The Red Threads of Fortune (Tensorate #2)
J.Y. Yang
For the dangerous hearts that kept me going
Acknowledgments
Writing this novella was an adventure. I think I completely overhauled it three times at least—and once at a very late stage after it had already been line edited, much to the chagrin of my editor.
So first thanks go to my very patient and much put-upon editor, Carl Engle-Laird. Not just for taking a chance on this generally unknown short story writer and inviting me to send him something, but also for sticking with me even as I cost him (probably) many sleepless nights. You’re awesome.
Irene Gallo, Christine Foltzer, and Yuko Shimizu conspired to give the novellas some of the most handsome covers I have ever seen. Months later, I’m still gobsmacked. Many, many thanks for making the books as gorgeous as they are.
A whole slew of people saw this book at various points in its larval development and offered critique. My gratitude toward Amit Chaudhuri, Nino Cipri, Kate Elliot, Georgina Kamsika, S. Qiouyi Lu, Jean McNeil, Nicasio Reed, Bogi Takács, Jay Wolf, and Isabel Yap: this book is what it is because of you.
Special thanks goes to Grace P. Fong for doing the wonderful artwork that accompanied the announcement of the novellas, in record time. Did I ever tell you that you’re amazing? Because you are.
Finally, I could not have done all of this without the help of my superagent, DongWon. Thank you so much for believing in my work and always having my back.
PART ONE
RIDER
Chapter One
KILLING THE VOICE TRANSMITTER was an overreaction. Even Mokoya knew that.
Half a second after she had crushed the palm-sized device to a pulp of sparking, smoking metal, she found herself frantically tensing through water-nature, trying to undo the fatal blow. Crumpled steel groaned as she reversed her actions, using the Slack to pull instead of push. The transmitter unfolded, opening up like a spring blossom, but it was no use. The machine was a complex thing, and like all complex things, it was despairingly hard to fix once broken.
Mokoya might have stood a chance with a Tensor’s invention, anything that relied on knots of slackcraft to manipulate objects in the material world. But this was a Machinist device. It worked on physical principles Mokoya had never learned and did not understand. Its shattered innards were a foreign language of torn wires and pulverized magnets. The transmitter lay dead on her wrist, Adi’s strident voice never to squawk forth from it again.
“Cheebye,” she swore. “Cheebye.”
Mokoya repeated the expletive a third time, then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, head bowed prayerfully over the transmitter’s corpse as she swayed on her mount. Phoenix breathed patiently, massive rib cage expanding and deflating, while her rider recited swearwords until her heart stopped stuttering.
The desert wind howled overhead.
Finally Mokoya straightened up. Around her, the Gusai desert had been simplified to macrogeology by the moonlight: dunes and rock behind, canyon and cave in front. A thread of the Copper Oasis shone in the overlapping valleys before her. Sky and sand were blissfully, thankfully empty from horizon to horizon.
No naga. And if the fortunes were kind, she would not meet one before she returned to camp.
Scouting alone was a mistake. Mokoya knew that. The crew had followed a scattered, crooked trail of dead animals and spoor for a dozen sun-cycles, and it had brought them here. Experience told them that the naga’s nest would be hidden in the canyon, with its warren of caverns carved out through the ages. The chance of a scouting party crossing paths with the beast while it hunted during the sundown hours was very real.
And yet Mokoya had convinced Adi to let her take Phoenix and the raptor pack to explore the sands east of the camp by herself. I’m a Tensor, she had said. I trained as a pugilist in the Grand Monastery. I can handle a naga, no matter how big. I’m the only one on this crew who can.
Unbelievably, she had said, I know what I’m doing. I’m not a madwoman.
Just as unbelievably, Adi had let her go. She had grumbled, “Ha nah ha nah, you go lah, not my pasal whether you die or not,” but her expression plainly said she was doing this to prevent more quarreling and that she considered this a favor to Mokoya, one she intended to collect on. And so Mokoya had escaped into the cool darkness, the open sands imposing no small talk or judgment or obligation, free of all the things that might trigger her temper.
Now, barely an hour later, she had already destroyed the transmitter entrusted to her care. Even if she avoided encountering the naga, she still had to explain the transmitter’s death.
She had no good excuses. She could lie and say it was done in anger, because Adi would not stop fucking calling to check whether she was still alive. But such violence was the hallmark of a petty and unstable woman, instead of a Tensor in full control of her faculties.
And what of the truth? Could she admit she had been startled by Adi’s voice coming out of nowhere and had lashed out like a frightened animal?
No. Focus. This question could be answered later. Getting distracted by these neurotic detours had allowed shimmering pressure to sneak back into her chest. Mokoya shook her head, as if she could dislodge the unwanted thoughts and emotions.
Phoenix sympathetically swayed her massive head. Her head feathers rustled like a grass skirt. Perched on the giant raptor’s back, Mokoya cooed and petted her as though she weren’t a beast the size of a house, but a small child. Phoenix was a gentle, happy creature, but one wouldn’t know it just looking at her. In cities, people scattered at her approach. Sometimes the scattering was accompanied by screaming. And sometimes Phoenix would think it was a game and chase them.
Mokoya avoided cities these days.
A hooting noise heralded the return of her raptor pack. A hundred yields ahead of Phoenix, the flat sandy ground dropped away and folded into a crevasse: the beginning of the steep, scrub-encrusted canyon that bordered the Copper Oasis. It was over this lip that Mokoya had sent the eight raptors on their hunt for quarry. They were really Adi’s raptors, raised by the royal houses of Katau Kebang in the far south of the Protectorate’s reach and trained in the arts of hunting any naga that strayed across the Demons’ Ocean.
The first leapt into view and landed in a cloud of sand, tail held like a rudder for balance, teeth and claws splendid in the moonlight. They were exactly like Phoenix—narrow-headed, long-limbed, plumed in coruscating feathers—only differing in size (and in other aspects that Mokoya did not like to discuss). One by one they loped toward their giant sister and stood patiently at attention, their hot breaths a whistling symphony.