The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  For the first time in many years, Xi-Hue felt discomfited by conflicting information. The palace was clearly new and impressive, in a crude style. It suggested a good base of wealth and a vigorous class of nobles. Yet the manners of the people were those of savages. He tried not to think of the strange contraption they had provided as his toilet, but to his horror, the memory made his cheeks burn. It sat above the floor! With an urgent need upon him, he’d stared nonplussed at a mushroom of white porcelain. Driven by need, he’d climbed on to crouch with his feet on either side of the hole. Even then, he might have finished all he needed to do if he hadn’t leaned on a metal handle, placed at convenient height. When that had suddenly moved, he’d fallen off the seat to the accompaniment of rushing waters. It had been at what could only be described as the worst possible time. The mess had been appalling, putting him in mind of prisoners who defiled their own cells. He had even somehow marked the wall as he slipped sideways.

  For a diplomat to be kept waiting was one thing. Keeping a king waiting was an extraordinary discourtesy. Yet Xi-Hue’s memory of the afternoon was mostly clatter and frenzy as his servants tried to restore the bathing room without revealing to their hosts what had happened. Xi-Hue himself had insisted on two separate baths. The first had been alone, without even his personal staff attending.

  By the time he and his retinue were finally ready to leave the rooms, it was almost dark and torches had been lit all over the palace grounds. Xi-Hue wondered if the toilet had been intended to humiliate him, but it was hard to see how he could possibly ask, without revealing his difficulties. He had to resist the urge to smell his hands again, though he had scrubbed them so hard they were cracked and raw. On his first night in a city for months, he had not expected to miss the forests, where a civilised man simply found a sapling to hold and dug a little hole.

  The king of Darien was a boy, as Xi-Hue had been warned in the exchange of pigeons that had preceded his entry to the city. Shiang kept no network of spies in Darien and that was just about the extent of Xi-Hue’s information. He had a reputation for adaptability, he knew – the quality any diplomat must have when presented with some food or drink of dubious provenance. Or indeed a boy-king who had sat on the throne for almost five years. Xi-Hue had expected to meet a lad of seventeen or so, but the throne dwarfed its inhabitant. The king might have been ten, perhaps twelve at the most. Xi-Hue swept on, easing a smile onto his face.

  The long hall was lined with subjects and guards. Xi-Hue was not sure what to make of the fact that neither he nor his retinue had been searched for weapons. It was either innocence or arrogance, he could not yet decide which. The court of Shiang had the same practice, which was the first thing he’d noticed in common since his arrival. Either way, he had on his person two thorn-rings to kill a man with a touch, while his retinue included Master Wai, the most accomplished quick-poisoner in Shiang. No doubt there were men with similar skills watching him make his way towards the boy-king of Darien.

  Xi-Hue halted as one of the king’s men raised a hand, stepping forward.

  ‘Ambassador Anson Xi-Hue,’ the man announced. ‘Lord of the white, plenipotentiary to the court of Shiang.’

  The details had been passed on while Xi-Hue had been taking his second bath. The moment was upon them all.

  Xi-Hue had discussed with the council at home how much respect he should show to a foreign king. Shiang recognised no other authority as an equal, though there were a number of degrees of respect for trading partners and foreign chieftains. Back in Shiang, it had seemed reasonable to offer the bow of master-to-favoured-servant. Yet Xi-Hue had been promoted to high office for exactly this sort of fine judgement. Darien was a hub of power. He had sensed that from the first moment inside the gates and seen the length of the shadow they cast.

  On instinct, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head. In the silence, Xi-Hue heard the slight intake of breath from his retinue as he did so, though the hiss of clothing assured him they had copied his action. He had dressed them in dark gold for the first meeting. Having them all kneel at the same moment would have looked like the beat of a wing, especially on that dark, polished floor.

  Xi-Hue held the position long enough to count ‘one emperor’ in his head, then rose.

  Years of training prevented any sharp movement as he saw the king had come to stand before him. The boy moved like a wraith! There had been no sound, Xi-Hue was certain. Yet the child-king had left his throne and walked two steps down. Was this more of the magic of Darien? They seemed so assured, these people, hardly deferent at all. Perhaps he had wandered into a nest of foreign wizards and would be lucky to get out with his skin.

  Xi-Hue settled his initial shock as the boy looked up at him with a faint smile, clear-eyed and straight in his posture. He was clearly waiting for Xi-Hue to speak.

  ‘Your Majesty, I am delighted to see your city for the first time,’ Xi-Hue began. ‘It is a wonder. I have been made most welcome.’

  ‘You are welcome, ambassador. May I call you Xi-Hue?’ To Xi-Hue’s surprise, the young king pronounced it perfectly as ‘Tsee-hway’.

  ‘Your Majesty is welcome to use any name he might wish. I am your most humble guest and visitor. I only hope you will forgive any breach in custom that arises from my ignorance of your ways.’

  ‘Then you may continue to call me “Your Majesty”,’ the king said. Xi-Hue bowed once more in response. ‘Were you satisfied with your rooms? Some of your servants were found trying to burn garments in a walled garden on the palace grounds. They seemed distressed. I have had wine sent to them. I hope that is all right?’

  ‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ Xi-Hue replied, though he was mortified to have his dishonour on the cusp of being public knowledge. ‘They are not … familiar with the customs here.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said the king. ‘Though perhaps they can learn. I am interested myself in learning, ambassador. Master Tellius says so little about his home. It is like squeezing a stone. You would do me a great honour if you’d sit at my side as we dine, to tell me about Shiang. Perhaps I will have the pleasure of visiting one day.’

  ‘When you are older,’ Xi-Hue said, beginning to relax.

  The king looked sideways at him.

  ‘Yes … when I am older, as you say. Until that happy day, though, I will just have to remember everything you told me. I hope you like duck well done, ambassador. My cook has been threatening to leave my service if we didn’t come to the table. And I would not like to lose him.’

  Xi-Hue found himself unclenching as he walked alongside the boy-king, Arthur. He did not signal his retinue to follow and so they remained where they were. He was on his own, a task for which he had been well trained.

  As they reached the end of the hall, he and the king approached two huge doors that hinted at lamplight and the smell of good food beyond. Another man stepped out of the shadows then, to stand on Xi-Hue’s right shoulder as the young king stood on his left. Xi-Hue glanced at the fellow, seeing a tall and slender man of around his own age, with good bearing and features … The ambassador stumbled, suddenly clumsy. He might have fallen if Tellius hadn’t taken him firmly by the arm.

  ‘Ah yes, I suppose you’ve never met,’ Arthur said. ‘Ambassador Xi-Hue, let me introduce Master Speaker Androvanus Yuan-Tellius, king of Shiang. Now please, we really must attend to this duck, or my cook will pack his bags and be gone by the morning. And gentlemen, that would be a tragedy to overshadow anything else.’

  Xi-Hue steadied himself, though he felt faint. It had been a long day. To top it all, as a veteran of a thousand diplomatic meals, he knew with near-certainty that the duck would be overdone. It always was. He took a deep breath and forced the cold face once more as the three of them swept into the dining room. Some forty men and women rose in greeting, with bare plates and untouched napkins arrayed before them. Candles lit the table almost intimately, though it stretched the length of the room. Xi-Hue felt his confidence return. Regardless of the state of the
duck, despite all the surprises he had endured, he was in his element.

  7

  Kingdom

  Prince Louis found his confidence grew as he crossed the border – and not just because he and his companions rode Féal land. The formal border itself had been just a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere, barely a wooden beam to block the road. It had pleased Louis to halt and present his travel papers to the guard there, signed and sealed by the king’s clerk. The prince had saluted the lonely officer and received a salute in return before riding on. It didn’t matter that he and his men could just as easily have gone round. Louis was back in the kingdom. With every mile that passed under their hooves, there were more signs of order, from the solid roadbed and clipped hedges, to fields marked by stone walls, like a net thrown over the land.

  Ambling along a sunny road, with hills on either side, Prince Louis felt calm descend. The southern marches had been lawless when he had been born twenty years before. By all accounts, a policy of massed hangings had put an end to the worst of it, so his father said. These days, the villages to the south were quiet, respectful places. More than one householder came out to see who was riding through and then stood with their heads bowed when they recognised the prince’s livery, rolling their caps to rope in their hands. They were decent, hard-working sorts, he thought. Men of the soil, who asked nothing more than sun and rain for their crops. They built their own low-roofed homes with sweat and strength and skill, like badgers rooting in the black earth. He rather envied them the simple beauty of their lives.

  Louis’ father still told the story of meeting one of their headmen or village elders. A skinny old fellow, chosen to speak for his people, yet who still claimed not to lead. In gentle reproof, the king of Féal had explained how things would be. All men were ruled, he had said, though some could never see it. The natural estate of man was to bind himself in laws – and to appoint strangers to enforce them. In short, man feared his own nature. To emphasise the point, the king himself had returned the man’s head to his family. He had walked into their village alone and spent an entire morning sinking a hole for a sharp stake, hammering it deep, packing stones around it, then placing the head on top, in the very centre of their main crossroads. The man’s wife and two sons had come out to watch him, but there had been something in the king that day that prevented them from speaking a single word. He left them staring at the slack-featured thing as he walked back the way he had come.

  That had been a very different world, when King Jean Brieland had been young and unforgiving. He told the story as a cautionary tale in later years, saying he should have sent in his men to burn the village first, not risked his life just to make a point. Yet the village had not risen up against the stranger who’d strolled in amongst them. If the wolf walks slow, his father said, the geese are sometimes too afraid to run.

  When the officials and taxmen of Féal had come in the weeks and months after that first visit, they had not been refused a building in the high street. Or when the first villagers died in their beds of old age and there were the taxmen of Féal with their pouches for the new ‘death duty’, no one had dared complain. They remembered the king who had walked so cheerfully in with his tools, with his spade and long hammer.

  The secret, so his father said, was to strike hard, then squeeze gently. The taxes he imposed were never too harsh, though he increased them just a touch each yearly review. Even in that, his father’s sly humour could be seen. Each ‘review’ was announced with talk of the burden of costs, as if one day it might actually lower taxes. Somehow they always went up even so.

  The prince dismounted at his father’s breaking grounds. King Jean Brieland was out in the summer air, of course, tending the warhorses that carried his most feared knights into battle. Prince Louis watched his father mount a huge young stallion, leaping onto a rug across its back without saddle or stirrups. The king wore dark yellow gloves and a wide tunic that left powerful arms bare and brown. The leggings were shiny with age and horse sweat, cinched at the waist by the old belt he always wore. For a while, Louis watched, unable to look away. The horse fought the man gripping him, leaping and plunging its head. It was a contest between two leaders of the herd and Louis thought he could hear his father laughing over the whinnies and snorts. There were times when Prince Louis wondered if his father cared at all for the kingdom, or if he was simply a man who preferred to dominate – to ride rather than to be ridden. It was an energy and determination King Jean brought to all parts of his life, whether it was bargaining with suppliers, or convincing some pitiful village that they had a new master and were part of a glorious future.

  If King Jean Brieland had simply taken all they had, life would have been much simpler. All men understood robbery. Yet instead, the king employed them by the thousands, as clerks and judges and prison guards and chancellors – men whose living depended on maintaining his regime, whose families depended on supporting him for their bread. More, he paid men and women to spend the royal treasury – on roads, on doctors, on schools for the poor children. It was perhaps the ultimate demonstration of his will, that those he had crushed went on to cheer him as he paraded past. In their own towns.

  Louis looked on his father with awe and more than a little dread. The prince was still dusty and stained from the road. He knew he had made good time and the news from Darien could hardly have gone ahead of him. He should have been coming home in triumph, but his father would decide whether he had earned praise or censure. Yet Louis was confident, his spirits borne up by the extraordinary trade deal he had made.

  His father slid down, landing lightly. He slapped the horse on the rump, almost in insult, making it snort and toss its head. The king grinned, standing far too close to a still unbroken animal that could have crushed him, but showing no fear.

  ‘That will do for today,’ the king said to the trainers.

  They formed a ring to try and get ropes on. Confused, the big horse bucked, the hooves coming close to his father, before it was off once again, galloping around the enclosure. Prince Louis watched and waited, ready for his father’s attention to fall on him. King Jean knew he was there, of course. Like the horse, Louis could run around and around, but never break free.

  Your son is here. Won’t you greet him? Has he displeased you? No, he is loyal – more loyal than you deserve. Yet you ignore him while he stands and waits. You give him no honour, in front of your men.

  ‘Honour must be won,’ Jean Brieland snapped. ‘It cannot be given.’

  He had spoken aloud and shot a warning glance to his shadow, sitting in the dust of the corral like a stain on the ground. His son took his words as an opening and immediately stepped forward. The king of Féal felt the shadow’s silent triumph. His hand drifted to his belt, hooking one thumb inside and letting the fingers fall like a wing. He took comfort in that touch.

  ‘I believe I have won honour,’ Prince Louis said. He patted a leather satchel on a long strap. ‘As perhaps you hoped, Father. I have here an alliance with Darien, a trade agreement that will benefit us both.’

  He paused in hope of some reaction but his father’s gaze was on the horse he had broken. The animal knew that he watched. It kicked and bucked in a show of rebellion that had not been evident while it bore his weight.

  ‘I bought a property there …’ Prince Louis went on. ‘And had it refurbished as our official residence.’ He trailed away as his father glanced at him, one eye squinting almost closed in an expression of irritation.

  ‘You had your men mark the positions of the city gates, the heights of the walls?’

  The prince reached into the satchel, pleased to be able to report success.

  ‘Yes, Father. They worked without sleep. I have plans of every district, in as much detail as we could manage in a short time. Darien is … a wondrous place.’

  ‘I see. A city that employs a legion in its defence. Five thousand men.’

  Prince Louis hesitated for just an instant, trying to choose his an
swer. In response, he sensed his father’s interest turn on him like a flame.

  ‘A few years ago, perhaps. They have armed the people of the city since. I could not say how many carry guns now, though I saw them on the streets, worn openly. I didn’t get the chance to see any other defences – the Sallet Greens, the Regis shield. The De Guise sword …’

  ‘They do exist,’ his father said, though his attention seemed to have drifted away. It was as if he spoke to a patch of dry earth nearby. When Prince Louis stammered on, the king looked at him in surprise.

  ‘I-I am sure. But the defences of the city were not shown to me, Father. Still, they have agreed to trade and to goodwill between us. The council of the Twelve Families voted and I must say, it was …’

  ‘I thought they would refuse,’ the king said over him. ‘I sent you, because I thought you of all my sons would surely fail. Oh, don’t look so downcast! I didn’t think anyone could win an alliance with Darien. They are so proud – and too wealthy to bribe. No, I thought they might give me the pretext to invade. By killing you, or imprisoning you, or humiliating my representative. Something like that. Instead, you return waving papers in triumph! What am I going to do with you now, eh? With all my plans in disarray?’

  ‘I thought you wanted …’ the prince began, breaking off. ‘If you had told me your plans, perhaps I could have made a worse job of the approach!’

  It was a rare flash of anger in him and the king heard it. Jean Brieland turned his back on the warhorse, glancing just once at the patch of ground that had fascinated him before. Prince Louis had learned not to follow that distracted gaze. There was never anything there.

  ‘I gave you an impossible task and you succeeded anyway. Perhaps you are my son after all, as your mother always claimed. Eh?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Prince Louis murmured.

  His father snorted.

  ‘I hope so too, after all the time I have put into training you. Darien was not meant to be an ally, Louis! If I attack them now, I will be betraying a sovereign state bound to me in trade and by oath. It would be like raping a friend, do you understand? No one would ever trust me again.’