‘I see things differently. I am descended from a people to the north of the Jade Emperor’s lands, who were nomadic in just the same manner as these clans. And they became a settled culture in time. All it requires is the will to impose change, and I have that will. Where my father failed and lost a world, I shall succeed and create a new one. I have achieved the impossible and turned the warring clans into a unified people. Now we will seek out more agreeable lands for them.’
‘All so you can have a new painting made where it is my brother dying in disgrace while your flag flies over the walls of Velutio? That seems at odds with the wisdom so evident in your manner.’
‘Do not presume to speak of things you do not understand, Prince Quintillian.’
‘You do not need to invade,’ Quintillian said quietly. ‘Our palaces are built of stone, not gold or silver. There are places in our empire where the sun sears the land and little will grow, and other places where the snow never departs and crops are but a dream. We have as many problems as any other nation. If you seek in the empire a new idyll for your people, then you are mistaken. And the empire has a large, professional army. We have fought wars for a thousand years, honing our skills. To achieve this fantasy paradise, the conquest would be a hard fight and with uncertain outcome – would you wish to have your son instead commit a new painting showing your own death before the walls of Velutio?’
The Khan’s eyes hardened for a moment. ‘Be careful, young prince. I do not anger easily, but when I do, my rage unchecked can kill kingdoms.’
‘All I wish is to avoid a conflict that will ruin two peoples. If you seek the advantages that the empire has to offer, they can easily and readily be obtained through trade and negotiation, and I am the perfect broker for that work.’
The Khan shook his head. ‘You do not understand the fundamental nature of the clans. They understand trade and negotiation and will practise such when there is no alternative. But their very culture is based upon taking what they want and using everything up. The dream I have given them is of conquest. I gave them a vision of the future and in return they give me their strength and loyalty. If I take away that dream and offer them only negotiation, this alliance will fall apart in a heartbeat. Be grateful, young prince, that I have impressed upon them the importance and value of conquest and occupation. There are many that do not understand the need to occupy and would be happier ravaging the empire, firing its cities, stealing its valuables and raping and slaughtering its inhabitants. They are a simple people, Prince Quintillian. They see compromise as weakness and negotiation as failure. To them there is only the raid. You may think that I am the only thing focusing them on your empire, but now, I am rather the only thing keeping them focused on occupation rather than devastation.’
‘You bring siege engines and cavalry to take the empire, though? A mismatched force, surely? Your people are not besiegers. They are raiders. They are not suited to attacking cities and fortresses. I would hate to meet their like on the plains in open battle, but behind walls? They will be to Velutio as gnat bites to a horse. Faced by the full imperial might of the four armies, you cannot hope to achieve your goal. Abandon this folly now, Khan, before half the world is strewn with corpses.’
‘I am growing tired of the direction of this conversation, Prince Quintillian. I brought you here to ask you about your empire and instead I find myself justifying my actions to you instead. Quit your bargaining, young lord. The campaign is already begun and nothing can turn the clans from their course. Soon we will cross the border. We will make for your capital and we will break it, for unlike the clans, the empire is like a serpent: when the head is removed, the body will shudder and die. And I fear not your military. I am no fool. I have had agents in the west for over a year paving the way for me. You would be surprised – horrified too, I might suggest – at the lack of resistance we will meet when we come. The best future for the empire now is to lay down their arms and accept us when we come, for I would have your people intact, not festering in the burial pits. I have no wish to rule a land of bones and dead flesh.’
‘I find that I also have entirely lost my appetite for this discussion,’ Quintillian said in a quiet, acidic tone.
The Khan simply waved him away, and Quintillian turned, the huge warrior falling in next to him. As they passed back out into the corridor and the doors closed behind them, the big man grinned. ‘You did well.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes. My father is very hard to anger. Keep going like this and he will acquiesce to my demand to tear you limb from limb.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘When he has calmed down and considered matters he will send for you again. But you smell of the latrine. It is not fitting that you stand in my father’s hall looking and smelling like this. I will have a room made ready for you in the palace and clean clothes sent to you.’
Quintillian frowned. ‘Solicitude now, on the back of death threats? You are every bit as enigmatic as your father, you know that?’
‘Oh, no, Prince soldier, I am not a complicated man. I am a warrior and a Khan’s son. I wish to make my father proud, and so I will look after you as long as he sees a need for you. But as soon as he has no further use for you, I shall gut you and leave you for a sky burial.’
Quintillian frowned again as he realized they were not making their way to the main entrance again, but had instead turned into a new area of the palace. The warrior threw open a door and the prince stared. In the centre of the wooden room stood a huge bronze bath tub, its fittings moulded into the shape of a dragon, so that it stood upon four clawed feet.
‘A bath?’
‘So that you do not smell of shit when you are next called. The clansmen care not whether they smell of horses or blood, or dirt or faeces, but my father has refined tastes. Slaves will come with hot water and appropriate lotions for you.’ He gave Quintillian a hard glance from hooded, inscrutable eyes. ‘Try not to drown. I am looking forward to your death in so many inventive ways.’
And then the big man was gone, closing the doors, and Quintillian was alone in the bathroom. Well, even though his worst fears for the empire had been realized, one good thing had come out of this: he was in the palace and no longer trapped in that slave compound. And if Asander could be brought here too, then their chances of flight had just increased dramatically.
And so had the necessity for it.
Chapter VII
Of the Invisibility of Slaves
Four days passed with a strange sense of strangled civility. The perfectly refined and cultured situation in the palace could easily have been an echo of Quintillian’s previous life in Velutio, were it not for the constant overhanging sense of threat. Each day, Quintillian had been sent for by the Khan at around the time ofthe noon meal, and the two would sit in an edgy courteousness, discussing the most odd and mundane of topics. It had quickly become clear that the Khan had been entirely truthful in that he had no interest in learning of military matters.
The subjects had flowed quick and fast, but with the smoothness of interested conversation, from the architecture of the great bathhouses and the triumphal arches of long-gone emperors to the paintings of the eastern masters to the best methods of growing cabbages – though on subjects like the latter, Quintillian could be of little help. They discussed the sources of the best dyes, the nature of both red and black pottery and its aesthetic value. What were the various dialectical differences between regions? Was market day observed on the same day throughout the empire? Were markets small individual civic affairs or were they more like the nomads’ version where clans would travel for many days to attend a giant central market?
It went on.
The one thing they learned to avoid was any hint of the coming conflict. After the first day’s meeting, the Khan had refused to be drawn on the matter. The second day had almost ended in violence when Quintillian pushed the subject of conciliation just a little too hard and drove the Khan to anger. Now, the threat of wa
r hung over them like a bad smell, but just like a smell, could not become the subject of polite conversation.
Asander had joined them on the third day and had proved invaluable, being brought into the palace and given a room next to Quintillian. With the former scout acting as a high-speed translator, it was possible for the council of elders to become involved, and they had almost as many questions as their master.
Apart from the hour or two each day when their presence was required to inform the Khan more and more about the world of which he intended to become master, the two men were left largely to their own devices. They were subtly checked upon periodically when slaves came to sort their bedding or bring them food or extra clothes and the like. But there was no doubt that for all the pleasantness of their current life compared with their compatriots in the outer compound, they were still very definitely slaves. When they strayed too close to the vestibule, which seemed to be the only way in or out of the palace, the guards rather forcefully turned them back, making it clear that they were to stay where they were told. Similarly, their rooms had no windows and were illuminated only by the small oil lamps that the slaves kept fuelled. They were not permitted into the Khan’s personal area of the palace, and the guards there were even more forthright about the two slaves’ lack of freedom.
And yet they were well fed, and their privileged status was easily seen reflected in the envious eyes of the other slaves who attended them, who themselves had to return to the outside compound at night and defecate in a ditch. Asander and Quintillian were allowed to use the latrine in the bathroom, which consisted of a wooden seat over a drop into a quagmire outside the palace, which had been sown with the most powerfully-scented plants that grew on the steppe in an attempt to lessen the stink. It largely failed. That first day, Quintillian had examined the seats with a view to squeezing through the latrines and swimming the cesspool for escape. Ignoring entirely the clearly unpleasant aspects of the plan, it was clear that no human being, no matter how diminutive, was going to fit through the hole. The Khan’s men weren’t that stupid.
But there would be a way out. Quintillian was sure of it.
Here, now, on the fifth day since the Khan’s arrival at Ual-Aahbor, Quintillian stood in the corner of the bathroom, busily fastening the strange eastern clothes he had been given, then flattening his damp hair with the palms of his hands. They were required by the Khan within the hour, and it had become customary to bathe and dress in fresh clothes for the meetings – both he and Asander.
The scout busily towelled himself off. Both men had served on campaign and, despite Quintillian’s lofty rank, he had made it his business to share the hardships of his soldiers. One thing his father had always impressed on him was the value of being seen as one of the men. It was, to a politician or a general, worth more than gold. And so both men had shared bathing facilities with others. Of course, Quintillian had also bathed in public in the great bathhouses of Velutio, though it seemed that Asander had visited the capital only once, the day of the hiring, and was otherwise used only to smaller provincial bathing establishments.
The two men tidied themselves for the coming meeting in silence as the slave scooped a bucket of used water from the bath and took it away for disposal. Once he was gone and they were alone, Asander closed the door.
‘I spoke to one of the more talkative slaves this morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘The slave compound is unusually full today. It seems that the logging party has not been out over the last two days. You know what that means?’
Quintillian nodded sombrely. ‘That they’ve stopped. They’ve finished the siege engines. I’ve also noted that the newly-arrived clan chiefs generally present themselves to the Khan, and there have been between five and ten a day until yesterday. Since yesterday morning there have been two. I think the full strength of the clans has finally gathered. Their army is almost ready to move.’
‘You know that if we’re going to go, we have to go soon, then.’
Quintillian smiled. ‘It is foremost in my mind, Asander.’
‘And yet we’re no closer to finding a way.’
‘Ah,’ the prince said with a sly grin, ‘I think I might have an idea there.’
Asander finished drying himself and threw on his nomad-style leather trousers and loose-fitting tunic. ‘Well?’
‘Slaves might as well be invisible, you agree?’
‘To the masters, slaves are little more than furniture, especially here.’
‘I’ve been watching the slaves in this place, and they keep taking away our used plates and cups, our bathwater, the pisspot from the rooms and so on.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, where do they take them?’
Asander frowned. ‘I have no idea. Why hadn’t that occurred to me?’
‘I know they don’t take them out through the vestibule, ’cause I’ve seen slaves being turned back by the guards there, just like we are. And wherever they take all the waste, they can’t be keeping it inside the palace. The Khan is too civilized for that. Which means that they are leaving the palace somehow, or at the very least there is an aperture…’
‘A what?’
‘An aperture. A window, then. Big enough to empty a bucket through. And if that’s the case, there is always the possibility that a person can get through it.’
‘What do you suggest, then?’
Quintillian shrugged. ‘Only way we’re going to learn more is to follow them. How about now, since we’ve more than half an hour still to waste?’
They peered at the bath. There were probably still three buckets’ worth of used water to get rid of. Sure enough, as they fell silent and waited, Asander fastening his belt and pulling on the strange leather slippers he had been left, they could hear the slave approaching once more with his clunking bucket.
‘We’ll have to be really careful,’ Asander hissed. ‘You know what these slaves are like. They’ve been pushed to the edge of their humanity. If they think we’re causing trouble, they’ll sell us out to the Khan’s men in a heartbeat. They’ll see it as a chance to improve their own lot.’
Quintillian nodded. ‘And I don’t want to give them any more fuel to prod the Khan into giving me to his son.’
The Khan’s offspring, whose name they had discovered was Ganbaatar, had settled into a habit of constant threat to both men, making it quite clear that the moment his father lost interest in them, he would personally supervise their execution, and would make it sublimely painful. He had already taken to carrying his favourite flaying knives in his belt against the very chance his father tired of the new pets.
The huge warrior made Quintillian shudder. Not because of his strength and power, or even because of the clear streak of vicious cruelty that ran through his veins, but because that cruelty was so neatly and expertly bound up in civility. It was like speaking to a demon in the shape of a priest. You could talk to Ganbaatar and find yourself enjoying the pleasant banter right up to the point where he mentioned feeding you your own testicles.
It seemed that Ganbaatar was the Khan’s son by the daughter of a horse clan chieftain, so while the Khan maintained a tenuous control over the assembled fractious army by pure wit and strength of mind, the nomads saw the son as one of their own. He was revered partially for his skills with sword, bow and horse, and partially for his fanatical loyalty to the clans and hatred of their neighbour states.
The prince’s musings halted suddenly as the slave with the bucket bumbled into the room and scooped up another load of bathwater, turning and carrying it from the room once more. The two men waited until he was gone and then started to move quietly out into the corridor, following him at a discreet distance. It took only a few steps to realize that the leather slippers were too creaky and heavy to allow for a stealthy pursuit, and both men quickly slipped them off and tucked them into their belts before moving off again.
The slave seemed entirely oblivious to the two men behind him as he carried his sl
oshing bucket, his burden and his own footfalls largely masking the sounds of pursuit. After a few turns, the slave moved through one of the larger main sections of the palace where two nomad guards were busy chattering. Neither even glanced at the small, stooped figure with the bucket. Quintillian and Asander, still in the shadows a small way back, shared a look and shrugged. Brazen seemed the most sensible option, so the pair waited until the slave had moved into the next corridor, slipped their leather shoes back on, and strolled out into the open area, muttering meaningless nothings to each other, certain that the guards couldn’t follow their language anyway.
Sure enough, despite their mode of dress, the guards managed a quick glance in their direction, wrote them off as meaningless, and went on with their conversation. Quintillian and Asander moved into the next corridor and, ten steps into the shadows, slipped off the shoes once more, padding fast in their bare feet to catch up. They reached a junction, and with no sight of the bucket slave, paused for a moment. The palace hummed with life, but it took only a moment to pick out the sound of something wooden being opened somewhere in the distance to their left. Presuming this to be the work of the slave, the pair scurried along in that direction.
They rounded another corner, the sound of pouring liquid now confirming their path, and then another as they heard the wooden portal shut.
Quintillian’s heart thumped as they rounded yet another corner and came face to face with the bucket slave. The man yelped and raised his bucket threateningly.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped in a northern imperial accent. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘We got lost,’ Asander said quietly, his voice cracking with tension at the surprise encounter.
‘Barefoot?’ the man hissed. ‘It ain’t that warm. What are you really up to?’
‘Listen,’ Quintillian began, but the slave took a step back. ‘I think we should talk to the guards, eh?’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Quintillian murmured placatingly. The slave opened his mouth to reply, his expression hard, but nothing emerged as Asander’s arm shot out and grabbed the man by the throat, choking off sound. The smaller, older man struggled furiously, and tried to smash the bucket down on Asander’s head, but the blow failed, painfully trapping his own wrist in the handle instead.
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 9
