by Matt Weber
The throne room was a small ocean of blood already, a disciplined half-circle of polychrome-armored Demon Guards closing in on a group of badly outmatched assassins, one of whom surrendered as the King entered. General Gyaltsen stood at the center of a ring of red and black, laying about wildly but shrewdly with the Cerulean Sword, which howled and barked and threw off small cyclones that wheeled about to knock down the enemies who threatened the general’s back. “Shall I summon reinforcements, General?” asked Tenshing.
“As many as you can find, Your Holiness” called Gyaltsen. “These foes of mine need all the aid they can obtain, and Cerulean is under-exercised of late. Perhaps if we exhaust it, it will cease whining so at court.” At this the Sword let loose a yowl and a great gust of wind, scattering four assassins like pebbles in an avalanche.
“Alas, Gyaltsen,” said Tenshing, “it has gone well for us this night, but I do not yet command the enemy. I can send you only allies.”
“What use have I for allies? These men of Kandro’s nearly slay themselves. I do not think the process can be accelerated, save by high explosives.”
“Well. You do good work, General. You know that anything you require is yours.”
To this the general could make no apt reply, wherefore he resumed the slaying. King Tenshing watched the skirmish for a moment longer to ensure that Gyaltsen had not overstated his advantage. That matter settled, Tenshing proceeded to the nursery—where, the Demon Guard informed him, their ambush had proceeded apace. After its satisfactory conclusion, they had consulted with the steward and determined that almost all the royal children could be repatriated by the following evening, although a few beloved toys had been damaged and the chalk mural that had for years delighted the King’s fifth son, Nyatri, had been irreparably defiled by a dying killer’s arterial fount. The King asked for paper and swiftly wrote to the steward, asking him to summon the artist who had drawn the mural, a portraitist from Thyongso who had passed through as part of a traveling spectacle some years before; when he was done, he gave the note to the lowest-ranking member of the guard there present, who was more than happy to deliver it. He then made his way to the wives’ quarters, not far off, and soon accelerated his leisurely walk to a run and then a series of leaps, taking perhaps insufficient care not to scrape his head on the rough granite ceiling; for he had heard a woman’s sobs, and it was a barb in his heart that he could not recognize whose.
His four wives were gathered with their children, though not all their children—there were only girls, it took Tenshing a moment to realize, and of those only three, Sonam (the eldest) and Mother-of-Daughters’ youngest, Tara and Tsetsen. The middle wives, Seba and Prajna, stood, and Kamala knelt, sobbing into Mother-of-Daughters’ right shoulder while Tsetsen rested, fast asleep, on her left. A single assassin lay face down on the carpet, a Demon Guard looming uncomfortably to the side. Mother-of-Daughters looked up, and Kamala followed her eyes; when she saw Tenshing, she sprang up and hurled herself into his arms as she had done so often in their courtship—throwing all her weight against his immovable stance. Tenshing clasped her and murmured a thing he did not remember; his eyes were on Mother-of-Daughters. “Who is hurt?”
“No one,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “I took care of it.” At this Kamala’s chest heaved and she sobbed more vigorously into the hollow of Tenshing’s neck. Mother-of-Daughters gave a small, curious shrug. “His face and chest are badly burned. Kamala saw it.”
Tenshing nodded at Mother-of-Daughters. “Well done, wife.”
She took a step toward Tenshing and Kamala, the better to hide her words from the other wives. “It should not have happened. We were told you knew the entry points. We were told we would be safe. You did not marry warriors, King Tenshing Astama.”
“I married one, it would appear,” he said.
“An amateur,” said Mother-of-Daughters, “whom you saw fit to station with a dozen women and children.”
Tenshing kissed his fourth wife’s hair as her sobs ebbed. “I am sorry,” he said. “My judgment has been taxed in this as in all things.”
“Why did you take so long to get here?” asked Mother-of-Daughters; and here Kamala turned on her as a feeding dog will, if disturbed.
“Shrew,” the young Queen said; her voice brought winter to the warm halls. “It was me the killer threatened, and I do not shrill at our husband. I recognize my fortune in this union. I recognize that circumstance cannot be thwarted in these things. How many assassins were there, and but one escaped to find us? It is a miracle.”
“Kamala,” said Tenshing, but he could not summon the tone of reproof that the outburst seemed to require. “There is no gain in this.” He turned to Mother-of-Daughters. “I was opening a line of communication to Chief-Marshal Kandro. It took some time to debrief the messenger.”
Tenshing knew the silence that would meet this intelligence, and the scornful eye that would inspect it; but this knowledge did not preserve him from the sting of either.
Kamala turned back to Tenshing. “The attack is over, is it not? And you cannot be less busy tomorrow than you were today. You should sleep, husband.” She put a hand on his chest. “I will help you.”
Tenshing released Kamala from his grasp, then left her with Mother-of-Daughters and went to his other wives and children. To each he said a few words and gave a kiss or touch, except for Sonam, who looked balefully at him and backed away at his approach. “I heard what that cow said to my mother,” she hissed. “How can you let her cling to you so?”
“Let her, daughter?” said Tenshing. “She is my wife. I rather invite it.”
Sonam only scowled. Tenshing breathed deeply, letting himself be flayed for a moment by the lash that is a daughter’s scorn. “Tomorrow I will practice with the Masters of the Eight Weapon Hand and the Reflecting Pool Mind in the courtyard at my customary hour. Your presence would be welcome.”
“You think that makes it any easier to look at her?” said Sonam.
“I cannot see how it would,” said the King. “Yet the invitation stands.”
Sonam turned her back on Tenshing. He touched her shoulder and she shied away. He returned to Kamala and Mother-of-Daughters, who had become able to ignore each other by the simple expedient of the baby Tsetsen’s waking; she was whimpering softly for no special reason, and Mother-of-Daughters was rocking her and singsonging whatever empty phrases came to mind. Tenshing kissed his child and breathed in the scent of his first wife. “Good night, Pema,” he said. He silently offered his arm to Kamala. They left the wives’ quarters, her hips swaying just slightly more than necessary with each step.
The Logistics Bureau
t cannot be said that the Logistics Bureau of Heaven’s Steel Forged Into Earthly Swords was accustomed to the sort of activity that went on at its doorstep at noontide of the day Datang and Lin Gyat entered Rassha—but, accustomed or not, the Bureau’s organizational activities went on more or less uninterrupted, with only the desk clerk in the lobby diverted from his normal course by the bloodied, split helmet that crashed down by his paperwork. “Mmm,” he said. “Corporal. Troop?”
“The Versicolor Guard,” said Datang, knuckles white around the halves of the helmet. The clerk pulled a form from a stack and made a note.
“Name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cause of death?”
“Gunshot to the head.”
“Details on the engagement?”
“None to report.”
The clerk gave her a steely glance at that. “You were uninvolved in the engagement?”
“Is there a reason to believe I was involved in the engagement?”
The clerk looked Datang up and down. Over and above the bloodied versicolor armband that bound her bicep, she had bad scratches on the leg, forearm, and forehead, and her stance clearly favored her left leg. “Your name?”
“Datang. Corporal, Cerulean Guard.”
“Your brassard is wrong, and I see no insignia.”
&nbs
p; “This is no brassard,” said Datang, “but a bandage. I am a green recruit—your greenest but one, in fact; only my immense associate here is less senior. You shall have a letter from Colonel Margad in due course.”
“Lin Yongten the Eager Edge, Corporal of the Cerulean Guard, vouches for her,” said Lin Yongten. The clerk sifted through a slim book, examined Lin Yongten’s face, and nodded. “The letter from Colonel Margad will stipulate that Corporal Datang was involved in an altercation before her recruitment, the details of which are irrelevant due to the soldiers’ amnesty.”
The clerk’s composure seemed finally to be fraying. “Corporal,” he said, “this woman has walked in here and declared, with no proof, that she has been recruited into the Cerulean Guard, while covered in blood, carrying the bloodied helm of a Versicolor corporal and bandaged with a Versicolor brassard—and you expect me to put her name into the lists without—”
“What was the colonel’s name?” Datang asked Lin Yongten.
“Corporal.” The clerk sounded slightly strangled. “You mean corporal.”
“My colleague has another officer in mind,” said Lin Yongten.
“Another officer,” the clerk said, with noticeably more difficulty.
Lin Yongten was looking at Datang with more than a little skepticism. At last he gave the name. “Colonel Lamto. The brassard is his.”
The clerk looked from Datang to Lin Yongten and moistened his lips once with a lizardlike motion of the tongue. “And how do you come to have this officer’s trophy?”
“The details are irrelevant,” said Datang. “Due to the soldiers’ amnesty.”
“Colonel Lamto?” said the clerk. “Colonel Lamto.” He was suddenly all business. “Very good. I apologize, Corporal Datang, is the second character of your name the ‘tang’ of ‘appetite’ or the ‘tang’ that looks like ‘snow’?”
“The latter,” said Datang.
“Excellent,” said the desk clerk. “Well, as a corporal in the ranks, you have the right to a seahorse insignia on the arms and armor you bear; should you choose not to have them altered, you may see the comptroller for a corporal’s blazon. We issue a pike or halberd, a straight or broad sword, and a longbow, crossbow, or rifle; one weapon in each of those categories is required at your residence, and a minimal deposit for any military issue will be deducted from your first pay draught, to be repaid on return of the weapon. You may join Corporal Lin in Colonel Margad’s company. Will your sizable associate be joining up as well?” the clerk concluded, punctuating the question with a sunny smile and a flurry of stamps on various forms.
“Yes,” said Datang, “only Colonel Margad believes our talents may be best used elsewhere.”
“By all means,” said the clerk. “The three of you may join Colonel Torma’s company. I shall fill out the attestations to your character posthaste—we must staff this detail with only the most upstanding citizens, you know. Ah, Torma will be pleased to have two corporals trained in the Rigors. Young man,” he said to Lin Gyat, “your name, please?”
The clerk enrolled Lin Gyat with merry alacrity, nodding agreeably at the giant’s inexplicable digressions. Lin Yongten whispered in Datang’s ear. “How is it you knew he hated Colonel Lamto?”
“The Lotus, Eager Edge,” said Datang, “did you never meet the man? The very Deity Who Waits would hate him.”
Lin Yongten chuckled. “An excellent gambit. Now we have but one problem before us.”
“What problem is that?” asked Datang.
“How not to die of boredom,” said Lin Yongten. “This clerk who loves you so has assigned us to the least eventful patrol in all Rassha.”
“I think I will benefit from a day of boredom.” Datang rubbed her wounded arm. “But perhaps only a day. Where is this legendary patrol?”
“The Resting Place Between Heaven and Earth Pavilion,” said Lin Yongten.
Datang’s eyes widened. “Zao gao,” she said (having been rather taken with Lin Yongten’s dashing use of the Gardener tongue an hour before, and invoking the only phrase she knew). “The palace grounds?”
Lin Yongten nodded. “Its grounds, its outskirts, and its corridors.” He stroked his sheathed sword as if in placation.
“Be of good cheer, Eager Edge,” said Lin Gyat. “I shall pray to the White Umbrella Deity for a battalion of assassins—for she is unable to refuse me, I assure you—and the three of us will drown in red glory.”
The clerk froze, white-faced. Datang covered her eyes with her hand. Lin Yongten smiled thinly.
After assuring the clerk a thousand times that Lin Gyat would exercise no divine influence to flood the Orchid Palace with assassins—exactly that had occurred not long before the Regency’s end, Lin Yongten explained, and much of the military retained a superstitious horror of alluding to it—the three visited the depot in the basement of the Bureau to fill the gaps in Datang and Lin Gyat’s armamentaria—Datang had no pole-weapon, and Lin Gyat was annoyed to learn that his club counted as neither pole nor sword. “Perhaps Colonel Torma will allow you to carry it on patrol anyway,” said Datang, but Lin Yongten shook his head.
“Decorum and conformity are at a premium on that patrol, I fear.”
Lin Gyat dug around in the racks until he ran across a broadsword nearly as tall as Datang. “This will serve, I think,” he said, with an offhand swing that nearly decapitated the master-at-arms, “though it feels rather slight.”
“That weapon,” declared the master-at-arms, a querulous old Gardener with palsy in his hands, “was commissioned by Choso the Crocodile-Fighter himself, and last used by Sawed-Off Brug at the Battle of Disorderly Gorge.”
“The Crocodile-Fighter,” Lin Gyat breathed, awestruck.
Lin Yongten frowned. “Forgive me, learned master, but it was my impression that Sawed-Off Brug was slaughtered at the Battle of Disorderly Gorge.”
The master-at-arms shrugged. “He was a bit short for the weapon, shi-bu-shi?”
“And, if my recollection serves, the Crocodile-Fighter was commander at the Battle of Disorderly Gorge.”
“Dui, Scholar-Corporal—it is as though the histories are reprinted on your tongue.”
“Nor—and please, forgive me if my memory is at variance with the facts—was the Crocodile-Fighter a swordsman.”
“That is true.” Lin Gyat frowned briefly. “Though why should it matter?” He hefted the sword with pure love pouring from his eyes.
Lin Yongten was looking sternly at the master-at-arms, whose expression of innocence had begun to show some strain. “Through my small study of military history,” he said, “I have formed the impression that Sawed-Off Brug quite looked up to the Crocodile-Fighter, whereas the Crocodile-Fighter regarded Brug as an irritant.”
“Really,” said the master-at-arms, “that rather surpasses the knowledge of an old steel-bursar.”
“It is well documented, though perhaps I am unaware of competing accounts, that the Crocodile-Fighter regularly humiliated and endangered Brug through ascendingly flagrant lies, such as that a willing woman awaited Brug in guise of a sheep, or that a chasm could be more easily leapt by a short than a tall man because the short man could take more steps per unit distance.”
“Well, that seems plausible to me,” said the master-at-arms.
Lin Yongten turned to Lin Gyat, who was following the conversation with a mild, pleasant-faced interest. “Come now, do you not see what it adds up to? The Crocodile-Fighter never used that thing in your hands. It was commissioned as a joke on Sawed-Off Brug, and it was a joke that got him killed. That weapon’s only history is the killing of the one man who ever wielded it.”
“Your theories befuddle me, Eager Edge. Here—” he addressed the master-at-arms— “hand me a whetstone.”
The master-at-arms, smirking at Lin Yongten, did so. Lin Gyat placed the edge squarely against the stone and began to move it up and down, practically striking sparks. Lin Yongten and the master-at-arms gaped in horror; Datang could not stop herself from interv
ening in the desecration of even such a star-crossed weapon, and wrenched the whetstone from Lin Gyat’s hand. “The White and Red, Envied of Snakes, has no brother in your Green Morning ever taught you to sharpen a sword?”
Lin Gyat frowned and snatched the stone back with a swift hand, resuming his destruction of the immense broadsword’s none too keen edge. “I am not sharpening it, as any idiot can see; I have no time to shave my enemies into tartare. If my own club does not satisfy the fetishes of bean-counters, I will have one that does. I think even our decorous commanding officer will not inspect the lesions on my foes’ corpses any too closely.” He tossed the whetstone, now scarred with black and white streaks, back to the master-at-arms, who caught it with aplomb despite his shaking hands. “Come,” said Lin Gyat. “Let us enjoy the half-day’s furlough that our friend at the desk has given us.”
The three departed the Logistics Bureau and took the nearest crossing to East Rassha, which was the Bridge of Sixty-Four Discernments, despite a brief plea from Lin Gyat to return to the Street of Dogs for lunch. But Lin Yongten wished to take them to the house that he and a colleague from the Cerulean Guard were renting, in the hopes that they might choose to take rooms there. “We have had bad luck with housemates,” he admitted. “We roomed with two infantrymen who did not return from the Hill of Faces. I cannot pretend it was a great loss to the world, but they paid their share of the rent on time—if only because my friend persuaded the Logistics Bureau to garnish it from their wages.”
