Drakemaster, p.8
Drakemaster, page 8
Wang Lin Yo raised the shard of metal in his hand and lashed out, cracking it across the drakemaster’s face in a spray of blood. Munkjar’s horse danced back from the violence. The overseer reached down to line up the slave for another blow.
At a kick, Tsang launched forward and Yusen shouted, “No.” They pushed past the group of injured men and mounted the slope. “No,” Yusen repeated, low and hard. “He is the khan’s drakemaster, and you do not beat him senseless.”
Wang Lin Yo retreated a little from the horse’s hooves, and Yusen stopped her precisely between the two men.
“He must be held accountable.” The overseer’s face reddened, his glance darting toward the general. “His duty—”
“Is to the khan and to his weapons. Yours is to the khan, and to his slaves. Duty is more than discipline. Discipline is more than beatings, do you understand? The khan’s property and mine have been damaged today by you. It’s enough. It does not happen again.” Tsang stood still as stone beneath him. Discipline. Her strong legs defended his slave. Duty. Protecting what was his. As his father tried to do. Honor.
Munkjar chuckled. “I see your education in my tumaan has taken hold.”
Yusen stared down at the overseer until the man stalked away, barking at the slaves, demanding to know about their injuries.
“When was the last time I measured you?” Munkjar said in that same laconic tone.
“Hand,” Yusen ordered, then, with a sharp glance over his shoulder, “I am taking the khan’s drakemaster for treatment by the shaman, so that he may present the khan with his new weapons as soon as possible.” He aimed his fist down to where the drakemaster hunched on the ground, not opening his palm, not wanting to show his own injury. “Hand,” he repeated.
Shakily, the giant rose, wobbling on his too-long legs, slowly extending his left arm, his right hand pressed to the side of his head, blood streaming down his jaw and dripping to the ground.
Yusen hooked the chain onto the slave’s bracelet, then caught the slave’s wrist and guided his hand to the front of the saddle, holding his fingers to the solid edge, keeping his own small, dark hand on top of the slave’s pale one. At the softest cluck, Tsang walked forward, slow and graceful, leading them away, the smell of smoke fading, the smell of blood still strong.
Several times during the walk, the drakemaster faltered, and Tsang paused, ears switching, until Yusen gave her the nudge or cluck that moved them onward. The slave’s hand beneath his trembled, and he held on tight. Soldiers glanced up as they walked by until they noticed Yusen’s scowl and looked away. Soon enough, the entire tumaan would hear of the explosion—those who had not already connected the sound they heard with the failure of the latest firedrake. He hoped his slave’s injury would not prevent him getting to work on new ones. That, or he would have the overseer stitched into a hide and beaten to a bloody mess: Wang Lin Yo pushed them into this, then made the drakemaster pay for his own haste, but Yusen had allowed it. He had forgotten his own duty, and that knowledge burned behind his eyes. Surely the overseer, the khan’s trusted workman, would not willfully place his crew in the path of an explosion. Yusen had been wrong, and he would be lucky not to be taken to task for his mistake. Perhaps, in the end, it had been a good thing to have Munkjar witness their scene.
This thought made Yusen’s scalp tingle as if he could feel the shadow of the sword, or, worse yet, feel the chill weight of it at the top of his head, feel the balance shift toward the hilt as he finally stood just tall enough to die.
Ahead the peaked tent of a shaman rose up on the outskirts of camp. He had remembered rightly, though this tent was new, its occupant unknown to him. No matter—any shaman should be able to search the slave’s eyes and probe his scalp and see to his health.
Tsang stopped at the slightest shift in his weight, and Yusen leapt lightly down on the wrong side, briefly crowding the drakemaster against the horse’s side. “Stay,” he told the slave. “She will be steady.”
The flap of the shaman’s tent opened and a head poked out—wizened and narrow, so thin it was nearly skeletal. The eyes narrowed, searched him again, flaring, narrowing as if the shaman could not decide if he were intrigued by Yusen, or irritated by him. Yusen knew both responses. “I meditate,” the shaman said in a strange accent. “What do you want?”
“The khan’s drakemaster is injured. He needs treatment.”
The eyes twitched again. “That slave?”
“My slave.” Yusen tried to sort the shaman’s accent into any of the tribes. “He is the khan’s drakemaster. One of the weapons exploded.”
The shaman made a rumble of interest, ducked back inside and rustled about his tent for a moment.
Yusen unhooked the chain, then caught the slave’s wrist in his grip, taking his faltering weight and leading him a little forward, then down to kneel on a deer hide spread before the tent. He glanced around and, finding nothing of use, fetched the waterskin from his saddle and splashed it over the left side of the drakemaster’s face, peeling away his protective hand, gripping him as he flinched from the water. Roughly cleaned, the wound angled from the slave’s eye across his jaw, a short cut and an area of bruising. Yusen ran an appraising finger, pressing lightly along the brow and eye socket down to the jaw. The drakemaster gasped and flinched, trying to pull away, but no bones shifted under the pressure. The pain of the cut and the ache of the spreading bruise would be awful, and it would hurt him to eat, possibly for days, but the blow did less damage than a higher blow might have—the foreigner’s height had spared him that. Maybe they did not need the shaman’s aid after all.
“Nothing broken. Did you lose teeth?” Yusen asked.
The slave started to shake his head, stifled a cry, and mumbled, “No.” His hand moved back up toward his face, hesitated, cradled his jaw.
“You make the khan’s weapons?” The shaman emerged from his tent with a little bundle of oddments, a piece of bone, a leather pouch, some sort of wooden containers, and a pillow clutched under his elbow. This he dropped and sat down on with a groan, tucking his sandaled feet under his rough hide clothing. Sandals?
Yusen squatted alongside his slave, opposite the injury. The drakemaster’s jade-colored eyes shifted to glance at him, the left eye rimmed in red, changing shape as the flesh swelled around it. Please the Eternal Sky it would not swell shut. Satisfied now that his slave was not seriously injured, Yusen faced the shaman as he spread his little array of items.
The shaman’s skeletal thinness—dark skin stretched over obvious bones and feeble muscles—disturbed him. His skin had a peculiar glow about it, as if flecks of gold hid in the creases. Sandals. Not boots. That strange accent, as if he barely spoke Mongolian at all. “Where are you from?” Yusen asked.
“The mountains,” the shaman answered. He leaned forward, studying the drakemaster’s face. “And he—not from here.”
“I captured him on the campaign to Budapest. He made bells for their towers.”
The shaman picked up the broken bone he had carried out and waved it with one hand. “How the khan’s weapons? How you make them?”
The slave barely parted his lips. “Not well enough.” His fingers tightened into fists. “Next time, better.”
The pain of speaking tightened the slave’s well-muscled arms and shoulders and trembled in his hands.
“Do you have herbs for the pain?” Yusen demanded. “He must be able to work on the new weapons.”
The shaman’s tongue darted out, wetting his lips. “Not here.” His hand roved over his things. Where were the bundled herbs, or the incense? He hadn’t even lit a fire. Yusen fingered the hilt of his sword.
“You are good weapons?”
The slave expelled a sharp breath, and Yusen leaned forward. “He will be better than Master Sheng, for the glory of the khan. Who are you?”
“I shaman!” said the shaman, waving the broken bone. “I speak spirits, I know secrets!”
“I know lies.” Yusen’s sword slashed free, the drakemaster scrambling backward from his path. “You are no shaman—who are you?”
In spite of his age, the shaman leapt up, flailing his arms. “Is crazed! Is crazed whelp of a dog!” He danced away from Yusen, shrieking. Clusters of soldiers, returning from patrols or practices hesitated, and a few tramped toward the disturbance.
“Ai, Cartwheel, are you robbing a shaman, now?” called one of the commanders. “Watch that he doesn’t put a curse on you—or on that fine horse of yours.”
Yusen froze, sword in hand, still between the shaman and his property. What if the man were simply a tribal shaman from a different place, where they practiced different rituals? He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t take the chance. Foolish to provoke the man; foolish, too, to allow him any closer to the drakemaster. No worthy kind of shaman forced a man to speak whose jaw had been nearly split moments before. Gritting his teeth, Yusen slid his sword back into the sheath and flicked his fingers in blessing. “I was rash. Forgive me. I think the slave will be fine.”
The shaman pointed his bone sharply at Yusen and chattered in a language he did not recognize. The setting sun caught the hints of gold in his skin—had the man bathed in a stream with golden silt? Was that a key to his magic? Yusen didn’t want to find out. He flicked his fingers again, adding a bow. “Again, forgive me. We took you from meditation. A mistake. We go now.” The shaman’s absurd speech was beginning to affect Yusen as well. He turned his back—a brave gesture? A foolish one?—and helped the drakemaster to his feet, latching his hand back onto the saddle, patting the horse’s neck. “Not far,” he muttered, then mounted up.
The shaman bobbed his head, then again at their audience, and swiftly ducked back into his tent. A skinny arm emerged a moment later to drag in the deerhide and everything on it.
Once they arrived at Yusen’s ger, the drakemaster stumbled to his place and sank down, first to his knees, then lying on his back, eyes closed, breath catching. Yusen stared down at him. It had been a long time, even granted Wang Lin Yo’s severe beatings, since his slave was so badly off that he did not even try to honor his master or perform his duties. Rummaging through his own things, Yusen found a packet of herbs and set that to steeping, then he located a clean swatch of silk to staunch the blood. His rough fingers snagged on the fine threads, and he thought of Bao Xing, the khan’s treasure. He found a length of cotton instead. He dropped this on the slave’s hand—no sense in chaining him tonight—and placed a bowl of the herb brew near his head. “Drink it for the pain.”
The slave did not open his eyes. His fingers gathered in the cloth and brought to his face, pressing. His lips parted, and he breathed, “Master.”
Better. Yusen wrapped his own palm, changed to a clean del, and thought a long moment of his duty. Finally, he rose and left the ger to find Munkjar, his general, and tell him of the false shaman, but when he passed by the place, the tent was gone, and only a bit of trampled grass showed where it had been.
“Scared him off, I guess,” said the commander of the nearby troop. “Imagine you, scaring anyone that much! But then, a child could’ve snapped that man like a dry stick for the fire, maybe even you could’ve done it.”
Yusen asked, “Did he come with your hundred?”
“The shaman? He arrived around the quarter-moon, said a vision brought him to serve the khan.”
“To serve the khan? That’s what he said?”
The fellow shrugged. “Near enough. Something about the order of heaven.”
Yusen prodded a bit of the flattened ground, noticing a few drops of blood. His, or the slave’s? Should he tell Munkjar anyhow? He thought of the shadow of the sword upon his head, and turned away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bao Xing fumbled a hair pick and poked her own finger, a spot of red appearing in the midst of the ink stain already there. She was not used to all of the details it took to make her a lady, and no matter how she tried to organize them, they did not make sense to her. All of the pearls and combs, the paint-pots and tiny brushes scattered a low table, a disordered sky in which she could never seem to identify the proper constellation of tools.
“Come, come!” The fleshy woman’s pouty lips did little to elevate her appeal. “The khan’s wives are waiting.”
“Perhaps they would appreciate an entertainment.” Ming Lun gave a graceful bow of the sort Bao Xing should be able to execute; the thought of it made her queasy. She would fall over and ruin all the work of her hair and face.
The queens’ servant looked doubtful, but gave a sharp wave of her hand, and Ming Lun lead her dancers past in a flutter of silks and whispers.
Bao Xing fixed the pins in her hair as the music in the next tent began. She groped and found her cane, holding on a little too tight to her father’s gift. The cane had been her grandfather’s and several ancestors before him. Its carvings of trees, mountains and stairs made her think of home with piercing sadness, then firm resolve. Home survived because she was here instead of fleeing into the hills. Once the soldiers had taken her, they left the observatory intact, left her father alone in their excitement to deliver her to the khan. She must make the best of it.
Then she slipped her hand under the pouch that held her combs and slid free the strange gift she had found upon waking. The round amulet just about filled her palm. Slightly bent and blackened by age or fire, it consisted of three layers of bronze held together with a pin at the center. The back plate had a loop at the top for the amulet to be hung, and the front of it bore a pattern of dots. Over that, a second layer had a tracery of swooping lines, then a simple, crooked pointer. The plates must once have turned in relation to each other, the middle plate serving to mark something on the plain of dots below, and the long pointer to take readings. What was it and who had sent it? It came wrapped in a scrap of fabric, cotton, well-woven, but not embellished, lightly soiled as if washed many times. How had it even arrived at her bedside in the middle of the night? Bao Xing did not know, but its pattern of dots and arcs looked tantalizingly familiar.
Next door, the music rose to a trill of completion, and Bao Xing slid the amulet away, rising carefully and passing through a vestibule, into the tent proper, beckoned by the woman-servant and flanked by a few others.
The drummer rapped out a complex rhythm and the dancers sighed, their pretty faces drooping. “The Mandate of Heaven? Must we dance it, Lun?” one of them whispered.
Ming Lun flared her eyes at them. “It is the most important dance that we perform, and you must know it flawlessly. Come.” She swept them forward, this time taking the floor along with the girls and leading them through a series of precise stomps and pivots. Bao Xing’s feet throbbed just looking at them. At least the dance was slow enough for regal movement, but she could barely walk up stairs on her Golden Lotus feet, and these girls were dancing.
Bao Xing lifted her eyes to the women who watched them, bored, lips pursed. A few of the women looked on politely, but the others sipped their bowls of tea and toyed with the edges of their Mongolian robes. While the dancers wore flowing layers of silk, the queens and their daughters wore narrow garments of brocade, stiff with gold and red edging. Almost all wore blue in some variation, most with patterns of clouds. Their eyes had drooping corners, their noses looked sharp, their hands—displayed for all to see—were roughened by riding. Furs decked their cushions and draped their shoulders as if they had just come from the hunt, or as if it were winter, not summer at all. They looked barbaric and strange, roughly shaped.
The dance ended and the girls all curtseyed and trotted past Bao Xing back to their own tent.
“You are our husband’s new treasure?” said an older woman who sat on a pile of cushions at the center of the group. Rings of silver shone on every finger, and silver coils marked her throat and ears. Atop all this, she wore a tall, conical hat embellished with pearls.
Bao Xing moved forward, bowed, and settled on her knees before the queens. Three, at least, were queens, the others princesses or ladies, she knew that much. “Thank you for your kind welcome,” she said carefully, the strange language feeling thick and blocky on her tongue.
One of the younger women, her glossy braid trailing down into her lap said, “It’s a good thing he doesn’t take concubines from the Chin, I think, Qutuqui, or a few of our friends should find themselves with lots of time for stitching.”
The older queen smiled too widely, without showing any teeth. “Indeed, Chubei. Although she looks too willowy for use.”
The women laughed, and Bao Xing, struggling to follow their rough speech, tried a smile herself.
“Then give me the training of her,” Chubei offered. “She needs help with language, and she must learn everything of the household if she’s to become a part of it.”
“Beh.” Qutuqui leaned back and waved for more tea. “She’ll still be Chin. A bauble to decorate the hall when the khan entertains ambassadors. He’s already thinking who to give her to.”
Chubei flicked this away and held out her hand to Bao Xing. “Come by me, lady. The khan has said you are to remain with us, to learn from each other. What’s your name?”
“Bao Xing.” She rose and, receiving a nod from the senior queen, went to Chubei’s side.
“Sit, sit. Ceremony comes with time.”
“Please quiet yourself,” Qutuqui said. “There are many more offerings to view.”
Chubei pressed a finger to her lips, but her eyes twinkled. She drew Bao Xing down beside her and whispered, in careful Chinese, “I should like to have a friend among the Chin. You will be my friend?”
“Yes,” Bao Xing answered, though, in truth, she did not know how. She and her father lived in the tower alone after her mother’s death, after imperial commissions ceased to arrive and they had to dismiss their servants. A runner from the nearest village brought them food when her father lit the lantern to signal for it, otherwise, they descended only to walk to the temple on holy days or to light incense at their ancestors’ graves. Bao Xing had never had a friend.
