Fox and Phoenix (17 page)

“So,” she said, “how do you know Lian? Did our princess decide to study medicine?”

Quan looked puzzled at first, then laughed. “Hardly. We met in lectures. Magical Philosophy and Ethical Applications. Would you like sugar for your tea?”

Yún made a face. “Who puts sugar in their tea?”

“Barbarians,” Quan said. “We had several exchange students from tribes in the far northeast. Interesting customs. One of my cousins lives in the outer provinces, and he tells me the most outrageous tales. Of course, he could be exaggerating.”

As he talked, he measured tea into a small teapot decorated with dragons that intertwined into a pattern making an even larger dragon. Soon he was pouring tea into three cups that looked as though they'd been cracked and mended several times over. A poor man, but I recognized the dishes as coming from a once-rich household. And the tea itself turned out to be a rare and delicious blend from the southern coastal cities. It had a delicate smoky flavor that chased away all my miseries in spite of myself. Quan explained that another cousin who lived on the coast sent him regular shipments. Meanwhile, Yún continued to ask polite questions about Quan and his studies, which he just as politely deflected.

She's right,
I thought.
He's hiding something.

We finished our tea. Quan smiled, but I could tell he was embarrassed. “I promised you dinner. There is only one difficulty.” He paused, cleared his throat. “You see, I meant to visit the markets today, but—”

“But you stopped to talk with us,” Yún finished for him. “Never mind. We have some leftovers from the train. Show me what you do have. Let's see what we can cook up.”

Quan supplied rice, eggs, fresh leeks, and one lonely onion. We supplied our cartons of twice-cooked beef. It wasn't easy, cooking for three (plus one hungry griffin) in that makeshift kitchen, but one burner, three pots, and two skillets later, we had a heaping bowl of what the snobs would call an unclassifiable meal.

As we cooked and ate, Quan told us funny stories about the university, his cousins (he had a hundred, at least), and Phoenix City itself. He never mentioned Lian again, nor did he talk about the emperor or his court. I expected Yún to ask more questions, but she didn't. She laughed at Quan's stupid jokes and convinced Yāo-guài to accept tidbits from our host's fingers. Only when Quan happened to glance away did I catch the calculating look in her eyes, and I knew she had not forgotten her own warning.

Once the meal was over, Quan nodded toward the stacks of pillows and blankets. “My bedroom is yours,” he told Yún over her protests. “I remade the bed with clean linens. Kai and I will be comfortable enough out here. The floor isn't as hard as it looks.”

Yún glanced at me. I rolled my eyes. Reluctantly, she withdrew with our griffin. Quan set to work, laying out the cushions and blankets. I scowled at him.
Are we supposed to like you now?

He glanced up and smiled pleasantly. “Doesn't that hurt your face?”

That only made me scowl harder. “Why are you being so nice to us?” I demanded. “We don't have any money, and we aren't powerful nobles back in Lóng City. Anyway, what were you doing with those snobs from the university?”

“My father taught me to be helpful. It was a rule in our household. Besides, I remember when I first came to Phoenix City, years ago. Someone helped me then. It's my turn now.”

I opened my mouth, shut it. Maybe that was enough to explain his kindness to us. Maybe, I thought, there was such a thing as a good coincidence. Maybe I should just keep watching.

 

 

 

IN SPITE OF everything, I slept like a twice-dead griffin. Once, close to dawn, I drifted up from muffled dreams to find Yāo-guài nestled under my chin, his feathers tickling my nose. His breath was warm upon my wrist, and I could feel a steady heartbeat against my chest. Dead or revived? But sleep rolled over me once more, and I sank back into never-dreams.

Later, much later, I woke again to the murmuring of voices. Bright light slanted through the window shutters, and from far away came the familiar noises of early morning street traffic.
Not yet,
I mumbled.

A heavy weight thudded on my back. The griffin gave a bone-shaking screech and pecked at the back of my head.

“Time for breakfast, Kai,” Yún called out.

Bleary-eyed, I sat up.

Yún and Quan were both disgustingly wide awake. Yún was making tea, while Quan searched through the narrow closet that served as his pantry, muttering. “Rice, smoked fish, I thought I remembered buying more groceries last week. Ah, Kai, you're awake. If you'd like a bath, you should hurry before the hot water runs out. The tub is just down the hall.”

Yún tossed a towel at me. “Take Yāo-guài with you He's stinky from yesterday. I think he's molting, too. Here's a comb.”

“What about soap?”

“I left some by the bathtub.”

I eyed the griffin. She was right. Yāo-guài looked pretty shabby. No palace guard would let us inside with him the way he looked. Swallowing my grumbles, I captured him and stalked down the hall.

The bathroom was more like an extra-large closet, completely filled with a gigantic iron tub. A small sign listed the invocations to use for turning the water on and off, and adjusting the temperature.
More magic,
I thought uneasily, and of a kind I never expected to find outside a royal palace. You couldn't use up magic flux, according to my mother, but you could wreck the currents by sucking away too much at one time.

Pretty soon I was too busy wrestling with a very uncooperative griffin to worry about magic or its misuse. By the time we finished with our baths and got back to the room, Yún and Quan had laid out breakfast. There were bowls of rice and curry, and a stack of yeasty cakes. Quan must have nipped out to an early market, I thought, as I gobbled down a handful.

Quan watched as Yún fed bits of rice and beef to Yāo-guài. “You say he was dead?”

“Dead and stuffed,” I said. “My mother bought him from a wandering junk man.”

“Interesting,” Quan murmured. “There are some odd qualities about the magic, almost as if someone had cast several spells at once. Would he let me examine him?”

“Try it,” I said.

Quan and I exchanged pleasant glances. His eyebrows lifted, clearly suspicious, but he held out two fingers to Yāo-guài.

The griffin gently nibbled at the offered fingertips. Its eyes gleamed and it snapped.

Quan jerked his hand back and sucked on his fingers. He studied the griffin with increased respect. “I see where you got the name,” he said. “Little monster.”

Yún chuckled. “It's the fish oil on your fingers, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.” She gathered Yāo-guài into her arms. “Now, what about Lian? We need to talk to her right away. Kai has a talk-phone, but we've had trouble using Lian's number.”

“And I bet the wizards here spike the lines,” I added.

“They do,” Quan said. “Let me think.”

He rubbed his bitten finger absentmindedly, as though he were running through a dozen or more possibilities.
Like a doctor making his diagnosis,
I thought.
Or a spy figuring through which plans would work and what to do if they didn't.

No, not a spy. A nobleman used to courts and intrigue.

“We could send a message,” he said at last. “By hand is best.”

“A courier?” Yún asked.

“No. I have some friends I trust.”

He brought out a writing kit and paper. For a moment, he frowned at the paper, then brushed a note swiftly and sloppily. The message, which he showed to us both, told Lian that a friend in Lóng City had sent her a gift she had long desired in her heart. If she wished to accept the package, she should arrange for the messengers to be admitted to the palace. I also noticed he didn't sign the message.

The note went to a child in the courtyard below. Thereafter, Quan told us, it would make its way across the city to a certain trusted runner inside the palace.

“What if you can't trust this runner?” I asked.

“I can. She won't say anything. I know her.”

Yún's eyebrows lifted. “Another cousin?”

“I have several,” Quan said mildly.

His answer did nothing to ease the anxious twinges in my stomach, but I couldn't argue without giving away our news for Lian. And no matter how friendly he was, I couldn't quite trust him. Once we reached Lian, we didn't have to.

Two hours later, the reply came back:
Bring me the package at once, please. I will make certain the gates open to you. Lian.

The trip took an hour by tram, in between stops and transfers and blockages. Quan had politely insisted on coming, even though Yún insisted back—not quite so politely—that it wasn't necessary. Most of the time, I pretended to doze in my seat, but I was watching Quan from half-closed eyes. Something had changed. He wasn't the stiff, cautious young man we'd first met. He looked nervous, and that made me nervous, too.

The tram jerked to a halt in the middle of a crowded square. At the north end, a high wall stretched the entire width of the plaza. Behind it came a series of huge buildings, fat towers, and skinny towers, all of them capped with gold-plated roofs shaped like fancy pastries. From everywhere at once came the strong, taut sense of magic. Those were no ordinary protection spells. Those would pluck any thought of danger from my mind and crisp my body to ash before I could even clear my throat to work a spell or plan a misdeed.

The palace.

Quan tapped my arm, recalling me. “This way.”

He took us along the wall and around the corner to a smaller gate flanked by dozens of guards. All of them were dressed in sober gray. All had the imperial insignia of a blazing phoenix embroidered over their chests, and the usual assortment of stun pistols and daggers. Several, those with gems above the insignia or embedded in their ears, carried long curved sabers.

Quan approached the senior guard and bowed. A flash of electronics from the guard's eyes told me our images were being recorded. Nervously, I shifted on my feet until Yún hissed at me to keep still. Quan was talking to the guard, but his voice was too low for me to make out the words. Then I heard the words “gift” and “package.”

The guard beckoned us to approach. “Show me this gift,” he said.

“It's a magical beast,” Quan said smoothly. “Apprentice Yún?”

Yún took the griffin from inside her shirt and let the guard examine him. Yāo-guài hissed and ruffled his feathers, but allowed the guard to look him over, only snapping once when the man lifted his tail.

“Very well,” the guard said, returning the griffin to Yún's arms. He flicked open the talk-phone on his wrist and spoke some nonsense words. Coded instructions, I guessed, because a runner appeared almost right away.

First, we had to stop inside a small stuffy room, where more guards recorded our faces and fingerprints. After that, the runner took us through a small set of doors into a very plain corridor—a service passageway, from the looks. Gray stone walls. Gray stone floors. The air felt warm and close, as if we were a hundred
li
underground. A series of lamps overhead slowly rotated on their stems, following us as we passed by.

The corridor ended in an empty room with low ceilings and a railing around its three walls. The minute we stepped inside, a door slid shut behind us. None opened in front.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Magic lift,” Quan said.

“But we're—”

The runner pressed a series of buttons on a small inset panel. Abruptly my stomach dropped to my toes. I lurched sideways, just in time for Yún to lurch into me. Quan and the runner had both braced themselves against the wall.

One sudden stop. Another lurch toward the side. My ears were buzzing from all the magic, my insides were crawling up through my throat, and all I wanted to do was pound on the door and scream for someone to let me out of this hideous trap.

With another whooping change of direction, the magic faded slowly away, while it felt as though the room was sliding slowly across a level surface. I swallowed my stomach back to its proper place. Yún didn't look any less unnerved than I did. The wretched griffin, however, was chirping in excitement.

The same doors slid open to reveal another corridor.

“Did we actually go anywhere?” I croaked.

“Quite a distance,” Quan said. “Up five floors and across half the palace.”

To my relief, he wasn't laughing at either of us. The runner had that blank servant's expression that said he'd tell the story later to his friends. Probably with lots of exaggeration and jokes about the poor mountain peasants from up north.

“This way,” Quan said.

“You say that a lot,” I growled.

Yún smiled queasily, as though she hadn't recovered yet. “Slowly, please.”

We followed the runner past several large courtyards filled with blossoming trees, along a sunlit gallery, through more halls and chambers. Finally, we stopped before a small set of doors, decorated with tiny enameled panels depicting folk tales of the mountain kingdoms.

The runner touched a wall panel of silver webbing. Soft chimes sounded from within. Very quickly, a woman in the emperor's livery opened the door. “The princess expects you,” she said, gesturing for us to enter.

We came into an airy, six-sided entryway. I only had time to take in the silk hangings; the miniature fountain carved from a block of jade, with more jade figures set all about its rim; and a scent that reminded me of mountains and home, before a voice called out. “Kai! Yún!”