In the Vanishers' Palace Read online

  “She needs to rest,” Elder Tho had said, smiling that toothy smile of hers, the one that promised bad things.

  “She’ll be better soon,” Head Minh Phuoc had said, sounding for all the world as though she didn’t believe it.

  Oanh was alive, and the fever had broken. She was changed, but surely change was such a small price to pay for keeping the demons of death at bay? Had the change been the dragon’s price? Surely not. It seemed far too insignificant.

  As Yên and Elder Giang laid Mother on her small bed, she woke up, and looked straight through Yên. The glazed, slightly distant expression scared Yên to death: a hint of wonder and awe, soft feelings that, in the world after the departure of the Vanishers, just got people killed. “Mother—”

  “It worked. I saw her.”

  “I saw her too. Mother, what did she ask for?”

  “Child.” A soft exhalation that barely warmed up Yên’s hand. “She was so beautiful...” And then she closed her eyes, and slept again. Her skin was drained and translucent, the wrinkles on her face deep furrows like the ones in the diseased, ravaged earth outside. The ink of the dragon’s summoning still stained the skin beneath her fingernails. The words Yên had seen, the words that had still been clinging to Oanh, seemed to be gone. The dragon was right: she needed rest. The thought was a stone in Yên’s mind.

  The dragon had said she’d come back. What for, and when?

  Elder Giang stayed for a while, hovering at the door as though they wanted to tell Yên something but couldn’t quite work out what. Their gaze was fearful. Fragile. Unusual for an elder, even more unusual for them. Yên no longer had the energy to dance around village politics, if she’d ever had it. She’d only learned to do it because Mother was so hopelessly uninterested by it. “Do you want tea?” she asked.

  She’d expected them to make their excuses and leave, but much to her surprise, they nodded, and helped her draw water from the beaten-down purification unit. They sat cross-legged at the low table, breathing in the grassy, soft smell of the tea, with the kind of easy grace that belonged at court.

  The children Yên taught had made an effort to clean up after class, though Vinh, as usual, had left a pile of open books and calligraphy papers dangerously close to the teapot. Yên surreptitiously nudged them out of the way, using the opportunity to flip them over. She wasn’t sure if Elder Giang would have approved of Vinh’s habit of drawing plants and fish in the margins of her essays—no matter how beautiful they were, the animals effortlessly flowing alongside the calligraphied letters.

  “You tried the Metropolitan exam last year,” Elder Giang said.

  Yên flushed. She hadn’t thought she would. “I failed.” It would have been her and Mother’s way out of the village. To go to the capital under armed escort as a meritorious scholar, to be presented to the Empress and her consort; to be, if not rich, then at least favored. Valued. Not to be thrown away on a whim. They could have slept, knowing that they would never be taken away to the Plague Grove to be slowly taken apart by the purifying artefact. Yên still had nightmares from the last time she’d been forced to attend a purification: old Thanh Hoa, looking across the circle as light fell into shimmering veils around her, locking her into place—her skin lifting itself from glistening muscles, and muscles and veins from bones, and then the bones themselves peeling away, discarded layer after layer, and an endless, impossible scream bursting from lips and vocal cords flayed away into nothingness....

  In the capital, Yên and Mother could have slept, knowing that they were safe. Away from Elder Tho and her endless, predatory waiting. “I’ll try again,” Yên said. “In three years’ time.”

  “It’s an admirable attempt,” Giang said, at last. There was no irony in their voice. “I tried that, when I was young. Running away from the village as soon as I could.”

  They had a secure position in the order of things—their family rich and influential, their lands vital to the village’s survival.

  They’d never had to worry about survival, or how desirable they were. “Things were different, when you were young,” Yên said, cautiously. What was Elder Giang trying to say?

  Elder Giang sighed. “The next exam is in three years’ time.” They sipped their tea, slowly. “Sometimes, the best thing to do isn’t waiting.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yên said.

  “You want me to tell you it will get better,” Giang said. “But it will get worse, child. And”—they stared at their cup for a while—“three years is a lifetime.”

  They were clear. Too clear, to the point of bluntness. “You want us to leave now. Mother healed Oanh—” If that wasn’t value to the village, then what was?

  Elder Giang drained their cup and rose. “Let me be blunt, then. It’s not Mother who needs to leave.”

  Yên stared at them. She wasn’t stupid. “The dragon’s price.”

  “She asked for a life,” Elder Giang said. “Oanh’s life, but...” They let the word hang in the air, its meaning all too clear.

  Yên was many things. But even befuddled and struggling to follow a conversation, she wasn’t stupid. She was the one in danger. Whatever life the dragon had asked for, in the end, it had fallen on her. Of course. “I can’t leave,” she said. “Mother.”

  “I can take care of your mother.” Elder Giang gave her that look again: brittle and haunted, as though something fundamental in them had broken in that room. “You need to run.”

  “Now?”

  Elder Giang’s face was hard. “I tried, child. I did. But sometimes things are rotted through. Like a cancer.”

  “I can’t run now,” Yên said. “Not at night.” At night, with the Vanishers’ leftover constructs prowling the forests outside the village? She wasn’t old or lame like Mother, but she’d still be torn apart anyway. And where would she run to? What other village would take her in, when she had nothing to bring other than vague knowledge of letters and healing?

  But it wasn’t as if she had a choice. She’d have to grab things before running away, because they would watch the house afterward. She’d need food and drink: tea, rice cakes, some of Mother’s unguents for the most urgent of wounds. The thought of leaving without even time to say her goodbyes to Mother, of trying to argue with another set of elders how much she was worth, just made her feel nauseous. “How much time do I have?”

  Elder Giang spread their hands. “I don’t know,” they said.

  Yên owned little: thin brushes, brittle paper, diluted ink, and the broken shards of an inkstone, the treasures of a moneyless scholar. A tunic and trousers of rough, threadbare silk, the embroidered peaches mere circles of color on a tree barren of leaves and branches. Not much to pack, but then, she didn’t have time for sentimentality. “Let me just—” she started, and then she heard the noise outside the house.

  A simple curtain was the only thing that separated their door from the village streets. Other houses had thick metal doors, and identity controls salvaged from Vanisher artefacts, but neither Mother nor Yên could afford such things. They’d always known the truth: anything that made it past the village’s armored walls and sentinels would make short work of metal or wood.

  Elder Giang’s face was tight. “I thought we had more time.” They moved to stand in front of Yên as though they could ward off the inevitable, and threw open the curtain. Yên followed them, her heart beating madly in her chest. It didn’t feel real. Too sudden and too unexpected. It was happening. As she’d always known it would.

  Outside, at the bottom of the steps leading to their house, a circle of village elders, grave and solemn. And Elder Tho, pale-skinned and tall, in the pale light of the pockmarked, diseased moon. “Younger pibling,” she said, sharply, to Elder Giang, making an imperious gesture with her hand. Her displeasure was clear in the way she addressed Giang: not to a younger but still-respected sibling, but simply with the neutral term for parent’s sibling, the formal one reserved for strangers.

  Elder Giang said, softly, sl
owly, drawing themself up to their full height, “This isn’t right.”

  Elder Tho’s face didn’t move. “This is how it has always been, younger pibling. The weak die so that we may survive.”

  “The weak.” Elder Giang’s face was unreadable. “Do you really think a healer’s daughter and apprentice is weak and useless?”

  “Enough,” Elder Tho said. “I can also have you removed.” The way she said it suggested something far more permanent than calling the militia on Elder Giang. And, to Yên: “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, child. It could be your mother instead of you.”

  A memory, unbidden: Mother, hanging pale and limp in the dragon’s hands, the words of light lazily whirling beneath her skin, going fainter every time they crossed under the bones. Mother, going away with the darkness forever. No. “The village needs a healer,” Yên said, all thoughts of respect and decorum fleeing her.

  “Are you questioning our decisions?”

  “The First Teacher said one should never be afraid to correct one’s mistakes,” Yên said. She had Elder Giang in front of her on the steps, and saw them flinch at the bluntness and disrespect of this. But really, didn’t they know where it was going? Just as Elder Tho could remove Giang, she could as easily remove Yên.

  “Don’t make a fuss, child. That is unbecoming of you.”

  Mother. Elder Tho had never liked her or Mother, and no matter how self-destructive it might be for the village. She’d smile and say that diseases killed anyway, that there were other scholars who knew the words of the Broken-World Teacher, never mind that none of them knew how to apply them to healing.

  Being rude would get her nowhere. They’d already decided, but they were reluctant to make a scene unless they absolutely had to. And she could use that to bargain for scraps.

  The thought was as bitter as ashes in her mouth.

  Yên said, slowly, “Mother is old and wise, and I’m her only support. If I go away, would someone take care of her?”

  “I’ve told you,” Elder Giang said. They sounded exhausted. “I’ll take care of your mother.”

  Yên looked, unblinkingly, at Elder Tho. Because she needed to hear Tho say it. Not a promise—she wouldn’t be able to trust it—but something from her. Anything.

  Scraps. Crumbs.

  “It will be arranged,” Elder Tho said, smoothly. “We’re not suggesting that filial piety be trampled. But the village has incurred a debt, and it has to be paid.”

  A debt. A life given to the dragon, and everyone knew what dragons did with the lives of mortals. At best, she’d be dead; at worse, a plaything to be broken.

  Yên inclined her head. “May I say goodbye?” she asked.

  Elder Tho frowned. “We have no time—” Something in Elder Giang’s face must have stopped her, because although Giang didn’t say anything, they suddenly seemed to grow taller yet, filled with the wrath of Heaven.

  “Filial piety,” Elder Giang said, simply. A single word in Viêt.

  Elder Tho didn’t move, but she relaxed, a fraction. “Not long, then,” she said, grudgingly.

  TWO

  The Heart of the River

  Mother woke up, only for long enough for Yên to kiss her. She sank back immediately into sleep afterward, and Yên wasn’t even sure if Mother would remember this upon waking. Yên could only hope, could only pray to dead ancestors for a mercy that had long since departed from the world. Even the Vanishers hadn’t known what the word meant. They had been cruel and fey, taking what they pleased to build their artefacts and gates and ships. Mercy was something Yên’s ancestors had had to teach themselves, to remember that they were different.

  In the end, Yên left a message to Mother in the house: broad strokes hurriedly written on a scrap of paper she wedged under her empty teacup. What could one say to one’s own mother? Every word seemed too small, too slight to say what Yên wanted to say: please live. Please grow older and wiser, and recognized. Please.

  And the words she couldn’t put on paper, lying heavy on her heart: I always thought you would go first. It’s unfair, parents shouldn’t have to bury their own children. Please forgive me. I was given no choice.

  One small mercy to be thankful for: it was night, and all the children were in bed. They wouldn’t have to watch—because of course they’d have had to, just as every purification was a public occurrence. They’d wake up and find Yên gone, and forget her in time. Though she hoped Vinh’s parents would remember what she’d said, and encourage Vinh to sit for the examinations: the nine-year-old had true talent, the kind that would blossom into scholarship if properly tended to. A small pinch of regret that she’d never see that, or find out if Khiêm would ever learn to sit still and listen, or if Thiên An would understand she needed to take more risks in her essays and in her life.

  They would be fine. They were the village’s future, and not even Elder Tho would dare to cut those lives short.

  Elder Tho and the others escorted Yên to the edge of the Plague Grove, outside the village’s walls. There’d been a debate on whether they should put on isolation skins, but Elder Tho had cut it short: they couldn’t offend the dragon by implying she might be contagious. So, the skins remained in the village. Elder Giang looked, for a moment, in danger of being sent back to the village, but Elder Tho grudgingly allowed them to come with Yên. They walked in silence, not saying a word, until they reached the Plague Grove.

  It was away from the village: a place for travelers to be quarantined if necessary. The trees were skeletal and thin. Silver circles of words surrounded them, generations of scholar-magicians inscribing wards of protection for the village’s safety in the ground until the paint itself seemed to have become part of the earth. In the center was the purifying artefact, mercifully silent and dark. At least Yên wasn’t going there. At least it would be over soon, except that she couldn’t even be sure of that.

  Yên stood, shivering, in the trees by the river’s side. A smell of sheening oil and rot wafted from the polluted water. Light shone beneath the surface, dancing in abstract patterns. The skeletal, hollow moon limned the gnawed, diseased branches in dim grey light. By Yên’s side were the village elders, ghostly, almost-featureless figures in the moon’s light. Elder Tho held Yên’s wrist tight enough to bruise. “She’s late,” Elder Tho said, sounding annoyed.

  Yên wasn’t sure if late made a difference—a few more moments of freedom, a few more moments of breathing—because who knew why the dragon had asked for a life?

  “Elder sister.” Elder Giang’s voice was tinny and muffled as they spoke. “Please be quiet. At night—”

  Yên could have laughed, if she’d still had laughter in her. Of course, they were outside the village boundaries at night, and Heaven only knew what waited for them under the trees.

  “Perhaps we should have taken your mother,” Elder Tho said.

  Yên forced out words from between frozen lips. “You promised...” But what was the value of promises, to women such as her? Elder Tho had always gotten her own way. She had always had the village bend to her will and whims, and an impoverished scholar like Yên weighed so little in her world.

  To Yên’s surprise, Elder Tho shook her head. “I did.” Her voice was low and thoughtful. “We made a bargain, and I’ll hold to it. If you do.”

  “You know I have no choice,” Yên said. She bit her lip. Respect, she had to remember respect, but she was tired of bowing to her own death.

  Elder Tho’s mouth opened—to censure, to order every bone in Yên’s body broken—but Elder Giang spoke up first. “Elder sister, the river!”

  In the water, the luminous stains had stopped drifting: they swirled around a motionless center, as if someone had planted a brush into the river’s bed and turned, again and again, a slowly increasing frenzy of stains and blobs all merging into one another, a congealing mass of light shot through with holes like a lotus root hollowed out of seeds. No, not a mass of light: they were words, the same ones that had trailed the drag
on as she’d come into the village. Duty. Dreams. Worship.

  The light dimmed, throwing into sharp relief the boundaries between letters. The words drifted slightly apart as if something, holding its breath and drawing them all in, had suddenly released it.

  Something pushed from beneath the water—emerging, lithe and sinuous, a huge, serpentine body, translucent stubs of antlers with the same glow as the moon’s—a mane, scattering droplets of river water as the dragon shook herself, her roar the thunder of a storm that stripped leaves and bark from the trees. Teeth—sharp, pointed—gleamed in her mouth, and it took no effort at all to imagine that huge maw snapping over flesh and bone, tearing chunks of meat away from arms and legs, nudging ribs open to gobble up heart and liver and lungs.

  Mother had been right: she was beautiful.

  Yên should have been on her knees like the elders, face pressed to the ground, hiding from this luminous, terrible creature to whom she now belonged, from her death and all the stretched hours that would come before it. But she couldn’t look away.

  The dragon stretched, body arching upward, a line of scales pointing straight to the lambent sky; and then bent forward again, head making straight for the shore, gaining speed, as if she meant to scoop Yên up in her jaws. Yên, sluggish and entranced, watched her come: light coalescing on pearlescent scales, droplets of water shaken to the ground like a shower of jade and silver, eyes as large as her hands, the dark pupils like a hole into which she was endlessly falling—

  The light shifted, hardened. The dragon shimmered, and shrank. For a bare moment, she was two things in the same place. And then the serpentine body faded, and only the shape of a human remained.

  It was the same person Yên had already seen: unchanged, though her face was tight with an expression Yên couldn’t name. Eagerness, blood-thirst?

  Ancestors...

  The dragon walked to where Yên was standing, slowly, leisurely. Around Yên, the air tightened, turning cold and wet. Tendrils of mist rose from the ground, smelling musty, clamping themselves around Yên’s limbs and face until she could no longer move.