Fox and Phoenix (Lóng City 1)

Thinking of Danzu, dry and comfortable in Lóng City, I stomped extra hard. My foot hit a slick patch and sent me sliding all the way down the slope to the two-foot-deep puddle at the bottom.

Splat.

I spat out a mouthful of mud and yelled curses at the gods, the sky, Danzu, the ghost dragon king, anyone and anything else I could think of.

Are you done? Chen said calmly.

No, I said, and yelled some more, until my throat went hoarse.

Eventually, I ran out of curses. I picked myself up and wiped my face.

Mud coated my boots and trousers and hair. Mud had ground itself underneath my fingernails, and I was sure there was mud inside my ears.

“I hate mud,” I muttered.

Then

, because you can’t curse the gods without them hearing you, lightning flashed across the steel-gray sky, the earth rumbled, and a mother of all storms broke loose. I nearly drowned in that first minute. Rain sluiced over my face and washed all the mud away from my clothes and skin. Wet-proofing didn’t matter to this storm. Deep inside, very faint, I could hear Chen’s chuckling.

I rubbed the water from my eyes and trudged on.

Three hours later I reached a small, flea-ridden inn, tucked between the trail and a rocky cliff. The innkeeper took one look at me, streaming water all over his floor, and charged me double for the privilege of standing out of the rain. “Storms are very bad this year,” he said, helpfully, as he hurried me through the common room, into a closet-size backroom, where a grinning serving girl tried to help me out of my clothes.

“Stop it,” I growled. “I can undress myself.”

Still grinning, the girl left me alone to bathe and change my clothes. Soon after that, I had a hot meal and felt more like a real human being again. It’s temporary, I thought. Surely it can’t make a difference if I spend just a day here.

BY THE AFTERNOON of the third day, I’d stopped asking when the storm would blow past. Never, I thought, as I stared at the blank shuttered window. Bits of ice and hail ticked against the wooden slats.

Inside, two dried-out women and a younger man spent their hours tossing spirit-bones and betting on the outcome. Two other men who looked like ex-caravan guards drank mugs of steaming hot beer and fed bits of bread and meat to the hairy dogs at their feet. A handful of others wandered restlessly between the common room, the stable, and the stuffy loft upstairs where we all slept. We were all bored, even the dogs. The radio had died two days ago. A vid-silk-screen stretched across one corner of the common room, but it was an old model, and it only played static movies, and the flux here ran in spits and spurts, making the vids even harder to watch.

Once the rain lets up, we go, I thought.

It won’t let up for another month, Chen grumbled. Then it snows.

We go anyway. The storm’s almost past. Besides I can’t stand it here—

The inn’s front door banged open, and a huge mountain of a man stumbled into the room.

I glanced over, back to the shutters. Then my gaze clicked back in amazement.

Water dripped and dropped from the man’s voluminous overcoat and wide-brimmed hat, but nothing stuck to him. His clothes looked crisp, his gray and white streaked hair remained neatly tied back into its queue, and even his boots were clean of mud and muck. I sniffed and smelled magic. He had to be a rich merchant. Who else would spend a fortune on so many spells to keep himself dry?

A crackling noise sounded from underneath the floorboards, and some invisible force sucked away the pool of water. One of the ex-guards twitched. I coughed to hide my laugh—it was just a standard spell laid by a commercial magic worker to keep the inn dry and clean. Oblivious to the magic underfoot, the man glared around at everyone. “I need a room,” he growled. “Immediately.” Oh, yes. He was a rich merchant, all right. One with lots of minions.

The innkeeper ran forward, skipping around the damp patches. “We have no room,” he said. “Sorry, no room at all.”

“There is always room. Besides, I spoke to you—to you, you miserable worm—ten days ago by talk-phone. You promised rooms for me and all my caravan. Were you lying?”

The poor innkeeper was almost weeping. “Storms have been very, very bad,” he whined. “The worst in ten decades, and the hospitality laws say I must not—”

“I know all about hospitality laws,” the old merchant barked. “That means you give me and all my train rooms, too. You can’t send us back on the road. Two of my own donkeys drowned, and the roads are knee-deep in mud . . .”

He went on, howling about some special cargo that a very special customer had demanded by express delivery—one so precious the merchant himself had to oversee its transport. I groaned quietly. It was easy to see where this argument would go. The innkeeper truly had no more rooms, but the merchant was right. Those same hospitality laws said you must not, could not turn away travelers in life-threatening weather, except for extraordinary circumstances. I already shared a room with two stinking men. By tonight, I’d share it with at least two more.

“. . . please, honored sir.”

“. . . extra expense, calling direct from Crescent Moon . . .”