by Duncan, Dave
Two Gray Sisters, but which one was in charge? If the Empress Mother was involved, almost certainly Twilight, although she might be cutting her own hay here.
“She was desperate. She is delighted by your skill. She likes you a lot and—”
Lark said, “Stop!” She spoke very softly, but Twilight’s grimace suggested strongly that she had been leashed also and Lark was running two slaves. He had guessed wrong. Who could possibly be behind this conspiracy? Lark had known both his leash and Twilight’s. He had been told that no one except a helper’s abbot knew his leash. … But common sense would dictate that there would have to be written copies, kept in a safe place. Someone had found his leash at Sheep Rocks and Twilight’s at … at wherever she had come from, umpteen years ago. That suggested that this coup had been organized by someone very high up in the Brotherhood.
Lark said, “Take the clothes and get dressed, Horse.”
He took the bundle and unrolled a set of Gray Helpers’ all-enveloping nightwork garb of dark gray silk. They brought back memories of old times, when he was Horse, practicing burglary in ranch houses around Sheep Rocks. Feeling absurdly shy, he went to the far side of the room and unlaced his robe. “Where did you find these?”
“Made them,” Lark said. “It’s easy to smuggle things out, but anything coming in is searched for weapons. Hurry.”
He obeyed as he must. The hood he could understand, but why gloves? The women were not wearing those. By the time he was done, nothing of him would be visible except his eyes.
“Time to go,” Lark said.
The secret passage was totally dark, and the conspirators proceeded by touch. Twilight led the way, Lark brought up the rear, and even they found it a tight squeeze in places. Twice, Butterfly Sword almost became jammed and never did he have enough headroom. He began collecting bruises and scrapes, trying always not to tear his black garments. After several twists and turns, they descended a long staircase, emerging into the open through a hatch behind some shrubbery. Twilight closed it behind them.
The Great Within comprised hundreds of buildings, separated by open courtyards or parkland. Gray Helpers’ training still helped, but even seeming magic would not let a person look like nothing at all. Had there been a moon, they would certainly have been seen, but they were black on black, and in more danger of losing one another than being observed by a guard. Butterfly Sword had never worked out the complete geography of even the Great Within, let alone all of Sublime Mountain, but the stars told him that he was being led inward, not out to the perimeter. He was not heading to freedom.
Eventually, Twilight knelt alongside a wide flight of stairs, leading up to an imposing entrance. The sides were made of latticework. She opened a panel in this and the other two followed her in; Lark closed the door. Lying in the evil-smelling dead space under the staircase, Butterfly Sword wondered what else inhabited it. Rats? Snakes? Scorpions? He must be lying on the detritus of years, blown in through the sides, and probably the excrement of small vermin. He could see nothing.
“You know where we are?” Twilight asked.
“No.”
“Practically underneath the Empress Mother’s bedroom.”
Then he knew what was to be required of him. “Does she know it has an assassins’ door?”
“It is an emergency exit,” Twilight said. “Normally, it cannot be opened from this side. I explored it while she was attending the girl’s lying-in this evening, and removed the safety catch on the inner door. This one I left ajar. You crawl about twenty paces straight ahead, then turn left and go up very steep stairs. They stop right at the secret panel, dead ahead. Don’t break your neck or bloody your nose.”
He nodded. He was about to make his first score, and his subject was the most closely guarded person in the Good Land, probably in the entire Fourth World. The void in his belly would hold an ox.
“Which way does it open?”
“Away from you.”
He shivered. “No lacquered table standing against it, laden with porcelain figures and vases?”
“No,” Twilight said. “There should be, of course, but it opens into the privy. That is bad design.”
He did not want to do this. He had been too long away from the House of Joyful Departure, where the youngsters talked hopefully of murder every day and the girls favored boys who had scored. He was an Emperor now, not an apprentice assassin. He was out of training. Why him, not one of the women?
“She is my client,” he whispered, appalled.
Lark said, “That is why we leashed you. Twilight has served the subject for forty years, so a death order would probably drive her insane. Besides, it may need more physical strength than we have. I will give you the command in a moment.”
“Thank you.” He was sorry, because he had become fond of the old she-demon, but she had ruled by knife and poison for years, so a violent death was fitting. This was what he had trained for since he was a child, and he did have more to gain than either of the women, more than anyone in fact. It would save him from an early death. It would be an epochal score, even for the Gray Order.
“Guards?”
“None in the chamber,” Twilight said. “In summer, she has servants to fan her all night, but not now, just a maid sleeping behind a screen. The privy is in the northwest corner, facing east. A chair against the wall, main door center west, handle on your left. Guards outside that door. A freestanding screen, and then a mat in the southwest corner, where a maid sleeps …”
She detailed the Empress Mother’s bedchamber, which was a large room containing many items of furniture, but he had not lost his training. When Twilight finished her description, he repeated the list back to her twice.
Then: “Why? Who is the client?”
“You are,” Lark said. “As soon as you have produced a son, you will die, and the Order does not want to lose you. We will wait here for you.” Then she gave him the direct order: “Butterfly Sword, go and out the Empress Mother!”
He was grateful for it, because he could not refuse.
Twilight opened the panel for him and he crawled into a pitch-dark passage.
She had been right about the steepness of the staircase; it was almost a ladder. He could see a faint line of light at the edge of the panel at the top, and when he pushed it ajar, he found that the privy was illuminated by a candle burning brighter than the sun. Now came the tricky part, the reason for the shoes, gloves, and hood. Although he was covered in dust and cobwebs, he must leave no footprints or fingermarks to show that there had been an intruder. Balancing at the top of that steep staircase, he stripped to the skin and went through the hatch stark naked, having a waking nightmare of the Empress Mother throwing open the door and finding him there. Then he would have to use violence and marks on her neck would shout murder to all the world. She did not appear, but when he started to open the door, an angry roar shattered the silence beyond and he stubbed his toe hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. More silence. … Then another leonine roar ripped the darkness.
The snores were encouraging, for he had often heard the subject complain of insomnia. The maid remained a serious complication, and he stood and listened a long time, until he had analyzed her breathing and was quite certain that she, too, was asleep. A clock ticked. The air was heavy with the scents of flowers and spices, overlying the body smell of a bedroom and long-used clothes too ornate ever to be washed. The only light was the single candle behind him, and he left the privy door ajar, as he had found it. Silent on bare feet, he passed the high display cabinet loaded with treasures, the dressing table, a stool that was not where Twilight had predicted … and came to where the subject slept.
He arrived at the left side, farthest from the snores. The bed was huge, built of brick, with space underneath for braziers to warm it, but winter was past and they were not lit. He parted the muslin draperies and climbed onto the slab,
then crawled closer to where the subject lay, on her back, about two thirds of the way across. He selected a spare pillow, stuffed with sweet-smelling rose petals. Although the subject lay on additional padding, she would certainly struggle and that was where his strength would be needed. An old woman dying in the night without a mark on her would raise no questions, but one with bruised heels and hands would.
He recited the mantra to steady his heartbeat until he felt calm and filled with purpose. Swiftly, he pushed the pillow down on her face and threw his far greater weight on top of her, restraining her arms and legs as much as he could. No more snores—would the abrupt silence alarm the guards outside? Her initial struggles were stronger than he expected, but they did not last long. Very likely, she died more of terror than suffocation, but he held the pose until he knew she must be dead.
Reaction hit him. Oh, Ancestors, what happens now?
In a way, this murder was her own fault. The Empress Mother had used the Gray Helpers to subvert the Empire for her selfish purposes, as only she could have done, but now someone had stolen the plot away from her.
The client would be pleased. What client? Probably no one would benefit more than the former Novice Horse would. If he could keep up the deception for even a few days, he would be Emperor in fact as well as in name. He would be the richest man in the Fourth World. But whoever was behind this conspiracy must also expect to benefit enormously.
Sister Lark held his leash.
He would rule the Good Land, but the Gray Order ruled him.
He closed the panel and descended the stairs carefully, collecting everything he had brought, counting until he had seven garments. Then he paused briefly to dress before retracing his steps. He peered out of the hatch under the stairs.
“All well?” Lark’s voice whispered.
“All … What’s happened here?” There was just enough light for him to recognize the pale blur beside her as a naked body.
“She had outlived her usefulness. In fact, she was a danger to both of us.”
He shivered. People were no more than tools to Gray Helpers like Lark, and yet he could not deny her inhuman logic. Twilight had known far too much ever to be trusted.
“Stars preserve us! What are we going to do with her? Two bodies in one night will—”
“You,” Lark said grimly, “are going to drag her into the secret passage and leave her there. I’ve stripped off everything that can serve to identify her. You will turn her over and pound her face against the tiles until it is unrecognizable. She may not be found for centuries.”
What of the smell? His gut writhed. Of course a bad stench might be attributed to evil demons. “I must obey if you insist, of course. But I will get blood on me, and I have no way of washing it off before my servants come to tend me in the morning. You’d better do that yourself, Sister.”
She muttered angrily then said, “Very well. Take her inside and just leave her there. Her real face may not be recognized, but make it look as if she were leaving, just in case.”
He obeyed, turning the body around and dragging it in feet first. The worst part was climbing back over the corpse to get out, for the passage was very narrow.
Lark said, “I’ll stay around as Musician Arpeggio—I was promoted two grades because you praised me last night. The night I sing ‘Four Cranes Crying,’ that means I need to speak with you, understand? You arrange it. Develop insomnia and summon musicians to play to you. I may change roles later and have you appoint me as one of your concubines. Don’t count on too much joy from that, though. You know I don’t do voluptuous.”
“I hear and obey, Jewel of the Lotus,” the Emperor said. With all the luscious young girls he could ever want eager to serve him, why should he lust after her bony body now? Then he remembered that his official mother had just died. The court would go into mourning for two years, during which no sex would be allowed. Other men might manage to cheat, but the Emperor’s love life was a state function. He might be very glad to entertain Eunuch Arpeggio.
Except that music would be forbidden, too. Obviously, Lark had not thought of that, so he did not mention it. He could order all the musicians sent away. She might not have thought of that, either.
They crept out from the hiding place and began their perilous journey back, shadow to shadow to shadow. Lark carried Twilight’s clothes. The eastern sky was starting to shed its night attire.
As they crouched under cover, waiting for a cloud shadow, Butterfly Sword said, “Is the real Emperor still alive?”
“Of course not.”
So the old dragon had murdered her own son. Knowing that, he did not feel so bad about killing her. Lark’s orders had left him no choice. He had never had any choice. His decision had been made for him when he was a child, when his mother had died and the Gray Sisters who came for her corpse found him hiding in a closet. No one had ever asked his opinion of murder as a way of life; it was just a given, like eating. And it certainly paid well, or would do so if he could keep his skin whole for the next couple of months. By then he would either be agonizingly dead or the unquestioned ruler of the Good Land.
Except that Lark would be holding his leash. Who held hers? Possibly no one at all! Some houses held hundreds of Gray Helpers, so no abbot could possibly remember all his subordinates’ leashes; every abbot or abbess must keep a written record somewhere. Lark was an expert, and Prior Fraise had been a donkey—she could have found that list in Sheep Rocks. Then she could act entirely on her own. No, that didn’t work, for how could she have known that the former Novice Horse was now the Lord of Ten Thousand Years? How could she have known Twilight’s leash? Someone much higher in the Gray Order must have masterminded the Empress Mother’s death.
“I have more orders for you,” Lark whispered. “You will behave like a genuine Emperor. You will hold on to the throne at all costs, as the real Absolute Purity would, had he grown up in his right mind. You will never leave the palace.”
“You are contradicting yourself, my lady. The rituals for the Empress Mother’s funeral will require me to leave the palace.”
“Then I amend your instructions to say that you may leave the palace only to perform the Emperor’s recognized duties.”
“State processions, obviously. No hunting trips?”
“We’ll see, in a year or two. Your immediate problem is to keep yourself in one piece and not a thousand and one pieces.”
Never a truer word spoken! First Mandarin and Chief Eunuch would be inclined to support the imposter, for they could not denounce him without dooming themselves to the thousand cuts as well. There was no obvious legitimate successor to the—
Boom!
“Flay me!” Lark said. “She did it! Already?”
Boom!
“Or they cut it out of her,” Butterfly Sword said unhappily. Poor Sweet Melody! Then the clammy touch of danger registered. “Oh, Heaven bless us! If it’s a boy they’ll try to waken the Empress Mother!”
Boom!
“And then you!” Twilight cried. “Quickly!”
Boom!
Throwing caution to the winds of Heaven, they began to run. People running would be much less suspicious now, with the glad news of another royal baby echoing through the night. The palace staff would be thrown into turmoil. Sacrifices and celebrations must be organized at once. But would the confusion be enough to justify ignoring people dressed completely in black?
Boom!
“How many is that?” Butterfly Sword said. “Was that six?” He tore off his hood, the better to see where he was going.
Boom!
That was certainly more than five, so Sweet Melody had given the Emperor a son. If she still lived, she would have to be promoted to third-rank concubine or even Junior Empress, but that would be his decision now. He plunged into the shrubbery and stripped to the skin while Twilight struggled with the panel. Then h
e went wriggling and squirming along the passage to his chamber, gasping in his haste.
After that it was all an anticlimax. No one burst in to tell him the awful news of his mother’s death. The guns had told him the other news, and if the Emperor chose to ignore it, then who would dare disturb him? He composed himself, calmed his racing heart, and pondered his next move. Finally, he decided to face the day and thumped the gong by his bed.
He was not surprised that Joyous Diligence chose to answer the summons in person. They both knew that the birth of a prince changed the imposter’s status considerably. For once, he kowtowed. He was left on his knees.
“A large, healthy son, Your Majesty.”
“And the woman?” Butterfly Sword inquired with a shiver.
“Well, I believe.”
“Send to find out. I will rise now. Have my tea and congee brought.”
Eunuchs washed him, shaved his lip, plucked a few chin hairs, and dressed him. Still no word came. Surely the servant girl would have been awakened by the guns? The guards had perhaps panicked. Or they had reported to Chief Eunuch and he had panicked. Or—most likely—the eunuchs were busy stripping the bedroom of everything in it but the corpse, robbing the dead. Only when there was nothing left worth stealing would they tell the world that the tigress had gone.
Butterfly Sword found himself nervously reviewing his memories, convincing himself that, yes, she had been really dead.
Suddenly, Joyous Diligence reappeared, his face paler than ivory. He even forgot to kneel, which was a serious error when the valets were still present.
“Something wrong?” Butterfly Sword inquired.
“Your Majesty, the Empress Moth— Your august mother has ridden the golden chariot to a higher world.”
“No! When? How?”
This game must be played out at several levels. Butterfly Sword knew everything, or hoped he did. Joyous Diligence knew the Emperor was a fraud but could do no more than guess that his supposed mother had been murdered—and unless he knew that Butterfly Sword had once been Novice Horse, he could not suspect him of doing the job personally. The servants listening with horror knew neither secret.
