11 The Rookery

~TIEN LYN~

Tien Lyn fought the nightmares in apprentice's cell and lost. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw dead bodies with familiar faces: her father, her uncles, her aunts, Xia Dao Ni, and her other cousins. The memory kept bringing up people she barely knew and now lost, an excruciating task. She saw no point in looking for a scroll to read, not even Empress Mei's chronicles. Mere written words wouldn't keep her mind from circling through the dark places. What she needed to keep her from going mad was the company of living beings.

A bird chirped outside at the first sign of light. It was still too early for the humans to be up and about, but the birds in the rookery would be waking up. Tien Lyn pulled her ugly dress on, fighting dizziness. Her fingers could not make it through the tangles in her hair, and she just let her shoulders droop. She did not care enough to search for a brush. The water jug was front and center in the austere room, but she ignored it. Washing up felt too hard a task to tackle just now.

The spiral staircase leading up to the Bird House creaked mercilessly, but it was nothing compared to the cacophony that greeted her on the seventh floor. The Senior Apprentice had not lied: it was the birds' domain. Birds roosted on the beams under the ceiling, birds fluttered in their cages, birds, birds, birds...

To do away with the stink its inhabitants produced, the upper floor of the pagoda was opened to the fresh morning air. After her sleepless night, Tien Lyn wanted to stand by the railing, look at the sunrise, and breathe. She leaned against the wooden lattice that was used in place of solid mud and brick walls taking in the dizzying height of the tower that offered an escape from her guilt and grief.

Behind her, a bird flapped its wings, took in a mighty breath and produced an ear-splitting screech. Tien Lyn turned away from the tempting sight to look at the intruder. It was huge and had legs as long as a crane's, a fan of colorful tail-feathers. It strutted around like it owned the place. Recognition dawned on her. The bird that chastised her was a magic fenghuang.

She edged away from the railing: "I am sorry, I am sorry, Lord of Birds!" Perhaps it would peck her to death she deserved.

"She's nobody's Lord yet. Just a chick," The mage came around the central pillar that blocked her view armed with a jug of water and a small dish. His smile was benign, but fenghuang beat a hasty retreat.

"I hope to see her paired up with a dragon one day," the mage continued as the bird flapped up noisily to the railing and settled to observe. The old man handed Tien Lyn the jug and gestured for her to pour fresh water into the dish. He deftly replaced the dish in a cage while complimenting the bird's plumage.

"Good morning, Master... ahem..." Tien Lyn attempted to recapture his attention. "I am sorry, Master... ahem... Finch did not mention your name?"

The mage chuckled. "Oh, that's Finch for you. Ever cautious. A good man, and talented. He's reached Understanding a long time ago. I could have made him a mage. Yes, yes, I could have. But do not tell him that, child."

"But why?" Tien Lyn asked, offended on Finch's behalf.

The mage sighed deeply: "It is for his own good, child. Ours are troubled times, very, very troubled."

He extended another dish and waited for her to pour water in comfortable silence. Another dish. And another.

When he finally spoke up it was to tell a bird that her last clutch was excellent.

Tien Lyn grew impatient and dared to cough to interrupt the string of praise to the bird's egg-laying abilities.

"About Finch, Master?"

The mage furrowed his brow but returned to the human concerns: "You see, the lands that foolish Wo Jia buys with blood, he will never hold."

Tien Lyn bit her lip in alarm. Surely, a bolt of lightning would strike any man who dared call the Celebrated Emperor a fool, even if he was a mage. But nothing happened, and she relaxed. The Celestials did not punish righteous men for denouncing a tyrant.

The mage did not veer off this time, despite replacing the birds' water quite methodically, "Either the wild people and demons he's taken by surprise will reclaim what's theirs in time, or they will do that and tear us down for good measure. It would be pointless to waste Finch in the Emperor's wars. Or me."

"How can you two hide from the Eyes and Ears of the Celebrated Emperor?" Tien Lyn asked. "Don't all the mages swear an unbreakable oath to serve?"

"So we do, child, but only the mages. Finch is a senior apprentice." He beamed obviously proud of exploiting this loophole.

Tien Lyn kept her eyes on the dish in her palm. A chill grabbed her by the neck: secrets like that, they could kill. But her life was already forfeit, so she blundered on, "What about you, Master?"

"Oh, I was sworn, child," the mage replied with a merry twinkle in his eyes. "To Wo Jia's grandfather. Now there was a wise Emperor! I was also sworn to Wo Jia's father. Less wise, but passable."

Tien Lyn dared to look at the man. He did not seem old enough to serve the Celebrated Emperor's grandfather.

"When the time came to swear my oath to Wo Jia, I am afraid I missed the appointment," the mage shook his head in self-depreciation. "I am growing forgetful in my dotage."

"Would not the Celebrated Emperor remind you of your duty?" Tien Lyn asked.

"Ah, yes, he would," the mage agreed. "But I use an extraordinary amount of magic to keep my name forgotten."

"Oh." Finch was a clever man, he'd said. And careful. "That's why Finch did not give me your name..."

The mage seemed to be pleased with her perceptiveness, "Thus I will not give you my name either. It does take a lot of magic to keep it forgotten. However, your mother's family gave me a delightful moniker. They took to calling me Uncle when Dew-on-a-petal's great-grandfather asked me to scry his children for magic talent. He was my brother, so I was an Uncle back then. I did not mind that it stuck afterward. It makes me feel younger."

"My mother's great-grandfather was your brother...?" Tien Lyn wanted to make sure she did not mishear that, and tentatively added: "Uncle?"

"Yes, child," the mage nodded, "Mages can live five and more lifetimes of a common man. I intend to find out just how much more. Hence, I avoid Wo Jia's invitation to serve."

He took yet another dish from her hands, replaced it, and tweeted at a canary who responded by breaking into song with energetic abandon. He listened, his eyes closed. Tien Lyn waited, the jug growing heavier in her arms with every passing moment.

"We are done here," the mage said suddenly. "Come to see me in the Chamber of the Waning and Waxing Moon. You can make tea, and...."

His eyes flung open in a sudden alarm: "You mother did teach you how to brew tea? Dew-on-a-petal makes excellent tea."

"Yes," Tien Lyn reassured him, "yes, she did teach me that, and a great many things besides...." A great many useless things.

"Oh, I don't doubt that!" the mage exclaimed. "We will let your mother sleep for now. It will be for the best. I want to cast your bone horoscope again."

"Again?" She wished he did not speak in riddles. "And why would it be for the best without my mother?"

The mage waved her off, with the irritability that befitted his ancient age.

With the same jug she'd used for watering the birds, Tien Lyn went outside to fetch fresh water from a beautiful stone font. An agitated flock of hens swirled around her ankles, then ran away disappointed to rummage through the neat rows of vegetables, pecking, and quarreling. While the absence of the four junior apprentices guaranteed her safety, it must have disrupted the life here a great deal, just as Finch had said.

She did miss him, she realized when he spoke up as she was searching the shelves for tea leaves. "The Chamber of the Waning and Waxing Moon has everything you need to make the Master's tea, Lady."

"Ancestors, are there any secrets a mere mortal could keep from you mages?" She wished she had found the hair-brush.

"I am a senior mage apprentice, Lady," Finch corrected, "The Master always asks guests to brew his tea, so he could read the leaves after. But your travails will not be in vain. I will drink this one, and you can make fresh tea upstairs."

He reached over her shoulder, picked a tin from the shelf above her head, and started measuring out the leaves.

"You are welcome to it," Tien Lyn murmured taking a step back. In the brightly lit kitchen, Finch still looked like a wild barbarian from beyond the Sand Sea of Bones. Conscious that a direct query might be tactless, Tien Lyn asked a more neutral question: "How long have you been an apprentice here, Finch?"

"I resided here for nearly twelve years since the Pagoda was built. Truth be told, I supervised its construction for the Master," the man smiled wistfully, as if remembering the good old times, then volunteered: "I've apprenticed with the Master for thirty-two years, twelve of them as a senior apprentice."

"Thirty-two years?" Almost twice her lifetime thus far. Tien Lyn's heart went out to Finch as she recalled her newly-met Uncle's confession that Finch could have been a mage in his own right long ago. The man was also a trained killer, but she could not harden herself to hate him for the skill that saved her life, "Do you like being an apprentice?"

"Do you like being a maid of seventeen years?" Finch retorted, quick as mercury.

This stung. There were worse things to be than a maid of seventeen. "Don't you want to be a mage?"

Finch turned away to take the boiling kettle off the stove and set it on a wooden mat to cool down before soaking the leaves. He kept his back to her as he settled to wait. "Don't keep the Master waiting, Lady. He wants to cast your bone horoscope."

"I think the hens are hungry," she saw the muscles of his thick neck tighten. She bit her childish tongue. Since yesterday's upheaval, Finch was the closest thing she had to a friend. "Finch? Can I help you with the chores later on?"

Finch signaled his acceptance of Tien Lyn's peace offering by turning his head a fraction. "Your help is welcome."

She did not relish being given a task that she could not possibly carry out. "I... I do not know much about agriculture."

"Apprentice Darting Swallow was a concubine before she manifested as a mage. She professed a similar regrettable gap in her education," Finch's lips twitched in amusement. "I still have an excellent scroll on the art of mucking the pigsty somewhere."

Tien Lyn held his eyes to convey just how undaunted she was: "I hope the verses are not too cryptic."

Finch was still laughing when she started her climb to the Chamber of the Waning and Waxing Moon. She nearly laughed as well, before her throat constricted with a new wave of guilt. How could she banter like this when her whole family had perished? Sickened, she leaned against the wall. A heartbeat followed a heartbeat, and she would not move from her dark corner.

She was on the brink. One more step and her life would split in two. The old life, the "before" was no longer real. But she could not see ahead, just like she could not see past the next turn of the spiral staircase.

Did the fate bring her to the Pagoda to be trained as a mage? The apprentice Darting Swallow was a woman. Tien Lyn peeled herself from the wall. If she could command lightning like Finch, she could defend her mother and herself. She could fight against those who would hurt or humiliate her.

When Tien Lyn started climbing up again to the mage's chamber, her hands curled into fists, her pathetically small fists.