Guardians of Dawn - Ami (eBook)

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On the eighth day of the osmanthus month, Ami’s fairy tree unexpectedly produced a miniature flower.

It was the fragrance that caught her attention first—a rich, subtly musky perfume that brightened the heavy animal smells of livestock and overripe humans in Kalantze’s village square. Ami set down her begging bowl and picked up the tiny brass vase containing the fairy tree. She touched a gentle fingertip to the delicate white petals, letting her magic mingle with the plant’s ki. “Little Mother,” she murmured. The tree shivered and shimmered as another minuscule bud emerged, quivered, and blossomed in the blink of an eye.

“Doom!” Beside her on their shared woven blanket, Ami’s father preached his usual dire prophecies to anyone who would listen. “Doom upon all the world!”

Although the villagers of Kalantze had long since learned to ignore Li Er-Shuan’s dire rantings and ravings, a few pilgrims who had come to pray before the Pillar eyed him askance. Nearby, a handful of castle guards on their rounds paused, ever watchful for signs of unrest.

“Shush, baba,” Ami murmured, eyeing the guards. “Not now.” She picked up her begging bowl once more and adjusted the wooden sign propped up against her legs. SCRIVENER, it read, in three different languages—the syllabary of the common tongue, the alphabet of the Azure Isles, and the Language of Flowers. Beside her, Little Mother produced another bloom.

“Rinqi?” Li Er-Shuan sniffed the air in surprise. “You haven’t worn that perfume in years, darling.”

Ami flinched as her father’s gaze met hers and flitted away again without recognition. “Ami, Ami, I’m Ami,” she reminded him through clenched teeth. “Mama’s been dead for twelve years.”

A misty expression crossed Li Er-Shuan’s face as he struggled to reorder his mind and find the correct moment in time. Ever since the two of them fled Zanhei, he had become increasingly unmoored from the present, forever wandering the halls of memory or the branching pathways of the future. “Oh,” he said vaguely. “I forgot.”

Ami pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed. “Alms, alms for the needy,” she called, tapping the side of her begging bowl with her knuckles. She nodded her head at the passing pilgrims, trying her best to ignore their pity.

There wasn’t much use for a scribe’s services in the remotest parts of the Zanqi Plateau—the Free Peoples had their own systems of writing, if they were literate at all—but it was all she had left to sell. Most refugees from other parts of the Morning Realms had not stayed long in Kalantze, either young and able-bodied enough to travel with the nomadic clans as apprentice or itinerant magicians or else skilled in some way aside from magic that allowed them to adapt or assist with the way of life in the outermost west. Woodworkers. Weavers. Herbalists. Healers. Hunters. Only the very old, the very young, the disabled, the infirm, and the useless were left behind to survive on charity—begging for grace in the village square. Like Li Er-Shuan. Like the orphans of the Just War.

Like her.

“Doom!” Li Er-Shuan bellowed. “The Guardians awake and demons walk among us!”

“Baba,” Ami pleaded, looking toward the castle guard once more. Their increased presence in the village set her teeth on edge, the memory of black wings etched onto leather sleeves ground into the over-tight muscles of her jaw. But these guards were no Kestrels; they were merely dispatched from the nearby fortress-monastery of Castle Dzong to protect villagers from the growing crowd of restless pilgrims come from far and wide to pray before the Pillar.

“When the Pillar blooms,” Li Er-Shuan called, “the end of the world is not far behind.”

One of the pilgrims, a tall yak-herder with a gold devotional shawl about their neck, gave the astrologer a sharp glance. At their feet, a small child peered at Ami with a curiously flat gaze that lifted all the hairs on the back of her neck. Her magic tingled, itching like a rash. “The Pillar has bloomed?” the yak-herder asked fearfully. “But the sacred tree has not blossomed in over two thousand years!”

A ripple of anxiety fluttered through the crowd. “The Pillar, the Pillar,” the pilgrims murmured. “Why won’t the Qirin Tulku let us pray before the Pillar?”

For the past several weeks, the gates of Castle Dzong had been shut to any and all supplicants seeking solace before the most sacred relic in the realm. The Pillar was the only living sapling of the mythical Root of the World, also known as the tree of life. Stories and rumors had run rampant throughout the streets of Kalantze as to the reasons why, and the mood of those encamped in the village was tense and volatile, like tinder just waiting for a spark.

“Proof!” Li Er-Shuan moaned. “We need proof.” He clutched a leather folio filled with papers and notes to his chest. “For though it is written in the stars and in the book, we must see the Pillar for ourselves!”

The crowd murmured in restless agreement.

“Ho, beauty,” said the nearest guard. Raldri, one of the youngest members of the castle guard, and the only one she knew by name. He was a familiar face around the refugee shantytown after sundown. “Keep that old man of yours quiet lest we arrest him for disturbing the peace.”

Ami bowed her head and kept her gaze lowered. “Of course, Excellency.”

Raldri said nothing, and she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck like the burning rays of a too-hot sun. “No need to be so formal with me, beauty,” he said in an entirely different tone of voice.

She didn’t respond. She never knew how to respond in the proper way and had learned long ago that silence was better than erring.

The guard stepped closer and knelt down before her. “Business is slow, I take it?” he asked. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a coin in exchange for a kiss.”

Ami furrowed her brows. “No.”

“You’re no fun.” Raldri pushed out his lower lip in a pout, but his eyes were hard. The mismatch made everything he said and did feel like a lie. It made Ami squirm with discomfort, her magic writhing in her chest in warning. He crouched down beside her with a grin, teeth flashing white. “Don’t you find me handsome?”

He was so close she could smell the sharp stink of old sweat and stale beer beneath the champaca and cinnamon perfume oils he wore. “I acknowledge that Raldri’s features are symmetrical and balanced,” she said, leaning back and trying to create space between them without having to get to her feet, “which other people find attractive.” It wasn’t a lie, and Ami didn’t think Raldri would find offense in the statement.

“You’re an odd one.” His smile grew wider, even as his eyes grew meaner. “Beautiful, but odd.” He reached for the spectacles on her face. “And you’d be prettier without those on, owl eyes.”

She ducked her head, partially to avoid his touch, partially to hide the green-gold glow blooming about her cheeks. “But I can’t see without them.” Ami picked up Little Mother’s bowl from the blanket, turning it round and round and round, letting her overworked magic unspool into the fairy tree’s ki pathways. Three more miniature flowers blossomed in Little Mother’s tiny branches, bursting like tiny fireworks against a dark green canopy.

“Raldri.” A gloved hand came down hard on the guard’s shoulder and pulled him aside. “Enough.” A short, slim youth in the nondescript brown tunic and trousers of the castle barracks stood behind him, a stern expression on their scarred face. “Your attention is unwanted.”

Raldri scoffed as he got to his feet. “My attentions are always wanted. It’s not my fault you have a face like a cowpat.”

The left side of the stranger’s face was mottled and twisted with uneven flesh, a crescent moon of burned tissue curving down from above the brow to end at their lips, pulling one side up into a perpetual smirk. Theirs was not a beautiful face by any objective standard, but neither were they displeasing to the eye. The stranger caught Ami’s gaze and smiled. It matched the kindness in their gaze.

“And it’s not my fault you have the personality of yak cud,” they said, pushing Raldri down the path ahead of them. Although the scarred youth stood nearly a head shorter than the other guard, they radiated such a sense of calm authority and charisma that Raldri complied without protest. “Go. We’ve got rounds to make.” They gave Ami a wink as they left.

She set down Little Mother and picked up her begging bowl again. “Alms, alms for the needy.”

“Here.” The tall yak-herder dropped a few coins into her begging bowl. “May the Wheel turn and fortune smile upon you again soon.” Their eyes slid to Li Er-Shuan, who had ceased preaching and was now frantically scribbling notes on the pages in his folio.

Ami lifted the bowl and pressed it to her forehead as she bowed....