Spirit Hunter (13 page)

“Oh! He says that he has come to take what is his!” Eighth Daughter whispers.

“Is Lord Fang Swiftarrow’s
father
?” I hiss back.

Eighth Daughter turns to stare at me. “Didn’t you know that? I thought everyone did.”

I understand Swiftarrow’s reply perfectly. “No,” he says. “I do beg your pardon, Lord Fang, but no.”

And, as we watch, Lord Fang steps closer so there is barely a finger’s width between them. I can feel the heat of his rage from here. Swiftarrow does not move, and I have to squash a flicker of respect for his courage.

“Fang Shiyu, you will learn to obey me.” Lord Fang speaks with slow, icy fury.

Swiftarrow spits on the ground. “I am not Fang Shiyu.”

Before our eyes, he steps sideways into the shadows cast by the courtyard shrine and is gone. He has faded into the night.

“Heavens,” whispers Eighth Daughter. “Great heavens.”

Without another word, Lord Fang turns his back on Autumn Moon, mounts the gelding and rides away out of the gate.

Autumn Moon stands alone in the courtyard, watching him go. Eighth Daughter grabs my arm. “Duck!” she hisses, and we huddle beneath the windowsill. “I do not think we were meant to see that.”

I could not agree more.

Beyond the walls of the Forbidden Garden, the twelfth bell has just rung across the city. I lie awake in the moonlight, listening to Eighth Daughter’s slow, steady breathing. Poor child. She cried a lake of tears, wailing that she would never see Swiftarrow again after his wicked father had come to take him away.

“And he just ran off,” she sobbed. “Don’t you see, Asena? Lord Fang is a cruel man. If Swiftarrow is ever caught, Lord Fang could easily have him strangled, and no one would punish him for it.”

I cannot sleep, even though I know soon we must all rise for meditation in the hall, many hours before the rest of Chang’an wakes. Every time I close my eyes, I see Swiftarrow – and Baba. Swiftarrow’s father is cruel and a drunk. Baba is lost to me for ever, but when I was born, he held me in the palm of his hand like a new kit and such was his joy that he wept. What a fine daughter I grew into – so befuddled by the beauty of a half-bred T ’ang boy that I let him send my people to their deaths. I mustn’t think about Baba and Mama. I’m never going to see them again. But I know what Mama would say to me now. I can almost hear her voice.
Admit it, Asena: you feel pity for the boy because his father is a heartless lout.
It’s true. Never mind everything Swiftarrow has done, I am sorry that he burned with such misery when Lord Fang rode into our courtyard.

Wait.
Our
courtyard? Am I starting to become Shaolin?
I might still see Swiftarrow’s spirit-horse, but I am no true shaman any more, not without my wolf-guide. So what am I? Shaman or Shaolin?

A deeper darkness falls across the chamber. Has a cloud drifted across the moon? No. There is someone here with me and Eighth Daughter. Someone else. I sit up, mouth dry with fear. What I would not give now to be holding a knife—

“I did not come to hurt you.” It is Swiftarrow.

Heart pounding, I stare straight ahead, not meeting his eyes.

He has not spoken to me since the Blind Trial – nor I to him. He steps away from the window, crouches at my side, an arm’s length away. “Asena, please hear me. Please don’t pretend I am not here.”

It is the first time I have ever heard him speak my name. I look up and I wish I had not, because the sight of his face still whisks the breath from my lungs. His lip is cut, clotted with dried blood, slightly swollen.

“You should hold a warm compress to that.” I speak before I can stop myself. Once a healer, always a healer. “What do you want?” My voice is sharp and bitter, louder than I’d meant.

Eighth Daughter murmurs in her sleep, shifts in her tangle of sheets. Swiftarrow and I both freeze. At last, she breathes steadily again, soundly wrapped in sleep.

“I am sorry about the Gathering,” Swiftarrow says, quietly. “Truly I am. And I’m sorry for taking you away from your kin—”

“What’s left of them,” I hiss, wishing that my words could burn him.

“When I found you, there was a man at your side, wounded in his leg. He called your name as I took you away—” Swiftarrow falls silent, looking as if he wishes he had not spoken.

I stare at him. Could it have been Baba? Could it?

“What did he look like?”
Oh, Baba
.

Swiftarrow shrugs. “He was tall, with his hair in many plaits.”

Baba and Uncle Taspar were the tallest of all our kin, and I know my uncle died at the Gathering because I saw his corpse next to Shemi’s. Could my father really still be alive? I will never see him again, but perhaps Mama will.

Swiftarrow is watching my face – I feel the heat of his gaze – he’s waiting for me to speak.

“Am I meant to be indebted to you now that I know not every last man in my family was butchered?” I demand, voice shaking. “Why are you telling me this – do you think it makes all well again? That it strikes out what you did?”

He does not deserve to see how grateful I am for this small, unsteady flame of hope.

“I am sorry,” he replies, angry now. “I thought it might offer you comfort.”

“Nothing you can say will ever comfort me.”

He sighs, making an effort to control his anger. “Listen: I am leaving, and you will not have to look upon me any more. But I give you my word: I shall never betray the Horse Tribes again. I swear it. I wanted you to know.”

“What you do is none of my concern,” I reply. My eyes are burning but I will not let him see me cry. “If it’s forgiveness you seek, I can never forgive you for betraying the Gathering, because I have no mercy on myself for letting you do it. I do forgive you for taking me away from my father. It was no more than I deserved.”

“Asena, do not blame yourself—”

“But I must.” Raw heat spreads across my face, and I am glad that it is dark. I would die of shame if Swiftarrow knew how his green eyes and golden skin had scrambled my wits.

“I am sorry,” he says, again. He waits for a reply, but I give none. I say nothing, looking past him to the moonlit window. Swiftarrow tore me away from my father’s side, and now he must leave his home. It is a fair bargain. But as he slips across the chamber, back to the open window, fast and fleet as a cat, I find myself wishing that he would not go. Despite everything he has done, I still wish he would not go.

O
n his knees, Swiftarrow bowed so low his head rested on the reed matting. It smelled of dust, of summer’s heat. Rain hammered against the shutters; he was relieved to get away from it. The roads were running with water, the ditches full. His hair was wet: the maids had forced him into a bath and then a dry robe, fussing and shaking their heads over his own sodden, street-mired clothes. How strange to be wearing embroidered blue linen instead of Shaolin black. This morning he had awoken before dawn, as if he were still in the Forbidden Garden and not sleeping in the stable-straw behind Madam Ha’s tavern. But he could not return to the temple: he had no wish to bring down the wrath of Lord Fang on Autumn Moon.
My old life is over.
Never again would he spar with Red Falcon in the courtyard: scorpion, wolf, swallow, dragon. There would be no more laughing with Hano in the cook-room, no more catch-ball with Eighth Daughter in the hall.

And no more Asena.

“Little brother, you need not kneel.” His sister White Swan sat cross-legged on the couch, bright in her robe of fire-coloured silk, hair hanging loose around her shoulders like a spill of ink. “Come and talk to me.” She sounded serene as ever, but that signified nothing. A drunken man might very easily choke the life from a concubine who had displeased him and meet with no more than a fine: in the House of Golden Butterflies, hiding one’s true feelings could mean the difference between life and death. Swiftarrow pushed the thought from his mind and sat at her side. His sister kissed both sides of his face. Her breath was sweet with the scent of cloves.

“Tea, O brother?” White Swan leaned over to the table and poured two cups, handing one to him.

Swiftarrow took it, forgetting to thank her as he gazed out of the window. An autumn-red plum leaf drifted by, and he sighed. What was Asena doing now?
Glad I am gone, most likely.

“Our father is a dangerous man, Swiftarrow,” White Swan said, quietly. “You would be wiser not to persist with this disobedience.”

He jumped, splashing tea over the borrowed robe. So she did know. She stared at him, one eyebrow raised at his clumsiness.

“What is her name?”

Swiftarrow looked up. “What are you talking of?”

“Come, brother, where are your wits?” White Swan sighed. “Whenever men act with such foolishness, one can safely wager there is a girl at the back of it. Who is she?”

“I cannot set one foot beneath the roof of Lord Fang, and that is all,” Swiftarrow replied. First Autumn Moon and now White Swan. Why were all women so wretchedly knowing?

His sister frowned. “Truly you have hidden yourself well these last few days. Have you not heard?”

“Heard what?” Swiftarrow demanded. “Say.”

White Swan turned, gazing out of the window. The sky was grey with gathering rain. “Lady Fang is dead. The summer fever took her to the ancestors four nights ago. Lord Fang is now in mourning.”

“What has that to do with us?”

“She left him only daughters. And it would seem that the same was true of his concubines. Save our mother, who bore you.” White Swan smiled. “Swiftarrow, you are Lord Fang’s only son. If you had any sense at all, you would befriend him now rather than whipping the man into a fury by speaking to him with plain disrespect and then refusing to come when he called.”

“I care nothing for being his only son. I want none of his gold.”

“Come, we both know you are not speaking the truth – it is not riches you seek but Lord Fang himself. Your father.”

“Do you claim to know my mind better than I? I hate him.”

“You wish you did,” White Swan said. “It is not the same. Listen to me, Swiftarrow. Go to our father as he has asked, yet I warn you he is not what you long for him to be. Take great care. Speak to him with respect, beg his forgiveness, but remember that a cat cannot be a dog. Lord Fang will never change.”

“Why should I beg
his
forgiveness?” Unable to look at her any longer, Swiftarrow went to the window, staring out at the garden. Lily-flowers floated on the pool’s surface like pale fists. He remembered his mother lying in her chamber, bathed in rosewater, clad in grave-clothes, a lump of pale green jade in her mouth.
They are burning Mama’s things in the courtyard,
White Swan had told him, holding his hand.
They are sending her best robes up to Heaven.
The smoke had scorched the back of his throat, clung to his hair. The House of Golden Butterflies had rung with mourning cries, but Lord Fang had wept silently the morning after his most beloved concubine died, standing on the bridge, looking down at the lilies.

Will he take us away when he goes?
Swiftarrow had asked that day, watching him from the window.

And White Swan had replied,
I do not think so.

“You must beg forgiveness because he is your father,” she said, “but that is not the only reason: people are beginning to talk. The feud between Lord Fang and his wrong-side-of-the-sheets son has become quite the delicious piece of gossip. Is this really a wise time to draw curious eyes to yourself, Fang Shiyu?”

“Don’t call me that,” Swiftarrow hissed, and then asked, “What do you mean?”

White Swan smiled. “But Fang Shiyu is your name – one of them. There is nothing you can do to alter the fact. Accept it. Come, Swiftarrow. Do you think I am a fool? What reason had you to be in the palace? Do not tell me the Empress summoned you there to give thanks for that poor barbarian girl.”

“I was following orders when I took her—”

“I do not doubt it, and more than likely with my life as forfeit to make sure you succeeded,” White Swan interrupted. “What manner of dangerous little errands are you running for Her Imperial Majesty now?”

“O sister, don’t speak her name with such contempt,” Swiftarrow said. “If the wrong person were to hear, you would be dead by morning. Listen, the Empress has ordered me to spy on our dear uncle, Lord Ishbal.”

White Swan frowned. “It’s well known that the Empress has lost trust in the Tribes, even Ishbal, who claims loyalty to her. She is terrified that they will all rise up against the Empire once more.”

“It is time the Horse Tribes were free of the Empire’s claws. I will spy on Ishbal’s camp, but I mean to find out how many of his men agree with me. Together, the Tribes shall defend themselves. Apart, they will be defeated.”

“Swiftarrow, attempt no such thing!” White Swan hissed. “It is purest treachery to the throne. If you were discovered—”

“I have betrayed the Horse Tribes once. General Li ambushed their camp and so many died. I cannot do such a thing again.”

She shook her head. “I know. I did hear of it, and I wept. I know it’s wrong that you must serve the Empress, carrying out her dreadful commands. But, brother, if you are caught double-dealing, she will have you gutted like a pig.”

“I will not get caught.” He smiled at her. “Come, you know I will never be caught.”

She sighed. “I could not bear it. Truly, I could not.”

“You will not have to. Did you see Brother Red Falcon last ten-night, when you went to hear the sutra?”

“Yes. We listened to it in the meadow, and it rained.” She paused. “Snake-eye has still not returned from the temple at Mount Shaoshi?”

Swiftarrow shook his head. “No. But surely the Abbot will grant Autumn Moon leave to take us east. And when he does, we can all be free of Chang’an, and free of the Empress.”

“Until Snake-eye returns safely, we can never be at ease. If the Empress heard the Shaolin were making ready to leave her, she would have every last one of you strangled in the market-square. Do not forget it. Swiftarrow, spy on Lord Ishbal if you must and play a double-game if I cannot stop you – but please take care. At least give the gossips nothing more to discuss.”