Planetary: Mercury, page 13
“But the guards are coming!” Pao said.
“Not for another five minutes,” Wei snapped. “Now, leave me be. It will be done before then.”
“Fine,” Pao said, looking around nervously. “This isn’t one of your Kueh tricks, is it?”
Wei grimaced, but mumbled back a negative. She had wished the color of her eyes, a light gray instead of the normal brown, didn’t immediately identify her as one of the Kueh tribesmen of the northern provinces. While she didn’t care for the stereotype that the Kueh were thieves and swindlers (that was her job description, after all), the accusations that they used witchcraft, and perverted the arts of good, gods-fearing sorcerers or Life-Cultivation masters were something she could do without. She had had more than a few prospective clients turn her down after seeing her eyes.
She pushed this tumbler, and then that, and with the skill of a portrait-painter drawing out an image in ink, she unlocked the most mysterious vault in the Empire.
The door groaned open as Wei shoved her mass against it. Pao joined in, and slowly, they managed to push the massive door open a crack, enough to fit them both through. Once through, they tugged and groaned, pulling the door shut.
After a minute or two of heavy breathing, they looked around themselves. The base floor of the tower was rather plain, the only ornamentation being lacquered red capitals crowning redwood columns and an ornate staircase, all decorated with sinuous dragons, antlers and manes chiseled and carved with exquisite detail. It was fitting to see dragons everywhere, as they were the sign of the Emperor, and his divine ancestry.
However, the building they were in wasn’t fitting. Palaces shouldn’t have giant lighthouses built in the middle of them, especially if they were landlocked. No one, save for the Emperor and his Luminous Sages, were permitted to enter this tower.
Of course, that brought the rumors. Surely the Emperor hid only his costliest of treasures here, couched in gold and silk, and that the lights that shone at strange and erratic times was to light his treasury whenever he wished to view his wealth. Others, of a more cynical and superstitious bent, whispered that this tower was where the emperor committed blasphemous rituals, blood-stained and debauched rites meant to wrest the sacred lin, life force, the spark of the divine, from innocent virgin hearts. That, they said, was the only reason the lighthouse would shine at such times, whether the light banished the darkness in the night, or rivaled the sun in the day.
Wei thought it was likely treasure. A lot of treasure. As she bounded up the stairs, Pao following her, she was already planning on what she was going to do with the obscene amount of wealth that she’d be getting from this heist. She followed the stairs that clung to the octagonal wall, waiting to see the fabulous treasures doubtless in store.
The second floor wasn’t terribly interesting. It was populated with scroll shelves, diamond-lattice wood with dozens of rice-paper scrolls filed away, locked behind a lacquered screen with more ornate carvings, all to do with dragons. Sure, dragons were a sign of the divine Mandate of the Gods, the decree that gave the Emperor authority, but this tower’s aesthetic was bordering on obsessive.
Wei pulled out a scroll and opened it, as, oddly, it lacked a seal. “What is it?” Pao asked. Her partner was strong, often used as extra muscle, but illiterate. Wei could read, thanks to her mother, and her mother’s strange delusions.
“They look like military orders. They’re talking about different legions, moving through the YanDao mountain passes, dated a while back.” Wei replaced the scroll. “The treasure has to be upstairs,” she said, though part of her started to doubt that.
They ventured up to the third floor, which had a strange box in the center, swaddled in black silk, with two chains (or possibly one long one) disappearing into the container. The box had a lid, with small holes cut for the chains, and unlike everything else, it was bare, without adornment. “The chains lead to the next floor,” Wei said. “There’s probably some device hooked up to them. I’ll go check.”
She ran up these stairs, past ever-lit paper lanterns (the first real success of the Emperor’s alchemists), and stared at the strange sight.
The room had a large, cylindrical stone structure in the center, where the chains would have led into. It wasn’t cylindrical, Wei realized, but a ring of a spherical structure, bent outwards. A door, curved to fit the shape, lay open, and inscribed on the inside of the door, in hand-sized squares, were dozens of characters.
She stepped in. There, a silver globe hung, suspended on chains. Around it, above and below, were bowl-like stones, also spherical, inscribed with more characters. As she approached the silver globe, she realized it wasn’t silver, but glass, with strange lenses attached on what appeared to be strands of gossamer, and the silver within wasn’t actual silver, but mercury. The stuff of alchemy.
What the heck was this?
She saw a wheel, connected to the chain. “I think I found it!” Wei called down to Pao. “Stand by!” She grabbed the wheel, inscribed with different dragons clutching numbers to them, and began to turn it.
The chains moved, pulling up, and two things happened. One, the room was flooded with brilliant light from below, seeping through the cracks in the floorboards. Two, she heard a torturous scream from down below. Pao!
She rushed down, and beheld the source of light.
It was round, and caged in gold, and it shone with the fury of a thousand suns. She could make out strange designs shifting on the surface of the thing, like the bands of color that shifted across the alchemists’ flammable dragon oils, before the light overwhelmed her and she sank to her knees. And then, in the face of the harsh, merciless light, darkness fell over her eyes, and she collapsed.
Chapter 2: The Sages of Shar Lung
She awoke to darkness.
Wei knew her eyes were open, yet she saw nothing. And, searching her memories, the last thing she remembered seeing was that strange sphere, and the brilliant light that poured forth from it. Had it blinded her? Slowly, with trembling hands, she reached up to touch her eyes.
Instead, to her relief, she found thick bandages around her eyes. Reaching behind her head, she untied them. Slowly, gently, the darkness gave way to gentle red light. Misty shapes appeared as she unwound the bandages, these shapes becoming clearer and clearer with every slow unwinding. At last, the final length of cloth fell from her face, and her sight was unveiled.
She was alone in a small room, on a bed of simple linen. An ever-lit lantern hung above her, images of peacocks and dragons dancing whenever the strange, alchemical flame flickered.
There were a few other items in the room, mostly items invoking the gods of health and healing. Several stelae, carved of green malachite, called for the blessings of the gods of individual organs and humors, promoting good lin flow across the vital points of the body, and lay at the four cardinal points of the room, the prayers on them inscribed in the ornate clerical script. Behind them incense burned, filling the air with its pungent aroma. Other than those, the room was bare.
She rose on unsteady feet and made her way to the door. She tried it, and found it locked. She reached for her lockpicks, but realized that her thief garb was missing.
Wei sat down on the bed, angry and afraid. She was angry at everyone, but especially herself. How stupid did she have to be to be caught? Then again, it wasn’t really her fault. That strange orb, shining bright like a sun, burned into her memories as it had burned into her eyes, was to be blamed.
The door opened, and Wei stared as the ruler of the Empire of Yin, the most powerful man on earth, and the son of a god, entered her room.
Immediately, she prostrated herself, and refused to look up. There was an oath of fealty that she should have said, but it had been so long since Wei had needed to recite it that she thought it best to simply remain silent and pray to whoever in Heaven was listening that he decided not to execute her.
“Rise,” she heard a man say. She did, still keeping her eyes downcast. Others had entered the room, and she saw the robes of their station. There was the Imperial Augur, master of omens. Next to him, the elderly Imperial Alchemist, with his skin stretched over his skull like rice paper, shifted his knobby hands, his long fingernails clacking together. The Imperial Surgeon, younger, was the only one among the retinue who didn’t have the long, lacquered nails that denoted status. And behind him, with his white hair and beard reaching down to his chest, the Imperial Sage barely moved.
“Look up.” Slowly, hands shaking, she looked up, making sure not to make direct eye contact with the Emperor. To look into his eyes and declare oneself equal with one who had divine blood flowing through his veins was an act of blasphemy.
The other advisors gasped. “You were right,” the Emperor said to the Sage. “She is marked as you said. And of one of the northern tribes, strange.” He added that last part as a
“When she had not expired after the second hour, I knew she would survive, Your Highness,” the Sage said. He turned to face Wei. “Are you lettered, thief?”
“Lettered? I can read, if that’s what you mean,” Wei said. “Not cleric’s script, but regular characters, that is.”
“Ah. Well then,” the Sage said, “her arrival, capture, and her survival is most auspicious, Your Highness. She may have broken your laws, which Heaven gave you authority to declare, but she may also have been given to us as an act of providence. My Emperor, allow me to take her in as one of my retinue. I can speak with one of the conjurers to prevent her from attempting escape, but as one who has seen the light within the Tower and yet was not destroyed by it, she will be of great use to us.”
The Emperor loomed over her, and Wei stared at his silk slippers. “Hmm… very well. The Imperial Artificer has been working on a restraining device. That may be of more use to you in controlling this thief.” He turned and walked away. “I have more business to attend to. Clean her up and take her to the Artificer.”
Chapter 3: Secrets of the Sage’s Tower
“Finest quicksilver from the Yeng-Se Islands! The blood of ancient dragons, yours for only a small cost!”
“Genuine penghou meat and bones! Cut right from a camphor tree! Cure your aches and cast the bones for the future!”
“Talisman of Nine Dragons, blessed in the springs of Danzhou! Plague-ward, carved from the finest jade this side of the Mahn Mountains! Red Bat Amulet, bring you luck! Six-Demon Bag! All for a good bargain!”
Wei frowned and charged through the marketplace. She looked ridiculous, dressed in a robe of silk, instead of her normal, plain garments, and it felt alien on her skin.
It wasn’t as alien as the warm necklace she wore. The stone felt alive around her neck, and it may have been her imagination, but she swore she felt the thing move and writhe beneath the surface. It depicted a serpent, its body segmented into V-shapes that fit into each other, connected by a few links of silver chain. The sorcerer who had fastened it around her neck had promised her that should she disobey orders or attempt to leave the city, the necklace would contract and heat up, slicing off her head and burn while it did. Wei still felt the scrape of his long, lacquered fingernails on the back of her neck.
She rushed past the markets, up the streets, towards the monumental palace, and stepped through the gates. Multiple dragons stared down at her, their empty stone eyes imperious, rearing up, frozen in motion. She weaved through the statues, stepping through an archway beside the palace door and entering a lotus garden.
She stepped across the flagstones, making sure not to disturb the glassy surface of the artificial lake. Lotus blossoms broke the mirroring surfaces, two blossoms opening upwards and downwards, the reflections vivid and solid-looking. Wei had been stunned at the quiet, at the tranquility of this room. Now, she ran through the chambers without the reverence of the first time she had entered the lotus garden.
She ran through the courtyard, across the carefully furrowed sand, heedless of the patterns that gardeners had spent hours planning and a few days furrowing, and up to the door of the Tower. Only a few nights before, she was creeping along, hiding from the pools of light cast by the paper lanterns hung every so often. Now, she ignored the lanterns, dim in the daylight, and approached the door.
Wei adjusted the parcel of paper in her arms, before withdrawing the long iron key entrusted to her. This time, she didn’t have to pick the lock. She was welcome, if still supervised.
She entered the tower, and a strange feeling washed over her. It felt like she was being watched, like someone was studying her. It was a feeling she trusted, and had saved her life many times in her career of theft.
The Imperial Sage stood, arms folded. “There you are! And good, you have the paper. We’ll see if that… auspicious anomaly occurs again.”
“Auspicious anomaly?” Wei asked. “I assume you’re not meaning me.”
“No, you are the second. The first happened two weeks before you were found.” He stepped over to one of the lattice shelves and fetched a scroll. “We expected a message and instead we got this.” He opened the scroll.
There was a poem there, burned into the paper, the edges of the gaps dark and charred. Dusk falls over broken mountains, the poem said, and shadows fall over a traitor’s banner.
“So… someone burned poetry into paper?” Wei asked.
The Sage sighed. “No.” He gestured to her to follow him up into the stone bowl chamber on the fourth floor, where every inch of the curved wall was covered in carved stone characters. The more she looked at them, the more she noticed that each one had something to do with the military. “Do you see that?” the man asked, pointing a lacquered fingernail at the giant silver globe suspended in chains in the middle.
“What is it?” Wei asked. “It looks like quicksilver.”
“It is.” The Sage nodded. “It is a most potent elixir, and the only liquid medium noble enough to withstand the glory of the pearl.”
“The pearl?”
“Are you going to spill all the secrets to the thief?” someone behind them demanded. Wei turned to see a man in a dark, plain robe, with embroidered dragons snaking their way up his sleeves and curling around the hem. His dark eyes were surrounded by angry red tissue, inflamed and sickly. “Ah, forgive me, urchin. I am Ha Wen, Master Quangdau’s apprentice.” Quangdau. So that was the Sage’s name.
“Ha Wen, your arrogance is unbecoming. Wei, due to her gift, is also my apprentice,” the Sage snapped back. His eyes glinted dangerously from behind his white eyebrows. “Please see that your vanity and condescension is not so offensive to my sight next time by keeping it hidden.”
“Of course, Master.” He bowed his head.
“As I was saying, Wei, what you had glimpsed below, that which had claimed the life of your… associate, is known as the Pearl of Shar Lung.”
“Shar Lung, one of the Dragon Gods?” Wei asked in disbelief. “One of the Eight Sons of the Heaven Goddess and the God of the Earth and Underworlds?”
“The very same.” The Sage nodded. “He blessed the Empire, he and his sons, the Dragons of the North, by giving us their Pearls. What do you know of a dragon’s Pearl, Wei?”
“She’s a street thief. I doubt she’s very studious in her religious studies,” Ha Wen said.
“Ha Wen, your tongue moves, yet I hear no words of wisdom or wit. Only venom.” The Sage turned. “Refrain from speaking again, especially against someone who succeeded where you failed.”
Ha Wen frowned, and his hand brushed his reddened eye sockets. “Did he try to look at that… at the Pearl?” Wei asked.
“Yes. He nearly blinded himself.” The Sage paused. “Ha Wen, keep watch. Call to us if a message comes.” With that, the Sage led Wei out of the chamber.
“Anyway, the Pearl of a dragon is where it stores its lin, its life force. It is also where the source of dragons’ heavenly powers come from. What do you know of dragons, Wei?”
“They’re messengers of the gods,” Wei said, as they started to climb up some stairs.
“Precisely.” The fifth floor looked like a sorcerer’s laboratory. Wei had been in a sorcerer’s laboratory before, at the behest of a rival magician who had hired her to steal his rival’s secrets. There was a stone slab for chalk-drawings, several scroll-shelves, and strange glass equipment that shone, glinting in the steady glow of the paper lanterns. “This is where we ward the Tower, preventing peeping spirits and fouler conjurations from stepping near the entire palace.”
“It couldn’t ward off me,” Wei said.
“Yes, well, if our wards worked on mundane humans, every time someone entered they’d be reduced to ashes.” The Sage sighed. “Anyway, when Shar Lung gave us his Pearl, and had his sons give up theirs, he taught our sorcerers how to arrange a device to send messages across massive distances in an instant. We had discovered how to enchant scrolls, so one thing written on them would instantly appear in another, but that only worked over a short span.” The Sage smiled. “The Pearl shines its light on a character, and we record it. This way to the Astrology Chamber.” He proceeded up.
The Astrology Chamber was open to the sky, with a strange-looking device on a raised dais in the center of the Tower. “This is our viewing basin.” Wei inspected it as she approached. It looked like a large, shallow bowl made of dark iron, with a dragon curled around the brim, slightly lower than the rim of the basin. The Sage pushed on something, and the dragon curled upwards, the entire thing shifting until its mouth was right above the bowl. “The traders to the west, in their desert lands, taught us how to use the noble quicksilver to search the sky.” He pressed down on the antlers of the dragon, and the black statue spat forth a stream of silver liquid.
Immediately Wei backed up. “What is the matter?” the Sage asked.
“I’ve been told by my people that quicksilver is powerful, and dangerous,” Wei said.
“Ah.” The Sage nodded. The dragon continued to pour forth the stream of metal liquid until the dish was filled to the brim. The Sage pushed on one of the stones of the base, causing the dragon to curl down again, leaving the basin full of mercury. “Come closer, so you can see the mirror.”
“Not for another five minutes,” Wei snapped. “Now, leave me be. It will be done before then.”
“Fine,” Pao said, looking around nervously. “This isn’t one of your Kueh tricks, is it?”
Wei grimaced, but mumbled back a negative. She had wished the color of her eyes, a light gray instead of the normal brown, didn’t immediately identify her as one of the Kueh tribesmen of the northern provinces. While she didn’t care for the stereotype that the Kueh were thieves and swindlers (that was her job description, after all), the accusations that they used witchcraft, and perverted the arts of good, gods-fearing sorcerers or Life-Cultivation masters were something she could do without. She had had more than a few prospective clients turn her down after seeing her eyes.
She pushed this tumbler, and then that, and with the skill of a portrait-painter drawing out an image in ink, she unlocked the most mysterious vault in the Empire.
The door groaned open as Wei shoved her mass against it. Pao joined in, and slowly, they managed to push the massive door open a crack, enough to fit them both through. Once through, they tugged and groaned, pulling the door shut.
After a minute or two of heavy breathing, they looked around themselves. The base floor of the tower was rather plain, the only ornamentation being lacquered red capitals crowning redwood columns and an ornate staircase, all decorated with sinuous dragons, antlers and manes chiseled and carved with exquisite detail. It was fitting to see dragons everywhere, as they were the sign of the Emperor, and his divine ancestry.
However, the building they were in wasn’t fitting. Palaces shouldn’t have giant lighthouses built in the middle of them, especially if they were landlocked. No one, save for the Emperor and his Luminous Sages, were permitted to enter this tower.
Of course, that brought the rumors. Surely the Emperor hid only his costliest of treasures here, couched in gold and silk, and that the lights that shone at strange and erratic times was to light his treasury whenever he wished to view his wealth. Others, of a more cynical and superstitious bent, whispered that this tower was where the emperor committed blasphemous rituals, blood-stained and debauched rites meant to wrest the sacred lin, life force, the spark of the divine, from innocent virgin hearts. That, they said, was the only reason the lighthouse would shine at such times, whether the light banished the darkness in the night, or rivaled the sun in the day.
Wei thought it was likely treasure. A lot of treasure. As she bounded up the stairs, Pao following her, she was already planning on what she was going to do with the obscene amount of wealth that she’d be getting from this heist. She followed the stairs that clung to the octagonal wall, waiting to see the fabulous treasures doubtless in store.
The second floor wasn’t terribly interesting. It was populated with scroll shelves, diamond-lattice wood with dozens of rice-paper scrolls filed away, locked behind a lacquered screen with more ornate carvings, all to do with dragons. Sure, dragons were a sign of the divine Mandate of the Gods, the decree that gave the Emperor authority, but this tower’s aesthetic was bordering on obsessive.
Wei pulled out a scroll and opened it, as, oddly, it lacked a seal. “What is it?” Pao asked. Her partner was strong, often used as extra muscle, but illiterate. Wei could read, thanks to her mother, and her mother’s strange delusions.
“They look like military orders. They’re talking about different legions, moving through the YanDao mountain passes, dated a while back.” Wei replaced the scroll. “The treasure has to be upstairs,” she said, though part of her started to doubt that.
They ventured up to the third floor, which had a strange box in the center, swaddled in black silk, with two chains (or possibly one long one) disappearing into the container. The box had a lid, with small holes cut for the chains, and unlike everything else, it was bare, without adornment. “The chains lead to the next floor,” Wei said. “There’s probably some device hooked up to them. I’ll go check.”
She ran up these stairs, past ever-lit paper lanterns (the first real success of the Emperor’s alchemists), and stared at the strange sight.
The room had a large, cylindrical stone structure in the center, where the chains would have led into. It wasn’t cylindrical, Wei realized, but a ring of a spherical structure, bent outwards. A door, curved to fit the shape, lay open, and inscribed on the inside of the door, in hand-sized squares, were dozens of characters.
She stepped in. There, a silver globe hung, suspended on chains. Around it, above and below, were bowl-like stones, also spherical, inscribed with more characters. As she approached the silver globe, she realized it wasn’t silver, but glass, with strange lenses attached on what appeared to be strands of gossamer, and the silver within wasn’t actual silver, but mercury. The stuff of alchemy.
What the heck was this?
She saw a wheel, connected to the chain. “I think I found it!” Wei called down to Pao. “Stand by!” She grabbed the wheel, inscribed with different dragons clutching numbers to them, and began to turn it.
The chains moved, pulling up, and two things happened. One, the room was flooded with brilliant light from below, seeping through the cracks in the floorboards. Two, she heard a torturous scream from down below. Pao!
She rushed down, and beheld the source of light.
It was round, and caged in gold, and it shone with the fury of a thousand suns. She could make out strange designs shifting on the surface of the thing, like the bands of color that shifted across the alchemists’ flammable dragon oils, before the light overwhelmed her and she sank to her knees. And then, in the face of the harsh, merciless light, darkness fell over her eyes, and she collapsed.
Chapter 2: The Sages of Shar Lung
She awoke to darkness.
Wei knew her eyes were open, yet she saw nothing. And, searching her memories, the last thing she remembered seeing was that strange sphere, and the brilliant light that poured forth from it. Had it blinded her? Slowly, with trembling hands, she reached up to touch her eyes.
Instead, to her relief, she found thick bandages around her eyes. Reaching behind her head, she untied them. Slowly, gently, the darkness gave way to gentle red light. Misty shapes appeared as she unwound the bandages, these shapes becoming clearer and clearer with every slow unwinding. At last, the final length of cloth fell from her face, and her sight was unveiled.
She was alone in a small room, on a bed of simple linen. An ever-lit lantern hung above her, images of peacocks and dragons dancing whenever the strange, alchemical flame flickered.
There were a few other items in the room, mostly items invoking the gods of health and healing. Several stelae, carved of green malachite, called for the blessings of the gods of individual organs and humors, promoting good lin flow across the vital points of the body, and lay at the four cardinal points of the room, the prayers on them inscribed in the ornate clerical script. Behind them incense burned, filling the air with its pungent aroma. Other than those, the room was bare.
She rose on unsteady feet and made her way to the door. She tried it, and found it locked. She reached for her lockpicks, but realized that her thief garb was missing.
Wei sat down on the bed, angry and afraid. She was angry at everyone, but especially herself. How stupid did she have to be to be caught? Then again, it wasn’t really her fault. That strange orb, shining bright like a sun, burned into her memories as it had burned into her eyes, was to be blamed.
The door opened, and Wei stared as the ruler of the Empire of Yin, the most powerful man on earth, and the son of a god, entered her room.
Immediately, she prostrated herself, and refused to look up. There was an oath of fealty that she should have said, but it had been so long since Wei had needed to recite it that she thought it best to simply remain silent and pray to whoever in Heaven was listening that he decided not to execute her.
“Rise,” she heard a man say. She did, still keeping her eyes downcast. Others had entered the room, and she saw the robes of their station. There was the Imperial Augur, master of omens. Next to him, the elderly Imperial Alchemist, with his skin stretched over his skull like rice paper, shifted his knobby hands, his long fingernails clacking together. The Imperial Surgeon, younger, was the only one among the retinue who didn’t have the long, lacquered nails that denoted status. And behind him, with his white hair and beard reaching down to his chest, the Imperial Sage barely moved.
“Look up.” Slowly, hands shaking, she looked up, making sure not to make direct eye contact with the Emperor. To look into his eyes and declare oneself equal with one who had divine blood flowing through his veins was an act of blasphemy.
The other advisors gasped. “You were right,” the Emperor said to the Sage. “She is marked as you said. And of one of the northern tribes, strange.” He added that last part as a
“When she had not expired after the second hour, I knew she would survive, Your Highness,” the Sage said. He turned to face Wei. “Are you lettered, thief?”
“Lettered? I can read, if that’s what you mean,” Wei said. “Not cleric’s script, but regular characters, that is.”
“Ah. Well then,” the Sage said, “her arrival, capture, and her survival is most auspicious, Your Highness. She may have broken your laws, which Heaven gave you authority to declare, but she may also have been given to us as an act of providence. My Emperor, allow me to take her in as one of my retinue. I can speak with one of the conjurers to prevent her from attempting escape, but as one who has seen the light within the Tower and yet was not destroyed by it, she will be of great use to us.”
The Emperor loomed over her, and Wei stared at his silk slippers. “Hmm… very well. The Imperial Artificer has been working on a restraining device. That may be of more use to you in controlling this thief.” He turned and walked away. “I have more business to attend to. Clean her up and take her to the Artificer.”
Chapter 3: Secrets of the Sage’s Tower
“Finest quicksilver from the Yeng-Se Islands! The blood of ancient dragons, yours for only a small cost!”
“Genuine penghou meat and bones! Cut right from a camphor tree! Cure your aches and cast the bones for the future!”
“Talisman of Nine Dragons, blessed in the springs of Danzhou! Plague-ward, carved from the finest jade this side of the Mahn Mountains! Red Bat Amulet, bring you luck! Six-Demon Bag! All for a good bargain!”
Wei frowned and charged through the marketplace. She looked ridiculous, dressed in a robe of silk, instead of her normal, plain garments, and it felt alien on her skin.
It wasn’t as alien as the warm necklace she wore. The stone felt alive around her neck, and it may have been her imagination, but she swore she felt the thing move and writhe beneath the surface. It depicted a serpent, its body segmented into V-shapes that fit into each other, connected by a few links of silver chain. The sorcerer who had fastened it around her neck had promised her that should she disobey orders or attempt to leave the city, the necklace would contract and heat up, slicing off her head and burn while it did. Wei still felt the scrape of his long, lacquered fingernails on the back of her neck.
She rushed past the markets, up the streets, towards the monumental palace, and stepped through the gates. Multiple dragons stared down at her, their empty stone eyes imperious, rearing up, frozen in motion. She weaved through the statues, stepping through an archway beside the palace door and entering a lotus garden.
She stepped across the flagstones, making sure not to disturb the glassy surface of the artificial lake. Lotus blossoms broke the mirroring surfaces, two blossoms opening upwards and downwards, the reflections vivid and solid-looking. Wei had been stunned at the quiet, at the tranquility of this room. Now, she ran through the chambers without the reverence of the first time she had entered the lotus garden.
She ran through the courtyard, across the carefully furrowed sand, heedless of the patterns that gardeners had spent hours planning and a few days furrowing, and up to the door of the Tower. Only a few nights before, she was creeping along, hiding from the pools of light cast by the paper lanterns hung every so often. Now, she ignored the lanterns, dim in the daylight, and approached the door.
Wei adjusted the parcel of paper in her arms, before withdrawing the long iron key entrusted to her. This time, she didn’t have to pick the lock. She was welcome, if still supervised.
She entered the tower, and a strange feeling washed over her. It felt like she was being watched, like someone was studying her. It was a feeling she trusted, and had saved her life many times in her career of theft.
The Imperial Sage stood, arms folded. “There you are! And good, you have the paper. We’ll see if that… auspicious anomaly occurs again.”
“Auspicious anomaly?” Wei asked. “I assume you’re not meaning me.”
“No, you are the second. The first happened two weeks before you were found.” He stepped over to one of the lattice shelves and fetched a scroll. “We expected a message and instead we got this.” He opened the scroll.
There was a poem there, burned into the paper, the edges of the gaps dark and charred. Dusk falls over broken mountains, the poem said, and shadows fall over a traitor’s banner.
“So… someone burned poetry into paper?” Wei asked.
The Sage sighed. “No.” He gestured to her to follow him up into the stone bowl chamber on the fourth floor, where every inch of the curved wall was covered in carved stone characters. The more she looked at them, the more she noticed that each one had something to do with the military. “Do you see that?” the man asked, pointing a lacquered fingernail at the giant silver globe suspended in chains in the middle.
“What is it?” Wei asked. “It looks like quicksilver.”
“It is.” The Sage nodded. “It is a most potent elixir, and the only liquid medium noble enough to withstand the glory of the pearl.”
“The pearl?”
“Are you going to spill all the secrets to the thief?” someone behind them demanded. Wei turned to see a man in a dark, plain robe, with embroidered dragons snaking their way up his sleeves and curling around the hem. His dark eyes were surrounded by angry red tissue, inflamed and sickly. “Ah, forgive me, urchin. I am Ha Wen, Master Quangdau’s apprentice.” Quangdau. So that was the Sage’s name.
“Ha Wen, your arrogance is unbecoming. Wei, due to her gift, is also my apprentice,” the Sage snapped back. His eyes glinted dangerously from behind his white eyebrows. “Please see that your vanity and condescension is not so offensive to my sight next time by keeping it hidden.”
“Of course, Master.” He bowed his head.
“As I was saying, Wei, what you had glimpsed below, that which had claimed the life of your… associate, is known as the Pearl of Shar Lung.”
“Shar Lung, one of the Dragon Gods?” Wei asked in disbelief. “One of the Eight Sons of the Heaven Goddess and the God of the Earth and Underworlds?”
“The very same.” The Sage nodded. “He blessed the Empire, he and his sons, the Dragons of the North, by giving us their Pearls. What do you know of a dragon’s Pearl, Wei?”
“She’s a street thief. I doubt she’s very studious in her religious studies,” Ha Wen said.
“Ha Wen, your tongue moves, yet I hear no words of wisdom or wit. Only venom.” The Sage turned. “Refrain from speaking again, especially against someone who succeeded where you failed.”
Ha Wen frowned, and his hand brushed his reddened eye sockets. “Did he try to look at that… at the Pearl?” Wei asked.
“Yes. He nearly blinded himself.” The Sage paused. “Ha Wen, keep watch. Call to us if a message comes.” With that, the Sage led Wei out of the chamber.
“Anyway, the Pearl of a dragon is where it stores its lin, its life force. It is also where the source of dragons’ heavenly powers come from. What do you know of dragons, Wei?”
“They’re messengers of the gods,” Wei said, as they started to climb up some stairs.
“Precisely.” The fifth floor looked like a sorcerer’s laboratory. Wei had been in a sorcerer’s laboratory before, at the behest of a rival magician who had hired her to steal his rival’s secrets. There was a stone slab for chalk-drawings, several scroll-shelves, and strange glass equipment that shone, glinting in the steady glow of the paper lanterns. “This is where we ward the Tower, preventing peeping spirits and fouler conjurations from stepping near the entire palace.”
“It couldn’t ward off me,” Wei said.
“Yes, well, if our wards worked on mundane humans, every time someone entered they’d be reduced to ashes.” The Sage sighed. “Anyway, when Shar Lung gave us his Pearl, and had his sons give up theirs, he taught our sorcerers how to arrange a device to send messages across massive distances in an instant. We had discovered how to enchant scrolls, so one thing written on them would instantly appear in another, but that only worked over a short span.” The Sage smiled. “The Pearl shines its light on a character, and we record it. This way to the Astrology Chamber.” He proceeded up.
The Astrology Chamber was open to the sky, with a strange-looking device on a raised dais in the center of the Tower. “This is our viewing basin.” Wei inspected it as she approached. It looked like a large, shallow bowl made of dark iron, with a dragon curled around the brim, slightly lower than the rim of the basin. The Sage pushed on something, and the dragon curled upwards, the entire thing shifting until its mouth was right above the bowl. “The traders to the west, in their desert lands, taught us how to use the noble quicksilver to search the sky.” He pressed down on the antlers of the dragon, and the black statue spat forth a stream of silver liquid.
Immediately Wei backed up. “What is the matter?” the Sage asked.
“I’ve been told by my people that quicksilver is powerful, and dangerous,” Wei said.
“Ah.” The Sage nodded. The dragon continued to pour forth the stream of metal liquid until the dish was filled to the brim. The Sage pushed on one of the stones of the base, causing the dragon to curl down again, leaving the basin full of mercury. “Come closer, so you can see the mirror.”
