Fox and Phoenix (18 page)

Lian ran toward us. She hugged Yún first, me next. “I'm so glad to see you,” she said fervently. “I've missed faces from home. I missed yours.” She hugged me again, so fiercely it left me breathless. My throat contracted as I realized we would be bringing her no good news from that home she missed so much.

A musky scent tickled my nose. A fox-shaped shadow glided past us. Jun, Lian's fox-spirit, circled us once and paused, her nose pointed toward the doorway behind us. Her muzzle wrinkled into a snarl.

Abruptly Lian drew back. Her gaze traveled past us to Quan. All the joy vanished from her face. “You,” she said. She drew up stiff and straight, once more the cold, remote princess I remembered from the first time we met.

Quan flinched. “Your Highness.”

“You did not write that note,” Lian said. “I know your handwriting. Or were you lying with your brush? The way you lied to me before, with words and deeds.”

“Lian, I wasn't lying. I—”

Jun cut him off with a growl.

“Go,” Lian said coldly. “Thank you for bringing my friends, but go.”

Quan's face flushed. He swept into a deep bow, his manner as formal as Lian's. Without another word, he backed out of the entry hall. Jun flickered out of sight, back to the unseen world of the spirit companions.

Lian waited, her hands pressed together in front of her chest, until the outer doors closed. She released a long breath and turned to us, her expression still remote. “I apologize for such rudeness,” she said. “It was . . . he was . . .” She dismissed whatever she was about to say with a swift sweeping gesture. “Never mind him. Tell me why you've come to Phoenix City. I'm quite, quite happy to see you, but it's so strange.”

Yún glanced at me. I opened my mouth, but my voice died inside my throat. After a long moment of silence, Lian stared from Yún to me, then back. “The message said you had news,” she whispered. “What is it, Kai?”

There was no way except the straight one.

“Your father is ill,” I said. “They believe he is dying.”

L
IAN STARED AT ME. “MY FATHER? DYING?”

A woman popped into sight from behind a painted screen—another servant dressed in the emperor's livery. She bowed quickly and vanished through a doorway. I heard the susurrus of voices in another room, the
hiss
of slippers over bare tile, as those other servants withdrew to some farther set of rooms. The gossiping had started already.

Lian's expression seemed to close in on itself, as if she was thinking the same thing. “Please,” she said, “come with me. We must talk more.”

She swept through the arched doorway, her robes gleaming like a waterfall of blue and silver. Yún and I glanced at each other, then hurried after her.

Lian took us without pause through a series of exquisite rooms. Watercolors hung from the walls. Fantastical creatures built from wire and priceless gems curled around the lamps overhead. And everywhere, just where you might want to sit, were benches covered in brilliant silks of jade and indigo. It was like walking through a fairy-tale treasure house.

I'd hate it here,
I thought.
Nowhere to kick off your sandals and get comfortable.

Not exactly nowhere. Lian brought us to a small room, off what looked like her bedchamber. Here were several enormous stuffed chairs, the kind where you could curl up and take a nap. Or sit and read. Or just talk with friends. Oh, and there were books—shelves and shelves stuffed with them. A wide desk occupied one corner, with more books and a few papers scattered over its polished surface. I saw a brush and inkwell, a sheet of paper half-filled with writing. She must have been at work when we arrived, I thought.

Lian paced back and forth between the window and the desk. She swung around, her face no longer blank, but alive with a fierce determination. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

Yún and I glanced at each other. Yún nodded.
You first.

Right. The ghost dragon king had appointed me the messenger. With a few stops and starts, I gave Lian the story from the beginning, from the trade negotiations, to her father's sudden collapse at a banquet, to the rumors of plots and machinations at court. Lian nodded a few times—her father must have told her about the negotiations months before—and frowned when I mentioned the rumors. When I told her how the court wizards and physicians were unable to cure the king, her lips thinned into a sharp line.

“Why did no one send word?” she demanded.

“They claimed they did,” Yún said. “They said you never replied.”

“I received no message. Go on.”

I finished up with my mother's disappearance and the ghost dragon king's commands, then Yún took over. She told Lian about our arrival in Phoenix City and how we met Quan. The moment she mentioned his name, Lian's eyes narrowed. “He is an opportunist,” she said, her voice going low and dangerous. “He used your innocence to pretend you needed him.”

“He was not entirely wrong,” Yún said slowly. “We've encountered some odd . . . coincidences.”

She named them: the bandits who weren't really bandits; the thief in Golden Snowcloud; the strange magical disturbance in Silver Hawk City, on the edge of the Phoenix Empire. “Chen and Qi went off to investigate, and they haven't come back yet. That's strange, too.”

“Coincidences,” Lian began.

“Yes, but there have been too many of them,” Yún countered. “Magical and mundane. Kai didn't say before, but he tried a dozen times or more to call you with his talk-phone. He couldn't. The network said your number no longer existed.”

“And don't forget about the magic flux,” I said. “Snow Thunder City had none at all. A boy told us it would come back in the spring, but that makes no sense.”

“It might be connected with the crisis in magic flux shares,” Yún said.

Lian waved her hand abruptly. “The magic flux doesn't matter. What matters is that I go back to Lóng City at once.”

She clapped her hands. Dozens of servants in the emperor's livery swarmed into the study. A flurry of complicated commands followed—instructions for collecting belongings, fetching trunks from storage, a summons for scribes and runners, and orders to her own maids to lay out her best and most formal robes—then all the servants streamed off in ten directions.

Lian turned to her desk and pressed a series of buttons. The surface split in two; a very sleek calculor machine rose into the air. She tapped the keys. The vid-screen (made from a strange plastic web) glowed a moment, then its background went dark, except for the image of a man's pale face in the center.

The man bowed. “Your Highness?”

“I request an interview with His Imperial Majesty. An urgent matter.”

“Of course. I will inquire.” He didn't look surprised. These rooms were spiked, then.

The man consulted another screen off to one side. He tapped a few keys. “His Imperial Majesty will receive you in the Emeralds-of-Heaven audience chamber in half an hour. You may have ten minutes of his time. Does that suffice, Your Highness?”

“A more than generous allotment,” Lian said. “Thank you.”

She switched off the calculor and returned the machine to its slot. For a moment, she did nothing but stare into the distance, as though Yún and I were invisible.

(As though she sat alone on Lóng City's throne.)

At last, she gave herself a shake. Her mouth twitched into the barest of smiles. “My presence here is different from most other students'. The emperor specifically invited me to stay at his court. I cannot leave unless I petition him. But there is no need for you to concern yourselves,” she said, as Yún started to rise. “Stay here and rest. I shall have the servants bring you refreshments.”

She clapped again. More servants appeared from nowhere to receive orders. Once she delivered them, Lian herself vanished through a side door, trailed by a dozen maids.

“She's very upset,” Yún whispered.

“Upset, or angry?”

Yún eyed the doorway where Lian had disappeared. “She is like her father,” she said in soft voice. “Very proud. Which means she would hate to hear me say such a thing.”

A collection of servants arrived with trays, bearing tea and pastries stuffed with magic crabmeat. From the next room, we could hear Lian's raised voice. More servants hurried between nearby rooms, fetching piles of clothing, from brilliant emeralds and ruby to sober-hued grays and darkest indigo. Others flitted around with brushes and combs and jewelry boxes. Watching them, I forgot to eat, except when Yāo-guài pecked at my hands.

Sooner than I expected, Lian reemerged from her dressing room. She wore layers of shimmering robes, ivory and emerald green and black, with gems at the sleeves and all along the hemline. More gems sparkled from her hair, which she now wore in a complicated arrangement. “This shall not take very long,” she said.

She swept out the door, leaving a faint cloud of jasmine perfume in her wake.

“Very proud,” I whispered.

“ShÄ«,”
Yún said, hushing me. “She worries about her father.”

Remembering how my mother had grieved for my father, I shut my mouth on any comeback. Yún was right. Lian would not show any tears or anxiety in front of us, never mind the rest of the world.
Āi-ᾱi.
Now I wished I had broken the news more easily, instead of blurting it out, but my words were like kites on broken strings, swooping away from all recall.

Glumly, I stared at the piles of fragrant, no doubt tasty food. “I wish Chen were here.”

“And I wish Qi were here,” Yún said. “I thought they'd catch up with us by now, but—”

“Maybe they're hunting clues and got sidetracked. Chen does that sometimes.”

“Maybe.” But Yún didn't look any more convinced than I felt.

She picked up a chopstick and poked at one of the pastries without any enthusiasm.

I sighed and poured myself a cup of tea (which reminded me uncomfortably of Quan's exquisite smoky tea).

We had all changed forever. Me, Yún, and Lian. All the rest of my gang. Which wasn't my gang anymore. Briefly I wished I could recite a magic spell and transport us all back to a time when all we cared about were running pranks and tricks in the Pots-and-Kettles Bazaar. But my mother was right. I wasn't a child any longer. Even the most complicated magical spell in the world couldn't change that.

“Kai, what's wrong?”

Yún watched me with those large dark eyes.

“Besides the obvious?” I asked, then flipped my hand to one side. “Sorry. I'm just worried about Chen and Qi.”

I poked at a pyramid of steamed dumplings. No good. My appetite had vanished. Restless, I let my feet carry me into another room off the bedchamber. It was a sitting room, decorated with paintings. They were all pictures of Lóng City, I realized. There was the Golden Market on a feast day; there the main temples and the monks parading in crimson robes; there a view from the high walls, with the whole city poured over the mountainside.

(She misses home.)

(Of course, idiot. So do you.)

(Well, I didn't ask to leave. She did.)

(You aren't going to be king of Lóng City. Just a make-believe Prince of the Streets.)

Dismissing my loathsome inner critic, I passed by the rest of the landscapes and cityscapes to a small group of portraits. The center one was a square of painted silk that shimmered with magic. It was a portrait of Lian's father, Wencheng Li, just as I remembered him from last year. Thin gray hair drawn back into a tight queue. Weary eyes, but not so weary that you missed their intelligence. As I watched, I saw those eyes flicker toward me, then above my shoulder, as though he'd noticed something. He smiled. Maybe Lian had come to watch her father sit. Maybe he was smiling at her.

I jerked back.

I plopped onto the nearest bench. From time to time, a servant glided silently through the room on errands. Next door, Yāo-guài warbled in excitement while Yún spoke to the beast in low soothing tones. Everyone had a task or obligation here except me. “I wish I had something to do,” I muttered.

A faint whirring sounded from the floor. I jumped up, startled.

A small square table, the size of a handkerchief, rose from the floor. More gadgets. The table paused. Cautiously, I sat down again. The table continued to rise. As soon as it reached the level of my arm, it stopped again. On top of the table stood an even smaller square box. As I watched, wide-eyed, the box flipped open to display an even smaller vid-screen, the color of creamy new parchment.

Mrrrp,
said the vid-screen.

Magic flux rippled through the air as the vid-screen came to life. A thin keyboard unrolled itself from underneath the box and prodded my arm.

There's too much magic in this palace,
I thought.

The metal box vibrated. Intrigued, I ran my fingers over the keyboard. The vid-screen shimmered. A stream of images flickered past—so quickly they were more like dots of color and light. I tapped a few more keys. The images slowed, then froze with another tap.

I saw a thousand upturned faces, like a sea of brown dots against an emerald green expanse. I saw a great phoenix worked in gold, suspended from the ceiling. I saw a chamber so vast, it made the palace in Lóng City look like a mousetrap. In spite of the tiny vid-screen, I felt as though I had tumbled directly into another world.

The focus changed; the dots changed to courtiers, guards, and commoners, the camera pausing here and there. It was a silent scene. I saw one courtier lean toward another, but their conversation was inaudible to me. Before I could figure out how to change the volume, the camera zoomed away from them and locked on one man's face.