Battle Magic

travel well,” she told him. “We’ll see each other soon enough. It takes more than the likes of Weishu to come between my boy and me.”

Parahan rode over to wait with Briar as Rosethorn crossed the Snow Serpent Bridge alone. She looked small and lonely as she followed the lesser road away from them.

“I should go with her,” Briar said, gathering up his reins. “Someone will see her by herself like that —”

Parahan grabbed his arm. Slowly, from the edges in, Rosethorn and her horse disappeared from sight. All that remained was an empty road.

14

FORT SAMBACHU, GYONGXE

Evvy soon learned that it was one thing to be the companion of Rosethorn and Briar, the nanshurs from the west, and quite another entirely to be a student nanshur of eastern blood who had been left behind without them. For her first day after her friends’ departure, she had slept, eaten, explored, slept, and eaten some more. Even the cats were happy to laze and stuff themselves. On the second day she wandered among the refugees who were coming in from the villages on the eastern hills and plain. Unlike Briar or Rosethorn, she could do that without inspiring awe or fear. Here near the border, her Yanjingyi face was common enough to cause no extra interest. She admired babies, helped the families to settle in the fort’s empty rooms and sheds, and — when no one was looking — shored up crumbling walls in the rooms by packing the pieces they had lost back into the crevices. On the third day she wandered idly between the buildings, sending gravel and larger stones to fill in cracks.

It was when she looked at the fortress walls that she began to worry. They were not as solid as they ought to be. She started at the gate. There were gaps between the wooden frame and the wall that surrounded it. This close to the mountains, the builders had used stone in the walls instead of the brick preferred by house builders, to Evvy’s great approval. If she was to make repairs, she could do more with stone. She would need to do a great deal to make up for all this neglect and age.

Shaking her head, she climbed up to the battlements for a look around. Things were no better here. There were holes in the plaster on the walkway where running men could easily trip. Brick edging in the crenels had fallen away: Soldiers leaning out for a look below could slip on gravel or crumbling plaster and fall to their deaths. Anxious, she began to usher loose stones into the gaps on the walkway until one of Captain Rana’s mages caught her.

“You are a student!” he shouted. “Students do not practice magic without their teachers!”

“My teachers let me do the magic I’m best at!” Evvy shouted in return. “I don’t need a teacher for filling in gaps!”

The mage marched her straight down to Captain Rana’s office. They had to wait as the captain listened to complaints from refugees ahead of them in line. Finally he gave them his full attention.

The mage stood haughtily straight. “I caught this student practicing magic, unsupervised, without permission, on the wall. She was meddling with the walkway. She could have destroyed everything!”

“I am certain that she did not. I am familiar with her skills. You may go,” the captain said.

“But, sir —”

“Dismissed,” the captain said firmly. The mage stalked off, and the captain sighed. “Evvy, you can’t carry on here as you did with Briar and Rosethorn to back you up.”

“But you knew I didn’t do any harm! And the walls here need shoring up!” cried Evvy. “I can pack stone into the holes so tight it’ll be as if there’s new rock in place!”

“A few holes in plaster do not mean the fort will collapse,” the captain said patiently. “I have seen your work. I was impressed, but I am not prepared to do battle with my mages every time you want to fuss with things. This fort has stood for centuries.”

“It shows.”

Rana held up a hand. “We can use some more of those glowing stones you made on our journey,” he said kindly. “Why don’t you do that? It will help us save torches, and you’ll be useful.” Firmly he added, “That will be all, Evvy. Try to stay out from underfoot.”

Like the mage, she knew she had been dismissed. She stomped back to her room to sulk for the rest of the day. She made several handfuls of her spare pieces of quartz glow, then go dark again, just to be spiteful. Finally, knowing Briar and Rosethorn would both raise their eyebrows at her if they knew she was carrying on, she made them glow again. She put them in a basket and carried them out to the gate, where the sergeant in charge of the watch could be found.

“Captain Rana wants these,” she announced, and left the basket at the astonished man’s feet. Without another word she climbed up to the southern wall. Several of the guards saw her, but they were from Rana’s company and knew her. They nodded and left her alone. For the rest of the night she listened to the mountains sing.

A few of the tones almost made sense, she thought as she listened. One was water trickling over rock. Another was water streaming over it, and another was water roaring over it. That tone was rain falling on stone. She thought one might be snow falling on granite, but she would have to be closer to granite during a snowfall to be sure. There was a click that had to be a mountain goat setting a hoof on limestone, and a long, soft brush that she would bet was a snow leopard’s tail passing over gravel. But what was that metal scrape on granite, the tone that wavered? And the ringing clop like horseshoes in a cave, but not exactly?

A guard sent her to her room finally. Her cats curled around and on her. Monster’s cheeping mew of worry intruded on her thoughts and she petted him to comfort him. Ball settled between her shoulder and ear and purred loudly as if to drown out the mountains’ singing. She couldn’t do it; Evvy could hear them even in her room now. Apricot and Raisin covered her feet, Mystery her belly, and Ria curled inside the curve of her free arm. Asa settled on top of her head. Their combined purrs led her into sleep. She dreamed of the Sun Queen’s husbands. The cats climbed the mountains and laughed at her for not going with them.

Perhaps that was why, after feeding them and letting them out in the fort’s grounds to do their business in the morning, she took a small pack, filled it with dumplings and a water bottle from the fort’s mess kitchen, and strolled out of the rear gate. “Don’t go too far,” the guard cautioned her. “And if you hear a trumpet, come running.”

She nodded and ambled on. The herd boys had already gone out with the villagers’ goats, sheep, and yaks. Everyone felt safe with the southern mountains at their backs and the massive wall of thorny vines blocking Snow Serpent Pass in the east. She’d heard the soldiers say that by the time any Yanjingyi warriors came over the plain, everyone would be inside the fort with the gates closed and barred.

Evvy meant to go only as far as a ridge she could see from the southern walkway. It was home to a waterfall that fed the little river by the fort. She would take her lunch there, listen to the mountains a while, and return.

It was a glorious day. The sun warmed all the stone surfaces around her as she walked. She inhaled the air, scented with granite, limestone, and quartzite. The mountains’ chorus rang out in her ears, louder than the cries of the eagles and the singing of the smaller birds, louder even than the waterfall as she approached it.

The trees at the foot of the waterfall hid a canyon on the other side of the small river. Exploration would have been out of the question had a large pine not lain across the water, forming a perfect bridge. Evvy looked up at the ridge, where she had planned to have lunch, then down at the fort and the plain. There was no sign of any horsemen or trouble. She climbed onto the pine and across the river.

The canyon led her deeper into the stone reaches at the mountain’s foot. It made an echo chamber for the birds and the singing. Evvy felt like she was inside magic. She finally stopped for lunch by the creek that ran along the canyon floor, ravenous after her morning’s explorations. She was ready to swear that the mountain husbands and the Sun Queen herself sang to her as she took a nap.

Then she was yanked out of pleasant dreams. Soldiers in Yanjingyi uniforms grabbed her and bound her