The Eighth King (The White Umbrella Testament Book 1)

by Matt Weber

  Datang blinked once, then again. “Envied of Snakes,” she said in reluctant respect, “that is a thought of unprecedented convolution.”

  Lin Gyat’s chest puffed out a bit. “My brother Eager Edge has said that, with but twenty or thirty years’ hard work, I could earn my scholar’s duck.”

  The Versicolor guards were wrong-footed by this exchange, but the acolyte who accompanied them cleared his throat. “Begging pardon, Corporal and Private, but the senior Queen is not accustomed to waiting.”

  Datang nodded. “Of course.” She met the eyes of the Versicolor guard who had tried to deceive her. “My name is Datang, as you know, for I believe I am the only woman fencer among Ceruleans or Versicolors. You may debate me when you like, and I imagine my companion would gladly bandy words with any rhetorician of your acquaintance who hankers for the polemic.”

  The Versicolor guard affected nonchalance. “No doubt a day will come when we are not equal to the rigors of fine conversation. Perhaps then we will disport ourselves in dismantling your flimsy syllogisms. Now, though, my time is the King’s.” He smirked. “And yours the King’s wife’s, who now kills her evenings seamstressing. A sad fate, but I think you should aspire to it.”

  That nearly cost the guard his throat, but Lin Gyat turned and said, “Good evening, then,” in such a pleasant voice that further colloquy would have seemed incongruous. Datang followed him in a haze of red, the pace of her stride quickly outstripping Lin Gyat. After a few moments, she rounded on him. “The Lotus, if we do not reach the Chusrin Wing in all haste, you goat, I may chew through the very walls to ease my mind.”

  “The Chusrin Wing?” said Lin Gyat. “What is there?”

  It was now impossible for Datang to remain in Lin Gyat’s presence without entirely destroying Palace decorum, and with every appearance of calm, she opened a window, climbed to the ledge, and leapt out, seeking ingress across what she believed was the Dawn Courtyard. She gained it easily, and walked with considerable speed down the corridor before she realized that it had not been the Dawn Courtyard, that the part of the palace in which she had landed was utterly unfamiliar, and that she was lost.

  She walked first down a corridor accented with pictures of chrysanthemums and small mammals, then another adorned with plum blossoms and waterbirds. When she reached the corridor decorated with bats and orchids, her stomach fluttered with a sensation that, had it been allowed to come to its full fruition, would have been one of apprehension at a mounting certainty that she was in a region of the Orchid Palace where even General Gyaltsen’s Cerulean Guard did not belong. But that sensation was truncated by the single open door in the bat-and-orchid corridor—or, rather, by the man leaning against the doorframe. Not much of him was visible, for his face was turned into the room and his body was more in than out, but three things were unmistakable: The versicolor brassard on his left bicep; the burn-scar on his left cheek, which faced her; and the gemmed sheath of a straight sword, which was empty.

  Datang strode swiftly closer, making no show of stealth but doing her best to keep her footfalls silent nonetheless, as a laugh echoed through the open door. “Come now,” said a voice. “Surely you cannot imagine our august superior to be ignorant of your people’s comings and goings.”

  “Well.” The voice came from the office, and although the speaker evidently sought a derisive tone, the effect was rather vitiated by a perceptible quaver. “As I retain the services of no man so ludicrously styled, I cannot possibly ignore whatever may have become of him, inasmuch as I am entirely unaware of it. You might more profitably consult the fishwives of Polychrome Street.”

  “We will spare them our inquest for the nonce,” said the burn-scarred man. “Nonetheless, the King’s Lama will find your answer pleasing. Until tomorrow, Magistrate.” And he stepped into the hall to leave, turning directly to face Datang.

  Immediately he came on guard, his straight sword tracking her, even as a corner of her mind whispered a dozen criticisms of his draw and stance. His associate, also a Versicolor, rushed out and saw her; his own broadsword hissed from its sheath, less decorated than his comrade’s. Datang stifled the urge to draw. “Have I interrupted some business?” she asked.

  “None that concerns you, in any case,” said the guard with the broadsword. “You may tell your General his spying mission has failed; we shall certainly convey the same to our Lama.”

  “Gentlemen.” Datang filled her voice with as much false amiability as she could muster. “Do we not all serve the King?”

  “I often ask myself the same question,” said the guard with the broadsword. “My comrade and I are here enforcing important regulatory statutes endorsed by the King, wherefore I posit that we two do serve him; and yet here you are, presenting no authority to enter the Hall of Bats and Orchids nor stating your business here, wherefore I find myself forced to inquire after your own allegiance.”

  Datang gave silent thanks that she was not expected to seek satisfaction for such comments, for the prospect of bandying words with yet another pair of Versicolor guards too craven to fight a woman filled her with the most profound exhaustion. “With any other pair, I would invent a less mortifying justification, friends, but in truth, I am lost. You are aware, no doubt, that my sex is grievously handicapped at navigation. I had thought myself exempt, but it was hubris.”

  She fixed her face in its most vacant possible expression and waited for the men to attack; but, amazingly, they lowered their sword-points an inch, then two. “How did you manage to lose yourself here, where guards would have prevented your ingress?”

  Datang gave a great shrug and told most of the truth. “I was relieved but a few minutes ago, and sent to find the senior Queen, who requires an escort to the fabric markets. I saw no guards.” A thought occurred to her; she gave voice to it with as bright and unthreatening a tone as possible. “Perhaps you were the guards who would have stopped me!”

  The guard with the broadsword tensed at this; Datang saw it in the bobble of his weapon. She had scored. “No doubt some nitwit Ceruleans have delayed the changing of the guard at that post,” he said. “You will hear of their censure, I imagine. In the meantime, you will find the senior Queen in the Chusrin Wing, on the Twilight Courtyard. Follow the Hall of Apes and Apples to the Silent Vestibule; there is a corridor whose entrance appears to be enclosed by a chusrin’s jaws. Mother-of-Daughters lives in the suite behind the ebony doors.”

  “Ah, I thank you.” Datang made a gratuitous abasement and then, before the men could move their swords, brushed past them with a quick salute at the official behind the open door. He was a wiry man of medium height, old-looking but clearly younger than he appeared, everywhere encrusted with peacocks—embroidered on his good silk robe and hat, enameled on pendants and bangles, in statue form on his desk and in paintings hung on his walls. Datang engraved the image in her mind as best she could without lingering, always aware that two men with naked swords stood behind her, then made her way to the Hall of Apes and Apples, where no doors were open and no Versicolor Guards stood to impede her progress.

  Her thoughts raced so fast that they could barely retain the directions to the Chusrin Wing and Mother-of-Daughters. For all that one of them was decorated for merit, the Versicolors she had faced were simple footmen whose technique betrayed no towering skill. The mandarin, for his part, was of the fourth rank (perhaps the third; Datang could never keep straight the correspondence between ranks of the civil service and their symbol birds) and bore the title “Magistrate,” token of broad responsibility at a high level of the bureaucracy. The asymmetry was trenchant—yet the Versicolors had evidently held the high ground in the colloquy, presumably due to the invocation of their “august superior.” The matter surely concerned a brother of the Green Morning, else why focus on his ludicrous style? Perhaps not such an odd thing to draw the attention of the King’s Lama—yet what he sought was inaction, or so his lackeys had suggested to their victim. What could be afoot?

  The quest
ion nagged until Datang reached the ebony doors and Mother-of-Daughters’ suite. Lin Gyat had only just arrived—perhaps Datang’s hastily chosen route had something to recommend it after all. Lin Gyat himself made that very observation. “You should teach me the Crane’s Migration Step. If we are to have a great love affair, we should be more equal in the games of pursuit that men and women play.”

  Mother-of-Daughters herself stepped out at this—a woman, as it turns out, of Cascade ancestry not so many generations back. Lin Gyat was, if not smitten, at least enthralled. “What are these games that men and women play?” she asked, with all the dignity of a queen. Lin Gyat began to explain himself. Datang briefly anatomized the chill that had struck her stomach at Lin Gyat’s proposal and realized that, whatever the benefit or cost, she would never teach him the Crane’s Migration Step.

  The stroll from the Orchid Palace into Rassha’s night markets was not one Datang had taken before; after afternoon shifts, she was accustomed to depleting her small savings in the company of her Cerulean comrades-in-arms at one of the more modestly priced watering holes of East Rassha, or else, in the absence of savings, to returning to the rowhouse to read or converse with Netten or Lin Yongten. But it seemed that Mother-of-Daughters made this pilgrimage often and had a preferred route. From the Resting Place Between Heaven and Earth Pavilion, they descended the Avalanche Stairs1 , which were delicately lit by gas flames housed in globes of irregular crystal shaped to look like great hunks of snow, which cast an irregular tracery of delicate blue shadow on the granite steps. After speaking cordially to the Versicolor Guards at the foot of the Avalanche Stairs, Mother-of-Daughters directed Lin Gyat and Datang not to the Boulevard of Sudden Enlightenment, which would have led straight into the fabric market, but rather to the Silver Dragon Terrace and thence to the Street of Dogs, where she dallied to purchase and consume a rice-flour sweet before continuing. She insisted on sharing her small meal with Datang and Lin Gyat; the latter gave every appearance of full-throated enjoyment, but Datang could not help but notice the eyes of all the other vendors on them, still haunted by the memory of their bloody encounter with the Versicolor Guard not far from the very cart before which they now stood. Incomparable Mukpo’s gaze was particularly dire. “You seem to feel some tension, soldier,” Mother-of-Daughters said to Datang, licking the powdered sugar from her fingers with an elegance entirely incommensurate to the act.

  “The vendors are wary of me, Queen—and not, I admit, without cause.”

  “I wish you would not call me ‘Queen,”‘ said Mother-of-Daughters, and the smile on her face was sincere but pained. “But I understand you guardsmen are sensitive to matters of rank.”

  “It is a concomitant of the profession,” allowed Datang.

  Mother-of-Daughters nodded, releasing a small sigh through her nose. “What happened to make these good citizens so wary of one of General Gyaltsen’s men?” She caught herself, frowned, and said, “I beg your pardon. Guards.”

  “My friend and I—” Datang gestured to Lin Gyat—“had cause to engage a small group of adversaries near here.”

  Mother-of-Daughters’ face was serious, but Datang could detect a current of amusement struggling to break through. “‘Had cause to engage,”‘ she said, savoring the words. “That is an interesting locution.”

  “Linguistics has never been my specialty,” said Datang.

  “Most fighting men, you understand, would say they had been ‘set upon,’ or ‘waylaid,’ or been ‘victims of an ambuscade’—”

  “Well, Your Grace, the realities of combat vex the active-passive dichotomy,” said Datang. Mother-of-Daughters raised an eyebrow; Datang felt her own face warm and redden. “The enemy approached us with numerical advantage and clear intent to engage. But to insinuate that they attacked first would… oversimplify the situation.”

  “What lackbelly would so insinuate, and why?” said Lin Gyat. “I scrambled a man’s brains at an eighth-mile range. It was a masterly shot!”

  Mother-of-Daughters sized up Lin Gyat. “I would never have taken you for a firearms specialist, soldier, I confess it.”

  “Few do.” Lin Gyat puffed out his chest. “And those who survive the learning of it rarely realize that I am yet deadlier in the mêlée. A hero’s frame is large enough to hide a multitude of secrets.”

  Datang and Mother-of-Daughters exchanged a glance which shared all that needed sharing. “Well,” said Mother-of-Daughters to Datang, “I am convinced by your refutation of the active-passive dichotomy. My husband has faced similar vexations.”

  Lin Gyat laughed; Datang winced. “Your husband, vexed by self-doubt? He hardly stinted to take the field, did he, Your Grace?”

  Datang could nearly feel Mother-of-Daughters’ back stiffen, her face set. In a flash, she realized which husband the Queen had meant. “A leader of men must project consummate resolve,” said Datang, “especially in harsh conditions. But who knows what demons may torment such a man—steward both of a high cause and the men’s lives that go to secure it? His wife, surely, better than two green recruits to the Royal Guard.”

  Lin Gyat shrugged. Mother-of-Daughters’ shoulders lowered, though perhaps not all the way; but, when Datang met her eyes, she imagined some small gratitude lingered there.

  At some unspoken signal, the three resumed their walk to the fabric market, taking the Street of Dogs to the winding alley that was called Notaries’ Canyon, after which they rejoined the Boulevard of Sudden Enlightenment. Mother-of-Daughters was much recognized there, both by the Versicolor Guards who patrolled it in some density and by various mandarins, scholars, and other gentlemen of rank who strolled under the paper lanterns. Datang began to understand why she might prefer a more indirect route. When they reached the market—whose tents and canopies were naturally more colorful and sumptuous than those of any night market Datang or Lin Gyat had ever seen—they wove through the narrow alleyways made by the various vendors until they reached a fully enclosed tent with a sign slashed in bold characters: “The Silken Palace.” Mother-of-Daughters directed Datang and Lin Gyat to stay behind while she entered to negotiate with the proprietor. “He is an eccentric,” she said, “and has taken the entry of soldiers ill before. I was informed earlier today that he has come into possession of a mile of phoenix silk smuggled at great cost from the very heart of the Garden, and that he hopes not to hold a scrap of it after a week has passed. He surely would not let anyone who was not a regular client lay eyes on it.”

  Lin Gyat shrugged, but Datang gave the tent the suspicious look she would, matters of rank aside, have given Mother-of-Daughters. “May I look inside? I do not wish to cast aspersions, but it is a dark and hidden place. Can you be sure it is safe?”

  “Oh, I visit this merchant with great regularity,” said Mother-of-Daughters.

  Datang shifted her weight, torn between obedience to an immediate order and execution of her most precious duty. “May we stand outside?” she asked. “So that we may better hear in the event that something unexpected should transpire.”

  Mother-of-Daughters set her jaw; Datang swallowed a swiftly mounting terror and set her own, rooting her stance for good measure. A moment felt like a century. At last Mother-of-Daughters softened. “Very well, soldier, on this condition: When I emerge unharmed from this tent, you will not ask this of me again.”

  “Done,” said Datang.

  “And done,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “Come, escort me to the tentflap, since you must; then you may prick your ears for a scream that will never come.”

  Lin Gyat and Datang followed this estimable order, and indeed it did not come—nor did any other noise other than murmurs and the rustling of fabric, for following the silk-merchant’s greeting, Mother-of-Daughters’ first act was to whisper something in his ear, and not one word was spoken in full voice thereafter.

  “Must we arrest her?” said Lin Gyat after fifteen minutes. “I was not taught the procedures for arrest.”

  “You were taught them,” said Dat
ang, “but you could not stop staring at that disgusting barbarian statue.” The tutorial for new guards had taken place in the Hall of Unanticipated Methods, which had housed among other alien artifacts a statue of a fat woman carved in white stone, covered incompletely by a sheet and painted with a realism that bordered on the obsessive. Datang herself had been intermittently mesmerized by its bright red-brown nipples; Lin Gyat had gaped openly and could speak of nothing else for days. “In any case, there is no need to arrest a lady of the court for excessive zeal in dickering over fabric.”

  Lin Gyat chuckled. “Dickering over fabric. A worthy euphemism. I will remember it.”

  “Zao gao, you fat goat, it is no euphemism.”

  “But she is engaged in sport with the silk-merchant,” said Lin Gyat. Insight lit his face. “Ah, I apprehend the confusion. You believe she is exchanging sport for—”

  “Sport is out of the question,” said Datang. “Cease your slander of the Queen or I will kill you.”

  “You could not kill me.”

  “Then you will have to kill me, and I will haunt your every waking moment.”

  “That would be pleasant,” mused Lin Gyat. “Against my better judgment, I often find I miss you when we are parted. But I suppose one cannot sport with a ghost.”

  “Not this ghost.”

  “Ah! Mortality,” said Lin Gyat. “I suppose it is settled, then.”

  True to his word, Lin Gyat was silent, but now Datang’s perceptions were corrupted: Every indistinct syllable might be a word of love, every shift and rustle a note in love’s silken orchestra. “May He Who Waits preserve me, Envied of Snakes,” said Datang—“what evidence undergirds your sickening libels?”

  “Please,” said Lin Gyat. “I am not new to the joys of intimate pursuits.”

  “So I have been told,” said Datang.

  “Yes, my reputation precedes me. As to the evidence: For a start, the King has set her aside in the Chusrin Wing, desiring—one presumes—to spend his precious virility on son-making. But she is Queen still, and married to the crown; wherefore we may infer that her appetites can find no easement in the Orchid Palace, for who would cuckold a King in his lair? Turning, then, to the present moment: The evidence is written all over the air. Every little breath that passes their lips is a breath of passion. Every rhythm in the whispers of the silk betrays them. And, as I have told you, I am not unacquainted with female physiology. The aroused woman secretes a musk of sorts, which will drive a man well-suited to her needs into a frenzy of abandon. I smelled that musk on her ever since we met outside her suite.”