Pinion by Jay Lake Page B

bowed slightly. “What the . . . signifies.” She’d missed several words there.
    Apparently so had Ming. “Who is this which signifies?”
    “Those who come,” Seven Trees said. “The Wall sends ambassadors at times. You. Furthermore, you do not always understand your own purposes. This feast is intended to . . .” Again she lost the sense of the words.
    The Chinese glanced back at Paolina again. “They tell fortunes by the foods we choose,” he said in English.
    She glanced down at the mats. Were some of these dishes drugged? Poisonous? A ritual meal was a far different thing from a welcoming banquet.
    The tall man smiled. “All the ambassadors of the Wall have been welcomed here. Including the . . . when they come down from the heavens.”
    A missing word.
    “Where are they now?” Ming asked.
    Seven Trees shrugged. “Some have moved on. Some stay to join us. Some leave their bodies behind.”
    Paolina froze at that last. “The food is a test,” she said, also in Chinese.
    “Of course.” Seven Trees looked surprised. “How else would we know you were bearing rectitude?”
    “We will not choose from among
poisons
.” That last word was in English, for she did not know the Chinese.
    Their guide drew his fur close around him and frowned. Paolina’s hand once more reached for the stemwinder. The sailor dropped his shoulders and let his feet slide a bit farther apart.
    “You will eat.” A stillness hung in Seven Trees’ voice, low and threatening. “You will eat, and we will know you by your choices.”
    She pulled the winding knurl out to the fourth detent. Paolina had become something of an expert on focusing her will.
    Bringing down the ceiling was not an option. For one thing, an entire building rose skyward above them. Everyone would be crushed. Nor did she want to stop Seven Trees’ heart. Yet if she simply moved herself and Ming away from here, she risked another earthquake like the catastrophe she had caused back in Sumatra by calling
Five Lucky Winds
to her aid.
    “We are not ambassadors,” she told Seven Trees. “We are travelers who would be upon our way now, without delay.”
    “You will choose, then eat; then we will see who you are.”
    Men stepped from the various passageways. At least a dozen, wrapped in cloths of various patterns and colors, each carrying a long spear with a diamond-shaped black iron blade.
    Ming gave Paolina a hard, wordless look. His meaning was clear enough.
Do something. I cannot fight them all
. She had defeated an entire navy. Stepping out of this danger was well within her means.
    She had sworn not to use this power. She had been willing to accept oblivion of the spirit to send it away from the world. She had fled here to the Southern Earth to escape the threats of venal, grasping men who would take it from her.
    Now she was to be made a pawn again by her own fear.
    Paolina felt her anger rising.
Men
, it always came to
men
. Boaz had beendifferent, Ming was quite decent, but these people in their termite palace atop their frozen mountain were no better than the
doms
of Praia Nova who had made her childhood such a lengthy misery.
    With anger grew resolve. With resolve grew intent. The warriors stepped closer, their spears at the ready.
    “Ming,” she said. He took her arm. She closed her eyes and thought hard on the angel who had met them atop
a Murado
.
    Where had he meant to send us?
    She opened her mouth to say something else, but the breath was snatched from her in a whirl of dust and the long, terrified scream of a grown man in pain.
WANG
    He followed the monk upward. Clearly the woman had been hiding among the sailors aboard
Fortunate Conjunction
, had worn their cotton blue uniform, head shaven as most of the crew kept themselves.
    Wu, the mate, must have known. Perhaps not Captain Shen, who seemed lost in his own head. It had been obvious to Wang that Wu ran the boat. As for the monk, she was . . . what? A ghost in truth?
    Perhaps all the Kô’s