Page 32 of A Forgery of Fate

“I lied.”

He clucked. Next I knew, his fist came flying at my face.

Nomi screamed as I flew back. I landed on my stomach, my chin scraping the rusted ground. Yet it was my cheek that stung most, the outline of the opal ring imprinted onto my skin. As I screwed up my face, I tasted the coat of blood on my teeth and spat, “Still upset about the peppers, I see.”

“Oh, I’ve been seeing red all day. I don’t expect it’s about to stop.” Puhkan picked up his knife and pressed the flat of his blade into my neck. He spoke into my ear, “Now, the truth.”

“Leave her alone,” pled Mama. “If you or Madam want your fortune told, you’ve only to ask. I still have Sight that—”

“Do you recall the game you played when you lost this house, Weina?” Puhkan interrupted.

Mama went rapidly pale.

“It was fortune’s toss,” he answered for her. “ ‘One more throw,’ you said, before you gambled away your house. ‘Fortune is with me still. I can see it.’ ” He leaned forward. “Your Sight has come back, I take it. How about another toss?” He dug the knife into the swell of my throat. “This time for your daughters’ lives.”

Mama was stricken. She shook her head vehemently.“No.”

“How can you refuse? If you win, I will let all of you go. If you lose”—Puhkan inclined his chin, and his men grabbed both Nomi and Fal by the necks—“you can stay in your old house forever—as ghosts.”

“Leave her alone,” I rasped. “I’ll play.”

“You?” Puhkan pinched me by my chin.

“I’m the real fortune teller. What, are you afraid I’ll win?”

He let out a low laugh. “Simple rules: I throw five tiles in the air. You paint which ones will land facing up. If you’re right, your family can go. If not”—Puhkan drew a line across his throat—“that clever little sister of yours will get a bloody necklace.”

My jaw throbbed with pain.Damn it,what was I doing? I couldn’t control what I saw.

It was too late to back out. One of Puhkan’s men set a piece of parchment on the ground, cut the ropes binding my wrists, and gave me a brush soaked in cinnabar ink.

Puhkan bounced a sack of tiles on his palm. The cloudy spot on his ring was still moving, but no one else seemed to notice. “Falina, you’ll toss. Little alchemist will call out the tiles. That way all the sisters can be involved.”

“Draw bamboo,” Nomi urged me. “There are more bamboo tiles than any other in the game. Your odds are highest.”

Nomi didn’t believe I had Sight, and I wished she were right. A game of odds could be influenced. There were 164 tiles to choose from: flowers, the four directions of the wind, bamboo, and circles. Bamboo was indeed the sensible choice.

The problem was, I did have Sight. A faint tingle shivered down my fingers, pulling me toward the brush.

The parchment was wet, a layer of water glimmering as red ink from my brush dripped onto the page. While Puhkan taunted my sisters about our game, I stared at the opal ring on his finger.

It was clear now that the hand in my vision had been Puhkan’s. And the trees? Outside the kitchen window, larches rustled, swaying like upright feathers. I’d grown up with them, hung lanterns on them at every festival. How could I have forgotten?

But that smudge on the opal was still a mystery. I tilted my head, squinting at it. Reddish light yawned from the jewel, its shape almost like…like a wing.

A wing.

Suddenly my teeth chattered, and a violent tremble coursed through my body, as it did whenever a vision at last came true. I clasped my shaking hands together so Puhkan wouldn’t see.

“Are you ready, Truyan?” he was saying as his men cut Falina’s wrists free and shoved the bag of tiles into her arms. “We’re starting.”

As the tremor passed, my eyes were already starting to roll back. I couldn’t fight off the premonition that was about to seize me. This had happened before, always when I’d beenin a desperate situation, my heart pounding in my ears the way it did now.

Holding my brush at a slant, I dragged it to the paper, and before Falina made her toss, I began to paint.

The ink was wetter than I liked, so I carefully made downward strokes to minimize smearing. Slowly the lines of a bird formed. Her neck was long and curved like a crescent moon, her wings majestic as a crane’s. Peacock feathers extended off her grand tail, which nearly trailed off the page. Last, lifting my brush upright, I drew her eyes, a gleaming crimson.

A phoenix. If I were playing for odds, it was the worst choice, because there was only one. But I had a feeling.

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