'Hold out your left, then. Palm up.' She watched him. Those demon-blue eyes were unnerving, if you stopped to think about their watery pallor. But that did not matter. She was part of the Hundred now, and if he did not teach her properly the others would find her and corrupt her, and he would be the last one left.
He placed the stone in her palm.
Light flared, so bright he shut his eyes.
When he opened them, she was still sitting there, hand clenched in a fist. The fire crackled as if nothing had happened.
'Ouch.' With beads of sweat on her upper lip, she cautiously opened her hand. Light pierced the darkness, and she giggled unexpectedly, sounding like a girl.
Of course, she was just a girl.
'Do you know in what year you are born?' he asked her, not sure if demons counted the years as humans did.
'I'm a Hawk!' She grinned, fisting her hand and opening it to see no light, and then fisting and opening to bring light.
'There is no Year of the Hawk.'
'Of course there is! The hawk flies after the deer and before the ox.'
'Ah! A Crane, then.' With the turn of the year, she had made nineteen years.
'What is a crane?'
'The crane is a bird. She is orderly, cautious, honest, and kind-hearted. Yet once Cranes have developed an opinion of somebody, it is difficult for them to change it. What is your name, lass, so I may call you something?'
'Kirya,' she said, still playing with the opening and closing of her hand, the word tossed carelessly.
'Kirya, eh?' It was a workable name; so many foreign names were simply impossible. 'Dedicated to the Fire Mother at birth.'
'Not fire!' Fragile lines of confidence deepened as she frowned disapproval. 'Fire is sacred to the gods. It is not for us to claim we are part of the gods.'
'How can we be separated from the land, and the land from the gods?' He had lost her. 'Maybe so, yet in our country the name Kirya will be understood as partaking of fire.'
'Why?'
'Because it's a Fire-born name. If you don't like it — eh, had you a pet name your family called you?'
'Kiri.'
'That's a man's name. Water-born. Yet what of this? Water-born, you would be Kirit. How do you like that?'
'Kirit.' She rolled it on her tongue as she might test the flavor of spiced barsh.
'A Water-born Crane, orderly in its nature but made adaptable by its heart of Water. Born in the Year of the Red Crane, which adds energy and intensity to your nature, and also — well, let's leave that for another time. The Red Crane is known to be passionate in its opinions, and ruthless in its quest for justice if an injustice had been done.'
The wind soughed and the fire slumbered, popping once, ash settling. The clouds were shredding to bits on the peaks, and in the east the stars began to fade into a gloom presaging day.
Blinking, she said, 'Why do you talk so much?'
He laughed. 'Because I am a Water-born Blue Rat, dedicated to Ilu, the Herald. Also, there is so much to say. Here-, now, let me tell you the Tale of the Guardians again. That is the best place to start.'
But she rose as the twilight before dawn, mist-silver cloak flowing around her. She paced along the rim of the height, below which the slope was so slick with rubble that a single step would send you plunging. With her head turned eastward, she scanned lands broken by furrows and gullies and the occasional tabletop plateau, that sloped to the mantle of darkness marking the distant sea. Returning, she saddled Seeing. When he realized she was loading all her gear into the saddlebags and leaving his particular things behind, he scrambled to pack.
'Kirit. Where are you going?'
The girl who had ridden into demon land to redeem her brother was not about to let one useless man's blithering objections rein her in.
'I want justice.'
Of course he was such a cursed fool just as the others had always teased him, a city boy born to luxury who hadn't the wits or skills to make do outside of the salons where expensive jaryas gathered to declaim their poetry and scions of rich families gossiped and intrigued and made behind-the-curtain deals. Not that he had done any dealing, famous as he had been, in those days long ago and in his limited circle, for being too proud to gamble; that had been their way of saying they thought him too naive to understand what was actually going on.
He had missed some important gesture or shading of her mood. Oblivious as the moon in love, thinking he had awakened her and finally done something right all the way through, he had let it tromp right past him. He thought he had actually fulfilled the pact he had made with Ashaya, who had worn the cloak of Mist and walked into the shadows because of the persuasion of the others but who had the strength in the end to turn her back on corruption, when in
truth he was the least of them, really, too stubborn to fall into the shadows but not strong enough to fight. Mostly he was able to walk through the world cheerfully enough; it's just that sometimes the facade was stripped away by an unexpected setback.
Where would Kirit go?
Was it the view she had seen when she'd walked along the height that had jolted her into action? Was it the sea, or the dawn, or the sky? Or night's shadowed sky calling to her?
Far in the distance, if you had quite good vision, could be seen the flare of human-made fires.
I want justice.
Too late, he knew where she had gone.
In a short span, an exceptional degree of construction had flowered on a pair of neighboring hills situated to overlook a bay where the Qin were building a settlement. When the wind shifted to blow in from the sea, the stink of bubbling oil tainted the air, but it rarely lasted long. Eagles glided above. Young men drilled in military order at dawn and dusk, their shouts carrying in the dry air. Between drill, these hirelings and debt slaves shaped bricks and dug ditches and heaped dirt into what would, when completed, be an impressive stretch of berm encircling both hills and the narrow valley down which a shallow five-seasons river ran. Also, laborers cut a well. At night, the workers slept in tents.
A cadre of men and seven women trained as reeves; not that he knew the drills and technique, but it was obvious who had an eagle at hand and who did not. Shallow-drafted cargo boats beached on the shore within the shelter of the bay. Laborers hauled logs from the boats to build crude lofts for the eagles: at least forty raptors were gathered in the greater span of this territory, a phenomenal number to be seen outside the reeve halls. Some were willing to share close quarters while others kept their distance in the Spires.
As for the fifty or so Qin, they ranged wide as they scouted the lay of the land until, he supposed, they knew it as well as a farmer knows his fields. They kept watch over lads who shepherded flocks of sheep and goats, and several of their number stayed with the herd of horses grazing the slopes. They supervised a contingent of debt slaves who were digging an underground irrigation channel farther
inland. They hunted antelope and black deer through the tableland, not unlike the eagles. They explored the long-abandoned hilltop ruin in pairs, harvesting from sinks of naya near the ruins.
Every day they drilled the hirelings in weapons and formation. Those who could ride they brought hunting with them, although none could ride as well as the Qin. g*
Rats are known to be impatient, quick to become restless, eager for a change. But he had to think like a patient Crane. She was but one small pale young person. And yet she was born and raised on the grass, as the Qin were: she was a hunter. As animals return time and again to a watering hole, so did the Qin keep going back to the ruins.
He approached the ruins on foot just before dawn. Long-abandoned buildings leave a footprint: buried and broken walls; sunken lanes where folk once walked; scatters of potsherds and broken masonry. He almost stumbled into a well, half filled in with debris. At intervals, he heard hissing, and although he watched for snakes he saw only birds, rodents, and the ubiquitous thumb-sized flying roaches. He passed between the collapsed remnants of an old
