Huang pressed his lips together and splayed his hands palm down on the table, inadvertently accentuating the missing digits.
“So just what do you plan to do about it, my little sprite?” Temujin scratched his neck thoughtfully.
“I think we need to stop running, stop hiding, and take the fight to Ouyang, where it belongs.”
Across from her, a smile began to spread across Huang’s face, and he inclined his head slightly. “Iron Jaw, for the first time in a long time, you and I are in complete agreement.”
There were twelve of them crowded into the red crawler, all together, as it trundled down onto the Grand Trunk from the west. They were taking a chance passing through the same junction Huang had tried to attack the month before but held out hope that any forces in the area would only give the crawler a cursory search, should they be stopped. As it happened, they reached the city walls of Fanchuan before encountering any authority, and by that point they were on familiar ground.
Mama Noh rode in the cab, with Temujin in the driver’s seat beside her. Ruan scowled from a seat in the rear, while Gamine and Huang sat on cushions on opposite sides of the converted cargo hold, which the Red Crawler Opera Company had for years used as a makeshift living room, storage area, and rehearsal space. In addition to the five surviving members of the inner circle, there were four of the original opera players and three former plantation laborers who had picked up enough tumbling or could sing well enough that they could pass for performers in a pinch. An even dozen who had left the relative safety and comfort of the Fists’ camp in the Forking Paths and come to Fanchuan, capital of Fangzhang province, on a last-ditch attempt at final victory.
It was not common knowledge that the Red Crawler Opera Company was a part of the Harmonious Fists Uprising. From the beginning, Gamine and Huang had recognized the potential usefulness of having a small number of Fists who could come and go through towns and villages without raising undue suspicion. And since the red crawler had been a familiar sight in the Tianfei Valley and the outlying provinces alike for years, it was not difficult to establish identification with the authorities, if need be.
The plan was the simplest yet, brutally so, but with the largest risk and the most significant potential benefit. And it depended upon the twelve people within the crawler convincing the authorities in Fanchuan that they were precisely what they appeared to be, a group of opera players returning to the capital after several years performing in the outer provinces.
Temujin had been selected to sit beside Mama Noh because, in his long years working various grifts, he had successfully passed himself off as everything from a bureaucrat to a peddler and all points in between. He was likely the most skilled liar in the bunch, though Mama Noh insisted that her skills were somewhat superior, but that she called it acting.
Huang felt certain that Gamine could out-lie both of them if the need arose, but he didn’t see anything to gain from pressing the issue.
The guardsman at the city walls, after questioning Mama Noh and Temujin for three quarters of an hour, finally stamped his chop on their admittance papers, and the crawler was cleared to enter.
The easy part was behind them. Now things would get difficult.
It had taken several weeks to put the early stages of the plan into motion. One of Mama Noh’s most trusted people, who had been with the opera company for long years, had been sent out on foot to Fanchuan. The woman had joined a caravan of travelers passing through the Grand Trunk conjunction, and on reaching the Tianfei Valley had stolen away in the night to circle Fanchuan and approach from the east, to allay any suspicion. Once within the city, her task had been to establish contact with those who had employed the Red Crawler Opera Company in years past, and to arrange for a suitable engagement for the players.
The realities of their circumstances meant that no communication had been possible with the player between the time she left the box canyon and the time that the red crawler arrived in Fanchuan, but Mama Noh’s faith in her had not been misplaced. By the time that Gamine, Huang, and the others climbed down the hatch into the bustle of the capital city, the player had arranged a suitable booking for the company, beginning less than a week away.
The player’s instructions had been short and simple, but everyone was endlessly impressed that she’d carried it off. After all, it could not have been easy to book an engagement where the only criterion dictated who was to be in the audience. But with a broad smile, the player was able to report success. She had managed to convince the agent to commission the performance without ever raising suspicion. The following week the Red Crawler Opera Company was engaged to perform at the Hall of Rare Treasures, the residence of Governor-General Ouyang himself.
Huang knelt in the forecourt, working the edge of his red-bladed saber back and forth across a lightly oiled whetstone. The blade’s leading edge shone mirror bright, reflecting the daylight that streamed around the edges of a shuttered window. It’d already had the keenness of a razor when he’d started sharpening, hours before, and now he was doing little more than polishing the blade. But it gave him something to occupy his hands, though sadly the same could not be said of his thoughts, which still raced in tight circles in his mind.
He’d scarcely walked through the front door in several days, preferring to remain indoors, but in this he was not alone. Mama Noh’s envoy had been able to secure lodgings for the company in the less fashionable district at the extreme south of the city in Southern Gate District, and the ersatz players all tended to remain inside and keep to themselves as much as possible. Even when there wasn’t strategy to be discussed, plans to be reviewed, or maneuvers to be carefully practiced, Huang and the others preferred to keep out of the public eye as much as possible. Still, they could not remain indoors forever, and from time to time they were forced to go out into the city, either singly or in pairs, to fetch provisions or scout their routes to and from the governor’s palace, or simply to indulge vices left too long unsated.
When Huang had ventured beyond the walls of their lodging, he had found Fanchuan a much different place than the city he remembered. It seemed to have changed considerably in the years since he had been gone, but then it was hard for him to know whether it was really the city that had changed or he himself. After all, he’d been little more than a child when he was last inside the walls of Fanchuan, and the boy who he’d been was now long gone.
Still, he could not deny that there were definitely things about the city that were different. And he was not alone in noticing them.
“This isn’t a city,” Ruan said as the door banged open and he strode into the forecourt. He slammed the door shut behind him. “It’s a rutting military stronghold!”
Huang only glanced up, continuing to work the saber back and forth across the whetstone. “More soldiers about?”
Ruan scowled. “I lost count!”
The skeletal bandit was right. The city did seem to be crowded with soldiers. Both Bannermen and those who served under the Green Standard, the soldiers loitered on every street corner, and crowded every teahouse and tavern. The hanging gardens in Sun-Facing District, not far from the Hall of Rare Treasures, had been pulled down, completely trodden under, and converted into a makeshift garrison, with ordered rows of tents housing hundreds, even thousands of troops. And whole rows of houses in Green Stone District had been seized by the authorities and converted into barracks.
“You still sharpening that rutting thing?” Ruan looked sidelong at the blade in Huang’s hand. “If you keep it up, you won’t have enough sword left to stitch on a button.”
Huang looked up from his work, lips curled in a sneer. “Don’t you have work of your own to be doing, Ruan?” Somehow, he managed to make the other man’s name into a curse.
To Huang’s surprise, Ruan didn’t respond in kind but instead looked down at him with what appeared to be genuine concern. “You doing all right, Hummingbird?” He folded his arms over his chest and regarded Huang closely. “Not li
ke you to snap like that.” He paused and then glanced uneasily toward the main body of their lodgings. “It’s not some sort of . . . woman trouble, is it?”
Huang couldn’t help but chuckle. He shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
Ruan sighed, looking relieved. So far as Huang knew, the skeletal-faced bandit had never been in a relationship with a woman that lasted longer than a single night, if that, and the intricacies of longer-term relationships were obviously something with which Ruan was far less than entirely comfortable. “What then?”
Huang took a heavy breath and laid his saber across his lap. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I’m just anxious about our mission. I keep thinking about having to . . .” He paused, searching. “About having to eliminate Ouyang.”
Ruan pulled a face, like he’d just tasted something bitter. He shook his head. “No, no. Don’t dress it up in pretty words like that. It isn’t eliminating we’re about. It’s killing.” He narrowed his eyes, looking closely at Huang. “Can’t bring yourself to say it, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. Killing’s a man’s work, and no place for the squeamish.”
Huang picked up his blade and began running its edge once more back and forth across the whetstone. He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again, remaining silent.
“You know,” Ruan went on, pointing to the sword in Huang’s hands, “for the longest time I wasn’t sure you knew how to use that thing. Oh, you could swing it around, of course, all sorts of fancy dancing. But it was forever and a day before I saw you actually stick it into anyone.” He chuckled ruefully. “Fact, Jue and I had a bet running for a while as to whether you’d ever be blooded or not.”
At the mention of Jue, Huang felt his face tighten and saw that Ruan, too, was lost in a sudden reverie, remembering their fallen brother.
“I’ve never killed if I could help it,” Huang finally admitted after a long silence. “For a time, I thought I could avoid it. Then there came that day we stood at the mouth of the Forking Paths, and it was the lives of the soldiers or the lives of our own. It was a choice that I could make, and would make again. But later, when I stood on the cliffs overlooking the beginnings of the Grand Trunk, and had Zhao’s murderer in the dirt before me, I couldn’t—” He broke off, his eyes stinging. He tightened his hand around the saber’s hilt in a white-knuckled grip, his lips drawn into a line.
Ruan stepped forward and laid an uncharacteristically tender hand on Huang’s shoulder. “You’re not a murderer, Hummingbird. There’s no shame in that. You’re a soldier and kill only when someone needs killing. You may have put off your uniform and taken up the bandit’s life, but you’re still a soldier down where it matters.”
Huang looked up. He’d never heard Ruan talk to anyone this way, much less him.
“If not for Zhao,” Ruan went on, “I would have killed you the day we met, out there on the sands. I thought you needed killing.” He paused, his expression unreadable. “I was wrong, though. And I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”
Ruan squeezed Huang’s shoulder for a moment, then turned and walked away into the lodgings, leaving him alone with his saber, the edge mirror bright and razor keen.
Gamine hadn’t seen Temujin in the better part of a day and was beginning to worry.
“He’s probably off somewhere drunk,” Mama Noh said.
“I’m sure of that,” Gamine answered. “The question isn’t if he’s drunk, the question is where.”
When they had first arrived in Fanchuan, there had been some concern early on that Temujin, with ready access to spirits, might fall back into his accustomed habits and in some drunken moment reveal the Fists’ true identity and their plans to the authorities, however inadvertently. To the old man’s credit, though, he seldom drank in taverns, but tended instead to purchase jars that he brought back to their lodgings to drink in peace. Whenever he was out of Gamine’s sight for too long, though, she couldn’t help but worry.
Just as she was checking the storeroom, half expecting to find him sprawled out insensate on the cold stone floor, she heard the sound of Temujin coming in through the front door. She met him in the dining area, to find him already unstoppering an oversized jar of wine.
“You look surprisingly sober,” Gamine said with a smile, sliding into a chair across the table from him.
“That, hop-o’-my-thumb,” Temujin said with a grin, “is a problem that will quickly be rectified.” With the jar open, he didn’t bother with a cup but drank straight from the spout. He set the jar back down on the table and wiped his mouth with the cuff of his sleeve. “There’s not a few in this town that wouldn’t benefit from a bit of tipple as well, if you want to know my opinion.”
Gamine gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?” She’d seldom ventured outside the lodgings since they arrived, having the inescapable fear that she might run into someone who knew her from some former life, either as the prized pet of the Chauviteau-Zong estate or as the young grifter on the make. Most of what she knew of the current state of the city came from the reports the others carried back, Temujin among them.
“I’ve been in and out of this town since I was younger’n you, and I’ve scarce seen it so tense. People agitating on the streets about the governor, the papers full of stories of crime and murder and worse.”
Gamine nodded thoughtfully. From what the Fists had learned since arriving the week before, there appeared to be considerable unrest among the populace. There were stories about the Harmonious Fists and the uprising in the news of the day, but surprisingly less than any of them might have expected. Instead, the broadsheets and criers were more interested in stories about the Parley gangs, which were taking advantage of the authorities’ distraction with the uprising in the north; an unrelenting crime wave had followed in all the valley provinces. And, perhaps most surprisingly, time and again the Fists heard stories about the public agitating for Ouyang to step down, and for the governor-general’s policies in the outer provinces to be reversed, in particular his new offensive with its “No Prisoner” tactic.
As difficult as it was for the Fists to believe, a considerable percentage of the public supported the uprising and were pushing for the farmers, miners, and other laborers to be given precisely what they were demanding.
Gamine tilted her head to one side, hearing faint strains of music from beyond their lodging’s walls. “What’s that?”
Temujin cocked his head, listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh, just another funeral procession. Passed it on my way back. Seems folks die pretty often here in Southern Gate, don’t they?”
Gamine chewed her lower lip, lost in thought. She remembered what Master Wei had taught about what awaited the faithful after death, how there would be no hunger and no pain, no loss and no loneliness, only endless satiation, comfort, and bliss. She thought of all those Fists who had fallen, these years past, in their struggles against Governor-General Ouyang. Had they woken to find themselves in that kind of paradise, free from earthly worries and woes?
Thinking of Ouyang, though, reminded her of their mission and the task that lay before them. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the thought that nothing lay beyond death, in which case in killing Ouyang she would be consigning him to oblivion, or the thought that something lay beyond death, in which case she would be sending him to his punishment or reward, whichever the case might be. And if there was some life after life, some continuance beyond the veil of death, was she running the risk of denying herself entry by staining her hands with Ouyang’s blood in cold, calculated murder? Because that was what it would be, she had come to realize. Not the heat of battle, defending herself and her people from attack, but the clinical, calculated taking of another life, killing someone who had no inkling that death was coming to him.
“Old man?” Gamine finally said, breaking the silence. “What do you think waits for us after death?”
Temujin quaffed another draft from his jar, his eyebrow cocked. “More of the same, is what
I figure. If you ask me, and you did, death is just the life we’ll find on the other side of the Eternal Blue Sky. Like passing through a mirror. Jenghiz Khan and the Mongols of old had themselves buried with their prized possessions, their animals, swords, and gold, so they’d have them ready to hand when they sat up on the other side. If it was good enough for them, I figure it’s good enough for me.” He took another pull from the jar and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “But I don’t spend too much time worrying about death, hop-o’-my-thumb. Life is trouble enough.”
It was the day of the Red Crawler Opera Company’s scheduled performance at the Hall of Rare Treasures, and everything was in readiness. The thirteen Fists had been drilled on the plans until they could each recite not only their own role backward and forward, but those of all the others as well.
None of them were under illusions about their own chances of escape. If everything went exactly according to plan, the odds were still against any of them living to tell the tale. They would be attacking the governor-general when he was at his most vulnerable, within the safety of his own home. While they had a better-than-average chance of succeeding, and reaching Ouyang before his guards intercepted them, the place would be ringed with still more guards. And although the guards were stationed to keep people out of the governor’s residence, when the alarm was raised about Ouyang’s murder, the guards would be in a perfect position to keep the Fists in.
And even if they were able somehow to escape the governor’s residence, elude the guards, and make it out into the city, Fanchuan was packed from one wall to the other with Bannermen and Green Standard guardsmen. Most would be willing to cut down the Fists where they stood for the promise of a free round at a tavern, and if the authorities put a bounty on their heads when issuing their descriptions, it was likely that the Fists wouldn’t make it a dozen steps before being hacked to pieces.
Iron Jaw and Hummingbird Page 25
