by Paul Krueger
* * *
—
Kohoyama must have been a proud city at its peak, because even under foreign occupation it still looked like nothing Lee had ever seen. It had wide paved streets with neat rows of cars parked along their edges, short buildings with symmetrical façades and gently sloped roofs, and electric lampposts lining all its sidewalks. From the looks of it, it must have been captured without a shot fired, because she saw nary a broken window, bullet hole, or burn mark. In fact, the only real indicators she saw that it had been taken over were the presence of Shang, Sanbuna, and Dahali soldiers, and the flags under which they marched. Most of Tomoda had been divided into discrete zones of control after the Copper Sage Armistice, but Kohoyama, Xiulan explained, was far too valuable a jewel to leave in the hands of a single power.
“Easy enough for us to get started,” Lee said as they stepped off the dock and onto dry land. “We go and say hello to the local Shang, tell them to gas up a ride for us, and be on our merry way?”
Something chilled about Xiulan’s bouncy demeanor. “I would rather as few Shang be aware of our presence as possible,” she said. “Even if they were to learn my true identity, Ruomei commands more far-reaching authority than I. It would only take a single phone call for her to realize what I’m up to. We’re already looking to face the might of General Erega’s finest. I’d just as soon not add Ruomei to our list of enemies.”
Lee frowned slightly, then shrugged. Streetwise Xiulan wasn’t, but Lee didn’t doubt the princess knew her politics. “As you say.”
Xiulan tapped some ash from her pipe. “When last I heard, the palace was in Dahali hands. They’re a mercantile society, which makes their politics more, ah, flexible. For the right price, they’ll grant us access. They may even provide us with a vehicle.”
Lee gestured to the lines of cars along the sides of the streets. “Why not just pick one?” She pointed to a sleek-looking car, shiny and smooth and black as obsidian. “That one looks like my kind of ride.”
“A Tomodanese-made model,” Xiulan said simply. “Appealing to the eye, but inoperable without their inborn talent of metalpacting.”
“And besides that excellent point, Inspector,” said someone behind them, “Chetan Parkash doesn’t imagine its owner would be too happy with you.”
The two of them turned to see a stocky Dahali man striding up to them with a rooster’s confidence. He was sharp-eyed, with pronounced cheekbones and a long nose. His skin was darker brown than even the Sanbunas Lee had seen in her day. His beard, long and black and braided into three separate forks, bounced off his muscular chest with each step. He wore a military uniform the color of wet sand, with enough decorations on it to suggest he was someone at least halfway important. But the real eye-catcher was the knife thrust in his sash, with its gilded hilt and jewel-encrusted sheath.
“Afraid I don’t know who that is,” Lee said, “and I don’t really care.”
The man smiled, but Lee got the impression the gesture was more an excuse to show his teeth. “If there’s anyone whose word you should care about,” he said, gently patting his own chest, “it should be Chetan Parkash’s.” Despite his thick accent, Lee noted that his command of Shang was rather good.
“Well, then why don’t you go find Chetan Parkash, and the two of us can have it out, eh?” she said, but Xiulan placed a firm hand on her shoulder.
“At ease, Inspector Lee,” she said. “You’re speaking to Chetan Parkash.”
“What?” Lee said, brow furrowing. “But he said—”
“He’s Dahali,” said Xiulan. “The personal pronoun is a high privilege for them, afforded only to those who can, ah, afford it.” She gave Parkash a shallow but respectful bow. “One which I’ve no doubt you’re well on your way to earning.”
“If this one’s quarterly earnings are as favorable as last quarter’s,” he said, pleased. “Very good, Inspector.”
Lee squinted at him. “How’d you know we were inspectors?” She figured there was no point in denying that, considering Xiulan’s badge was the least of the secrets they had to give up.
“Though the port of Kohoyama is shared among the three flowers of the Garden Revolution, Chetan Parkash counts himself its greatest florist,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Very little happens in Kohoyama that escapes this one’s notice. Certainly, agents of the Li-Quan would attract this one’s interest. Particularly ones who charter passage on a merchant ship, rather than going through official channels.”
Lee arched an eyebrow, but Xiulan was unflappable. “Your informants served you well,” she said lightly. “We’re here to investigate confidential matters of personal interest to the Most August Personage of the Crane, and would not wish for our presence to interfere with the goings-on of the local garrison.” She opened her coat to reveal her badge pinned to the lining. But just beneath that, Lee saw, she’d left her wallet plainly visible.
Clearly, Parkash noticed it, too. “Of course,” he said, motioning for her to close her coat. “This one has the utmost respect for personal servants of the Crane Emperor. Curious as your situation is, in the interest of continuing the warm relationship between your great country and this one’s, Chetan Parkash will be happy to assist your investigation in whatever capacity you wish.”
Xiulan flashed Lee a grin, but Lee wasn’t too sure of this herself. She had a tiny bell somewhere in her gut, and for the entirety of this short conversation, it had been softly ringing.
“We would love to accept such a generous offer,” Xiulan said. Lee was struck by the change in her voice. She was prone to using flowery language just as a matter of course, but when she’d used it with the magistrate it had been a weapon, meant to intimate and intimidate. Now her voice pitched higher to turn her words into a shield. This, Lee realized, had to be a skill she’d learned growing up in the court of Shang.
Apparently it worked, because Parkash beamed. “Then allow Chetan Parkash to have you for tea, Inspectors, and you can outline your precise needs.”
Tea was starting to sound good to the snarling monster that was Lee’s hangover, but Xiulan held up a polite hand. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “We merely wish to see the palace. The tea can be a parting gift.”
Parkash was quick to adopt an expression of disappointment that Lee didn’t quite buy. “Understandable,” the man said. “Would you allow this one the honor of driving you there?”
Xiulan beamed. “Nothing would please us more.”
Parkash led them to a car already waiting by the edge of the docks. Unlike the sleek Tomodanese cars, this one was clearly of Dahali design. Its roof was high, its nose snubbed, its profile narrow. Lee had heard that the roads in faraway Dahal were similarly narrow and cramped. On the wide-open roads of Tomoda, though, it looked like a toy.
Lee shot a wary look Xiulan’s way. She hadn’t survived as long as she had by just getting into the first car that opened its door to her, especially when the other passengers weren’t supposed to know she was even there in the first place. But once again, Xiulan appeared blissfully unconcerned.
“Royals,” she muttered in Jeongsonese, softer than a breath.
A brown-coated soldier stood waiting by the car’s door. His uniform was simpler than Parkash’s, and the knife in his belt appropriately more plain. When Parkash approached, he banged his right fist against his left shoulder in salute, then bowed to Xiulan and Lee respectfully before opening the door. As she slid into the sunbaked brown leather bench seat, Lee was surprised at how roomy the car’s interior was. But the heat trapped inside did little to assuage her hangover.
Lee had grown up in Shang’s cities, so cars weren’t quite the novelty for her that they would’ve been for someone from the country. Tomoda had introduced a full fleet of them to Shang, and not long afterward Shang itself had begun mass-producing knockoffs of the Dahali design, with an internal combustion engi
ne. Even before Shang’s Peony Revolution had broken out in earnest, both types had been common sights for a city girl like her.
She found the purr of this car’s engine beneath her seat oddly soothing. She leaned back and cast an eye out the window. Here and there, she saw Tomodanese people going about their days: cleaning storefronts, walking the streets, standing on corners and chatting as they smoked cigarettes. Sometimes they would look up and stare at the car as it passed them, but for the most part they just went about their business.
It all seemed so bizarrely normal.
Lee had never been to Tomoda before, but she’d had her share of encounters with the Tomodanese. She’d felt the sting of their rifle butts against her face. She’d picked the pockets of the people they’d murdered. She’d listened time and time again on the radio as they chalked up everything they did to ending the barbarism of shadepacting. Never mind that most of their victims couldn’t even pact, whether by ability or by Shang law. To her, people like the Tomodanese had to have crawled out of some red-skied hellscape where the soil was ash and the rain ate at your flesh as it fell on you.
But this city, Kohoyama, seemed like it was just…a place. A place with strange-looking buildings and far more cars than she’d ever seen in her life, but a place all the same. The sky wasn’t even red.
Parkash spent the drive pointing out buildings and reeling off brief explanations of what they were used for when the royal family was vacationing. And in each case, he made sure to highlight the ways in which Dahali bravery had been instrumental in capturing them, as well as the rest of the city.
“It’s an elegant metaphor for the overall shape of the war, don’t you think?” said Parkash as he wrapped up another one of his diatribes.
Lee cocked an eyebrow. “What’s he mean?” she said to Xiulan.
Parkash studied them in the car’s rearview mirror. “Chetan Parkash is surprised an agent of the Li-Quan isn’t more informed on the subject of international affairs.”
Lee scowled at him. She was getting the sense she’d just asked a dumb question, but the three-bearded bastard didn’t get to make her feel dumb about it. “My jurisdiction’s a bit more local,” she said. “Why don’t you dig into it so my limited Shang brain can understand?”
Her sarcasm seemed to delight Parkash more than it irked him. “While the dominions of Shang and the Sanbu Islands both languished under the rule of Tomoda, in the west lay the prosperity of Dahal,” he began grandly. “Other nations fell to their metallic menace, but Dahal rose to become a power of equal stature with them, using trade with Tomoda to create innovations envied by even the Mountain Throne of Hagane.” He stroked his beard a moment before adding, “Chetan Parkash means no offense to your great nation, of course. This one is simply stating the facts of the historical record.”
“Of course,” Xiulan said, pulling out her pipe and lighting it. Her eye was at half-mast with barely concealed boredom, though the shadow of her hat meant only Lee could see it. “We wouldn’t ever think otherwise.”
“When the Tomodanese grew greedy and coveted Dahal’s ingenuity and riches, they launched blistering attacks against her border, and gobbled up vast swaths of her land. But while the flat-nosed devils drew first blood, it was Dahal who had the last laugh.”
Lee rubbed her very flat nose and scowled more.
“Dahal proved herself ungovernable. Her people formed the Lotus Revolution, elder sister to the Jasmine of Sanbu and the Peony of Shang. And when Tomoda was forced to sink more and more resources and manpower into Dahal, Shang and Sanbu were suddenly presented with an opportunity they hadn’t seen in decades.” He stroked his beard, and the rings woven into its braids jangled against one another. “Dahal was a seed that lodged in Tomoda’s throat, and eventually she sprouted into a garden that choked it to death.”
“A story well told,” Xiulan said cheerfully, though the lopsided smirk on her face remained.
“This one thanks you. But now, with great sadness,” said Parkash, “Chetan Parkash must bring this ride to a close. Your destination looms, Inspectors.”
Lee suddenly realized a shadow had fallen over the interior of the car. When she turned to press her nose up against the window, she saw a massive palace, far larger than any daito’s mansion Lee had ever seen.
It was taller than it was wide, more like a tower than a proper palace, but despite that simple design it still commanded an air of…Lee couldn’t think of a better word than fanciness. Its walls were gleaming white (fancy), its bowed rooftops a bright cobalt blue (very fancy), its lawns green and inviting (oh so fancy). Like the city, there was nary a scratch on its face. The only things missing were the blue Tomodanese flags that had once surely fluttered from its spires and windows, not the Dahali ones that flew there now.
“So,” said Lee as the car came to a stop outside its front gate. “This is where evil goes to get a tan.”
“You never struck me as particularly concerned about evil,” Xiulan said, getting out of the car and stretching.
Lee shrugged. “Plenty concerned about tans.”
“Per the agreement reached in the Copper Sage Armistice, the palace has remained largely untouched and vacated, save for some cursory spoils taken as a well-deserved compensation for Great Dahal’s efforts in securing the peace.”
At this, Lee genuinely grinned. Thieving, she understood. “Of course,” she said, trying on courtly civility for a change. It didn’t fit the best, but Lee looked good in anything.
“There are troops stationed nearby under Chetan Parkash’s command,” he went on. “If you find them and tell them this one has ordered them to give you a ride anywhere you wish, they will do it. You have the word of Chetan Parkash.” He smiled again, teeth gleaming beneath his thick black beard.
“And you have Shang’s sincerest thanks for your generosity and discretion,” Xiulan said. “We’ll have to dine with you before we depart. As a way of showing our gratitude.”
“Nothing would make this one happier,” said Parkash. “Inspectors.” He bowed deep one last time, then slipped back into his car.
Lee and Xiulan watched him drive away in silence. Lee’s mouth twisted as she stared at those headlights. Soft as a chime on the wind, the bell in her gut was still ringing away.
Xiulan broke the silence first. “Have you ever been in a palace before, Inspector Lee?”
“In Hai-Kwung, a palace was what you called a place where you could hire yourself someone pretty for the night.”
“Then I shall take that as a no,” said Xiulan. She beamed. “Have heart, Lee. You’re in for a treat.”
“I don’t know.” Lee sighed as they started for the door. “The other kind of palace is hard to beat.”
She still hadn’t woken up.
All night long, she’d curled in the middle of the boat, her breaths shallow and her rest fitful. Jimuro had crammed himself into the boat’s stern, one hand on the boat’s metal motor to keep it running. In his other hand, he held a single bullet: the only remaining round in the gun he’d borrowed from the sergeant. It had no targets now, so instead he held it flat in his palm and coursed his spirit through it, willing it to point due north.
But while he kept an eye on the sea ahead, the true object of his gaze was the gargantuan slave at the bow of the boat, the monster the sergeant had called brother.
His gaze slid from the ridges of Dimangan’s back muscles and bones to fall on the unconscious sergeant. Her breathing was still labored, and her face was furrowed with pain. She was mostly still, though occasionally her entire body would spasm. Even as he watched, she did it again, every centimeter of her twitching and convulsing.
The brute cradling her sucked in sharply, though Jimuro wasn’t certain exactly how those creatures breathed. Seeing them there, he was struck by how similar the sergeant and her brute looked. Even accounting for the way barbarism had twisted t
he slave’s form, both it and its sister were sketched in similar hard lines.
But the more his focus drifted to Sergeant Tala, the brighter outrage sparked in his stomach. She’d been so self-righteous in the brig, and yet a human slave was a taboo so dire, even people as depraved as the Sanbunas and Shang considered the practice beneath them.
That outrage curdled into disgust in his gut as he considered the monstrosity before him—not a monster, for in truth this creature, Dimangan, was a victim. The true monster lay unconscious in its lap. Enslaving another creature’s spirit was abhorrent enough, whether that creature was person or beast. But to enslave one’s own flesh and blood…He thought of Fumiko, his own sister. She’d died a terrible death at Sanbu’s hands, but in his heart Jimuro knew he would have wished that same fate on her ten thousand times before he wished the one the sergeant had inflicted on the thing her brother had become.
He looked down at the hand holding the bullet and realized he’d clenched it tight. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and reoriented his makeshift compass. He considered letting the slave know they were nearing the shores of Kinzokita, but he stopped himself. They had reached a tacit unspoken agreement, prince and slave.
Neither of them would say anything to each other.
That way, neither of them would have to die.
* * *
—
By the time they finally reached the rocky coast of Kinzokita, it was full-on morning. The clouds overhead were thick and gray as steel wool, the way they always were up north. Despite everything, Jimuro’s heart swelled. After three long years, he’d finally set eyes on his beloved country, and soon enough his feet would follow suit. He’d longed to breathe its air, to eat some genuine udon made from grains grown in its dirt, to lie awake at night and listen to the gentle call of the cicadas in its trees. He could feel the spirits of the world wherever he went, but as he beheld the friendly shore, they practically sang in his veins.
