Chapter One
THE TAVERN WAS LITTLE more than a waxed canvas tent, tilted towards the south by the wind that rushed headlong down the mountain. The woman who tended the makeshift bar had a thin wispy mustache styled into pointed wings over her lip, and Chih took down her family history while the mammoth scouts argued outside.
“By any chance are you related to the Dong family in Baolin?” asked Chih. “They sent some children west during the famine years, and they have the same story about Lord Kang’s chase that you told me.”
The woman, Dong Trinh, frowned, shook her head, and then shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said. “That’d be my dad’s side of the family, though, and they were mostly eaten up by a walking dog curse.”
“Wait, what’s a—”
Before Chih could ask or Trinh could answer, the tent flap flicked open and the two scouts came back in. The elder, Ha-jun, was tall and lean for a northerner, with permanent scowl lines chiseled into his face. The younger, Si-yu, was shorter, nearly rectangular in build. Her face was as smooth as a beach pebble and her small black eyes were as bright as polished brass mirrors. They both wore the long sheepskin coats, fur boots, and baggy silk-lined leather trousers that were practically a uniform in this part of the world, and the only thing that set them apart from the locals were the coils of braided russet hair sewn to the shoulders of their coats.
“All right,” said the elder scout. “Against my better judgment, and because unlike most southerners you have the wit to be properly dressed, I have decided to allow my niece to take you up the pass.”
“The offer of datura seeds didn’t hurt at all,” said Si-yu cheerfully, and Chih diplomatically handed over the paper packet stuffed with small black seeds. They were as common as hashish in the south, but much rarer above the snowline.
Ha-jun took the seeds from them, sliding them into his coat before nodding to Si-yu.
“All right. There and back by tomorrow, and no messing around at the way station, either, understand? We need to be back on the circuit sooner rather than later, especially if there’s a real storm on the way.”
Si-yu made a face at her uncle’s retreating back before picking up her lance and turning to Chih.
“Well, cleric, are you ready to go?”
At the moment, Chih didn’t look much like a cleric. Their indigo robes were rolled up tightly at the bottom of their single bag. Under their fleece-lined hood, their usually shaved scalp was covered with a bristly inch of dark hair. Singing Hills was far less strict about robes and deprivations than other orders, but Chih would need a barber before they made it home.
“All set. Are we leaving soon?”
“Right now, if you’re ready. We can make the way station by dark with just a little bit of luck.”
Chih followed Si-yu into the dry and scouring cold, shuddering a little in spite of themself. The wind bit into their bones and left them oddly sore and sleepy, and they shrugged a little deeper into their coat.
“Aren’t you meant to have a little recorder bird with you?” asked Si-yu, leading them down the single street of the rickety little town. There were similar towns scattered all along the border, hardscrabble little places that mushroomed when gold was discovered five years ago. The gold vein had played itself out in three years, and now there was something haunted about the whole region.
“Yes, my neixin, Almost Brilliant,” Chih said with a sigh. “She’s sitting a clutch of eggs right now, and this cold would be too much for her anyway.”
Silently, they offered a quick prayer up to Thousand Hands for Almost Brilliant’s comfort and safety. They had sorely missed the neixin’s supernaturally good memory on their current trip, but it was more than that. It felt downright unnatural to be out in the world without Almost Brilliant’s sharp words and good advice.
“Hopefully, when her children are grown, she’ll want to come out with me again. We’ve been together since I first got my marching orders.”
“May the Master of the Sky will it so,” said Si-yu. “I’ve always wanted to meet a neixin.”
They came to a fenced paddock, a rudimentary wood structure that looked as if it did not have the strength to hold back much more than a small flock of disinterested rocks. Beyond narrow rails were—
Chih had seen them from a distance before, and given the northern countries’ long and storied history, there was not much need to document them for Singing Hills, though of course Chih would do so anyway.
The mammoths in the frozen paddock were the lesser breed, smaller, slender-legged and with shorter trunks than their royal cousins. This lot mostly belonged to a breeder who was bringing them east to one of the outposts there, and they were largely russet-hued, some with a white foot or a splash of white on the topknot of fur sitting over their brow.
It seemed to Chih that they regarded the fence with a friendly condescension. If she wished to do so, the smallest among them could knock the rails aside. Instead, they chose to display their good manners by refraining and dozing on their feet, occasionally sweeping fodder into their mouths from the sheltered troughs.
It was the royal mammoths, almost half again as big and colored a deep and rusty red, that had beaten back the soldiers of the Anh empire more than fifty years ago, but the lesser mammoths had done the rest, charging through the snowy battlefields with their small ears standing straight out from their heads and bugling furiously.
“Don’t be impressed with those,” Si-yu said scornfully. “Save it for Piluk.”
She whistled twice and a mammoth a touch smaller than the rest officiously pushed her way through the small herd and walked over to where Si-yu waited with open arms. Piluk, Chih saw, was darker than the others, no spot of white on her, and her long fur shaded towards black at the tips.
“This is my baby. She’s from a sister line of the great Ho-shuh,” Si-yu said, and Piluk’s mobile trunk came down heavy and companionable around her shoulders as if in agreement.
“You can tell me exactly what that means on the road,” Chih said with a grin. “She’s a beauty.”
“Tsk, don’t compliment her in front of the others. They’ll get jealous, and then they’ll refuse to do anything until you praise them as well. You can only praise a mammoth when you are alone with her and no one else can hear.”
“I am going to put that into my record, and when I get home, it will be copied twice over into the volumes kept at Singing Hills. You must be very careful about what you say to me, or you may go down in history as a liar,” said Chih in amusement.
“Who’s lying? Come on. I’ll show you how to mount a mammoth, and then you’ll have to paint me in a better light.”
Si-yu scaled Piluk’s side so fast that Chih thought at first she must have simply grabbed great handfuls of Piluk’s long fur to help herself up. When they looked more closely, however, they could see that there were loops of leather hanging down from the saddle close behind Piluk’s neck, one longer and one shorter.
“Hand in the shorter, foot in the longer, that’s right, just like that, and then wait for the push.”
“Wait, the push . . . ?”
Piluk’s foot kicked back, gentle for such a large animal, and Chih yelped as they were suddenly pushed up bodily. They would have planted face-first in Piluk’s dense fur, but Si-yu reached over to grab Chih’s shoulders and to drag them the rest of the way up.