The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (105 page)

Kerris looked up at him, his
cheeks streaked with his tears.

“Thank you,” he whispered and he
smiled.

“It is my honour,” Kirin said
and he realized that, for the first time in months, he meant it.

The Wrong Side of the Wall

Ling,

I must speak first as your
Shogun-General. Kerris is indeed back, along with his wife and kittens. They
have spent time in the company of Ancestors and are now insistent that we, as a
Kingdom, prepare for war. This is the reason for the
Chi’Chen
army
– they wish to present a united front as we approach Khan Baituskhan of
the Lower with terms of alliance. I have promised them my dual division and we
are currently heading toward the foundry of Shen’foxhindi along the wall.

I am also sending with this
parchment his two kittens, mongrels both. Please find a home for them in the
imperial nursery – they are blood of my blood. You may tell people they
belong to Kaidan and his consort the Lightning, and they will be accepted as
royalty.

Now, I speak as Kirin, the man
who loves you and will love you until there is no breath in his body, and if
the monks and priests and seers are right, perhaps beyond even that. Be
careful, Ling. This is a dangerous time. Take nothing for granted. Sleep with a
dagger. Be wiser than ever and do not assume with Chancellor Ho or any of the
Council. We are all at war now.

I will write once we reach
the foundry.

Your Kirin

-
an excerpt from the journal of Kirin Wynegarde-Grey

***

It was still dark when the witch
came back. Setse had grown quiet and sat now under the cedar branches, eyes
dull, the baby in her arms. It was a very quiet baby, he thought, as far as
babies went. Most babies fussed and squealed. This one growled. No—
purred,
the witch had called it. Purring. It was an odd sound. He could not fathom it.

She slipped under the silks and
he watched her as she unbound the black wraps that covered her face and hair.
It could have been for warmth, but he doubted it. She looked like she intended
to blend with the shadows of night and he had long since given up trying to
understand her. She shook her hair out and stretched her long body, forcing him
to avert his eyes. He had heard about women like this. His grandmother had
warned him. It was no wonder she had a baby with her.

She produced a pair of skins
from the satchel at her hip, passed one into his hand.

“Broth,” she said. “From the
soldiers of the Wall.”

That’s what he heard. He didn’t
believe it at all. She could have been meaning something completely different.
She could have been offering him poison. It didn’t matter. Days had become
nights, nights were now days. He was traveling with cats and they hadn’t killed
each other. Life had become entirely too strange for him.

She knelt down by his sister,
stroked her cheek, kissed her forehead like an older sister. Once again, he
felt nothing. If she had wanted to kill them, they would have been dead days
ago. His shoulder and leg were hurting, reminders of enemy arrows. He was so
very tired.

“Broth,” she said again.

He looked at the skin. It was
thick and well made with a crest of gold stamped into the leather. Twin
dragons. The symbol of the Enemy. They were serpents, all of them. Beautiful
and deadly.

“Take it,” she said. “It will
increase your strength and perhaps… improve your mood?”

He could have sworn she smiled
at him.

She unfastened the stopper,
lifted the skin to Setse’s lips. His sister shook her head and he wondered if
she was feeling the ache from the arrows too. They would both be dead by
nightfall, he was certain.

“Drink, little sister,” she
said. “Your people need you strong.”

“What do you know about our
people?” he growled, lowering the skin. “Who are you to talk to us about them?”

For her part, Setse just blinked
up at them, lids heavy and slow.

“And how did you get this broth?
Did you climb the wall and steal from your own people?”

“Of course.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Your sister needs—”

“Enough,” he growled again and
he sat forward, feeling strength run through his bones for the first time in
days. “Do not talk to me of my sister. We are grandchildren of the Blue Wolf
and will let ourselves die unless you give us answers and now. We can do that.
You would know if you understood anything at all about our people.”

The woman looked down.

“Why? Why are you doing any of
this?”

She turned her large powerful
eyes on him. They gleamed like suns in the desert sky, like harvest moons over
the fields of Karan’Uurt. He didn’t know where to look now, was trapped in them
like a deep, terrible cauldron of gold.

“Redemption,” she said finally.

And she lowered herself to the
snow, scooped the baby into her arms to nurse.

The silks above him were turning
purple as the night fled the approach of yet another day under a strange and
foreign sun. Life would never be the same for him or Setse ever again.

He stared at the skin in his
hands for a long moment before lifting it to his lips.

***

They caught the first glimpse of
the Wall at noon, the golden crown of the stone dragon that was their mother,
the Great Mountains. It rose and fell, skirted and capped and just the sight of
it filled them with awe. Even the two who had made the Wall their home for
almost two years could not fail to be inspired by its majesty. It represented
the Upper Kingdom in a way that was proud and strong, defiant and unyielding.
It was an icon among icons and cats are, after all, an iconic people.

Ursa pulled up her horse, lifted
her hand to shield her eyes.

“The cauldrons,” she growled.
“They are burning orange and white.”

“What does that mean,” asked the
jaguar from the back of his horse.

“Orange is for dogs,” said
Sireth. “But white?”

“Monkeys,” said the snow
leopard. “White is for monkeys.”

She did not look at them and he
could tell she was thinking. Alarm fires of any colour would surely set her
warrior’s blood racing. Not for the first time, he wondered how long she would
last as the wife of a priest.

Finally, she turned, her pupils
little more than slits in her near-white eyes.

“You saw this?”

“Some, yes.”

“Good.”

And she urged Xiao forward and
they carried down the road.

Soon after, they caught the
smell of sulfur.

The foundry of
Shen’foxhindi
was an open wound in the belly of the Mountains, with large pits carved out of
the face of the rock that were visible from miles away. Layers of grey and
black, purple and blue, like a patchwork of stone, with threads of orange ore
running throughout. The sky hung dark over the entire range and they could see
smoke from the smelting fires. Heavy wooden beams served as both crane and
catwalk to move baskets of ore and iron and men. And there were many many men.

They had passed several huts on
the trail in to
Shen’foxhindi
and roads radiated in all directions like
the spokes of a wheel.
Shen’foxhindi
was an important place, not only
for its iron smelting and smithing, but for its importance as a garrison town.
In fact, for years, the debate had raged on as to whether its name warranted a
change to
Sri’foxhindi
but the foundry owners had protested, insisting
the name change would increase the taxation of the residents and thus, discourage
employment. It was a booming town. Tents skirted the edges of the foundry,
running up and down the slopes like the spots on a leopard.

Ursa turned in her saddle.

“So we are going there?”

“Yes, I believe we are.”

“And we are looking for a dog.”

“Yes.”

“There.”

“Yes.”

“In a garrison town full of
cats.”

“Yes.”

“How would it get over the
Wall?”

Sireth frowned, looked back at
Yahn Nevye. From the back of his horse, the man shrugged.

The Seer turned back to his
wife. “I have no idea.”

She shook her head and turned
away as the horses began the descent down the road into the foundry.

No one took note of them, no one
even looked up as the small party passed merchants and diggers, bankers and
bakers going about their morning here in the belly of the Mountains. Smells
other than sulphur began to wage war in their nostrils. Beer and chicken, sweat
and earth, yak and woodsmoke. The road was dark, the snow all but gone as both
yaks and oxen pulled carts filled to tipping, and they passed more than one
broken wheel in the frozen ruts. Many tongues were heard as well, for while
Hanyin was the language of commerce in most of the Empire, Imperial, Farashi
and Hindi were close behind. There was laughter, there were orders, there were
greetings and there were arguments, every conversation known to cats overheard
in the time it took to pass through the heart of the foundry and step upon the
road to the garrison.

High above, the Wall towered
over the city like a sovereign, protecting it from dogs. Few cities of
importance sat this close to the borders of the Lower Kingdom and naturally,
the Wall was thick, high and wide. Battle towers were spaced closely and in
fact, it resembled a great crown with banners proclaiming ownership and might.
It was a terrible, wonderful sight.

There were several stone gates
leading up to the garrison and the road had considerably less traffic than
those into the foundry. They passed two carts—one filled with breads, the
other with firewood. They passed two men leading a small herd of goats and a
haggard woman carrying a basket of leather. She had a cap of yak hide tied over
her head and a corncob pipe clenched between her teeth.

Sireth pulled up his horse
beside her.

“Excuse me,
sidala,”
he
said. “What is going on at the garrison?”

She did not pause, nor did she
look up, merely chewed on the pipe and kept walking.

“Please,
sidala.
Do you
know?”

“Sidala!
Hah!” she
grunted. “Don’t no one call me
sidala
round here.”

“Highly esteemed
sidala,”
he added.

She smiled behind her pipe.
“Don’t you see them fires?”

“The orange and the white. Yes
of course.”

“We prepare for war, we do. All
Wall towns prepare.”

“War?” The Seer sat back on his
horse, glanced at his wife. She scowled at him. Talking to civilians was not
her favourite thing.

“An army coming, coming from the
east. Biggest army since
Roar’pundih
. Soldiers and monkeys. Damn
monkeys. Hate monkeys.”

“Is there war with the
Chi’Chen?
Is that why the fires are burning white?”

“Who am I? Shogun-General?”

The woman spat on the ground and
trudged off, leaving the three waiting in the road for several long moments.

“Interesting,” said Sireth and
he sat for a moment longer before urging Dune forward. Nevye moved in beside
him.

“Do you believe her?”

“What’s that?”

“The woman. Do you believe her
story about the war? About the army and the monkeys?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

The jaguar shrugged. “How would
she know anything? She’s a merchant woman, not a soldier.”

Ursa spat on the ground now. It
made a hole in the snow beside the road.

“This merchant woman lives in a
garrison town, idiot. She makes her living by knowing.”

Nevye grunted but said nothing,
and together with packhorses in tow, the three of them moved off and under the
first of the stone gates that led to the Wall.

***

It was a thing unseen since the
beginning of the Fanxieng Dynasty – the Great Wall solid with mounted
soldiers. They rode ten abreast at the widest parts, two at the steepest as the
Wall rose and fell with the Mountains. From the battle towers along the way,
the trotting of the horses looked like an undulating dragon, multi-coloured and
fierce with banners flying both crests as it moved along the parapet. This
dragon carried on for as far as the eye could see, from one end of the horizon
to the other and news of such a sight began to race through the Kingdom, of an
army of cats and monkeys and horses all heading north.

At the head of this dragon, the
ghost Kaidan accompanied a Shogun-General in blood red. It was an amazing
thing, a miraculous thing, but a thing that quickly took root in the collective
imagination. It is not surprising. Cats are, after all, an imaginative people.

The plan was to ride for days,
not stopping for sleep or rest as the army carried on up and down the many
steps that punctuated the Wall. To stop at any point would cause horses down
the line to be forced to stop mid-rise or mid-descent, and if any stumbled,
tripped or took lame, the entire army would be compromised. Along the Wall,
tigers waited at every plateau with skins of soup and tea for the riders,
chickens for the horses and all ate as they willed en route. Those tigers also
waited with brooms and spades, for any break in the line would be met with
cleaning. An army of two thousand horses and as many men produced a huge amount
of dung. Normally, it would be collected and reused in the small infertile
farms that littered the mountains and fed the battle towers, but now, the sheer
volume was literally swept up and tossed over the wrong side of the Wall,
hopefully reaching the bottom before it had the chance to freeze.

No matter how noble the cause,
death by frozen dung was not an honourable death.

“And so we pulled him up onto
the shore of Ancestorland. That’s what I call it. Ancestorland. Solomon calls
it NorAm but that doesn’t make as much sense as Ancestorland. Oh mother, I
thought he was dead. It took such a long time to get the breath back into him
but Solomon is so good at that kind of thing and finally, he opened his eyes
and I was so happy! I was thrilled! Honestly! If you'd’ve seen him flying
through the air like that! That
mis’syle
hit the boat and
bam!
It
was just a ball of fire and flying ship bits and of course, Kerris…”