by Jeff Wheeler
After the feast was finally over, Kexin approached her with King Zhumu’s orders. Her ensign would sleep in the northwest courtyard of the palace. Cots and bedrolls had been assembled for them, and fresh water would be made available for them to drink and bathe in. In return, her ensign would be responsible for patrolling that quarter of the palace. She needed to ensure the walls had sentries at all times, day and night.
Bingmei thanked Kexin and asked Mieshi to make the assignments, instructing her to save the least favorable watch duties for Bingmei—Kunmia had always taken them when she was their leader. Mieshi left to make the arrangements, and it surprised no one in the ensign when Damanhur followed her.
Bingmei watched their hosts in their fancy clothes, and despite the borrowed clothing she wore, she felt a piercing awareness that she wasn’t one of them.
She smelled Jiaohua before she felt him appear at her side.
“What is it?” she asked, staring at the crowded hall.
“Muxidi wants to see you,” he said.
She could have denied the request, but something told her the confrontation was inevitable and they were supposed to meet again. And she was so very tired of fighting fate at every turn.
The dungeon beneath the palace was dank and fetid, studded with the stone arches supporting the weight of the palace. Bracketed oil torches illuminated the darkness, but shadows writhed everywhere. It surprised her to see so many people down below, sleeping on cots. These weren’t prisoners. It showed her how unprepared the city had been for the influx of refugees. She saw little children hunkering down close to their parents and could smell the fear coming from them. The fear of the dark, the unknown future, the enemy who might attack them again. She clenched her fists and shuddered as she passed through the huddled masses.
There’s one way you could help, a traitorous voice whispered in her ear.
But she was a warrior. She couldn’t just lie down and die for them. She’d rather fight.
Jiaohua and a Sihuian guard led her down the cramped corridor, past more cots and cells that contained sleeping prisoners. At the end of the hall, they arrived at a cell with only one captive. He was sitting on the floor, one knee up, his black silk outfit filthy. His gaze shifted up to meet hers. A scraggly beard covered his cheeks and mouth, and his hair was also unkempt and stringy, hanging in clumps across his face.
He looked terrible, beaten, but he smelled like a man sick with shame, regret, and the torture of self-recrimination. This was Muxidi, the once-fearsome Qiangdao leader. He was broken inside. There was no anger churning in him now. No ambition. It was all guttered out.
He stared at her. She stared back.
“I felt you coming,” he said hoarsely. “I feared it was the beginning of madness, yet here you are.”
Bingmei approached the bars, which were pitted and stained. The air had a sulfurous smell to it.
“You wanted to see me,” she said, wondering what he would say. She had hoped to never see him again.
“Yes, I’ve wanted to see you,” he said. “I’ve tortured myself day and night, wondering if it might happen. Yet here you are, and I find I cannot speak the words. I’ve wanted to speak them. Why is that? Why can I not say them now?”
“He’s raving,” Jiaohua muttered. “Say what you wished to say, or I’ll take her away and never bring her back down in this muck hole. Say it, you coward! You told me. Now say it to her.”
Muxidi’s eyes became feverish. He looked up at her, and she felt a little whisper of hope before anguish choked it out. Clenching his fists, he beat his own head. “Say it! Just say it! How is it that some words can choke? I . . . am . . . sorry. There. There. It works now.” He stopped beating himself with his fists and started banging his head back against the wall. “I am sorry. I am sorry!” he nearly shrieked.
Bingmei stared at him, aghast, her heart surging with violent and conflicting emotions. She wished she were anywhere but deep in this dank dungeon.
“I murdered . . . I did . . . I murdered your family. Your parents. They are both dead because of me. You saw me kill your grandfather . . . you saw it. And I didn’t care. I would have killed you too had you not bounded away by some infernal bit of magic. I could have killed a child. I would have.” His voice cracked. “Back then I was consumed by a sickness. By a need for revenge because of what your grandfather did.”
Bingmei groaned. She couldn’t help it. She gripped the bars. “If you speak ill of my grandfather, if you try to taint my memory of him . . .”
“I won’t! I won’t! I swear it on my two souls, one of which is already sold to the Dragon of Night. I won’t. I won’t.” He started gasping, choking for breath.
Bingmei thought him the most piteous man she’d ever seen. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“It was all in my mind. He . . . he never did me wrong. Not truly. He sent me away from the quonsuun. Banished me because of my pride. My conceit. He had killed my grandfather in a competition by accident and took me in because of his guilt and to make amends. I used the leopard banner for my own purposes. To fight in competitions as my grandfather once did. All for the sake of glory, to prove I was better than him! How our minds savor the things they want to believe. The glory wasn’t for him. It was for me. Master Jiao saw through my self-deception, and he rightly banished me from his quonsuun when I injured someone who had quit the fight.” His lips twitched as he spoke the words. Then he hung his head low, and his greasy, unkempt hair covered his face. “But I believed at the time he had wronged me and my grandfather. And I wanted revenge. If I was unworthy to be part of it, then no one was worthy. I vowed in my heart I’d destroy it. And I did. Oh how I did,” he groaned. He fell silent, his shoulders shuddering with sobs.
After an immense pause, he lifted his head. “You should have killed me. You were entitled to exact revenge on me. You chose not to. Why? How could you not?”
It felt like a hand had gripped her throat. Until this very moment, she’d doubted her decision to let him live. But now, taking in the depth of his suffering, she knew at the core of her being that Kunmia Suun had been right all along. Was this alone not evidence that revenge did not satisfy? That the dregs of its cup were the bitterest to drink?
She clenched the bars with her hands, pressing her forehead against them. She sorrowed for this man, for the ruin he’d made of his life. In her mind, the only reason he hadn’t committed suicide was because he dreaded the Grave Kingdom.
The words came slowly to her, but they did come. “Because of what my master taught me. She warned that revenge would never heal, only harm. And I see in you that it is true.”
He rushed to the bars in an act of utter wildness. She was so shocked by his sudden lunge that she pushed herself back as he slammed into the metal. Jiaohua kicked him through the bars, making him grunt in pain and sink to his knees.
“Forgive me,” Muxidi pleaded, groaning, his eyes full of anguish.
“You dare ask her this?” Jiaohua said and then spat on him. He looked like he was about to do further violence, but Bingmei grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Back away,” Bingmei warned. She’d struck him before. They both knew she could.
Jiaohua’s frown was terrible. He shifted it to Muxidi, staring at him with daggers in his eyes. “You have no right to ask for it!”
“Forgive me,” Muxidi pleaded, gasping, grunting.
Bingmei walked back to the bars. She heard the former Qiangdao sobbing. Her suffering at losing her parents, her beloved grandfather, had scarred her deeply. But this . . . this regret and despair were infinitely worse. Her wounds had eventually healed. His were still oozing. She’d never smelled so much sorrow and regret. Nothing she did was likely to change it. There was simply too much.
She squatted by the bars, bringing their faces level with each other.
She reached through the bars and stroked his tangled hair. “I do forgive you,” she said. She wasn’t sure how much she meant it, but seeing someone in such agony
moved her. If he’d been the least bit deceptive, she would have withheld her comfort.
His sobs stopped as he lifted his head, eyes full of disbelief. A little spark had kindled inside him. It smelled like candle wax.
“You . . . you do?” he whispered thickly.
She stroked his head again and rose, nodding once. Then she turned and walked away, thinking about the princess’s bathing chamber.
Would any number of baths rid her of the memory of such smells?
But her heart felt a peculiar sense of lightness. As if a heavy stone she’d been carrying inside her had been left behind in the prison. She hadn’t expected that.
Jiaohua grumbled as he walked next to her. “You didn’t have to—”
“Just shut up, Jiaohua,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Unassailable
Birdsong awoke Bingmei the next morning. There were different breeds in the western rim, and their sounds jarred her awake. Were they finches? It sounded so. She lay on a pallet on the floor of the courtyard they’d been assigned to defend. Although she’d gone to sleep sweating after performing her night duty, she felt pleasantly cool now. She lifted herself up on her arm, surveying the sleeping bodies scattered around the area. At least it wasn’t the cave anymore. Or the thick forest.
Bingmei stood and walked through the courtyard, enjoying the subtle breeze against her red silk jacket and pants. The wide sleeves let in the morning air, almost cool enough to make her shiver. Breathing in deeply, she smelled the freshness of the air, savoring the lack of emotion since everyone else was still resting. She walked by a huddle of sleeping students. She felt remarkably light, as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. She felt more peaceful and solemn. More attuned to her body. Was she a different person today than she’d been the night before?
Gazing around the courtyard, she realized there was enough space for her to practice a form, so she went back to her pallet and retrieved the Phoenix Blade from its scabbard. After putting on her shoes, she walked to the far edge of the courtyard. Marenqo waved down to her from the wall where he squatted, hand gripping his staff.
Bingmei started with the salute position and then launched into the routine called dragon straight sword. As she performed the movements, she felt an inner peace settle within her, and she glided through the form. She’d practiced it so many times it felt like part of her now.
When she finished the form, her breath coming faster now from the exercise, a strange feeling came over her. She set down the Phoenix Blade and started on a hand form next. Her body was invigorated, her mind alert, but a strange feeling bloomed in her heart. It felt as if she’d done this before, here in the courtyard in Sihui. She hadn’t, of course, but the sense of nostalgia was overpowering.
The feeling swelled as Bingmei started a new form. She dropped into low stances, swinging her legs around in circles that would trip opponents. Her body wove and ducked, her arms coming around like sweeping wings. Her fists were closed, but she noticed that her pointer finger was bent so that the knuckle protruded, her thumb pressed into the crease. She’d never done this movement before, but power thrummed through her, and she sensed that striking someone with that knuckle would be incredibly painful for them. She leaped and turned midair, landing gracefully, then dropped again, sweeping low. It was a complicated form, and it felt every bit as much a part of her as dragon straight sword did. Only she’d never done it before. It felt as if it had been hiding inside her.
At the end of the form, she smelled Mieshi’s curiosity. When she turned, the other woman was coming toward her, her brow wrinkled. She gave off a hint of admiration.
“What form was that?” she asked.
Bingmei straightened after her final salute, a sense of belonging in her heart. She shook her head as Mieshi reached her. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve seen all the forms taught in the school,” Mieshi said. “I’ve mastered most of them, but I’ve not seen that one before. It looked like you were a . . . bird.”
“It’s called five birds,” Bingmei suddenly said, the compulsion to speak startling her.
“Would you teach it to me?” Mieshi asked.
Bingmei nodded and started teaching Mieshi the form. It was the first time she had taught Mieshi anything.
General Tzu took Bingmei and Jiaohua on a tour of Sihui’s defenses before midday, while the heat was still manageable. They walked down the main street, passing through the merchants’ stalls, and he showed them the heavily guarded bulwarks. There was a wide bay leading to Sihui, which would be easy for Echion’s fleet of enormous ships to pass through, but the river itself was a different matter. Defenses had been constructed to block the river, which she’d seen the previous day, but she hadn’t grasped the magnitude of the endeavor. People labored day and night to construct walls of stone and dirt and timber to protect the city.
General Tzu had not been idle during the season of the Dragon of Night.
“We learned at Sajinau,” the general said, “that stone docks lay beneath the waters, giving the ships a place to land. After searching the banks here, we’ve found the same docks beneath the water here. We have used them as a foundation for our walls.”
“Echion won’t have a solid place to land,” said Jiaohua, nodding in approval.
“No, he’ll be forced to disembark farther away from the city and march on Sihui. To counter this, we have troops hidden in the woods that will attack and retreat. We want him to pay for every li that he tries to claim.”
“We’re better prepared this time,” said Jiaohua with a smirk.
General Tzu shook his head no. “Hardly. We’re still quite vulnerable. We have escape routes set up should we need to abandon the city and food stores set up in outposts farther away.”
“What if Echion strikes from behind?” Bingmei asked him. “The way we came.” They had to move aside to dodge a cart carrying stones to a group of workers.
“To address that risk, we have scouts in the woods,” General Tzu said. “Your ensign is the only group that has come from that direction since the season began. And you were spotted long before you reached the guards on the bridge. Echion won’t be able to hide an army from us. If they come that way, we’ll see them days in advance.”
“So you’re prepared either way,” said Jiaohua. He was silent for a moment, as if considering the situation, then made an urgent gesture. “But what about the killing fog? He used it to destroy the army at Sajinau!”
Although General Tzu’s expression did not shift, Bingmei smelled the fiery scent of anger beneath his calm. He was still furious about his loss in Sajinau, but something else lay beneath it. Despite all the defenses he’d built, she could smell the unease within him. He didn’t believe it would be enough.
“That is where Muxidi has been most helpful,” replied General Tzu.
“How so?” Bingmei pressed.
They reached the first bridgework, and the general gestured for them to follow him up. She’d mostly heard the Sihuian dialect in the streets, but now that they were on the wall, amidst the laborers, she heard her own tongue. Bingmei could smell the fear of the people but also the hope General Tzu had given them. She caught a few whispers, and while she couldn’t distinguish all the words, which were often mumbled or spoken low, she could breathe in the sentiment. Calmness, in the scent of dragon fruit, seemed to radiate from the people General Tzu passed.
They reached the top of the massive bridge straddling the wide river, arches extending into the water on either side to support it. The height of the new bridge had been calculated so it would allow for smaller junks to pass beneath, but not one of the massive ships Echion had used at Sajinau. As they stood midriver, gazing down at the vast waterway, Bingmei saw other bridges in various stages of construction. But would it be enough? Could the bridges stop a huge ship that tried to crush its way through? Or could Echion bring some other magic to bear that would demolish these efforts?
“What about the fog?�
�� Jiaohua prompted. “What did Muxidi tell you?”
General Tzu folded his arms, gazing down the river. He’d chosen a spot where there were no workers and they could speak in private. Roof shelters protected them from the burning sun. “He said the fog didn’t affect the Qiangdao because Echion protected his armies with one of the Immortal Words.”
Bingmei stared at him in interest.
The general pursed his lips. “Most of what we’ve learned has come through our spies. When Echion defeats a population, he establishes a series of laws.”
“The Iron Rules,” Jiaohua said.
The general nodded. “Indeed. They are written. He assigns the people a role to play in society. The smartest ones, usually the courtiers, are taught to read an ancient language. It is a series of sigils, or what Muxidi called glyphs. They represent different words, but they can also be combined to form new words. They’re painted on slats of wood or bamboo and bound together so they can be folded.”
Written words were powerful. Bingmei had first seen that in Fusang, but the lesson had been repeated again and again: Jidi Majia perfecting his ability to write. Liekou felling Mieshi by tracing a glyph on her. Rowen, too, had talked about the power of the glyphs.
“How does this protect a soldier?” Jiaohua asked in confusion.
“Muxidi said the officers are taught a particular glyph. The glyph is drawn on the back of the soldier in ink mixed with blood.” He turned to face them, his lips firm. “As long as they have the glyph on their back,” he said in a low voice, “the fog will not kill them.”
Jiaohua’s eyes blazed with eagerness. “What is it? What does it look like?” Everyone was afraid of the sleeping death caused by the fog.
General Tzu shook his head. “Echion changes the glyph frequently,” he said. “He uses the fog to destroy his enemies and keep his own officers from rising against him. He knows the Immortal Words. We do not. My strategy, should Echion attack us, is to use some of the Jingcha to capture an enemy soldier. We see what glyph is on his back and then paint the same one on our soldiers. That way, the fog won’t decimate us as it did our last army.”