by E. M. Hardy
That answer seemed to surprise the Maharaja, who lowered his now-raised brows and peered into Ishida’s eyes. “Why?”
Ishida didn’t even need to think. “Because Zi Li is not her grandfather. She will not tolerate the betrayal of Inagaki Nobumoto, formerly known as Ye Heng. She will not offer us another chance to redeem ourselves, even if we were to offer the Shogun’s Head on a platter. No, she will use everything at her disposal to crush into dust those who oppose her.” Ishida glanced at Venkati with tired, frustrated eyes as he huffed in displeasure. “You and your people are not exempt from her vengeance, which will be swift and terrible once the General of the Black Turtle gathers the horsemen of the Khanates and tramples us into dust.”
Ishida undid the straps of his helmet, cradling it in his arm as he paced inside the spacious tent. “I still have no idea what all this has to do with what you said earlier, about the Shogun not liking me at all.” The Maharaja just swayed his head in a nod while twirling the tips of his moustache. Ishida swallowed the temptation to slice off that damnable piece of facial hair, and might just push through with it if Venkati didn’t stop playing with it all the time.
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry so much about the Khanate Horde,” the Maharaja suddenly declared with a wide grin on his face. “Especially when I tell you what that snake you call your Shogun is planning.”
Chapter 08
Isin Safak sighed before rapping the head of the walker with her knuckle and pointing her chin at a nondescript man in the crowd. “And I’m telling you to just go up and arrest that man under the authority of the League of Merchants.”
Martin turned the featureless face of the walker toward the man in question, studied him for a few moments, and then turned back to Isin. She remained where she stood, tapping her feet in impatience.
“Look, Isin, it was all fun and games the first few times you pulled off that stunt. We resolved those with a few apologies and explanations on my end, then a few threats on your end if they get rough. But this is Ozhan. People here hate the League with a passion. My eyeballs already spotted three groups of armed men watching our convoy from different buildings, and one of my walkers is currently patching up a broken arm after fending off a small mob. Those people were angry enough to attack my walkers in broad daylight, Isin, and the emir’s guards are the only reason the mob couldn’t get close enough to reach you and Suhaib. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to further piss off the locals over something as stupid as a prank.”
Those weren’t pranks, not really. Isin just wanted to get a better picture of how Martin resolved conflict situations—especially awkward ones involving mistakes and their subsequent shame. She noted his apologetic, self-debasing attitude, which honestly surprised her even as she filed the information away in her mind. Most people tended to become more arrogant, more self-important with just a hint of power over other people. This one didn’t quite react that way, which confused Isin more than she wanted to admit. He even apologized to lowly slaves, for crying out loud! Nobody did that to slaves, except others of their own kind, and even then only when forced to do so!
“Oh, sun and sand,” Isin groaned, as she pushed herself off the shaded wall she was leaning on. “Fine, you stupid pothead. Stay here and piss your pants then. Just position your walkers so they’re ready to run that fool down the minute he runs.” Isin rolled her eyes and pulled her veil and hood up to shield her face from the harsh glare of the sun. She didn’t bother turning around to see if Martin was following her. She knew all too well that he watched her every movement with one of his flying eyeballs up in the sky. That, and other walkers assigned to guard Suhaib’s caravan were already getting into position to intercept the man she marked out in the crowd.
“I hope I don’t get a knife in the gut for this,” she mumbled to herself, as she ambled through the crowd, losing herself in the press of bodies. She made her way to the man she pointed at earlier, making sure to stay out of his line of sight. It was easy to do thanks to all the people crowding the area, from curious onlookers seeing walkers for the first time to eager traders tripping all over themselves to check out the wares her convoy brought along on their trip. She pinched the hand of an enterprising pickpocket, shoved a toothless beggar away, and stabbed the hand of a lecher attempting to grope her.
“Hey there, Doruk,” she exclaimed, loudly, as she shook her hood down around her neck and clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Fancy seeing you here!”
The man called Doruk pretended to startle, his eyes widening as he recognized Isin through her veil. However, one hand flashed underneath his robes right before it popped back out to slam a knife into Isin’s gut.
Or at least the hand tried to.
Before the blade could find its mark, Isin danced back and whipped out a knife of her own to slice the offending limb. She cursed as she felt the blade skid across the surface of a leather vambrace and stepped back to dodge a counter-swipe. The poison would have done its job if it had bitten into the skin, but the thick leather shielded Doruk’s arm against that.
The people around them didn’t scream in panic. Attacks like these were too common, especially when the League of Merchants was going through one of its internal purges. Instead, people began scattering and taking the closest shelter they could find. Realizing his cover was blown, Doruk immediately gave up the fight and bolted away from the action—running right into the ceramic chest of a walker.
“Took you long enough,” huffed Isin, as she slipped the dagger back into its poisoned sheath. She would have loved to apprehend the man with a flourish, but you really didn’t want to risk playing with poisoned knives where the slightest nick would leave you a twitching, babbling mess of constricting muscles.
Doruk tried dodging past the walker, but it simply smacked him in the knee with a ceramic baton while ignoring the scrape left behind by the man’s blade. Doruk hissed as he fell, clutching his dislocated kneecap on the way down.
“Now let’s see what you have here,” Martin mumbled, as he held Doruk down with one walker while another frisked the man. That walker picked up the dagger and traced the blade with a finger that came away wet with some kind of oil. “If I were a betting man, I’d wager that this stuff here is poison,” he said, rubbing the sticky liquid in between two fingers.
“And what kind of person carries around a poisoned blade?” asked Isin in a sing-song voice, relishing her victory over the not-so-omniscient entity controlling walker and eyeball.
“An assassin,” three voices said in unison—the first from the walker holding down Doruk, the second from the walker holding the knife, and the third from a walker that came up beside Isin and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“No, the term is League operative, and this one isn’t supposed to be here in Ozhan.”
“You okay?” asked the walker right beside her, which laid a hand on her shoulder as it inspected her dusty shalvar pants and her loose gömlek chamis for tears or rips.
“Yes, now hands off,” Isin snapped back, as she violently shrugged away the walker’s hand, pulling away from the touch that she knew was meant to be supportive. Martin fortunately got the hint, and backed away from her personal space.
“What’s all this about!?” huffed Suhaib, as he came rushing by, his armsmasters a hair’s breadth away from drawing their own weapons at the sight before them.
“Ah, Prince Suhaib. I trust your talks with Emir Aydogan went well?” quipped Isin. “No? Then should I tell the Council to send in the armies to burn this city to the ground and salt their much-vaunted date orchards?”
“Isin!” hissed Suhaib, as he stormed over to the League Executive and pulled her in close with one hand. “You shut your dirty mouth before you destroy everything I spent the last three days trying to put together!”
“Sure thing, princeling,” Isin replied with a smirk, palming the long needle back into its sheath within her sleeve when she realized that Suhaib wasn’t actu
ally planning to hurt her.
“I finally get Aydogan to ship fruits to the League by selling to my father’s traders, to agree to a mutual defense treaty with Ma’an and a non-aggression pact with your people, and you threaten it all with these shenanigans of yours! Speaking of shenanigans, why exactly did you force Martin to incapacitate this man?”
“Force? Me?” exclaimed Isin with as much faux-outrage as she could muster.
“Yes, you. Now stop dodging the issue and tell me what’s going on here!”
Isin chuckled as she pointed her chin at the two walkers holding the man down. “He’s one of ours, a field operative working for the pro-war hawks within the League. I shared a few drinks with him back in the day, and I know the crowd he hangs with. I saw him out here today, and I knew that he’s on a job.”
“And beating him down to the ground and calling attention to us benefits us how?” demanded Suhaib, crossing his arms in anger.
Isin groaned and threw her hands up.
“He’s here for you, I think,” Martin said, cutting off her rant before she could even get a word out.
“Me?” Suhaib responded, incredulous. He let the implication sink in for a minute, brows furrowed in concentration before sighing in resignation. “Yes, me. I’m the public face of this peace between Ma’an and the League. Take me out of the equation, make a spectacle of executing the peacemaking son of Ma’an, and my father would never work with the League again. He’d rally the independent emirs together, and then there’d be war.” He turned toward the walker closest to him, a frown on his face. “And I honestly think Martin won’t take that kind of thing lying down. Best-case scenario for the League is that he’ll stop working with you lot, cease providing aid of any kind as he reassesses his options. At worst, he’ll join up with my father and help put you and your people into the ground. Makes total sense when you think about it.”
“Glad to see you’re faster on the uptake than usual,” snorted Isin, outwardly derisive of Suhaib but inwardly impressed by his quick understanding of the implications of his own assassination.
Suhaib turned back to Isin, worry written all over his face. “Is this going to be a problem moving forward? Will I expect the League to keep trying to poison me, cut my throat in my sleep, even as I do all I can to convince the other emirates to cooperate with it?”
“I’m working on it,” Isin bit back, letting more heat escape her lips than she intended to. “I’m not the only one interested in this peace you’re ironing out, but there are hawks hiding among the doves. Doruk’s presence here is proof enough that the hawks are not done trying to mess things up just yet.”
“Hey pothead,” Isin shouted out, as she turned away from the prince to face the walker beside her. “Do me a favor and keep an eye out for our young princeling here while I check up on a lead. Oh, and I’d really appreciate it if you’ll lend me one of your walkers and an eyeball tracking me from up high. I’ll need the muscle and the lookout where I’m going.”
She turned around, not waiting for Martin’s reply. “Bossy little thing, isn’t she?” the clay man blurted out loud to Suhaib. She didn’t bother waiting around to listen to the prince’s reply as she signaled to a nearby shopkeeper, signing her by hand that she wanted a meeting with the League executive assigned to oversee operations in the city of Ozhan.
Besides, bossy was good—especially in the League.
***
“Are things that bad in the League?” asked Martin, as one of his walkers fell in beside Isin, who started weaving into the seedier parts of the city. Doors in this section were closed, and the shopkeepers glared at the strangers instead of hawking their goods. “I mean, should I bring in more walkers and eyeballs to provide extra security for Suhaib? And maybe for you?”
Isin puffed out a breath and shook her head. “One walker’s enough for muscle, more will scare away my contact. Besides, I can spot a League assassin from a mile away before she even unsheathes her blade or slips a needle outside her sleeve.”
The walker kept pace with Isin’s brisk walk, taking a few moments to think on his response. “How did you spot that guy? I get that you recognized him, but how’d you pick him out from all the people around him?”
Isin just kept walking forward without turning around to face the walker. “Oh, no. I’m not teaching you how to spot League operatives, how to recognize them in a crowd. I plan to live long enough to make it to the Council, thank you very much.”
Another beat of silence. “So… the Council, huh. How does—”
“No, Martin, I am not going to tell you anything more about the Council,” Isin said.
“Okay, okay!” Martin shot back, easing off the pressure. “Fine. Can I ask you about something else?”
“Wait,” Isin said, as she swiveled her head left and right, her neck straightening before locating the shop she was looking for. She blinked at the minder overseeing baskets of beans, who in turn nodded before turning around and going back inside the shop. She turned around, headed toward a nearby stall and ordered a few meat skewers from the sour-faced vendor. He was just about to tell her to sod off when she flashed coins worth three times the cost of the skewers, signaled the League sign with her fingers, and let the tip of her needle poke out of her sleeve. The man stiffened and busied himself with grilling the skewers she ordered, lavishing them with sauces and herbs.
“Okay, ask whatever you’re going to ask. We’ll have to wait here a while, so might as well get this over with.”
Isin saw the walker angle its head toward the sizzling skewer. She didn’t need to see a face to recognize envy in the way that the walker’s empty face tracked the meat. She memorized the information so she could jot it down in her notes, for it might be a useful bit of information later on. Or it might not; every little bit helped her understand the enigma that was Martin Fuller.
“Right,” Martin started, as he forced the walker to look away from the grilling morsel. “Before I continue, I just have to ask: you agree with the peace-faction, right?”
Isin bit off a square of meat on her skewer, chewed up the lamb for a few seconds to savor the spices, and swallowed the bite before answering. “No, I’m with the faction that brings in the most profit for the League—both long-term and short-term. I’m all for tearing down Ma’an if doing so will result in something better for the League. I was, in fact, about to do just that with an army until someone came along with his clay puppets. You and your walkers tipped the scales heavily in favor of peace. Building and patrolling the roads made trade safer and, therefore, more profitable in the long run. And that post office idea of yours? Brilliant propaganda to help us win over more and more emirates to the League. We’ll be able to unify the Bashri Basin under the banner of the League in a few years if this keeps up.”
Isin chewed on another square of meat, conveniently failing to mention that the operatives she had sent to the Ren Empire all listed Martin as an existential threat not just to the League of Merchants but to civilization as a whole. Martin had warned her earlier about sending endless waves of clay men to wear her army down before turning his attention to other League assets. Turns out he wasn’t just blowing hot air. She had read the report of one operative that managed to identify a huge pyramid in the Ren Empire, the one in the Leizhu Swamp. He said that the pyramid could churn out thousands of walkers in a single month. And that’s just one pyramid that was easily accessible thanks to the Renese garrison around it. Her agents had no information on the pyramid situated deep within the Puruzlu Mountains, as well as the ruins in the middle of the most desolate corner of the Bashri Desert.
It was a good thing she listened to her gut when Martin came to her with an offer, that she kept pressing for an amicable solution instead of declaring war on the faceless walkers. Give him enough time, and he would most definitely grind the League’s armies down to dust—especially since clay walkers have far fewer logistical problems than armies of flesh and blood.
&nbs
p; Martin’s walker inclined its head before nodding. “I see. So what you mean to say is that you’re on my side as long as it’s beneficial for you to do so?”
“Yes,” Isin answered bluntly, not bothering to mince words this time around. “The same way you’re on my side as long as it is beneficial for you to do so.”
“And what happens on the day that you think it’s more beneficial to throw all this peace away, to plant a knife in my back and in Suhaib’s back?”
“That won’t be a problem as long as we keep our partnership mutually beneficial,” Isin said with a shrug, giving a response while dodging the question. The walker nodded once more, rubbing its chin as the mind within it paused to think.
“Thanks for the honesty, Isin. Appreciate it much.”
“Just keeping things real,” Isin responded, quietly breathing a sigh of relief as her gambit paid off. She guessed right in believing Martin was the type of person—or at least the type of being—that preferred brutal frankness instead of roundabout flattery.
“I ask this because of a few problems up in the Ren Empire.”
“You mean the rebellions?”
“Yes, exactly. One of the rebel factions, the Sahaasi Dominion, is suing for peace. The ruler of this rebel faction, the Maharaja, promises to hold his forces back at the border of the land he’s already taken without a fight, that he will abstain from pushing further into Imperial territory, and that he will keep the hostages he captured safe and sound. In exchange, he asked me to hold off on any attacks on his people and to treat with him fairly once the war ends. The only problem here is that the Empress forbade me from negotiating. She ordered me to crush the rebels and that there will be no compromising whatsoever—even if it means abandoning five thousand hostages to their fate at the Maharaja’s hands.”
Isin bit savagely into her meat skewer to prevent the smile on her face from blooming out into the open. A little advice for so many juicy nuggets of information concerning the affairs of the lands beyond the mountains? Times like these were why Isin had decided to join Suhaib’s caravan like a field operative instead of hiding behind the shadows, like what most executives did once they found themselves in their cushy new positions, ordering people around.