Read Online Pinion by Jay Lake - Free Book Online

pale
die
—tight-woven straw—for amattress. Walls lacquered imperial red. A porthole rimmed in brass. A table to match the bed, empty now but clearly intended to host an altar. The smell of old incense, polishing oils, and the musk of damp straw from the
die
.
    For the sake of thoroughness, Wang tugged open the closet door. Nothing but dust within, not even spare robes. He bent to look beneath the bed. Only someone folded paper-thin would have hidden there.
    Why was the seal broken?
Nothing was here to hide.
    Wang backed out, frustrated. Where could the monk be? When he straightened from jiggering the seal back into place, he saw Wu staring from the ladderway. The mate just nodded once, then turned away.
    A ghost, indeed. At least as ghostly as the rest of this strange crew.
    Fortunate Conjunction
reached a set of islands just as the day was failing. These were the most unusual formations Wang had ever seen, jutting like limestone thumbs. They resembled the most fanciful scrolls of Guilin. The lower edges overhung the water, as if their bases were being stolen away by the sea.
    A rambling building covered the top of the nearest island. Wang realized it was a palace—wings and towers and jutting balconies,
shi
after
shi
of stonework and bamboo stretching farther than the largest Gan River rice farms of his youth in Chiang Hsi Province.
    Not a building, a city.
    Lights flickered within hundreds of windows. Gongs rang the watches of the evening. But no banners flew, no sigils depended. This fortress ruled itself, answered to no court or emperor, solitary above the porcelain-blue waters of the ocean.
    “We are at Phu Ket?” he asked quietly of no one in particular.
    One of the sailors glanced up at him, then answered in a thick Annamese accent. “Phu Ket lies east.”
    He turned that way. Land loomed on the horizon. “But that was my destination.”
    “Phu Ket is the port of entry, not the destination,” said Wu, behind him. “Very few come straight to Phi Phi Leh. Most who do never return.” The mate glanced into the waters of the night-darkening sea.
    Wang followed his line of sight. Something ominous lay on the pale sand. A ship, the cataloger realized. His eyes roamed across other shadows, reefs of broken hulls and dead men. Captain Shen still stood at the wheel, eyes riveted on the fortress looming in the sky above.
    “I am to row you to the dock,” Wu added.
    “Of course.” Wang followed the mate to the rail, where a dinghy waited, a sailor already at the oars.
    Wu climbed down the rope ladder. Wang followed. Another sailor tossed a bundle after them that nearly bounced into the ocean. Wang’s meager belongings. A second bundle followed; then they pushed off.
    Wu sat in the stern of the tiny boat, Wang in the bow. The other sailor rowed amidships, his back to Wang. No one spoke as they pulled across the waters. Dusk vanished in a blaze of stars before they reached a tiny dock at the foot of the overhanging cliffs.
    The cataloger stepped cautiously from the dinghy to the ladder, then up to the dock. The sailor shipped the oars and followed Wang. Wu tossed up one bundle, then the other, which the sailor caught. He turned, looked at Wu, and winked.
    The monk
.
    Of course, Wang thought, struck with amazement. Where else to hide but among the crew?
    “Good luck,” Wu said, then rowed away as if the woman had never existed.
    She shucked out of her roughspun uniform. Wang turned away, embarrassed, once he realized what he was seeing. Moments later, she tapped him on the shoulder. The saffron robes were back, taken from the second bundle.
    “I believe you are expected,” the monk told him.
    “Above?” Wang peered up at the rickety wooden stairs affixed to the side of the island cliffs. Hundreds of steps. Impossibly high. They made his head ache.
    “The journey of a thousand steps begins with a single climb.”
    Wang couldn’t think of a suitable response, so he picked up his bundle and began the endless