The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (10 page)

“I don’t know how I got here either. I just know I’m freezing.”

“It does not bother me if you use the fire.”

She sat, not beside him, and not opposite him, but keeping him to her right, wilderness to her left, good rock at her back. She would never find the money. But a fire was better. They sat as though the burning branches were sharing village news.

It was good to sit. It seemed to her that she’d been traveling much longer than she remembered. A story occurred to her, as though it had happened to someone else: that once upon a time a girl was close to suicide, and yet at the selfsame time her family believed her prideful and in need of beating down. She vowed that whatever she decided about living, she would decide it far away from their shadow. She ran, and ran, and somehow the question of killing herself never came up again. But she was tired. Now, at last, there was nothing to do but breathe and study the fire. Contemplation, respiration, combustion.

“How long have I been running?” she wondered aloud.

“Time is like sparks,” the man said. “Who knows when its source will spit up a new moment?”

“You are different from other men.”

“Well, I am an illustration.”

“What?”

He smiled, as if recalling something. “Are you not within my painting?”

The dreamer woke.

Next-One-A-Boy sat up. Shafts of moonlight stabbed the cave all around her. There was no sign her fellow bandits had noticed anything, nor that the sentry had even looked her way. It seemed she had not moved.

Her clothes were damp. She closed the scroll and lay awake the rest of the night.

The next day was not good. She stumbled through the training regimen Chang demanded of his bandits. There were occasional mutterings about how the Wind and Rain Society upriver had it easier. But instead of punishing the carpers, Exceedingly Accurate Wu kept upbraiding Next-One-A-Boy, as if the girl had volunteered for the job of camp scapegoat. Finally, after Next-One-A-Boy shifted left when Wu called for right, Wu interrupted the drills for a lecture. There was a dim groan from the bandits.

“It is said,” Wu addressed all thirty of them, leaning on a bamboo cane, “that in the Summer and Winter period, long before the Empire of Walls, when the land was in chaos, the Sage General went to a job interview with the Lord of Long River.”

Wu commanded their attention as simply as gravity commands a stone. She was a thin, spare woman who seemed to possess exactly the minimum bulk for her duties, as though to bear any less flesh would be slacking, and any more ostentatious. Her hair she kept shorter than any other’s in the gallant fraternity, just the modicum useful for warmth. Her cloak was an unadorned storm-grey, and her weapon was a single knife, for as a commander, she said, she should not waste time or muscle with superfluous gear.

Exceedingly Accurate Wu was known for her conversational style, or rather her complete lack of it. To speak was to waste perfectly good air that might be serving bandit bodies or feeding bandit fires. So she used this great power of humankind sparingly, and only for the most vital of reasons: to scold, to command, and to lecture. Other uses of speech were beneath contempt. (“Good morning, Wu!” somebody other than Five Finger Chang might say, “It’s a beautiful day.” “It is a vast world,” Wu might reply, “and thus certainly a horrible day for somebody. Why not make it you?”) To hear so many words from her at once was shocking, almost as if the Rabbit of the Moon had hopped into the caves bearing peaches of immortality.

Wu said, “The Lord of Long River enjoyed the Sage General’s maxims but desired a field test. He commanded the General to take charge of his hundred giggling concubines, and make of them a fighting force. The General appointed squad leaders and began formation drills. The squad leaders tittered and laughed and their squads maneuvered like drunk puppies. The Sage General had the squad leaders beheaded.”

Exceedingly Accurate Wu paused, bamboo cane extended. That, plus the ice in her gaze, were all the theatrics needed to conceptualize the axe.

“Imagine the horror of the Lord of Long River as his beauties’ heads rolled in their own blood, their painted eyelids fluttering for the final time. Almost the Lord had the visitor decapitated as well, but the Sage General bade him wait, for the Sage General was still executing the Lord’s own command. The Sage General appointed new squad leaders, and this time the concubine army was silent. It performed to near perfection.”

Wu smiled. “The Lord said, ‘Your methods are monstrous,’ and the General replied, ‘The Lord of Long River plays at rulership but does not truly want to protect his people.’ At these words the Lord recognized the General’s wisdom, and appointed him commander of the armies. Never while the Sage General lived did Long River suffer defeat.”

Wu paused again, still smiling. The effect of a smile on Wu’s face was not unlike that of a daffodil set atop a coiled viper. “What can we learn from this story?”

Feet shuffled. Gazes met toes. Feng Axe-Big-As-Himself cracked his knuckles. Muttering Chung said, “. . .”

Next-One-A-Boy’s hand went up.

“Yes.”

“We learn,” Next-One-A-Boy said in a rush, not sure what drove her to speak, “that if women have no place in the hierarchy of a kingdom, they cannot expect even the wise to protect them. They will become as meat, fit only for consumption in the bedchamber or as sacrifices to settle an argument. For the Sage General spoke of security for the people of Long River. But where was the security for the dead concubines?”

Wu’s smile was gone. “We are done drilling for the day. Next-One-A-Boy, meet me beside the waterfall.”

Where the waterfall plunged into the caves was where Chang or Wu could confer—or reprimand—with some privacy, as voices were drowned by the roar.

Cold spray hitting her like a slap, Next-One-A-Boy said, “I merely thought, Wu, as a woman, you must be making a point about women . . .”

The bamboo cane connected with her shin. She knelt with a whimper.

“I was instructing a band of bandits, you idiot, not a gaggle of rich daughters. Women with power over men do not speak of it, lest it evaporate like morning mist.” Wu shook her head. “There are times I curse my scholar father for educating me, I who could never take the Examinations for civil service.”

“That is the fault of men!” The same anger that fueled her words earlier was now redoubled, and brought Next-One-A-Boy back to her feet. “And they get most women to go along! They fear our strength, so they forbid us real work, tell us to yield to others, even bind our feet. I only escaped that fate because we were poor and my parents could not afford to have me shuffling about. I had hard labor in the fields and household chores and a Little Emperor to mind, he who would get all the education the family could muster. We must stick together, we women. You and I are alike.”

“You are whining,” Wu told her, eyebrows rising. “I do not whine.”

“I do not whine either,” Next-One-A-Boy objected. “I curse and spit. I bite and kick. I learn and advance.”

Wu shook her head. “You whine. You whine when you complain of your past. You whine when you seek allies in other women. You whine when you emphasize your femaleness.”

“I wear exactly what the men wear! My hair is no more clean or elaborated than any bandit’s. I wear no jewelry or token.”

“You walk so as to emphasize the sway of your hips. You lay your hands upon the curves of your body. You stand in an unbalanced way so as to extend a leg. Do not pretend.”

Next-One-A-Boy’s cheeks burned. Did she truly do these things? She had not thought about it. “I am as nature made me,” she said.

“Indeed. And you have not advanced beyond that state. You spend your time daydreaming, not honing your body and mind. You pine for male approval, else you would not complain so much about them. You stare at your reflection in the pools of the cave, revealing your vanity. You waste your obvious intellect—do not smile, it is not a compliment—on catty witticisms, not on researching the many texts we have here in Shadow Margin. Until you apply yourself as a human being, do not cry to me about the unfairness of being a woman.”

Next-One-A-Boy was angry now. “Must I pretend to be a man? It would be a lie!”

“You need not pretend to be a man. You must cease to be a child.”

Next-One-A-Boy had stalked off then, a parting bamboo rap against her bottom demonstrating that every possible action would mark her as a “child,” and therefore she might as well do what would bring her relief. She fled to the surface, stomped past the sentry, and cried beneath a tree. Sobs surged like a flooding river, and just as beyond control. Wu would have disdained her weakness now. Her parents would have claimed she was seeking pity. Her brother, the Little Emperor, would have mocked her. There was no one who accepted her. She was a monster . . . no, not even that, for a monster, like the chi-beast at the Wall, had its grandeur. She was simply a waste of flesh.

At last the sobs came more slowly, like aftershocks of an earthquake. She could breathe now, and think. The world had its freshness again, fog twisting around pines and junipers. A bird flitted from one cloud of branches to the next, watching her sidelong. She watched it back.

A voice said, “This is the moment to stay within. Not the weeping. Nor the thing that brought the weeping. The moment after. When your mind is open to what is really there.”

“Who is this?” Next-One-A-Boy demanded, looking this way and that.

“Someone closer than you suppose.”

She looked up.

Crouched in the branches of the tree was the Woman in Black, from the Heavenwall.

“I could summon the sentries,” Next-One-A-Boy said.

“How interesting!” said the Woman in Black. “I too could summon the sentries. There might be a fight. There might be a chase. There might be a card game. So many possibilities.”

“You are crazy. Are you drunk?”

“Yes! Drink is helpful when dressing up in black and approaching monsters or bandits.”

Next-One-A-Boy giggled. Just a little. She covered her mouth.

“A girl!” crowed the Woman in Black. “There is a girl in there.”

Remembering Wu’s words, Next-One-A-Boy shed her smile. “What do you want?”

“Want? I want to experience light and dark, good and bad, turbulence and serenity, and recognize them as counterparts in the eternal dance, so I may turn an open face to nature and its changes. Also, I am fond of children and was wondering how you were.”

“I am fine!” Next-One-A-Boy sat up tall. “You can go be mysterious somewhere else.” In a gentler voice she added, “Thank you. And thank you for your help at the Wall.” She paused. “Who are you?”

“I am of the wulin. I have dedicated myself to esoteric arts so as to be occasionally meddlesome in the world.”

Among the gallant fraternity she had heard talk of the wulin. They were of the Rivers-and-Lakes, like bandits and peddlers and rogues and others who could never fit in. But the wulin were remote even from these, for they knew secrets of fighting that set them apart. Wulin warriors could pop up anywhere, and often took up lost causes. The bandits didn’t like them much.

“So you like to tell everyone what to do,” Next-One-A-Boy said.

“No! If I wished to command I would not skulk about in black. I would lecture people instead of fighting monsters and rogue warriors. But in the end words are as transitory as clouds in the sky. My deeds may be worth more, though they too will fade like a weed-threaded road.”

Next-One-A-Boy tried to follow the path of the Woman in Black’s speech, but it seemed to meander through strange forests. “Woman in Black,” she said. “What do you think? How is a woman to live in the world, and not just exist? How am I to be me, and not just a spirit shackled to the name ‘woman’?”

There was a hint of gentle regret in the wulin woman’s voice. “Let go of names for a time. ‘Woman.’ ‘Girl.’ ‘World.’ ‘Spirit.’ Live in the place you reached when you had sobbed your last, and had no thought for
then
or
later,
but only saw what you saw. That is the start of it. The Way. Where it leads is up to you. But you cannot find the Way when you are confounded by chatter. Speaking of chatter . . . someone comes. Therefore, I go—”

“Hey,” called Flybait, oblivious to the Woman in Black concealed in the leaves overhead. Next-One-A-Boy glanced at his approach only for a blink, but by then the wulin woman had vanished. Flybait seemed the woman’s conceptual opposite, stumbling up and flopping himself down beside Next-One-A-Boy as if invited. Almost she would have snarled at him, but then he said something unexpected.

“I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“Oh . . .”

“Wu seems to have it in for you. I don’t know why. You know, I don’t like her. She shouldn’t treat you like that.”

She sat closer to him, drew her knees up into the embrace of her arms. “Thanks.”

“Thanks? I didn’t
do
anything . . .”

“Thanks for saying something. Thanks for saying you care, without trying to make me
into
something, or make me
do
something, or make me
perceive
something. Just being there.”