The Silk Map (42 page)

She turned her head. There was but one parrot she'd ever confided in, and this one was much too green to be Hakan.

We will tell you half of everything
, she'd told Hakan and his owner,
if you keep it to yourself for half a week.

Stupid
, she thought, turning away.
Never underestimate the gossip skills of birds
. They could not assume the Karvaks were unaware of them. And while they had taken a few precautions as regards the House of Spiraling Veils, they were not exactly lying low.

Still, no turning back now.

Luck was with them, for Ildus appeared, and there was no sign of Karvaks. More, Ildus called for Snow Pine to dance. “She is the loveliest dancer to ever appear here!” he called out.

Snow Pine proceeded to perform moves that seemed more in line with esoteric breathing exercises than with dancing, for all that she spun upon the stage, clinking her finger cymbals.

Dancers could earn an additional fee by serving the customers, and Mad Katta had long since perched himself at Ildus's table, buying rounds. Gaunt came forward in response to his hail and poured.

Luck broke her way a second time, as a tipsy Ildus said, “You—pale one—you started the same day as that girl from Qiangguo. What do you know about her?”

Gaunt came over and poured him wine, leaning close. “Only rumor, my lord. They say she is a princess sent out to marry the lord of Madzeu, but she abandoned him and her title and struck out west.”

Ildus stared at the dancer.

Gaunt's hands moved, years of practice behind them. She slipped Ildus's keys from his pocket and replaced them with Bone's replicas.

They would not be functional keys; Bone would have needed the originals for that. But they were the correct heft and appearance, and this was Ildus's day of rest. With luck, they would have hours before he discovered the exchange. And luck seemed to be with them today. Even as she turned away from the table, Ildus got out his keys to finger them as he watched the dance.

Seconds passed, and no word of mistrust escaped Ildus's lips. Bone had done his job well.

Now Gaunt moved among the tables, planning their exit—and her luck turned.

Suddenly she was face to face with Liron Flint.

A shocked look on his face, Flint said, “I sensed my sword was hereabouts . . . Gaunt? Is that . . . Snow Pine?”

She heard whispering from the sword. “Flint . . . not now.”

“I'm sorry,” Flint said. “The situation has changed.”

Into the House of Spiraling Veils strode the Karvak princess, Steelfox, a falcon upon her wrist. Beside her was a person whose visage reminded Gaunt of Katta, and who wore silver charms much like the wanderer's; yet the costuming was unfamiliar to her: a heavy gray coat and pants, with a bow and quiver.

“You cannot leave this place,” Steelfox said to Gaunt. “Nor can your friend on the stage. My soldiers are surrounding this building. Flint and Quilldrake work with me now. We will have your pieces of the map.”

Snow Pine heard Steelfox, and she leapt from the stage, drawing gasps and boos from the audience and an angry cry from Mistress Kelebek. Snow Pine ignored them all. She landed upon a table, launched herself from it as she tugged something from her hair. When she landed upon the floor, it was with an iron staff ready to help her vault. The next moment she was face to face with Flint.

“You,” she said. “After we—”

“I am sorry,” he said. “I felt something too. But this is glory.”

Snow Pine bowed. “Have some more glory.”

She swung Monkey's staff, and Gaunt, before quite thinking about it, blocked the swing with Crypttongue.

There was a concussion of force that knocked both of them backward and that made Flint, Steelfox, and the mysterious archer stagger as well. There came a whispering in Gaunt's mind, like that of the captured souls but thinner, dimmer:
I am not of this world, sword, and you shall not claim me.
She felt also a cold anger that was not hers. Gaunt found herself wanting to strike again, and Snow Pine was on her feet, fury in her gaze. They edged closer to each other.

“The sword,” Flint said. “It has bonded with you now. I am sorry.”

Before Gaunt could react to his words, Katta was there, putting a hand upon Gaunt's and Snow Pine's shoulders. “No! No, if you fight now, they win . . .” He looked up and saw the strange person beside Lady Steelfox. “You . . .”

“Yes,” said the archer, and the voice sounded female to Gaunt, though she was not certain. “I know who you must be. He who gave up the chance to be the greatest of shamans.” The archer continued in a language utterly unfamiliar to Gaunt.

“Speak so they can hear,” Katta said, “if you please.”

“You are he who gave himself to alien gods. You are Deadfall.”

“You do not understand the nature of the Undetermined, sister,” said Katta. “And that name belongs to another now. Please demonstrate, my friend.”

A dark shape fell from the ceiling upon Flint, Steelfox, and Katta's countrywoman. “Run!” Katta said to Gaunt and Snow Pine. “Stay together if you can, but remember the rendezvous.”

They ran.

But out in the marketplace, with its hundreds of babbling voices and scores of squawking parrots on pillars, Gaunt saw that Steelfox hadn't lied. More than two dozen Karvak soldiers in full armor stood with drawn swords, the gasbags of two balloons dominating the market square beyond. Gaunt did not understand the orders given, but she knew she was the target. The soldiers advanced cautiously, as though briefed on the powers of her saber. No doubt Flint had told them all he knew. She wished she had that advantage.

There was no sign of Bone. Well, that was as it was.

Snow Pine caught up and stood at her side, their backs to the wall of the House of Spiraling Veils. “Sorry about almost clubbing your head in.”

“I am almost sorry I prevented you from doing the same to Flint,” Gaunt said. “After everything—”

“I'm not talking about him,” Snow Pine said. “You have to get to the meeting point, and Zheng.”

“This is not a mission of war,” Gaunt said. “I'm not abandoning you.”

“You are not abandoning the children,” Snow Pine said. “If you have a chance to reach Xembala, even alone, Gaunt, you must take it. I will worry about me. I am a monkey after all.” She grinned. “I will clear a path.”

“Snow Pine—”

“Save your talk, poet. Just act.”

Snow Pine waited no longer but charged the Karvaks, swinging the iron staff as she did. Men fell like barrels. Gaunt whispered a prayer for her friend and a curse for fate, and ran through the gap. A single warrior was in her way, and at a glance she could imagine his story—young, eager, scared but self-mastered, shocked by such an exotic foe as herself, but ready to make a name for himself in the game of war. The poet in her wanted his story to go on. The thief in her wanted to run the way she came. The mother in her would do what she had to do.

She jabbed with Crypttongue, and the sword spent its fury at the staff of iron upon the young Karvak. He screamed as the sword slipped between the panels of his armor and found his heart. Crypttongue slipped smoothly free of him as Gaunt ran past, and nearly as swiftly the Karvak's spirit entered the last free gem upon the pommel.

Swan Goddess
, Gaunt thought,
what have I become?

My name is Luckfire
, came a youth's voice into her mind.
Where am I? Have I failed? Am I dishonored?

Welcome
, came a chorus of other voices, and Gaunt felt sick at heart. She was grateful that she could push the babble aside, but she never forgot it was there.

Her wig had come loose in the struggle, and it was impeding her sight. She tore it off, wincing, and almost wished she could shroud her gaze again.

The Karvaks were surprised by Gaunt's ferocity, and especially Snow Pine's, but they seemed determined to live up to their ancestors' deeds, and were not giving up. Several warriors had run to intercept Gaunt.

There were too many. She was becoming weary, and the sword's gems were full of spirits and could steal no more. The babbling of the trapped minds filled her head until it was as though she swung and jabbed and parried within a dark room filled with voices, the external world just a blaze of light through a cracked doorway.

Voices. Acting on a mad impulse Gaunt spun Crypttongue and shoved the pommel into a Karvak's face.

Luckfire
, she silently commanded,
I release you!

Light burst in the warrior's face, light and more than light, a red glow that twisted and swirled and revealed a youth's face wrenched with exaltation and fear as the spirit blazed through the living warrior's head and rose toward Father Sky. Dazed and blinking, the Karvak in front of Gaunt staggered backward, letting her advance to one of the great arches bordering the Bazaar of Parrots.

It was not enough. More foes came, blocking her escape. She jumped onto a fruit cart and ignored the invectives of the vendor as she attempted to release another spirit, but she had not learned any other names, and this seemed to be a requirement. “Tell me who you are!” she demanded and was rewarded by an incomprehensible hubbub as all the spirits spoke at once.

“I think you'd know me by now!” came a voice, and the warriors looked up as a crazy thief swung by a rope into the market. His arrival snapped an awning, toppled a fruit cart and sent apples and peaches careening everywhere, left merchants swearing, and broke the Karvaks' line.

Bone came to a stop by tumbling onto the ground, rolling to his feet, and offering her his hand. She jumped to join him.

He nodded to the arch and winked. She pointed toward it with Crypttongue.

As they ran into the District of Doves, Bone said, “Handy thing, that blade.”

“I thought you hated magic swords.”

“Well, I am not the one carrying it.”

Every city had its own architectural language for saying
rough neighborhood
. In Qushkent the sigils of that language included termite-ravaged shacks and tottering towers of cracked brick, fire-charred ruins never rebuilt, and habitations fashioned like nomadic tents, nestled amongst the rest. Other signifiers included knots of young men staring from behind crumbled walls, older men standing nonchalantly streetside with daggers in hand, faces that peered from windows and darted away just as Gaunt noticed them.

Bone took a coin purse from his belt and tossed it to one of the largest and oldest loiterers, one who had several lieutenants close by.

“What are you doing?” Gaunt demanded as they ran down one narrow lane, then another.

“Spreading goodwill!”

“They won't help us, Bone. After all that talk about the horses—”

“I concede! But do not forget who's chasing us! Qushkent and the Karvaks have history!”

As they ran, trying to seek one of the spots chosen by Katta—whom she hoped was safe—she began to suspect Bone was not crazy, not in this one respect. Out the corners of her eyes she caught sight of tents shoved into streets, laundry stretched across alleys, spontaneous gatherings clogging intersections. The Qushkent city guard was noticeably absent in the District of Doves, and there was no one to command the citizens to make way for the troop of armored foreigners. Angry shouts followed flights of scattered birds into the air, but she saw no Karvaks for now.

They reached a low wall, and Bone leapt atop it, froze, teetered, took a deep breath, and held up his hand.

“I had not expected the outskirts of town to be so near,” he managed to say.

Gaunt looked over the wall.

Sheer granite cliff greeted her and an ocean of cloud perhaps a hundred feet below. Cold wind ruffled her hair. “Come down from there,” she said.

“It is exhilarating.”

“Come down.”

He huffed, spun, jumped, bowed.

“I swear, if you fall to your death from this city,” Gaunt said, “I will compose a poem so savagely mocking that all your other exploits will be as dust, and the name ‘Imago Bone' will be a synonym for ‘dolt' for the next thousand years.”

“You would not.”

She folded her arms.

He sighed. “You have my promise not to die in that manner. I may keep it very soon.” He peered over the wall. “Aha, I think that is it.”

Gaunt noticed a man upon a tiled rooftop near at hand, and he noticed her. He commenced whistling and gesturing.

A shout went up, and though she still did not know the language, she recognized the beautiful tones of Karvak. The lovely sound probably said,
Our quarry is this way.

She nudged Bone. “I don't think everyone here hates the Karvaks.”

“Ah, human nature,” he said, leading her down a single-file path alongside the wall. “Let nine hundred and ninety-nine people agree on the value of breathing, and the next will extoll strangulation.”

Gaunt saw one of the Karvak balloons rising from the Bazaar of Parrots. “We'd best hurry.”

“I agree! I am not contrary! Ah, here—” He slipped through an old fissure between two great stones in the wall. It took either confidence or blind faith to do this with the void so close at hand, but Gaunt followed.

She emerged onto a stairway so narrow as to make the paths up Five-Toe Peak look like highways. The wind made mischief with her footing, and carrion birds circled through the white.

“Why was this even built?” she asked.

“I have speculated, and now I am sure.” He sniffed deeply. “Ah! The dank ripeness of flowing sewage.”

Indeed, a trickle of foul water emerged from a tunnel in the side of the mountain, for inevitably Qushkent must drop its waste upon whatever mysteries dwelled below the clouds.

“I already miss the desert,” Gaunt said.

They reached the sewer-tunnel, and it was as rank as Gaunt had imagined, as well as low-ceilinged and uncomfortably warm. At least there was a faint glow from Crypttongue, a radiance of many pale hues emanating from all the gems save the one that had imprisoned Luckfire.