The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (19 page)

“This is pointless, Father,” said the man with the shard of magic mirror within his skull, the glass reflecting clouds writhing past on all sides, twisting into fabulous shapes which he did not heed.

“How so,” rasped the man whose face was wrapped in bandages.

“Our quarry has clearly gone to ground. We do not know the language of this bizarre place. We cannot but terrify those who might aid us. And the soldiers on those curious walls are becoming more alert each time we pass.”

The bandaged man looked down upon the dragon that bore them. A couple of crossbow bolts protruded from the majestic minerals of the creature’s hide. “They are of little account.”

“But Gaunt and Bone slip further away.”

“No.” The disfigured man raised up his lantern. Motes of fire writhed forth, lashing in every direction. “They are within the bounds of the horizon.”

“I cannot foresee their capture.”

“They are doom-ridden, those two. More so, the child Gaunt bears. The dragon senses it. It creates turbulence in time’s pathways. A fog. But in time we will pierce it.”

“I want to avenge the harm they did you! And . . . I don’t wish to grow old here.”

There was silence amid the clouds. A sunset commenced like burning roses beyond brown-blue mountains, fire-petals scratching away the blue twilight, leaving behind the night. Only the dragon took heed.

“Very well, my son. We will descend to the nearest village, and learn the language.”

“They will not be eager to teach.”

“Then we will find a learned man, a healer. I will unwrap my bandages, for I am sufficiently recovered. My face will stir his compassion. You will then emerge from shadows and gore him in the head. Your shard will extract the knowledge.”

“Thank you, Father. I know you would prefer to wait.”

“Such are the things I do out of love.”

Bone was unused to the role of an honored citizen, albeit one most seen by night. He was unsure how to take tea with the magistrate, or calligraphy lessons with Lightning Bug, or the games of weiqi (something like the eccentric great-uncle of checkers) he played with Tror. He did know he was grateful not to be risking his neck in mansions or tombs while he waited on Gaunt, for the discomfort of pregnancy took an ever greater toll. And he was grateful the shadow of wings did not return.

Still, certain details of his coming to this haven nagged at Bone. He questioned Tror and Lightning Bug as he would have prodded an old scab. He and Gaunt continued to study the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell eagerly (Gaunt still progressing the fastest) and he pressed the citizens of the Empire for information.

Tror, as Eshe had said, was a follower of the Swan Goddess, and in his zealous youth he’d left the foreign settlement at the capital, bearing local costume and a case full of self-published tracts. He’d preached along the river before running afoul of the authorities in Abundant Bamboo. He convinced them his bookmaking skills would make better restitution than his head.

“My business grew, friend Bone. Now I am official printer—a publisher of such works as the province produces, a bookseller, a notary, and a peddler of pamphlets. Once a year I make my original pilgrimage in reverse, carrying my smaller wares down to Riverclaw.”

As he spoke, Tror placed a white stone onto the weiqi board, a move that limited the options of Bone’s black stones. The thief frowned. “Forgive me, but I am impressed such a business can succeed in this Empire, which seems so controlled.”

“Knowledge is honored here, my friend, more so than in our homelands. They value warriors of course, and mystics. But scholars are the elite. Only the nobility rank higher. And so we hangers-on of scholarship can make a living.”

Bone placed a black stone, on pure instinct, far across the board. “You do not miss your former calling? Nothing in you wanted to follow Eshe?”

Tror made a thoughtful smile, fingering a white stone in his reserve. “I still follow the Swan. I believe in honoring her example, and showing love to all thinking beings. I no longer believe, however, she calls me to convert a hundred million people. I think Eshe’s desires are more modest than my own, and her chances of success correspondingly greater. She was always more worldly, that one. It is a survival trait in a priest.” Tror’s next stone was in the vicinity of Bone’s far-flung scout. Bone knew he was losing, but he’d forced Tror to respond. That was something.

Tror laughed; whether at himself or the game, Bone did not know. “Devotion and arrogance are sometimes like palm and knuckle on the same hand,” Tror said. “This I learned from Qiangguo. They understand balance here.”

It happened that Lightning Bug overheard this exchange and alluded to it when she and Bone next spoke over calligraphy, adding with a smile, “Ah, Tror! He is still prideful enough to attempt to summarize us to foreigners. He knows enough to have an opinion about us. But not enough to know doubt. Now, try to make the stroke with your eyes closed, over the span of a single breath.”

Bone raised the brush. “And how would you characterize your people?” He painted.

“You can’t breathe while talking. Your character for ‘harmony’ looks like an earthquake hit it. And I would not characterize my people. There are too many of us. We are happy and despairing, free and imprisoned, passionate and cold. Beyond every garden you will find the forest.”

Bone dipped the brush. “Garden and forest. You used those terms with Walking Stick, the day we arrived.”

She nodded, with a faraway look. “Know this, Imago Bone, that below the surface of the Empire you will find many associations, formal and informal. A few have great strength. I belong to one such, called the Forest. Walking Stick belongs to another, the Garden. His society values connections in high places. Mine has its soul in the countryside. His honors women but keeps them subordinate. Mine celebrates the wildness of the female heart.”

“Are you enemies?” Bone closed his eyes, took one breath, and painted.

“Ah, how Westerners seek to summarize! But if you must, call us opponents, as in a game of weiqi. You have made an excellent character. Alas, your mind has wandered, and you have not painted ‘harmony’ but ‘haste.’”

“And how would you describe Westerners?” Bone asked, nettled.

“I would not presume.” Lightning Bug smiled again. “Except, perhaps, that you are in haste to characterize.”

A harvest moon found Gaunt’s stomach distended and low, wrapped by the scarlet twistings of notional dragons, and she believed the baby might come within days. Certainly the way it kicked at her lungs and liver suggested it was feeling cramped. She lived as much as possible on the house’s upper floors, finding it difficult to descend the long stairs.

Thus there was no possibility of hiding when, after moonrise, the official named Walking Stick reappeared. Bone was out scouting for any newcomer bandits, and Tror was peddling books in a nearby village. Gaunt was practicing calligraphy, and she heard Lightning Bug in the fore-room, arguing with Gaunt’s former rescuer.

Gaunt could follow only snatches of their conversation, rapid as falling hailstones. From Lightning Bug’s side there came an
outrageous request
and
she could not
and
of course I am loyal to the Empire
. From Walking Stick’s side there was
apologize for the necessity
and
ten thousand regrets
and
your loyalty, once-beloved, will not be forgotten.

Gaunt heard him shove past Lightning Bug. She knew something was wrong, and she imagined she should stand, grab her ink box as a weapon, or growl at least.

She was still struggling to rise as he entered.

Walking Stick looked much as before, clutching his fighting staff, wearing the black silk robe embroidered with a multitude of long-limbed white insects and one red firefly. He raised his staff and bowed to Gaunt and to the four directions. Then he advanced.

“State your business,” Gaunt said, in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell.

Walking Stick raised an eyebrow at her good diction. “It is the business of Empire, Persimmon Gaunt. Forgive me. The superior man must at times be harsh. You must be taken from here.” He advanced.

Gaunt did not ask for an explanation. She took up her ink bottle and flung the contents at Walking Stick’s eyes. The official ducked and blinked. Black liquid maimed the insects of his robe. Lightning Bug was shouting something. Gaunt could not easily rise, but she slumped from her chair and swung the little writing table against Walking Stick’s chin. He sprawled backward in a flurry of paper.

There would be no time to escape down the stairs. Bone had sometimes lectured her on her unwillingness to kill. But she did not hesitate to stagger up, grab the chair, and bring it down upon him.

Yet Walking Stick was already rolling out of the way. He deflected the chair with his forearm, caught Gaunt’s wrist, and swung her arm behind her in a way that blinded her with pain.

It was then she saw Lightning Bug, armed with a copy of the provincial census results, in hardback. She swung it as though attempting to convey the figures directly to Walking Stick’s brain. He staggered and released Gaunt.

“Run, you fool,” Lightning Bug said.

Running was not in Gaunt’s vocabulary these days, but she was already partway down the stairs. She panted. She felt like vomiting. Somehow she reached the bottom and moved between and below buildings, bamboo stilts like bloody spears in the red moonlight. Crashes and thuds echoed within the house behind her.

She did not know how long she fled. Every door was closed, as if the inhabitants guessed her doom and wanted no part of it.

Out of the dark, someone hissed “Gaunt!”

It was Bone. Hope filled her veins like blood from her thundering heart. “Here. Where?”

“Up here.” And there he was, upon the roof of one of the two-story houses. “I saw Walking Stick. Something worried me . . .” He dropped a rope. “Climb!”

“I’m too heavy,” she said, feeling that her whole body surrounded that word, fattening the letters.

“Climb!” he repeated. He made his own emphasis, throwing gangly arms around the rope.

She tried, and he hauled. Both did better than she expected. Some desperate reserve of strength kept her scrambling up the rope, while somehow Bone kept it moving.

Indeed, soon Gaunt was startled at the strength Bone displayed.

She was about to gasp her gratitude when she took his hand, struggled over the top . . . and found Bone unconscious beside the rope.

The offered hand belonged to Walking Stick.

“The Garden requires you,” the imperial official said. “It does not require Imago Bone. But the superior man should show compassion. Out of respect I will take him alive to the capital, if you submit.”

“What do you want from me?” Gaunt asked, conscious of the empty air at her back.

“Your belly is a map of the realm.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Crossing and recrossing the land are the Heavenwalls,” Walking Stick said. “They are far more than gestures of defense or control. They channel chi to he who bears the Heavenwall Mandate. This power has chosen the life within you, and left its mark on that life’s bearer. How would you like to be mother to an emperor, Persimmon Gaunt?”

“That is madness.”

“That is power. Its ways often look mad.”

“But,” cut in a woman’s voice, “they’re not. Not
truly
mad. Accept no substitutes!”

And Lightning Bug was there, leaping up from behind Gaunt and tossing a flaming bottle of some high-grade alcohol at Walking Stick’s head. He deflected it with his namesake staff and stumbled backward. Gaunt shifted out of the way.

Lightning Bug pursued, facing Walking Stick in a fighting stance while reaching into a sack. She tossed a scroll over her shoulder. The casual-looking throw landed it right in Gaunt’s hands.

“Look, poet!” Lightning Bug said. “This is your vessel of escape. If I’d been sure of your peril I’d have given it over sooner.”

Expecting a writ of Imperial amnesty or a treasure map or perhaps a piece of Living Calligraphy, Gaunt was nonplussed to unroll a sepia landscape painting of a spindly, cloud-entwined mountain, with a pagoda crouched near the peak.