I checked the workroom again. No change there either.
I hate nightmares that don’t stop when you wake up.
In the kitchen, the sight of last night’s dirty dishes (one plate, one teacup, not two) checked me harder than my mother’s deserted workroom or bedroom. I spun around, ready to run and run until fright and anger bled away.
Chen blocked my path.
Eat first, he said. Then we make plans.
I’m not hungry.
He lowered his head and presented his tusks. You will be.
With Chen prodding and poking me along, I stacked the dirty dishes in the wash basin and filled the teakettle from the courtyard well. While I waited for that to boil, I fed the shop cats and cleaned out their sandboxes. The sun was well up before I finished. I brewed a full pot of tea and chewed on some leftover dried fish cakes from the pantry. There wasn’t much else. Other than a few more packets of salted fish, our pantry was nearly empty. I’d have to visit the farmer’s markets soon, however, or I’d be eating dust.
(Only if my mother doesn’t come back.)
(She will.)
(But when?)
A small hard skull butted my hand. The griffin.
The flat stone eyes gleamed black, and its metallic feathers glittered in the thin yellow light. When it saw it had my attention, it opened its beak and keened. All the cats scattered at the noise.
“You can’t be hungry,” I said.
With a quick dart, it nipped my thumb.
“Ow!” I sucked at the bite and tasted blood. Were there such things as vampire griffins?
The griffin keened again. I tossed a spare fish cake in its direction. It pounced and tore the cake into bits with its beak. Being dead and stuffed didn’t seem to stop it from wanting meals. Or attention or comfort, I mentally added, when it butted my hand again, demanding a scratch behind its feathered ears. I wondered what kind of magic Ma mi had worked upon it.
Thinking of my mother made my stomach churn. I tossed the griffin my last fish cake and bolted up the stairs to my room. There I picked up the leather scroll case with my special certificate, proclaiming me to be a prince of the streets. On second thought, I stopped long enough to scribble down a note for Yún, explaining that Ma
mi had cancelled our classes for the day. She and I would be at the special import markets to order the exotic goods from Yún’s list. Yún was to spend her free hours alone in the nearest temple, practicing meditation.
A faint odor warned me that Chen watched over my shoulder.
You should tell Yún, he said. Or she’ll worry.
She’d worry more if I told her the truth.
She is your friend. Friends tell each other the truth.
Easy for him to say. Yún would only have questions. So did I. I wanted to ask mine first.
I galloped back down the stairs and flipped around the sign that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PRESS RED BUTTON TO LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE FOR EMERGENCIES. Then I locked all the doors and windows, dumped the new dirty dishes into the washbasin, and poured the remaining hot water over them. Outside, I sealed Yún’s message into an envelope labeled YÚN: READ ME and stuffed it into a crack where she would find it.
Make another sweep for Nuó, I told Chen.
Where are you going? Chen’s tone sounded more anxious than usual.
To the palace.
“PLEASE LET YOUR Highness be assured we shall exert ourselves mightily . . .”
The bland young officer sitting across from me was using all the pretty phrases he must have learned in bureaucrat school. More, I thought, because I’d come waving around my special certificate. In spite of the official seals, and the fancy wires and circuits embedded in the scroll’s leather container, the business of me being a prince was all a big ugly lie, and we both knew it, but the young man was good at his job, so he didn’t say anything.