by E. M. Hardy
After savoring the prince’s discomfort for a few extra moments, Isin stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder. “That, my dear royal, is where your oh-so-charming personality comes into play.”
***
A few hours earlier
“Dear Zi Li, I hope this letter finds you in good health. I am crushed by the news that your people suffer so from the famines and floods plaguing your lands. I know I have mentioned this before in proxy thanks to Martin’s constructs, but let me reiterate my heartfelt regret for the suffering of your people. I know all too well the burdens of doing all you can to ensure the safety and wellbeing of your people, especially when Mother Nature turns her fury upon the land. The first of many caravans should be arriving in your borders by the time you receive this letter. They hold foods that should help ease the hardship of your people, as well as spices that will help flavor and preserve additional food. I hope with all fervor that—”
“Ugh. All this stuffy, straight-laced formality,” Isin mumbled to herself as she huffed, crumpled the letter, and tossed it to the ground. “Just ditch your attendants, find an empty room, and start knocking bones already.”
Isin scowled at the crumpled letter and attempted to burn it to ashes with an intense jealousy she would rather die than admit to anyone. No luck; the sheet of paper stayed crumpled, mocking her with its roundabout sappiness guised in formal matters of state. Isin grumbled once more and stooped down to pick up and straighten out the poor piece of paper. Good blackmail material on Ma’an royalty was so hard to find, after all. They seemed to actually try their damnedest to live up to the standards of nobility they spout out. Most royal houses just paid lip service to the ideals of duty and obligation while sitting on their cushioned asses; making everyone else work for them as they wined and dined their days away.
This was why it was so hard for the League to fully overtake the courts of Ma’an the same way they did with the other emirates.
Isin reviewed the letter once more before folding it properly and slipping it into a locked drawer containing copies of intercepted letters. It would appear that Prince Suhaib and this Empress Zi Li of the Ren Empire were getting along fabulously. Sure, the whole song-and-dance routine between them was as stiff as a sheet of limestone, but there was no mistaking the affection hidden behind all those layers of formality.
Isin leaned back on her chair, rocking it on its hind legs as she pondered the sudden rise of the young prince. First, he evaded the many traps designed to kill or capture him, then he managed to ally his emirate to Martin and those faceless walkers of his. Not only that, but he also traveled past the Puruzlu Mountains to the Ren Empire. Then he managed to secure the aid of the Ren Empire while simultaneously catching the eye of the Empress?
“I’ll probably have to kill him,” Isin thought out loud as she chuckled darkly to herself, secure in the privacy of her basement safehouse within the city of al-Taheri. “Poison, perhaps. We still have a few agents situated in the palace. The emir and the older royalty are too hunkered down to get at them, but Suhaib? I’d have to burn a lot of my operatives to reach him at this point, but it’s still doable. I should be able to get rid of this pain in the neck before he becomes too influential to take down without grave repercussions.”
Another thought played through her mind, though. “Or maybe…” Isin stopped rocking her chair, settling it solidly back on its four legs with a bang. She steepled her fingers while resting her chin on the outstretched thumbs. She thought for a few more minutes, furrowing her brow in concentration.
She had attained her recent promotion to senior executive within the League of Merchants not through the traditional means of killing her way up. No, the council had promoted her because of the deal she had struck with Martin. True, the army she oversaw was supposed to bring down the walls of al-Taheri and level the royal palaces of the Ma’an. They instead returned without even laying their eyes upon the city itself. Many of the other senior executives wanted her head on a platter for that, as did quite a few members of the council. They barely tolerated her reasons for doing so, and she lived with a literal dagger to her back for the weeks after recalling the army. When Martin came through with his deal, however, the other executives could not deny the improvements he made in connecting the Bashri together—all while allowing the League of Merchants to claim the credit.
Martin got what he wanted, while Isin reaped all the benefits.
The Merchant executive leaned back once more, rocking on the two hind legs of the chair as she let the rogue thought run wild in her mind. She explored the possibilities, pieced together the parts, prepared contingencies, and balanced the risks against the rewards of the plan that formed in her mind. “Martin made it work,” she mused to herself. “So why couldn’t I?”
She whistled merrily as she ran the details of her scheme through her head, all of them involving a young prince and his budding relationship with an empress to the north.
Chapter 04
“Good progress,” Martin murmured as he watched a doll spray liquified clay all over the tunnel walls. The substance hardened almost immediately as it made contact with the crumbling surface, reinforcing the walls and preventing them from collapsing into themselves. Other dolls in front of the tunnel continued excavating debris—vacuuming out sand with their shape-shifting limbs, pulling out collapsed rocks, and grinding out exposed struts of metal. Martin had learned his lessons from collapsing tunnels, all from his haste to dig up the treasures hidden with the underground facilities that used to house Custodian 2819. It had taken eighteen collapsed tunnels and about three hundred lost dolls before he got the hang of clearing out and reinforcing the walls.
All this led to the first prize in nearly six months of painful, slow-going tunneling: an intact door, slightly warped and twisted from the stresses of exploding generators and collapsing tunnels. Its metallic sheets bent slightly inwards and its surface showed a bit of slagging from the heat, but it looked to be in pretty good shape. At least, it was durable enough that his dolls were having a hard time cutting out an entrance using their ceramic grinding disks. It took three days and dozens of burnt-out disks to cut a hole small enough for one of the dolls to fit through.
Martin transmitted pride and satisfaction through his link with the dolls, instructing one of his walkers to come close to a doll working on the door and pat its head. “Thanks, little guys,” Martin said through the link, even though he knew that the dolls didn’t really talk. The consciousness guiding the toddling little ball of clay, however, leaned into the walker’s hands, basking in his praise and transmitting their own feelings of satisfaction through the link. That same doll then braced itself for the task ahead and crawled through the hole it and its brethren had just made.
“Jackpot!” Martin exclaimed in excitement as he saw what the doll saw. “Or… not,” he grunted as he got a better look.
There, in the darkened room, lay the dreaded crystals that had gutted Martin’s forces when he first attempted to take over the underground facility. He dreamt of acquiring those crystals, bolstering his own forces with their long reach and destructive power. He also imagined other possible uses for those crystals, such as diffusing their beams to brighten the night with artificial lights or perhaps communicating over vast distances by tightening those beams of light. Fiber-optic communications might even be possible if he could manage to transmit the light through some sort of medium!
Yes, there were plenty of crystals locked away in this room. The only problem was that most of them were shattered into millions of tiny pieces. A thin layer of crystalline dust and plain old dirt coated the crystals. The room held nothing else of interest: just crystals. Martin sagged in disappointment as he realized this was just a storage room for damaged or defective crystals—most of which had been pulverized by the massive explosion within the facility. He couldn’t even find a terminal, databank, production vat, or memory crystal that could teach him how to work with the light
-emitting crystals.
Other dolls crawled into the room and began sorting things out. They pulled at the ruined crystals, organizing them so that Martin could better inspect them. To his surprise, the scrutiny of the dolls revealed relatively intact crystals: a dozen of the small ones meant to be mounted on the heads of the scarabs, and two larger ones normally positioned on turrets to blast intruders with intense beams of light. All sported cracks in them, with a few chipped corners, but they looked intact enough to work—or at least Martin thought they looked intact enough to work. He hummed with satisfaction, basking the pleased dolls with as much praise and satisfaction as he could.
It was a small start, true, but it was the first productive discovery while excavating this facility. Losing thousands of walkers in his takeover of the facility, only to be thwarted by a suicidal Custodian AI? That had dashed many of Martin’s hopes. Holding the crystals in the hands of a walker though, imagining all the possibilities once he excavated the facility? That one thing helped soothe the bile of failure that marred Martin’s expedition into these ruins.
A thought struck him: where did these crystals originally come from, and where could he get more?
***
“Hey, Suhaib!” Martin called out with one of his walkers, as he approached the prince.
Suhaib turned around, busy overseeing his entourage and checking over the supplies needed for his journey. Munjid stepped away as blades, disks, darts, and shafts of all kinds clinked from their harnesses on and under his armor. “Prince.” The veteran armsmaster nodded formally to Suhaib before turning to his other armsmasters, spreading them out and assigning them to their respective posts. “Prince,” echoed Faadi as he stepped aside. Martin noted the old man’s crinkled smile, hating to interrupt whatever the old caravan master was sharing with Suhaib.
“What?” Suhaib barked back at Martin, irritation clear on his face as Isin sauntered up beside him, giving the prince a once-over with her eyes. Suhaib shifted his attention to Isin, glaring with as much venom and anger as he could. The Merchant shrugged, playing innocent even as she so obviously insinuated herself close to the prince so she could hear whatever Martin had to say. Martin thought for a moment that perhaps Suhaib was irritated at him, that maybe he really did interrupt something important. Or maybe he was just pissed off that the lady Merchant stuck to him like glue on paper.
Not that he cared; maybe the League of Merchants could help him with what he needed anyway.
“Are you familiar with crystals? I’m looking for something very specific.”
Suhaib blinked in confusion, shaking his head. “There are many crystals in the world, Martin. Describe this crystal that you had in mind.”
Martin accessed the partition of his consciousness controlling the walker within the underground facility—the one just outside the storage room for ruined crystals. He held a sample closer to the walker’s face, looking for details to help distinguish the crystal from others.
“Let’s see,” he said with the walker just beside Suhaib. “It’s a very clear, transparent crystal. Colorless… almost like glass or polished diamond. Or wait. It’s already been cut, polished, and processed. I’m not even sure if this crystal occurs naturally or is created artificially.” Martin slumped with his walker, deflating as he realized how lame his explanation sounded. His plan was a lot more brilliant in his head… at least until he heard himself share it.
Isin interrupted then, butting into the discussion. “We have many connections in the League—jewelers, miners, seers. Perhaps you can send over a sample, have our experts look at it to see if we have some to sell?”
Suhaib grimaced at Isin’s interference, his hand clenched into a fist as he visibly fought to contain himself. “Yes,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “That could work. We also have a few jewelers in Ma’an that could help. I know a few with exceptionally knowledgeable jinn that could help.”
“If I may,” Isin added, face and voice dead-pan but eyes twinkling with suppressed curiosity. “What do you need these crystals for? The purpose could help us identify what kind of crystals you need.”
Every instinct in Martin’s non-existent body told him to say nothing about the destructive potential of the crystals. It would be a bad idea to give Isin any hint about how dangerous those crystals really were. Yet, a small voice in the back of his head nagged at him. Something about small secrets spilling over, snowballing into something so big that he would not be able to control the fallout if they came out. This particular secret would come out once he learned how to harness the power of the crystals. How would Suhaib react after that? How would the League of Merchants react? They were satisfied with Martin’s gifts at the moment, true, but would his tenuous agreement with them remain intact when they realized what they were giving him?
Isin waited for a heartbeat, expecting more from Martin. Martin sighed, using the walker’s body, and decided to stick to his policy of telling nothing but the truth… just not the whole truth.
“Lighting,” Martin said to the eager Merchant. “I might be able to use the crystals to create artificial light. That’s just one possible use, though. I plan to tinker around with the crystals, perhaps unlock other properties over time.”
Isin nodded, looking satisfied for the moment, while Suhaib followed suit. “Very well. Send one of your pet cow-boxes to bring a sample of the crystal to Ma’an. I’ll send some of my agents to pick up the samples, deliver them to the miners and seers around the League, while the princeling’s people give it a crack.”
Suhaib furrowed his brows and shot a sideways glance at the Merchant. She pretended not to see his reaction, nodding instead to Martin and turning around to inspect the caravan Suhaib put together.
“I hate that woman,” Suhaib mumbled to no one in particular.
“Eh,” Martin said, as he shrugged with the walker beside the prince. “At least, nobody’s trying to murder you anymore.”
Uhi unveiled herself from the Invisible World in a shimmering haze of red light, hovering slightly above the ground. “Don’t be too quick to trust her,” she snickered, as she circled Martin’s walker, lightly tapping its head with two hands like a bongo. “Just because a League Merchant is shaking your hand doesn’t mean she won’t use the dagger she’s holding behind her back.”
***
Martin shifted his attention up north, to the Ren Empire. Fifteen thousand fragments of his consciousness wove together in the form of marching walkers, each sharing knowledge and information during their journey from the Leizhu Swamp Pyramid to the southern borders of the Empire.
Martin shifted further north, to a walker approaching a garrison that the General of the White Tiger was currently inspecting.
“Martin Fuller,” greeted the General of the White Tiger, as he rode up to the walkers approaching his entourage. “General Shen Feng,” Martin called back, holding up a hand in greeting. The General dismounted from his horse, approached the lead walker, and clasped it firmly on the arm—surprising Martin with the warm familiarity behind the grip.
“Good to see you,” the General of the White Tiger exclaimed with a grin, as he released his grip on the walker. “How goes the campaign to the south?”
“It’s going.” Martin shrugged. “Progress is slow since my dolls are still building obelisks, but it’s going.”
The general nodded appreciatively. “At least, your walkers are not restricted by the need for food or water. We’re scrounging up as much supplies as we can for this battle, fixing up the roads to ensure our lines flow smoothly. To be honest though, I’m relieved that you’re handling the southern campaign. I’m not entirely comfortable leaving the capital undefended, especially if General Bai Yu falters faster than we expect.”
That gave Martin pause. Perhaps the Empress wasn’t being completely vindictive, and was just holding Shen Feng in reserve so he could reinforce whatever front needed help the most?
“Having you and your walkers arou
nd is a blessing indeed as we have two rebellions to put down… especially after what happened to the General of the Vermillion Bird.” Shen Feng’s grin faltered at the memory, transforming instead into a grimace as he pondered the fate of the southern garrison—the one stationed within the Sahaasi borders. Ye Heng’s spies, the Order of Rats, muddled information coming in from those lands, feeding false information to the Imperial Balancers. By the time the Empress wrestled control away from the Three Sages, the southern garrison and the general leading it had fallen to the Sahaasi rebels.
The general forced himself to smile, however, as he remembered the troops around him.
“I’m not too worried, though. We are here, now, and I am confident that we can eventually quell this rebellion on our own terms. The General of the Azure Dragon Bai Yu is busy penning the Taiyo upstarts in their islands, while the General of the Black Turtle Guo Zhenya is busy calling up troops from the Khans up north. My own people will provide assistance where it is needed until Guo Zhenya arrives with riders from our Khanate vassals. You are the tip of the spear. You will advance upon this rebellious Maharaja, beat him back into his borders and pressure him while we gather strength.” He grunted in annoyance as he continued, allowing his voice to carry over to the troops straining to catch the discussion between the general and the walker. “He and this upstart Shogun will pay for their treachery, mark my words.”
Martin nodded with the lead walker as the other walkers halted their march. “I hope I can live up to your expectations, Shen.”
“Hah! Don’t sell yourself short! I should know first-hand how dangerous these clay men of yours can be.” The general laughed bitterly. Martin kept silent, not wishing to rub salt on those old wounds. The general was no doubt referencing the time that Martin’s walkers had trounced Shen’s troops on the failed assault on his pyramid.
“Come.” The general beckoned with a hand. “Join me in my quarters. Your walkers may be tireless, unfeeling constructs, but I would rather we discuss strategy with some tea warming up my meat and bones.”