The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (127 page)

He looked at the jaguar. “This
is not some kind of trap? The dogs are well-known for their strategic advances
and retreats.”

“I only see the runners,” said
Nevye. “The Ten Thousand are two days away.”

Kirin turned to the Alchemist.
“Sidala?”

“It is strategic,
sidi,”
she purred. “But not the way you think.”

He shook his head. Riddles,
always riddles.

“Release the horses. The dogs
will have seven warriors to contend with.”

“But
I’m
not a warrior,”
said the jaguar.
“
And neither is Setse. She can’t fight.”

Setse said nothing.

“She fights,
sidi,”
Kirin
said. “Like the Snow.”

The powerful smell of incense
and suddenly, a wraith appeared at his side. He had not seen her move but she
was
kunoi’chi
. There was nothing new in that.

“There is something that may
help,
sidi,”
she purred.

“What is it?”

“Hmm.” She smiled. “Strategy.”

She turned away but she was
humming to herself in strange, exotic keys.

***

Damaris Ward did not need to
show her security badges to get into the labs. She was Jiān de Seguridad,
Security Supervisor for the entire district. Everyone knew her on sight.
Columbia District Shenandoah was small compared to Rocky Mountain or Marathon,
more relaxed. She was able to run it well, tightly but without too many
complaints. All in all, she was glad she worked here.

The labs were deep
underground in case of a containment breach. Above them were the compounds and
exhibits and she never had much use for those. Animals were animals, all
dangerous, but she knew they were visited by many of the residents of CD as
often as the comm labs, maybe more. They loved to watch them play, eat, mate.
And more than anything, they loved to watch them fight.

This new Super called them
friends.

She trotted down the spiral
stair, her boots echoing on the grey metal and she nodded to the guard outside
the door. It squeaked as he pushed it open for her and the smell of food paste
struck her nostrils. It had to be difficult for the scientists who worked here.
It smelled bad and sounded worse, as birds squawked and rodents threw
themselves against the walls of their pens. She looked around, surprised at the
lack of staff.

“In Screens,” said the guard
from the door. “Persis has gone down to the new pen. Everyone wants to watch.”

She nodded again and made her
way to the room called Screens. Twelve people were crowded around three screens
and they moved aside as she strode in. A man she knew only as 6 looked up at
her.

“I’ve never seen anything
like this before,” he said. “Persis is talking to it. In Chinese.”

She could see the linguist in
contagion suit inside the quarantine cell, flanked by two guards with Dazzlers,
talking to the most beautiful animal she had ever seen. It did, in fact,
resemble a slim young woman with wavy hair and she was talking in a very animated,
sing-song voice. Her hands moved with expression over her obviously pregnant
belly. But she had a tail that moved like an animal’s tail and orange fur that
was covered in black stripes. In fact, the closer she looked, the more the
young woman reminded her of the images of tigers in the crystal archives. She
had never seen a living one. They had been extinct for centuries, even before
the originals went under.

“Where is it from?” Ward
asked. “Has Sengupta asked her where it is from?”

“Some place called the Upper
Kingdom,” said 6. “They came over in a sailing ship. Just the three of them.”

“Yuh, the STS took it out. I
wish it hadn’t but it’s automated.” She leaned forward. “Are they from the
IAR?”

“That’s what Persis thinks,”
said another man. Her eyes flicked to his jumpsuit and the name Dell. “The
woman speaks Chinese, Hindi, English, Mandarin, Urdu, Farsi—”

“Persis Sengupta is a
linguist. Of course she speaks—”

“Not Persis,” said Dell. “The
tiger. Woman. Tiger woman.”

Ward sighed, thinking.

“She came with clothes,
correct?”

Dell nodded.

“And you weren’t suspicious
about an animal that wears clothes?”

“I was,” said Dell. “Ask 6. I
thought it was strange but he said it was a hunting adaptation, like a magpie.”

“Magpies don’t carry swords.”

For his part, 6 said nothing.

“So, the other one?” she
asked. “The male? Where is he?”

Dell looked down again as 6
pushed back in his chair.

“Hey, I’m not
Jiānkeeper.”

Dell shook his head.

“The Compound crowds are
crazy to see him. They’re putting him in with the leather-back.”

“What? He just got here.”

“I know! But comms have been
cancelled and people want to watch—”

“Mā de!” she swore. “Get
Compound on the feed. I need that grey out now.”

And on a table in a corner of
a lab ignored by a staff watching a linguist speak to an animal, a sword began
to move.

***

He stood on the mound under the
tallest of the stones, sifting the air for scent but the wind was blowing from
the north, taking all traces with it. The plain was dark, the stones darker and
the laughing moon hid her face behind her blankets of cloud. It was a very cold
night, but still there was no snow. Indeed, the Plateau of Tevd was a strange
and holy place.

There was a sound on the wind, a
pulse, a heartbeat growing louder and he turned to wake the others when the
song entered his head once again.

He smiled, welcoming her back as
her voice slid up and down in her strange, exotic keys, musical and mysterious
and so very other. The second voice joined in, young and sweet and
inexperienced and he wished of all things to add his voice to the mix but he
was a soldier and he did not sing. Still, he could listen and enjoy and imagine
and he leaned back against the stone and closed his eyes when suddenly, there
were horses thundering up onto the mound, shattering the music of the night.

He staggered backwards, pulling
his sword and swinging but the horses struck him with their bodies, sending him
reeling to the ground. He could hear the others shout and bark and he scrambled
to his feet, snatching the sword from the cold hard earth. There was a figure,
darker than the dark stones and he could see dual glints in the moonlight,
swung his sword up and the night rang with the song of steel. He struck the
long sword, ducked and swung again, deflected this time by the short. He
scrambled down the mound, spun and swung, hearing the scrape of blades and
seeing sparks leap from the clash of iron. To his right, his beta was fighting
hand to hand with a very small warrior and he could tell it was a woman. She
moved like a dancer, her hands and feet everywhere at once but he could not
watch for the swords were upon him once again.

He snarled and lunged forward,
bringing his sword up in an arc that disemboweled most opponents but the steel
was jerked aside by silk, lengths and lengths of night black silk, looping and
wrapping around his blade and he fought it but there was another woman and she
moved like the night, like smoke and shadow and he wasn’t certain of where she
was or where
he
was, and he snarled and rushed forward but a boot sent
him backwards, thrashing but trapped in length after length of black silk. He
wrested himself to his knees but froze as a flare of light erupted before his
face.

The barb of an arrow was pointed
between his eyes, and he could see a dog at the end of the bow. Behind him, a
lion holding two swords, one at his throat, the other at his beta. Another dog,
a little slip of a girl, stood over the third who lay unmoving on the stone,
but next to him, so close he could see the gold in her eyes, was the Singer of
the Songs inside his head. She smiled at him.

Another cat came, bent down to
his level. Long-Swift recognized the eyes of the moon in an instant, wondered
how such a thing could have happened in a man.

“Enx tajvan,”
said the
cat.
Peace
. He spoke the Language perfectly, without accent.
“Dajgui.
Namaig
Yahn Nevye gedeg. Che oilgoj bainuu?”

Long-Swift snarled, lunged
forward but the bowstring squeaked as the dog pulled it taut. The cat held up a
spotted hand.

“
Ugui,
ènx tajvan,
eregtai.
Peace, brother. We come in peace.”

The cat stood, gestured for him
to do likewise and slowly, warily, the Irh-Khan rose to his feet, arms and
torso still tightly bound in silk. He threw a glance at his men and the girl
straightened.

“I did not kill them,” she
pouted and he noticed in the moonlight that one of her eyes was blue.

“Who are you?” he growled.

“Jalair Naransetseg,
Granddaughter of the Blue Wolf.”

The Oracle, the little girl
who had evaded the 110
^th
for months.
He had so many questions
for her.

“This is my brother, Jalair
Naranbataar, Master of the Bow. And Sherah al Shiva, Magic and Shadow. Shar
Ma’Uul, Powerful Seer and…” She looked to the figure towering over them all in
the darkness. “Kuren Ulaan Baator, Shogun-General of the Upper Kingdom.”

He narrowed his eyes. The girl
noticed.

“The Khanmaker,” she added
proudly.

He swallowed as the words of the
Eyes echoed in his mind.

“Come, Swift,” said the Singer
in fluid Language. “I will make tea.”

***

They sat in a circle of candles.
Both betas were bound at the wrists and knees with bolts of black silk and the
archer had his arrows fixed on them lest they move. They would not take tea and
growled such vulgar obscenities that Long-Swift was beginning to wish they had
bound their mouths instead. For his part, only his wrists were bound and he
stared at the tiny cup with horror.

“Drink,” said the Singer and she
raised a similar cup to her lips.

“You seek to poison me.”

“No.” She sipped her tea and he
noticed her eyes, ringed with inky blackness, remembered the eye in the tent
guilt with gold. “Just tea.”

The lion was speaking and
Long-Swift could not help but stare. Lions were icons to his people, totems of
great importance. Killing one made you a Khan. Seeing one changed you forever.

“So, I hope you understand,” the
yellow cat was saying in the Language. “This is not a mission of war. The Upper
and Eastern Kingdoms wish Unification with the Kingdom to the North.”

“Never,” he spat.

“Stranger things are happening,
Lord,” said the cat.

“I am not Lord,” growled
Long-Swift.

“Irh-Khan,” said Oracle and the
other dog, her brother, glanced at her.

“Irh-Khan of the Khan of Khans?”

“This is treason against the
Chanyu.”
Long-Swift laid back his ears. “You will both be disemboweled and left to die
on a field of ravens.”

“We will disembowel them and
paint them with honey and bury them in an ant hill,” snarled the red dog.

“We will rape the women and
disembowel the men and paint them all with honey and bury them in an ant hill
in a field of ravens,” snarled the long-nosed one.

“Shut your mouths!” snarled
Long-Swift. “You dishonor the Khargan with your talk.”

“The Khargan dishonours himself
with the Eyes of Jia’Khan!”

“Silence!”

“The Eyes of Jia’Khan?” asked
the yellow cat. “Eye of the Needle…”

“Eye of the Storm,” finished the
Oracle.

Long-Swift growled but said
nothing.

The cat turned and spoke to the
lion. The lion spoke to the Singer who nodded. She reached to slip a blade,
thin and sharp, from within the crush of her night-black hair, and Long-Swift
knew she was
renzeg
. Killer, Hassassin, Ninjaah.

She sliced the silks at his
wrist and sat back.

“Stay calm, Lord, or the
Khanmaker will remove your feet,” she said, her voice smooth as the silks on
his pelt and she smiled.
“Only
your feet.”

The lion began to talk when
suddenly, the yellow cat rose to his feet. The Oracle did the same and they
stood together, looking out over the Field of One Hundred Stones.

“Horses,” they said at the same
time. “Red and Blue Desert Horses cross the Holy Plateau of Tevd.”

The cat spoke a heartbeat behind
the girl and Long-Swift shuddered. It reminded him of the Eyes and he wondered
if this was how such a thing began.

They sat for several hours until
moondown when horses thundered up to the Deer Stones on the Holy Plateau of
Tevd.

***

“Two Necromancers?” Kirin growled,
lashed his tail and the Scales of the Dragon struck against a Deer Stone,
chipping it. “Are you certain?”

“Eye of the Needle,” said
Sireth.

“Eye of the Storm,” finished
Kirin. “Yes. I understand now.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” said
Yahn Nevye as he sat facing the sunrise, arms wrapped around his knees.

“Be grateful,” said Kirin. “You
would be dead.”

“But Setse would be alive and
that was what mattered. Now, I owe my life to a Necromancer.”

“You owe your life to many
people,
sidi.
You owe your life to the Seer and to the Major and to me
and Sherah al Shiva and Kerris Wynegarde-Grey and ultimately to the Empress of
the Upper Kingdom. It is not your life. Not anymore. Not once you crossed the
border into the Kingdom of the Dogs.”

“Still, she shouldn’t have done
that,” he said, shaking his head. “She, she shouldn’t have done that.”