The Silk Map Read online

  “Trouble controlling your gift-beast?” Jewelwolf said.

  “It is morning and I haven’t been letting him hunt.”

  “He’s always caused problems for you,” Jewelwolf said thoughtfully. “I remember his hatching.”

  “Naturally.”

  Steelfox remembered the calm, grave voice, so much more devastating than any shout. Look, my daughter, look how your falcon has emerged into the light. Let your fears ease. I know now, what I should have realized. You are not a baatar. Not a hero. There is no shame in that, my beloved girl. Take your bird and go now to your mother. Jewelwolf, attend me.

  “So here you are, sister, a baatar . . . talking of human sacrifice.”

  “Say what you will, our shame shall be ended, sister, whatever it takes.” Jewelwolf paused and gazed south. “As it was at Hvam, so shall it be in Anoka, and Yao’an, and all the rest, if we are defied. And perhaps, for one example city, it shall be as Hvam whether we are defied or not. We’ll claim their feeble fortifications and ring them round as we would the prey in a great hunt. All that breathes within shall live only at our sufferance. We’ll let some escape: those with wit to flee and others who have talent. The rest we’ll destroy, and the skulls of men, women, children, and animals will rise as monuments, and the smoke of their former flesh will writhe as a black banner upon the wind. For even the greatest army is weak if it cannot boast fear as its herald.”

  “Does your husband have a taste for such work?”

  “He’s learning. I consider myself a gifted teacher. I look forward to instructing my sons.”

  “The Grand Khan wasn’t pleased with your handling of Hvam.”

  “Though you are my elder sister, it is not your place to criticize me in Father’s name. You were never a baatar. He was right to send you to the taiga.” Jewelwolf’s voice softened. “You will always have an honored place, sister. But times are changing. You belong with your Reindeer Folk, not upon the grasses or the Braid of Spice. There in the shadows of the forests is where your destiny lies. Not in the bright glare of battle.”

  Something cold entered Steelfox’s voice. “I may be no baatar. But I am our father’s daughter. And I give him and our mother the respect you never did. If there’s war, I’ll distinguish myself in it. There is more than one way to prove one’s worth.”

  She said these things, and perhaps Mother Earth and Father Sky heard her, or perhaps she’d already seen the shadows falling on the grass. Either way, the timing could not have been better.

  Guards were shouting, and early risers among the children were pointing, as shapes emerged from behind Mastodon Mountain and climbed the eastern sky. Haytham ibn Zakwan had followed instructions and had positioned himself for a dramatic entrance. In fact, there he was in his white robe, waving theatrically down at the Karvaks beside the drumming Northwing.

  I may be no hero, sister, but I can fly, Steelfox thought, as the shadows of the great balloons, carrying their flying gers, fell upon Lady Jewelwolf’s astonished face. All the way to the Braid of Spice.

  From a distance the city of Yao’an appeared to Gaunt as a squarish crystal covered in dust, some manner of mirror perhaps, shattered into myriad glass rhomboids and painted brown by the winds from the western deserts. Here at the northernmost foothills of the Worldheart Mountains, looking down on their destination, she fell to her knees. A month of hard travel had finally brought them to Yao’an, and this was only the threshold of their true journey.

  Bone staggered up behind her and fell onto his face amid the dry grass. He coughed dust. “Well. We’ve arrived at the Jade Gate. We’ve accomplished that much.”

  “We walked, Imago,” Gaunt murmured. “All we did was walk. We’re good at that by now.”

  “Yao’an,” said Snow Pine as she caught up to them. She sat cross-legged upon the hilltop. “When I was a girl I’d sometimes hear the saying, ‘Beyond Yao’an, you will never taste springtime.’”

  Snow Pine had said the Braid of Spice was not a literal road, for no authority had ever managed to maintain a highway all the way from Qiangguo to the Midnight Sea. But Gaunt did perceive three roads in this place at least. One stretched westward into dry country beyond a broad, willow-lined, muddy river. That river flowed north into a gray-and-tan expanse of desert before vanishing into a haze that blurred both horizon and sky, and a curve of the Red Heavenwall followed the waters north, with a narrow cart-path running between like a child running to keep up with her parents. To the east a broader road meandered beside the Heavenwall, passing into green grassy land dotted with scrub, eventually vanishing into better-watered territory patched with forests.

  The travelers had emerged from similar country weeks ago to enter the wilderness leading to Five-Toe Peak. At that time they hadn’t even come near Yao’an.

  “A city,” Bone mused in a voice he usually reserved for gems or gold. “Wine. Gossip.”

  “Food that isn’t dry as sand,” Snow Pine said, “or tough as sandals.”

  “A bath,” Gaunt conceded.

  Before long they were descending the hill as fast as they dared, billows of dust following them like a pack of thirsty, hungry, filthy dogs. At heart Gaunt was a city girl. She’d never let go her writing gear or at least three books, and crumbled in her pack was much-abused black clothing she considered her “escapade outfit,” something suitable for both rowdy nightlife and the less-combative form of caper. She’d never wear it in a fight (unless a plan went very wrong), but it was worth the extra weight to clutch that much of her past.

  Yet closer in, Yao’an revealed itself a doubtful source of rowdy nightlife. It was an orderly collection of thousands of buildings, laid out in the four-section pattern beloved of Qiangguo. Three high walls formed a U, closed at the top by the even taller rampart of the Heavenwall. The city lay at the spot where the Wall bent northward, so that no force appearing from the north or the west could afford to ignore it. Gaunt caught a glimpse of the two great markets—the Eastern, with its goods gathered from various provinces of the Empire, and the Western, with luxuries carried across the Braid of Spice.

  Her heart hammered, and it was more than the plunge down the hill and onto the dry, cracked land bordering Yao’an. It was more than the thought of a few fleeting comforts.

  Somewhere in this city, someone might know about ironsilk, and the story of Xia.

  The walls loomed higher, and very few buildings rose outside. Most farmland here lay eastward. The few constructions to the west were caravanserais, filled with camels and merchants either newly arrived or soon to depart. Three stone watchtowers lay southward between the city and the foothills. One belched smoke as the travelers neared the Southern Gate.

  Close up the city walls looked to be of brick and rising six yards overhead, topped with crenellations, flags, and soldiers. The guards at the gate seemed bemused.

  “You came from the hills?” said their commander, imposing in steel armor formed of many small and interlocking bits that each resembled the three-pronged character for “mountain.” “You don’t seem like hillfolk, with their bright costumes and tasseled hats, smelling of yak milk. Now you,” he continued, studying Snow Pine, “look like a girl from back east, in the Littoral. And you two, you look like death.”

  “Death’s a country by the western sea,” Bone said, “a pretty place, but never drink the water.” But he said it in his native tongue.

  “What are you babbling?” the guard asked.

  “He says,” said Gaunt, stepping on Bone’s foot, “our caravan was hit by sandstorms and we’re the only survivors. We stayed in the mountains out of sheer terror. That’s where we found our guide.”

  “I got lost in the mountains months ago,” Snow Pine said. “My poor parents were eaten by Bashe-snakes. May we enter the city, burn incense for the dead, and drown our sorrows in wine?”

  “You need to pay to get in,” said the guard. “Maybe a little extra because I don’t trust you.”

  Luckily they’d left civilization w
ith modest money belts, and one virtue of monster-infested wildernesses was that they were cheap. Gaunt plucked a few coins, and they clinked together in the commander’s palm. He frowned and nodded, and led them into a guard shack where all their daggers and Snow Pine’s sword were sealed into their sheaths with wax, a complicated imperial chop impressed into each. Gaunt’s bow was bound with rope, every inch of which held similar calligraphy, and the knots were sealed with wax and pressed with the chops. The arrows were left alone.

  “A weapon with a broken seal,” said the guard commander, leading them back out, “is the mark of a miscreant and will make trouble for you. Seeing as you don’t have travel papers, you’ll want to get to the Western Market, and fast. Someone there might give you lodging. Otherwise the informal fees will stack up. That’s free advice.” He waved them through the gate.

  “Do you need to pay to get out?” Bone asked in the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell, just as they were stepping through the gate.

  “Not if you leave by the Western Gate,” said the guard. He frowned as he realized Bone had understood him the entire time; however, by then they had mingled with a crowd of women in multicolored patchwork dresses and men in long-sleeved robes with circular collars. The guard grunted and returned his gaze to the mountains.

  Gaunt and Bone attracted stares from the people on the wide stone street—nothing hostile, simply surprised attentiveness, as if a mated pair of tropical birds had suddenly descended and begun talking about the weather. Snow Pine, with her rumpled cloak and fierce expression, earned almost as many puzzled looks.

  “Let’s get to the Western Market,” Snow Pine said. “That’s the only place you’ll blend in.”

  It was strange, Gaunt thought as they made their way toward the bell tower at the city’s heart, they’d been dwelling much deeper into Qiangguo than this border city, and yet she hadn’t felt so much appraisal as now. But they’d kept to small towns and rough corners of big ones, places where people were willing to overlook useful foreigners.

  The sun was descending, and despite the stares they quickened their pace. Even Snow Pine wouldn’t want to be caught unsheltered in this unfamiliar city’s night. The noises and colors and scents were overpowering after so much time in the wild. It seemed to Gaunt she heard thousands of shuffling feet. She smelled sweat, dung, meat, spices. She saw crimson banners and roofs, golden doors, black clothing, and wood everywhere. It seemed Yao’an’s people either loved wood or didn’t expect to be staying in one spot forever. Only the frequently encountered walls of the city wards were of stone. These were four yards tall, gated and guarded.

  Bone echoed her thoughts. “I feel as though I’m in a stockyard,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Gaunt, “a giant stockyard, six miles on each side.”

  Snow Pine sounded uneasy. “This city feels more controlled even than the capital,” she said. “Perhaps because it was built in a more warlike time, and it still guards against invasion.”

  “I’m surprised anyone dangerous lives out in that desert,” Gaunt said.

  “Well, beyond the desert, to the north, are the great grasslands. There are nomad tribes, some dangerous, some not.” She ceased speaking as they came to a gate. This too called for an informal fee. Gaunt began thinking she was in the wrong business. They entered a ward devoted to the business of tradesmen and minor merchants. The rogues passed the shops of bakers, butchers, grocers, tailors, and carpenters. There were small gardens and peddlers’ carts. They saw a low-rent alchemist’s office with jars of peculiar substances stacked on shelves beside the street for passersby to marvel at. Bone lingered a moment, looking at flickering fire-gems, such as might be handy for illumination.

  Gaunt took his arm, and Snow Pine said, “Those are unreliable-looking, Bone. Prone to explode.” As Bone shrugged and went on, Snow Pine continued, “So, the fiercest steppe-riders nowadays are the Karvaks. In my parents’ youth they conquered the trading cities to the west, but Qiangguo drove them out again. We know they could return. We’re raised on bloodcurdling stories of their atrocities.”

  “And thus you must trust your protectors,” said Bone, “and grease their pockets liberally.”

  “I don’t love our rulers, Bone,” Snow Pine said, “but I’m smart enough to know there’s more than one source of evil in the world, and that they’re not all equal.”

  As if to underline her argument, the next two gates let them pass without bribes. Twice they crossed gently sloping bridges where canals sloshed beneath. After the first crossing they saw more elaborate buildings—temples to various deities of the Celestial Court, buildings of civic administration, homes of the moderately prosperous. Here and there they saw an odd motif in the architecture. Three rabbits or hares were arrayed in a circle, as if they were running endlessly within the span of a wheel. The ears presented a subtle illusion. Each animal’s ears pushed into the very center of the wheel, one swung backward, one swung forward. Each ear was shared with that of a different hare; the backward swinging one was also the forward swinging ear of the hare behind, while the forward swinging one was also the backward swinging ear of the hare ahead. Thus, while each animal seemed to possess two ears, the tableau of three rabbits portrayed only three ears in total, forming a sort of aural triangle at the picture’s heart.

  “Interesting,” Gaunt said, after they’d noted a handful of these images. “Is there a special meaning to them?”

  “Not that I know of,” Snow Pine said. “I guess I’ve seen this motif once or twice before, but I never thought anything of it. There sure seem to be a lot of them here in Yao’an.”

  They zigzagged their way through the wards, some prosperous, some destitute, some welcoming, some suspicious. The sun became a half-circle sliced by city walls. A rich, heady smell crept into their noses as the shadows welled, that of thousands of cookfires all over Yao’an. Three stomachs groaned their way through two remaining wards until they found a gate to the Western Market. This called for a bribe even larger than the one at the Southern Gate, as though the guards sensed Gaunt and Bone were placing themselves in more danger with every new inch of afternoon shadow.

  “Do you know what I hate most about petty corruption?” Bone said. “That it hardly ever has a central, plunderable vault.”

  “Hush,” Gaunt said.

  As the Westerners grumbled their way into the Market they were blasted by sound and color. Even with people departing the place to beat curfew, it was hard to find space to maneuver. There were some last, frantic trades being conducted at the top of the lungs, over such spices as nutmeg and coriander and saffron, over furs of otter and lynx and snow leopard, and glinting bottles of strange herbs, peacock feathers, and jewelry crafted from turquoise and gold and jade, parchments with rubbings from famous temples along the Braid, and glass marbles embedded with “evil eyes” of every hue.

  There were griffin-hides and carapaces of giant ants. There were slabs with bizarre fossilized creatures within. There was a ship’s wheel of immense size fashioned of black rock, carved along the rim with spidery glyphs. There was a clump of sand contained within a jar sealed with cork and a mysterious rune; the sand whipped and swirled like a live thing.

  This was all bewildering enough to Gaunt, but by now much of the Market had transitioned from business to entertainment. There were stage magicians who were swallowing knives and spitting fire. There were sorcerers who were swallowing fire and spitting knives. There was a troupe of musicians performing with voice, flute, and fiddle from a platform atop a ridiculously large, and astonishingly patient, camel. There was a troupe of acrobats forming human pyramids, and walking on stilts, and juggling glass bottles filled with scorpions. The performers were cheered on by the denizens of the Market and by those elite citizens of Yao’an empowered to walk any ward at any hour. Gaunt had the feeling of a celebration only now commencing.

  She looked around for someone to ask about it and found a grocer of Yao’an who was packing up her family’s cart (she must have had
appropriate papers for the gates.) “Madam,” Gaunt said, or what she hoped was the equivalent, “is it always like this?”

  “Huh?” The middle-aged woman looked a little dazed by a day at the Market. She took a moment to focus on Gaunt, and another moment squinting at Gaunt’s auburn hair. She seemed suspicious. Bone took the opportunity to buy a few watermelons, and commenced handling them like an amateur juggler or a malfunctioning scale. The purchase seemed to ease the grocer’s concerns. “No, respected outlanders,” she said. “Business is down. It picked up today because Washing Day’s tomorrow.”

  “Washing Day? What?” But by then the grocer had returned to her packing and corralling her helpers and children.

  Snow Pine told Gaunt, “I should have remembered. This time of year they wash the images in the temples of the Undetermined.” She pointed to three buildings at different corners of the Market, glinting with gold-plated statues. “They’ll anoint the big images and bathe the little ones.”

  “The Undetermined certainly likes his statues,” Bone said. “I suppose fame’s no flaw if you’re enlightened.”

  “Be respectful, Bone!” said Gaunt. He was normally an easygoing man, content to rob the rich and spend his gains among the poor. (Not give away, of course. Spend.) But he had a hard spot for religion, and as a wayward devotee of the Swan Goddess, at times that made her wince.

  Moreover, they were surely surrounded by thousands of followers of the Undetermined, and she didn’t want to test their serenity.

  Snow Pine said, “Besides, Bone, most of those images aren’t of the One himself. They’re of his colleagues, the Thresholders, beings who compassionately help people toward enlightenment.”

  “I don’t mean to mock,” Bone said. “Everyone deserves a bath. Speaking of which . . .”

  “Yes,” Gaunt said, glad to be in agreement again, “we need to find an inn.”

  “One thought, if you don’t mind,” Snow Pine said. She began rapid, scattered conversations with people nearby that usually brought shrugs, but which sometimes resulted in pointing at various spots around the Market and beyond its Eastern Gate. Gaunt had a reasonable grasp of Qiangguo’s language, but the speed of these exchanges left her far behind.