by JC Kang
She tiptoed through the bedrolls, looking at the peaceful faces of sleeping young women. They’d all been kind to her. If the Rotuvi army attacked first, there was no doubt what would happen to these poor girls.
Her pack served as a pillow. From its secret compartment, she withdrew a stealth suit, tool pouch, and three flashpowder packets. With a last look at her sleeping roommates, she slipped out into the night.
Outside, the white and blue moons had yet to rise. In the darkness, Jie’s elf vision perceived the world in shades of greys and greens. The guard outside the door, ostensibly there to protect the maidservants from the laborers, snored on the ground. She crept by and headed toward the kitchen.
There, she shrugged out of her dress and hid it under a cauldron. She slipped into her stealth suit and pulled up the masked hood. Borrowing a knife, she slunk toward the main keep. Periodic flashes of light burst from the guarded mine.
Bauble lamps illuminated the two guards outside the doors. Jie slunk along the light’s edge and circled around to the room where Lord Shi had met with Ambassador Borivoi. Finding handholds in the mortar between the foundation stones, she climbed up to the now-shuttered window and listened. Silence.
She eased one of the leaves open and scanned the room. Nobody was there. The paper and brush from the earlier meeting remained on the desk. The room darkened when she slipped in and closed the shutter, so she withdrew her own light bauble and tiptoed to the desk. Taking the brush, she jotted a coded briefing.
Lord made deal with Rotuvi king. Mining for Gold. Found Pyrite. King is angry. Enemy army to attack in two days.
The floorboards chirped, and voices in the hallway approached. Footsteps stopped at the doors. Light shined through the crack between them. She evaluated the room. The chairs, table, and desk would provide no cover.
Holding the message between her lips and stuffing her light bauble into her pocket, Jie tip-toe-sprinted toward the corner, pop-vaulted between the walls, and wedged herself between two of the rafters with her hands.
The doors opened, revealing the steward holding a lamp, and Lord Shi. The silhouettes of a short soldier and a tall, lanky man stood behind them. Jie pressed her back against the ceiling. The beams now blocked her line of sight, but at least they’d have to be right under her and happen to look up to see an eavesdropping half-elf. Her improvisation was worthy of the Surgeon, the second of the deceased Black Lotus masters. She closed her eyes and listened.
The lord stomped across the room to the desk. He opened a drawer and whipped out a sheet of paper. “What do you think, General Lu? Do you have enough men to hold the hills?”
The short soldier’s footsteps came to a stop right beneath her. “Jue-ye, my scouts say they number ten thousand strong, armed with spears, swords, and crossbows. We have a thousand men and three cannon. If we blow one of the two bridges, it will force them into a bottleneck. We’ll rain bolts and musketballs on them. Whoever makes it across must then charge uphill and breach our palisade.”
Jie’s arms burned from the strain of holding herself in place. Sweat gathered on her brow. It would trickle and splatter on General Lu’s nose if he stood there much longer spouting his hare-brained ideas: A thousand men might hold the high ground for now, but Rotuvi could keep sending more troops, while Lord Shi’s firepowder and musketball supplies would dwindle. Then there was the imperial army they didn’t know about, attacking from the other front.
Lord Shi’s question came out as a growl. “How much longer, alchemist?”
The alchemist took several steps in, his long stride and light weight suggesting he was the skinny man at the back. His refined accent was that of a scholar from the capital. “The pyrite extraction process for the latest batch is done. It’s been taken to the secret mine.”
So Lord Shi knew it wasn’t really gold. Now if they’d just hurry up and reveal what they were extracting.
Lord Shi’s brush swished across paper. “Prepare samples to send to the lords of the North. The empire has exploited us for too long; once they see we don’t need them anymore, they’ll join me.”
Jie would’ve gasped if it were safe to do so just then. The two bridges General Lu referred to were those from Cathay, not Rotuvi. Lord Shi wasn’t looking to defend this land against foreigners; he was planning on defying the emperor. Not only that, he wanted the mineral-rich North to ally with him. The imperial army would be caught between this fort and the Great Wall.
She needed to infiltrate the secret mine and find out what samples could coax an entire region into rebellion. Now, if only Lord Shi would hurry up and leave, and take the general with him before his bloodlust got doused with half-elf sweat. It was pooling on her nose now.
A distraction, maybe. Something important. Modulating her voice with a Mockingbird’s Deception to sound like Lord Shi’s son, Jie threw her voice to the doors with a Ghost Echo. “Daddy!” She shuddered. The tone pitched too high, like a Night Blossom beckoning lustful men in the Floating World, but at least it sounded like it came from the doors. She adjusted her voice. “Come here.”
General Lu turned and took a step, just as her sweat plopped soundlessly into the rug. Lord Shi, too, headed toward the door with the alchemist. The steward folded up the message as he hastily left. The room blinked into darkness. Their chirping footsteps faded.
About time! Leg and arm muscles sore, Jie dropped to the floor. Shaking out her poor limbs, she wrote a new message, blew the ink dry, and folded it in the clan’s six-crease pattern. It would tear if opened by anyone untrained in the art.
Jie darted to the window, pushed open the shutter, and slipped out. She looked to the iridescent moon, now waxing halfway to its third gibbous. It was almost too late to deliver the note.
She raced down the path and through the camp, pausing to evade the occasional sentry, or duck behind a tent when the mine entrance flashed. When she arrived at the rendezvous point at the tree line, she let out a sparrow call.
A shape emerged from behind a tree. A shortsword hung at its side. “My Little Sister. Late for once.”
Jie snorted. She’d taken Zheng Tian under her wing when he first arrived at the Black Lotus Temple as a shy ten-year-old. He’d called her Big Sister back then, but over six years, he’d physically matured into a han—strapping—young man.
Meanwhile, her elf blood had left her prepubescent and dismally flat. She flicked the message at him. “Here.”
“What does it say?” He swept it out of the air. He had yet to master the unfolding technique, though knowing his mind for puzzles, he’d probably be able to piece the shreds back together if he did try to open it.
“Lord Shi is planning a rebellion and wants to drag the North in with him.”
Tian tapped his chin. “With what? He’s in foreign territory. He’s risking the wrath of foreigners. And the Emperor.”
Her thoughts, exactly. “Something’s in the mine. Come with me.”
Tian cocked his head and held up the message. “I need to get to the waystation. By the fourth gibbous. Otherwise, they’ll assume you blew your cover. The imperial army will advance. And get caught between Lord Shi and his friends.”
Was it worth the risk? The secret mine likely held the answer, and with at least four guards, two Black Fists were better than one.
Part 4
Hiding by the tent closest to the secret mine’s entrance, Jie cast a quick glance at the iridescent moon. It waxed just past its third gibbous. Tian had less than an hour to make it to the waystation, a half-hour away at full sprint. Maybe this was a bad idea.
A trail of three light baubles illuminated the open space between her hiding place and the twenty paces to the cave. There were no boulders, trees, or even shrubs to provide cover; just several rocks. Unlike the sentry outside the women’s lodgings, the four guards here stood alert. In the time it took to dash across the space, the soldiers could take aim and shoot. An arrow might be possible to catch, but a musketball was another story.
She t
apped in clan code on Tian’s arm. You, second light. Me, first and third. You, right two.
Incredulousness couldn’t be conveyed through code, yet somehow Tian’s response managed it. You sure?
The plan certainly wasn’t worthy of the Architect, the last of the three legendary young Black Lotus masters. Nor was Tian as good as the Surgeon, and she certainly didn’t qualify as the Beauty. At least not yet. Still, it might get them close without getting riddled with musketball holes.
Now, she tapped. She picked up a rock and flung one at the first bauble. It smashed, its light blacking out. Tian dashed closer and hurled two stones at the second. Shattering glass and darkness indicated one had hit. Just one remained, shedding light out to five paces from the cave entrance.
The soldiers shouldered their muskets.
Jie surged after him and threw her voice with a Ghost Echo, originating to the far right. “Don’t shoot. We’re just looking for a private place.”
“Stop!” A guard leveled his weapon on that spot. The others followed suit.
Jie kicked a rock, sending it spinning and arcing into the last bauble at the cave entrance. In the darkness, her elf vision took over. The four guards tightened their formation at the mine entrance, their guns sweeping back and forth. Without waiting, Tian slid to the right. Having spent a year blindfolded, he deftly avoided obstacles as he closed in rapid silence. Jie flanked to the left.
“The lights!” one guard yelled.
“Sound the alarm.” Another swept his gun left to right and back.
Light flashed from the cave, illuminating her. Jie’s vision blurred at the sudden brightness, and the shapes of the guards turned their guns at her. Two, three shots rang out.
Dog farts! In a few moments, the entire camp would rouse to life. She dove into a forward roll and sprung up where the right-most guard should be. Her wrist contacted his forearm. She swept a leg behind him. With her other hand, she reached for his head and jerked him to the ground. A phoenix-eye fist to the temple knocked him out.
Her vision adjusted. The other guard dropped his musket. He swept his sword from its scabbard and arced it in her direction. She could’ve stood where she was, and the blade would’ve passed over her head if she were even close enough to hit. Nonetheless, she dove shoulder-first into the man’s shin. Hooking a hand behind his ankle, she sent him sprawling to the ground. A twist of her body dislocated his foot. She rolled over and delivered an elbow to his face.
Springing to her feet, she looked around. The third guard lay moaning on the ground, while the fourth slumped in Tian’s chokehold. Behind them, confused voices erupted through the shanty-town.
Time was running out. She bent down and liberated a guard of his dagger. “Get to the waystation.”
Tian drove his heel into the semi-conscious guard, then turned and ran.
Jie dashed into the mine. Her night vision failed not far from the cave entrance. The stench of rotten eggs and smoke assaulted her nose. She pulled out her light bauble, ready to hide it if she ran into someone.
The smooth passage was oval-shaped, with the ceiling rising not much higher than a grown man. It was wide enough that four men could march abreast. It descended at an easy-to-manage slope. Lights flashed periodically. A swarm of bats zigzagged by, forcing her to duck.
Muffled voices emanated from up ahead, where the tunnel opened up into a brightly-lit grotto. Shadows shifted on the cave walls. At the edge of the roughhewn cavern, she paused and looked.
The walls and ceiling sparkled white, though it’d been scraped away in some places. A soldier rolled a keg down a side tunnel, while another pried open a crate and then followed the first. Three rows of crates formed a U-shape around a long table, where three more men weighed powders on scales. Beside the table sat another keg.
“More charcoal.” A tall, lanky man in long robes gestured toward one of his assistants. His voice was that of the alchemist from earlier.
The assistant troweled out a black powder from one of the crates, into a large bowl. He passed it to the alchemist, who mixed the charcoal with yellow and white powders in a large ceramic jar. Taking a pinch, he set it on a platter. He struck a stone with a piece of metal, sending sparks into the mixture.
It flashed.
Jie sucked on her lower lip. It all made sense now: The bats and sparkling white walls meant saltpeter. The rotten-egg smell, sulfur. And charcoal. Lord Shi was making firepowder. The alchemist with the formal accent must’ve been privy to the secret formula, the one which gave Cathay an advantage over its neighbors. No wonder General Lu thought they could hold out against a siege.
She studied the cavern’s texture. Several counties in the North mined saltpeter. They’d mined so much that they had to go deeper and into more dangerous places to find it. The clan had noted the lords of those counties complaining about quotas. With Lord Shi sitting on a new source, in a defensible part of a foreign country, his insurrection might actually succeed.
Voices came from the head of the mine entrance—the only way out, unless one of the side tunnels led back to the surface. And first, she needed to deal with the traitorous alchemist and his assistants, lest they spread a state secret.
Taking a deep breath, she hurled her knife into the alchemist’s throat. His three assistants watched wide-eyed as he choked up blood. He slumped to the floor. The jar of firepowder slipped from his hands and rolled half a pace across the ground.
The jar… Tian might be able to calculate the yield and blast pressure, but for Jie, it was guesswork. The cost of being wrong meant having half-elf innards splattered to the cave walls.
As the others crowded around the alchemist, Jie flung two flash packets at the firepowder trail, spun, and sprinted toward the mine entrance. A red flare lit up from behind, followed by fizzling and dancing shadows. Then, pottery shattered. Screams and coughs echoed from the cave.
Jie ground to a halt. Voices and bootsteps came from the mine entrance. The tunnel was too narrow for her to get by, and if the two distinct coughs and one scream were any indication, all three of the assistants still lived. She turned back to the cavern.
Inside, the two coughing men covered their eyes with their sleeves and waved away the thinning smoke. Pottery shards left bloody marks in their robes. The third swatted at his blazing robe, spreading the flames.
Jie stayed low as she pattered over to the alchemist’s body. She jerked her knife free and crept to the closest assistant, who’d suffered cuts on his upper body. He moved his arm away from his eyes just in time to see her plunge the blade between his ribs and into his lung. His face contorted, and his mouth opened in a silent scream.
Bile rose in her throat. She’d killed from a distance before, but never so close. The flames would claim the second man, but there was still the third to murder, up close and in cold blood. Now, footsteps thumped from a side tunnel—the soldiers who’d been moving the kegs.
Her next victim rubbed his eyes. All his wounds were down around his legs, where the pottery had shredded his robes. Jie leaped over, slunk low, and jammed the knife into his thigh, right at the femoral artery. Blood belched out from the stab. She looked up toward the sound of footsteps.
Two soldiers emerged from the side tunnel.
Jie ducked down behind the row of crates.
“What happened here?”
“An accident?”
“Help!” her last victim rasped.
Jie crawled low and fast around the crates, in the opposite direction of the approaching voices. She rounded the row just as the men reached the table.
“Heavens!” Footsteps quickened to the scene.
Jie hazarded a glance over the crates. The soldiers were kneeling by the man whose thigh she’d stabbed. She slunk toward the side tunnel.
“It was a girl.” the dying assistant’s voice came out weaker now.
The men stood and looked around. One met her eyes.
He drew his broadsword and pointed. “There!”
More wit
nesses. More lives to take. If they didn’t kill her first. Unlike the assistants, these were trained soldiers, nearly twice her size. Their broadswords gave them a reach advantage over her knife and dagger. She raced into the side tunnel, and they lumbered after her.
Light baubles on the ground illuminated the passage. Although it wasn’t much wider than the access tunnel, it had rough walls and support beams. She stomped on each light as she passed, hoping the guards might trip in the darkness and fall on their swords.
No such luck; and several paces ahead, the tunnel opened into another cavern. So much open space would give them an advantage.
Jie stopped at the last light bauble and smashed it. She spun, dagger in one hand and knife in the other. With the light from the second cavern at her back, she’d appear as a silhouette to them.