And maybe that was why, now, he delayed before finishing them off. Why he prolonged the struggle, not wishing for it to be over too soon. It wasn’t something he could tell his sons, nor his advisors, but it was so. He enjoyed this. Like a great wei ch’i player, he longed for an opponent who could match him, stone for stone.
Oh, there was Shepherd, true. And there had been the First Dragon. Only Shen Fu had let himself be taken far too easily. Surrounded not in the end game, but in the opening gambits, before the shapes could be determined on the board.
But as for the others…
These T’ang… these erstwhile friends of his… they were good administrators, good men to have in peacetime, but in war?
Tsao Ch’un spat contemptuously. Without Shepherd and Shen Fu on their side, they would have lost to him in hours.
There was a knock on the outer doors.
Tsao Ch’un turned, looking towards the sound, distracted by his thoughts.
‘Come…’
One of his servants entered, carrying a tray, his head bowed.
‘Master, your breakfast…’
Tsao Ch’un glanced at the man, then gestured towards the low table at the side. ‘Put it there…’
He was thinking about Chao Ni Tsu. Wondering what Chao would have made of all this. So caught up in his thoughts that he was barely aware of how close the man had come.
The clatter of the tray hitting the floor woke him, made him half fall, half jump to the side, even as the assassin’s blade caught and cut his shoulder, tearing silks and flesh with equal ease.
He rolled and came up, clutching the first thing that had come to hand.
It was a chopstick. Tsao Ch’un laughed, amused by how fate had played its hand.
Laughter which, he could see, unnerved the other, who now threw himself carelessly into a new assault.
The blade cut air. Tsao Ch’un, though seventy-four, was no longer there. He slipped down, under, and with a subtlety of limbs that belied his age, had come up directly behind his attacker.
He brought the chopstick down hard into the fleshy part of the man’s neck, between ear and spinal cord, feeling the blunt stick wedge then snap.
As his attacker stumbled, clutching at the broken stick embedded in his neck, Tsao Ch’un fell on him savagely, sinking his teeth into the man’s upper cheek, then wresting the knife from him.
It was over in a moment.
Tsao Ch’un stood there, looking down at the dead man, his chest rising and falling violently, the breath wheezing from him.
His shoulder ached, but it was nothing. What shocked him most was the identity of his attacker, for yet again this was someone he had trusted implicitly. A man who had been with him since he’d been a child.
How had they turned him? Or had the man harboured some deep, resentful grudge against his Master? Something he had kept hidden, waiting for this moment to express?
Tsao Ch’un cursed. He should have kept the man alive. Bled him on the slab as he had bled Shen Fu. But it was too late now.
Servants were running to him now, crowding in the doorway to the room, anxious for their Master but afraid to enter, lest they receive the same treatment as his attacker.
‘Take him away!’ he ordered, stepping back, away from the body. ‘And send a medic. Someone we can trust, neh?’
But the heavy irony in that last request was not lost on any there, for they knew their Master’s moods and how randomly his rage could fall. Especially when, like now, he seemed so calm, so in control.
Then, as they knew, he was at his most dangerous. You might as well pick a tiger’s teeth, it was said, as serve Tsao Ch’un at such moments.
Yet one there – a young groom of only eighteen years – dared to speak up.
‘Should we burn the body, Master?’
Tsao Ch’un’s eyes fell on the groom. For a moment all there averted their eyes, fearful for the young man, but then Tsao Ch’un smiled.
‘Yes, burn him. He and all his family.’
*
As night gave way to day over the ruins of Bremen, so Tsao Ch’un’s youngest son, Tsao Ch’i Yuan, gathered his officers together to discuss the situation. He had his father’s orders in the pocket of his uniform. Orders that were most specific. Only they didn’t make any sense. Not now that Bremen no longer existed. If the idea had been to break the rebels’ stronghold, then that was done. Only the rebels had gone elsewhere. They ought to have been attacking Shepherd’s place, the Domain, for that was the enemy’s heart now.
Tsao Ch’i Yuan could not understand why his father delayed. Why he didn’t throw everything he had at the remaining T’ang and finish it. Shepherd had nukes, it was said, but so what? He didn’t have enough to fight even a limited campaign. Only sufficient to defend himself.
What worried him more, however, was the effect this delay had on his men. There had been rumblings of discontent among the ranks even before yesterday’s assault on Bremen. Those rumblings had grown overnight – a product of their inaction. Now he would have to deal with them.
He had his father’s permission, of course. Much as the old man had promised him that he would be in command, he liked to meddle. Liked to hold the strings, even as he allowed his sons the illusion of being in charge. But Tsao Ch’i Yuan was not fooled by his father’s masquerade. Tsao Ch’un feared his sons. Or, at least, he feared them becoming independent of him. Rivals to him.
But this needed to be attended to. Needed to be stamped out in the bud, before it got serious.
As he stepped into the chamber where his officers were waiting, the buzz of conversation died. As one the men turned to him and bowed, their heads bared.
‘Ch’un tzu,’ he addressed them. ‘We have a problem…’
Later, when he was alone again, seated in his cruiser, waiting for the craft to be given clearance to take off, he wondered what his father really wanted. Long term, that was. Was his plan to share the world out between the three of them, or was it all to go to Tsao Heng, the eldest?
It had never been discussed. Whenever the matter had been raised, their father had crushed all mention of it instantly. But it wouldn’t go away. Eventually they would have to face it squarely. And then?
Then this, between them and the Seven, would be a mere rehearsal. For there was no way he would bow to Tsao Heng.
So why not hit him now? He and his other brother. Take them both out and end the debate before it happened.
It was a tactic his father surely would approve of, for wasn’t he always talking about simplifying matters? And this would simplify it all.
Tsao Ch’i Yuan smiled. Maybe, only first he had to purge his own ranks. To round up all the troublemakers and put them to the sword.
Then, and only then, would he make his decision.
Tsao Ch’un had showered again and dressed, now he stood beneath the screens, watching as his forces took out the latest wave of rebel craft.
The Seven were using up their troops with a speed they could really not afford, and that was not like Shepherd. Not like him at all.
Maybe they’ve overruled him.
Only that wasn’t likely. The T’ang might be pompous, but they were not stupid. None of them had any experience of warfare, and they were sure to defer to Shepherd every time than trust to their own flawed instincts.
Unless Shepherd himself were dead…
Only he’d know that, surely? Word would have got out.
Tsao Ch’un spoke to the air.
‘Find out the precise time when we can last verify that Amos Shepherd was still alive.’
The thought of Shepherd’s death ought to have excited him, and yet it didn’t. If anything it disappointed him, for it would mean he was facing them alone – those three incompetents.
There, even that betrayed his thinking, for there were four of them still. Only he didn’t really count the T’ang of Australasia. He could deal with him in a morning if he had to.
Tsao Ch’un reached up, touching his s
houlder. The GenSyn patch was already at work, healing the wound, generating new growth, but it was sore still, and would be for days.
They say I have a charmed life…
He chuckled. If he had died, the Seven would have had a chance. Because the moment he was dead his idle, good-for-nothing sons would have been at each other’s throats. As it was…
Tsao Ch’un spoke to the air once more.
‘Get me Tsao Heng. Tell him I have new orders for him.’
He had decided, there and then, to wind down the campaign in North America. To de-prioritize. He’d get Tsao Heng to shift his forces east – to Europe. Most of them, anyway. They’d need to keep a presence there, in case anything flared up again, but the rest of his forces could be thrown against the Seven.
Not that that was his purpose here. Oh no. It would take his son days, maybe even weeks to redeploy his forces. To get the best part of half a million men across an ocean and into position was no easy task, especially if they were being constantly harried and attacked. Tsao Ch’un knew that it wasn’t the most efficient use of his forces, not when he already had a Banner army established in Europe, but it would keep Tsao Heng busy, and that was the point.
‘Ah, Heng,’ he said, as his eldest son’s face appeared on the screen above him, ‘listen carefully. This is what I want you to do…’
Li Chao Ch’in watched as Wang Hui So’s eldest walked down the sloping lawn towards them. He was dressed, like all of them, in his ceremonial robes. Though only twenty-two, the ancient silk garments gave him an air of great authority, of great distinction.
Amos Shepherd stood nearby, next to his wife and daughter, looking on, his eyes, as ever, taking in everything.
Li Chao Ch’in looked to his fellow T’ang, Tsu Chen and Hou Hsin-Fa. Like him, they seemed greatly moved by the moment. By the simple sight of Wang Lung, who, dressed as he was, looked the image of his father when he’d been younger.
When we first met, back in Nan-ching, all those years ago.
Back then, none of them would have imagined such a moment. Why, even to live in such a world was beyond their wildest thoughts. Yet, ineluctably, it had come. And now they were on the verge of ruling that world.
If we can survive that long.
But this was an important step towards that goal. To make Wang Lung one of the Seven. A T’ang.
Li Chao Ch’in shivered. Why, even the word moved him today. T’ang. ‘Beautiful and imposing’ was its literal meaning. And to be a T’ang… from henceforth it was be the equivalent of Son of Heaven. For this ceremony would be different from those which had given them their titles. This would be the first of a new ceremony, where the new T’ang would give his oath of loyalty not to a single man, greater than he, but to his fellows.
Beautiful and imposing… So they would be from this day on.
Against all sense, against his better nature, and certainly against the great streak of cynicism that ran in his blood, Amos Shepherd watched Wang Lung become a T’ang. He felt a strange, impassioned longing that this dream, that currently looked so hopeless, so incapable of being fulfilled, should yet come about.
A world, ruled by the Seven and at peace.
For even as he stood there, even as Wang Lung said his vows and bowed before each of his fellow T’ang in turn, kneeling and kissing the black iron ring of power on each one’s right hand, so the two strike forces were in the air, winging out across the greatness that was Asia, towards their targets.
An hour from now we shall know.
Word was that Tsao Chun’s son was packing up in North America; boarding his men onto whatever troop ships he could muster and flying them back here for one final confrontation. But they would know long before the first of them returned. It would be settled long before then.
Shepherd looked to Wang Lung. The young man was speaking to Li Chao Ch’in now, equal to equal.
‘I shall have him, Chao Ch’in. I swear to you. I shall hold that man’s heart in my hand before this is finished.’
Maybe so, Shepherd thought, moved by the young man’s words, but they walked in darkness right then, their destinies uncharted.
Jiang Lei woke suddenly, the taste of ginger in his mouth. Or so he thought. For when he licked his lips he realized that it was not ginger but the memory of ginger, from a meal so long ago, so distant that he had forgotten it ’til now.
That first meal with Chun Hua.
The old man lay there, staring almost silently at the whiteness of the ceiling, the faintest smile colouring his features.
There had been a poem… ah… something vague… something about…
No. It was gone.
The smile slowly faded. Ginger… what was it now? Something about ginger… something about… ah, yes.
Chun Hua. His beautiful Chun Hua.
Jiang lay there a moment after that, thoughtless, his eyes slowly blinking.
And then… her smile. It was there suddenly, there in his mind, in his memory, as sharp as the day he’d first seen her. Her smile. Like the dawn itself.
Her smile.
Chapter 24
CONSEQUENCES
Jake woke. For a time he lay there in the dark, the whole of him trembling as he tried to recover from where he’d been, adrift once more, lost on the floodtide of memory.
It was just after five. From the living room he could hear the faint murmur of the news channel. He closed his eyes, ignoring it, shutting it out. Only the dreams were in his head. He couldn’t shut those out. And so he lay there, remembering that circle of spitting faces, their eyes filled with hatred, their thin and ugly mouths accusing him, tearing him to shreds.
Back in the beginning. When they’d first come to the levels.
They had called them ‘tzu pao kung i’ – ‘self report, public appraisal’, part of the process of ‘passing through the gate’, of purifying yourself by exposing your weaknesses to those who lived and worked with you.
They argued that the old self had to be stripped away before the new self could be built. It was a technique the Communists had used, under Mao Tse Tung, supposedly a way of making citizens more sociable, more compliant. Which was all well and good, only what was never said was just how vile it was. To experience a tzu pao kung i was to have one’s soul flayed publicly. It destroyed one’s trust in one’s neighbours. Twenty years on and Jake could still see those awful, hate-filled faces. Still feel the flecks of their spittle on his face as, one by one, they had leaned in to criticize him, pecking away at him like crows, making mountains of the pettiest little faults. Condemning him for being who he was. And not a word of praise. Not a single utterance in his favour.
People had been known to kill themselves after such sessions.
He had been stronger than that. Or so he thought, for even now, twenty years later, he lay there trembling. Afraid of those memories. Terrified.
And it wasn’t only that. Some mornings he forgot. Some mornings, when he woke, it really felt as if he were back there. That all this was a dream. Only then he’d remember, and with it he’d think of everything he’d lost. All of those things that made life bearable, which, here in this other world, were converted into shadows of themselves.
The Big Lie, it touched it all – every last sentiment, every cherished recollection – until, in the end, you began to doubt that any of it had ever really happened; began to accept Tsao Ch’un’s crazy rewrite as the truth. And then you were in trouble, because that was when you began to fall apart inside. When none of it made any sense. When there was no coherence, no logic – rational or emotional – behind the rewritten story of your life. No reason for having done all the things you’d done.
On such mornings he would wake before the dawn, in the fevered grip of some recollection turned to dream. And there, in those waking moments, he would face it – the abyss. That great, gaping nothingness that underpinned his existence. That absence where there should have been a healthy, happy presence.
A continuity.
; His life. All the things he had ever done. All of them turned into a lie.
They had told him that what he felt was natural. That things would get better, once they settled down. Once he’d grown accustomed to the life. But simply being there, inside, in the levels of their vast, earth-spanning City, was a kind of torment. For Jake it had always felt like an imprisonment, like he’d been trapped.
Some people slowly fell apart. He’d seen it with his own eyes, countless times, and whilst most went quietly, some went out in a blaze of violence. Ticking bombs, they were. Ticking fucking bombs.
Reconstructed, they said of him. Only that wasn’t really how he felt. No, he felt like an actor who had forgotten his lines.
Beside him Mary woke. She reached out, taking his hand in hers.
‘What’s up?’
The simple touch of her fingers, entwined against his own, warm and familiar, lightened his mood. She was the sunlight of his winter years.
What’s up? It wasn’t something he could properly answer.
‘I’ll make some ch’a,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘Just wait there. I’ll bring you a cuppa in bed.’
Jake sat there at the kitchen table, waiting for the kettle to boil, looking up at the muted screen and watching the silent images of Security forces going about their business. Calming things down, making sure there was order in the levels.
He’d checked his messages and as yet there was no word from Advocate Meng. Then again, he’d not expected anything. Not until later. But there was a message from Beth, letting them know that she’d be over in the afternoon.
He was about to make the tea, when the door buzzer sounded.
Jake looked up, speaking to the house screen, ‘Switch the view to the external corridor.’
The image changed; showed a figure in the corridor outside. It was a courier by the look of it.
Jake went out, standing there a moment. No, he thought. You’re just being paranoid. If they wanted to get you, they’d get you.
Daylight on Iron Mountain Page 33