Snow in the Year of the Dragon Read online

  Curious, Kirin thought to himself, how his heart still twisted at the sight of Sherah taking his son away with the dogs. He should be beyond it. Above it, far removed from such familial matters. It was Ling, he told himself. She would never have the freedom to leave like that, to hike her child on a hip and just leave. He wondered if she would have the freedom to live once her baby was born.

  “Kirin? You alright?”

  Kerris leaned into him in an old way, a way from times gone by. Kirin smiled wearily.

  “I’m fine, Kerris. It has been a very long year.”

  “Year of the Dragon now,” his brother said. “Anything can happen.”

  “Anything, indeed. I’d almost forgotten.”

  “There are Gowrain in the city,” whispered the Scholar. “I saw two.”

  “Gowrain?” said Kirin.

  “They’re not our usual bears,” said Kerris. “Smaller, stockier, working alongside the Chi’Chen.”

  “Do you think they’re slaves?” asked the Scholar.

  Kirin grunted. It was possible. While Gowrain were fierce and powerful, the Snow were indomitable. There was little in all the world that could stand up to the Snow.

  The Moonflowers stopped at another doorway. Four stony women stepped out.

  “Our stop, I expect,” said Kerris. “I wonder if there are hot springs in here?”

  “Do you think so?” asked his wife.

  “Monkeys love hot springs,” said Kerris. “Both mountain and water are warring but the water is winning.”

  “Makes sense,” Fallon said.

  Kirin shook his head. Nothing his brother and the Scholar said made sense to him. They lived on another cloud-layer above him, like Ancestors and dragons and women.

  “Do you want to come with us?” asked the Scholar. “If they take you to another room, you’ll be all alone.”

  “Alone with four monkey women,” grinned Kerris.

  “Alone is good,” said Kirin. “I need to think.”

  “Bushido?” said Fallon.

  “Yes,” he lied. “Bushido.”

  And with that, Scholar and Geomancer disappeared through the doorway, leaving him with the Moonflowers and the low ceiling. They turned and shuffled to the next doorway, where four women stood waiting with tea and hot towels and he wondered at the combination.

  He bowed a small bow to the Moonflowers, who as one, bowed back before turning and shuffling away along the low corridor. He watched them go, marveling at the way they carried the little fans with their tails, wondered how tails like that could possibly have come into being. With that thought, he took a deep breath and entered the room.

  The ceiling was just as low as the corridors – barely enough for his head and little else. The room was sparsely furnished and lit by a single lantern on a table set with food. Against a far wall, there was a blanket on the floor. No, not a blanket – he narrowed his eyes – a pelt of thick black and white fur. Bear, if the Scholar were to be believed. In the center of the room, water bubbled and boiled in a pit and the smell of eggs was very strong.

  He glanced around the room, pausing at the sight of the far wall. It was missing. From floor to ceiling and as wide as two men lying head to toe, the room was open to the night sky. Despite the deep winter cold, the room was warm, and he realized that it was because of the water pit. It was remarkable engineering, and he wondered if it was designed by monkeys or Ancestors.

  He crossed to stand in front of the open window-wall. Three stories below, the tent-city glowed with firepits, lanterns and kilns, throwing sparks up into the night sky, but the city was more than this. Light glowed from the surrounding mountains themselves, with hundreds of window-walls open to the occupants within. He could see monkeys reading by candlelight, monkeys eating at tables, talking in animated conversations, taking each other to bed. He could see monkeys reclining deep in their waterpits, heads barely visible as they soaked the pain of their lives away. Ordinary lives on view for everyone to see.

  Shin Sekai. This was a new world indeed.

  He shook his head, turned to find two of the four behind him.

  “You are not Moonflowers,” he said in Chi’Chen. He wondered if he spoke with an accent, much the way monkeys and dogs did when they tried to speak Imperial. “What are you called?”

  “Stonelilies,” said the woman. She held up a bolt of fabric. “Wear this. Your clothing is unclean. You must be clean before you eat.”

  He glanced over at the table. Vegetables raw, roasted, and boiled in a variety of colourful dishes, and his belly grumbled again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. For soldiers, hunger was a constant companion and once again, he thought of the Nine Thousand Dragons.

  “Is there a place where I might remove my clothes?” he asked, not surprised when the only response was silence. “No? Here then. With your help. In front of you and this large open window.”

  “The New World is a community of peace.”

  “And considerable freedom,” he said.

  They were waiting on him, for him to oblige, but the table was also waiting for him to indulge. Against the far wall, the bear pelt soft and thick, waiting for his head to lay in sleep. They were all waiting on him, just waiting, and he was so very tired.

  He passed her the helm and reached for the buckle of his doh.

  ***

  A peak towers over the others, one of sandstone and clay and empty walls rising to the skies. At the very top, an Ancient monastery, red-stained brick and cedar-beamed roof. Higher now to the beating of the wings, windows black and hollow like the spots on a jaguar’s pelt. Higher still, the landscape spreading far beyond, rocky and grey. Below, a lone hare racing from the shadow.

  The owl spreads his wings behind his back, dropping his weight into his talons—

  “Where are you taking us, cat?”

  Yahn Nevye turned to find Balmataar directly behind him at the cliff’s edge, his bi-coloured eyes narrowed, his filthy hair rising on the mountain wind. He was taller than Nevye, for Nevye was only a jaguar and Balm was still growing. He was surprised the young man had restrained himself here at the cliff’s edge. One push and his rival would be gone, lost to the Scales of Khunlun and this valley with no name.

  Unless of course, he lived. Shar Ma’uul had a habit of living.

  “To the mountains beyond that snowfield,” he said. “Silence has seen a place that may suit the school.”

  “School,” the young man grunted. “I thought you were raising an army.”

  “Soldiers begin at the beginning,” said Nevye. “The Oracles are powerful but untrained. Training will make them more powerful.”

  “It will make me more powerful.”

  “It will, Balm.”

  “Then I can kill you and take your woman.”

  Nevye grunted.

  “My woman has killed a Legion of soldiers,” he said. “You’d be dead before you moved a finger.”

  The young man made a face. Clearly, he had not thought of Setse as anything but a girl. He had never seen her dance with a dagger.

  “Maybe I kill you now,” Balmataar said, “And say that you fell.”

  “She wouldn’t believe you,” said Nevye. “Besides, she is more powerful an Oracle than you. She sees into your black heart as we speak.”

  The young man snarled but stepped back. Nevye could see the war on his face. He needed no Gift to aid him in that regard.

  “Why do you fight us, Balmataar?” he asked. “Why not just leave, return to the village where we found you?”

  “Because I’m going to burn that village,” snapped the Oracle. “I will go back and I will burn every gar. I will burn every fence, I will burn every man and woman until all that is left is ash and bone.”

  “I’m sorry, Balm. We’ll not help you with that.”

  And he moved to pass but Balmataar blocked him.

  So young and full of himself. Or perhaps it was the anger. Life was difficult for Oracles of the Chanyu. Few of them we
re happy. He wondered if this was how he’d come across to Sireth benAramis so long ago. Angry and lost and looking for someone to blame.

  “Hate lessens your power, Balmataar,” he said. “It compromises your mind and darkens your chi.”

  “You talk too much, cat.”

  “Step out of my way.”

  “Make me.”

  Nevye sighed. He used to be a soldier, wondered if three deaths had brought the skills back. When he was a soldier, two moves and the boy would be down; three and the valley would be fed with blood. Training the Chanyu was proving more difficult than either he or Setse had ever imagined.

  He clasped his gloved hands together under his chin and the winds rose with them.

  “Alchemy is change,” he said to himself as much as to Balmataar. “And change is Alchemy. I ask the air to change, to move faster and faster so that it pushes against the body of the boy with the golden eye. I touch the mind of the boy with the golden eye, press upon him with the force of my thoughts and he sees who I really am, the soldier from Keralah who is now both Alchemist and Seer, and he will step back because the air is so strong that it will push him from the mountain if he does not.”

  The wind whipped Balm’s hair and hide coat like wings. His boots began to skid across the rock and he leaned forward, fighting to stay in place.

  “He is not a foolish boy,” Nevye continued, “Merely angry, and he knows that to die today would be waste of his young life. But it will end if he does not move, for we have many Oracles more skilled than he and no one will miss him or even shed a tear for him, the boy with the golden eye.”

  Balmataar snarled but stepped back, and back again. The winds died away.

  “The udgan was right,” he growled. “You are tngri.”

  “Perhaps I am,” said Nevye. “But a white one. Don’t make me call the black.”

  He pushed past the boy.

  “I will kill you!” Balmataar called after him. “I have seen it! I will learn your tricks, then I will kill you and I will be leader of the Oracles!”

  He shook his head as he made his way across the rock, feeling the brush of Silence as he began his return from the mountain. The owl had a hare in his talons, so at least two of them could eat tonight.

  He would make sure it would not be Balm.

  ***

  Early morning and the baby is sleeping. Naranbataar can hear the Khargan making love to his feline wife, can hear every breath, every scrape, every sound as their bodies slide across each other and he tries not to listen. He has never had a woman. He has never known this pleasure. His life has been Setse, her care, her survival. Not this, never this.

  He is serving the Khan of Khans but he doesn’t know how or why. He is proud of his position but in truth, he is only watching the baby and the baby is the son of the witch who is now Khanil of the Chanyu. It is a mystery but Naranbataar has lived with mystery his entire life. He is the brother of an Oracle.

  In his sleep, Kylan lashes his tail. He will wake soon, looking for food. The witch has milk and that’s good. There has been little food in the mountains this winter and all the soldiers are hungry. He wonders where his sister is, if she is alive, if she is happy with the cat. He can imagine them now, just like the Khan and Khanil – different kingdoms, same bed. But he doesn’t want to imagine that.

  The monkey women are waiting along the walls like statues. He wonders if that is all they do – wait. The food was prepared when they entered the room but it is all vegetables and dogs hate vegetables. The Khan has demanded meat but the monkey women just stare at him. He wonders if they will both die of hunger before the night is done.

  There is quiet now from the Khan and Khanil and he knows they are finished. He wonders if it is possible for the witch to catch the Khargan’s seed and what a child might look like if it survived. Certainly nothing like Kylan, but then again, such a thing has never been done. Some things are different but truthfully, most are the same.

  He doesn’t want to think about Setse and her lover. No girl’s brother ever does.

  “I did not know you were married,” says the witch quietly. He thinks she is lying across the Khargan’s chest, but he doesn’t know and won’t look.

  “Long time before,” says the Khargan. “Andetje. She died birthing a son many winters past.”

  “I am sorry to hear of it.”

  “Don’t be. Now I have you, Singer of Songs.”

  “You are a good man, Long-Swift Sumalbaykhan,” she purrs. “I am proud to be your wife.”

  “And I am proud to be your husband, Khanil of the People. Luck has smiled on me twice.”

  “Hmmm. You are the only luck I have ever known.”

  He grunts. “Maybe all you need.”

  There is silence for a long moment.

  “I wait for it to run dry. I fear that day.”

  “Dogs know the dry times. We thrive there. They do not last.”

  “One day, Dharma will call my name,” she says. “My true name and I must treat with her, pay for a life filled with dark bargains.”

  There is a pause.

  “My hands are not clean.”

  “You cannot live with clean hands, Khanil. No one who lives can.”

  “You do not believe in fate, husband?”

  “The Chanyu do not believe in many things,” he says. “We have a saying. ‘I believe in sky and earth, in blood and birth, in war and strife, in moon and life and you.’”

  “It is beautiful,” she purrs.

  “And true.”

  It is sealed by what Rani could only imagine is a kiss, followed again by noise.

  He sighs, pulls the baby close to warm him. Is it so easy to love the enemy, he wonders, but then he realizes that he is holding a cat and his heart swells with the thought. He would die to protect this little cat, so perhaps the world is changing despite the protests.

  All the while the monkey women wait, but he doesn’t wonder what they think. His lids close and he is lost in sleep without dreams.

  ***

  Jeffery Solomon sat up abruptly, blinking and looking around the Griffen’s cabin. Through the windows, clouds and red scrubland but all he can see are snatches of dreamstate, fleeting and surreal. Armand Dell eaten by kangaroos, the Griffen swallowed whole by sharks, Ward’s goggled cap disappearing in a pit of lava. It was a blessing, then, for such a restless sleep to be broken by the sound of the alarm.

  “What is it?” asked Sengupta as she pushed up from her cot. “Why the alarm?”

  “Dunno.” He pressed the wire at the base of his skull. “Ward? What’s up?”

  “Contact.”

  He blinked again, cursing these short bouts of sleep. But then, for a Sandman, anything less than a hundred years was short.

  “Kalgoorlie?”

  “Maybe. We got pinged. Something’s drawn a bead on us.”

  “People, yes?” said Sengupta. “Human people?”

  “I’ll come forward,” said Solomon and he rose from his cot, paused to check the taglines running from Dell’s feed. He was stable, but pale, and running a low-grade fever.

  “How is he?” asked the linguist as she crossed the deck to join him.

  “We may have to put his hand in stasis,” he said. “It’s not responding to the feed.”

  “Stasis? Really? Isn’t that extreme?”

  “Might be the best I can do until I get some proper meds,” he said. “Those ‘roos probably had something in their saliva that’s not a part of the old protocols.”

  She bit her lip, looked down at the zoologist.

  “Isn’t it awkward working with a hand in stasis?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “If he actually worked...”

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  “It’s Dell,” he said.

  “You didn’t turn him away when he offered to come.”

  “It was either let him come or let him get shipped north.” Solomon sighed. “But you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not his fault he
has no experience. None of us do.”

  “Is he going to turn into an animal?”

  Now it was his turn to bite his tongue. It also wasn’t her fault that she believed in monsters. Their entire compound had been fed mistruths to keep them suspicious, defensive and close to home. It was simply a natural use of a very natural fear. This was a new, unknown world now, with altogether new myths and legends, ripe for the making.

  “No,” he said. “People don’t turn into animals.”

  “They turn into something in-between, like your friends.”

  He grinned wearily.

  “Dell just needs to be more careful, that’s all.”

  “If he turns into an animal,” she said. “I hope he’s a careful animal.”

  And for the first time in a very long time, she smiled at him.

  He turned and left the cabin. Naturally, Damaris Ward was in the cockpit, working her controls as though she were part of them. He wondered if she were as fearful as Sengupta but had a cockpit to keep her safe. Armour, he had realized over the years, came in many shapes and sizes.

  “So?” he said. “We got pinged?”

  “Yuh,” she said. “We passed an old C-spike two mits ago and it picked up. We’re pinging off something else and our trajectory is being hacked.”

  “You have the CODA on?”

  “I know my drills,” she growled.

  “I know you do. Sorry.” He shook his head. Dell’s injury had made them all jumpy. “But you haven’t heard anything?”

  “No,” she said, twisting the CODA plug inside her ear and passing it to him. “But we’re only assuming they have the same tek. Sit, Seven. You’re making me nervous.”

  He did, taking the seat next to hers and sliding his feet into the locks. He felt the straps grow tight around his hips and thighs. He slipped the plug into his ear and she passed him a roll of glass. He spread it out on the console in front of him and immediately the Griffen’s surrounding area – below, above and 360 degrees rotation – sprang to hololife in front of him. There were two pips coming from the west.

  “We are assuming they’re from Sandman 3, aren’t we?”