The Red Threads of Fortune Read online

  All that is, exists through the grace of the Slack. All that moves, moves through the grace of the Slack.

  The firmament is divided into the five natures of the Slack, and in them is written all the ways of things and the natural world.

  First is the nature of earth. Know it through the weight of mountains and stone, the nature of things when they are at rest.

  Second is the nature of water. Know it through the strength of storms and rivers, the nature of things that are in motion.

  Third is the nature of fire. Know it through the rising of air and the melt of winter ice, the nature of things that gives them their temperature.

  Fourth is the nature of forests. Know it through the beat of your heart and the warmth of your blood, the nature of things that grow and live.

  Fifth is the nature of metal. Know it through the speed of lightning and the pull of iron, the nature of things that spark and attract.

  Know the ways of the five natures, and you will know the ways of the world. For the lines and knots of the Slack are the lines and knots of the world, and all that is shaped is shaped through the twining of the red threads of fortune.

  It was a long spiel. So long that by the time her attention had slogged all the way to its odious end, her lungs had stopped trying to collapse upon themselves. Her head still hurt, lines of stress running from the crown to the joints of neck and shoulder, but her legs held when she stood.

  Phoenix came and pressed her massive snout against Mokoya, whining in distress. “Shh,” Mokoya said, palms gentle against the pebbled skin of the creature’s nose. “Everything will be okay. I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.”

  The raptor pack circled them. They were almost as tall as Mokoya when dismounted. Unlike her, they seemed to be largely unaffected by the naga’s passage.

  Mokoya marked the spot where the beast had disappeared. She could spin this into a triumph. No more hunting, no more groping through unsympathetic desert searching for signs. She had found the naga’s nest. And the best part of it: defying the reports they’d heard, the naga was average for its kind. They’d hunted bigger; they’d certainly captured bigger. This wasn’t the otherworldly monstrosity Mokoya had been fearing. Adi’s crew could definitely handle this one without problems.

  Mokoya raised her left wrist to deliver the good news, then remembered what she’d done to the transmitter. Cheebye.

  Wait. No. There was still the talker. How could she have forgotten?

  Phoenix lowered herself to the sand at Mokoya’s command. She reached into the saddlebag and rooted around until she collided with the talker’s small round mass, the bronze hard and warm against her palm. Tensing through metal-nature infused the object with life-giving electricity. Its geometric lines lit up, plates separating into a loose sphere. Slackcraft. Mokoya turned the plates until they formed the configuration twinned with Adi’s talker.

  Several seconds passed. Adi’s voice welled up from the glowing sphere. “Mokoya! Kanina—is that you or a ghost?”

  “It’s me, Adi. I’m not dead yet.”

  An annoyed noise, another expletive. “Eh, hello, I let you go by yourself doesn’t mean you can ignore me, okay? What happened to Yongcheow’s stupid machine?”

  “Something,” Mokoya demurred. “An accident.” She leaned against Phoenix’s warm, patient bulk. Get to the point. “Adi, I’m coming back. I found the nest. I did it, all right? I found the naga’s nest.”

  Chapter Two

  THE VISION HIT MOKOYA on the way back to camp.

  As usual, the warning signs came too late. Dizziness, a shot of vertigo, and frisson up the spine. Not enough time to dismount and get to stable ground before the Slack punched her into the past, soup-heavy and pungent.

  The world snapped into a different form. Sunfall-sky, tang of firecracker smoke, crash of trumpets and drums. Mokoya was eight years old, brimming with anxiety as she shivered on the upper floor of an inn over a choreographed riot of color and noise. The spring procession. Chengbee. Behind her was Master Sung, Head Abbot of the Grand Monastery, and twenty pugilists he had handpicked. All of them scanned the sky, waiting for it to betray the first hint of horned head, of wings swallowing the falling sun.

  Two weeks before, Mokoya had had a nightmare of celebration shredded by death. It was a desperately specific nightmare, of the sort that Mokoya had been plagued with recently. The sort that then came to pass exactly as Mokoya had seen them.

  If this nightmare was like the others, it meant a naga would attack the spring procession when the sun fell. She did not want it to. She did not want to be labeled a prophet, someone who saw the future in dreams. She did not know why it was happening to her.

  Beside her stood Akeha. Her twin, her anchor. In this time before they had confirmed their genders, she was his mirror, and they were indistinguishable except for her mismatched eyes. He let the sides of their hands touch, to show that he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid of her.

  The sky deepened rapidly to plum, then bruise-black. Sunfall.

  Everything tumbled forward with terrifying speed. Darkness descended, deeper than twilight. The awning of a naga’s wings blanketed the horizon: someone’s trophy pet, frightened and angry. The crowd screamed, and the pugilists kicked off, rising in a cloud, weapons primed and humming.

  But it was Akeha, bright Akeha, who moved fastest. He closed his fist over his head, and water-nature surged. An animal scream split the air. The naga’s massive body twisted, plunging in free fall. Someone grabbed her shoulder. Someone shouted, “Jump!” Mokoya leapt forward, and—

  She was lying on her back, sand clotting her mouth and burning her eyes. Confusion, at first, then clarity. Her name was Sanao Mokoya, she was thirty-nine years old, and she was no longer a prophet. In exchange for grim futures, she had gained a lizard arm and a mass of scars congealed across her face and body. This was the Gusai desert. She did not fear naga. She hunted them.

  Phoenix lay next to her on the sand, an obedient mound of raptor, breath disturbing the red sands. Slowly Mokoya sat up, ignoring the pain that flared through her hip. Bodily pain was a temporary condition. She knew this.

  Lashed to her waist was the dream recorder she always wore, a box of intricately carved bronze bearing the heavy patina of age and the particular workmanship of the Protector’s court. Powered by slackcraft, it had been a constant presence in her life since childhood, when the adults around her had wanted records of every Slack-touched vision.

  The box hummed with another successful dream capture, a satisfied sound that was almost gleeful.

  Mokoya flipped its lid and extracted its contents: a palm-sized glass pearl, teardrop-shaped and freshly filled, insides swirling with opalescent colors. Not liquid, just light, an imprinted pattern in the Slack.

  Once upon a time, when she still saw the future in dreams, each filled capture pearl would be taken by Tensors and analyzed over and over, every drop of meaning and context wrung from its innards.

  Then the accident happened, and the gift of prophecy left her. When the Slack hit her these days, it was with moments from her past, even ones she herself had forgotten. Her dream recorder, ever faithful, caught these fragments of history in its glass droplets.

  Sometimes they were useful. In Phoenix’s saddlebag, nestled amongst the thick folds of brocade, lay a dozen other capture pearls, their bellies full of slivers from happier times. Gap-toothed smiles, sticky fingers, a little girl’s hair haloed in summer light. But sometimes it was moments like these, full of things she didn’t care to remember.

  Mokoya twisted the capture pearl in her hands. Up to that point in their lives, she and Akeha had been ordinary children, sold by the Protector to the Grand Monastery to repay a debt, content to live their lives in ascetic obscurity. After Mokoya had been confirmed a prophet, their lives had started the thirty-year-long process of coming apart. Why would she want to keep something like that?

  She tensed the vision out of the pearl, unknotting the braids in the Slack
that kept it in existence. Briefly a thought crossed her mind: she should undo the skin on her wrists and belly, and spill her blood and guts into the soft sand. Let her flesh be dissolved by the wind and her bones be bleached by the sun.

  Mokoya looked at Phoenix. The raptor huffed, patiently waiting for her to move on.

  With a sigh, Mokoya got to her feet. She felt calmer now, or at least numb, as though the vision had lanced through her chest and drained the abscess of nervous energy. “Come,” she said to Phoenix. “Let’s get going.”

  * * *

  “We should capture it.”

  Yongcheow and Adi exchanged a glance. One was the willowy Tensor son of a magistrate, raised among silk and baubles; the other a simple Kebangilan herder woman, squat and ropy from years of hard work. But the language their eyes spoke was universal.

  “You gila or what?” Adi asked with a squint.

  “I’m not a madwoman,” Mokoya said, and this time her conviction was real. “I’m telling you, I saw the naga with my own two eyes. We can handle it. Why would I lie to you?”

  “Because you have completely lost your mind,” Yongcheow snapped, arms hedged across his chest. The loss of his transmitter stung, and he was in no mood to play nice with his sister-in-law. Akeha had sent him with the crew to keep an eye on things, but everyone knew it was really to keep an eye on Mokoya, and the two had scratched at each other’s nerves for a dozen sun-cycles.

  Mokoya was tired. She ignored him and looked at Adi. As crew captain, her decision was the only one that mattered. “This will be no different from any other assignment,” she said. “We know where the naga is now. If we wait for the Machinists to tell us what to do, we might lose it. It might move on. Or attack. We can’t delay.” She added, more amicably, “You’re not the delaying kind.”

  “No meh?” Adi’s face bore skepticism, but Mokoya could see her resistance crumbling like weathered clay. She was a practical person, after all, someone whose world was structured to avoid the stingers and thorns of politics. Born a princess to a sprawling, squabbling family, she had married a commoner to escape the strictures of royal life, only to divorce him later. Adi was a woman of few regrets. This assignment—which she had agreed to for Mokoya’s sake—might be one of them.

  It was a sentiment Mokoya shared.

  Yongcheow scowled. “Look, I know you think I know nothing. Fine. Will you at least listen to the wisdom of the Machinists? This is no ordinary naga, blown from the Quarterlands by accident. The Tensors did something to it. The Protectorate sent it here for a reason. We can’t treat this like one of your normal hunts.”

  Mokoya said, “The Machinists’ report said the naga was big. It’s not. Obviously their wisdom has large gaps.”

  A frustrated burst of air escaped Yongcheow. “The pugilists from the Grand Monastery arrive tomorrow. Let’s at least wait until—”

  Mokoya snapped, “We don’t need Thennjay’s help.”

  Silence buried them all. In the heartbeats that followed, Mokoya knew she had spoken too loudly, too fiercely, and cursed the looseness of her mouth. Adi and Yongcheow were frozen in apprehension. Even the crew, flocked on the sand between the tents, had turned to stare.

  Mokoya’s diaphragm squeezed, as though the heaviness infesting her belly was pulling the drawstrings tight. She kept her jaw clamped shut as her throat spasmed.

  “Okay,” Adi abruptly said into the quiet. “We do it.”

  Yongcheow shot her a look of betrayal, his mouth forming a protest. Adi stopped him with a glance. Mokoya watched the split-second exchange and realized that they had talked while she was away. Filaments of worry wormed through her chest. What had they discussed? What had they agreed on?

  “We go at next sunrise,” Adi said. “And we only have a few hours to prepare. So come. Chop-chop.”

  * * *

  On the periphery of the camp, Mokoya found a series of cracked shale outcrops the right size and shape for cudgel practice. Dozens of yields away, Adi’s crew sat under the gentle circles of sunball-light, sharing spiced tea and tall tales before the hunt. Strains of their laughter drifted over, as though mocking her. The ink of the sky diluted in anticipation of the coming sunrise. Mokoya had ten minutes left to get ready.

  She inhaled, becoming hyperaware of her body in relation to the rest of the world: her feet light on the ground, the cudgel loose in her hand, the heaviness solid in her stomach.

  She exhaled, and in that breath, the world slowed around her.

  Mokoya struck. She was lightning, she was quicksilver, she was the sun that flew across the sky. Her cudgel struck the rock six times in succession, each blow landing with a crack. Needle-precise fractures shot across the rock in dark lines.

  She pulled skeins of metal-nature together. The cudgel came to life, its core singing with electricity. Mokoya spun in the sand. The bolt arced and struck the rock, dead center.

  It shattered. Shale fragments plowed into the sand, and dust billowed up in circles.

  Mokoya moved on to the next outcrop.

  She was most alive like this, conscious thought subsumed beneath layers of movement. Focused on destruction, she didn’t have to think about other things. Like seeing Thennjay again, after two years on the run, or the depth of betrayal she felt at Akeha for summoning him here.

  Part of her wanted to die in glorious battle against the naga, just because she knew it would hurt Akeha. It’d serve him right, thinking that he knew what to do better than she did. Turtle bastard.

  The Slack unmake them all. She swore as she struck the columns of rock over and over. Fuck. Shit. Kanin—nahbeh—chao—cheebye—

  You’ve learned to swear like a southern merchant, her brother had said, back in the city. He’d sounded proud of the fact.

  Mokoya slammed one end of the cudgel into the sand so hard it stayed upright. Her heart galloped in her chest, and she didn’t know how much of it was exertion, and how much of it was nerves. She wanted to explode the same way the columns of rock had.

  She let her cheeks billow with breath several times. Misery and anger blossomed in bright colors over her right arm. No good. Mokoya tightened her cloak over her shoulders, as if that would hide it.

  Phoenix had been watching her from a safe distance. Mokoya went over and plunged a hand into her saddlebag, desperately seeking a capture pearl. Just one memory, any memory. A lottery of the past.

  She extracted her hand from the bag. In her trembling fingers, a sunrise-pink capture pearl shimmered. Yes. This would do. Mokoya settled cross-legged against Phoenix and tempered her breathing. As she gently tensed through the pearl’s contents, the vision unfolded in her head, brilliant and crisp as the day it was made.

  Eien, round-cheeked and sticky, pointed to belts and buttons with their blunt fingers, saying “Yim? Yim?”

  A bright afternoon eight years ago. Eien, new to talking, too young to have thought about gender, testing out their favorite word “khim,” which their tender tongue could not yet shape. Yim. Every reflective surface got pointed to and interrogated: “Yim? Yim?”

  A belly laugh, and there was Thennjay, sitting across from them in the traveling cart. Broad-shouldered, shaven-headed, dimpled as she remembered him. Ceremonial saffron vivid against the deep rosewood tones of his skin. Eien detached from her lap and bounced toward him. Their father lifted them into his arms, planting a kiss on their head, his smile ivory-brilliant. The child reached for the bangles on his arm. “Yim!”

  “Oei.”

  Mokoya opened her eyes very slowly, lingering in the golden light for another half second. In the grayish predawn, she found Adi standing over her, arms akimbo, genial expression displaced by a frown. A sunball glowed and bobbed beside her.

  “You’re really moody today, you know?”

  “I’m fine.” Mokoya cracked her neck, her shoulders.

  “Sure or not?” Adi’s tone made clear which side of the divide her opinions fell upon.

  Mokoya pulled her cloak over her arm. “You don’
t have to worry. I won’t jeopardize the hunt.”

  “You think I’m worried about the hunt?”

  Mokoya had come Adi’s way two years ago, a strange and angry woman with a giant raptor and a bagful of unfixable problems. Adi had looked that mess and somehow still said, Come with us.

  Mokoya sighed. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Okay. Can.” Adi shook her head wryly. She wasn’t fond of arguing, either. “Come. It’s time already.”

  Chapter Three

  THE RISING SUN BREATHED the sky to life. It sloughed through a gamut of clammy blues before warming to pink, its skin scarred with strips of cloud. Astride Phoenix, Mokoya smelled water on the air, a metallic tang cleaner than blood and not quite as sharp.

  The caverns chosen by the naga had a single mouth, a wide slash in the rock that could swallow Phoenix twenty times over. A hundred yields to its left lay the scrub-ringed clearing where the crew waited with hungry nets.

  Mokoya was the bait.

  She sent her soundball, a softly glowing, plum-sized sphere laden with the cries of naga prey, floating toward the cave mouth. Tensing through metal-nature woke the device and triggered a piercing blast: the trumpeting call of a tuapeh. A temptingly juicy meal for a naga.

  Silence followed. Stillness. The cave mouth remained undisturbed.

  Mokoya counted to six, then tensed again. Another sound.

  Phoenix shuffled, nervous.

  She couldn’t be wrong. The prickle rippling through her lizard arm meant the naga was close by.

  A shadow passed across the ground: wings, still distant, still indistinct. Startled, Mokoya looked up. The new sun greeted her, smearing green afterimage into her vision. She squinted.

  High overhead the naga circled, gliding, wings held straight.

  Surprise hissed between Mokoya’s teeth. The naga had left the cave during the sundown period. But naga had poor night vision. They hunted in daylight.

  The beast dipped downward, not vertically as for a landing, but sideways, like a flyby. Still out of their reach, but close enough that Mokoya could pick out the massive tendons in its wings, stretching out from the muscles of the arm, and—