Chương 17

Something stirred in Sarin Jeida's veins. She didn't need to look behind her to know there was a pool of shadow forming there. Her body, her blood, already knew its master was close. Her rooftop garden sprawled around her in the dark, herbs and vines and vegetables spilled from clay pots and wooden planters, growth that had long since escaped containment and crept over the edges of the building.

Her crows lined the railing and perched on the lip of the big feeder she kept full for them, dozens of black shapes against the lights of Thousand Bridges below. Beyond the maze of canals and stacked tenements, a sliver of Saltside glittered where it met the harbor. She had set her dinner plate aside and reached for the wine when she felt him, and turned. Shadow pooled near the stairwell door, black and thick, its surface disturbed as though something stirred beneath. A figure rose from it.

The shape resolved into Gutou, and for a moment she did not recognize him. The master she knew was a withered thing, skeletal and pale, his skin like paper stretched over ancient bone. This man stood straight and broad through the shoulders, his flesh full of new muscle, his skin flushed with color she had never seen on him. The sunken hollows beneath his cheekbones had filled in and smoothed over.

His eyes still sat deep in their sockets, still burned dark, but the light behind them was different now, vital and hungry in a way that made the air around him feel heavier. He looked as though he had shed centuries. He grinned at her, and the expression felt wrong on this new face, it was too young, too alive.

"Good evening, little bird." The crows shifted, restless, and she understood the impulse. The blood in her veins sang in response to his presence, louder than it had ever sung before. She kept her face still. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he had found or taken or consumed, he would tell her when he wished to tell her. Questions would only annoy him. She set the wine down on the small table beside her plate and lowered herself into a bow, her hands pressed together before her.

"Master." He waved a hand, dismissive of the formality, and crossed the rooftop toward her. His stride was different now, long and loose, the walk of a young man whose body answered him without complaint.

"No need for that tonight, little bird." He stopped at the railing and looked out over Thousand Bridges, drew a deep breath through his nose as though he could taste the city. The crows nearest him hopped aside and gave him space.

"I found something wonderful this evening." He turned to face her, and the grin had not left his face.

"A treasure I did not expect. Someone, I should say. A foreigner with the most extraordinary blood I have ever tasted." He spread his arms wide, invited her to look at what he had become.

"This is what one feeding gave me. One." He laughed, a sound she had never heard from him, full and easy and strange.

"I didn't even drain him. He is still out there." She straightened from her bow. Her face remained still, but behind it her mind had gone sharp and quiet, the way it always did when her stress level rose.

"Tell me more, master." Gutou's grin widened.

"The brother of the chosen one is here in Dragon's Rest. I met him tonight." He paused, let the weight of it settle.

"I think he may be an even greater treasure than his twin." He looked down at his hands, turned them over, flexed the fingers.

"I tried to drain him. It was like drinking from an ocean of blood. I drank and drank and there was no bottom. And the power of it!" He laughed again.

"He broke my technique through sheer force of vitality. Tore free as though my grip were nothing. And still, what I took from him in those few moments gave me this." He spread his arms again, showed her the new body.

"He was a Jotunar. Tall as a door and twice as broad. Yellow hair, blue eyes. You will know him when you see him." Sarin's eyes widened before she could stop them.

"I have seen him, master." She smoothed her expression back to calm.

"Tonight, at Hong Nguyen's. He came in with another cultivator. They spoke with Hong in the back rooms." Gutou's eyes lit up, and for a moment his new face looked almost boyish.

"Did he now." He stepped closer to her, and there was approval in his gaze.

"My little bird. Always in the right place." He reached out and touched her chin, tilted her face up toward his. His fingers were warm, strong, full of borrowed life.

"I have business elsewhere. Old debts to settle, now that I have the strength to settle them." His thumb traced along her jaw.

"I leave tonight, and I may be gone for some time. While I am away, you will watch the brother. Learn what you can. Where he goes, who he speaks with, what he wants." His grin sharpened.

"Get close to him if you can. Seduce him if the opportunity presents itself. And if you manage to drink from him..." He let out a slow, shivering breath.

"Prepare yourself for the most wonderful meal of your life." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. She thought about the barbarian at Hong's. The way he looked at her when their eyes met, direct, curious, without guile. The way he moved through the room as if nothing in it could hurt him. And he was handsome. The idea of getting close to him did not displease her. A smile touched her lips. Gutou saw it and mistook its source.

His gaze moved over her, traced a slow path down from her face to her throat to somewhere below her collarbone. The way he looked at her changed, and she felt the weight of it on her skin. A cold understanding moved through her. Gutou's withered husk was gone, and in its place stood a man, with a man's appetites. Her stomach turned, but discipline kept the look of displeasure off her face.

"Hmm... Now, little bird, I feel stirrings I haven't felt in a long, long time..." His voice had dropped, gone thick. His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck. He pulled her toward him. She was not in the mood for this. So she closed her eyes and left her body behind. Her eyes shut on the balcony with Gutou, and opened hundreds of feet above Thousand Bridges. Her black wings beat against the cold, drafty night air.

The city sprawled beneath her, a maze of canals and stacked tenements, lanterns reflected in dark water, footbridges at every level. She was perched on a rooftop three streets away, and also on a railing by the canal below, and also circling above the crowded night market on the other end of Trader's Row. She had hundreds of bodies, hundreds of perspectives.

One moment the wind ruffled her feathers and carried the scent of the harbor to her nose, the next she stood on the corpse of a dog in an alley, plucked out its eyeball and savored the coppery tang of blood on her tongue. A drunk stumbled across a footbridge and she watched him from two angles. A gondolier poled his boat through the black water and she tracked him from above. A cat crept along a windowsill and she turned her head to follow its progress.

The city lived and breathed beneath her and she breathed with it, beheld it with a thousand eyes. She stayed with her crows, until the blood in her veins told her Gutou was gone. The rooftop materialized around her as she opened her human eyes, returning her to the garden. She lay on her back near the railing, her clothes in disarray, the stone cold beneath her. Her skin was damp with sweat that was not all her own.

She stared up at the stars and let her breath come slow and even, let her heartbeat settle back into its normal rhythm. Her crows watched her from their perches, silent, patient. The crows asked nothing of her. She smirked at the thought. Sometimes Gutou teased her about preferring the company of animals to people. Her answer was always the same. Have you met any people lately? She sat up, straightened her clothes, ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it.

The wine still sat untouched on the small table, beside her dinner plate. She drained it in one gulp, set the cup back down and crossed to the stairwell door, descended the narrow steps into her flat. The room below was spare and clean, a bed, a table, a chair. Nothing on the walls. She knelt beside the bed and reached beneath it, felt for the loose board she had pried up years ago. Her fingers found the edges.

She lifted the board and drew out a golden object the size of her fist, intricate with gears and filigree. She carried it to an open space on the floor and set it down. A touch of her finger, a whisper of qi, and the device stirred. Gears turned. Petals of gold unfolded one by one, clicked into place, formed a shape like a blooming flower. Light rose from its center and spread outward. And a dome of burning eyes materialized in the air around her.

Some bore slitted pupils like a cat or a serpent, some were compound and faceted like the eyes of an insect, some had round irises like a human, some were elongated like a goat's. All of them blazed the same gold, bright enough to banish every shadow in the room. The weight of their attention pressed down on her from all directions. Sarin knelt and inclined her head.

"Sarin Jeida, Investigator of Events, Situations and Persons." The eyes watched her. The silence stretched on. She kept her head bowed, her breathing steady. The golden light played across her skin and cast no warmth. REPORT. The word came from everywhere at once, a chorus of voices layered atop one another, some deep, some shrill, some human, some not. It filled her mind, left no space for anything else. She did not flinch.

"Mo Gutou departs from Dragon's Rest this evening on a personal errand. He has encountered the twin brother of Huihun's chosen vessel, fed from his blood, and undergone some kind of transformation. I have been tasked with locating this individual, and compromising him." She paused.

"I await instruction." The silence stretched again. The eyes blinked and shifted in their slow orbits. PROCEED AS INSTRUCTED. MAINTAIN COVER. The voices layered and overlapped. ASSESS THE VESSEL'S BROTHER. IF HIS GOALS ALIGN WITH THE INTERESTS OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSE, CULTIVATE HIM AS AN ASSET. BURNING LOTUS MUST NOT SUCCEED. She waited for questions about Gutou's errand. For concern about her safety. For anything that acknowledged she was more than a tool pointed at a target. None came. The eyes began to fade.

One by one they blinked out of existence, cat eyes and insect eyes and goat eyes, until only the golden device remained on the floor before her, its petals folding closed with soft clicks. Sarin knelt alone in the dark. She stared at the device for a while. The gears had gone still. The gold gleamed faintly in the dark. Eventually she let out a slow breath. Then she picked up the device, crossed to the bed, knelt, and fitted it back into its hiding place beneath the loose board.

Her fingers pressed the wood flat until the edges sat flush with the floor around it. Then she rose and climbed the narrow stairs back to the roof. The crows had settled in her absence. They lined the railing and perched on the planters and watched her with their black eyes as she crossed to the small table where her wine still waited. She reached beneath the table and found the wooden box she kept there, opened it, drew out a slender pipe of carved bone and a pouch of hashish.

Her fingers packed the bowl with practiced ease. A whisper of fire qi and the herb caught, glowed red, released a thin curl of smoke into the night air. She put the pipe to her lips and drew deep, let the smoke fill her lungs and seep into her blood, then released it in a slow stream that drifted up toward the stars. Then she refilled her cup with wine and took a sip.

Let the two sensations mingle, the burn of the smoke and the coolness of the drink, felt them spread through her chest and soften the edges of her thoughts. Someday, the Burning Lotus or the Eyes of Heaven were going to sacrifice her, for reasons she would have no say in, and the game would continue as if she had never existed. She was just a piece on the board. She had known this for a long time. For forever. Tonight she was simply tired of knowing it.

Out of anyone in the two groups, at least Gutou would have the decency to make his lies convincing before he stabbed her in the back. Sweet of him. She took a sip of wine. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, a piece could become a player. It had happened before Sarin's eyes once or twice. And she'd heard many a tale of the same sort of thing happening elsewhere. Both the Eyes of Heaven and the Burning Lotus suddenly had a keen interest in this barbarian.

They had just told her, without telling her, that his choice of allegiance would matter. And they both chose her to go out and secure it. The crows shifted around her, ruffled their feathers, settled again, as if her agitation moved through their bodies as well as hers. She sat with them in the night, smoked and drank to ease her mind, and watched the city below her. The thought of the barbarian's face made her smile wryly. Wherever he was, she hoped he knew what he'd gotten himself into.