Portal of a Thousand Worlds

by Duncan, Dave

  “I will go and see her,” Butterfly Sword said. “At once. … But I cannot, can I?” The Emperor must not be tainted by the presence of death. The rules of mourning were incredibly restrictive and complicated at the imperial level. “Have the Gray Sisters been summoned?”

  “I do not know, er, Your Majesty.” The eunuch’s eyes burned with rage, or possibly fear, and very likely both. If the imposter could win acceptance, then he would truly be Emperor, and he would remove all witnesses to the truth.

  “Send for Chief Eunuch at once. Summon my chair and inform First Mandarin that I will receive him in the Abode of Wisdom.” Who else would a bereaved and now liberated Emperor consult? He mentioned a few others, and hastily added Court Astrologer to the top of the list. Joyous Diligence departed, no doubt relieved that he had an excuse to rush to his father for instructions.

  Three, Butterfly Sword decided: Chief Eunuch, First Mandarin, and Supreme Guardian—if those three supported him, then the rest of the world would have to. Supreme Guardian was leading the army south to meet the Bamboo Banner. His representative in Sublime Mountain was a nonentity.

  Almost before the Lord of the High and the Low was ready to receive Chief Eunuch, the gross old pudding had come waddling in, arriving so quickly that he must have been on his way already. Butterfly Sword dismissed everyone else, and Chief Eunuch watched them go with a meaningless smile and without moving from his place by the door. Only when it closed did he begin to move, waddling forward.

  Was he going to stop and make obeisance?

  Butterfly Sword did not wait to find out. He beckoned and pointed to cushions nearby. “Come and sit down.” It was an admission of equality or even subservience, and the old man’s eyes glittered slyly as he spread himself on and over the seat.

  “May I offer my deepest condolences on—”

  “Crap. The old cat is dead and none of us expected that. Let’s talk about this. Just this once, we’ll speak openly. I’m a fraud and you know it. But if you denounce me, you’re likely to be torn to globules before you’ve started your second paragraph. Correct?”

  The eunuch nodded, moving his smile up and down on the mountain of butter that was his face. He was so vast he was scenery.

  “And even if you survive that, who’s going to believe you? The harridan accepted me, fawned over me in public, claimed me as her son. Didn’t she know her own son? That’s what they’ll ask.”

  “Oh, dear me. I could probably find a number of witnesses.”

  “I daresay. And I don’t know who most of them are, so I can’t silence them first, correct?”

  Another smile, even more blubbery. “As Your Majesty says.”

  “But they will only be eunuchs, and who will take their words against the Emperor’s? Oh, you may pull me down, but you’ll go to the chopping post, too, my fine accomplice, and all your witnesses with you. A man your size will need twenty thousand cuts. You’ve made fools of the court, the country, and the aristocracy. You’ll do better staying aboard than swimming among the sharks. What do you want out of it?”

  What could a eunuch want? Not women, not estates to leave to nonexistent children. Power? Retirement would be too dangerous for him, because he must keep an eye on the fake Emperor to ensure his own survival. Revenge on old enemies? But of course, this eunuch did have children.

  “I have seven grandsons. I do not wish to see them forced to follow the family tradition.”

  “A palace apiece?”

  “Two palaces,” the fat man said automatically.

  “One.”

  “With a hundred rooms apiece. And the title of prince.”

  “One medium-size palace apiece. I thought princes had to have imperial blood in their veins.”

  “Today the Empire gained another who does not.”

  That was a low blow. Butterfly Sword had a son he had not set eyes on yet. “What I meant was, how do you propose to fake their ancestry?”

  Lard Face sneered. “Two-thirds of the princes in the Good Land are descended from overactive imaginations.”

  “Then it’s agreed. You make the arrangements and the imperial clerks will press the imperial seal to the imperial paper in the imperial presence.”

  There was something about Chief Eunuch’s smile that suggested he had expected more of a battle. Or wished he had asked for more. Or was going to ask for more tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. “Also, those other witnesses will not come cheap.”

  They would undoubtedly come cheaper than the ultimate cost to the treasury. “I rely on you to deal with them in the most appropriate fashion.”

  The fat man detected the threat, of course, and his smile narrowed slightly. “Your Majesty is most generous.”

  “I can afford to be,” said Absolute Purity. “One other thing. …” He paused a moment, thinking it through. Yes! Where there is no honor, there is no dishonor, as the Humble Teacher had taught. If the Good Land must be ruled by an imposter, that was still better than having it ruled by a puppet of the Gray Order. Now that the Empress Mother was gone, Butterfly Sword could hurl the full power of the Empire at Sister Lark. Any mention of Eunuch Arpeggio would make Chief Butterball writhe in fury, for he would certainly have heard of the fake Emperor’s curious interest in the singer, and to suspect a plot in the Great Within that he did not understand must be agony for him.

  How could Butterfly Sword explain his sudden interest in a third-rate vocalist? Easy: I thought he sounded more like a woman than a castrato; his voice was not strong enough to come from male lungs. So I demanded another song, and after that, I was sure of it, but of course I could not denounce her as an imposter in case I might be wrong. It seemed no more than a harmless prank then, but since my dear mother …

  No, no, no! Hint at assassination to anyone in the Good Land and they would immediately think of the Gray Helpers. Imposture likewise, and Chief Eunuch knew what Absolute Purity was. To go down that road would be suicidal.

  “No matter,” the Emperor said. “It is unimportant at a time like this. By the way, I understand that Joyous Diligence is your son?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I hereby promote him to my chief food taster, and he will perform his services in my presence.”

  Chief Eunuch displayed bad teeth in a quite horrible snarl. “As Your Majesty commands, so will it be.” He turned his back—which would normally be a capital offense—and waddled away.

  In any case, Lark would slip out the gates without question. Gray Sisters would be called in to remove the ill-omened imperial carcass from Sublime Mountain as fast as possible, and she would blend right in with them. The toughest guards Chief Eunuch commanded would never interfere with the death-tainted pariahs.

  Butterfly Sword must remain bound by the compulsions she had laid upon him. She need not return to the palace as Eunuch Arpeggio; she could find a hundred ways to sneak up on him. Even were she to be caught and put to death now, it was a safe bet that she had acted under compulsion herself, so her superiors must know the words to control the Emperor.

  Unless she had managed to double-cross them, which was more likely.

  He called for a carrying chair, one of the informal small ones used only inside the Great Within. He dismissed the trumpeters, bell ringers, and gong beaters who came with it. Accompanied only by a dozen eunuch guards and carried by a mere eight bearers, he was borne swiftly and silently to the Robing Room, which led to the Abode of Wisdom. More flunkies waited there, ready to dress him in his formal robes, but he waved them away. No amount of silk brocade and jewelry was going to impress First Mandarin. A fully draped Emperor could barely move.

  He beckoned Sandalwood, who was chancellor for the Abode. He was an elderly eunuch, scraggy and croaky as most of his kind became when they aged, but sharp-witted and seemingly efficient. Butterfly Sword had noticed the Empress Mother playing him off against some of Chief E
unuch’s faction, and suspected he might be a future ally. His was an important office, for the Abode of Wisdom was a meeting place between the inner and outer palace complexes, and was therefore well guarded.

  “Has First Mandarin arrived yet?”

  Sandalwood bit his wrinkled lip, hesitant before an unfamiliar new ruler. Young, newly empowered Emperors were dangerous. “Not when I looked a moment ago, Majesty. I will check again. …”

  “The matter is urgent, Chancellor. Will you please make sure he is not unduly delayed in answering our summons?” Butterfly Sword had no intention of cooling his heels while First Mandarin played dominance tricks.

  The retainer blinked in amazement and then smiled. “With Your Majesty’s permission, I will send men to fetch him at once.” Any chance for the eunuchs to score off the mandarinate was too good to miss. Palace politics was a cesspool as deep as the ocean.

  “You have our permission to be quite insistent. But admit no others until I have conferred with First Mandarin.”

  Butterfly Sword went out to the alcove where the throne stood. The lamps there were lit, but he could see through the fretwork screens that boys were still lighting lamps in the main hall. They spun around in alarm as he pushed the sliding doors apart. “That will do. Go!” boomed the giant, yellow-robed autocrat in a very unaltered-male voice. They fled in terror out the side doors, trailing sparks from their tapers.

  He stepped down from the dais and headed over to a window. Dawn was fast approaching and he had not slept. Would he ever dare sleep again?

  Could he hope to escape alive from this epochal hoax? Would he try to disappear even if he could, knowing that the alternative to the Adopted Son of the Sun must be civil war? At worst, the Empire would collapse into warring states that might contest with one another for a century before order could be restored. At best, the Eleventh Dynasty would simply be replaced by the wild-eyed fanatics of the Bamboo Banner, but all reports indicated that the provinces they had overrun just fell into chaos. And the earthquake would have turned rats into tigers, as some poet put it. Peasant revolts had rarely led to a stable government in the past, so far as he recalled. First Mandarin would know. New dynasties usually sprang from Outlander invasions led by military geniuses; internal uprisings produced only decades of chaos. So the ethical course was to press on.

  A man pleads his own case best, the Courtly Teacher said.

  And pleads the case of a son he had not seen yet. If he could pull this off, he would found his own dynasty.

  Could he reasonably hope to? Chief Eunuch had been easy game, for he was motivated by greed and a lust for power; his wits were dulled by over-indulgence. First Mandarin, though, was distilled essence of fox. His mind was sharper than assassins’ daggers and his training had cast him in the bronze of tradition and duty. His principles would not exclude theft to enhance his salary but they would stop far short of treason, and although the late Empress Mother had bent them enough to encompass her own usurpation, she had probably stayed narrowly within the bounds of legality.

  Or had she? The realization that Butterfly Sword was not certain of the rules came like a deluge of ice water. He had assumed that the old man was in on the hoax, but maybe he was not. In fact, on second thought, that was a far more likely guess. And how to find out? Probing for hints would never work. First Mandarin was as inscrutable as the moon to a blind man. The imposter would have to gamble, rolling dice blindfolded, with his life on the table.

  After gratifyingly few minutes, one flap of the great door at the far end of the hall swung open. First Mandarin stumbled in as if shoved. The door slammed shut.

  And Butterfly Sword could relax again, knowing the answer to his question. Obviously Sandalwood’s men had been assiduous, perhaps even to the point of manhandling the head of the imperial government. The old man was so furious that he had forgotten about inscrutability. For what might well be the first time in half a century, he had lost his temper, standing at the door glaring flames at the usurper. He would never look at a real Emperor like that. To be dragged before a real Emperor in that way was a recipe for sheer, bone-melting terror.

  Butterfly Sword waved for him to come close, and he shuffled over. The Emperor went back to studying the dawn. He decided a poetic mood might be appropriate. “Night’s fears wither as the east blossoms.”

  No mandarin could let a quotation go by without topping it. “The greatest sorrows come guised in hope.” He did not kneel, just scowled up at the imposter, seeming much smaller than Butterfly Sword had expected. It was the first time they had ever been close, the first time they had spoken together.

  “Can we be overheard here?” Butterfly Sword whispered.

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters for my life, your life, and the lives of millions of the Gentle People. Nobody expected this to happen, Excellency. The hand of Heaven did this.” Actually, the powerful hands of Brother Horse. “Let us decide what we can do to solve the Good Land’s problem.”

  “I say that you are the Empire’s problem!”

  “I don’t want to be. I did not choose this. Give me my favorite concubine and our daughter, then show me the door, and we will willingly be gone.” Oh, if only! By himself, Butterfly Sword might have a good chance of vanishing in the mass confusion of the Empress Mother’s death, but Snow Lily and Snowbell were hostages in the Great Within, hostages of both Chief Eunuch and the mandarinate that ruled the Great Without. “But what happens then, Excellency? Who holds the Golden Throne if not I? And what happens to the Empire?”

  The mandarin twisted his papery lips as if about to spit. “You think you can rule the Good Land, boy?”

  “I think you can. And despite what the late Empress Mother believed, I think you have been doing so since Zealous Righteousness died.” Flattery was the only arrow Butterfly Sword held in his quiver. “She told me many times that she knew of no one who could do it better and I certainly do not. You cannot expose me as an imposter without laying yourself open to charges of high treason. The Empire needs you and you must tolerate me.”

  With a visible effort, First Mandarin had recovered his composure, returning his face to its normal rice-flour color and texture. His straggling mustache and wispy beard were snow white, his queue an iron gray. Even his eyes wore a film like thin ice, and maggots would find more meat on an icicle.

  “Oh, must I? You are too sure of yourself.”

  Which was certainly what Butterfly Sword himself suspected, faced with that ancient confidence. This discussion ought to be held in secret, of course, but there was no secrecy around Emperors. Their talk might not be overheard, but they were certainly being watched, and probably by spies from every faction in the palace, however many there were.

  “Who succeeds me if my supposed mother’s death proves infectious?”

  “Prince Boundless Shore. A fourth cousin or so. A youth still, but he is said to have promise.”

  The Empress Mother had insisted that there was nobody, but she had been pleading her own indispensability. No doubt First Mandarin was currently doing the same, and he could be extraordinarily convincing.

  “Will his claim be uncontested? Will he leave you in charge, as I would? Can he unite the Empire against the rebels? Open one tiny crack in the imperial facade and it will crumble before the onslaught of the Bamboo Banner.”

  “You try to bargain when you should be on your knees begging for mercy.”

  Maybe. But the old man was making no attempt to leave, which was as good as bargaining under the circumstances. The longer he stayed, the more he must seem like a fellow conspirator. The issue might balance on a knife blade, but it had not tipped yet.

  “Venerable One, I just bought Chief Eunuch with pretty trinkets. I will not insult you with bribes. All I can offer you is my cooperation to save the Empire from chaos and interregnum. Tell me what you need that the Empress Mother refused you.”r />
  The milky eyes studied him for a moment. “You could start with Supreme Guardian’s head in a bucket.”

  Saved again! Now they were haggling, and all that need be settled was the price. Butterfly Sword realized that he had watched First Mandarin in action often enough in the last year, but the old man had never seen him do or say anything, just sit. The man had no way of judging him. The imposter had been a stuffed dummy on a throne, no more. Now he must show that he was clever—but not too clever.

  “Supreme Guardian is a loon,” he agreed. “Who will you put in his place?” Will, not would.

  “Iron Spur. A brilliant general. He crushed the barbarian uprising in Siping five years ago, driving them back into their desert with great slaughter. The army worships him.”

  “Can you trust him? A relative, perhaps?”

  “A grandson,” the old man admitted shamelessly.

  “I must meet this hero. Where is he now?”

  “Moldering on the Siping frontier, where he has been stationed ever since.”

  Where he posed the least threat to his grandfather’s rival, Commander-in-Chief Supreme Guardian. With his grand­father’s help, the doughty Iron Spur might tip the scales in the coming struggle to control the palace.

  Butterfly Sword produced his best cute little boy smile. “Can I summon the noble Iron Spur without alerting Supreme Guardian’s allies here at court?”

  This time, the appraisal was a little longer. “No. But I could.”

  “Do so without a moment’s delay. And tell him to bring as many men with him as the frontier can spare without leaving the door wide open to barbarian raids.”

  That was a surprise. “What do you plan to do with troops, imposter?”

  “Rat catching. I want you to use them to drive the vermin out of the palace. I have seen how they behave, how the Empress Mother favored them, how they manipulated her, how they have appropriated the government. They are roaches.”