Page 9

“Slowly,” murmured a woman’s voice.

A blur of light gradually became my mother.

“Slowly. Don’t sit up so fast.”

The back of my head ached, and my eyes were sticky with grime.

I felt like I’d been unconscious for a week.

“What happened?”

Fal stated the obvious: “Yargui took us.”

I let out a groan as I sat up.

The floor was cold, and ropes chafed at my wrists and ankles.

I blinked.

“Did they hurt you?”

“We haven’t been awake long enough for that,” replied Nomi.

Ever practical, my youngest sister.

Though now that I thought about it, I had smelled winksweed on those sacks over our heads.

Probably enough to knock us out through the afternoon.

“Where are we?”

No one answered, and I wished I hadn’t asked.

Once my vision came back into focus, I knew exactly where we were.

Our old house.

It was falling apart, the wood on the walls stripped bare, the ceiling weeping dust.

Still, as clear as yesterday, I could picture the way it had been.

In my mind, I resurrected the wooden screen that my sisters and I had hidden behind while eavesdropping on Mama reading fortunes.

The hall my sisters and I scampered down, chasing each other while wearing Baba’s sailing clothes, tripping over his long sleeves and landing hard on the smooth walnut floor.

I shook away the memories.

Right now we were trapped in the kitchen.

Insects skittered from unseen hollows, their activity making the shadows dance.

All four of us huddled together.

We hated roaches.

Nomi blew at her bangs.

“I wish I’d poisoned them,” she muttered, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking about Puhkan and his men.

“Stupid firecrackers didn’t do anything.”

I inched closer to her.

“It was brave of you,” I said, “and very clever. Did you make them yourself?”

Nomi nodded.

“They were supposed to explode more, not just give off smoke.”

“Maybe it’s good they didn’t,” I reasoned.

“We were still in the room.”

Nomi sighed.

Her stomach growled loudly.

“Do you think they’ll feed us? Or will they just kill us?”

“Hush,” hissed Mama.

“I’m trying to pray.” Her hands were locked together, and she looked up, silently imploring the gods to save us.

I gazed up too, but for a different reason.

Looking down meant I’d see the bloodstains from Gaari’s eye patch, still on my sleeve.

Heat pricked the corners of my eyes, tears on the verge of falling.

I’m sorry, my friend, I thought.

When I make it out of here, I’ll avenge you.

I swear it.

“Tru,” Nomi whispered.

“You all right?”

No, I wasn’t all right.

But this wasn’t the time for me to mourn.

“Are there shards on the ground?” I asked, getting to business.

I used my feet to shuffle through the debris.

There were pieces of porcelain, dead roaches, and remains of other pests I wished I didn’t have to look at.

“Don’t bother,” said Fal.

“The big pieces have all been swept clean.”

“So they have,” came a familiar silky voice.

Puhkan joined us in the kitchen.

“My men and I took pains to smoke out the rats; we wanted the house to be in proper order for your arrival.” He sniffed.

“I can still smell the fire, can you?”

Now that he said it, I did.

Shadows leapt from a brazier behind us, flames crackling.

“It’s just kindling for now,” said Puhkan.

“But if you start taking too long…” He tapped Nomi’s nose with the end of a burnt matchstick.

“Little alchemist, I, too, enjoy playing with fire.”

“Don’t you touch her,” I hissed.

“Or what?” Puhkan laughed.

“You should be proud of your daughters, Weina. The youngest has a scholar’s mind; your second daughter, an exquisite beauty. And the oldest…”

He gave me a look I didn’t like.

“What are we doing here?” said Mama.

A spark of her old strength ticked in her jaw.

“I know Madam Yargui to be a fair woman. My daughter paid—”

“Which is much appreciated,” said Puhkan, fluttering his fingers to show off the ring.

It shone spectacularly, but something else caught my eye.

That cloudy red spot on the opal was back.

And it was moving.

“Let us go,” I said.

“A deal is a deal.”

“Don’t look so cross, Truyan. Your stay here has nothing to do with the sparklers your sister set off last night. If anything, any other day, we might have even offered her a job. You too, for your thievery. But…”

“But what?”

“But you said something interesting at the noodle house,” Puhkan said.

“At first I thought it was the rambling of a foolish girl, but I haven’t been able to forget it. Remind me again.”

I bit down on my cheek.

My big, stupid mouth.

“I said I could read fortunes,” I lied stoutly.

“Like my mother.”

“No, no.” Puhkan rubbed his eyes, still bloodshot from the chili.

“You said, specifically, ‘I can paint the future.’?”

“I lied.”

He clucked.

Next I knew, his fist came flying at my face.

Nomi screamed as I flew back.

I landed on my stomach, my chin scraping the rusted ground.

Yet it was my cheek that stung most, the outline of the opal ring imprinted onto my skin.

As I screwed up my face, I tasted the coat of blood on my teeth and spat, “Still upset about the peppers, I see.”

“Oh, I’ve been seeing red all day. I don’t expect it’s about to stop.” Puhkan picked up his knife and pressed the flat of his blade into my neck.

He spoke into my ear, “Now, the truth.”

“Leave her alone,” pled Mama.

“If you or Madam want your fortune told, you’ve only to ask. I still have Sight that—”

“Do you recall the game you played when you lost this house, Weina?” Puhkan interrupted.

Mama went rapidly pale.

“It was fortune’s toss,” he answered for her.

“?‘One more throw,’ you said, before you gambled away your house. ‘Fortune is with me still. I can see it.’?” He leaned forward.

“Your Sight has come back, I take it. How about another toss?” He dug the knife into the swell of my throat.

“This time for your daughters’ lives.”

Mama was stricken.

She shook her head vehemently.

“No.”

“How can you refuse? If you win, I will let all of you go. If you lose”—Puhkan inclined his chin, and his men grabbed both Nomi and Fal by the necks—“you can stay in your old house forever—as ghosts.”

“Leave her alone,” I rasped.

“I’ll play.”

“You?” Puhkan pinched me by my chin.

“I’m the real fortune teller. What, are you afraid I’ll win?”

He let out a low laugh.

“Simple rules: I throw five tiles in the air. You paint which ones will land facing up. If you’re right, your family can go. If not”—Puhkan drew a line across his throat—“that clever little sister of yours will get a bloody necklace.”

My jaw throbbed with pain.

Damn it, what was I doing?

I couldn’t control what I saw.

It was too late to back out.

One of Puhkan’s men set a piece of parchment on the ground, cut the ropes binding my wrists, and gave me a brush soaked in cinnabar ink.

Puhkan bounced a sack of tiles on his palm.

The cloudy spot on his ring was still moving, but no one else seemed to notice.

“Falina, you’ll toss. Little alchemist will call out the tiles. That way all the sisters can be involved.”

“Draw bamboo,” Nomi urged me.

“There are more bamboo tiles than any other in the game. Your odds are highest.”

Nomi didn’t believe I had Sight, and I wished she were right.

A game of odds could be influenced.

There were 164 tiles to choose from: flowers, the four directions of the wind, bamboo, and circles.

Bamboo was indeed the sensible choice.

The problem was, I did have Sight.

A faint tingle shivered down my fingers, pulling me toward the brush.

The parchment was wet, a layer of water glimmering as red ink from my brush dripped onto the page.

While Puhkan taunted my sisters about our game, I stared at the opal ring on his finger.

It was clear now that the hand in my vision had been Puhkan’s.

And the trees?

Outside the kitchen window, larches rustled, swaying like upright feathers.

I’d grown up with them, hung lanterns on them at every festival.

How could I have forgotten?

But that smudge on the opal was still a mystery.

I tilted my head, squinting at it.

Reddish light yawned from the jewel, its shape almost like…

like a wing.

A wing.

Suddenly my teeth chattered, and a violent tremble coursed through my body, as it did whenever a vision at last came true.

I clasped my shaking hands together so Puhkan wouldn’t see.

“Are you ready, Truyan?” he was saying as his men cut Falina’s wrists free and shoved the bag of tiles into her arms.

“We’re starting.”

As the tremor passed, my eyes were already starting to roll back.

I couldn’t fight off the premonition that was about to seize me.

This had happened before, always when I’d been in a desperate situation, my heart pounding in my ears the way it did now.

Holding my brush at a slant, I dragged it to the paper, and before Falina made her toss, I began to paint.

The ink was wetter than I liked, so I carefully made downward strokes to minimize smearing.

Slowly the lines of a bird formed.

Her neck was long and curved like a crescent moon, her wings majestic as a crane’s.

Peacock feathers extended off her grand tail, which nearly trailed off the page.

Last, lifting my brush upright, I drew her eyes, a gleaming crimson.

A phoenix.

If I were playing for odds, it was the worst choice, because there was only one.

But I had a feeling.

“Magic paintbrush,” I murmured as I came out of my trance.

At the words, puffs of steam hissed from the phoenix’s outline.

Her wings bubbled up from the damp parchment, her crimson eyes blinking alive.

If you want to live, she uttered in my mind, stop gawking and get the ring back.

I nearly dropped my brush.

“What in the—” Icy mist clogged my throat, closing it off so I couldn’t speak.

“Time’s up,” said Puhkan.

“Alchemist, announce thetiles.”

Nomi’s voice trembled.

She could see what I’d painted, and from her expression, I knew it didn’t match the tiles Falina had thrown.

“Only one piece has landed face up,” Nomi whispered, the color leaching from her face.

She held up the tile.

“Three bamboos.”

“And what did your sister paint?” Puhkan leered, though he already knew the answer.

“Don’t—” Falina cried, but the men pushed her to theside.

Puhkan stalked toward me, a dagger at hand.

“A pity,” he said.

“Ghosts it is.”

A shock of water burst out of my painting, throwing Puhkan against the wall before he swiped at my throat.

Mama and Nomi rammed him from the side, and Fal dropped the nearest brazier onto his head.

Get the ring!

the watery spirit shouted in my head.

It sliced through the ropes binding my ankles.

Now!

Shooting to my feet, I seized the ring from Puhkan’s hand, slid it onto my thumb.

Immediately, the opal in the center started glowing, iridescent colors swirling into a mist that soon flooded out.

“What’s that?” Nomi cried.

“I don’t know,” I said, ushering my family out of the kitchen.

“Let’s get out of here.”

A phoenix, made entirely of water, peeled off my tile painting.

Her every feather rippled with the intensity of a cascading waterfall, and her wings were crystalline, each ridge like a shard of ice.

Her red eyes blazed.

There’s a carriage outside, she rasped.

Get inside.

You owe Elang’anmi a debt.

With that, she flew over Puhkan’s men, swiping at them with her enormous talons.

“It’s a spirit,” the men gasped.

“Petty sorcery,” snarled Puhkan.

“Cut it down. Burn it.”

His men kicked over the brazier and charged at the bird, slashing through her feathers with their daggers.

But no steel or iron could penetrate her, and she hissed at them.

“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Mama and my sisters.

We made for the window in the back of the kitchen, the same one I’d stared out of when Baba left home for the last time.

Countless times I had laid my head against the wooden sills, waiting for him to come home.

Now I kicked through the milky paper panes and helped my family escape onto theroad.

At the last minute, I glanced back at the phoenix.

Puhkan and his men were waving torches at her.

The fiery heat made her feathers melt and flicker, and the phoenix’s red eyes darkened dangerously.

Rushing forward, she spread her wings wide, flying through Puhkan and his men and dousing the torches until they were but wisps of smoke.

The air turned cold, and the men grew afraid.

“Please, divine spirit. We mean you no harm.”

The phoenix rose high above them, her magnificent wings still spread.

A few of her feathers had melted from the fire, and in a dramatic display, she revived them one by one—only this time, each feather was icicle sharp at the tip.

The men tried to run, but the phoenix whipped her tail around them in a loop.

Using her wing, she smothered Puhkan’s face, digging into his temples with her feathers.

His skin went translucent like the jade disk hanging over his chest.

I climbed out of the window right before he screamed.

As promised, a carriage was waiting on the road.

I recognized its gilded wheels and the carved dragons along the roof.

My family was already inside, and once I joined them, the horses took off, making for the hills.

Behind, our old house went up in flames.

Puhkan’s men fled through the door, yelling and shrieking.

While Mama and my sisters stared, embracing each other in relief, my gaze went to the sky.

I was looking for the phoenix, but she was gone.

All that was left was a cloud of silvery mist floating toward the carriage.

It sneaked inside through the window slats and gathered over my hand.

In a blink, it vanished, and I looked down at the opal ring, which had turned suddenly cold on my finger.

I swore I heard a laugh tinkling within its hollows.