The trouble with hiding three enormous huskies was that all three believed they ought to be wherever the others were.
Sia had claimed the place nearest Xu Hao's bed. Grey slept by the shelter opening, where she could hear the forest. Little One regarded both arrangements as invitations to find a better one.
That morning, she climbed over Grey, stepped on Xu Hao's blanket, and settled across Da Bao's legs with a satisfied sigh.
Da Bao examined the dog pinning him to the ground.
"We could build another shelter."
"For whom?" Xu Hao asked.
"Her."
"She would sleep in this one anyway."
"Then we'll build two."
Er Bao, who was trying to rescue the cooking pot from Little One's tail, said, "Or we could remember that she came from a card."
Da Bao looked down at the great grey-and-white head resting on his knee.
"Oh."
Xu Hao laughed, but he was looking past the shelter towards the forest. Yesterday they had found another marked tree along the lower trail, and Da Bao had spoken about the night his family fled their home. Those two things had stayed with him.
A hunter passing beneath the ridge might see three identical Wind beasts at a distance. A curious hunter might come closer. Someone who knew what an earth cultivator could and could not summon might ask the wrong question.
"We need to learn to put them away," Xu Hao said.
Little One opened one eye. Apparently she objected to the phrase.
* * *
They chose the flat rock above camp. There was room to work without a dog stumbling into the fire, and the trees around it kept the rock out of sight from the lower trail.
Er Bao brought Grey first. She sat beside him, watching his face as he settled cross-legged on the stone.
"You can feel her card?" Xu Hao asked.
"Yes. It has been there since you gave it to me."
"Then think of her returning to it. You aren't sending her away. You're asking her to rest."
Da Bao folded his arms. "That sounds easy."
"You aren't the one doing it."
"I will be in a moment."
Er Bao laid a hand against Grey's neck. Her ears tipped backwards, then forward again. A pale light gathered at the ends of her fur.
Xu Hao had time to take one surprised breath.
Grey vanished.
The stone where she'd been sitting remained empty. A few loose hairs drifted onto its surface.
Er Bao's hand stayed in the air.
"Brother?" Da Bao asked.
Er Bao closed his eyes. His shoulders loosened.
"She's there."
"Where?"
"Where the card is. I can feel her, just as before." He opened his eyes and looked at Xu Hao. "It wasn't painful."
"What did you do?" Xu Hao asked.
"I stopped trying to imagine the card itself. I thought about Grey sleeping somewhere safe, and I felt her answer."
Xu Hao looked at the loose hairs on the rock. The card had taken the dog but left the world she'd touched entirely unchanged.
"Bring her back," Da Bao urged.
Er Bao hesitated. Then he held out his hand.
Light gathered near his knees. Grey appeared with one paw lifted, as though she'd been interrupted in the middle of a step. She put it down and pushed her nose against his palm.
Er Bao smiled. He did not look at all like a man who had expected to be so relieved.
* * *
Da Bao insisted that Little One should go next.
He sat where Er Bao had been sitting, then changed his mind and stood. Little One stood too. He sat again. So did she, on his foot.
"Little One," he began solemnly, "you are going somewhere for a very short time. You must be brave."
Xu Hao glanced at Er Bao. "Does he intend to do this every time we reach a town gate?"
"Probably."
"I'm explaining," Da Bao said. "She deserves to know."
Little One licked his chin.
"See? She understands."
Da Bao closed his eyes, drew a slow breath and concentrated. Nothing happened.
He tried harder. Little One leaned into him. He nearly toppled off the rock.
"Perhaps," Xu Hao said, "you could stop holding on to her."
"I don't want her to think I'm pushing her away."
"She's already sitting on your boot. I doubt she's worried about your affection."
Da Bao looked down. The dog was staring up at him, waiting for whatever interesting thing he would do next.
His expression softened. He scratched the fur behind her ears and let go.
"Rest, girl."
Light ran through Little One's coat. She disappeared before he could finish the next word.
Da Bao stared at his empty boot.
His hand shot to his chest.
"Can you feel her?" Er Bao asked.
A long second passed.
"Yes." Da Bao's voice was unexpectedly quiet. "She's waiting."
He called her back at once.
Little One materialised in front of him, bounded forward and knocked him onto his back. The sound of their landing carried across the ridge.
"Very discreet," Xu Hao observed.
Da Bao was laughing too hard to answer.
* * *
Sia watched the proceedings from beside Xu Hao's knee.
He had dismissed her once before, briefly, while working out how to summon her. That ought to have made the exercise simple. Instead he found himself delaying it, rubbing the place behind her left ear that made her lean against him.
On Earth he'd taught her to wait outside shops. She'd learned to sit patiently by the door, although the moment he returned she behaved as though he'd abandoned her for a week. He had always found it funny.
There had been one door, since then, through which he hadn't come back.
Sia raised her head and nudged his hand.
"It's all right," he told her.
Er Bao turned towards the trees, giving him privacy without making a show of it. Da Bao was occupied persuading Little One to remove herself from his chest.
Xu Hao closed his eyes. He pictured the place in his mind where Sia's card rested. He could feel the familiar presence there even while she stood beside him, impatient and warm beneath his fingers.
"Go and rest, girl."
The pressure against his leg disappeared.
He opened his eyes to an empty patch of stone.
He could still feel her. That was the strange part. He knew exactly how it felt to reach for someone and discover there was nothing left to reach. This was different. There was a quiet certainty inside him, as though Sia had gone into the next room and was waiting for him to open the door.
He let that certainty settle before bringing her out again.
She appeared facing the wrong way, turned in a hurried circle and planted both paws against his chest. Xu Hao caught her before she could push him off the rock.
"Not a week," he told her, laughing. "Barely half a minute."
Sia had no interest in such distinctions.
* * *
By midday they knew the important part: each brother could dismiss his own companion, feel her while she was hidden, and call her back. None of them had felt the draining weakness that followed Card Drawing or Superimpose. Summoning caused a small tug beneath Xu Hao's ribs, but nothing more.
Xu Hao wanted to know what happened when they had no time to prepare.
Er Bao agreed to one final trial. Da Bao protested that his little brother was beginning to sound like a schoolmaster again.
"I was a schoolmaster."
"That explains so much."
They took the dogs to a bend above the lower trail, where a bank of pale stones ran between two stands of pines. Er Bao asked Da Bao to watch the southern approach while Xu Hao waited with Sia. Grey and Little One remained with their owners.
"When I raise my hand," Er Bao said, "put them away. No speeches. No looking at one another to see who's finished."
"That's directed at me," Da Bao said.
"Very perceptive."
Er Bao lifted his hand.
Xu Hao thought of Sia resting. The light came at once.
Grey vanished almost as quickly. Little One took another pace before disappearing, leaving Da Bao reaching after a dog who was no longer there.
For three heartbeats, the hillside held only three men.
Xu Hao looked down at the pale ground.
The dogs' paw prints were everywhere.
One set led straight to his feet and stopped. Another ended beside Da Bao's boots. Little One had circled a shrub twice before vanishing, leaving an especially clear record of her movements in the damp soil.
"Well," Xu Hao said. "We can hide the dogs. Apparently not where they've been."
Da Bao followed his gaze. "We could cover the prints."
"And what would that look like to someone following a trail?"
"A lot of disturbed dirt."
"Exactly."
Er Bao crouched beside the nearest impression. "On the road, we dismiss them before anyone can see. Preferably on rock, or somewhere the tracks won't point to us."
"And we never summon them in front of strangers," Xu Hao said.
Da Bao looked towards the forest below. "Even if somebody attacks?"
"If that happens, staying alive comes first," Er Bao answered. "But we should not let a curious merchant see three beasts appear from empty air merely because we want company on the road."
They left the prints alone. Any attempt to erase them would make the patch of damp earth more conspicuous, and there were already plenty of animal trails nearby. They would choose better ground next time.
As they turned back towards the ridge, something cracked in the brush beyond the stones.
The three men stopped.
Usually Sia would have lifted her nose. Grey would have watched the trees. Little One, less helpfully, would have wanted to investigate.
All three were hidden.
Xu Hao felt the absence keenly. Concealing them had removed his first warning as well as his most unusual secret.
Er Bao held up a hand. Da Bao eased his club from his shoulder.
The brush moved again. There was a heavy snort and the sound of hooves striking stone. Whatever had approached them turned away, crashing down through the lower ferns.
No one pursued it.
After the noise faded, Da Bao looked at Xu Hao.
"A deer?"
"Possibly."
"Could have made good supper."
"Could have," Er Bao said. "Or it could have been running from something else."
Da Bao settled the club against his back.
Xu Hao kept his attention on the trees until they were well away from the bend. There were times when Sia's sharp nose would matter more than concealment. He would have to learn to judge them.
* * *
That night, the dogs returned to their usual places beside the fire.
Er Bao was checking the leather bindings of his sword. Da Bao had Little One's enormous head across his lap and was attempting to explain why she mustn't leap on him when summoned. She regarded the lesson as an invitation to lick his hands.
Xu Hao took out his bark notes and wrote down what they'd learned. Cards concealed the animals and their powers. The bonds remained. No great drain from dismissal or return. Light visible during both. Tracks remained in the ground.
He added one last observation: hidden dogs could not warn them of what they smelled.
Er Bao glanced over the list.
"Useful?"
"Very. Also inconvenient."
"Most useful things are."
Da Bao looked up. "That can't be true. Meat is useful."
"Obtaining it has been inconvenient on several occasions," Xu Hao said.
His brother thought about the tiger, the white boar and the missing boot.
"Fair."
Xu Hao folded the bark and put it away. Across the fire, Grey slept with one ear angled towards the darkness. Little One had given up on listening and was snoring against Da Bao's leg. Sia rested her chin on Xu Hao's ankle.
Hibiscus Town was still beyond the southern ridges. Er Bao would not take him until he reached the third layer of Dust, and he had not reached it yet. But there were fewer practical reasons to fear the journey now.
Three great beasts could disappear from sight.
The harder part would be remembering, when the road was crowded and the questions began, that he could not make the rest of the world disappear with them.