The Broken Knife

Kaz thought fast, trying to figure out how to answer without revealing too much. Of course, the truth was that he didn’t really know why the humans were able to take ki directly from him, but Lianhua was as curious as he was, in her own way. If he told her he didn’t know, she would continue trying to figure it out, bending her not-insignificant intellect to the task, and possibly insisting on experimenting as well. It was clear that she didn’t just accept what others believed was obvious, so she might figure out more of the truth than even he knew, and he had no idea what that truth might reveal. He liked her, far more than he would have guessed when they first met, but he only trusted her so long as their goals aligned.

Finally, he said, “I think I may be one of these… What did you call them? Color-weavers? I see my ki as colors, which is how I know that my channels are leaking. I think that when you humans are, ah, cultivating? Yes. When you try to refill your power, you pull the leaking ki from me.”

He stopped, watching her carefully. So far, he hadn’t lied, and he didn’t want to. From a distance, the ki that had leaked from his channels was certainly the first and easiest for them to steal, but when they touched him, they pulled directly from his cycle, and he couldn’t seem to prevent it, at least not entirely. Kaz didn’t want anyone to know that they could take his power just by touching him. He could only imagine what someone like Gaoda would do with that information.

Lianhua leaned forward, looking thrilled. “Do you know how rare that is? There’s a clan that exclusively trains Weavers, but their techniques are never shared. Any clan-member who can’t see their ki is relegated to an outer family, and never learns the true secrets. Every now and then, someone will figure out how to do it spontaneously, but the Yanse clan always adopts or marries them. I’ve always wanted to talk to a Color-weaver, but-”

Her words cut off, and she bit her lip. “You can’t tell anyone else about this. The Yanse are jealous of their power. They’re one of the strongest clans, trusted by the Emperor himself. I think his grandmother was a Yanse, though they don’t usually marry anyone but another Weaver. If they found out there’s a kobold who can Weave, they would…”

Lianhua sat back, shaking her head. “I don’t know what they would do. They can’t marry you, and I don’t know if they would see you as, um, someone they could hire.”

“A person, you mean,” Kaz said, glancing toward the huts. The other humans had known him for long enough now that he thought Raff, at least, was beginning to see him as something other than a beast, but Gaoda never would.

Lianhua’s cheeks grew pink, and she looked down at the small light she held in her palm. “Yes,” she admitted. “There are a few nonhuman races that we treat with respect, but they all look… more like us.”

Kaz felt his heart sink. “Are most humans like Gaoda, then? Would they just see me as an animal?”

She sighed. “I think more of them are like Raff, actually. They’ve been taught that kobolds are monsters, if they’ve heard of them at all. They’re not bad people, though, so if they got to know you, they’d treat you with respect, if not friendship.”

He snorted a little, tail wagging in amusement. “So you’re saying that Gaoda is a bad person?”

Lianhua rolled her eyes. “Gaoda is… Gaoda. He’s the son of his clan’s leader, so he’s been given the best of everything. Unfortunately for him, he’s the second son of a third wife, so now that he’s an adult, he’s realizing that he’s expected to serve his eldest brother for the rest of his life.”

Kaz’s eyes went wide. “A wife is a mate, right? His mother has three mates? And his brother will be allowed to lead this clan? Does his mother have no daughters?”

She laughed, a deep belly laugh that she had to cover with both hands, looking like she was trying to swallow her light. When she was finally able to speak again, she said, “Never repeat that to Gaoda. No, a ‘wife’ is the female half of a mated pair. In our culture, females are the lesser. ”

Kaz shook his head. “So your females are like our males?”

Lianhua let out a slow breath, expression shifting to something closer to sorrow. “Not quite, though that comparison would have been close in the past. Then, a woman would never have been allowed to go on a journey like this. She usually wasn’t allowed to choose her own husband, or what she wanted to do with her life. Things have been getting better over the last few centuries, and now women are often treated almost the same as men, though once they get married, they lose some of that freedom.”

“Is that why you don’t want to marry Gaoda?” Kaz asked, though it was meant more as a joke than a serious question. After all, who would want to take Gaoda as a mate?

Lianhua’s face fell, though, and she looked away. “No. I… don’t want to marry anyone. Ever. I would have liked to have children, but not at the cost of marriage.”

She flicked her little ki ball up into the air and gave Kaz a brittle smile. “Now, I believe you promised to answer a few questions for me, and so far, I’ve only answered more of yours. Not that I mind, but-” She looked toward the huts, and Kaz remembered that they had a limited amount of time before someone woke up and came to check on Lianhua.

Lianhua leaned to the side and scooped a little water from the pool, pouring it over the little chalk figure she’d drawn. On the wet stone, she drew a new picture. This one started out much the same as the first, but the back was hunched, and the nose had a star drawn around the end.

“What do you know about the mole-men?” she asked, laying down the chalk.

Kaz frowned. He wasn’t sure what a mole was, but the word reminded him of a conversation he’d overheard between Lianhua and Pilla, the chief of the Copperstrikers. “Do you mean the mosui?”

She nodded. “That’s what Pilla called them. Raff said they look like upright moles, with huge, clawed hands and tendrils protruding from a short nose.”

He shrugged. “Oda had us stay close to the den while we were in the mid-levels. She was always trying to get back to the Deep, so we were told not to bother exploring, because we’d be going home soon, plus it’s much more dangerous than either the heights or the Deep. I do know the mosui control most of the nine central levels.”

Picking up the chalk, he drew a circle around the figure. It was so large that they both had to move back, which prompted Li to crack open one eye, grumble, and then yawn widely. Kaz ignored her as she began to stir, too busy drawing little squares around the edges of the circle. When there were eighteen, he drew a smaller circle between the figure and the squares and laid the chalk down again.

“There are only eighteen levels between the top and bottom of the mountain. These are called the mid-levels, for obvious reasons.” He tilted an amused look at her, and she smiled back before they both turned their attention to the drawing again.

“Kobolds control the four deepest, and the five highest. The nine in between are almost entirely given over to the mosui. The exception is the area around the stairs, which mostly circle the outside, though there are a few others scattered around.” He touched each square in turn, pausing on the fourth.

“We’re heading for this one next, and it’s not too far away. I’ll ask Zyle who controls it now, and see if he has any idea about the fifth as well. After that,” he shook his head, “it’s like constant vara. The tribes who hold these nine stairs control the mid-levels. No one can go up or down without their permission, and there are no other stairs or passages that we know of. Various tribes have tried mining or blasting their way through, but the stone on these levels is strange, and we can barely crack it, much less dig out a tunnel.”

“And this is where the mosui live?” Lianhua asked, and Kaz nodded.

“Kobolds hold the stairs only because the mosui don’t seem to care, though Oda would have torn out my throat if she heard me admit it. Mosui territory is basically anything outside the area marked by our totems, and while those totems change when the tribe changes, the new ones go up in the same place. Any totem that moves vanishes, any kobold that steps outside does the same. If a tribe tries to expand their territory more than once, the whole tribe simply disappears, and the next kobold to come through finds an empty den ready to claim, and the totems back where they belong.”

Lianhua was looking grimmer with every word. She laid her hand flat over her sketch of the mosui. “So you have no idea what’s in this area? How do you know it’s the middle of the mountain?”

The dragon scampered over to Lianhua’s hand, sniffing at the chalk lines as if they might be edible. Her tongue flicked out, tasting the white powder, and then she noticed the abandoned chalk stick lying on the ground between them. Kaz snatched it up when he saw the greedy look in her eye. Lianhua laughed as Li glared at Kaz before sticking her nose deep into his hand, trying to reach the chalk.

Kaz shook his head, picking up the little dragon and cradling her to his chest with the hand that wasn’t holding the chalk. She wriggled in protest, sending images of herself swallowing the stick whole, and he sent her back a picture of herself, holding her belly and clearly feeling sick. She returned firm denial, and he sighed, handing the chalk to Lianhua.

“There’s a map,” he said, holding onto an angry Li as the human female put her chalk back into her pouch. “At the top of the fifth set of stairs, there’s an ancient map carved into the stone. It’s the same style as the stairs themselves, and one of the red lights is set in the center, so I think whoever made the stairs made the map as well. You can see the stairs set around the outside of the circle, just like this.”

“A map?” Lianhua exclaimed, leaning forward again. “Why didn’t you tell me? What else does it show?”

Kaz rubbed his snout, ears lowering slightly. “Because I’m the only one who believes it is a map. I told Katri, and she believed me until Oda told her it wasn’t, and even Rega said it was just another one of the decorations that can sometimes be found near the staircases. But I can-”

He hesitated, but decided there was nothing too dangerous in admitting a little more. “I can sense where I am in the mountain. I’ve always been able to do it, so I never got too lost. As long as I have at least one point of reference, I can always find my way. That’s how I knew my tribe was going around in a circle as we climbed the stairs on the way up. Even Oda wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that our small tribe could hold a place on one of the nine levels, so we didn’t linger. But when I saw the carving, I knew it was showing the path we’d just traveled.”

Lianhua’s eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at him, but she just said, “There’s only one way down, so we’ll pass by this map.”

He nodded. “That’s also part of why I didn’t mention it. You’ll see it anyway, and there was no reason to tell you in case you just think it’s another carving as well.”

Her expression softened, and she reached out to touch his hand briefly. “Kaz, I believe you, and I definitely won’t make fun of you. If you even think something might be a sign of an older civilization, please tell me.”

He nodded and drew in a deep breath. “In that case… I think the mosui are living in a city.”