Lace and Blade 2

by Deborah J. Ross

  And meantime here was distraction for the eye too, no need to dwell further on the grisly horror in the courtyard. He could watch instead the boy’s slender grace over kettle and charcoal-pot in the wreathing steam and the shadows. Watch as his sleeve fell back as he reached for the tea-bowl, see how a glimpse of line and movement could define the perfection of a wrist....

  The boy came forward on his knees to serve Ho and then the others, one by one. Now, watching, Shu was no longer distracted. He was snared, rather. In the grim light from the courtyard, the boy had a still-ethereal beauty, as though death and horror could not mark or mar him. There was no tremble or hesitancy in his fingers, no fear in his eyes, only the shy deference that was proper. His thick black hair was as tame as oil and fingers could achieve, not quite a porcelain smoothness; that privilege was owned by his skin, which was immaculate. Nothing about him was as coarse as his clothes. He was like polished jade, Shu thought, that could never be debased by the sacking it was wrapped in.

  Shu shifted his stool a little at the table, to see the boy better when he retreated to his corner, to the kettle and the brew-things. Let the other generals argue between themselves; they could make all his own points for him anyway, and believe them better from their own lips than from his. Let them imagine he was listening, governing in silence. What he wanted was in his sight, more and far more than he had come for, more and far more than he had ever hoped to find here.

  In truth, he had expected to find the generals dividing up the house and its treasures between themselves. Having forestalled that, prevented it, now he wanted one of its treasures for himself. A son of the house might have been difficult to claim, but a serving-boy? He could surely manage that, without giving Ho distemper...

  He was, perhaps, more obvious than he thought, less subtle than he liked. General Ho was saying unusually little, being altogether too complaisant. Waiting, perhaps, for an opportunity to spring. Well, Shu would not give it him. If Shu knew one thing, he knew how to wait. He could ride away from here on that appalling horse, and send later for the boy....

  The boy was coming forward with fresh tea: a forward boy. He was kneeling at Shu’s side, his bare wrist brushing Shu’s: a careless boy, except that the gesture had been entirely careful. As was the catch of their eyes together, the boy’s dark and luminous, enticing, pleading. An importunate boy. And an alert one, seeing Shu’s interest and responding to it, seeing something for himself therein. In all of this, a desirable boy; and more, seen closer, still a beautiful boy.

  Shu said—no. Shu tried to speak and had no voice, and had to pause and clear his throat before he could say, a little thickly, “Boy. Who rules this house, with your master dead?”

  “His sons are gone, lord,” fled, the boy must mean, which might perhaps be another reason why the governor hung alone on his scaffold there, “so my mistress, I suppose. If you do not?”

  A grunt, and, “Perhaps I do. Smart boy. Where may I find your mistress?”

  The boy told him but wouldn’t show him, wouldn’t follow into the women’s quarters. A whole boy, then, and keen to stay that way. Shu sent him instead to wait in the outer courtyard, with the abominable horse; and let the weight of his own authority carry him crushingly over all tradition, into another man’s harem.

  A dead man’s, and Shu made a kinder invasion than it would have faced without him. Which perhaps they knew, these frightened women and their eunuch servants; word travels swiftly, incomprehensibly, through a house that stands under pain of destruction. They welcomed him as best they could, better than he should have expected. No shrieking, no cowering, only silent and rapid conduct to the new widow in her grief.

  She was genuinely grieving, he saw, though perhaps not for her husband. She had closed the shutters, against any view of his dangling body; that was just as well, though nothing could have shut out his screaming. He must, Shu thought, have screamed. Perhaps a lot, perhaps for a long time.

  “...A kitchen boy?” she repeated, bewildered.

  “His name is Shen.” A cautious boy, a deep boy.

  “Is it?” She waved a hand vaguely. “Of course, take what you want...” meaning, You will anyway; you have already taken my husband, my life. And then she said what she really meant, what she really mourned, “My sons...?”

  “They are gone,” he said, “which was wisdom, and may have saved their lives. They will not be pursued, and perhaps they have not gone far. They may send a message,” if they were not too wise to be so careless. “If you have the chance to reply,” if they hadn’t ridden far and far, beyond all telling, “tell them to lie low until the last of the army has moved on. Whomever we leave here as governor, he will have instructions; they should be safe to return, if my word has any weight behind it.”

  And he patted his great comfortable pillow of a stomach, to show her that it did.

  ~o0o~

  There would be no second journey on the atrocious horse; Shu waited until his carriage came eventually to collect him.

  His brother generals were gone by then, long gone in pursuit of the endlessly-running emperor. Shu might have waited indoors, in comfort, with his boy, but the house was too much troubled already. The last thing its mistress needed was a late-lingering and most unwelcome guest.

  Instead, he put the boy to the horse’s bridle and led them both out onto the road. Here there were no comfortable benches or blossom-trees to give a perfumed shade, no fish rising in drowsy pools, no gods in niches, watching: only the road, endless and empty. But there was at least a wall at their backs, to screen them from the house and vice versa; there was a post to hitch the horse to, freeing the boy to attend to his new master.

  Who was stranded suddenly, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish, as he approached and backed away from saying various variously stupid things.

  He was master here, he told himself sternly, and he could simply look if he wanted to, if he chose. He did want, but he chose not. He chose to gloss his looking with speech, as if he could draw the lad into an easy, natural conversation, as if a general and a kitchen-boy could ever match mind to mind in comfort. By the side of a weary road, say, after a bad morning, while they waited with a thread-thin patience for a carriage that was tediously slow in coming.

  As if he had ever had the skills of common discourse, as if charm and subtlety and insight came to hand, to mind as readily as tonnage and mileage and usage, as if words were numbers and could all be made to march in line....

  “Can you read, boy?” It was how he was accustomed to deal with the world, by means of questions, answers, facts.

  “No, lord.”

  “Ah.” He had, to be frank, small use for a kitchen boy. He had no kitchen, nor any immediate prospect of a house to put it in. He might have found legitimate employment for a secretary. Clutching at straws, “You can be taught, perhaps, if you are quick to learn. Are you—?”

  A smile, small and quiet, enough to break the heart. “I am told so, lord.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Even so, he could never be quick enough. The sharpest mind needed years to learn its characters; Shu would not have years to justify his boy. Not months, even. He would have no time at all. As soon as the news was out, as soon as the boy was seen in his shadow....

  Well. His brother generals had their personal servants, their body-slaves and favourites. He was entitled too. They would laugh only because they always laughed, as people always had. There was no harm in that.

  At last, young eyes conjured what they waited for. “Is that your carriage, lord?”

  “Is it?” He saw, perhaps, something breast the rise; yes, certainly, a shape coming down, lit by occasional sparks within its own shadow. “I expect so. I hope so. What can you see?”

  “It is, it’s a carriage. It looks mighty large, lord: wheels higher than my head. And drawn by, drawn by...” He hesitated, shaded his eyes with his hand, looked again, looked around for startled confirmation. “Drawn by fire-horses?”
>
  Shu chuckled. “Not quite,” though the boy earned credit for the attempt, and for his courage too. Likely this was his first brush with the spirit world outside of gutter-magic, a fire-spell or a murky potion. Nine boys out of ten would have been running by now.

  This boy stood and stared, and now it did feel entirely natural and easy for Shu to let his big blunt hand with its missing finger rest on that slender neck, to feel bones and tendons and the surge and suck of young blood beneath soft and supple skin.

  To grip tight enough for reassurance, to shake him gently as a sign of adult authority in this new world, to let him know where he belonged now, here at Shu’s side; to murmur, “Don’t be afraid, Shen. That is your home now,” this is your home now, beneath my hand, “and no matter if demon-cattle draw it forward day by day. Only the view changes. You’ll learn.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “You should perhaps begin by learning to call me master,” as he was not a soldier and couldn’t be a scribe, could only be, what, a house-boy in this curious snail-shell house....

  “Yes, lord,” he said complacently, twisting in Shu’s grip to press a daring cheek against his arm. Unless it was the defiance that was daring, and the cheek that was complacent. Shu couldn’t tell; he had no experience, nothing to draw on. This world was abruptly just as new to him, implicit with things stranger and far stranger than a carriage drawn by unearthly creatures.

  It reached them at last, a vast square block of a wagon hauled by six great black beasts with fire in their bones and smoke beneath their hide. Sometimes he thought they were only fire and smoke, and their physical shape was pure illusion. But it was an illusion that held good, mile by mile and month by month; that was solid wrought iron that muzzled and yoked them and linked them to the traces, and those were very real hollows that their hooves left, bitten deep into the road.

  Shu had paid his price to have them, and still thought them a bargain. He’d bargained with a demon for a herd to draw the wagon-train, to keep up with the army in its chase; that deal had been made with prisoners’ blood. But then he’d needed six more for himself, not to be left behind, and the cost of those of course had come to him.

  There were those who thought he’d lost his finger in the war, on his climb to rank. He’d never seen any reason to disabuse them, but actually he’d spent it on the war, which was a very different thing.

  ~o0o~

  Shu had designed this carriage himself, though he had never needed to be so coarse as to say so. Screens folded out from the walls, to divide the interior into separate small rooms: a reception chamber, a place of work, a bedroom.

  No kitchen.

  With the screens folded back and his things packed away for travel, it seemed bleak enough, a poor space to offer to a boy even for his own use, let alone as an expression of his master. Shen seemed delighted even so, finding his way swiftly from the clever hinges in the walls to the challenge of the chests, how some of them opened out to make furniture while they still contained Shu’s papers and scrolls, his brushes and inks, his clothes and cushions and bedding.

  “This one? What does this do,” poking and prodding with delicate ineffectual fingers, “how does this unfold...?”

  “That one,” laughingly, reaching to pull him to his feet where he came lightly, easy to the touch, “that one is just a chest....”

  ~o0o~

  No kitchen, but it didn’t seem to matter. When the light failed, when the carriage stopped, Shen made tea over a charcoal fire outside. Shu drank it at his desk, reading the reports that were already coming back to him from the vanguard. He made calculations, made notes, wrote instructions in swift clear characters on thin strips of paper. By the time those had been rolled and slipped into bamboo tubes, sealed and sent away with runners, there was food: jewelled rice with egg, hot and spicy and delightful, neatly and delightfully served.

  At length—when the bowl was empty, essentially—he remembered to ask, “Have you eaten too?”

  “Oh yes, lord. With the men.” And, in response to a blankish frown, “I made congee for the guards. After so much work, digging this out of the mud, they needed something hot.”

  Of course they did. Another day, any other day, Shu would have known it, would have seen to it himself. Today— well, today he nodded, but said, “In the future, feed them, certainly, but take your own meals with me.” And, when the boy seemed likely to protest, “It is an order.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  And then the boy was clearing away the empty dishes, and Shu need only sit back and watch him move in the lamplight; and he thought this might almost be all he wanted, just to see beauty in action, in private, and know it to be his own.

  But there was more, inevitably, more to come: a time when the bed had been laid out and all the lamps dimmed bar one, and in that depth of shadow he could watch as Shen slipped the coarse tunic off his shoulders and let it fall, revealing himself to be entirely the boy, entirely the body beautiful.

  And then that same implausible boy—unlooked-for ever, unexpected utterly, irresistible now—stepped forward and put his slim fingers and his urgent attention to undressing Shu. It was a more complicated procedure, with buttons and sashes and lacings to be addressed, but there seemed to be an astonishingly short time—and that to Shu, who was the acknowledged expert in the study of time and work—between those firm, determined hands easing off his slippers and those same hands unknotting his breech-cloth and setting it aside.

  And then returning to his body, impertinent, imperious; and if Shu were aware of the contrast at all—the great sagging ageing bulk that was himself, against the lithe slender subtle ivories of youth—it could have been only for a minute, before any notion of himself as a separate creature, a mockable man, was stripped away entirely in the hot damp bewildering wonder that the boy made of his bed.

  ~o0o~

  Messengers came, continued to come all night, as ever, and were for once delayed till morning. At some time in the night, the wagon-train that followed the army caught up and overtook. This was commonplace, Shu’s own order. He liked to bring the demon-cattle through on night-roads where he could, not to alarm the peasantry. The men could rest just as easily by day, and the cattle saw perfectly well in the dark.

  What was unusual was his being in his bed but yet awake to hear the creaking of ropes and axles, the hot breath and stamping of the beasts, the low calls of the men who worked them.

  In bed and awake and not solitary, that was unheard-of. He would have resented sleep this night, that might snatch away a moment’s understanding of slender bones and solid flesh, skin pressed stickily against his skin, a weight sprawled uncomfortably across his legs and a head nestled into his shoulder.

  A head that stirred, that lifted, although he would have sworn he had not uttered a sound or twitched a muscle; a body that shifted itself as though reading his discomforts, settling more snugly against his side; a voice that murmured, “Lord?”

  “Did the wagon-train wake you? It’s nothing, it’ll pass by and be gone,” as this night would, and all the world be new in the morning.

  “My lord was awake,” Shen said, as though he had read it in his sleep and so roused as a good boy ought.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Indeed it had been a quiet joy, a treasure to be held against uncertainty, the possibility of loss.

  “No, lord,” a kiss to his chest, an interlinking chain of kisses, “but now we are both awake,” a hint of teeth at his breast, at his nipple, “and it would seem a shame to waste that happy chance....”

  Time was a wagon-train, a series of moments, passing by and gone.

  ~o0o~

  In n the morning there was tea again, and congee for all in the open air around the conjured fire, even for Shu—“Eat, lord,” laughingly, “eat with us this morning, and this evening I will eat with you”—and so on, the everlasting haul along roads that unreeled like silk from a bobbin but never so smoothly.

  Shu sat on his well-padded rump in
his well-padded chair, jolted and bumped none the less. He read and scribbled charcoal notes and struggled to think clearly, and every hour called a halt so that he could write his orders properly and send them off via his tail of messengers, and the only unusual thing in that was the struggle, and the only unusual thing in his carriage was the boy, who was the cause of it all.

  By day’s end they had overtaken the wagon-train again in a familiar game of leapfrog—Shu being happy enough to startle peasants with his own turnout, if it saved him the inconveniences of travelling at night—and all but caught up with the rear echelons of the army, stalled now at the same river that had delayed the emperor. Stalled, but not for so long; the emperor had no General Shu to organise boats fetched down from a lake on wagons that would themselves float like boats to carry troops across beside the bridge that other troops were mending with timbers cut from the woods that fringed that same lake and carried on those same wagons....

  All day he had been arranging this and all that it implied. All day he had been talking softly to his illiterate boy, explaining every message received and every message sent, every consequence. It helped, he found, to keep things clear in his own head. Shen was a perfect audience, interested in everything, asking occasional pertinent questions, rolling and sealing Shu’s papers as he wrote them. If fingers occasionally brushed skin, if eyes more often brushed eyes, that was more than a perquisite, that was an incentive.

  After two days, it was no longer a surprise to find someone else at his elbow, in his eyeline, in his bed.

  In less than a week, it was already a habit to look around for him, those times, those few times that Shen wasn’t immediately there: as though something were wrong in the world, a little out of kilter, that needed a boy’s light body to rebalance it. He had never strayed far. He might be walking with the guards at the rear of the wagon, chewing ox-hide and listening to their tales of the war; he might be riding up front with the wagoners, learning to crack a firewhip and drive a team of hell-cattle. Boy-like, he wanted to be everywhere, but he always came back to Shu.