“What rhymes with ‘gasp’?”
“Hmmm?” Long Spring’s legs were slowly going numb underneath the low wooden clerk’s table. He stretched them out with a groan and settled back against the cool stone of the chamber wall.
Doing sums was fine when it all added up to something nice. But this…it shook him to the centre. Seventy-two bellies to feed, four small sealed clay pots of sorghum, a dozen pages of smeared tallies, a worn abacus, and one stiff winter pushing down from the north. This equation added up to a rash of illness amongst the rebels before the healing energy of spring arrived.
Long Spring looked over at Fire Fade where she lay on the floor, covered in a hazy blanket of incense. Strike that last figure; make it seventy-one bellies. A little collar of grief and guilt cinched round his throat. Jade Lord, have mercy.
“Is there a word that rhymes with ‘gasp’, and means death or dying or something like that?” Coriander shuffled the pages of her journal. She had taken to peeling public notices off the walls of the Lower City where they were hung thick and white as underclothes in a washerwoman’s courtyard. (“You can write on the back of them,” she pointed out. The one she was currently using admonished the male citizens of Pearl City to keep their bellies covered up while playing chess in public areas.)
“I’ll be needing my writing brush back – “
“Yes, I’m nearly there.” Her pointed chin stuck out at a thoughtful angle. “Let me see now…rasp, clasp, grasp…”
Long Spring sighed. A motley bunch – all quarrels and songs, artistic collaborations, political schemes, tile games and the slow seething boredom of the idle – that was the rebels.
It could come to an end, this life, this exercise in self-determination. Even if the Jade Lord himself appeared inside the Serpent’s Solarium in a shower of grain, even if he poured out the largess of the gods until every man, woman and child were up to their armpits in barley. It could end.
Because over the years they had survived as rats, something to be scrubbed out of the underbelly of the city, a special headache for the Minister of Sanitation and his minions.
But once they fell under the gaze of the Emperor, once he decided they were something more than a motley bunch of crooks and fools, it would all be over. And he wouldn’t bother sending the City Guard. No, the Emperor would send his army.
An echo from the stone corridor announced the approach of a visitor – and from the lopsided stomp shuffle stomp shuffle Long Spring could guess who.
“Hallo? Anybody here?”
Coriander sprang up and swept the curtain aside to admit Captain Kneecap.
“Long Spring about?”
“He’s figuring our grain rations, I wouldn’t bother him.” Coriander licked a spot of ink off the palm of her hand. “Plus there is a very, very sick person here, so –“
“Ahhhh, how is the little one?”
“I’d give her maybe three hours, or so.”
The old warrior held up a paper bundle, “Truth be told it was her I came to see. Brought something to lift her spirits.” He rustled it meaningfully.
“Well, she’s practically gone, so…speaking of which, would you like to hear a poem I am composing?”
The old veteran ducked into the chamber and made for the corner where Fire Fade lay under her smoky shroud. Stomp shuffle stomp shuffle, his remarkable double joint bent out and back, out and back.
Captain Kneecap was so named because his right leg was minus a key component (which had been neatly sliced off during the Northern Invasions). When pressed, he could wield this extraordinary limb as one would a barley flail – striking his victims from all sorts of unexpected angles.
Now, stooping like a crane in search of minnows, he carefully looked the girl up and down. Fire Fade was stretched out stiff and still, eyes closed and mouth open. On her breath was the faintest whiff of poison.
“Ai-yaaaah, that’s not good, now.” Captain Kneecap turned to Long Spring. “What’s that harebrained sister up to, then?”
“She was to have returned by now.”
“I see.” The Captain looked like he wanted to say something; instead he pressed his lips together, cleared his throat gruffly and turned to Coriander, “Come child, we have a little job to do.”
Long Spring watched them settle on the stone lip of Broken Talon’s chamber, underneath a row of black jade charms chiming softly in the evening breeze. The Captain unwound his bundle and proceeded to assemble a remarkable red-paper bird, stretched tight on a balsam frame.
“Fetch me a stout candle from Long Spring, child. Let’s give Fire Flash a beacon to follow, shall we? Let’s make it something she can see from the road, something that says ‘hurry along now – your sister awaits, your friends await’.”
“You mean Battle Axe, don’t you?” Coriander struck a spark with her flint on a wisp of oil rag; when it went up in flame she held it gingerly over the candle. It hissed and caught.
“Ah, yes.” Captain Kneecap laughed like a stiff piece of leather. “Fire Flash is her birth name, see. When Long Spring first brought the twins to live with us in the Underground City it was the first time we had young ones amongst us, the first time we had any women or girls amongst us and we spoiled them plenty. Well, the bossy one (that’s your Battle Axe, now) she loved nothing more than our foolish war stories, and I believe she picked the name herself. Suppose it was her way of telling us ‘I’m a warrior now, too.’” He stared out into the darkness for a moment. “And she is. Yes, I believe she is.”
Coriander lashed the burning candle fast to the crossbeam. The captain stood, gave the paper bird a gentle toss and the breeze caught it, lifting it easily up into the starry night. Whee, whee, whee the string sang out as it ran through his gnarled hands. He let out a good length and it climbed lightly into the darkness, burning steady as the compass star.
“Doesn’t it catch afire?”
“Oh, plenty.”
“Maybe not the wisest strategy, really-“
“You think they don’t know we’re here, child? A fire kite won’t tell them anything they don’t already know.”
Coriander leaned over and took the string from Captain Kneecap. Pulling gently she made the kite bob and weave like an inquisitive firefly.
“Let’s say I’m writing a poem about someone dying. If I say “surrender her soul to the asp” will people understand that what I actually mean is that the serpent is a symbol of death? Do you think they will get it? Do you get it?”
Resignation was clear in the old veteran’s voice, “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Well, it’s not quite polished, but since you are interested…ahem. Allow me to present my latest composition, ‘There Used to be Two, But Soon There Will be One’.”
Her eyes are dun, her skin is gray,
The fragile Fire Fade is fading away.
Her life has been brief, her impact small,
In fact it’s as if she hasn’t been here at all.
She braved the journey to Sesame Seed’s
To purchase our pancakes, to fill our baked needs.
And that was the last of the good things she done,
Because danger was lurking behind the buns.
His arrow dipped in a deadly brew
The City Guard’s aim was steady and true.
Her sister detached her from the bakery door
But now she’s dying on Broken Talon’s floor.
The rebels won’t aid her, so her sister is stuck
With a vagrant from the north; they’ll try their luck
At stealing a cure using trickery and such
But it isn’t likely to come to much.
Her guardian has called on all the gods’ powers,
But the fragile Fire Fade has only an hour
To breathe her last breath, to gasp her last gasp
And then she will surrender her soul to ….
Star Gazer
Far below, in the Garden of Mistaken Pleasures, someone else was watching the skies. His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the Great Purple Dynasty, Son of Heaven, Lord of Ten Thousand Years sat amongst the calla lilies, searching the heavens for the Imperial Star.
“Ah-hah, there you are,” he muttered. But so dim, so very dim tonight – almost as if veiled in cosmic dust. His heart stirred uneasily.
But what was this, now? Something danced into his vision. A piercing flame, a shining orb, a burning meteor throbbing in the skies above God’s Teeth. The Emperor lowered his celestial glass.
“It’s not a sign,” he said. But his heart whispered otherwise.
