by Duncan, Dave
Shoulders back, chest out!
Sorry about your dragon, Prince.
The lizard had coughed up his sword. It was bent and chipped, but he retrieved it, went over to the heaving, writhing corpse, and rammed the blade through its left eye, into its evil little brain.
I threw sand in its face, Prince. What did you think I threw?
When Jade Harmony heard that the afternoon’s excitement had made him twelve thousand taels richer, he was inspired to invite his sand warrior to dine with the family, an unprecedented honor. “Family” meant the merchant, his widowed daughter, and Morning Jewel, his lemon-sour wife, who pouted so reprovingly at this unseemly pampering of retainers that she had to eat her rice one grain at a time. Their underage son was excluded as always—the guards searched incoming traffic more rigorously than outgoing, so that socially deprived seedling had returned by climbing over the wall. He had needed instruction from Silky on how and where to sneak back into his own house, poor little rich boy. The four adults sat cross-legged and paddled food from delicate porcelain bowls with ivory chopsticks, even at times talking. Servants came and went, bringing and taking away.
Verdant Harmony just munched without mouthing a word, causing her mother to frown thoughtfully at her, as if assessing her for plague. Jade Harmony himself failed to notice their mood and droned about food shortages in the north and the price of grain. He neglected to ask a single question about the dragon fight, an oversight that rankled Silky—unreasonably so, since the Gray Helpers were taught to pursue anonymity. But the Gray Helpers were also taught how to make appropriate conversation at funerals, and now was an equally good time to talk about money.
“May I venture to ask the Eminent One if he has ever heard of the Portal of Worlds?”
The merchant contemplated the question, his in-house assassin, what conceivable reason the latter should have for putting the former, and the most appropriate of several appropriate answers. “Only legends,” he said at last.
“It has many of those,” Silky admitted. “But there really is such a place, up in the Fortress Hills. It is the work of great ancestors, a construct unthinkable to us lesser men in these smaller days.”
“What does it do?”
“Nothing. It’s only a carving on a cliff.”
“Ah.”
“But there are rumors,” Silky admitted, tweezing a chunk of pig liver out of the zoology-with-beans. “It is said that the gate opened at the end of the Third Dynasty and the ferocious Hauik came pouring out to conquer the Good Land.”
“And eventually founded the Fourth Dynasty?” Jade Harmony displayed a hint of interest.
“Precisely as Your Eminence says. And the dreaded Karun, who founded the Eighth, claimed a similar origin. No one seems to know where else they could have come from.”
The current Lord of the High and the Low was counted in the Eleventh Dynasty. Jade Harmony nodded thoughtfully as he worked it out—fourth, eighth, and then twelfth? His house assassin had made him about five times richer than he had been just a few months ago—assuming one included money that was technically his daughter’s, as Jade Harmony always did. When Silky talked, it was wise to listen. What bait was the House of Joyful Departure dangling now?
“And there are omens,” Silky added.
“What sort of omens?”
“Unseasonable weather, civil unrest.” He did not mention the old belief that such disasters were a sign of Heaven withdrawing its mandate from the ruling dynasty. Such talk was treason. “There are tales that many sky demons have been seen in northern provinces.”
“Superstitious rubbish,” said the merchant, who was highly superstitious.
“Indeed, as Your Eminence says. But there is one prophecy that may bear watching. It is said that the nightingale will sing to two broom stars.”
“Ah! The nightingale,” Jade Harmony dogmatized to his womenfolk, “is the only eponym found in both the catalog of years and the catalog of moons. Thus Nightingale Moon in the Year of the Nightingale is especially portentous!” Everyone knew that, even housebound women. “You think that the Portal of Worlds will open then, Sand Warrior?”
“Your humble servant is ignorant of such matters, Eminence, and defers to your noble judgment. However, most sources seem to believe that it opens only in the Year of the Firebird. If, indeed, two broom stars are seen during Nightingale Moon, then many persons may speculate that the Portal must open in the next Year of the Firebird—this cycle!”
“And?” the merchant’s piggy eyes glinted.
“There is much good grazing land near the Portal that might become more easily available to the wise investor who did not panic at foolish omens,” Silky said. That was the message the Abbot had told him to deliver. The Abbot had been rooting around in Portal lore for decades.
The meal dragged to a merciful close. Verdant had not once looked in Silky’s direction. Her mother had not once stopped pouting. Jade Harmony was still blissfully contemplating his twelve thousand taels. Eventually, he moved to rise and end the gathering. At once, his sand warrior was at his back to lift him, after which he was permitted to perform the same service for each of the ladies.
And then—surprise!—Jade Harmony was suddenly seized by a pang of gratitude. “And what of our noble dragon slayer? What can I give you to reward your fine service today? What does a strong young man crave, hmm?”
That was unquestionably an offer of one of the kitchen slave girls as a concubine, which was not exactly outstanding generosity, but better than his customary stinge.
Silky bowed very low. “Your munificence is legendary, Eminence. Just to serve you is ample reward. I have everything here I could dream of.” At that moment, he managed to catch Verdant’s eye. The great heifer looked straight through him as if he did not exist.
No matter. … He enjoyed a challenge.
His nightwork costume consisted of a dark gray tunic and matching trousers, but if he tried seeming magic with those on, he would become smallish and utterly nondescript. A romantic lover should wear sumptuous courtly robes, of which he had none handy; besides not even a mythical hero could climb three stories up a sheer wall in them. He improvised by stripping down to nothing except a sword belt and sword. That worked. His reflection became tall and lean, with muscles snaking under his skin. His eyes became strangely lustrous, his queue long and thick, finely braided. And so on.
When he was satisfied, he disarmed, turned his back on the mirror, and dressed in his now ostentatiously tight burglar clothes. He slipped his lock-picking tools into one of the copious pockets, extinguished his lamp, and went to his window to watch Verdant’s.
The walls of the palace were fitted with downward-facing bronze teeth to ensure that no burglar climbed very far, and flanked with spikes along the base to make certain that he would fail only once. After a very long torment of waiting—killing dragons made a man exceedingly lascivious—the lights faded, which meant that Verdant’s servants had finished readying her for bed and were departing. Tonight, she kept a light on, which was not her usual practice.
In a few moments, Silky reached the terrace outside her room. By his third night in the Harmony residence, he had mastered all its locks, so it was child’s play for him to creep up the servants’ stair to the family quarters, exit to the roof terrace through one of the unoccupied suites, perform a death-defying walk along the narrow parapet to Verdant’s quarters, and then—because he had arranged it beforehand—open one flap of the casement and peer in.
He might have lost his face to a point-blank blast from First Musket’s pistols, but this was certainly his lucky day. She was alone, sitting erect in a chair and wearing a robe that buttoned to her neck and covered everything except her face and toes. It could not conceal the width of her shoulders or the wonderful depth of her breasts, nor the great cataract of gleaming black hair.
The room was hot, heated by
crackling logs in the fireplace. Lit by firelight and a single lantern, it was a mist of silks, shadows, and heavy incense. The bed itself was well quilted and quite large enough for what he had in mind.
He slid a leg over the sill, smiling. “You left the window for me!”
“I did not! I thought I made sure they were all locked. You are a madman. You might have been killed climbing that wall.”
He closed the flap. “I died for you once, Princess. If I must, I will do so again.” He watched her scared eyes as he approached—justifiably scared, but she had known he was coming and could easily have arranged for servants or armed guards to wait here in her stead. He knelt before the delicate bare toes peeking out from under the hem of her robe. “Any more memories come back yet? The Summer Palace? That night in the Waterlily Park?”
“Nothing has come back, as you put it, nothing at all!” Verdant was as strong-willed as she was strong-armed.
She wanted to be wooed.
He sighed. “When I first told you, this afternoon, I thought you … But, no matter. You truly don’t believe me?”
“No.” Had there been a hint of hesitation there?
“I would never lie to you, Princess. I recognized you the instant I set eyes on you and my heart sang. I kept hoping, hoping, hoping that one day I would see that light of memory in your eyes, too.”
“You never will. If I strike this gong, you are a dead man, Sand Warrior.”
“Sometimes … Do you by any chance have a birthmark … about here?” He touched his chest. “Shaped like a fish?”
“No!” She lost color. It had cost him four taels and several sweaty nights to win that information about her birthmark. Both tattletale maids had subsequently been dismissed—for reasons that could not possibly have had anything to do with Sand Warrior Silky—so they could not now be questioned.
“Or do you recall this?” he said. He crouched down and kissed her toes.
She jerked her foot away. “What are you doing?”
“You used to enjoy having me kiss your toes, Beloved.” He took her foot, raised it to his lips, and gave every toe a thorough nibbling. Somehow, he could not imagine the late Distant Cloud ever descending to such indignity.
She did not say a word, not even when he repeated the process with the other foot. He was almost tempted to tell her to stop playing virgin, as if she didn’t know what he had come for or couldn’t stop him easily. But his crotch was aching too much for him to risk failure now.
“Oh, that brings back memories!” He sat on his heels and used the lustrous eyes on her. “You truly cannot remember the day we met, Princess Celestial Womb? In the spring, when you were boating with your ladies and the wind caught your parasol?”
He transferred the old story of Sea Flower and the Storm Prince onshore. It was famous poetry, but the Harmony residence was no palace of learning, and Verdant showed no sign of recognizing the originals of Princess Celestial Womb and Prince Noble Lance as their romance unfolded.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said at the end. “Who are you? Really.”
“Really Sand Warrior Silky, the city’s best. I really, truly did slay the dragon today and made your father a lot of money.”
“Why? You must love him more than life itself.”
“I love you more than life itself.”
“You lie like a camel trader.”
At least she was talking, not ordering him out. Not that he would go if she did, not now.
“I only lie to beautiful women when I am desperate to get into their beds. Ask me about anything else and I will tell you the truth, every word, I swear. But be careful what you ask.”
“Why did you fight the dragon?”
“To make money for your father, because eventually I will get a share of his wealth. That’s in the contract.”
“What contract?”
“That is a dangerous question.”
“Answer it.”
“The contract that says I am to make him very rich. I have already done so, with good advice and by other means that you definitely do not want to ask about.”
She fixed him with a hard stare. Perhaps it was only the dim lighting that dilated her pupils so much. Or perhaps not. He spoke before she did.
“Now I get to ask you a question. How much longer are you going to sit here gabbling like a dowager great-grandmother when I could be making love to you in that bed? I can show you things that Distant Cloud never dreamed of. I can make you cry out in unbearable ecstasy, not once but many times.”
“Words!” She stood and unfastened her robe. The birthmark was larger and nearer her nipple than he had expected. She walked across and climbed onto the bed, on top of the downy quilts. Silky put his sword down within easy reach and lay beside her, equally naked. It was only a few minutes before he got where he desperately needed to be. He thought he would have to struggle to hold himself back, but she did not want that. She pushed the pace as if she was equally eager, going quickly to climax, and if she was faking her cries of rapture, she was a very good actor. His orgasm was certainly genuine and entirely satisfactory.
She began the second round almost before he’d caught his breath from the first one. Much later, as he was climbing out the window, he said, “Tomorrow?” She did not answer, but anything not forbidden was permitted. Or rather, anything was permitted if you could get away with it.
The Abbot would be pleased to learn of his success.
Chapter 4
The Bamboo Banner came to Golden Aspect on a sunny afternoon in Hare Moon. As the Pearl Army had moved back inland, the countryside had risen, so Man Valor was seeing hills for the first time in his life. The town stood on a gentle rise at the edge of the plain, surrounded by paddy fields as far as the eye could see. At that time of the year, everyone was out attending to the spring weeding, so the diversion in the square attracted mainly children and old folk. The governor sent guards, but they watched from a balcony and did not interfere. There would not be much recruiting in Golden Aspect that day. Gathering nobodies, they called it.
Gathering nobodies, Man Valor had guessed, was not the main reason for this visit. He was not the only one to have noticed that the rice bowls were not being heaped as high lately. Many thousands of patriots followed the Bamboo Banner now, and they needed to eat well, for they were rarely still. They exercised ten hours every day to increase their agility, their strength, their martial skills. They ran for two hours a day, chanting battle hymns or the hypnotic, mind-wrecking doggerel of the Bamboo Song:
NOT sticks nor stones
can break my bones;
Swords and shot
can hurt me NOT …
Over and over and over and over and over and over …
That moronic jingle filled his thoughts, his dreams, his entire life. They sang it running, exercising, bathing, even sometimes wrestling. Any time they got a spare moment, they were expected to pair off and practice wrestling. They sat down exactly three times a day, to eat, but then they listened to lessons also. Even as a twenty-year-old dockworker, Man Valor had been no fitter and stronger than he was now, and he slept nine hours a night on the hard ground under the jeweled worlds of Heaven. Swords and shot can hurt me NOT …
Older than most recruits, he was doing well. In six months, he had been promoted from a nobody to a patriot of the second proving. He had learned how to endure the sort of blow he had watched Leaping Serpent take that long-ago day back in Celestial Vista Square, even strokes that should shatter bones—although that was hardly a fair comparison, because Man Valor’s bones were much better padded with muscle than Leaping Serpent’s would ever be. Sometimes, the strokes hurt more than he cared to admit, but no one seemed to notice his pain, and he suffered no serious hurt. The ancestors protected him.
Now Leaping Serpent had been promoted to
third proving and had chosen Man Valor to be second deputy in his cadre. That meant Man Valor was running right behind Serpent as the cadre approached the town from the west. Ahead of him was Serpent’s sweaty back, with a collection of fading bruises and the dangling ends of his headband with its three knots. Bamboo said, If your men cannot count your knots, then you are not their leader.
Twenty-eight more superbly trained and motivated young patriots ran behind them, with First Deputy Skewbald at the rear. Serpent and Skewbald had reconnoitered the town a couple of days ago and knew what part this cadre would play in the day’s events. Whatever it was, the rest would do as they were told, as eagerly as any men who serve a great and holy cause—more so, because they knew they were invincible.
Every town in the Good Land was protected by a wall, but Golden Aspect’s looked to be in poor repair and so low that Man Valor could have pole-vaulted over it. Three men stood guard on the western gate. They stared in alarm at this line of runners, every one of them armed with a heavy bamboo staff—all except Leaping Serpent himself, who held a thinner cane with its leafy fronds still in place. Every fifth man also carried a heavy ax.
First Musket stepped forward carrying a gun and accompanied by the elder of his two flunkies. Serpent waved his banner to signal a pause, and the cadre stopped advancing, but continued to run in place.
The junior guard bowed. “With deepest regret, we must inform the noble travelers that the laws of the Good Land and decrees of His Majesty, Lord of the High and the Low, et cetera, forbid strangers to enter cities while bearing weapons, and the most honorable governor of this ancient and peaceable town of Golden Aspect has charged First Musket to enforce this edict.”
“The Emperor is dead,” Serpent announced. “A woman has shamefully placed her defiling buttocks upon the Golden Throne. We come in the name of the Bamboo Banner, who will set this opprobrious affair to rights. And these staves are not weapons,” he added with blatant untruth, “but badges of our allegiance to the righteous cause of Bamboo.”
