Fox and Phoenix (29 page)

Quan had let his hand trail the mist. Suddenly, he jerked his hand back. His eyes were wide.

“What's wrong?” I whispered.

“Magic flux,” he whispered back. “Stronger than I've ever encountered.”

I touched my fingertips to the mist, felt a humming through my veins. Yāo-guài wriggled free of my coat and lapped at the magic flux, making happy chuckling noises in his throat. Fascinated, I watched as his claws shone like silver daggers, his feathers brightened to a burnished gold. His stone-black eyes reminded me of an onyx necklace I'd once seen.

Something nipped at my fingers.

I yanked my hand back with a yelp.

A ghost dragon darted between the wagon wheels and slithered up the side of the wagon. For a moment we were face to face as it stared at me with translucent gray eyes.
Hurry,
it whispered, then dived back into the mist to fade away.

My blood hummed louder. I sucked on my fingers, hoping the legends about their poisonous bites were not true. “Danzu?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “What?”

“Ghost dragons. Are those normal?”

No answer, but he urged his team to a faster pace. The horses were willing beasts; they bent into their harness and hauled us up a series of loops. At the next intersection, they veered to the left, bringing us into a wide underground courtyard. There they halted and dropped their heads.

Lamps in glass cages lined the walls. Ahead, a massive iron gate, guarded by two men and a younger woman. All three wore gray uniforms with the royal insignia of a screaming dragon. The two men wore a row of tiny jewels above their patches. The woman's uniform had an extra row that signified a captain.

“I thought you said junior guards,” I whispered to Jing-mei.

“Someone talked,” she whispered back.

Or someone had guessed about the peculiar arrangements made by the stable watch's junior officers. Quickly, I glanced around to find Yāo-guài. The griffin had burrowed underneath the blankets, with only an inch of his tail in sight. I pinched the tip, and it vanished.

Danzu hopped down from the wagon and approached the guards. The captain stepped forward and gestured for him to stop. I bent down to check the knife in my boot. Quan touched my arm and shook his head. Not yet.

The captain didn't give an alarm, but her face was like stone. She leaned forward and started talking to Danzu. Her voice was too soft for me to hear, but I could guess from the way Danzu glanced over his shoulder at Jing-mei. The captain kept talking. Danzu must have said something she didn't like, because the woman scowled and tapped his chest, then pointed at the other two guards.

Danzu trudged back to the wagon. He looked unhappy. “The captain wants a share of our delivery.”

Jing-mei bit her lips. “How much?”

“Ten percent.”

“Ten—” Jing-mei choked. “Anything else?”

“We're supposed to unload everything. Here. She gets to pick. If she likes what we have, she lets us inside and doesn't report us to the king's guards and the Guild Council.”

“But that's—”

“I know—”

“Didn't you tell her—”

“She didn't care—”

“Let her,” Quan said quietly.

Both of them rounded on him. “Are you mad?” Jing-mei said.

“We have no choice,” Quan said. “We must get into the palace tonight. Besides, if we refuse, she'll have us arrested. And if that happens,
and
the wrong people find out, it might be days or weeks before Lian can convince anyone of her identity.”

Or never.

Jing-mei chewed on her fist a moment before she spoke. “Very well. Kai, you and Quan unload the three crates marked with blue stripes. Then bring out the two smallest chests. Danzu, show them which ones I mean.”

We obeyed, hauling out the crates as though we were nothing more than thick-witted grunts. Jing-mei and Danzu stood next to the captain. I noticed the two junior officers remained close to the gates, clearly unhappy, but alert. If the captain refused our bribe, we couldn't jump them before they gave a warning with their talk-phones.

When Quan and I finished unloading the crates and chests, we stood off to either side. Jing-mei imperiously ordered Danzu to give her room. She shooed him away toward the gates, then bent over the smallest of the chests. “Here is the finest jewelry in my collection,” she told the guard. “But I would be honored if you chose this.”

Gold and jewels poured from her hands into the captain's. Magic flux gleamed from the gems and flowed down link by golden link. These were items saturated in protective spells, priceless items that made my breath freeze in amazement.

The captain shrugged. “Not interested.”

She said not interested to the miniature vid-screens. She sneered at the silvery disc talk-phones that Jing-mei demonstrated. This was not going well at all. I glanced at my other companions, trying to figure out what we could do.

Quan yawned and stretched, as though working the kinks from his back. That brought him a couple steps closer to the gates. Danzu stared at Quan, then he, too, stretched and shook out his legs. The difference wasn't much, but it put a bit more space between him and the captain. Less between him and the other guards.

My turn.

I yawned and scratched under my shirt. Turned half away from the guards and slid the knife from my wrist sheath into my hand. When I turned back, the captain had rejected the contents of all three chests and half the first crate.

“Junk!” the captain declared. “Who buys this worthless crap?”

I sauntered to the back of the wagon, lowered the front of my pants, and released a stream of piss onto the stones. Behind me, I heard a muffled choking sound from the closest crate. Lian or Yún. Trying not to think of them, I wiped myself and refastened my trousers. Then I turned back to the wagon and wiped my hands on the blanket covering the other crates.

“Yāo-guài,” I whispered.

The griffin emerged from the straw, his eyes bright and eager, chuckling softly. Without me saying anything, he wriggled underneath my shirt. I fiddled a while longer, then lurched back gracelessly to my old spot, between the wagon and the gate. Quan had inched closer too, but not much. Danzu was opposite us. And Jing-mei was lifting the last item from the last crate for the captain's inspection.

Time for ingenuity,
I thought.

I yelped as loud as I could. All three guards swung around to face me.

Danzu bent down to his boot. In one swift motion, he'd extracted his knife and nailed one guard by the shoulder. Quan downed the second one with a rock to the temple. At the same time, I flung Yāo-guài into the air. The griffin swooped at the captain and snatched the talk-phone from her wrist, then disappeared in a cloud of glittering magic. Before the woman could react, Jing-mei grabbed her around the neck, squeezed tightly, and lowered her to the stones, unconscious. Quan and I took care of the other guards, and soon had them bound and gagged.

“Hurry,” Jing-mei said. “We don't have much time before the patrols return.”

She searched the captain for keys to the gates. Quan and I released Lian and Yún from their crate. Among all of us, we unharnessed the horses and got them inside the palace storerooms. The wagon we left outside to confuse our pursuers. Then we took off at a run for the nearest stairwell to the upper floors.

We met Gan in the hall of Royal Audience Chambers for Intimate Friends and Enemies. A dozen guards followed him, most of them young, but also one or two senior officers. “Your Highness,” Gan said, with a salute. “I brought a squad of loyal men for your protection.”

Lian's eyes shone bright with emotion. “I thank you all. I will remember this.”

From far off came a thundering, as though a hundred feet galloped toward us. Lian pointed toward a side corridor and a wooden door that screamed servants' passage. All but three of Gan's friends took up positions at the foot of the stairs, their weapons ready. Gan and two others followed us up the narrow winding stairs. In the back of my mind, I heard Chen grunting in eagerness, and a faint whistling from Qi. Jun had turned visible, bristling with anger, her fox tail switching back and forth.

We reached the next landing. A crash and shouts echoed from below. Lian never hesitated. She swung the door open and marched into the room beyond, with Quan a step behind and their companion spirits swarming after them. The rest of us spilled into a brightly lit chamber.

It was just like the vision the ghost dragon king showed me—crowds of servants hurrying this way and that, a line of courtiers off to one side, gossiping, and in the middle, the bed where the king lay. Two royal physicians, surrounded by their attendants, gave orders and counter-orders. And there was a third physician, this one dressed in layers of silk robes. His collar was trimmed with silver lynx tails. His sleeves were embroidered with symbols of health and influence.

Quan shoved through the crowd to the bed. He bent over the thin, old man who lay unmoving underneath the linen sheets and pressed his fingertips against the slack throat. The king's face was as pale as new parchment, his wrists limp atop the sheet. He looked dead, I thought, then gulped to think my ill-thoughts might rise to heaven to influence the gods.

Tense and unmoving, Quan listened. “He lives,” he said at last. “Just.”

Lian, at his side, released a cry. “Can you save him?”

“I will do everything possible.”

Our entrance had frozen everyone. Now shouts went up, the attendants scattered to summon the guards. The third physician, the stranger to Lóng City, tried to drag Quan away from the king. “You idiot,” the man bleated. “You will disturb the pattern of my spells. Do you wish to murder the king?”

Lian's fingers closed over the man's arm. “Excuse me. Your patient is my father.
My
beloved father. Make way for the physician
I
choose.”

Quan laid his hands over Wencheng Li's chest and closed his eyes. His lips moved rapidly in recitation of healing spells, a staccato dance of syllables that seemed never to repeat itself. And then I caught the pattern, one so very complicated and delicate, as though I watched the pattern of snowflakes in a blizzard. The air around us drew tight. More and more magic flux flooded the room.

Pêng!
Yāo-guài materialized at the foot of the bed. His gaze fixed upon the king, he crept closer, panting audibly. Quan paused in his recitation. His eyes widened—I wished I could read his thoughts—then he laid a hand over the griffin's folded wings and recited a new series of words...

... and the king drew a long breath and opened his eyes. “Lian,” he whispered.

“I am here.” Lian touched her father's cheek, his forehead. “I was wrong—wrong to leave you, wrong to—I will never do it again.”

“Not wrong. My brave daughter.”

Quan had stepped back to make way for Lian. He was studying the king with narrowed eyes. A troubled, uneasy look—the look of a doctor who dislikes the signs in his patient. Everyone else had frozen again, so I sidled between to courtiers to reach his side. “What's wrong?” I whispered.

“I'm not certain. There's a strange blankness over his heart.”

The ghost dragon's words came back to me. “But you cured him.”

“Not exactly. Not completely. That . . . thing still eats at him. And there are signs of other magic at work. Magic that heals and doesn't—”

He broke off. “
Hēi!
You, there. Stop!”

He swung around and grappled the stranger physician to the floor. A dozen palace minions threw themselves on the pair. More servants and guards surged forward into battle. Animal spirits materialized from everywhere: pig, crane, fox, and phoenix. Other spirits—from the guards and courtiers—flickered in and out of view. Gan and I waded into the mess, both of us throwing punches. Someone grabbed me around the waist and hauled me away. It was Yún.

“Don't make trouble,” she said.

She had a lump over one eye and a bloody nose. My lip split as I grinned at her. Then we turned back to rescue our friends. In a few moments, we'd separated Danzu and Jing-mei from two hulking guards. The stranger physician crawled out from underneath a pile of minions. He was covered in bruises, and someone had ripped the lynx tails from his collar. He looked like he might dart for the nearest exist, but then Nuó appeared and seized his arm in her teeth.

Quan emerged from the chaos. He gripped a chain in one hand. The links were tiny, fashioned out of a whitish-grayish material that made my stomach turn queasy when I tried to look directly at it. Dangling from the bottom was a twisted mass of the same material. Its shape reminded me of a squashed spider, its legs sprawled in all directions. I noticed that Quan held the chain well away from himself and Lian.

“The spider of death,” he said in a thick voice.

Yún turned pale. “Are you . . . never mind. You would know.”

Quan rounded on the stranger. “Where did you acquire this loathsome thing?”

The man's eyes popped wide into moon circles. “I didn't. You can't prove it. You—”

“Shut up.” Quan squeezed his hand over the chain and spoke a word. A loud
crack
echoed through the chamber and my stomach lurched into my throat.

The thing vanished in a puff of acrid smoke.

Lian cried out. We all turned to see Wencheng Li attempting to rise. He fell back almost at once. When Lian dropped to her knees, he laid a hand on her head. Sweat poured from his face, but he was breathing, deep strong breaths, and there was an angry gleam in his eyes. “Begone,” he said to the minions that hovered over him. “I would talk to my daughter. To her alone.”