BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue006 Read online

  A gate led out on the back of the mountain, the path the guards watched least in the winter as it led only down a steep, icy trail. “We must stay in the shadows,” she whispered.

  Jia-li nodded fervently, and Kseniya set the girl on her feet. But when they stepped toward the distant gate, it swung inward.

  One of the guards, Kseniya realized, sneaking into the women’s house. Heart pounding, she shoved Jia-li behind her. The guard couldn’t help but see her there, but she hoped he might not notice the child cringing behind her.

  He stopped twenty paces from them. The rising moon’s pale light crossed his face—the wizard’s bodyguard.

  Kseniya didn’t know how he’d guessed they would flee this night, but it was over, her attempt to steal Jia-li away ruined before they even escaped the house. Biting back tears of frustration, Kseniya cursed herself silently. Her aggressive reaction to his touch must have warned the man that she’d been trained to arms, and made him suspicious of her.

  The man came no closer, though, holding his hands wide. It seemed an odd gesture, one perhaps meant to lull her suspicions.

  “Go,” she whispered to Jia-li and pushed the girl toward the courtyard. She heard the girl’s footsteps patter away, too soft for the man to notice. And once a moment had passed, Kseniya fled the platform as well, her heart like lead.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Kseniya sat in the inner hall of the women’s house, where the morning light from the courtyard served best for mending. Bao-yu sat nearby, completing the embroidery she’d begun the day before.

  In the quiet before dawn, Kseniya had returned the silks to the chest and thrown the food out past the gate where the birds could squabble over it. She hoped the wizard might believe she’d merely stood on that platform in the night to look at the stars. The bodyguard might not even have seen the girl behind her. And Jia-li had not known her plan, which should protect the girl should her father question her.

  When the groan of the outer gate alerted Kseniya, she went to greet her niece, but it wasn’t Jia-li in the courtyard. Two of the wizard’s guards stood there.

  “Come,” one ordered.

  Kseniya hadn’t been inside the wizard’s house for years. Large braziers burned on the edges of the room, keeping it over-warm. It reeked of incense, a heavy cloying musk meant to mask the burning smell of the wizard himself. That remembered scent triggered a wave of nausea, and Kseniya paused. Then she lifted her head and walked to the carpet before the dais where the wizard held his court.

  He sat on a heavily-carved chair of dark rosewood—a copy of the emperor’s throne, one of the other servants had once told her. The wizard’s dark hair showed far grayer than when Kseniya had last seen him. His handsome face sagged about his almond-shaped eyes, age and power wearing at his flesh.

  His robes of blue silk were richly embroidered, dragons flying across them stitched in bronze and red and gold. Not the slender twisting dragons Kseniya had seen on the robes of envoys from the Emperor’s court, but the wizard’s own dreadful creatures, fire and smoke billowing from their jaws. They were carved into the beams of the sanctuary, painted on the red walls.

  They looked out of the wizard’s eyes at her.

  The bodyguard stood some distance behind the dais, his somber tunic and trousers making him blend into the shadows. Even so, Kseniya could feel his eyes on her. Her two encounters with him had surely led to this pass.

  One of the guards pressed a hand on her shoulder, and Kseniya sank to her knees.

  “Why did you bring her?” Jia-li asked from somewhere beyond her line of vision. The girl must be several feet behind her, and to the left. The bodyguard’s dark eyes flicked in Jia-li’s direction, confirming that.

  “Quiet, girl,” the wizard said. He raised a hand, his long, pointed nails painted with blue lacquer. With one finger, he drew a slashing arc through the air.

  Pain seared like fire along Kseniya’s cheek, a line cutting across one of the old scars. She clenched her jaw to keep from crying out. She remembered that pain all too well.

  Jia-li screamed. She turned to her father and cried, “Stop it! Stop it!”

  The first flare of pain passed, leaving a low burning in Kseniya’s skin like poison. She could sense blood, hot and sticky, flowing down her cheek, but she didn’t dare heal herself. Should the wizard witness it, she feared he might learn the way of healing from her.

  And there would be more to come; she knew that from experience. A drop of blood fell to her chest, bright against the drab ramie of her over-robe.

  “Now, you will heal her,” the wizard said to his daughter.

  “I can’t!” Jia-li protested. “I don’t know how.”

  The wizard stroked the air again, and the dragon’s fire cut through Kseniya’s skin, a trail of red blossoming across her left sleeve. Kseniya bit down on her tongue.

  “Heal her,” he said. “You heal your hands at night, so I know you have the power in you.”

  The girl cast a horrified glance at Kseniya.

  The bodyguard hadn’t precipitated this after all, she realized. “No,” she mouthed at the girl.

  That defiance earned another stripe, this time running from shoulder to shoulder.

  “Heal her,” the wizard ordered, his voice louder.

  It had been the same with Anushka—the constant demands that she demonstrate her ability to heal. The wizard had only kept Kseniya alive to provide a victim for his game. I should have warned the girl before, she thought. I knew this day would come.

  Jia-li drew herself up to her full height, crossed her arms over her chest, and lifted her chin. “She’s only a servant,” she said in a disdainful tone.

  It was a valiant attempt, but the wizard ignored her ploy. He raised his hand, and fire traced across Kseniya’s forehead. Blood seeped into the corner of her eye, and she shook her head, trying to dash it out. One of the guards put his hand atop her head to keep her still.

  It went on until Jia-li lay sobbing at her father’s feet.

  “Heal her,” the wizard insisted.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Kseniya had no recollection of how she got back to the women’s house. She lay on the cold tiles of her tiny room, the smell of her own blood going stale about her. It must be night, she decided, for only a dim sliver of light showed under her door.

  The wizard would do it again, she knew, once she had recovered enough. His talent let him cut flesh, even from a distance, but nothing else. He couldn’t cut her clothes or put out her eyes. His guards, however, could easily do that for him. Little else held much horror for her any longer, but Kseniya feared the day she would lose her eyes.

  And there was no hope of escape now. Weakened so, she could never make it through the frozen mountains alone, much less with a child. She pressed one hand over her mouth to quiet the sound of her sobs.

  Someone leaned over her in the darkened room, and Kseniya jerked away in sudden fright.

  “Hush. I will not harm you.” Light flared about a man’s form as he uncovered one pane of a lantern. The wizard’s bodyguard fetched the pitcher of water and basin from her table and picked up a towel. “I do not think you should lie on your bed yet,” he said. “Can you sit here?”

  The wooden chair by the door seemed too far. “I am too weak to walk,” she whispered.

  “I will help.” He half-carried her to the chair. Her headscarf slid to the floor and her braid came loose. It fell over her shoulder, looking like a stream of blood in the darkness. “I have an unguent to help these heal,” he said. “I must clean them first.”

  She felt too weak to fight him, no matter what he did.

  “These are narrow cuts and should knit well.” He dabbed at her face, cleaning away dried blood. “I confess I suspected how you earned all those scars. I regret that I cannot protest.”

  The thin lines crisscrossing her face represented hours of pain under the wizard’s phantom touch. “He would not heed you in any case. He is not kind.”

  A sho
rt, dry laugh greeted that statement. “No. Kindness does not run in his blood. Do you understand what he wants of her?”

  Kseniya forced herself to focus. “I believe he wishes to learn to heal himself.”

  “But healing is an inborn talent, is it not?” The bodyguard wet the towel again and wrung it out over her basin. “There is a great difference. Save for the dragon’s fire, his own inborn talent, all the arts he practices are learned ones. He cannot learn to heal.”

  Kseniya hissed as he caught the edge of a cut.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She is too young, anyway, is she not?”

  Jia-li would not be able to heal for years, not until she reached her full growth. “How do you know that?”

  “My mother is of the Condara, who know much of your people.”

  Nearly a century before, the wizard had sent his fire-dragons to hunt down the nomadic peoples of the steppes in the name of his emperor. The Condara were one of the few surviving clans. They had lived quietly in the valley south of her own people’s mountains until the day the dragons returned to stamp them out.

  Yet this man’s hair and dress proclaimed him one of the Manchu, the Emperor’s clan. With his dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, he looked like he might be of the Emperor’s own family. “I wouldn’t have thought you one of the Condara,” she finally said.

  “And you should not tell, either. But you have shown you can hold your tongue.” His dark eyes looked inky black in the dimness of the room. “He wants to be certain that healing is an inborn gift, rather than an art.”

  “Why?”

  “For that reason, he bred her. To bear a healer’s gift as well as the dragon’s fire, so that when he places his spirit into her body, he will possess both.”

  Kseniya stared, uncertain if she’d heard him aright. “He will place his spirit in her body?”

  The bodyguard nodded his head and produced from a satchel a small tin, an unguent that smelled strongly of herbs. He patted some against the freshly bleeding cut on her cheek and the pain fled. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. What would become of Jia-li?”

  The bodyguard dabbed more of the unguent on the cut across her forehead. “He lives on by taking over the body of another—to cheat death and hold onto his power. In time, she will become the Emperor’s wizard, only it will not be her living in that body any longer.”

  She had feared his breaking Jia-li’s spirit, but this was far more horrifying. “I cannot let that happen.”

  “You cannot stop him. His magics protect him. None can come near him unless they share his blood.”

  She shook her head, but the motion made her dizzy.

  “You need to rest. We can discuss this later.” He lifted a small bowl from her shelf and poured water into it. Then he pulled a slip of paper out of the satchel, folded to hold herbs, and poured them into the water. “Let this steep for a few minutes, then drink it all. It will help build up your strength.”

  Kseniya felt her eyes drifting closed. The bodyguard shook her shoulder. “Do not fall asleep until you have cleaned all the cuts. Can you do so yourself?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Why are you helping me?”

  But he was gone. Kseniya eased off her blood-stained robes and tended the cuts across her chest and arms. She hoped the man had good intentions, for though he chose to help her, he could have killed her just as easily.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Kseniya woke, stiff and sore in every part. She’d lain down atop her bed without even bothering to don a shift, allowing the cold to ease away the burn of the dragon’s fire. Flecks of blood marked her fingers where she’d touched one of her cuts in the night. All told, she felt fortunate to be breathing still.

  Her first attempt to rise failed, so she lay there and waited until her weakness receded. After a time, she used the chair as a crutch and heaved herself upright.

  Her bloodstained garments were scattered about the floor where she had dropped them. The tin of unguent lay near the door, the overturned bowl next to it.

  Recalling that she hadn’t seen Jia-li since the afternoon before, Kseniya forced herself to dress, taking fresh garments from the chest next to her narrow bed. The stained ones she bundled together to take to Bao-yu. The old woman could get blood out of anything.

  When Kseniya entered the inner hall in the center of the women’s house, Jia-li threw her arms about her waist, sobbing.

  “Hush, dearest,” Kseniya whispered.

  Jia-li drew away and wiped her streaming eyes. “They wouldn’t let me see you.”

  “I expect not, dearest. I was very tired.”

  “I was so afraid.”

  Kseniya knelt on the floor, feeling better for not standing. She set her hands on the girl’s shoulders and gazed into her dark eyes. “You were very brave. It’s harder for you to watch me hurt than it is for me to endure it. I know. Your mother went through this many times.”

  “I don’t want him to hurt you.” Jia-li’s small mouth turned down at the corners.

  Kseniya managed a smile that didn’t pull at the cuts on her face. “I don’t either, but I prefer this to his hurting you. Explain to him that you don’t know how to heal. If he doesn’t believe you, then there is nothing more you can do.”

  Jia-li leaned closer. “He doesn’t know that you can.”

  “He has always suspected.”

  “I wish he was dead.”

  Kseniya stroked the girl’s pale cheek, wondering if that was the truth of the prophecy—that the girl must kill her own father. “Hush. We will survive this.”

  At least, she hoped they would.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The wizard didn’t send for Kseniya that day. Instead he kept Jia-li working at her normal tasks: making fire between her hands and moving small things without touching them. Smaller parts of his talent, Kseniya believed, that would allow Jia-li to control the dragon’s fire. The girl returned to the women’s house with burned palms again.

  “He didn’t hurt you today,” Jia-li said as Kseniya inspected her hands.

  “He tries to make you dread it.” She knew this game well. “He will wait until you don’t expect it.”

  The girl nodded gravely. Kseniya gathered her faded strength to heal the girl’s hands, but Jia-li jerked them away. “No, don’t.”

  “Punishing yourself will not change what he’s done, dearest.”

  Jia-li’s lower lip slid out, a rare mulish expression. “You should heal yourself instead.”

  She had done so where it couldn’t be seen, causing the cuts across her chest and arms to knit. Covered from the wizard’s sight, he wouldn’t know of it unless he had the guards strip her. If he did that, she would have greater worries than explaining healed cuts.

  “Perhaps he will wait longer if he thinks I am unwell,” she suggested.

  Jia-li refused to let Kseniya heal her hands anyway, and Kseniya honored that decision. Instead, she went to her room and retrieved the tin of unguent. “We can rub this into your palms and wrap them so you don’t hurt them in your sleep.”

  Jia-li acquiesced and went to her bed that night with her hands covered in a clean pair of summer stockings.

  Kseniya returned to her room and blew out her candle. She lay awake on her pallet for some time, listening. Her patience was rewarded when she heard a quiet footfall in the hallway outside her door. A second later, the bodyguard slipped inside. He closed the door behind him and opened his lantern.

  Kseniya caught the faint smell of burning about him, picked up from the wizard during the day, no doubt. Jia-li’s skin bore that same scent.

  “What is your name?” she asked as he settled on the floor.

  His dark eyes laughed. “I am not going to tell you that, woman, not if there is a chance it could come to his ears.”

  “You think I would tell?”

  “After yesterday, certainly not. But walls have ears. I am pleased that you seem better.”

  “I’m grateful for your aid,”
she said. “You know your herbs well.”

  He shrugged eloquently. “My mother taught me.”

  Kseniya sat back on her bed. “Why did you steal into the women’s house that night, when I saw you in the courtyard?”

  “To speak to one of the others. I would prefer you not give her away.”

  She gave him a sharper look in the dim light. He was a handsome man, perhaps only a few years older than herself. She should have expected he would, like the other guards, have a girl among the servants. “Of course not,” she said. “Why have you helped me?”

  “It is my place to do so,” he said. “I told you what he wants of her. Most of his arts are nothing to him, but controlling the dragons—that saps his life. Soon he will need another one, so I need your help to get Jia-li safely away.”

  “Away?” She could hardly keep the incredulity from her voice. “That was my intention that night, to take her from the mountain. Only I thought you knew our plan, so I sent her back inside.”

  He laughed shortly. “Ah, I understand now. My apologies, but where did you intend to go?”

  “I meant to follow the stars to the north and west—to take her to her mother’s family.”

  “It is a dangerous time of year to cross the mountains,” he said, shaking his head.

  “But now you say we cannot wait.”

  “No, we cannot. I will take care of him, but I need you to get Jia-li away. There is a village halfway down the eastern slope. I know those there who would hide you until spring. You can cross the mountains safely then, if you will accept their help.”

  After so many years alone, the offer of aid surprised her, but she was not too proud to take it. It gave her hope again.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She kept her secret to herself, not wishing for Jia-li to have something more she must bear. Nor could the girl be forced to tell what she didn’t know.

  Kseniya had just begun to stitch on the tunic left behind two days before when she heard the outer door creak open. A shudder ran down her spine. She hadn’t expected them to come for her so soon. She set the handwork aside and looked up to see two guardsmen enter the inner hall.