tha is close, is it not? I’ve been told one day, at most, on foot, and I presume I still have my horse, so… less?”

  “And your wife? Where will her allegiance lie?”

  “With the Empire. First and foremost and always.”

  “She is a hard teacher.”

  “You should see my bruises.”

  She smiled.

  “You are every bit as obstinate as Kirin has described.”

  “I am. Most decidedly.”

  “You have met your match in me.”

  “I have. Most assuredly.”

  “You cannot meditate here?”

  He hesitated, remembering the Room of Enlightened Shadows.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  He sighed.

  “I can but not the way I need. There is too much distraction and I admit that I am at a loss to what I need to do.” He sighed, clasped his hands behind his back. “Do I sift the hearts of the men and women working here in the Palace for thoughts of betrayal? Do I continue the hunt for ninjahs and hassassins or do I send my thoughts to the Shogun-General and his quest for treaties with the Capuchin Council? Or do I cast my mind to the Ancestors, use the Gift of Farsight to seek out their numbers, their camps, their strategies? And what of Unification? Sha’Hadin and Agara’tha are our greatest strength but they are leaderless and weakened by strife.”

  He shook his head.

  “I am a powerful man but I am only one, and I fear that in trying to do many things, I will fail to do any one thing.”

  She studied him for a long moment.

  “You feel you will be most useful at Agara’tha?”

  “I do.”

  “And you believe you can work with the current overMage, Lor barraDunne?”

  “I will do my best.”

  “Then you must go to Agara’tha. I will have the Chancellor attend the details.”

  “Thank you, Excellency.”

  “Excellency.” She smiled. “You respect me now?”

  “I have always respected you.”

  “But you will not bow.”

 
; “Would you?”

  Her eyes, deep and golden and large as the world. He did not turn from them. She raised a brow.

  “No,” she said finally. “You have earned your mountain top.”

  He smiled now, validated.

  “One last favour,” he said.

  “Anything.”

  “Before he died, Ambassador Bo Fujihara mentioned a Chi’Chen painter...”

  “Kai Yamakaze, yes. His paintings grace the Yellow Sun Room.”

  “He said I should see them.”

  “I will take you there myself.”

  As they turned away from the screen, two leopards fell in behind, as well as the Bushona Geisha in their riot of pinks and purples. They left the Imperial Nursery to linger over the Chi’Chen paintings of Kai Yamakaze in the Yellow Sun Room, barely noticing the Dragon’s Blood Bark curling in a tiny pot in a corner.

  In the War Room, however, the mouth of the Great Golden Lion is filled with incense. In fact, all throughout the Palace, every pot, every statue, every clay dish and bronze bowl glows with Dragon’s Blood Bark, as rumours of Ancestors and magic and murderous hassassins swirl and blend to the drums of war. Not knowing how or why, the people pray for a miracle. It is powerful superstition but cats are, after all, a superstitious people.

  And there is a shift in the wind.

  ***

  “Three?” grumbled Tony Paolini. “Is that all you have?”

  “Just three,” said Celine Car. “And not all of them work.”

  “Make them work,” he grumbled. “We’ll need all the REDmarks we can get if we are going to do this.”

  “How many can the others spare?”

  “Three from Claire, two from Jorgenson, two from Washington. Portillo has five, so that’s a plus.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “Marathon was the cache. Didn’t we have twenty, initially?”

  “We have five but you’re welcome to come dig them out if you like.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Tony,” she said. “Still, we could destroy the entire complex with fifteen REDmarks.”

  “If that’s what we wanted to do, yes.”

  She tightened her thin lips.

  “What about C-SAS gear?”

  “We’ll need as many suits as you can spare. Your list says fifty-seven. I thought you had over three hundred.”