Fox and Phoenix (Lóng City 1)

“We’ll wash you up and bind everything fresh,” I told her.

“Doctor Kai,” she murmured. “You saved my life. Thank you.”

I covered up my embarrassment by acting very busy. I built up our fire and set pots of water to boil for tea, and for mixing up more antiseptic to wash her arm and shoulder. Yún shuffled over to the griffin’s nest of blankets and knelt awkwardly by its side. When I happened to glance around, she was frowning.

“Is he—”

“Alive.” Her voice sounded subdued. “But weak.”

I knelt beside her and laid a hand over the griffin’s chest. Yao-guài stirred uneasily, but its eyes did not open, and its body felt thicker, stiffer. Stuffed, I thought, cold washing over my skin.

“Let me try a spell,” Yún said.

She recited a series of those mathematical incantations, the ones that sounded like ice trickling in the spring thaw. This time, there was not even the faintest sense of magic flux in the air. “That’s not right,” she whispered. “There’s always magic. Always. You used it last night to heal me. How?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Chen helped me. All I know is that it wasn’t magic flux.”

I gave you our magic, Chen grunted. Qi and I both. You made it easier than I expected, but now we have headaches.

“Can you do it again?” I asked, aloud and to Chen. “Can you save the griffin?”

Voices doubled within my mind. We tried last night. We couldn’t. The griffin lives upon the flux and nothing else.

Yún rubbed her hand over her forehead and shivered. “How can there be no magic flux? And what about the avalanche ? I didn’t summon that. I tried but—”

“The ghost dragon,” I said suddenly. “Maybe he heard you and wanted to help.”

“Hü. Maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced. “At least I knew the right words to send him away. The ghost dragon king insisted I learn them. I didn’t see why at first, but I’m glad he did.” She rubbed her forehead again, winced, then frowned at her injured arm, as though it had disappointed her somehow. “That still doesn’t explain about the magic flux. How can it disappear like that?”

The idea that magic could just vanish made me go cold inside. “I don’t know. But wait a minute. That boy at the inn told me they had a drought here. Or something like that.” It was hard to remember the exact words he used. “He said the magic flux would come back in the spring.”

“How could he know that?”

r /> “I have no idea. That nosy old innkeeper interrupted us.”

We stared at each other, Yún looking as troubled as I felt.

Yún released a long breath. “It doesn’t matter how he knows, or what that means. Not now, anyway. First we have to find a city-kingdom that does have wells or currents. But we’d better be careful which one. Those men who attacked us, they didn’t act like bandits. You saw their weapons.”

Exactly what I had thought. “Do you think that innkeeper sent them after us?”

“I don’t think so. But someone did. Someone rich and powerful who wants to keep us from telling Lian about her father.”

Assassins. I shivered. Gan had talked about plots and machinations. I hadn’t realized that plots sometimes meant death. I should have.

Yún’s always been the one who figures everything out. That’s not enough. We both have to be clever.

Yún herself looked weary and pain-wracked. I ordered her to sleep a few more hours while I cooked breakfast and tended our pony. Yún didn’t even argue. She curled up with the griffin and didn’t wake up until late morning. We ate our breakfast while poring over our maps.

“No more Golden Starflower Waterfall,” I said.

“And no more Lang-zhou City,” Yún said. “Whoever sent those soldiers will have more spies and soldiers in the valley.”

She stared at the map, chewing her lip. “We need magic and we need money.”

And Lang-zhou City had had both, not to mention those powerful wind-and-magic lifts that could take us up over the mountains and into the plains of the Phoenix Empire.

“West,” I said. “They won’t expect that.”