Fox and Phoenix (15 page)

Yún stared in her cup, the drink untasted. Her mouth was pinched with unhappiness. We hadn't talked much (at all) these past two weeks, but I couldn't help asking, “What's wrong?”

She shrugged. “Worried. About Qi and Chen. About . . . everything. All those soldiers, too.” She shuddered. “There's trouble between the mountains and the empire. Maybe it's something to do with Lian, or not. Doesn't matter if we're caught in the middle.”

Worry likes the sitting man, the old saying goes. And I couldn't blame Yún. We'd spent a month dodging mercenaries and thieves and snowstorms, and we still had more than five hundred
li
to go before we reached Phoenix City.

And it was the first time in two weeks that she'd answered me without frowning or glaring or muttering something afterward. My insides warmed a bit, and not because of the hideous coffee drink. Picking up my courage, I asked, “So what do you think we should do?”

Yún hesitated visibly, as though she weren't so sure about my reaction. “I think we should go. Right away. And not by horse caravan. We need a wind-and-magic train. We'll have to sell our pony and all our things, but we should get a good price for both. The second-hand dealers would be glad to buy our gear.”

I eyed her suspiciously. “You planned all this today?”

Another hesitation. “No. Days ago.”

And hadn't told me until the last minute.

(You told Chen she liked to order you around.)

(And being right is so wonderful.)

At the same time, Yún was right, too. We had to reach Lian as soon as possible.

“What about Chen and Qi?” I asked.

“They'll find us,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“No. All I know is that we have to reach Lian as soon as possible.”

I sighed. My head ached and my heart was empty. And yet, and yet . . . As much as I wanted to argue, she was right, curse her. “Okay. We hop on the fastest train tomorrow. What about our passports? Won't that tell our spy friends what we're up to?”

Yún looked startled, as if she'd expected me to start a fight. “I don't think that is a problem,” she said at last. “After all, it's not the emperor who wants to stop us. It's someone in Lóng City, in the court. Someone who wants the crown.”

Maybe. It seemed too simple. But like a lock-spell, the simplest explanations were often the true ones.

 

 

 

WE SOLD OUR pony and gear the next morning and headed to the train junction on the southern edge of the city. There we bought two first-class tickets, nonstop, for Phoenix City.

“How much money do we have left?” I whispered when I heard the price.

“Never mind,” she whispered back.

She shoved a brochure at me, while she handled the paperwork.

Yāo-guài poked its beak outside my shirt and chirped. Unlimited meals, huh. With our hungry little monster, maybe that was a good thing. Not to mention the extra guards. And maybe, if we were sitting in a private compartment, I could talk to Yún about what happened in the mountains.

We boarded our train late that afternoon. As soon as we reached our cabin, Yún disappeared into the private bathroom with our griffin. I stowed our packs in a cabinet and scanned the compartment. It was huge—big enough for two couches and a table. Buttons along the window let me change the glass from transparent to gray to absolutely dark. More buttons and switches controlled the seats, how much air flowed through the cabin, even what perfumes got puffed from hidden dispensers. A special combination (explained in tedious detail by some bureaucratic technical writer) explained how to transform the seats into beds.

Purely by luck, I pressed a combination that made a vid-screen pop out from its slot. A tap or two on the controls, and the picture snapped into focus. A man's face filled the screen—his eyes were dark slits, his skin the color of weak tea, his hair a thin skein of iron gray over his skull. His face was unlined, but I could tell he wasn't young. He stood, as the saying goes, on the far side of the mountain. How far, I could not tell.

I was fiddling with the controls, trying to find out what kind of vid was playing, when the screen blipped and a long menu written in hand-lettered characters appeared. Food. Real tasty food, cooked by gourmet chefs—not weeks-old provisions warmed over a smoky campfire.

Yún would like these, I thought, scrolling down the list.

I punched in whatever sounded tasty, or interesting, or even just different. Candied prawns, gingered shrimp, twice-cooked beef with scallions, a very strange dish called magic crabs. The only thing missing was the rude commentary from Chen. I paused and listened, certain he would pop into hearing or sight, but . . . nothing.

The rushing water had stopped inside the bathroom, but still no Yún, either. A serving boy soon arrived, his cart piled high with dishes. With a flourish, he swung a table out from its hidden slot, then laid out each dish with another flourish and a bow. He reminded me too much of Deming, back in Lóng City. In spite of that, I paid him an extra large tip.

Only after the door closed did Yún peek out from the bathroom.

“Is he gone?” she asked.

She wore a silk robe, rose-colored and embroidered with lilies and hummingbirds along its borders. Her dark hair was damp, and braided into a loose queue draped over her shoulder. She smelled faintly of rose petals. All my good intentions vanished and my face went hot.

“He's gone,” I mumbled. “Let's eat.”

We ate for a while in a silence thicker than wool. Just the
click-click-click
of the wheels as the train rattled on its tracks, the
shī
and hiss of the wind in the train's sails, and the crackle of magic when the engineer adjusted his levers to maintain the speed.

Only once did I try to say something. “Yún, about Golden Snowcloud. I'm sorry—”

“No,” she said right away. “I mean, not now. Please, Kai. Later. After we find Lian.”

Right. A good excuse, a true one. But would
later
ever get here? Or would Yún go back to Lóng City, earn her conjuration license and set up another shop, far away from a stupid street rat named Kai Zōu?

My appetite vanished. I clicked the vid screen on again. Six old men in dark tunics sat around a table, jabbering on about economic stimulus packages, future shares in magic flux, and how the trade negotiations in Lóng City might affect them. It was dull, but right now I wanted dull. Everything else hurt too much. Yún. My mother, missing or worse.

Yún set her chopsticks down. “That's not a video. That's real-time broadcast.”

I blinked at her words. Sure, I'd seen fancier real-time broadcasts in Lóng City's vid-parlors, but never before in a train rattling along at thirty
li
an hour. I started to ask Yún how she could tell the difference, but she shushed me.

My questions were unimportant, I thought. I poured myself a mug of tea and punched the window controls. The swirling patterns vanished from the glass. Outside, the countryside flashed by. Fields and fields and more fields. Herds of swine and cattle and sheep. A larger market town. A broad sluggish river. Tiny villages that were hardly more than dots as we sped past. Dark clouds smudged the gray skies. Even as I watched, a white streak jumped from the clouds to the soggy fields below. It was raining again.

 

 

EIGHTEEN HOURS.

 

Ai-yi
, they were the fastest and slowest hours of my entire life.

The griffin slept and ate and chewed up blankets. Yún did nothing but watch the news broadcasts, switching from channel to channel for no reason I could figure out. After a while, I gave up and stared out the rain-smudged windows at the countryside as the train shot over the rails. Chen never did make an appearance, though I called to him once or twice. It felt strange to be so alone inside myself. Worse than alone—empty.

Six hours into our journey, Yún switched channels again. I recognized the man who reminded me of a vid-screen actor. “Who is that?”

“Kaishan Zhu,” Yún said. “The emperor of the Phoenix Empire.”

“And those others?”

“His trade ministers.”

The gabbling onscreen sounded like the same gabbling as before, except that now the emperor was explaining how recent purchases of magic flux supplies from various neighboring kingdoms would ease this temporary shortage in the empire. He went on to reassure us that new negotiations were underway in the central mountain kingdoms to ensure a permanent solution.

“How can it be temporary and permanent at the same time?” I said.

Yún didn't answer. She punched a few buttons on the keypad. Most of the windows on the screen closed, replaced by one filled with text. Yún kept tapping at the keyboard. More text scrolled by, too fast for me to read. It was obvious she didn't want to talk.

The rest of the evening passed in dreary silence. Yāo-guài fell asleep in a small snoring heap. I ordered another meal of cooked beef and packed all the dishes into cartons and stowed them in our packs. Yún was still studying the screens when I finished picking up all our scattered belongings from around the cabin and packed them away, too. As the hazy disc of the full moon rose above a bank of clouds, I rolled myself in my blankets and fell asleep.

 

 

 

A LOUD SQUEALING woke me. I bolted up.

“Yāo-guài?”

The squealing came from outside the train. The griffin darted around the cabin, adding squawks and trills to the noise, while the squealing went on and on. Yún must have turned the windows to opaque, because a smothering darkness enveloped our compartment. Groaning, I switched the window to transparent. A flood of bright sunlight poured through the glass, blinding me and sending Yāo-guài on another frantic circuit. Late morning, my bleary mind calculated.

Yún sat up rubbing her eyes. “What is it?” she croaked.

“I don't know.”

Our vid-screen chimed. A woman's voice announced, “One hour to Phoenix City. Please make ready for departure.”

We had plenty of time to wash and eat breakfast. As the train slid into the station, Yún and I were already standing by the doors. The griffin had not protested once when Yún tucked him into her backpack, but I could see him squirming around inside.

The doors hissed open, letting a wave of warmth roll into the train. Dry air, tinged with smoke and grease and the electric scent of magic.

I nearly lost sight of Yún in the first two minutes. We had to grab each other's hands to keep from getting separated as we squeezed our way past hordes of travelers trying to board the train. Overhead, signs glowing with magic flux showed arriving and departing trains by platform number. Children shrieked. Voices from the loudspeakers announced changes to the schedule. Vendors hawking spiced rice, roasted chicken, and grilled squid shouted out their wares. An old woman carrying a live chicken in a cage stomped past us, both of them screeching at each other. We might have introduced ten noisy griffins and no one would have noticed.

By the time we squeezed through the last doorway into a wide square outside the station, I was sweating. It was far warmer than I'd expected. More like late summer than almost winter—a very damp summer where rain clogged the air but never fell.

“Do you remember Lian's address?” I said.

“She has a set of rooms near the university. Used to. She said something about moving when we last talked, but she didn't say where. But the university should have her new address. We can ask once we get there.”

We exchanged our money at a small kiosk next to the station. Yún asked the man for directions to the University Quarter. He grunted and waved his hand toward the opposite side of the square, as if that answered our question.

We did the squeeze routine again, sweating even harder than before. Eventually we popped out of the crowd next to rows of shops and vendors. And one strange, six-sided tower.

It was short, barely taller than I was, and painted a dull black. Each side had a big slot, a little slot, and a metal plaque with instructions. On top was a mesh cage. As I squinted at the instructions, a gnarled old man elbowed me aside and shoved a coin into a smaller slot. He jabbered into the slot in a thick southern accent. I heard a whirring noise.
Poof.
A flame shot up from the mesh cage, followed by a cloud of sickly-sweet-smelling incense. A minute later, the old man pulled a small square of paper from a larger slot and hurried off.

Yún planted herself in front of the machine and inserted a coin. “University Quarter,” she said briskly. “Headquarters for student dormitories. First year students. Political science and magical studies.”

More flames and smelly incense. The tower clicked and whirred and spat out another square of paper. Yún crammed it into her pocket.

We ducked into a nearby alley and examined the paper. Flowing script covered one side—directions to the University Quarter. On the other side was a map of the square where we stood. Magic flux flickered over its surface in the shape of an arrow pointing southwest. As we turned to see what lay in that direction, the arrow shifted with us. When we took a couple steps, the map changed to show a smidge more on one side, less on the other. A small gold-stamped device in one corner let us change the map's resolution from just a few streets to the entire city, with the widest avenues shrinking to needle-thin lines.